Friday 19 February 2016

Napoleon Hill - A Life in Lies 1

When Napoleon Hill was born in 1883, Horatio Alger's popularity was already on the wane. Alger mainly wrote children’s books, but branched out into biographies, including one of Lincoln.

Alger's tales are generally of the rags to riches genre - a young boy escapes poverty through an act of heroism or demonstration of character. This attracts the attention of some prominent person who appreciates the hero's qualities and lifts the youngster out of poverty, often inviting him to come live in his new mentor's palatial home.

Alger's characters have 'a definite purpose' - to achieve respectability and happiness. They are tempered by adversity: they'll meet setbacks, but they will emerge stronger, more determined, better able to achieve their aspirations.

Napoleon Hill presents himself as a tearaway, gun-toting child, "the worst boy in the county", … until the age of 11, when his father remarried and his stepmother took him under her wing! In "Magic Ladder to Success" (1930), Hill describes himself as "surrounded by the poverty and illiteracy that were firmly established on both sides of my family. For three generations before me, my ancestors were content to be poor and ignorant." (p.xxi)

He was saved from this fate by "an educated stepmother who came from a cultured family" - she planted ambition in his family "starting with my father, whom she sent away to college at the age of forty". (p.xxi) "It was my stepmother who taught me the value of having a definite, major aim in life." (p.xxii). She told him he should devote his energies to becoming a writer and promised she'd get him a typewriter if he surrendered his six-gun.

Now, famously, Abraham Lincoln's stepmother, Sarah, had a good relationship with her stepson (he was 10 years old when she arrived in the household). She came from a cultured family and introduced young Abraham to the classics of literature.

Hill's account is classic Horatio Alger - the advent of a new adult who recognises the young Napoleon's superior qualities, turns him away from self-destructive habits, and instils in him a sense of purpose … he shall become a writer!

Of course, Hill's family was hardly illiterate. His father and grandfather were printers, a prerequisite for which would appear to be literacy. His younger brother would study law at Georgetown, his father was a highly practical and resourceful man who did not need to be 'sent away' to college.

Hill never lets the truth get in the way of a good yarn … which seems like a good time to introduce "A Lifetime of Riches" by Michael J. Ritt Junior & Kirk Landers. Published in 1995, this is Hill's 'official' biography, courtesy of the Napoleon Hill Foundation - Ritt worked with Hill and is executive director of the Foundation, so don't expect a searching enquiry into Hill's life and works. This was never going to be an exposé. However, I'll use it as the skeleton on which to hang critical questions about Hill and his legacy.

Ritt describes Hill in the Foreword as "confidant of presidents and statesmen", "an American treasure", and assures us that the "prominent men of several generations freely revealed their secrets of success to him." (p.viii)

The biographers launch into the legend of gun-toting apprentice bandit, transformed into a journalist by his stepmother. They put words in her mouth - fiction rather than quotes - and create the obvious connection: she gives Hill a vision of himself as a great writer, he sets out to achieve it … positive thinking in practice!

Hill's father and grandfather were printers. His father produced a newspaper on a home-based press. If stepmother gets the credit for reforming the lad, you suspect dad and grandfather had an influence, that the legacy of journalism and printing were vital factors in shaping the boy's intellectual development. Can we believe the gun-toting delinquent tale? Did Oliver Napoleon Hill spend more time buried in books than earning a reputation round the county!

Hill makes frequent claims to having analysed 500 'successes' and 25,000 'failures' (in research and analysis terms, a complete and utter impossibility). I worked in the 'caring professions', in the Probation Service in England & Wales: working full-time (Hill, remember, was doing his alleged 'research' in his spare time), I doubt I prepared reports / assessments on more than 1500 people in ten years. Working as a research manager for a major organisation in England (and using computers), I probably carried out statistical analyses of some 4000 other people over a 3 year span - not individual assessments, but identification of trends and analysis of the effectiveness of intervention ... the data being generated by 50 or more professionals working in the field.

So I'll put my professional hats on (as caring professional and as social scientist / criminologist): Hill's adult behaviours don't paint a picture of a delinquent, gun-totin' tearaway! I see Hill as a timid, compliant child, anxious to please, bullied at school (he was 5'6" as an adult) - not an under-achiever, but easily frustrated, someone who felt he deserved better, who felt superior to others.

I suspect his persona was that of a cold, self-centred, isolated youth who escaped into fantasy books because he had few friends. I picture a dreamer, a loner, someone who learned to manipulate others with charm, not violence. As an adult he was bad tempered and a petulant bully determined to get his own way, but he'd have reserved his adult violence for women and children; he learned very early on that most boys of his age would beat the crap out of him if he antagonised them.

