Disqualified from active combat because of his missing finger, Carnagey was assigned an office job at Camp Upton. Given the rank of sergeant—doubtless due to his college education—he became an assistant to an army major and took on the responsibility of organizing office work, running errands, and answering the phone. At the beck and call of his superior, he was expected to perform any task, no matter how unusual. “I had just bought a Chevrolet car, and he asked me to drive him from Camp Upton to New York City and back every weekend,” Carnagey reported. “Naturally I was glad to do it because it meant a weekend away from the dull routine of the Army.” The major, an attorney in civilian life, jealously protected his status. “He always had a copy of the New York Times on his desk every morning,” Carnagey wrote. “One morning, after I sat there for hours doing nothing, I dared to open his copy of the Times. He was indignant because a lowly Sargent [sic] had dared to peep into his three-cent newspaper.”35

  During his stay at Camp Upton, Carnagey observed two incidents that left an imprint on his thinking about public speaking. One day, he attended a gathering of “unlettered Negro troops”—they were about to be shipped off to the European front—who were being addressed by an English bishop on the reasons they were being sent into the fight. In full oratorical flight, the visitor declaimed at great length on the importance of “international amity” and “Serbia’s right to a place in the sun.” The troops stared at him with blank looks. “Why, half of those Negroes did not know whether Serbia was a town or a disease. He might as well, as far as results were concerned, have delivered a sonorous eulogy on the Nebular Hypothesis,” the young sergeant observed. Another time, while in New York for the weekend, he heard a congressman hooted from the stage at the Hippodrome. He had chosen to speak to the crowd on the American government’s elaborate preparations for war, when they wanted to be entertained. After droning on for twenty minutes, mounting catcalls, whistling, and shouting finally forced him to “retire in humiliation.” The lesson from such occurrences was clear: Speakers needed to gauge their audience and find a fitting way to reach them on their own terms.36

  But most of the time, the young teacher and writer found life at Camp Upton to be completely barren of interest. After trying, unsuccessfully, to procure an assignment with the government’s Liberty Loan campaign in the summer of 1918, he lingered in his dull office job until the armistice in November. He was granted holiday leave to visit his parents, and then ordered to return. Finally, in late January 1919 Carnagey received his discharge from the armed forces. “Praise the Lord I got out of the army Saturday morning about 8:47,” he wrote his mother. “I surely have been happy since. It is a delight to have one’s freedom again.”37

  Upon returning to civilian life, Carnagey immediately jumpstarted his YMCA teaching project. He revived his courses in New York and traveled to Philadelphia to do likewise, while also creating new instructional programs for the Rotary Club and Advertising Men’s Club. Within a few months he was back up and running. On May 11, 1919, he wrote to his family on letterhead stationery with an impressive description emblazoned across the top: “The Carnagey Course in Public Speaking. Dale Carnagey—Author and Director. Conducted in YMCA Schools, New York Rotary Club, Advertising Club, American Institute of Banking, Philadelphia Engineers’ Club, and Commercial Organizations. Eighth Season.”38

  Carnagey’s revived classes highlighted, even more strongly than before, that the ability to speak in public would produce social and economic success. A syllabus declared “The Ability to Talk Convincingly Is Worth Hard, Cold Cash,” while the instructor overwhelmed students with testimonials from graduates, such as the salesman who claimed “this training has increased my yearly income by $3,000,” or the realtor who “increased his yearly commissions by $4,000 as a result of this training.” Carnagey also subtly underlined the New Thought dimension of his training. Each student, he claimed, would acquire enhanced “will-power, mental concentration, self-confidence, and convincing tones,” precisely the qualities that would give a man “a reputation and a power out of all proportion to his capacity.”39

  But Carnagey’s enthusiastic resumption of his career as a teacher of public speaking veered into excess. A few months after leaving the army, he became embroiled in a scandal involving the leading scholarly journal in the field of speech education, which accused him of deception in one of his YMCA promotional pamphlets. The resulting blow sent him reeling.

  The difficulties began with Carnagey’s article “My Triumph Over Fears That Cost Me $10,000 a Year,” the story of an anonymous businessman whose enrollment in a public-speaking course catapulted him to the top of the business profession. After being mustered out of the army, Carnagey revised the article into a pamphlet and sent it to the editor of an academic publication, The Quarterly Journal of Speech Education. He urged the journal to reprint the article and noted that he would happily secure permission from American Magazine to do so.40

  In fact, Carnagey’s reprint made several additions to the original American Magazine article. Most of them were inconsequential, merely adding details or elaboration to original points, but two changes carried more weight. First, it identified the protagonist’s inspiring speech teacher by name—Dale Carnagey—and added a statement from the YMCA that praised the efficacy of his courses: “they had more than four thousand students enrolled in various classes, and that more men from their public speaking classes had testified to the benefits they had derived than from all of their other classes combined.” Second, the revision added a section informing readers that “the nationally known Carnagey Course in Public Speaking” was being taught at the YMCA in their city, and invited them to attend a session. Moreover, Carnagey’s communication to The Quarterly Journal of Speech Education included a second pamphlet entitled “How to Promote Y.M.C.A. Classes in Public Speaking” with this passage:

