Napoleon Hill - A Life in Lies 3

In the previous blog we saw Oliver Napoleon Hill emerge from the First World War as a hapless nonentity who was once again having to cope with the failure of his latest business. And let's just recap: Hill had never met Carnegie, nor been entrusted with him to undertake any sort of research; Hill had never worked in the White House. Hill was a conman and a fantasist with nothing more than a string of small business failures to his name. Hill's claims are almost always total fantasies.

[I should remind you that I've used the official biography - Michael J.Ritt & Kirk Landers, "A Lifetime of Riches", 1995 - as the frame on which to hang my enquiry into Hill's life, and on which to base my questions about what really occurred and query what evidence we might find which could expose the truth.]

So, back to 1918, Hill's third son was born. It appears he did spend a little time with his family that year, but this is unusual. Hill maintained a successful front - he dressed well, he lived well, drove a nice car, maintained his image, his family was left struggling. From time to time he did invite his wife to visit him - his third son seems conclusive evidence of that - but he rarely spent time with his family. Hill - his writings make clear - enjoyed sex, he had no time for family.

[In Hill's "The Magic Ladder to Success" (1930), he questions why most men only succeed after the age of 40 (he's 47 by this time, and a failure). He concludes that it's because they expend so much sexual energy in their earlier years! (pp.68-69) Until the age of 40-45, most males dissipate their energies in "one long, continuous orgy of sexual intercourse". And true to form, he has the figures - he bases this "statement of fact" on a careful analysis of over 20,000 people. (p.69) So, 20,000 men have revealed the details of their sex lives to him - kind of makes Masters & Johnson's 1960s research a tad redundant, but then, of course, their ground breaking study involved less than 700 male and female subjects.]

Hill rarely mentions his family. He used them instrumentally. At one stage he made a ludicrous claim that he'd taught his son to hear using positive thinking. He poses as some Messianic figure. And it's a scam. He hardly spent any time with his children, he certainly didn't work any medical miracles on them, he certainly never healed his child and taught him to 'hear'. Hill was self-centred, self-absorbed, and children were simply a drain … unless he could serve one of them up in a parable to illustrate his own genius and greatness. Oliver Napoleon Hill was a conman.

But, back to 1918. He was broke again, so decides he'd launch his "Golden Rule" magazine. In "Outwitting the Devil" (written in 1938, published in 2011), he explains that by 1918 he'd discovered the "seventeen principles of achievement and thirty major causes of failure", but his philosophy lacked soul! He kept changing jobs, he 'drifted' through the War - no claims about the White House then - but he couldn't find any satisfaction in life.

Until Armistice Day, 1918, when he was suddenly inspired to launch his "Golden Rule" magazine. Somehow, he secured the backing of a Chicago printer, George Williams, pitching the idea of a magazine which would explore the nature of success. Hill's biographers comment that Hill had no "definiteness of purpose" yet - but he had now recognised his vocation!

The first edition of "Hill's Golden Rule" was published in January, 1919. All 48 pages were written by Hill. In it, he offered free lectures and training sessions to any company buying copies in bulk. It combined Hill's potted advice on how to succeed in business with a spiritual / religious element. Hill reviewed works by 'New Thought' writers who'd been developing the self-help, self-improvement genre since the late-19th century; he simply repeated the formula found in a number of their magazines.

Hill was clearly inspired by Charles Haanel, an eminent New Thought writer and speaker who published his "Master-Key System" as a correspondence course in 1912, then as a book in 1917. Hill wrote to Haanel (April 21, 1919) enclosing a copy of the "Golden Rule" magazine, and explaining that his own success "is due largely to the principles laid down in The Master-Key System". He described Haanel as "helping people to realise that nothing is impossible of accomplishment which a man can create in his imagination."

In an obsequious letter, trying to solicit advertising for his magazine, Hill claimed he was "President of the Napoleon Hill Institute" and had "just been retained by a ten million dollar corporation at a salary of $105,200 a year, for a portion of my time only, it having been agreed that I shall continue as editor of the Hill's Golden Rule."