So who'd allow a puny 10 year old to run around with a revolver he could barely lift? Certainly not his father, who seems to have been a responsible and respected man. The first time young Oliver tried to wave one about someone would have shot him ... or more likely taken the gun off him and tanned his hide. The tearaway claim is a complete nonsense.

At 13, Hill claims he worked briefly as a labourer in a mine (he alludes to this in his 1928, "Law of Success").  He's a small, slightly built child, probably a bookish lad - and he works in a mine? Maybe in the office, or running messages. It would be lovely to learn the truth.

Hill's father comes across as a remarkably adaptable man. He made a living as a printer, farmer, blacksmith, shop keeper, manager of a post office - then converted himself into a dentist (sending away for a manual on the subject - eventually putting himself through college when the legislation changed).

He was the model entrepreneur, and appears a caring parent. He'd probably let his kids help out on local farms and do odd jobs, but he's ambitious, upwardly mobile. He wants his kids to do well - younger son Vivian studies law. There's no reason he should have alienated the young Oliver Napoleon Hill … unless Hill felt jealous of his younger brother, felt rejected. Was his brother brighter, more socially skilled, more popular?

Nevertheless, by age 15 (October, 1898), Hill had put manual labour behind him and was apparently writing stories for the local newspaper in West Virginia. I can't conceive that he'd be paid for this (if, in fact, he ever did do any such writing). Small newspapers can't afford to pay freelances, especially not children. However, his biographers do remark that if there were no news stories to be found, "he simply made them up" (p.16). It's an interesting commentary on Hill's ability to spin a tale … and a reminder to listen for the alarum before we believe any claims made by him.

Hill's father was making enough money to support the family - it's hard to imagine a teenage Hill could have earned more than a few cents from writing - certainly not from small town and rural newspapers. He seems to have returned to school for at least two years. Then, at 17 (1900), off to business school, learning bookkeeping, shorthand, and typing - secretarial skills which, at that time, were seen as a popular male entry route to a career in business and commerce.

Significantly, in 1885, Andrew Carnegie wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Road to Business Success", which was specifically aimed at the many business schools and commercial colleges which had proliferated in the US in the late 19th century. These fell, essentially, into two strains - those training literate males and females to work as clerks and secretaries, and those which sought to introduce more privileged males to the new entrepreneurial skills of marketing, advertising, and accountancy.

Carnegie was vastly influential. His pamphlet instructed students to aim high - if they wanted to rise in the company, simply being conscientious meant they'd only be trusted to stay in the job they were doing. "The rising man must do something exceptional ... . HE MUST ATTRACT ATTENTION." The employer has to recognise "that he has not a mere hireling in his service."

 "The Road to Business Success" was certainly an influential document in its day. Did Hill come across this when he went to his second division business school? Was it his introduction to Carnegie's writings? Did he learn the vital lesson of making himself indispensible and being recognised as someone with potential? Or is it Horatio Alger again?

In his "Law of Success", Hill devotes Chapter 14 to the subject of 'Failure' and to the various epiphanies or turning points he had in his life. "After finishing a course in a business college," (presumably 1901), "I secured a position as stenographer and bookkeeper, which I held for the ensuing five years."

He tells us that he was successful in his work, advancing to the position of General Manager over this five year period. However, his employer went bust and Hill lost his job "as a result of causes beyond my control". (1906/07) This is Hill's first 'Turning Point'! He had to pick himself up.

Hill's biographers, however, elaborate on this. On graduation, Hill, it appears, was determined to get work with Rufus Ayres, the most successful local businessman. He worked hard for Ayres, impressed his employer, got promotion - but his big break came when the manager of one of Ayres' coal mines and chief cashier of one of his banks got drunk and 'accidentally' shot dead a black bellboy in a hotel.

Hill rushed to the rescue, persuading the coroner it was an accident, getting the boy quietly buried, then tidying up the mess in the bank (it's unlocked, the safe is open, there's money scattered around). Ayres is so impressed he gives Hill the job of mine manager!

And, of course, it’s pure Horatio Alger - Hill impresses Ayres because of his honesty and presence of mind, Ayres recognises the youthful Hill's superior qualities, etc. It's a storyline lifted straight from Horatio Alger.

Pity about the black kid! I mean, it's all very nice for Napoleon Hill, but someone has just been murdered (sorry, 'accidentally shot').

