Originally, the term referred to an individual who arises from a poor or otherwise disadvantaged background to eminence in financial, political or other areas by nurturing qualities, such as perseverance and hard work, as opposed to achieving these goals through inherited fortune, family connections, or other privileges. By the mid-1950s, success in the United States generally implied "business success".
Origins
The phrase "self-made man" can be found in both American and British periodicals in the 1820s. General Samuel Blackburn running for office in Virginia in 1824 used it to describe himself.[1] The English writer William Hazlitt described Lord Chatham in The New Monthly Magazine in 1826 as "a self-made man, bred in a camp, not in a court."[2] An 1831 obituarist in The Liberator describing Rev. Thomas Paul wrote, "As a self-made man, (and, in the present age, every colored man, if made at all, must be self-made,) he was indeed a prodigy."[3]
An oft-repeated but no longer creditable claim is that the term "self-made man" was "coined" on February 2, 1832, by Henry Clay in the United States Senate. (Historian Irvin G. Wyllie used Clay's Senate speech on that date as his first example of its use in his 1954 book, The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches, stating that it "was first applied" on that occasion).[4]
Self-made men
Benjamin Franklin, c.1785. Oil by Duplessis
Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, has been described as "undoubtedly the original self-made man."[5] and the greatest exemplar of the "self-made man".[6] Both the American Dream and the self-made man concepts are inextricably linked and are rooted in American history. Franklin's autobiography was described by the editor of the 1916 edition, as the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men".[6] His autobiography, which was dedicated to his son William Franklin, with the first chapter based on a 1771 letter to William,[7] was used as illustrative of the journey of the self-made man in the eighteenth century in Colonial United States. Franklin introduced the archetypal self-made man through his own life story in which in spite of all odds he overcame his low and humble origins and inherited social position—his father was a candle-maker—to re-invent himself through self-improvement based on a set of strong moral values such as "industry, economy, and perseverance"[6]:143 thereby attaining "eminence" in the classic rags to riches narrative. Franklin's maxims as published in his Autobiography provide others, specifically his own son, with strategies for attaining status in the United States, described as a "land of unequaled opportunity" in the last quarter of the 18th century.[7][6]:143
F. W. Pine wrote in his introduction of the 1916 publication of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, that Franklin's biography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar of the "self-made man".[6]
"Franklin is a good type of our American manhood. Although not the wealthiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly, in the versatility of his genius and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The simple yet graphic story in the Autobiography of his steady rise from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy, and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men. It is in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin's maxims."
—Frank Woodworth Pine 1916
Franklin and Frederick Douglass,[8][9] describe the "self-made man in similar language: "Being possessionless and unencumbered by authority is the necessary beginning state for the potential self-made man. One cannot be "made" by the help of a father, teacher, mentor, etc. ..., but must rise by one's own grit, determination, discipline, and opportunism. The irony is that they have made themselves free from bounds and possessions, in a sense impoverished, so that they can then begin to acquire power and wealth on their own. The key is to acquire those possessions and power without help. The goal, then, is not to become famous or wealthy in the literal sense, but to participate in something precise and mythical."[10]
Frederick Douglass, photographed between 1850 and 1860.
Frederick Douglass developed the concepts in a series of lectures "Self-Made Men" from 1859 onward, for example 1895,[11]:549–50 which were published and archived in "The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress". In his 1872 lecture[12] Douglass noted that there were "no such men as self-made men. That term implies an individual independence of the past and present which can never exist ... Our best and most valued acquisitions have been obtained either from our contemporaries or from those who have preceded us in the field of thought and discovery. We have all either begged, borrowed or stolen. We have reaped where others have sown, and that which others have strown, we have gathered."[12] However, he then provided one of his most detailed descriptions of the self-made man,[12]
Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can be put in this world, and in the exercises of these uses to build up worthy character. They are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results. ... They are the men who, in a world of schools, academies, colleges and other institutions of learning, are often compelled by unfriendly circumstances to acquire their education elsewhere and, amidst unfavorable conditions, to hew out for themselves a way to success, and thus to become the architects of their own good fortunes. ... From the depths of poverty such as these have often come. ... From hunger, rags and destitution, they have come ..."
