Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America

482 Pages·2013·4.62 MB·English

by  Watts Steven

ALSO BY STEVEN WATTS
Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream
The People’s Tycoon:
Henry Ford and the American Century
The Magic Kingdom:
Walt Disney and the American Way of Life
The Romance of Real Life:
Charles Brockden Brown and the Origins of American Culture
The Republic Reborn:
War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820

Copyright © 2013 Steven Watts
All of the photos are courtesy of Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., except for those of Carnegie
and Frieda Offenbach, and Carnegie and Linda Offenbach, which are courtesy of Linda Polsby.
Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in
a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue,
24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Watts, Steven, 1952-
Self-help Messiah : Dale Carnegie and success in modern America / by Steven Watts.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-1-59051503-7
1. Carnegie, Dale, 1888-1955. 2. Success. 3. Conduct of life. 4. Teachers—United States—
Biography. 5. Orators—United States—Biography.
6. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
CT275.C3114W37 2013
973.91092—dc23
[B]
2013003227
v3.1
For all of my teachers, friends, and colleagues at the University of Missouri
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction: Helping Yourself in Modern America
PART ONE: FROM CHARACTER TO PERSONALITY
1 Poverty and Piety
2 Rebellion and Recovery
3 Selling Products, Selling Yourself
4 Go East, Young Man
5 Teaching and Writing
6 Mind Power and Positive Thinking
7 Rebellion and the Lost Generation
8 Business and Self-Regulation
PART TWO: WINNING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE
9 “Do the Thing You Fear to Do”
10 “Men and Women, Hungry for Self-Improvement”
11 “We Are Dealing with Creatures of Emotion”
12 “Every Act You Ever Performed Is Because You Wanted Something”
13 “Give a Man a Fine Reputation to Live Up To”
14 “Find Work That You Enjoy”
15 “He Has the Whole World with Him”
16 “Businessmen Who Do Not Fight Worry Die Young”
17 “Enthusiasm Is His Most Endearing Quality”
Epilogue: The Self-Help Legacy of Dale Carnegie
Acknowledgments
Notes
Introduction
Helping Yourself in Modern America
n a cold January evening in 1936, a great horde descended on
O
the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. Three thousand people
crammed into the grand ballroom and onto the balcony
encircling it, while hundreds more stood shivering on the sidewalk
outside, unable to find even standing room as the hotel staff frantically
wedged the doors shut and hoped the fire marshal would not appear.
The throng was responding to a series of full-page ads in the New York
Sun that promised “Increase Your Income,” “Learn to Speak Effectively,”
“Prepare for Leadership.”
Yet the crowd did not spring from the ranks of the working class or
the desperately unemployed who were struggling to survive in the dark
days of the Great Depression. It came from a more prosperous stratum,
but one equally anxious about sliding into failure—entrepreneurs,
businessmen, shopkeepers, salesmen, middle managers, white-collar
executives, professional men. As the audience listened attentively for the
next hour, fifteen figures paraded before the single microphone on the
stage and gave three-minute testimonials. Understanding the principles
of human relations, the speakers proclaimed, had pointed them toward
success. A druggist, a chain-store manager, an insurance man, a truck
salesman, a dentist, an architect, a lawyer, a banker, and several others
explained that learning how to deal with people had dramatically
enhanced their careers and changed their lives.
After these endorsements, a short, trim man with steel-rimmed glasses,
ramrod posture, and a sincere, soothing voice with a slight Midwestern
twang took the stage. Dale Carnegie, creator of the self-improvement
course being praised, admitted that he was gratified by the large
audience. But, he added quickly, “I have no doubt as to why you are
here. You are not here because you are interested in me. You are here
because you are interested in yourself and the solution to your
problems.” He assured the crowd that each listener could learn the
techniques that had improved so many lives. Each could understand how
to be a good listener, make people like them instantly, develop an
enthusiastic attitude, handle difficult personal situations, and win others
to their way of thinking. Each could be successful. Every student taking
his course, he declared in conclusion, “begins to get self-confidence.
After all, why shouldn’t they—and why shouldn’t you?” The throng leapt
to its feet in thunderous applause and most of them rushed to tables at
the back of the room to sign up for the class. In subsequent years, more
than eight million students would graduate from the Dale Carnegie
Course in Effective Speaking and Human Relations.1
One year later, an even bigger event sent Carnegie rocketing to
national fame. In January 1937, his book How to Win Friends and
Influence People, which codified the lessons of the Carnegie Course, shot
to the top of the best-seller list. It would go through seventeen editions
its first year, and Leon Shimkin, Carnegie’s editor, sent him a somewhat
dazed letter in March 1937, after the book had already sold a quarter of
a million copies in only three months. “If one year ago a friend of mine
were to have told me that today I was going to send to an author the
250,000th copy of his book I would have either referred him to the
nearest psychiatrist or to Robert Ripley for a believe-it-or-not-cartoon,”
he wrote. How to Win Friends would go through dozens of reprintings in
subsequent years, ultimately selling more than thirty million copies
worldwide over the next few decades. It became one of the best selling
nonfiction books in American history—it sells in the six figures yearly
even now—with some ranking it only behind the Bible and Dr. Benjamin
Spock’s Practical Guide to Baby and Child Care.2
At the heart of How to Win Friends lay a message that massive numbers
of readers found irresistible: One could find success in the modern world
by developing attractive personal traits, bolstering self-confidence,
improving skills in human relations, getting people to like you, and
adopting a psychological perspective in assessing and meeting human
needs. Carnegie insisted that getting ahead in life—securing a better job,
making more money, enjoying the esteem of your peers—was simply a
matter of retooling your personality. With contagious enthusiasm, he
promised that his advice book would help any individual to “get out of a
mental rut, think new thoughts, acquire new visions, new
ambitions … Win people to your way of thinking. Increase your
influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done. Win new clients,
new customers … Handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your
human contacts smooth and pleasant … Make the principles of
psychology easy for you to apply in your daily contacts.”3
In such a fashion, Carnegie became one of the most popular and
influential figures in modern American history. His message promoting
sparkling personality, self-esteem, human relations, and psychological
well-being resonated widely and deeply in society, attracting millions of
acolytes and elevating him to a pinnacle of influence in shaping modern
values. And his legacy was a lasting one. Life magazine named him one
of the “Most Important Americans of the Twentieth Century.” A Library
of Congress survey placed How to Win Friends and Influence People as the
seventh most influential book in American history. In 1985, American
Heritage, the popular history magazine, chose ten books that had most
shaped the American character—“not its political life but its cultural,
social, and domestic life.” Predictably, the list included stalwart volumes
such as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden,
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class, W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls
of Black Folk, and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. It also
included Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.4
So what explains Carnegie’s meteoric rise? Why did millions of
ordinary citizens flock to his message of personality development,
human relations, and success? Why was he able to become a major
cultural figure in modern America? Answers to these questions lay partly
embedded in a massive reorientation of American life in the early
decades of the twentieth century, the remarkable era during which
Carnegie labored and wrote. The United States found itself in the throes
of rapid change as it transformed from a rural village republic to an
urban society of jarring ethnic diversity, imposing bureaucratic
structures, and bewildering social problems. From the 1880s to the
1920s, precisely the years of Carnegie’s youth and young manhood, the
United States experienced not only massive industrialization, mass
immigration, and the closing of the frontier but the rapid growth of a
modern consumer economy. In contrast to a nineteenth-century
landscape of vigorous market exchange regulated by an economic