Hill's biographers advise us that, "in his memoirs, Hill used the incident to point out the pragmatic virtues of honesty" (p.21). They're clearly not comfortable with this, and comment that "Hill would also be affected throughout his life by the ease with which a black man in 1902 Virginia could be killed and buried." (p.21) However, they recognise that he "may not have been bothered by this at the time" (p.21) as he'd been brought up in a racist society in backwoods Virginia.

[Did the incident even take place? Is it a complete, Alger-inspired fantasy? Hill can't rise through the death of a white man, but the death of a black youth? There must be newspaper and official records, if a killing took place. If a 'murder' took place, did Hill just use it as the plot for a story of his 'heroism'? Could an insignificant 19-year old clerk persuade a coroner to bury the evidence? It would surely take someone with a lot more political clout.]

Inevitably with Hill, confusion creeps in. Writing in 1928, Hill confirms he worked for Ayres, in Virginia, for five years (until 1906/07). His biographers suggest that, in 1902, he decided to study law, joining his brother at Georgetown, Washington. Hill announces he will pay the way through college for both of them by working for "Bob Taylor's Magazine" (the biographers describe this as "part of a flourishing genre providing inspiration and guidance for those of modest circumstances who were intent on achieving wealth and power") (p.22). It published success and inspirational stories for the literate lower middle classes.

Now, from what I can gather, "Bob Taylor's Magazine" first appeared in 1905. It was a distinctly small scale publication with limited circulation, combining essays and short fiction. Aimed at Southern readers, Robert L. Taylor was a Democratic Senator and former Governor of Tennessee who wrote editorials for the magazine and published some of his lectures in it.

It had a brief existence (April,1905 - December,1906). From January, 1907 until December,1910, it was merged with "Trotwood's Monthly" to become "Taylor-Trotwood Magazine". In 1910 it again merged to become "Watson's Jeffersonian Magazine" (described by some as a muckraking journal). Bob Taylor was editor, 1905-1906, then co-editor.

Taylor died in 1912. His magazine was published monthly in Nashville, Tennessee. It sold for 10 cents. It was of limited circulation - it was not a huge financial success, it was not a prominent national publication, it would have paid peanuts (if at all) for contributions by some unknown, freelance contributor, and it would never have been able to afford a full-time reporter on its payroll.

And yet, we have the legend: Oliver Napoleon Hill - born in a tiny cabin in Wise County, Virginia, escapes a legacy of illiteracy for a successful writing career, cutting his teeth with local newspapers in Virginia. Aged only 18/19, he approaches Bob Taylor for a job; Taylor agrees to write letters of introduction to prominent individuals who might make good subjects for the magazine - Edison, Ford, Bell, Carnegie.

This is 1902 ... three years before the magazine actually appears. The alleged interview with Carnegie will not occur until autumn, 1908. And yet, in 1902, we supposedly have Hill writing success stories for a magazine which does not exist while he puts himself and his brother through Georgetown Law School? And his first assignment is to interview Carnegie? There are huge inconsistencies here ... not least the fact that he's working for Ayres at the time - "After finishing a course in a business college, I secured a position as stenographer and bookkeeper, which I held for the ensuing five years."

Hill's biographers explain that he abandoned journalism, he's making "meagre earnings", and quit law school, telling his brother he'd have to pay his own way now. This, again, is fantasy. Georgetown offered law as a 2-year course, taught at night classes. Vivian Hill worked by day, supported himself, studied law in evenings … and graduated. He was never dependent on his older brother - I suspect there was little love between them. In fact, Oliver Napoleon Hill, throughout his life, showed little or no concern for anyone but himself - he disowned his father, he abandoned his wife and children ... and I suspect he was jealous of his brother.

Nevertheless, Napoleon Hill appears to have lost his job with Ayres. Was this because of Ayres' business failings, because of changed economic circumstances? Was Hill really Ayres' General Manager at this time, or was he still just a clerk who was laid off with the rest of the workforce?

According to his 1928 "Law of Success" account, Hill went off to become Sales Manager for a Southern lumber business. This is 1906? According to Hill, he did so well in the lumber business that, within a year, his employer took him into partnership. But then came the financial panic of October / November 1907 - the so-called 'Knickerbocker Crisis'. By the end of the year, Hill was bankrupted.

According to his biographers, Hill decided his best option was to return to "Bob Taylor's Magazine" and Washington. "His work would expose him constantly to the movers and shakers of American commerce. He would surely find a path that led to the grand heights his brief business career had promised." (p.24) This sets up the supposed interview with Carnegie, which is usually explained as occurring sometime in the autumn of 1908.