Sketch of English novelist Charles Dickens in 1842. Juliet John backed up the claim for Dickens "to be called the first self-made global media star of the age of mass culture."
Abraham Lincoln,[14]Michael Faraday, George Stephenson, Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, P. T. Barnum, Booker T. Washington, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Ford have also been described as self-made men.[15][10]:8 Both Carnegie and Lee Iacocca acknowledge that their own autobiographies were influenced by Franklin's.[10]:8 In theirs, both Lincoln and Ronald Reagan described their own origins as somewhat disadvantaged to reflect the narrative of self-made men.[10]:8 Blumenthal began his 2016 biography of Lincoln—A Self-Made Man—with the phrase, "I used to be a slave", referring to Lincoln's claim in 1856 that his "domineering and uneducated father" "exploited" young Lincoln by "renting" him out to "rural neighbors in Indiana." Following his escape from servitude, Lincoln re-invented himself.[16] Lincoln was inspired by Franklin's Autobiography.[17]:29–31,38–43
The Industrial Revolution spurred the growth of new businesses formed by self-made men in various industries that appeared in towns and cities throughout Britain. According to food historian Polly Russell: "Manufacturers such as Huntley & Palmers in Reading, Carr's of Carlisle and McVitie's in Edinburgh transformed from small family-run businesses into state-of-the-art operations".[18] In addition to goods being sold in the growing number of stores, street sellers were common in an increasingly urbanized country.[19] The soft drinks company, R. White's Lemonade, began in 1845 by selling drinks in London streets in a wheelbarrow.[20] As the spa town of Harrogate, England, grew in size and prosperity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the self-made men Richard Ellis,[21]George Dawson,[22]:631–632 and David Simpson,[23] became rich property developers, and draper's apprentice John Turner became even more prosperous as the town's moneylender.[24]
In an 1893 article in a railway magazine, Eugene V. Debs offered Andrew Johnson (1808–1875), the 17th President of the United States, Henry Wilson (1812–1875) was the 18th Vice President of the United States (1873–1875), Daniel Webster (1782–1852) who served twice as United States Secretary of State, Edward Everett, and Rufus Choate as exemplary nineteenth-century self-made men. Debs contrasted the successful self-made men to those whose "illiteracy, stupidity, lack of ambition, forever keeps them at the bottom ... [who] prefer pool to school, and choose to hammer coal and shovel it into a fire-box rather than employ their leisure in learning what they must know if they expect to rise." He calls on them to "resolve upon a change of habits — renounce follies and vices, obtain elementary books and study."[25]:267–217
In John G. Cawelti's 1965 book Apostles of the self-made man, he listed Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horatio Alger, and John Dewey as individuals "who either played a major role in shaping the success ideal or were associate with it in the public mind."[26]:1209[27]
In the restaurant business Frank Giuffrida, the owner and manager of the Hilltop Steak House which opened in Saugus 1961 and became the biggest restaurant in the United States by the 1980s, is described as self-made man in the Slate article.[5][28] Frank Giuffrida's parents were Sicilian immigrants who lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He began to work before he completed high school to run the family butcher shop when his father died. He opened the Hilltop Steakhouse after he sold the family store. His innovative strategy was to offer large size portions in a large scale restaurant, making up for the extra cost of generous portions by the economy of scale.[5] According to the New York Times, the "Hilltop exceeded $27 million gross" in 1987.[29]
In the field of modern art, Arshile Gorky has been described as a self-made man who rose from "a dark, rich peasant culture" to prominence among "New York modern artists" through his "self-taught erudition and aggressive principles."[30]
Horatio Alger Jr.'s six-volume Ragged Dick series which began with the first full-length novel, Ragged Dick published in May 1868, a Bildungsroman "whose name became synonymous with the rags-to-riches narrative", where young Dick eventually became the successful and distinguished Richard Hunter.[5][31][32][33]
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's magnum opusThe Great Gatsby, describes the downfall of the "archetypal, if somewhat misguided"[35] "socially ambitious self-made man" Jay Gatsby who rose from "an obscure and impoverished Midwestern childhood to become a wealthy and sought-after center of Long Island society".[36] Gatsby contrasts with Ben Franklin and the characters in Horatio Alger Jr. novels, as successful 'self-made men'. His story serves as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream where "an unhappy fate is inevitable for the poor and striving individual, and the rich are allowed to continue without penalty their careless treatment of others' lives."[36][37]
