Self help messiah, p.49
Self-help Messiah, page 49
4 DC, “Letters to My Daughter” (January 1952–1955), 91–92, DCA.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 92, 90; and Margaret Case Harriman, “He Sells Hope,” The Saturday Evening Post (August 14, 1937): 30.
7 On the history of the academy, see Gerard Raymond, “125 Years and Counting: The American Academy of Dramatic Arts Celebrates a Special Anniversary,” Backstage (November 26–December 2, 2009): 6–7, and James H. McTeague, Before Stanislavsky: American Professional Acting Schools and Acting Theory, 1875–1925 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993), 45–93.
8 Franklin H. Sargent, “The Preparation of the Stage Neophyte,” New York Dramatic Mirror (July 10, 1911): 5; and McTeague, Before Stanislavsky, 73.
9 McTeague, Before Stanislavsky, 80–84, 67.
10 Ibid., 67, 58; and Sargent, “Preparation of the Stage Neophyte,” 5.
11 Garff B. Wilson, A History of American Acting (Bloomington, IN, 1966), 100–1.
12 Ibid., 103; McTeague, Before Stanislavsky, 48, 55, 65; Sargent, “Preparation of the Stage Neophyte,” 5; and Algernon Tassin, “The American Dramatic Schools,” The Bookman (April 1907): 161.
13 Harriman, “He Sells Hope,” 30; and DC to Amanda and James Carnagey, April 1, 1911, DCA.
14 DC to Amanda and James Carnagey, April 1, 1911, DCA.
15 DC, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (New York, 1944), 124.
16 Sargent is quoted in McTeague, Before Stanislavsky, 72, 91, 93.
17 DC to Amanda Carnagey, August 17, 1911, DCA; Margaret Mayo, Polly of the Circus: A Comedy-Drama in Three Acts (New York, 1933); and “Polly of the Circus (1907),” in Oxford Companion to American Theatre (New York, 2004), 504.
18 DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 74; and DC to Amanda Carnagey, August 17, 1911, DCA.
19 DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 74–75; and Howard Lindsay, letter to author quoted in Richard M. Huber, The American Idea of Success (New York, 1971), 233.
20 DC to Amanda Carnagey, January 5, 1912, DCA.
21 DC to Amanda Carnagey, August 17, 1911, DCA; Howard Lindsay letter to author, quoted in Huber, American Idea of Success, 233; and DC to Amanda Carnagey, March 8, 1912, DCA.
22 DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 75–76; William A. H. Bernie, DC quoted in “Popularity, Incorporated,” New York World-Telegram Weekend Magazine (February 27, 1937), 9; and Harriman, “He Sells Hope,” 30.
23 DC to Amanda Carnagey, March 8, 1912, DCA.
24 For two good overviews of the main trends of the Progressive Era, see Steven Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (New York, 1998), and Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967).
25 For two broad analyses of the automobile’s impact on American life, see James J. Flink, The Car Culture (Cambridge, MA, 1975), and Steven Watts, The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (New York, 2005).
26 DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 88–89.
27 DC to Amanda Carnagey, May 5, 1912, DCA.
28 DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 76, 89; DC to Amanda Carnagey, December 12, 1912; and DC to Carnagey family, February 1913: all DCA.
29 DC to Amanda Carnagey, February 1, 1913, DCA.
30 Ibid.; DC to Carnagey family, February 17, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, February 24, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, March 4, 1913; and DC to Amanda Carnagey, March 18, 1913: all DCA.
31 DC to Amanda Carnagey, March 18, 1913, DCA.
32 DC to Baptist Young People’s Group, Pierre Baptist Church, April 1, 1911; DC to Amanda Carnagey, January 5, 1912; DC to Amanda Carnagey, December 12, 1912; DC to Carnagey family, January 14, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, February 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, June 16, 1913: all DCA.
33 DC to Carnagey family, undated 1913, DCA.
34 DC to Carnagey family, March 25, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, February 17, 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, May 16, 1913: all DCA.
35 DC to Amanda Carnagey, March 8, 1912; DC to Carnagey family, January 14, 1913; DC to Amanda Carnagey, March 18, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, March 25, 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, February 17, 1913: all DCA.