So this is Hill in 1919, fawning to Charles Haanel, representing Haanel as his inspiration and, effectively, as his mentor. Hill regurgitated and recycled Haanel's ideas - the bullshit Hill passed off as his philosophy is simply a rehashing and plagiarising of work by Haanel and others. Moreover, Hill would now follow Haanel's example, moving from magazines to selling correspondence courses, to writing books, to imagining himself touring the country giving lectures, etc. Had Hill subscribed to Haanel's correspondence course? Or did he just read the book?

1919, of course, was also the year in which Andrew Carnegie died (and Henry Clay Frick, Carnegie's one time partner-cum-rival in US Steel). Hill wasted no time in writing … not a eulogy to his supposed mentor … but a lengthy editorial attacking the two men and blaming them for labour unrest in the steel industry. Carnegie's life is described as an "example of colossal greed" and his philanthropic work dismissed as "a sop to his personal vanity". 1919, and Haanel is Hill's Svengali, not Carnegie.

Hill's partnership with Williams didn't last. By 1920, he'd lost the magazine> He talks about embarking on a nationwide lecture tour - Hill always paints a picture of the whole of the USA begging him to come and deliver something akin to the Sermon on the Mount in every major city in the land. Listen to Hill, you imagine him filling football stadia and concert halls. When Hill talks of a nationwide tour, it's as a salesman embarked on a trip to try to sell a product, in back rooms and small venues, perhaps offering to come talk to a local group of New Thought enthusiasts at their monthly meeting, and hopefully sell a few subscriptions to his magazine.

In fact, in 1920 he moved to New York and launched "Napoleon Hill's Magazine", then set off on a 'lecture tour', a sales pitch to sell the magazine!

Once again, the philosopher failed in business. Once again he alienated his partners, once again, his magazine folded. It seems he hatched a scheme to sell the magazine to prison inmates. Was this some sort of scam offering to undertake rehabilitation through business training? Or did it arise because Hill, himself, had been banged up in prison for some reason? There seems to be quite a gap between New York in 1920 and his move to Ohio in 1923. Was he in prison?

In "Outwitting the Devil" he describes his magazine years as a success … but he has a get-out clause. "The more we succeeded the more discontented I became, until finally, due to an accumulation of petty annoyances caused by business associates, I made them a present of the magazine." (p.9) Presumably his backers seized the assets after Hill had plunged them into debt.

Christmas Eve, 1923, and Hill was in despair. Out of business. Again. It was a bad year: the Chicago building in which he would claim to have stored his questionnaire returns, his photos of famous people, his correspondence, etc., was burned down. Did Hill make an insurance claim? Be suspicious of anything Hill claims.

But, Christmas Eve, 1923, and Hill had an epiphany - he has to complete his philosophy of achievement and tells himself to "begin transferring the data you have gathered from your own mind to written manuscripts"! (Hill can't simply 'write his ideas down' - he has to 'begin transferring the data you have gathered from your own mind … ".)  He explains that his 'other self' has awakened. I can't help but wonder if he's describing a psychotic episode?

"I went into the house, sat down at my typewriter, and began at once to reduce to writing the discoveries I made concerning the causes of success and failure." He hears a thought! "Your mission in life is to complete the world's first philosophy of individual achievement." (p.13) His mission - Hill's mission: nothing to do with Carnegie … that fantasy is yet to occur to him. But he apparently gets a premonition of the Depression and realises that millions will depend upon his philosophy to survive! Again, Hill with his Messianic fantasies - and a premonition he won't disclose for another 15 years!

Hill tells us that he completed this manuscript in 1924, but then remarks that he started yet another business. Again, this failed to "make him happy", so he turned it over to his associates and went lecturing instead!

Around this time he certainly appears to have borrowed $1000, to invest in the Metropolitan Business College of Cleveland, Ohio. The business was apparently on the market for something like $125,000, so there was a bit of a shortfall between the asking price and Hill's available capital. Somehow, he negotiated a deal with the college owner, and set about launching a range of courses.

This was a business college, offering courses in journalism, advertising and public speaking. It was a mail order business, providing correspondence courses - the 'college' was an office and post box number. Hill bought in to a going concern - there must have been several, money-making courses up and running. Of course, Hill fails in business yet again. Was this the business which failed to make him happy and which he turned over to his associates?