According to the 2017 "World Ultra Wealth Report" by research company Wealth-X, "wealth creation" from 1997 through 2017 has been "driven largely by self-made individuals", mainly men.[38]:27 According to the report, ultra high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI), those who have a net worth of at least US$30 million, were "predominantly self-made" having "earned their fortunes". Two-thirds of the UHNWI sourced "their wealth from their own efforts" such as "fruitful business ventures or successful investments."[38]:29 Of the 226,450 UHNWIs, 66% were self-made; of the 7,200 UHNW millennials (born between 1980 and 1995), 66% were self-made; of the 28,985 UHNW women, 45% were self-made; of the 33,290 UHNWI from emerging Asia (excluding Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong), 68% were self-made; and of the 34,961 UHNW Ivy League individuals, 75% were self-made.[38]:33
Cultural history
In his 2000 book Creating the Modern Man, cultural historian Tom Pendergast traced the way in which the concept of the self-made man was referenced in men's magazines from 1900 through 1950.[39]:10 Pendergast divided masculinity into only two periods: Victorian, which was "based on property-ownership and family", and "post-Victorian", which was "based on a cult of personality, self-improvement, and narcissism".[40] He described the "ideal Victorian man" as a "property owning man of character who believed in honesty, integrity, self-restraint, and duty to God, country, and family".[39]:10 The post-Victorian image of the self-made man was crucial to Pendergast's study. He revealed how through magazines men "were encouraged to form their identities around an ideology of hard work."[39]:10
Criticism of concept
The idea of 'self-made' has come under criticism. Mike Myatt in Forbes writes that "behind every success are significant investments and contributions by some if not all of the following people: family, friends, associates, protagonists, antagonists, advisors, teachers, authors, mentors, coaches, and the list could go on".[41]Malcolm Gladwell states that "success is a product of culture of background and what your parents and great-grandparents and great great grandparents did for a living".[42]
In September 2011, US Senator Elizabeth Warren challenged the concept of the self-made man in a video that went viral,[43] garnering over one million views on YouTube. Warren stated that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody".[44]
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He became the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.
Horatio Alger Jr. was an American author who wrote young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to middle-class security and comfort through good works. His writings were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on the United States from 1868 through to his death in 1899.
The American Dream is the national ethos of the United States, that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life. The phrase was popularized by James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931, and has had different meanings over time. Originally, the emphasis was on democracy, liberty and equality, but more recently has been on achieving material wealth and upward mobility.
A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire. Many national currencies have, or have had at various times, a low unit value, in many cases due to past inflation. It is obviously much easier and less significant to be a millionaire in those currencies, thus a millionaire in Hong Kong or Taiwan, for example, may be merely averagely wealthy, or perhaps less wealthy than average. A millionaire in Zimbabwe in 2007 could have been extremely poor. Because of this, the term 'millionaire' generally refers to those whose assets total at least one million units of a high-value currency, such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling.
Edward L. Stratemeyer was an American publisher, writer of children's fiction, and founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. He was one of the most prolific writers in the world, producing in excess of 1,300 books himself, selling in excess of 500 million copies. He also created many well-known fictional book series for juveniles, including The Rover Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, The Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew series, many of which sold millions of copies and remain in publication. On Stratemeyer's legacy, Fortune wrote: "As oil had its Rockefeller, literature had its Stratemeyer."
Russell Alexander Alger was an American politician and businessman. He served as the 20th governor of Michigan, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Secretary of War.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by African-American orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. In factual detail, the text describes the events of his life and is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the United States.