However, according to Hill's 1928 account, with the failure of the lumber business he became a car salesman (1908) in Washington. The attraction of Washington was his brother - Hill stayed in Vivian's home.

Let's digress, briefly. In 1901, Oldsmobile had begun the first mass production of motor cars, but it was only in 1913 that Henry Ford really speeded up the process by introducing a mobile production line. By 1908, the half dozen major manufacturers in the USA were producing fewer than 50,000 cars annually (10,000 by Ford). With a US population of nearly 90 million, one person in 1,800 was acquiring a car annually. It was a growing market, and one in which an ambitious young salesman could make a living. It was not yet a mass market.

Hill claims he identified a growing need for trained automobile engineers, so opened a school, "The Automobile College of Washington", to train chauffeurs, drivers and motor mechanics. He took out loans to finance this, but he over-extended and couldn't pay the bank. The bank seized his business. This failure, explains Hill, was the bank's fault - it had deliberately loaned him too much money in order to plunge him into debt. Hill's failures are always caused by someone else or by circumstances beyond his control.

In 1908, he'd met 20 year old Florence Hornor; they married in 1910. Hill borrowed against Florence's assets (and her family name), deluding himself about the success of his business and his claim to have sureties. He over-extended because of his fantasies, not because the bank manager lured him into it. [His biographers describe Hill as "full of grand plans and promises" (p.38) and comment that by 1911 "Florence's dowry money was fast running out" (p.41) … and they now had a child.]

With the failure of this latest business, his wife's family bailed him out and found Hill what he describes as a 'senior position' with a major coal firm - it was, in fact, a sinecure with one of the family firms. It was an easy job, so Hill informs us. He was earning lots of money … so, of course, he quit, left his family behind, and moved to Chicago (1912), shortly after the birth of his second child.

He explains this decision as caused by lack of challenge - more likely, it was caused by a need to escape his family (he abandoned his wife and children for 17 years, except for brief visits, insisting he'd send for them when he'd made enough, returned briefly in 1929, then abandoned them again.)

Late 1912, Hill got a job in the sales and advertising department of LaSalle Extension University (it offered distance learning courses and, in the 1930's was instructed to stop claiming it was a 'university'). His in-laws helped him get the job by providing references.

Hill trained salesmen, but, according to his biographers, around this time Hill has also had stationery printed - Napoleon Hill, Attorney at Law - and was advising people that he represented various banks and utilities. He didn't actually practice law (he couldn't), he trained salesmen, but he clearly had pretensions.

And, though he'd promised to send for his wife and children as soon as he was earning enough, he didn't. By the end of his first year he was quite comfortably off, but he didn't send for his family.

Hill worked away, training salesmen. His biographers explain, "Slowly but surely, Hill was beginning to create his own philosophy of success", all the while "working tirelessly on the Carnegie project". (p.47) This really is gilding the lily. "Whenever there was time, he would spend it writing letters, sending questionnaires, interviewing and analysing the lives of hundreds of people." (p.47) And, after two years, he quit his job with LaSalle.

Hill's "Law of Success" account explains that he'd done so well with LaSalle that it's boss "induced me to resign my position and go into the candy manufacturing business with him." His biographers, however, tell us that he bought a half interest in a franchise selling sweets, reorganising and renaming it The Betsy Ross Candy Company. They go on to confirm that his three partners clearly didn't get on with him. His biographers describe Hill as having a real temper, as being single minded and constantly insisting on getting his own way. Hill was impossible to work with! He wanted to be his own boss, he wanted to get his own way, he was intolerant of any frustration.

By Hill's account, the Betsy Ross company opened branches in 15 cities and was doing well, until, in 1914/15, his business partners "had me arrested on a false charge"! He contested the case, he says, and won (be interesting if someone could check the Chicago Superior Court records, see what the case was about). The biographers simply recount that he was plunged into litigation.

Hill was once again out of a job. It's worth pausing, here, to include some of his biographers' comments. He was capricious in his business affairs - was prone to moods and sudden flights of fancy. He was unable "to support his family - let alone live with them" (p.50). Visits to his family became infrequent - his in-laws felt he'd used Florence for her money. Hill's "business ventures failed miserably ... with almost perverse regularity" (p.51).

And, of course, the failures were never his fault.

In 1915, he launched his George Washington Institute (with more money 'borrowed' from Florence) offering a correspondence course in salesmanship. He produced a series of typewritten 'Lessons', emphasising that self-confidence and enthusiasm were the hallmarks of a successful salesman, but larding the lessons with hints about a 'Law of Attraction'.

