ENDNOTES

1 The secret was brought Hill, at age 25, was a freelance journalist trying to earn money to go to law school at Georgetown University when his famous interview with the industrialist took place. Carnegie (1835-1919) was in the middle of his philanthropic years, busy giving away $350 million of his vast fortune for charitable purposes (more than $6.5 billion in today’s dollars). It was the fall of 1908, and Hill had visited Carnegie for an interview for Bob Taylor’s Magazine. The rapport that developed between the old industrialist and the young journalist resulted not merely in a three-hour interview, but a three-day, three-night marathon discussion (with time out for sleep and meals) in which Carnegie enthusiastically spelled out in detail the principles he had followed and the practical steps he had taken in amassing one of America’s and the world’s greatest fortunes.

The old Scotsman was a fascinating figure. He had immigrated to the United States from Scotland at age 13, settling with his family in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Poor and with little formal education, he went to work first in a cotton factory, then (like Thomas Edison) in a telegraph office, and then for the Pennsylvania Railroad. By 1859 he had become head of the railroad’s western division, at the age of 24.

It is clear from his rapid advancement that Carnegie had keen powers of observation, great personal initiative, and an almost instinctive grasp of the principles of success. He used all those traits, plus an enormous capacity for hard work, to create a thriving steel-making business after leaving the railroad in 1865. By 1899 he had consolidated various holdings into the Carnegie Steel Company. In 1901 he sold the company to a group headed by financier-industrialist J. P. Morgan for some $400 million ($7.4 billion in today’s dollars).

2 Arthur Nash Arthur Nash (1870-1927) was originally a minister (Disciples of Christ) who left the pulpit for a career in the garment industry. After only seven years in the business, he had founded the Arthur Nash Company, a wholesale tailoring concern in Cincinnati. The “Nash Plan,” in which workers co-owned the business, was one of his management innovations. Nash is the author of The Golden Rule of Business, a popular business book in the early 1920s.

3 The secret was passed Stuart Austin Wier (1894-1959) was an attorney, engineer, inventor, lecturer, and a prolific writer. According to Hill’s official biographer, Michael J. Ritt, Jr. (A Lifetime of Riches written with Kirk Landers, 1995), Hill first met Wier in an oil field in Texas, and Wier became a lifelong confidant and Hill’s closest friend. Wier was a native of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, and was educated at Louisiana State Normal College, Rice Institute, the University of Chicago, Southern Methodist University, Cornell University, and George Washington University. He served in the U. S. Army Engineer Corps in World War I and from 1917 to 1920 was a construction engineer in Dallas, Wichita Falls (Texas), and Chicago. After the war he was a public lecturer under the auspices of the Chicago Welfare League and Chicago newspapers. Wier and Hill were both well known on the lecture circuit. In 1925, after receiving his law degree, Wier became a patent attorney who himself eventually held 40 U. S. and foreign patents. He was an author of wide-ranging interests, publishing books on law, Shakespeare, one titled How to Remember, and two that were no doubt of great interest to Hill—The Art and Science of Selling and The Science and Art of Influence.

4 While serving as Jesse Grant Chapline (1870-1937) was an educator and writer on sales and business topics. He founded LaSalle Extension University in 1908. The school eventually offered correspondence courses on the professional level in such subjects as accounting, law, business, and other fields. LaSalle Extension University advertisements were a staple of American home life in the 1950s and 1960s. LaSalle was purchased by Crowell-Collier Publishing Company in 1961. Originally based in Chicago on Dearborn Street, the school later moved to Wilmette, a suburb 15 miles north of the city.

5 This secret was used According to at least one account, Hill and Wilson first met when Wilson was serving as president of Princeton University and Hill came to interview him bearing one of Andrew Carnegie’s letters of introduction. According to Hill’s biographer, when America entered World War I, Hill wrote to President Wilson to offer his services and was assigned to Wilson’s staff as a volunteer public information/public relations aide. It is not completely clear what Hill was referring to here concerning the troop training and war funds effort. However, Wilson was obviously impressed by Hill’s work. Years later, he would write to Hill: “May I congratulate you on your persistence. Any man who devotes that much time [to the study of success]…must of necessity make discoveries of great value to others. I am deeply impressed by your interpretation of the ‘Master Mind’ principles which you have so clearly described.”

