Scharnhorst indicates Alger's legacy resides not only in the several parodies and satires by William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, John Seelye, Glendon Swarthout, and William Gaddis, but also in the Horatio Alger Awards and in the many young readers who embraced his moral and humanitarian philosophy and were disinclined to embrace robber baron capitalism. Scharnhorst writes "It would seem that Alger was either over-rated as an economic and political propangandist or – more probably – his books were simply not designed thematically to spread the gospel of orthodox capitalism and convert the readership of "The Masses".