Who is The Forgotten Man?

I’m reading a book called The Forgotten Man by Amity Schlaes. It is forcing me to redefine my understanding of the New Deal era. Very fascinating book.

clipped from article.nationalreview.com In the 1880s a Yale philosopher named William Graham Sumner had spoken of another forgotten man. Sumner described his forgotten man algebraically. A, he said, wanted to help X. Nothing wrong with that. B also wanted to help X. The problem occurs when A and B get together and pass a dubious law that coerces C into cofunding their project for X. C is the forgotten man in this instance. As Sumner wrote: “He works, he votes, generally he prays but he always pays, yes above all he pays”¦He keeps the production going on. C is the man, he also wrote, who is “never thought of.” During the Depression many people still recalled Sumner’s forgotten man. politicians debated which forgotten man, C or X, was the true forgotten man. Many believed that Hoover’s and FDR’s efforts on behalf of one forgotten man was creating a second. Sumner, even before the income tax, the Great Society and Medicare Part D had the foresight to call “jobbery”.