6 In the early days Since it was first published in 1937, Think and Grow Rich! has had a profound, if seldom publicized effect on many business and public leaders throughout the world. Manuel L. Quezon (1878-1944) is one of the first examples on the international scene. He was elected president of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, the year the Commonwealth was established to prepare that country for political and economic independence from the United States. In 1909 he was appointed Resident Commissioner of the Philippines, entitled to speak, but not vote, in the U. S. House of Representatives. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, he headed the Philippine government in exile in the United States, and it was during his stay in America that he was exposed to Think and Grow Rich! He died of tuberculosis in 1944, two years before his dream of full independence for the Philippines was realized.

7 While I was performing The doors Carnegie opened for Napoleon Hill would lead the latter to more than two decades of study and face-to-face discussions with an almost unbelievable array of business, professional, and public leaders and philanthropists, including four Presidents of the United States. All of them are fascinating individuals in their own right, but some may be somewhat obscure to readers today. Therefore, in this and in other endnotes that follow, additional biographical details are provided about many of these individuals, either to underscore the magnitude and uniqueness of their achievements, to shed further light (if only indirectly) on a success principle or point, or to “breathe some life” into these historic figures who have long since passed from the scene. Providing these details will also, perhaps, help recapture some of that sense of excitement and enthusiasm that Napoleon Hill clearly experienced in probing these unique achievers’ lives and minds.

7 WILLIAM WRIGLEY, JR. William J. Wrigley, Jr. (1861-1932), at age 13, was a traveling salesman for his father’s soap company. In 1891 he peddled soap with baking powder as a sales premium. In 1892, as a sideline, he began selling baking powder with chewing gum as a premium. The response was so good he dropped the soap and baking powder to focus exclusively on selling gum, eventually making “Wrigley’s” a familiar name on every American street corner. He pioneered in the use of sales incentives, offering dealers such things as clocks, coffee grinders, and fishing tackle. In 1893 he introduced Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum. By 1908 the company’s sales had hit $1 million per year.

7 JOHN WANAMAKER John Wanamaker’s (1838-1922) was a new kind of store. In 1875 he bought a freight depot from the Pennsylvania Railroad to house his new sales operation, which featured a variety of specialty shops under one roof. To market this “department” store idea, he became one of the first retailers to employ an advertising agency. In addition to his business interests, he also served as Postmaster General of the United States under President Benjamin Harrison.

7 GEORGE S. PARKER At the age of 16, George S. Parker (1867-1953), encouraged by his elder brother Charles, established his own game publishing company. George was an avid game player who had invented and sold almost 500 sets of a game called Banking. By 1888, Charles joined the company and, thus, Parker Brothers was created. (Their elder brother, Edward, joined the company in 1898.) George wrote the rules for all the games they produced (29 by the late 1880s) and was responsible for placing ads about the games in magazines and newspapers, a practice unheard of at the time. In addition to board games, Parker Brothers produced card games such as Flinch and Rook, and in 1935, two years before Napoleon Hill published Think and Grow Rich!, the company introduced one of the most popular games of all time—Monopoly. In all, George Parker invented more than 100 games.

7 E. M. STATLER E. M. Statler’s (1863-1928) hotels were the first to have running water and private baths in each room. By the mid-1920s, the Statler properties were the largest in America owned by a single individual. The slogan of his company has become a byword in American business: “The customer is always right.”

7 HENRY L. DOHERTY Henry Doherty (1870-1939) in 1910 organized and became president of Cities Services Company, a holding company for more than 100 public utilities and petroleum businesses with total assets exceeding $1 billion ($17 billion in today’s dollars). He was a leader in the oil conservation movement and he held numerous patents for combustion procedures and equipment related to the manufactured gas industry.