  You ought to distribute a large number of the booklet entitled, How I Overcame Fears That Cost Me Ten Thousand Dollars a Year … It is a biographical article of a man who joined a Y.M.C.A. course in public speaking and profited by it greatly. Written in a popular magazine style, it is interesting reading. The human interest story told in the article will lead men to read it who are not in the least interested in educational work. And it is the best sales literature in Christendom for this course. I shall be glad to send you sample copies of the reprint. You are urged to give copies of it to every man who inquires about the course or attends the opening session … This reprint can be obtained from me at the following prices: $1.50 for a hundred, $10 for a thousand.41

  Then the trouble began. Somewhat taken aback by Carnagey’s self-promotional onslaught, the staid, scholarly Quarterly Journal of Speech Education decided to investigate the provenance of the man and his article. It discovered a serious problem. Professor J. M. O’Neill, from the University of Wisconsin, produced the journal’s findings in an article entitled “The True Story of $10,000 Fears,” published in March 1919. After confronting Carnagey about the factual basis of his article, O’Neill related, the young teacher had admitted that the piece was not about a real man but “a story of the experiences of a number of his students.” But even after admitting deception, O’Neill continued, Carnagey still urged the journal to publish the article and “say that it is a true story, because it is a group of true stories.” The investigation came to an indignant conclusion: “The apparent assumption that the Editor of The Quarterly would be willing to reprint this article and tell the readers that it was a true story, knowing the actual facts of the case, was not very pleasing or complimentary.”42

  Nor was this an isolated incident. Around the same time, in Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Carnagey presented a lengthy narrative of “my own story, which I hope may serve as a guidepost to the thoughtful student.” This inspirational tale was, to put it mildly, a tall tale. He began by noting that during much of his career, he had remained mentally dormant until his company created a new department. Deeply disappointed when he was passed over for a promotion to manage it, Carnagey continued, he decided to change his demeanor and become “buoyant, enthusiastic, and optimistic.” He forced himself to be cheerful every day, read inspirational and historical literature, and focus his willpower on becoming successful. He discovered the virtues of public speaking and pursued it to develop self-confidence. Then, according to Carnagey’s account, “the general manager of our company was shot while hunting deer in Maine. I was given his position.” Only two years later, his success brought him to the leadership of an even bigger company that manufactured hardware and automobile parts. This prestigious, lucrative job, Carnagey concluded, provided more “leisure to devote to the hobby of my life—public speaking.” While some of the details matched aspects of Carnagey’s experience, this life story was a complete fabrication in its description of corporate positions and advancement.43

  Both the imbroglio with The Quarterly Journal of Speech Education and the embellished life story in his book revealed a reckless overreaching by Carnagey. It suggested a willingness, at this stage of his life, to use puffery as a tactic in climbing to success. The demobilized young soldier, straining to get his career back on track, became overzealous and allowed his enthusiasm to clearly outdistance his judgment. When the leading journal of speech teachers publicly chastised him, it must have been an embarrassment. Carnagey never addressed the controversy, either publicly or privately, but the fact that he never again engaged in such behavior suggests that he learned a lesson.

  In another sense, however, Carnagey’s difficulties in the aftermath of World War I help explain his unusual departure in the next few years. Hindered by the wartime interlude that disrupted his business and embarrassed by the dustup over his ethics in speech teaching circles, he was susceptible to the allure of an unusual but inviting new project that came out of the blue. It would send him on a fascinating adventure that took him far afield, both vocationally and geographically.

  Rebellion and the Lost Generation

  The notion of personal reinvention nearly defined How to Win Friends and Influence People. From its opening pages, Dale Carnegie insisted that readers needed to change their approach to problems and people, move outside familiar patterns of behavior and thought, and create a new persona to face the world in order to influence people and achieve success. His own experience illustrated this need. As Carnegie had learned, the changing circumstances of life often made older values and beliefs archaic. “I believe now hardly anything that I believed twenty years ago—except the multiplication tables, and I begin to doubt even that when I read about Einstein,” he admitted. “In another twenty years, I may not believe what I have said in this book. I am not so sure now of anything as I used to be.” But despite the ongoing flux of life, Carnegie continued, nearly everyone sticks with comfortable habits and “lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.”1

  But summoning the courage to overcome life’s impasses and embrace personal transformation promised enormous benefits. Carnegie described the example of one of his students, a sophisticated art dealer who spoke several languages fluently and had graduated from two foreign universities, but who had fallen into crisis when forced to confront his personal disarray and lack of effectiveness. He “was so shaken by a realization of his own mistakes, so inspired by the vista of a new and richer world opening before him, that he was unable to sleep” for days. So he decided to revamp his life and energize his career by becoming a more skilled practitioner of human relations. Carnegie believed that the ideas in his book, of course, would serve as a catalyst for change—“Incredible as it sounds, I have seen the application of these principles literally revolutionize the lives of many people”—but that personal transformation ultimately must come from within. “Do you know someone who would like to change and regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in favor of it,” he exclaimed. “But why not begin with yourself?… ‘When a man’s fight begins with himself,’ said 19th century poet Robert Browning, ‘he is worth something.’ ”2