The Columbian Orator is a collection of political essays, poems, and dialogues collected and written by Caleb Bingham. Published in 1797, it includes speeches by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and some imagined speeches by historical figures such as Socrates and Cato. It was popularly used for recitation in American schoolrooms from 1790 to 1820 to teach pupils reading and speaking. Typical of many readers of that period, the anthology celebrated "republican virtues," promoting patriotism and questioning the ethics of slavery. The Columbian Orator is an example of progymnasmata, containing examples for students to copy and imitate.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.
High-net-worth individual (HNWI) is a technical term used in the financial services industry to designate individuals who maintain liquid assets at or above a certain threshold. Typically, these individuals are defined as holding financial assets valued over US$1 million. A secondary level, a very-high-net-worth individual (VHNWI), references an individual with a net worth of at least US$5 million. The terminal level, an ultra-high-net-worthindividual (UHNWI) holds US$30 million in investible assets. Individuals with a net worth of over US$1 billion are considered to occupy a special bracket of the UHNW. These thresholds are broadly used in studies of wealth inequality, government regulation, investment suitability requirements, marketing, financing standards, and general corporate strategy.
Theodore Tilton was an American newspaper editor, poet and abolitionist. He was born in New York City to Silas Tilton and Eusebia Tilton. On his twentieth birthday, October 2, 1855, he married Elizabeth Richards. Tilton's newspaper work was fully supportive of abolitionism and the Northern cause in the American Civil War.
Sarah Franklin Bache, sometimes known as Sally Bache, was the daughter of Benjamin Franklin and Deborah Read. She was a leader in relief work during the American Revolutionary War and frequently served as her father's political hostess, like her mother before her death in 1774. Sarah was also an important leader for women in the pro-independence effort in Philadelphia. She was an active member of the community until her death in 1808.
"Self-Made Men" is a lecture, first delivered in 1859, by Frederick Douglass, which gives his own definition of the self-made man and explains what he thinks are the means to become such a man.
A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin is Nathanael West's third novel, published in 1934. It is a brutal satire of Horatio Alger's novels and their eternal optimism.
The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans is a nonprofit organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, that was founded in 1947 to honor the achievements of outstanding Americans who have succeeded in spite of adversity and to emphasize the importance of higher education. The association is named for Horatio Alger, a 19th-century author of hundreds of dime novels in the "rags-to-riches" genre who extolled the importance of perseverance and hard work.
Shields Green, who also referred to himself as "'Emperor"', was, according to Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave from Charleston, South Carolina, and a leader in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, in October 1859. He had lived for almost two years in the house of Douglass, in Rochester, New York, and Douglass introduced him there to Brown.
Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is a Bildungsroman by Horatio Alger Jr., which was serialized in The Student and Schoolmate in 1867 and expanded for publication as a full-length novel in May 1868 by the publisher A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six-volume Ragged Dick Series and became Alger's best-selling work. The tale follows a poor bootblack's rise to middle-class respectability in 19th-century New York City. It had a favorable reception. Student and Schoolmate reported their readers were delighted with the first installment, and Putnam's Magazine thought boys would love the novel. The plot and theme were repeated in Alger's subsequent novels and became the subject of parodies and satires.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass's third autobiography, published in 1881, revised in 1892. Because of the emancipation of American slaves during and following the American Civil War, Douglass gave more details about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery in this volume than he could in his two previous autobiographies. It is the only one of Douglass's autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American presidents such as Lincoln and Garfield, his account of the ill-fated "Freedman's Bank", and his service as the United States Marshall of the District of Columbia. Frederick Douglass shed light on what life was like as an enslaved person. Although it is the least studied and analyzed, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass allows readers to view his life as a whole.
Rags to riches refers to any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth, and in some cases from absolute obscurity to heights of fame, fortune and celebrity—sometimes instantly. This is a common archetype in literature and popular culture, such as the writings of Horatio Alger, Jr.