7 CYRUS H. K. CURTIS Cyrus H. K. Curtis (1850-1933) founded the magazine Tribune and Farmer in Philadephia in 1876 with his wife, Louise Knapp Curtis, in charge of the women’s column. The latter was so popular that Curtis expanded it into Ladies’ Home Journal in 1883. He established the Curtis Publishing Company in 1890 and seven years later bought The Saturday Evening Post for the sum of $1,000. With his marketing savvy, both magazines went on to become two of the biggest success stories in periodical history, with Ladies’ Home Journal hitting one million in circulation by 1893 and The Saturday Evening Post doing so in 1909.

7 GEORGE EASTMAN George Eastman (1854-1932), whose hand-held Kodak camera and $1 Brownie Camera for kids opened photography up to the masses, in 1924 gave away half his fortune, about $75 million (more than $790 million today), for such institutions as the University of Rochester and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was the first large-scale manufacturer to use profit sharing as an employee benefit.

7 JOHN W. DAVIS John W. Davis (1873-1955), like Napoleon Hill a Virginian, served as Solicitor General of the United States, Ambassador to Great Britain, and as an advisor to Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference. He was soundly beaten by Coolidge in a run for the Presidency. In 1952 he won a landmark Supreme Court case when he convinced the Court that President Harry Truman had exceeded his constitutional powers in seizing the steel mills.

7 WILBUR WRIGHT Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) got the idea for the design of his and brother Orville’s famous aircraft after watching buzzards flying. As he watched the graceful arcs the birds made during flight, he suddenly realized that to fly successfully, an airplane must be capable of moving on three axes—banking, moving up and down, and steering right and left.

7 WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) was a silver-tongued orator with tremendous charisma, though not quite enough to win the White House in three attempts. He served as prosecuting attorney in the famous evolution-centered Scopes Monkey Trial, squared off against the legendary defense attorney Clarence Darrow.

7 DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) was the world’s foremost scientific authority on fish. He named more than 2,500 species of the finny creatures. In his later career (after his tenure as Stanford’s president), he served as chief director of the World Peace Foundation.

7 DANIEL WILLARD In addition to his railroad responsibilities, Daniel Willard (1861-1942) served as a member of the Board of Visitors of the U. S. Naval Academy and as chairman of the War Industries Board in 1917.

7 KING GILLETTE On one of his trips as a traveling hardware salesman, King Camp Gillette (1855-1932) was advised by some wag to invent “something that would be used and thrown away.” Such an idea—a thin double-edged steel razor blade secured in a T-handle—flashed into his mind while he was honing a permanent straight edge razor. In 1903 he sold 51 razors and 168 blades. By the end of 1904, his American Safety Razor Company (later the Gillette Company) had sold 90,000 razors and 12.4 million blades.

7 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER John D. Rockefeller’s (1839-1937) Standard Oil Company dominated the oil industry and was America’s first great business trust. His near monopoly in oil led directly to the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. By 1910 Rockefeller’s fortune was equal to almost 2.5 percent of the entire U. S. economy—about $250 billion in today’s dollars. In 1911 the courts broke up Standard Oil into several huge companies—Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso, then EXXON), Standard Oil of New York (Socony, then Mobil), Standard Oil of California (Chevron), Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco, then part of BP), and Standard Oil of Ohio. His donations made possible the founding of the University of Chicago, Rockefeller University, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He gave away $500 million to philanthropic causes during his lifetime, and his total charitable gifts, together with those of his son John D. Jr., amounted to $2.5 billion by 1955 (approximately $17 billion in today’s dollars).

7 FRANK A. VANDERLIP Frank A. Vanderlip (1864-1937) was a financial reporter and later financial editor of the Chicago Tribune prior to becoming a banker. He also served as chairman of the War Savings Committee, which coordinated the sale of war savings certificates for World War I, and he was a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation.

7 F. W. WOOLWORTH Franklin W. Woolworth (1852-1919) opened his first five-and-ten-cent variety store in 1879 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. By the end of 1904, he was operating 120 stores in 21 states, and by the time of his death the company had more than a thousand stores. He pioneered in volume buying and artful counter display merchandising. The Woolworth empire eventually expanded to Britain and Ireland and several other countries, but by the late 1990s the chain had lost a long battle against the big discounters, and in 1997 the Woolworth Corporation announced it was closing its last 400 F. W. Woolworth stores with 9,000 employees, ending a venerable business that had simply become unprofitable.