36 DC to Amanda Carnagey, August 17, 1911; and DC to Amanda Carnagey, March 8, 1912: both DCA.
37 DC to Amanda Carnagey, December 12, 1912; and DC to Amanda Carnagey, February 1, 1913: both DCA.
38 DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 76; and DC, How to Stop Worrying, xi.
39 DC to Carnagey family, undated, 1913, DCA; DC to Carnagey family, May 16, 1913, DCA; DC quoted in James Kaye, “A Youth’s Timidity Led Him to World Influence,” Kansas City Star, July 24, 1955; and DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 76.
40 DC to Carnagey family, October 19, 1913, DCA; and DC, How to Stop Worrying, xi.
41 DC to Amanda Carnagey, February 1, 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, June 16, 1913: both DCA.
42 DC to Carnagey family, February 24, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, March 25, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, March 4, 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, October 19, 1913: all DCA.
43 DC to Carnagey family, June 16, 1913, DCA; and DC, How to Stop Worrying, xii.
44 DC to Carnagey family, June 16, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, June 3, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, July 8, 1913; DC to Amanda Carnagey, March 18, 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, October 19, 1913: all DCA.
45 DC to Carnagey family, March 4, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, undated, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, June 16, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, undated, 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, July 8, 1913: all DCA.
46 DC to Carnagey family, February 17, 1913, DCA.
47 DC to Carnagey family, October 19, 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, undated 1913: both DCA.
5. Teaching and Writing
1 DC, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New Yor, 1936), 12–15, 56.
2 Ibid., 12–17.
3 DC, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (New York, 1944), xi–xii; and DC, “Mass Meeting Talk,” September 29, 1937, in A Public Presentation of the Dale Carnegie Course, 6, DCA.
4 DC, “Letters to My Daughter” (January 1952–1955), 93–94, DCA; Margaret Case Harriman, “He Sells Hope,” The Saturday Evening Post (August 14, 1937): 30; James Kaye, “A Youth’s Timidity Led Him to World Influence,” Kansas City Star, July 24, 1955; and Richard M. Huber, The American Idea of Success (New York, 1971), 233–34.
5 DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 76–77.
6 Kaye, “A Youth’s Timidity”; DC, How to Stop Worrying, xii; and DC, “Mass Meeting Talk,” 7.
7 For the best examination of this institution, see Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt, eds., Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City (New York, 1997); quotes are from page 3.
8 DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 77; John Janney, “Can You Think Fast on Your Feet?,” American Magazine (January 1932): 94; and Kaye, “A Youth’s Timidity.”
9 DC identified October 22, 1912, as his first class in several places over the years, including DC, “Mass Meeting Talk,” 7; DC quoted in Arthur R. Pell, Enrich Your Life the Dale Carnegie Way (Garden City, N, 1979), 37; and DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 96, 77.
10 Harriman, “He Sells Hope,” 30; and DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 94–98.
11 Janney, “Can You Think Fast on Your Feet?,” 94; and DC, “Letters to My Daughter,” 77, 98.
12 DC to Amanda Carnagey, February 1, 1913; DC to Carnagey family, February 1913; and DC to Carnagey family, May 16, 1913: all DCA.
13 DC to Carnagey family, October 19, 1913, DCA; DC to Carnagey family, March 4, 1913, DCA; DC to Amanda Carnagey, December 12, 1912, DCA; Dale Carnagey and J. Berg Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking (Springfield, MA, 1915), title page; Harriman, “He Sells Hope,” 30; DC to Carnagey family, February 24, 1913, DCA; and DC to Carnagey family, June 3, 1913, DCA.
14 DC to Carnagey family, October 19, 1913, DCA; and DC, “War,” Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly (October 16, 1913): 365. DC also identified the Leslie’s editorial as his work and reprinted it in Carnagey and Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking, 84–86.
15 DC to Carnagey family, October 19, 1913, DCA.
16 For trenchant discussions of the new magazines, see Richard Ohmann, Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1996); Matthew Schneirov, The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America, 1893–1914 (New York, 1994); and Christopher P. Wilson, “The Rhetoric of Consumption: Mass-Market Magazines and the Demise of the Gentle Reader, 1880–1920,” in Richard Wrightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980 (New York, 1983), 39–64.
17 DC, “Fighting for Life in Antarctic Ice,” Illustrated World (September 1915): 22–26; DC, “The World’s Best Known Hobo,” American Magazine (October 1914), unpaginated; DC, “Mrs. Atwood—The Laborer’s Big Sister,” Illustrated World (February 1916): 808–9; and DC, “America’s Champion Money Raiser,” World Outlook (February 1917): 3–4, 26.
