The previous essay dealt with some of the origins of what will become the mainline1 thought in self-help or success literature throughout the twentieth century and beyond. In addition to this developing main-current we will find the emergence of offshoots and others, which at first begin slowly, and accelerate over time, up through the present day. Sometimes they are a departure in approach, sometimes they are a more focused look at a specific subject or category–such as personal finance, sales-techniques, human relationships, or something else. Nevertheless, the end-goal or purpose remains the same: success.2 As such, what underlies the totality of this literature is a clear sense of utility or pragmatism–it is paradigmatic of the instrumental stance. This is not literature to be contemplated, it is a literature to be used.
Before continuing the development of mainline self-help thought, however, I want to take a brief look at two very popular and influential offshoots that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century. The first is The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason, which was published in 1926. Here we have a clear split with the “power of thought” crowd and are once again back to a sober, rational, dollars and cents approach to success. Marketed as “the success secrets of the ancients”, the book is a parable of money management, purported to explain “the secrets of acquiring money, keeping money, and making money earn more money.”3 Outlined within are principles which many people take for granted today, such as paying yourself first (saving), budgeting expenses, owning your own home, protecting the principal of an investment, consulting those smarter or more knowledgeable than yourself, et al. There is an affinity of sorts with the Almanack4 of Benjamin Franklin, but I am uncertain about whether or not there is a direct causal connection; at least I have found no evidence for it. As well as pecuniary advice, Clason offers other anecdotes, such as taking decisive action, and the importance of never ceasing to learn and study–though it is important to remember that such advice is always packaged in such a way that following it will lead to financial success. The closest link I can find to any “thought power” advice is Clason’s endorsing the necessity of having strong determination or singular purpose. “Where the determination is, the way can be found.”5 The Richest Man in Babylon is, as far as I can tell, the first example of its kind. The broader notions of success found in its predecessors–even in Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich, which is obsessed with money–have little to nothing to say about the direct management and use of money itself. This is a specificity which will be repeated in the future among many success-related subjects.
The second offshoot I want to consider is Dale Carnegie’s famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). Anecdotal evidence would suggest that almost everyone–if they have not read it–has at least heard of it.6 Nearly 50 years after its initial printing, accolades such as “the first–and still the best–book of its kind–to lead you to success” and “time-tested advice in this book has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives” can be seen gracing the cover of the 1982 paperback edition published by Pocket Books (a division of Simon & Schuster). It is quite simply a book about how to successfully get along with people–the keyword being successfully. That is, regardless of what kind of situation you find yourself in, you will likely be dealing with people. And in order make that situation work for you–in order to get the most out of it, to profit the most from it–there are certain principles of human interaction that you should follow. It is divided into the following four sections: “Fundamental Techniques in Handling People”, “Six Ways to Make People Like You”, “Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking”, and “Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment”.7 Examples and anecdotes abound, from common people and famous criminals to wealthy industrialists and U.S. Presidents; from academics like William James or B.F. Skinner to poets and writers such as Goethe and Carlyle. What is perhaps most amazing about How to Win Friends and Influence People is the extent to which it is shot through with instrumentality and situated within a framework of utility. The criterion of human action is, unapologetically, the consequences that result from them. This perhaps shows how complicated human interaction has become, given the socio-economic conditions of the twentieth century and beyond.8 The significance of Carnegie’s book as the first and most influential of its kind is largely undisputed. And the popularity of books about the “science of dealing with people” has only increased.
These two examples, as I have already said, are offshoots; breaks in the mainline thought of self-help, that, as time passes, develop subcategories of their own. This “mainline thought” as I am calling it–what has come to be known as the contemporary genre of self-help–is largely the result of the work of one man: Napoleon Hill, whose published work remains in high demand to this day.9 The influence of the work of Hill on mainstream self-help or success literature is hard to overstate, nearly everyone writing in the field after him was influenced by his ideas in some way. Hill himself was heavily influenced by his predecessors, as is quite clear from his writing; Emerson and Haanel are perhaps the most prominent.10 Transcendentalism, New Thought, the common sense, pragmatic approach to success, all have a voice in the words of Hill, who sought to be as comprehensive as possible in his approach and subject matter.