7 COL. ROBERT A. DOLLAR Col. Robert A. Dollar (1844-1932) was born in Falkirk, Scotland, in1844. He immigrated with his family to the United States in 1856. By age 13 he was working in a Canadian lumber camp. He made his way to San Francisco and went on to develop extensive foreign trading and lumber businesses, becoming in the process one of the largest operators of ocean vessels in the world. Before his death in 1932, he had received keys to the cities of Falkirk, Boston, New York, and Shanghai.

7 EDWARD A. FILENE Edward A. Filene (1860-1937), along with brother Lincoln (1865-1957), made Filene’s department store in Boston world-famous. Known for its high quality fashion merchandise, it is best known for its Automatic Bargain Basement, which opened in 1909. The Basement featured distressed merchandise at bargain prices which were automatically reduced 25% after 12 selling days, then 25% more after 18 days, 25% more after 24 days, and, after 30 days, the clothing was donated to charity. Filene’s pioneered the charge-plate system, cycle billing, and branch store operations. The firm joined with F. & R. Lazarus and Company and Abraham and Strauss in 1929 to form Federated Department Stores, Inc. Edward Filene was also the co-inventor of the “Filene-Finlay Simultaneous Translator,” used at the war crimes trials at Nuremburg and later at sessions of the United Nations. Because of his 30-year crusade to establish credit unions in the United States, Filene is known today as the “Father of the U. S. Credit Union Movement.”

7 ARTHUR BRISBANE In his day, Arthur Brisbane (1864-1936) was the highest paid newspaper editor in the United States and one of the world’s most widely read editorialists, as managing editor of William Randolph Hearst’s The New York Evening Journal. He was known as the master of sensationalism, and he wrote the syndicated “Today” editorial column, which was written from 1917 until the day he died in 1936. While he was famous for blaring headlines and stories about atrocities, he also campaigned for better schools, labor law, and prison reform, and against the death penalty, crime, and Prohibition.

7 LUTHER BURBANK During a horticultural career that lasted 55 years, Luther Burbank (1849-1926) developed more than 800 varieties and strains of plants. These included more than 200 varieties of fruits (including the Freestone peach), numerous vegetables, grains, nuts, and a host of ornamentals. He was known worldwide as one of the world’s most innovative and prolific plant-breeding scientists. In 1871 he developed the Burbank potato, which was used in Ireland in the battle against the ravages of the blight epidemic. He was a friend of both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. His legacy inspired the City of Santa Rosa’s annual Rose Parade, which celebrates his memory.

7 EDWARD W. BOK Edward W. Bok (1863-1930) edited Ladies Home Journal for three decades. He won the editorship after successfully developing and syndicating, through his Bok Syndicate Press, a regular full page of women’s interest material for use by newspapers. He was a strong crusader for suffrage for women, wildlife conservation, clean cities, and elimination of highway billboards. His greatest crusade was against the excesses of the patent medicine industry, which led to passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. Ladies Homes Journal was the first American magazine to mention venereal disease, which is one indication of the strength of his convictions about keeping the public informed about issues that might affect their families. Bok, the son of poor immigrants from the Netherlands, won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography, The Americanization of Edward Bok.

7 FRANK A. MUNSEY Frank Munsey (1854-1925) was a master of media consolidation and mergers. In addition to his newspaper-publishing career, he published America’s first inexpensive (10 cents per copy) general circulation, illustrated magazine, Munsey’s Magazine. At his death in 1925, he left most of his $40 million (more than $412 million in today’s dollars) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

7 JULIUS ROSENWALD Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), a clothing merchant in New York and then Chicago, bought a one-quarter interest in Sears, Roebuck and Company, becoming its president in 1910 and chairman in 1925. Under his leadership, Sears began the innovative custom of manufacturing its own products for sale. He also came up with Sears’ soon-to-be-famous “satisfaction guaranteed or your money back” policy. He turned out to be a “challenging” philanthropist. He objected to the notion of “perpetual endowments” such as those Andrew Carnegie established, advocating instead the concept of “matched giving.” One of his bequests led to the establishment of 5,000 schools in 15 Southern states for the education of blacks. He also established the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and donated heavily to the young University of Chicago.

