"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps:" How a joke about bootstraps devolved into an American credo

[3Hotdogs]

2. Horatio Alger compounds this bullshit with his "rags to riches" books. People bought them as gifts

to inspire the 'utes at the turn of the 19th-20th century. These were stories about boys who had shit jobs in their communities, newspaper street vendor, shoe shine and so forth. Mostly orphans. They toiled and got nowhere UNTIL some benefactor saw a light in the boy and set him on the road to wealth.

One story was about a boy who saved the life of a wealthy man's daughter. "How can I ever repay you?" Next comes an offer of a job in an office at a desk, next to the company's owner.

"Oh no, sir, I could never accept that position. It is better than I begin in the mailroom......"

At the end of these, we are told that the boy, later became a man of influence in his community its.