What is the historical significance of Social Darwinism?

Was the belief that competition was part of human evolution and poverty existed as part of the natural order of things and that the small percentage of the wealthy at the top were the more evolved class of people. The belief applied terms from Darwin's An Origin of Species to social aspects of humans. Like, survival of the fittest and natural selection. It was a belief among many wealthy American businessmen: Sociologist Herbert Spencer; William Graham Sumner who wrote What Social Classes Owe to Each Other was considered the most influential Social Darwinist, he argued that social programs to designed to aid poor people worked against nature; Andrew Carnegie applied Darwin's survival of the fittest to society by believing that a free-market economy and noninterference of the government allowed the fittest to evolve. These people believed they were rich because they were evolutionally superior human beings.