7 CLARENCE DARROW After nine years as a small-town lawyer in Ohio, Clarence S. Darrow (1857-1938) relocated to Chicago in search of more challenging work as a defense attorney. His liberal views led him to take some of the most famous cases of the early 20th century, including the Leopold-Loeb Case, where he saved the two men from the death penalty; the Sweet Case, where he successfully defended a black family in Detroit who had been charged for violence against a mob that tried to force them out of a white area; and the Scopes “Monkey Trial” involving Tennessee teacher John T. Scopes, who was charged with teaching evolution, instead of creationism. His main opponent was William Jennings Bryan, former three-time presidential candidate. Despite the widespread view that Darrow had won the contest, Scopes was found guilty.

7 JENNINGS RANDOLPH Jennings Randolph (1902-1998) was graduated from Salem College in 1924. As a young man, he, like Napoleon Hill, worked for a time as a journalist. He served seven terms as a U. S. Congressman from West Virginia (1933 to 1947) and four full terms as United States Senator (1958 to 1985). Fondly remembered as “the last of the New Deal Democrats,” he gained renown as chairman of the Senate’s Public Works Committee, and he was the legislative father of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. After his death, his Senate colleague, Robert C. Byrd, recalled Randolph’s love of flight:

On November 6, 1948, with a professional pilot at the controls, Jennings…flew from Morgantown, West Virginia, to Washington National Airport in a propeller plane fueled with gasoline made from coal. Now, that was just like Jennings Randolph—out there pioneering, not only in flight, but also in the use of fuel in that plane that had a West Virginia source—coal. Certainly, that project was an act of faith, for which many remember Senator Randolph.

Randolph authored the 26th Amendment to the Constitution that gave 18-year-olds the right to vote. He was considered the father of the Appalachian Regional Commission, and one of his last major acts was to sponsor legislation preserving it. He served for many years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, established in 1962 by Hill and his wife, Annie Lou. Randolph died of pneumonia at a retirement nursing home in St. Louis on May 8, 1998, at the age of 96, and was buried in Seventh-Day Baptist Cemetery in Salem, West Virginia, the town of his birth. He had the distinction of being the last surviving person (non-Hill family member) mentioned by name in the original edition (1937) of Think and Grow Rich!

8 As far as schooling Steam locomotives replenished their boilers by stopping along the railway periodically to “take on water” from storage tanks.

Introduction
MINDPOWER: The Man Who “Thought” His Way

1 Edwin C. Barnes discovered Interestingly, Hill’s original working title for Think and Grow Rich! was The Thirteen Steps to Riches. According to one story, perhaps apocryphal, Hill’s publisher, Andrew Pelton, wanted the book to be titled Use Your Noodle to Win More Boodle. While the origin of the final title may never be completely clear, it seems logical that, in the end, it may have been suggested by this second sentence in the introduction.

2 How much actual cash If Hill was referring to 1937 dollars, the amount of “actual cash” Barnes’ original DESIRE might have been worth to him was anywhere from $25 million to $37.5 million in today’s dollars (Consumer Price Index inflation rate).

3 But the amount, whatever The notion of “transmutation”—literally, the process by which some object is changed into another nature, form, or condition—is crucial to an understanding of Napoleon Hill’s philosophy of success. Hill uses the term to describe the process by which intangible thought is translated, or translates itself, into physical activity that results in a physical change in the world. He also uses it to describe the process of converting one kind of mental state into another. The best way to understand precisely what Hill means by “transmutation” is to read the book through in its entirety, letting the particular “spin” he puts on the term sink into your mind.