18 DC, “Sharpshooting the Future,” Illustrated World (December 1915): 507–9.
19 DC, “Money Made in Writing for the Movies,” American Magazine (June 1916): 32; DC, “Rich Prizes for Playwrights,” American Magazine (April 1916): 65–66; and DC, “How I Laid the Foundation for a Big Salary,” American Magazine (August 1916): 16.
20 DC, “Rich Prizes for Playwrights,” 34; DC, “Money Made in Writing for the Movies,” 32; and DC, “How I Laid the Foundation for a Big Salary,” 16.
21 DC, “America’s Champion Money Raiser,” 26; DC, “Mrs. Atwood,” 808; DC, “Rich Prizes for Playwrights,” 68; and DC, “How I Laid the Foundation for Big Salary,” 16–17.
22 DC, “America’s Champion Money Raiser,” 3–4; and DC, “Show Windows That Sell Goods,” American Magazine (October 1917): 126–30.
23 DC, “Rich Prizes for Playwrights,” 70; DC, “Mrs. Atwood,” 808; DC, “Delivered One Lecture 5,000 Times,” American Magazine (September 1915): 55; DC, “Fighting for Life,” 26; and DC, “How I Laid the Foundation for a Big Salary,” 17.
24 DC, “My Triumph Over Fears That Cost Me $10,000 a Year,” American Magazine 5,000 (November 1918):–51, 137–39.
25 Ibid.
26 DC’s reprinting of this article is noted and analyzed in J. M. O’Neill, “The True Story of $10,000 Fears,” Quarterly Journal of Speech Education (March 1919): 128–37.
27 DC to Carnagey family, May 16, 1913, DCA.
28 Carnagey and Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking.
29 “Home Study Under College Professors,” Primary Education (November 1910): 535; “Miscellaneous Classes of Schools,” College and Private School Directory of the United States, vol. 6 (New York, 1913), 177; and Frank H. Palmer, “Correspondence Schools,” Education (September 1910): 49–51.
30 “Esenwein, Joseph Berg,” in Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw’s National Library of American Biography, vol. 2 (New York, 1909), 395; “Esenwein, Joseph Berg,” in Who’s Who in America, 1906–1907 (Chicago, 1906), 561; “Esenwein, Joseph Berg,” Wikipedia, quoting New International Encyclopedia (New York, 1914–1916); and J. Berg Esenwein, “Can You Too Have the Rewards of Authorship?,” Atlantic Monthly (June 1922): 47.
31 Carnagey and Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking, 5, 8, 80, 272, 358.
32 Ibid., 356, 357–58, 359.
33 Ibid., 109, 3, 94, 106–7, 95.
34 Ibid., 88, 83, 91.
35 Ibid., 4, 107, 301–2, 374–76.
36 Ibid., 102–3, 101, 262, 263–67, 270, 275–76, 273.
37 Ibid., 355, 357, 358.
38 Ibid., 356, 358, 361, 360.
6. Mind Power and Positive Thinking
1 DC, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York, 1936), “Twelve Things This Book Will Help You Achieve” on first printed page in the text (no pagination), 10, 14, 17.
2 Ibid., 29, 58, 70, 135, 48, 71.
3 DC, “Letters to My Daughter” (January 1952–1955), 48, DCA.
4 DC, Public Speaking: The Standard Course of the United Y.M.C.A. Schools, Book II (New York: Association Press, 1920), 17–20.
5 Ibid., Book III, 127–28.
6 Ibid., 127–28, 129–30, 131; and Homer Croy, “The Success Factory,” Esquire (June 1937): 241. A brief discussion of the Chautauqua Course of Reading can be found in The Encyclopedia of Social Reform (New York, 1909), 162, while a more extended analysis appears in John C. Scott, “The Chautauqua Movement: Revolution in Popular Higher Education,” Journal of Higher Education (July–August 1999): 389–412.
7 On New Thought, see Donald Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: A Study of the American Quest for Health, Wealth, and Personal Power from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale (Garden City, NY, 1966 [1965]); Richard M. Huber, The American Idea of Success (New York, 1971), 124–76; Richard Weiss, The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale (Urbana, IL, 1988), 195–240; and Beryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 (Berkeley, 1999).
8 See Meyer, Positive Thinkers, 51; Huber, American Idea of Success, 235; Weiss, American Myth of Success, 131–210; Warren I. Susman, “Personality and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture,” in his Culture as History (New York, 1984), especially 277–79; and Steven Watts, The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (New York, 2005), 323–24.
