Some came to escape religious persecution, while others came to acquire land.
Social Darwinism really ought to be called "Spencerism," after Herbert Spencer, who began such thoughts. Spencer and Charles Darwin were rivals, not allies. The term "survival of the fittest" is actually a Spencer term, which he applied to human beings. (Darwin used the term "natural selection" in reference to biological species.) The ideas of what came to be known as "Social Darwinism" is that some people are just better and more fit to succeed than other, so they ought to succeed and rule over the less-talented members of the human species (like poor people). Industry titans (sometimes referred to as "robber barons") used the ideas of Social Darwinism to justify their dominating ways over common laborers.