4 He had no money Edwin C. Barnes was born in Jefferson City, Wisconsin, in 1876 and died at the age of 78 in Bradentown (now Bradenton), Florida, in 1954. His relationship with the Edison organization made him independently wealthy, and at one time he had offices in New York, Indiana, Milwaukee, and other cities in addition to his “Edison Voice Writer” main office in Chicago. He moved to Bradenton from Chicago during the building boom of the 1920s and became the primary developer of the luxurious Palma Sola Park subdivision. An article in the August 21, 1924, edition of the Manatee River Journal-Herald gives a hint of the close relationship that existed between Barnes and Edison until the latter’s death in 1931:

Edwin C. Barnes of Bradentown and Chicago “broke into” the front page of the New York Times in company with Thomas Edison the other day. The immaculate Edwin demonstrated that he could kick a hat held shoulder high, and Mr. Edison, who is Mr. Barnes’ senior by about thirty-five years, demonstrated that he could do the same thing….Mr. Barnes, who is the principal owner of the Palma Sola Park Company of this city…has for years been connected with the Edison organization and he and the “wizard” are close friends. They have another interest in common—their love for Florida….Mr. Edison owns a home at Fort Myers, to which he repairs each winter, and Mr. Barnes owns one of the finest homes in Bradentown.

5 An uncle of R. U. Darby is the only person identified by name in Think and Grow Rich! about whom the editor could find no independent biographical information.

6 One day President William Rainey Harper (1856-1906) was the first president of the University of Chicago, leaving a post as professor of semitic languages at Yale University to assume the Chicago presidency. He was an innovator who initiated extension courses, studies in new disciplines such as psychology and sociology, and was also instrumental in the establishment of junior colleges.

7 The Ford DETERMINATION Henry Ford (1863-1947), the son of Irish immigrants, was a school dropout. At age 15 he was a machinist’s apprentice in Detroit and later worked as chief engineer of the Edison Company in Detroit until 1899, when he and others founded the Detroit Auto Company. In 1903 he struck out on his own, founding the Ford Motor Company. He introduced the Model T in 1908, assembly line production in 1913, the Model A in 1927, and the V-8 engine in 1932. He ran for a U. S. Senate seat and lost and at one time considered a Presidential bid.

8 Many years ago, I Napoleon Hill had an abiding interest in higher education, and post-secondary education in general, throughout his adult life, and he was associated with a variety of teaching institutions. His constant theme was that education should not simply focus on “imparting knowledge,” but on teaching students how to organize knowledge and apply it to accomplish specific objectives.

After he was graduated from high school, he completed business school in Tazewell, Virginia, and studied law at Georgetown University Law School In Washington, D. C., but dropped out the first year because of financial reasons. In 1913 he began working in the advertising and sales department of LaSalle Extension University in Chicago, where he discovered a talent for motivating students and teaching them how to sell. In 1916 he established the George Washington Institute to teach a correspondence course in salesmanship. In 1923 he made arrangements to purchase and operate the Metropolitan Business College in Cleveland (it was during this period that he was invited to deliver the commencement address at Salem College).

Hill in 1931 established the International Publishing Corporation of America and the related International Success University to distribute “success” resources, including a new publication he launched, Success Magazine. In 1941 he became a resident lecturer in psychology at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, delivering talks to undergraduates on “The Philosophy of American Achievement.” He received an honorary doctorate from Pacific International University in the late 1940s and was appointed head of that university’s new Department of Industrial Philosophy.

In 1962 Hill and his wife, Annie Lou, established the Napoleon Hill Foundation, a charitable organization heavily steeped in educational mission. The Foundation is headquartered in Wise, Virginia. The associated Napoleon Hill World Learning Center is located at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond, Indiana. Through the years the Foundation has been associated with several institutions of higher learning, including Johnson Wales College (formerly in Rhode Island), Salem International University in West Virginia, the University of the Pacific, University of Texas, and University of Northern Iowa. A college professor, Judith Williamson, heads the Hill World Learning Center. Two university presidents, the late Dr. Bill L. Atchley and the late Dr. Horace Fleming (University of Southern Mississippi), served distinguished terms on the Board of Directors of the Napoleon Hill Foundation.