But this move to Ohio would at least give Hill the opportunity to make yet another fantastic claim. According to Hill, he met Don Mellett, who ran the Canton Daily News. In "Outwitting the Devil", he tells us, "Mr.Mellett became so thoroughly interested in the philosophy of individual achievement on which I lectured that night", that he signed a partnership agreement and promised he'd quit his role as a journalist in order to publish and promote Hill's philosophy!

As I write in 2016, the name Don Mellett has largely passed into history, so let me explain why he found fame in 1926. Mellett was a campaigning journalist in Canton, Ohio, who earned the hatred of organised crime because of his stance against bootleggers during the Prohibition Era. He was gunned down by gangsters.

Mellett had no association, whatsoever, with Hill. I can't imagine Mellett had even heard of Hill, unless Hill had placed an advert in Mellett's paper for one of his lectures. Mellett was a dedicated newspaper man - there was no way he was going to quit his profession to back Hill in business.

Hill, however, had given a talk in Canton around the time of Mellett's assassination. Hill, in true exposure junkie mode, could hardly fail to fish for fame by association. Thus, he tells us that he, himself, narrowly survived "an assassination attempt" in July 1926, and had to flee Ohio and go into hiding for a year, sleeping each night with a gun under his pillow.

Hill doesn't even appreciate the contradiction inherent in his claim. If Mellett was going to abandon journalism and his crusade against organised crime, the gangsters would have been delighted - they might even have offered Hill some financial incentives to expedite Mellett's departure. Hill was a salesman, selling a correspondence course. He was no threat to organised crime. Hill was a conman, a cheap fraud, he'd have been scared out of his mind by a thug with a baseball bat.

But Hill claims the Ohio shooting filled him "physically and mentally" with a paralysing fear. I can't help wondering what happened in this year in hiding (1926-27). Did Hill serve a further prison sentence that year? His business folds (which is why he has to leave Ohio) - were there accusations of fraud? Or did it mark a major psychotic episode and his admission to a psychiatric hospital? Somewhere, there are court or institutional records.

But let's return to 1924, when Hill completes the writing of his "Law of Success", the work which is to be his magnum opus. It did, indeed, make it into print, in 1925/26. I think it was self-published - vanity publishing. And it flopped. At 1500 pages in 8 volumes, it was hardly going to fly off the shelves, even assuming any book shop was prepared to stock it!

Hill's biographers describe it as "bearing the name of an author with little or no standing in the commercial book trade" (p.110), which is a bit of a contradiction, given the image of Hill as a successful and influential magazine publisher. Hill, of course, was a conman - it's all about image and distraction. Hill left the remaindered copies of his philosophy with his wife.

Hill, however, was determined to find another published for his work - he claimed that this was why Mellet was interested in a partnership. In reality, Hill borrowed yet more money from his in-laws, from his wife, even from his 16-year old son, Blair, who was running his own small yet successful poultry business.

Numerous publishers refused to touch his work. And his biographers comment that none of the successful businessmen Hill claimed to have interviewed were prepared to invest. Apparently many were dead or retired! And, of course, the economy was in turmoil. Hill was a conman. He had no association with the rich and successful, he had a history of business failure and litigation. He was never a good investment.

Nevertheless, in 1927, we rediscover the 44 year old Hill in Philadelphia, where, according to his biographers, he "set up operations in a comfortable hotel" (p.108). He maintains the image of success, dressing and living expensively while his abandoned family struggle. And it's here that he manages to impress (con) publisher Andrew Pelton - expensive cigars, over-tipping staff, using letter heads and business cards which gave the impression he'd lived at and run a business from his plush hotel for years, acting the part of a rich, successful man (on borrowed money), .

Pelton was known to Hill. He'd advertised in Hill's magazines. Pelton was the publisher of Frank Channing Haddock's "Power of Will" (1919), another New Thought classic, and another work Hill would plagiarise. Was Hill reluctant to approach Pelton because he feared the publisher would recognise Hill's philosophy as nothing more than a rehash of Haddock, Haanel and others?

