Book 1: Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy

                                 Chapter 2 Internet Appendix

2.1 Self-Help in the Self-Help/Motivational Literature
2.2 Samuel Smiles and the Feminist Movement
2.3 Samuel Smiles and Laissez-Faire Capitalism
2.4 Some Misrepresentations of Smiles
Bibliography: Chapter 2 Internet Appendices

2.1 Self-Help in the Self-Help/Motivational Literature

The central messages of Samuel Smiles “were generally current in the mid-nineteenth century” (Briggs, 1958: 10). Smiles acknowledged as much when he wrote in the preface to the second edition of Self-Help (1866: 4) that his object was to “re-inculcate [the] old-fashioned but wholesome lessons—which perhaps cannot be too often urged.”

Smiles’s most famous book falls into the category of making a difference, or “transforming yourself, transforming the world,” as opposed to the five other areas of self-help and motivational books defined by Tom Butler-Bowdon (4–5):

• The Power of Thought (Change your thoughts, change your life);
• Following Your Dream (Achievement and goal setting);
• Secrets of Happiness (Doing what you love, doing what works);
• The Bigger Picture (Keeping it in perspective); and
• Soul and Mystery (Appreciating your depth)

The category that Smiles occupies is led by the Bible and includes Ayn Rand’sAtlas Shrugged, the subject of the next chapter (Butler-Bowdon: 5–6). The Making a Difference category also includes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance and Abraham Maslow’s Motivation and Personality. Benjamin Franklin’sAutobiography, like the work of Smiles, sees the self as transformable to good and great (Butler-Bowdon: 7, 271). Of recent vintage, Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is in the Smiles’s genre. Perhaps it is best to think of Smiles’s “ample project” (Sinnema: xxvi) as a forerunner to all these areas.

Writing in 1950s, Asa Briggs stressed the difference between Smiles and the contemporary big names. “In Smiles there is none of the slick manipulation which dominates Dale Carnegie’s writings, no suggestion of ‘gamesmanship’; there is none of the trust in smooth adaptation and adjustment which [Norman Vincent] Peale relates to peace of mind and ability to live happily; there are few fads and no easy hints” (1958: 19).

2.2 Samuel Smiles and the Feminist Movement

Political correctness may be partly responsible for the modern-day neglect of Samuel Smiles. Self-Help was written by a man for men, and offered only male examples. There are only heroes, no heroines (Sinnema: xxiv).

In defense of Smiles, his many talks that led Self-Help were attended only by men, since many professions were closed to women. “Engineers, physicians, university lecturers, politicians, soldiers, and bishops were by definition men” (Sinnema: xxiii), with few exceptions. Self-Help, however, did not deprecate women and enjoyed a high female readership (Sinnema: xxiv).

Two years after Self-Help was published, a treatise for women appeared: Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management (Sinnema: xxiv). It sold millions, finding an audience of men as well as women.

Smiles’s later books seamlessly incorporated happy tales of successful women. He wrote:

Thirteen years after the appearance of Self-Help, during which I had been engaged with other works, I wrote and published Character. I there endeavored to fill up the picture of the noble and magnanimous man and woman, and cited numerous examples taken from the lives of the best men and women who ever lived (1881: 4).

Indeed, Smiles began one chapter, “The world owes much to its men and women of courage” (1871: 137). In Thrift, Smiles cited a proverb, a man cannot thrive unless his wife let him, and described a woman as “the sun of his social system” and “queen of domestic life” (376). A man’s home “depends upon her—upon her character, her temper, her power of organization, and her business management.” Smiles stated in Duty (50), “The best school of discipline is home…. And homes are very much as women make them.” This was hardly sexist for its time, however anachronistic it may seem to some today.

2.3 Samuel Smiles and Laissez-Faire Capitalism

Broadly considered, Smiles was a classical liberal favoring free trade, open competition, and low taxation. He was suspicious about the ability of government to achieve what self-help and mutual aid could in addressing poverty. In 1839, he spoke of government as “but a necessary evil at the best” (quoted in Travers: 155).

Smiles championed different roles for government, even reversing his support for free trade later in his career. He dismissed laissez-faire (“Let Alone”) where “nobody” poisoned the water, adulterated food, and flooded the streets (1875: 351–52). His “nobody” was, in today’s parlance, a commons problem where it was difficult to identify perpetrators and assign blame. Smiles called for private accountability and government action, warning, “Laws may do too much; they may meddle with things which ought to be ‘let alone’; but the abuse of a thing is no proper argument against its use in cases where its employment is urgently called for” (1875: 352).

Smiles supported tax-funded universal education (1905: 166–69) and public libraries (Briggs, 1958: 14). Still, as Asa Briggs concluded: “For Smiles and most of those of his contemporaries who thought like him, the wisest way of tackling social evils was to combine the minimum of state interference with the maximum of voluntary co-operation” (1959: 439).

2.4 Some Misrepresentations of Smiles

Tim Travers accused Smiles of having a “‘static’ view of society” from a belief in “divinely ordered purpose” and “the reliable framework of nature” (74, 75). This view is contradicted by a passage in Self-Help (1866: 28): “The instances of men, in this and other countries, who, by dint of persevering application and energy, have raised themselves from the humblest ranks of industry to eminent positions of usefulness and influence in society, are indeed so numerous that they have long ceased to be regarded as exceptional.” Travers himself pointed out that Self-Help was “classless and non-political” (164), but he failed to understand what this means for social mobility. Smiles sought a meritocracy rather than aristocracy, or, in Travers’s words, an “aristocracy of brains and work” (275).

Smiles has also been misleadingly painted as a class warrior against the rich and powerful. Travers stated (230): “Work and self-help [to Smiles] were the obvious means to undercut and discredit the power of the aristocracy, and their value system of elegant idleness and conspicuous consumption rather than production and self-denial.” Yet Smiles was arguably more concerned with the illegitimatemeans to wealth (privilege) than with wealth, class rank, or consumption patterns per se. Smiles did not exhibit envy in his lectures or writing, and class distinctions were secondary. He did, however, warn about pleasure-centered “‘fast’ men” who “waste and exhaust the powers of life, and dry up the sources of true happiness” (1866: 277). Good things to Smiles should be enjoyed in moderation and immediate gratification postponed for the sake of thrift.

Bibliography: Chapter 2 Internet Appendices

Briggs, Asa. “A Centenary Introduction.” In Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, 7–31. Reprint, London: John Murray, 1958.

Briggs, Asa. The Making of Modern England, 1784–1867. Chicago: Harper & Row, 1959.

Butler-Bowdon, Tom. 50 Self-Help Classics. London: Nicholas Brealey, 2003.

Sinnema, Peter. Introduction to Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles, vii–xxviii. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Smiles, Samuel. Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance. 1859, 2d ed. 1866. Edited by Peter Sinnema. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Smiles, Samuel. Character. New York: A. L. Burt, 1871.

Smiles, Samuel. Thrift. New York: A. L. Burt, 1875.

Smiles, Samuel. Duty: With Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881.

Smiles, Samuel. The Autobiography of Samuel Smiles, edited by Thomas MacKay. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1905.

Travers, Tim. Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic. New York: Garland, 1987.