Here is a “footnote to a footnote,” which in a tenuous “Six Degrees of Separation” way leads from higher education, to the Napoleon Hill Foundation, to one of the top names in the broadcasting industry. Bill Lee Atchley was born in 1932 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, five years before the publication of Think and Grow Rich! He was the son of Cecil Atchley, a cement plant laborer, and his wife, a laundry worker. Employing many of the success principles of The Think and Grow Rich Philosophy from an early age, Atchley (“Billy” in his youth) went on to overcome the meager circumstances of his birth and play professional baseball in the New York Giants organization, get a doctorate in engineering, and then become president of Clemson University in South Carolina (during which time he served on the Hill Foundation). He also later was named president of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, and then Southeast Missouri State University. As it turns out, Bill Atchley's wife, Pat (he died in 2000, she in 2014), was the former Pat Limbaugh, also of Cape Girardeau. Her cousin from Cape Girardeau was none other than Rush Limbaugh III, who has presided over what many consider to be the most successful, and profitable, program in the history of radio broadcasting. Limbaugh, credited with virtually reinventing the national radio talk show beginning in 1988, is one of the best examples of how using a “Definite Chief Aim” to guide one’s decisions and actions can lead to extraordinary success in life. He has certainly proved Hill’s prediction that “There is plenty of room in radio for those who can produce or recognize IDEAS.” (See endnote 6 on pages 343 - 345.)

9 JENNINGS RANDOLPH Randolph later would write this endorsement of Napoleon Hill’s work: “I knew Napoleon Hill in 1922 when I was a student in Salem College in the town of my birth. Mr. Hill came to our campus as the commencement speaker in that year. As I listened to him, I heard something other than just the words he spoke, I felt the substance—the wisdom—and the spirit of a man and his philosophy. Mr. Hill said, ‘The most powerful instrument we have in our hand is the power of our mind.’ Napoleon Hill compiled this philosophy of American achievement for the benefit of all people. I strongly commend this philosophy to you for achievement and service in your chosen field.”

Chapter 1
DESIRE: The Starting Point of All Achievement

1 The morning after Fed by wooden buildings and sidewalks and coming on the heels of a long dry spell, the Chicago Fire raged from October 8-10, 1871, destroying four square miles, including the business district. Two hundred and fifty lost their lives, 90,000 were left homeless, and property damage was estimated at $200 million. As he wrote about the Chicago Fire, Hill must surely have had in the back of his mind another catastrophe, a personal catastrophe, also involving a fire in the Windy City. In 1923, after losing control of Napoleon Hill’s Magazine, which he had founded, he returned to Chicago to get his belongings that had been stored there, only to find the building they were in had been destroyed by fire. The loss was devastating. Gone were autographed photographs, many of his most important letters, including some from Presidents of the United States, and, worst of all, questionnaires that had been filled out by hundreds of the most eminent and successful individuals in America who had agreed to participate in Hill’s research. Ever the positive thinker, Hill carried on, determined to complete his project, and 14 years later Think and Grow Rich was published.

2 When the going was hard As a young man, Marshal Field (1835-1906) had left the family farm in Conway, Massachusetts, to become a dry goods clerk. Moving to Chicago in 1856, he became first a junior partner, then a senior partner in the firm known as Field, Palmer & Leiter. When Palmer and Leiter retired, he became head of Marshal Field and Co., a thriving wholesale and retail dry goods business. He devoted much of his later life to philanthropy, particularly in support of the University of Chicago.

3 It may be helpful More than $1 billion in today’s dollars. Actually, Hill speaks conservatively here, for Carnegie in his waning years gave away more than three and a half times that amount (again, in today’s dollars) to charitable causes.

4 Practical dreamers In the original version of Think and Grow Rich!, the Edison example is followed by this one: “Whelan dreamed of a chain of cigar stores, transformed his dream into action, and now the United Cigar Stores occupy the best corners in America.” Unlike Napoleon Hill’s philosophy and the success principles he developed, corner cigar stores have generally not withstood the test of time. George Whelan was a U. S. financier who in 1912, after the American Tobacco Trust was broken up, put his United Cigar Stores under a holding company—Tobacco Products Corporation—and began acquiring small tobacco companies. In 1919 he bought the U.S. business of London’s Philip Morris Company (begun in 1847) and formed a new American corporation, Philip Morris & Company, Inc. Whelan’s wheeling and dealing led to financial collapse in 1929, but the new company survived under new management. It would go on, under its flagship product, Marlboro cigarettes, to diversify and become by the 21st century the world’s largest producer and marketer of packaged consumer goods, with subsidiaries such as Kraft Foods and Miller Brewing Company.