Pelton, however, published the books. Hill sent off sample copies of his original manuscripts to "many of the great minds he had consulted during its creation" (the very people who had failed to back him because so many were already dead or retired). Hill, of course, had never actually met any of them, had never interviewed any of them, had never consulted with any of them. Hill's biographers advise that two eventually responded, promising to eventually read the manuscript (i.e., polite acknowledgement by a secretary that the sample book had been received …. And binned).

Nevertheless, Hill & Pelton printed the books with endorsements from the rich and famous. Which is curious, because his biographers inform us that, "After posting the sample copies" Hill locked himself away to rewrite his manuscript. (p.113) So what exactly had the great and the good allegedly endorsed?

Hill's 8-volume 'Law of Success' has been described by Hill's apologists as "offering the collective wisdom of the greatest achievers of the previous 50 years". It's a verbose, correspondence course; it could have been reduced to a single volume - except, I don't know if Hill ever entered into much correspondence. He didn't have the business acumen or organisational skills to maintain a correspondence course which would inevitably have taken 'students' a year or two to complete.

Did he ever offer a diploma? How many tutors did he employ, how large a staff would he have needed to maintain a successful school in operation for any length of time, one which could generate the sorts of income he claimed to be earning. The only picture we ever get of Hill is of a one-man band, running the operation himself. How could he have managed a 'school' with, necessarily, several hundred, if not thousands of students, unless it was all just a scam, a confidence trick fleecing the ambitious and aspirational lower classes?

Hill's correspondence courses more likely acted as sales fronts. His repeated claims to have analysed 20-25,000 'failures' can only be based on one of the services he sold to his students - send me $10 or $20 (or whatever) and receive a questionnaire which will enable you to undertake a personal assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, etc.

There's an example of such a questionnaire in his 1937 "Think and Grow Rich", where (pp.359-364) he prints one described as 'Self-Analysis'. From a research perspective, it's impossible to code. Even in a computerised era, there is nothing you could do to analyse this random set of questions (page after page of them). As an interview schedule - sit down, get the client talking about their life, values, skills, attitudes, etc., it's pointless. You'd start by asking a handful of salient questions, thereafter, the client's responses would determine what you asked next and how. There's no way you could follow a 5-6 page script without tearing your hair out … and being arraigned for human rights abuses. How would anyone imagine this could form the basis for a programme of self-assessment?

Hill's questionnaires are the work of a man with no research skill and no research training. Rambling, unfocused, lacking precision and objectivity. The only insight to be gained by completing one is a greater understanding and appreciation of your boredom threshold. It's the product of a complete amateur posing and preening himself, convincing himself that he's a competent social scientist. There is no obvious way to benefit from the exercise of completing one.

If these are self-assessment questionnaires he sold to students, he never got to look at them himself. Yet he's talking about analysing 25,000 individuals (he also claims to have analysed the sex lives of 20,000 people, and to have studied the functioning of 5,000 families). Even if we keep this down to 25,000 studies and allow him 30 years to undertake the work and assume that, miraculously, he has no difficulty finding volunteers - that's 3 intensive interviews per day (allowing time off on Sundays and annual holidays), every day, for 30 years.

And that's assuming he could undertake a full psychological assessment in a single interview! He'd actually need a minimum of 3 or 4 interviews, each lasting an hour or more. He'd have to devote 9-12 hours a day to his 'research', every day - and yet this is something he's supposed to be doing in his spare time. His research claims are a total fraud (and, don't forget, all his papers were destroyed in a fire in 1923, so he would actually have had to start again). Napoleon Hill was a total fantasist, a liar, and a conman.

When Hill finished his rewrite of the course (March 26, 1928), he wrote to his wife to tell her he'd taken a job as a salesman with a car dealership to earn money until royalties came in. Pelton had given him an advance - Hill had already drawn against the royalties to maintain his flamboyant lifestyle. No mention to his wife about repaying the borrowed money then.

