By Their Bootstraps:

The lives of twelve gilded age Social Entrepreneurs!

Given this focus on action in the present day, one might ask why we would sponsor a book depicting the lives of people who lived over a century ago.

The answer is that we see today’s resurgence in social entrepreneurship as a renewal of the spirit that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a spirit that saw the foundations of today’s independent, non-profit sector built by individuals who saw it as their responsibility to act to ameliorate society’s problems on their own without significant government oversight or involvement.

The sector these people helped create is taken for granted now, but was quite unique when they began.

Organizations that existed solely to provide benefits for others without charge were rare in the early 19th century, and even rarer in earlier times.

Consequently, these people blazed their own trails in creating their groups; they had to be every bit as entrepreneurial in the setting of goals and the creativity of achieving them as any founder of a business.

What distinguished them and the sector they were creating was the object of this entrepreneurial fervor: not the accumulation of wealth or the production of goods, but the betterment of their fellow men.

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Henry Olsen
New York, New York