  Carnegie’s second major book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, extended the theme. Meeting traditional expectations, he suggested, might bring security but often stifled life in other ways. “Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy?” he asked. He cited the example of a woman who had turned her life around after realizing her obsession with meeting others’ expectations and ignoring her own needs. “In a flash, I realized I had brought all this misery on myself by trying to fit myself into a pattern to which I did not conform,” she confessed. The key, Carnegie concluded, was to find yourself and not just copy others. “You and I have such abilities, so let’s not waste a second worrying because we are not like other people,” he proclaimed. “You are something new in this world. Never before, since the beginning of time, has there ever been anybody exactly like you; and never again throughout all the ages to come will there ever be anybody exactly like you again.”3

  The embrace of personal reinvention had deep roots in Carnegie’s own experience in the 1920s, when he overthrew just about everything that was familiar in his life. Abandoning his heritage of Midwestern Protestantism, his thriving public-speaking courses in New York, and even his native country, he embarked upon a commercial entertainment venture that sent him out of the country for the first time. While the financial rewards of his new project would prove less than he hoped for, the cultural exposure and broadened experience made it one of the most important episodes of his life. In fact, this adventure would trigger an extended hiatus abroad as Carnegie married a European woman, became a writer of fiction, and launched a stinging critique of life in the United States. In many ways, his life would never be quite the same.

  In the early spring of 1917, the telephone rang in Dale Carnagey’s office in the Carnegie Building in New York. When he picked up, a voice said, “This is Lowell Thomas. I’d like to come and see you.” The widely traveled Thomas, then a visiting professor in the English Department at Princeton, had been invited by Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane to speak on Alaska at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., as part of the government’s promotion of domestic tourism in light of the war in Europe. He had accepted, but wanted a public-speaking coach to help him shorten and sharpen his remarks. He had heard of Carnagey’s successful course, so now Thomas contacted the young instructor and convinced him to help. They met several times and collaborated on revisions. Thomas delivered the revamped speech with great success a few weeks later and it helped launch his wildly successful career.4

  Grateful for Carnagey’s expert coaching and advice, Thomas wrote an endorsement letter describing the New York instructor as “one of the best public speaking teachers in America today.” He reported that he had used some of Carnagey’s teaching materials with his students at Princeton and enjoyed great success. “I have known many students who have had their stock of confidence increased, their personalities developed, and their earning power expanded by studying under Mr. Carnagey,” he continued. “His course ought to be worth thousands of dollars to every man who profits by his suggestions and criticisms.” Carnagey used the letter in advertising his YMCA courses in several eastern cities.5

  Such was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two men. Each would go on to become world famous, Carnagey as a teacher, lecturer, radio host, and advice writer, and Thomas as a travel writer, media personality, and adventurer. Over the next four decades they maintained a close relationship, with Carnagey regularly visiting Thomas’s farm in upstate New York, and Thomas writing glowing introductions to several of Carnagey’s books. Carnagey dedicated his best-selling book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living “to a man who doesn’t need to read it—Lowell Thomas,” while Thomas inscribed a gift copy of his Pageant of Life: “To Dale, World’s No. 1 authority on the pageant of life!”

  But in 1919 the two ambitious young men came together in a joint undertaking, the origins of which lay in World War I. Thomas had dashed off to Europe as a war correspondent to prepare a series of syndicated reports for American newspapers. He not only wrote a number of dispatches but employed a cameraman, Harry Chase, to film the action. Initially focusing his efforts on France and Italy, Thomas shifted his attention to the Middle East, where the British general Edmund Allenby had just commanded the Allied takeover of Jerusalem. Journeying first to Egypt, and then flying to Palestine to cover the Allied capture of Jericho, Thomas eventually landed in Jerusalem, where he was introduced to Major T. E. Lawrence in February 1918. The unorthodox British officer, who had been fighting alongside Arabian fighters in their rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, fascinated Thomas and within a few weeks he had received permission to join Lawrence in Arabia. He would spend the next several months with the iconoclastic Englishman filming war travelogues and taking numerous photographs before returning to Europe.6

  Thomas came back to the United States after the armistice determined to take financial advantage of his fascinating war experiences. Utilizing hundreds of photographs and thousands of feet of film, he put together an illustrated lecture entitled “With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia” for a run at a theater in New York City. Thomas introduced the show, then moved offstage to serve as an invisible narrator while three projection machines offered a variety of colored slides, films, and lighting effects. Although modestly successful, Thomas’s lecture was rough and amateurish, with the images appearing unevenly and the narration not always matching what audiences were seeing on the screen. It didn’t help matters that he often spoke extemporaneously. Nonetheless, Percy Burton, an English impresario, arranged to present the show at London’s Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.7

 

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