Hill claims that, after a slow start, he was earning $2,500 a month by early 1929, enabling him to quit the car dealership. Was he actually earning this much? Was his
"Law of Success" course selling. His biographers describe it as having 'encyclopedic scope', 'a philosophical dimension', and an 'instructional format'. (p.116) They also, however, recognise that it was "flawed, rambling, sometimes incomprehensible", and could have been dramatically reduced in size. (The biography is printed by the Napoleon Hill Foundation, one of the authors worked for it - it's hardly guaranteed to be an honest exposé … although they do get a bit coy about some of Hill's claims.)

Hill delivered his fifteen laws of success, his Master Mind principle, and his claims about a universal medium, the ether, in which human thoughts vibrate eternally. His biographers comment that the "'Law of Success' might well have been discarded as the ravings of a lunatic but for the fact that much of Hill's most improbable conjecture was spun from the musings of men like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell." (p.119) They anchored Hill's words in respectability and stimulated readers to "ponder life on a grander scale more than any self-help book ever has". (p.119)

1929, and the Hill Myth really begins. He claims fame by association, bandying around the names of famous people, claiming to have interviewed or befriended them, bolting together ideas from New Thought literature, selling himself as a great philosopher, as a man making a contribution to humanity. And it's all a con, and a con which will be leveraged by an industry hyping up the lies and the vapid prose in order to market it and make a profit.

The "Law of Success" apparently proved so successful that Hill bought an estate in the Catskills Mountains and began talking of his plans to turn it into a Success University where he'd build vacation homes for successful people and invite them to share their knowledge. This was to be his 'Success Colony' (his biographers describe it as "a private school with a dubious curriculum and an impossibly remote location"). (p.131)

For a few months, Hill was a family man, living ostentatiously, driving a Rolls. And, by the end of 1929, he was once again destitute. He'd failed, yet again. Hill blamed this failure on the Wall Street Crash – it wiped out the savings of less than three million Americans, but it had knock-on effects for many more, and Hill's book sales slumped. Hill defaulted on his Catskill estate, borrowed more money, even sold his wife's engagement ring.

And here's the paradox. Hill's books were sold to people who wanted to get on the economic gravy train. They thought he was selling advice which would make them rich. Hill wasn't selling a formula for success - he was selling delusions, pandering to greed. When the economy went through one of its cyclical crashes, Hill didn't see it coming, Hill knew nothing of how to stay successfully afloat.

The Wall Street Crash might be offered as an explanation for his latest failure, in fact, it exposed him for the squalid little conman he really was. He had no understanding of life or the economy, he was a serial failure, but he conned people by claiming that he was the confidant of the rich and famous, so must therefore having something valuable to contribute. "The Law of Success" proved no protection against failure when Wall Street crashed.

Hill headed for Texas to work in the oil industry, writing his magazine in his spare time. It turned into another disaster - Hill claims he was duped, that he'd been promised $100,000 to set up a new oil company, but had earned nothing and had narrowly avoided prosecution! I have no idea what happened - it's simply incredible that anyone would employ Hill to set up a business, and utterly inconceivable in this instance given that Hill had no knowledge of or experience of the oil industry. It's more likely that one of his scams went wrong.

In March 1931, Hill launched his "Inspiration Magazine" - presumably he'd managed to borrow more money from somewhere. Described by biographers as a 'maverick publication' (p.132), it was written by Hill, most of the magazine being an advice column (containing fictitious letters and questions written and answered by Hill). He represented it as produced by the 'International Success Society'.  In April, 1931, he invented the 'International Publishing Corporation of America' and the 'International Success University'. In October, 1931, he launched 'Success Magazine'. These seem to have been a series of unsuccessful scams - he, in fact, scraped a living that year giving "Mental Dynamite" lectures (be interesting to know where, and to whom).

And the scene is set for the next great lie.

His biographers inform us that, in early 1933, Hill was invited to meet Roosevelt and was asked to "listen to and report on the mood of grassroots America". (p.138) "Hill's first assignment was to identify every conceivable institution that affected public opinion in America." (p.139) Hill claims (quoted p.139) that his proposals for mobilising public opinion gave Roosevelt "one of the most powerful mastermind creations this country has ever set into motion". He mobilised the clergy, got cross party cooperation in Congress, newspapers and radio stations started delivering positive headlines, and teachers began instructing their students in positive messages about the economy!