Hill describes himself as prospering, his biographers say he was earning a modest income, until the USA declared war on Germany in 1917. The second draft (June, 1918) apparently saw his class called up! [The first draft in June, 1917, called up all males aged 21-30, the second draft called up those who had turned 21 in the intervening year, the third and final draft, in September, 1918, extended the call-up to all males aged 18-45 - Hill was then aged 34.]

Once again, he was out of a job. And he had another epiphany on Armistice Day (November 11th, 1918). He conceived of launching "Hill's Golden Rule" magazine, and sat down to pen an 'inspirational' editorial.

Sorry, what, you might ask, about his time in the White House during World War 1? Simply put, he didn't work in the White House - it's all a myth. In 1928, the end of the war was too close for him to pretend to have been a White House insider. In 1928, he tells us that his teaching job was ended by the second draft and he found himself, once again, looking for work. Even in 1938, in his "Outwitting the Devil", he still described himself as 'drifting' through World War 1 doing jobs which didn't satisfy him, until he had the idea of launching his magazine!

In "Think and Grow Rich" (1937), Hill discusses the 'secret' of positive thinking. He explains that, "The secret was extensively used by President Woodrow Wilson, during the World War. It was passed on to every soldier who fought in the war, carefully wrapped in the training received before going to the front." (p.27) Wilson, apparently, claimed it helped raise the funds for the war! (p.27) But Hill still doesn't claim to have worked in the White House.

The myth, to be elaborated in later years, either has Wilson approaching Hill at the outbreak of war, or Hill volunteering to write propaganda material. Hill is supposed to have interviewed Wilson while he was President of Princeton (1902-1910), securing the interview on the strength of a letter of introduction from Carnegie. Hill refused to accept any pay for his White House work, so the legend goes! That obviously explains why there are no financial records of his 'work' there.

Of course, the most ludicrous claim about the First World War is the one included by Hill's biographers. "Hill was in the White House on the day in early November that the Germans requested an armistice." (p.57) Wilson read "the decoded message", passed it to Hill, then left the room. Wilson returned with his reply and asked Hill if he has any suggestions to add! Hill suggested the Germans must get rid of the Kaiser if peace iwa to occur!

Reality? At the end of September, 1918, Ludendorff had advised the Kaiser to sue for peace, accepting Wilson's 14 Points. By the end of October, Wilson had exchanged notes with the Germans demanding, as a precondition for peace, the withdrawal of German troops from France and the Low Countries, the end to submarine warfare, and the abdication of the Kaiser!

Most Germans accepted the Kaiser's abdication as a necessity. Pressure for the Kaiser to step down was dramatically increased by revolt, beginning with the German naval mutiny at the end of October, and by army mutinies and the threat of widespread revolution on the Russian model. November 9th, the Republic was proclaimed, the Kaiser having abdicated - Ludendorff had already fled the country.

Hill never met Carnegie, so had no letter of recommendation from him to Wilson. Hill never met Wilson - can anyone seriously believe that a sophisticated, educated, urbane, patrician like Wilson would have wasted a minute of his time on an anonymous small businessman with a record of business failure, debt and litigation? Wilson had the pick of US intellectual and artistic circles to choose from. A nonentity like Hill wouldn't even have appeared on the horizon.

In reality, the official war propagandist appointed by Wilson was George Creel, an experienced newspaperman. Creel set up the Committee on Public Information, and this organised the Four Minute Men - 75,000 speakers across the USA who delivered three quarters of a millions 4-minute speeches in thousands of US towns and cities, encouraging people to support the war and volunteer. Amongst the Four Minute Men were people like Charlie Chaplin.

During the course of the First World War, the USA drafted 2.8 million men. A further 2 million volunteered. Hill clearly never volunteered, he says nothing about being drafted (although he would have been included in the 3rd Draft of September, 1918). Would he have been rejected as too small? He does allude in one passage to 'hanging up his uniform' when he heard that the war had ended - it didn't seem to occur to him that if he was in uniform he would have to wait to be discharged, he couldn't just simply throw the uniform away. Hill played no part in the War, he never saw the inside of the White House (unless he ever went there as a tourist).

Like his connection with Carnegie, Hill's claims to have worked in the White House are total fantasies, if not the outright frauds of a conman.

I'll continue exploring the elusive history of Oliver Napoleon Hill in the next blog, but, somewhere in the USA, in some library or other, there are back issues of "Bob Taylor's Magazine" and its sequels. Are there any articles credited to Hill? Is there an article on Carnegie? Who is credited with writing it? What date? If you can answer any of these questions, please let me know.

A Life in Lies 2