In 1919 Napoleon Hill began publishing a success magazine called Hill’s Golden Rule, a “Magazine of Economic Philosophy and Applied Psychology, dealing with the Laws of the Mind and Human Conduct that point the way to success for every human being.”11 He lost control of it, and in 1921 he launched Napoleon Hill’s Magazine, which lasted until 1923. Both publications were focused on advancing Hill’s philosophy of personal achievement. Later he claimed his research on the “philosophy of personal achievement” was directly inspired by the behest of the industrialist Andrew Carnegie.12
Hill’s first major success was a book published in 1928 called The Law of Success. Originally released as individual courses before being formally published, the book is said to be “the result of careful analysis of the life-work of over one hundred men and women who have achieved unusual success in their respective callings.”13 Among those listed are Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, Charles M. Schwab, Alexander Graham Bell, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and many others. The book covers a wide range of subjects and is separated into sixteen lessons, the mastery of which will result in the attainment of whatever you desire. As with Wattles, this is portrayed as an “exact science”, the proof of which will become evident “only by testing and applying these laws for yourself.” The lessons are: The Master Mind, A Definite Cheif Aim, Self-Confidence, The Habit of Saving, Initiative and Leadership, Imagination, Enthusiasm, Self-Control, The Habit of Doing More Than Paid For, Pleasing Personality, Accurate Thinking, Concentration, Co-Operation, Profiting By Failure, Tolerance, and Practicing the Golden Rule.14
Like the work of George Clason and Dale Carnegie outlined above, this is a first of its kind. While both The Richest Man in Babylon and How to Win Friends and Influence People are concerned with a single subject in a highly focused way, The Law of Success aspires to be equally specified, but within a wide range of subjects–each of which is necessary to success (the book itself spans more than 1,100 pages). Individualism, autonomy, and personal power, as represented by Hill in The Law of Success are clearly influenced by Haanel, Emerson, and others. When it comes to the power of thought itself, the book is filled with pseudoscience masquerading as actual science.15 This is reminiscent of both Atkinson and Haanel; thought vibrations are alive and well: “Every mind is both a broadcasting and receiving station.”16 The importance of developing a “pleasing personality,” and dealing successfully with other people is emphasized, as is direct advice on the management of money. Ethics are also brought into Hill’s success-equation, such as the golden rule and others, albeit with an eye to their ultimate instrumentality. Hill understands the Bible through a lens of New Thought concepts and weds his philosophy of achievement to a quasi-Christianity of sorts. Faith, for instance, is seen as the application of “the creative power of thought”, and prayer is advocated as an instrumental force for success.17 There is also a duty to continuously strive for success reminiscent of Puritanism: “The best compensation for doing things is the ability to do more.”18 At bottom, The Law of Success is a distinct repackaging of the thought that has been covered in the two previous essays. It is presented in a more organized and systematic way and purports to be the end-all-be-all of success literature. Its contents are allegedly based on the experience and life-work of the wealthiest and most successful Americans, thereby both enhancing and cementing its appeal in the American psyche.
Think and Grow Rich, which would become Hill’s most successful book and his ultimate claim to fame, was published in 1937.19 Like its predecessor the book is purported to be based on the work of the same and more wealthy industrialists, U.S. Presidents, and other extraordinary individuals.20 In fact, Think and Grow Rich is really a repackaging of The Law of Success. While the latter was long, unwieldy, and read very much like a textbook, the former is much briefer (200 pages or so), succinct, and more attractively presented. In terms of ideas, the primary difference between the two is that Think and Grow Rich tends to emphasize more “thought power” content, often bordering on mysticism. The theology described in the previous essay, such as Atkinson’s “great body of Mind”, Wattles’ “Original” or “Formless Substance”, and Haanel’s “Universal Mind” or “Supreme Intelligence”, is, in Think and Grow Rich, referred to as “Infinite Intelligence”. “This Intelligence may, through the principles of this philosophy, be induced to aid in transmuting desires into concrete, or material form.”21 Like the title suggests, the power of thought itself is the well-spring of all success and achievement.
With the publication of The Law of Success and Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill created–or should I say popularized?–a unique character type: the millionaire, or the rich businessman.22 Through his emphasis on the work of actual people (whether he really worked with them or not) and his purported explanations of their success and achievement, Hill created an ideal that appealed very deeply to the American imagination. It wasn’t simply that these people were rich or powerful–that was common knowledge. It was that through Hill’s idealizations, he created the character type of an ideal person–the person fully wielding the powers of the universe, achieving success on their own terms. Furthermore, his work is an alleged road map to become such a person, if only we follow the formulas. The modern culture of achievement is about to be born.
Notes:
1. I say mainline because it becomes the most common and the most influential approach to success in the literature in question.
2. Conceived in more or less economic terms, depending on the writer in question. Something worth noting is that few if any writers in this genre eliminate money or wealth from their explicit or implied definitions of success.
3. Quotes provided are from the back cover of the 1988 printing of The Richest Man in Babylon published by Signet, a division of Penguin.