Allegedly, Hill contributed "a steady stream of suggestions for topics" and supplied scripts for FDR's fireside chats. (p.140) And he supposedly did this without accepting a salary (which would obviously show up in White House accounts). This is a man who can't support his family, who's in debt, who was "barely able to support himself with writing and lecturing activities during this period." (p.141)

The biographers remark that Hill claimed credit for "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" (p.134), but continue, "Whether he actually created that line or not, Hill believed it". (pp.134-135)

There are moments when you suspect you can see the join in the biography – much of the writing is uncritical, portraying Hill in at least an apologetic, if not always adoring light. But, here and there, we get reasoned asides and caustic comments … a sort of embarrassed "hang on, if this is what Hill claims, there is room for doubt here … but we'll just pass over this as uncritically as possible."

So we get the admission, "Napoleon Hill's personal record of his relationship with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and FDR's administration was surprisingly scant." (p.137) In fact, it amounts to a brief letter from the White House (signed Louis McH. Howe, Secretary to the President), thanking him for a letter (any crank writing to the President would get a similar courtesy letter).

In 1924, Roosevelt's speech to the Democratic Convention had been broadcast and was heard by a far wider audience than such speeches had previously reached. He attracted a lot of favourable attention and was quick to appreciate the potential of radio. Radio was very definitely 'new technology', and FDR was one of the first to appreciate its potential.

As Governor of New York from 1929-33, he used the radio two or three times a month. This is an era before TV or the Internet. Families sat around of an evening and listened to the radio together. FDR cultivated an image … an uncle who had dropped in to chat, an old friend, someone you could trust, someone you would welcome into your living room. Having honed his skills talking to New York, it was a logical step to expand his talks to cover the whole nation once he became President.

The first Fireside Chat, March 12, 1933, explored the subject of banking - the term 'fireside chat' was coined by Harry Butcher of CBS in May, 1933. FDR gave a total of 28 (some authorities suggest only 27). He used a number of speechwriters - Samuel Rosenman was chief amongst these. Hill was not one of them, he never worked at the White House, politically he would have regarded FDR as the Anti-Christ, FDR would have regarded Hill as a Neanderthal. The Fireside Chats used simple, anecdotal language, offered concrete examples, and picked on an enemy with whom everyone could identify - the greedy, 'chiselers', 'pessimists'. Simply compare the text of any of FDR's chats and the rambling, verbose, tedium of Hill's writings.

Hill had no association with Roosevelt, had no involvement in FDR's 'fireside chats' or New Deal programme. Hill was never employed by the White House. Politically, Roosevelt and Hill were poles apart. Intellectually, Roosevelt was an educated, urbane, sophisticated patrician - he would have little time for an intellectual pygmy and social parasite like Hill. And it's inconceivable anyone with Roosevelt's political nous would have touched a serial failure and obvious conman like Hill. It's just another fantasy claim - conceived instrumentally to enable Hill to con others. Whether or not he ever came to believe it himself, that depends on how you view Hill's mental health.

At which point, I'll pause. Read Hill's own writings, read around his autobiographical claims, understand a little of the history of the late 19th and early 20th century, and it becomes blatantly obvious that he is a conman and a fraud … and possibly psychotic. It's obvious his claims are fraudulent.

Yet it is a case of the Emperor's New Clothes. With many millions of websites all hailing Hill as a genius and accepting uncritically that he had been Carnegie's protegé and that he had served two Presidents, few people are going to step back and recognise just how naked the emperor really is. Hill is dressed in lies and delusions, in fantasies and frauds. It's time to come clean. Time to get naked.

So these notes are intended to inspire would be investigative journalists and local historians in the USA - check your local library, see if Hill ever lectured in your town, see if there are any court or police records, see if there are any reports by people who bought his correspondence course, etc. Find back copies of the various magazines he produced. Look for traces. I'd love to hear from you.

There is scope for a significant social history out there. I, meanwhile, am scribbling together notes for a screenplay - a tragic-comedy. Join me later to look at the rest of Hill's life and consider another series of questions to ask about the man's character, competence, and mental health.

Next - Napoleon Hill: A Life in Lies - 4