Psst. Horatio Alger was a pedophile.

Why do conservatives continue to revere the author of thinly-veiled romances of man-boy love? Why does the Horatio Alger Association continue to give out prizes and scholarships in his honor?

The Horatio Alger Award induction ceremonies are being held April 7-9 here in Washington, D.C. I don’t know why it takes three days to hand out these awards; there are only 16 honorees this year, including Jane Seymour and Herschel Walker. The larger question, though, is why, at a time when Republicans have gone batshit crazy calling every liberal they can find a pedophile or a pedophile-coddler, there remain awards and scholarships named after a famous, well, pedophile.

Horatio Alger (1832-1899) was perhaps the most successful writer of young adult novels who ever lived. Five percent of all the books checked out of the Muncie, Indiana, public library between November 1891 and December 1902 were authored by Horatio Alger. Among his best-remembered books are Luck and Pluck (1869) and Ragged Dick (1868). The Horatio Alger Association reveres Alger for his “tales of overcoming adversity through unyielding perseverance and basic moral principles.”

But Alger was also an ordained minister who at age 34 vacated the pulpit quite abruptly after being charged with “the abominable and revolting crime of unnatural familiarity with Boys.” This was based on testimony from two teenage boys in his parish, ages 13 and 15, who said Alger molested them. There were rumors he’d abused other youths in similar fashion. When the accusations were raised Alger did not dispute them; he just hopped the next train out of town. Later he confessed his guilt privately to William James.

After abandoning the ministry Alger commenced writing a series of dime novels about impoverished young boys getting ahead by displaying their pluck and determination to wealthy older men. My friend Mike Kinsley likes to point out that the books leave one with the impression that the way to get ahead is to find a powerful patron and suck up to him like mad. But ultimately these are romances about man-boy love that dare not speak its name. It’s kind of hilarious that the same sort of conservatives who excoriated Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for her rulings in child pornography cases (rulings not notably different from those made by Trump-appointed judges) continue to embrace Alger as a troubadour of entrepreneurial virtue.

(All of this about Alger, incidentally, is in my 2012 book The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.)

In other news, please read my latest New Republic piece, about NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo’s bold legal challenge to captive-audience propaganda harangues that management routinely requires employees to attend before a union election. Before passage of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act these meetings were judged illegal on the grounds that they were coercive. The Taft-Hartley law didn’t really change that, but after its passage the NLRB, in a decision that Abruzzo argues was mistaken, concluded that captive-audience meetings were OK. They are not OK, Abruzzo argues, because you can get fired for not attending one, or leaving early, or asking a rude question. You can read my piece here.