The Honour of a London Prentice is an English broadside ballad from the late 17th century. The ballad is a nationalistic celebration of England. It follows an English apprentice who goes to Turkey and wins the respect of the King and the hand of the Turkish Princess through heroic deeds. He defends Queen Elizabeth, and eventually gets the Turkish King to agree that no country is better than England, and no government is better than that of Queen Elizabeth. Sung to the tune of All You That Love Goodfellows. Copies of the broadside can be found in the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. Facsimile transcriptions are also available on-line for public consumption.
1 2 Franklin, Benjamin, Benjamin Franklin, his autobiography, The Harvard classics. 1909–14, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, retrieved 5 July 2006– via bartleby.com
↑ "Self-Made Men: Address before the Students of the Indian Industrial School". Library of Congress. The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress: Speech, Article, and Book File. Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Library of Congress. 1895. Self-made men ... are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any of the favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results.Folder 1 of 16 (Series: Speech, Article, and Book File—B: Frederick Douglass, Undated)
1 2 3 "Self-Made Men". The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress: Speech, Article, and Book File. Monadnock. 1872.
↑ Kotler, Philip; Armstrong, Gary (2010). Principles of Marketing. Pearson Education. p.278.
↑ "Find a will". probatesearch.service.gov.uk. Gov.UK. Retrieved 25 January 2023. Richard Ellis of Southlands, Harrogate. 23 October 1895, effects valued at £12,811 (equivalent to £1,574,299 in 2021)
↑ Neesam, Malcolm G. (2022). Wells & Swells, the golden age of Harrogate Spa, 1842-1923, vol.1 (1ed.). Lancaster, England: Carnegie Publishing. ISBN9781859362389. (Dawson's) brilliant business instinct made him a very rich man
↑ "England and Wales National Probate Calendar". ancestry.co.uk. H.M. Government. 1931. Retrieved 17 February 2023. David Simpson of Rutland Road Harrogate, 14 August 1831. His effects were valued at £69,890 14s 3d (equivalent to £5,052,153 in 2021)
↑ "Find a will". probatesearch.service.gov.uk. Probate search service. Retrieved 13 February 2023. John Turner of Starbeck, Harrogate. 12 April 1883 at the Principal Registry, personal estate £50,784, 15s 10d (equivalent to £5,441,695 in 2021)
↑ Debs, Eugene V. (April 1893). "self-made+men"+is+seemingly+paradoxical&pg=RA5-PA267 "Self-Made Men". Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine. Unsigned editorial. Vol.17, no.4. Retrieved November 14, 2017. The term "self-made men" is seemingly paradoxical — since men who rise from obscurity to eminence in any of the walks of life, must have been assisted by agencies quite independent of themselves
↑ Salzman, Jack (ed.). American Studies: An Annotated Bibliography. Vol.2. Cawelti focused on "different definitions of success", "how interpretations of the self-made man changed". He used three main sources for the self-improvement theme: 1) individual figures: "Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horatio Alger, John Dewey, who either played a major role in shaping the success ideal or were associate with it in the public mind", 2) "success manuals" from the "late 18th century to 1900" and 3)"self-made man as central character in fictional narratives." Cawelti explored "the characteristic complex of ideas about the self-made man "that reveal connections between social conditions and the divergent notions of success" from American Studies: An Annotated Bibliography, Volume 2 edited by Jack Salzman
↑ Cawelti, John G. (1988) [1965]. Apostles of the self-made man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.279. ISBN9780226098708.
↑ Nackenoff, Carol (1997). "The Horatio Alger Myth". In Gerster, Patrick; Cords, Nicholas (eds.). Myth America: A Historical Anthology. Vol.2. St. James, NY: Brandywine Press. ISBN1-881089-97-5.
↑ Scharnhorst, Gary; Bales, Jack (1981). Horatio Alger Jr.: An Annotated Bibliography of Comment and Criticism. Scarecrow Press. ISBN978-0-8108-1387-8.
↑ Decker, Jeffrey Louis (1994). "Gatsby's Pristine Dream: The Diminishment of the Self-Made Man in the Tribal Twenties". Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 28 (1). Duke University Press: 52–71. doi:10.2307/1345913. JSTOR1345913.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
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