4. That is, Poor Richard’s Almanack, published by Benjamin Franklin from 1732 to 1758.
5. See George S. Clason, The Richest Man in Babylon, The Camel Trader of Babylon.
6. Since publication the book has reportedly sold more than 15 million copies, and is popularly considered one of the most successful self-help books in American history.
7. See Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
8. As a preliminary hypothesis, consider that in premodern times society was largely structured by more or less fixed social hierarchies. Men and women of those times inhabited a distinct social role that provided them with a set of behavioral prescriptions, appropriate to the role they occupied. As modernity dawns and develops, the breakup or melting down of such roles begins to occur, lessening, or even eliminating, the behavioral structure that was commonly understood in the past. This is another way of saying that the individual came to be understood as a distinct social unit, abstracted from concrete circumstances, which steadily changed the prevailing social mores of the past. Changing modes of production and consumption, of work and leisure, led to a widening of the scope of behavior, resulting in a multiplicity of complexities in human interaction. The rise of psychology and psychiatry led to a new beginning in understanding the intricacies and nuances of the mind. If we consider concrete examples today, the question of how to approach someone about something often varies with the person in question. For example, some people prefer to be told straight up how things are. Other people prefer, or even need, a more gentle approach. Put differently, our interaction with each other has become more personal. The modern phrase, “it’s not pesonal–it’s just business”, echoes this change–though in this example, the business side more closely reflects the situation of premodern social hierarchies.
9. At the time of writing this, Hill’s most popular book, Think and Grow Rich, holds the Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #147 in Books. The Napoleon Hill Foundation (https://www.naphill.org/) is predominantly concerned with propagating his life’s work.
10. Many ideas and concepts are repackaged without attribution, which makes tracking influences on Hill difficult. Some, however, are more explicit. There are traces of the work of Prentice Mulford in the form of exact phrases, such as “thoughts are things.” A later copy (circa 1919) of Haanel’s The Master-Key System includes his correspondence with many people regarding the impact his book has had on them. Among this correspondence is a letter from Napoleon Hill dated April 21st, 1919. “I have just been retained by a ten million dollar corporation at a salary of $105,200.00 a year, for a portion of my time only.” “I believe in giving credit where it is due, therefore I believe I ought to inform you that my present success and the success which has followed by work as President of the Napoleon Hill Institute is due largely to the principles laid down in the Master-Key System.” (There are a couple things of note about this letter. First is the salary Hill purportedly has been given by a “ten million dollar corporation”. Remember the time is 1919, and $105,000 at that time would equate to roughly $1,500,000 today, “for a portion of my time only.” This is doubtful to me. The second thing I will point out is that there is no record of Hill actually being highly successful until nearly ten years later, and even that success was temporary.) Hill does explicitly cite Emerson as an influence, especially his essay “Compensation”, which he later rewrites as “The Law of Cosmic Habitforce”.
11. Quoted from the cover of the December 1919 edition of Hill’s Golden Rule. Italics in original.
12. There is some dispute as to whether this is true. Most of Hill’s books talk about the incident of Hill meeting Carnegie in person, at which time the wealthy industrialist challenges Hill to take on a twenty-year commitment to research the philosophy of personal achievement and success. From what I can tell, I can find no mention of this anywhere in Hill’s magazines from 1919 to 1923. It is not until The Law of Success is published in 1928 that we find this story, which allegedly took place in 1908.
13. See Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success.
14. Ibid.
15. To be charitable, much of what is written may have, at the time, been believed to be legitimate science. But this is not true of everything. The “thought vibration” concept, and that associated with the “ether” as a quasi-liquid space through which thoughts move, as far as I know, has never been believed by legitimate scientists. Hills acquaintance with scientific understandings of the day was likely via periodicals and newspapers, his understanding of which would have been heavily influenced by his commitment to New Thought, and other things.
16. See Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success, The Master Mind.
17. See Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success, The Golden Rule.
18. See Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success, A Definite Cheif Aim.
19. Published during The Great Depression, the title alone was extremely alluring. Depending on the source, sales figures to date range from 20 to 100 million copies sold. According to the Napoleon Hill Foundation, the 1960 edited edition of Think and Grow Rich has sold in excess of 100 million copies.
20. It is unclear whether Hill actually worked with such people, as he claims to have done many times. Any evidence that Hill had in his possession–photographs taken together, personal correspondence, etc.–were supposedly lost in a fire, and there appears to be no other corroborating sources.
21. See Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, The Sixth Sense.
22. Here I am somewhat drawing upon the work of Max Weber and Alasdair MacIntyre in analyzing “managerial types”, but also Robert Bellah, Michael Maccoby, and William H. Whyte, Jr. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart, Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman, and William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man.