9 Dale Carnagey and J. Berg Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking (Springfield, MA: The Home Correspondence School, 1915), 189, 80, 197–98, 359.
10 Margaret Case Harriman, “He Sells Hope,” The Saturday Evening Post (August 31, 1937): 30, 33; and Giles Kemp and Edward Claflin, Dale Carnegie: The Man Who Influenced Millions (New York, 1989), 121. In a letter from DC to Edward Frank Allen, April 8, 1916, the letterhead stationery shows his address as “Studio 824, Carnegie Hall,” DCA.
11 Frank Bettger, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling (New York, 1992 [1947]), 5–6, 15–16.
12 A 1917 advertising pamphlet for the Carnagey Course in Public Speaking, DCA; and DC, Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Books I–IV.
13 DC, Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Book III, 119, 122, 133, and Book I, 1–2, 21.
14 Russell H. Conwell, “Acres of Diamonds,” reprinted in DC, Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Book III, 3–28. For excellent biographical sketches of Conwell, see Huber, American Idea of Success, 55–61, and Judy Hilkey, Character Is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997), 58, 92, 102–3.
15 Russell H. Conwell, “What You Can Do with Your Will Power,” American Magazine (April 1916): 16, 96–100; Russell H. Conwell, What You Can Do with Your Willpower (New York, 1917), 42–13; Carnagey and Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking, 82–83; and DC, Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Book III, 26, 84, 87–88, and 2–28.
16 Elbert Hubbard, “A Message to Garcia,” as reprinted in DC, Public Speaking: A Practical Course for Business Men (New York: Association Press, 1926), 553–57. On Hubbard’s life, see Huber, American Idea of Success, 79–85.
17 Elbert Hubbard, The Book of Business (East Aurora, NY, 1913), 89, 158; Carnagey and Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking, 3–4; Elbert Hubbard, Love, Life and Work (East Aurora, NY, 1906), 43–44, a quotation that DC reprinted at even greater length in his How to Win Friends, 71–72. Weiss, in American Myth of Success, 189, 191, stresses Hubbard’s emergence as a New Thought advocate in the early 1900s.
18 See “James Allen: Unrewarded Genius, 1864–1912,” at James Allen Homepage, available at jamesallen.wwwhubs.com; and Mitch Horowitz, “James Allen: A Life in Brief,” in James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (New York, 1909).
19 Allen, “As a Man Thinketh,” reprinted in DC, Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Book IV, Part II, 2–23.
20 Arthur J. Forbes, editor of the journal The Business Philosopher, to DC, November 8, 1921, DCA; and DC, quoted in Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Book III, 122.
21 On Marden’s life and career, see Huber, American Idea of Success, 145–64, and “Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924): Founder of Success Magazine,” available at orisonswettmarden.wwwhubs.com. Susman, in Culture as History, 279, discusses Marden’s shift in emphasis from “character” to “personality” in his writings on success.
22 See the following books by Marden: Little Visits with Great Americans (New York, 1903), 11; Peace, Power, and Plenty (New York, 1909), viii, x; and The Miracle of Right Thought (New York, 1910), ix–x.
23 DC, Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Book I, 7, Book III, 129–30, Book III, 1, and Book III, 32. Surviving editions of this volume, presented in several different formats, indicate Marden’s “special lecture” in the table of contents but do not include the actual text. But most likely this lecture was a chapter from Pushing to the Front (New York, 1911 edition) entitled “Public Speaking,” 411–23; the quotations are from 411.
24 On psychotherapy in early twentieth-century America, see Weiss, American Myth of Success, 195–214; Nathan G. Hale, Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917 (New York, 1995), especially chapters IV–VII; and Meyer, Positive Thinkers, 65–75. Satter also analyzes the intersection of New Thought and psychology in the early 1900s in chapter 7, “New Thought and Popular Psychology,” in his Each Mind a Kingdom, 217–47.
25 Carnagey and Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking, 8, 80, 308, 360.
26 DC, Public Speaking: The Standard Course, Book III, 37, and Book IV, 6, 67–68, 78, 24–35.
27 Ibid., Book II, 16, Book III, 44, and Book IV, 24.
28 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York, 1905), 94–95, 115, 108; and William James, “The Powers of Men,” American Magazine (November 1907): 57–65; reprinted (and delivered as a talk) in several other venues under the title “The Energies of Men.”
