SAM WHO?:

Remembering a Classic, and the Man Who Wrote It (Lawrence W. Reed and John Blundell, 4/05/04, Mackinac Center for Public Policy)

In 1870, the Sultan of Turkey gave a book by a Scotsman to his entire entourage of top ranking officials. The Khedive of Egypt had the same work inscribed and painted on the wall of the Royal harem. Two years later, the Meiji dynasty ordered the book to be issued throughout Tokyo’s school system. Eventually, every prefecture in Japan followed suit. General George Custer described the volume as his favorite text. Many people kept it next to their Bible.

What was this book, and who was its author? It was called, simply, Self Help, and its author was a man named Samuel Smiles.

When he died at the age of 86, exactly 100 years ago this month, in 1904, only Queen Victoria’s funeral cortege three years earlier was said to have surpassed that of Samuel Smiles. He was loved not only for his book, but also for a wealth of other works that celebrated the virtues of independence, thrift, civility, character and hard work.

The cover of the 2002 Oxford University Press edition of Self-Help declares that the book “is the precursor of today’s motivational and self-help literature” and that it “awakens readers to their own potential and instills the desire to succeed.” In his lifetime, the author inspired riots in Belgrade, carnivals in Milan, and plaudits from leaders the world over. But sadly, just a century since Smiles died, he is largely unremembered in his native Scotland. Needless to say, decades of the British welfare state have not been kind to a man who preached personal independence and entrepreneurial capitalism.