New book is successful look at the history of failure
Published 2/21/06
For Christmas my parents bought me a book with the title “Born Losers: A History of Failure in America.” Uh, should I be worried about this?
Actually, I asked for it. I saw the author interviewed on C-Span last November just in time for me to get it on my Christmas list. I finished reading the book last week and have been thinking about becoming a success ever since.
“Born Losers,” written by Carnegie Mellon history professor Scott Sandage, is a cultural history about a subject that touches everyone who has their own story of being down and out or feels that, surely, life is more than an occupational identity. The publisher, Harvard University Press, believes this may be the only book out there on the subject.
But did Sandage have to open the book with a story implying that my high school hero, Henry David Thoreau, was a loser? Of course, Sandage was only quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson who eulogized friend Henry David at his 1862 funeral as one who might have been successful at one of his many undertakings if he’d only been more ambitious.
Nineteenth century America is the focus for most of the documentation in “Born Losers.” In addition to a depression which hit in 1819, the century saw nationwide “panics” in each generation including 1837, 1857, 1873 and 1893, according to Sandage. Because the 19th century economy was a national economy and because of the the risks involved for banks, investors and vendors, crediting agencies were born, chief among them the Mercantile Agency based in New York. The Mercantile Agency, forerunner of Dun & Bradstreet, hired anonymous informants who put the country’s businessmen under surveillance. Sandage researched the agency’s archives, which are held at Harvard Business School, and reproduces pieces of credit reports:
“The general opinion here is, that he is in a very critical & embarrassed condition, and that there is a strong probability of his failure.”
“In good credit now but hard times might blow them over.”
“Failed. Went too far, too many irons.”
“The whole lot of the Weatherbys are Bad Eggs.”
“Has been a planter, preacher, publisher, physician, & farmer but has never succeeded at anything & probably never will.”
“Broke & run away, not worth the power to kill him.”
Unfortunately, such reports could be filled with rumor, hearsay and innuendo. “A poor evaluation by the agency could ruin a man’s business because suppliers would no longer sell to him and bankers would not lend him money,” writes Sandage.
In the author’s decade-long search of diaries, business records, bankruptcy cases, suicide notes, charity requests and memoirs, he discovered the “begging letter.” Near the end of a century of financial struggle, one that had made millionaires of people such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, these men, along with other successful Americans such as Henry Ford, Mark Twain and Williams Jennings Bryan were receiving letters from Americans who were asking for money, jobs and advice or just sharing their story of hard luck. By 1900, writes Sandage, Carnegie was receiving as many as 15,000 letters each week.
Sandage says that many of their correspondents had bought into the American myth that Carnegie and company were self made men who had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, unaware that many tycoons were born into advantageous circumstances.
Sandage’s heavily researched and poetically-written volume took him ten years to write. At one point when he became extremely discouraged, he tried to learn the banjo. This gave him the opportunity to play for his history students and show them that you don’t have to be successful in the world’s eyes at something before you can enjoy it.
He also likes to tell his students, “You are not what you do.” Failure, he tells them, is not necessarily a personality or character defect.
Before the 19th century, says Sandage, failure was seen as an outcome or event at a point in time. By 1900, it was an identity.
He writes: “ ‘I feel like a failure.’ The expression comes so naturally that we forget it is a figure of speech: the language of business applied to the soul.”
For Christmas my parents bought me a book with the title “Born Losers: A History of Failure in America.” Uh, should I be worried about this?
Actually, I asked for it. I saw the author interviewed on C-Span last November just in time for me to get it on my Christmas list. I finished reading the book last week and have been thinking about becoming a success ever since.
“Born Losers,” written by Carnegie Mellon history professor Scott Sandage, is a cultural history about a subject that touches everyone who has their own story of being down and out or feels that, surely, life is more than an occupational identity. The publisher, Harvard University Press, believes this may be the only book out there on the subject.
But did Sandage have to open the book with a story implying that my high school hero, Henry David Thoreau, was a loser? Of course, Sandage was only quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson who eulogized friend Henry David at his 1862 funeral as one who might have been successful at one of his many undertakings if he’d only been more ambitious.
Nineteenth century America is the focus for most of the documentation in “Born Losers.” In addition to a depression which hit in 1819, the century saw nationwide “panics” in each generation including 1837, 1857, 1873 and 1893, according to Sandage. Because the 19th century economy was a national economy and because of the the risks involved for banks, investors and vendors, crediting agencies were born, chief among them the Mercantile Agency based in New York. The Mercantile Agency, forerunner of Dun & Bradstreet, hired anonymous informants who put the country’s businessmen under surveillance. Sandage researched the agency’s archives, which are held at Harvard Business School, and reproduces pieces of credit reports:
“The general opinion here is, that he is in a very critical & embarrassed condition, and that there is a strong probability of his failure.”
“In good credit now but hard times might blow them over.”
“Failed. Went too far, too many irons.”
“The whole lot of the Weatherbys are Bad Eggs.”
“Has been a planter, preacher, publisher, physician, & farmer but has never succeeded at anything & probably never will.”
“Broke & run away, not worth the power to kill him.”
Unfortunately, such reports could be filled with rumor, hearsay and innuendo. “A poor evaluation by the agency could ruin a man’s business because suppliers would no longer sell to him and bankers would not lend him money,” writes Sandage.
In the author’s decade-long search of diaries, business records, bankruptcy cases, suicide notes, charity requests and memoirs, he discovered the “begging letter.” Near the end of a century of financial struggle, one that had made millionaires of people such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, these men, along with other successful Americans such as Henry Ford, Mark Twain and Williams Jennings Bryan were receiving letters from Americans who were asking for money, jobs and advice or just sharing their story of hard luck. By 1900, writes Sandage, Carnegie was receiving as many as 15,000 letters each week.
Sandage says that many of their correspondents had bought into the American myth that Carnegie and company were self made men who had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, unaware that many tycoons were born into advantageous circumstances.
Sandage’s heavily researched and poetically-written volume took him ten years to write. At one point when he became extremely discouraged, he tried to learn the banjo. This gave him the opportunity to play for his history students and show them that you don’t have to be successful in the world’s eyes at something before you can enjoy it.
He also likes to tell his students, “You are not what you do.” Failure, he tells them, is not necessarily a personality or character defect.
Before the 19th century, says Sandage, failure was seen as an outcome or event at a point in time. By 1900, it was an identity.
He writes: “ ‘I feel like a failure.’ The expression comes so naturally that we forget it is a figure of speech: the language of business applied to the soul.”
posted by Jack W. Williams | 9:37 PM
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