5 Marconi dreamed Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) invented the first apparatus used for wireless telegraphy and was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics for his efforts. His work freed long distance communications from the restraints of wires and other physical transmission media and laid the foundation for the broadcasting industry.

Napoleon Hill, in discussing Marconi’s work here and in explaining certain other concepts later, uses the term “ether,” rather than “electromagnetic spectrum,” in both the original and several subsequent edition of Think and Grow Rich! In so doing, he was simply reflecting the popular scientific concepts and, thus, the scientific vocabulary of the day. In the latter 19th and early 20th century, many scientists believed that an invisible substance, which they called “ether,” permeated the universe, including “empty” space. Through this medium, light and other radiation were thought to travel like vibrations in a bowl of jelly. The Michelson-Morley experiments and Albert Einstein’s work, which resulted in the Special Theory of Relativity, forced the scientific community to abandon the concept of ether.

Over the years, the universe with its incredible array of electromagnetic, nuclear, and gravitational forces and phenomena has turned out to be even more mysterious than Hill or any turn-of-the-century scientist suspected. Hill’s effort to describe, in clear and understandable terms, energy phenomena—everything from broadcast waves to brain waves—gives the terminology in the original version of Think and Grow Rich! a more metaphysical and metaphorical “flavor” than it likely would have were he writing today. The few changes in terminology that have been made in this revised edition of Think and Grow Rich!—as, for example, the use of “electromagnetic spectrum” instead of “ether”—are made simply to remove stylistic “impediments” to understanding for today’s reader. The sum and substance of Hill’s ideas remain unchanged.

6 The oak sleeps The quotation is from the inspirational best-selling classic As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, a British-born American essayist (1864-1912). Napoleon Hill was undoubtedly familiar with the body of Allen’s work, which included such other popular titles as Eight Pillars of Prosperity, From Poverty to Power, and As a Man Does: Morning and Evening Thoughts. Allen taught that the key to personal power lies within the mind. The opening sentence of his classic is “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he”—in other words, we are what we think, and our character is the sum of all our thoughts. Hill uses variations of that tenet repeatedly in Think and Grow Rich!

7 At one time, such The “dreamer” President was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, is a federal agency that was established in 1933 under the Roosevelt Administration to control floods, improve navigation, raise living standards on nearby farms, and generate electric power on the Tennessee River and along its tributaries. The project was visionary in concept, gigantic in undertaking. The Tennessee River drainage basin covers parts of seven Southern states. TVA included nine major dams, 51 dams in all, interconnecting navigation locks, port facilities stretching along the route of the river, 12 coal-fired generating plants, and, later on, two nuclear plants. Combined generating capacity was more than 30 million kilowatts. TVA was a prototypical natural resource planning and management agency. Early in the New Deal, Hill—as he had with Woodrow Wilson—served as an unpaid public relations adviser to Roosevelt, according to Hill’s official biographer. He developed plans to shape public opinion, offered ideas for Roosevelt’s fireside chats, and there is some suggestion that he may have been responsible for the president’s famous phrase from his inauguration speech, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Senator Jennings Randolph was responsible for Roosevelt’s asking Hill to visit the White House.

8 O. Henry discovered O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), master of irony and the surprise ending and romanticizer of the commonplace. He had embezzled money from the bank where he worked, but received a light prison sentence and served only three years and three months in an Ohio penitentiary, with time off for good behavior. (Interestingly, work with the incarcerated was originally one of the goals of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, through sponsoring courses in prisons to teach inmates the principles for success in life. Studies have shown that recidivism is significantly reduced among prisoners who complete the studies.)

9 Strange and varied are “Infinite Intelligence” is the term Hill uses to describe “God,” or “Divine Power,” or the “Supreme Being” at work in the universe and whose influence is felt everywhere within it. His conception of God, or Infinite Intelligence, is richly textured and multi-faceted. God, to Hill, is more than a divinely spiritual, personal, moral force. God is a source of intelligence, direct communication, and exchange of information—between the Supreme Intelligence itself and the individual, and even between individuals. It is clear that Hill writes primarily from a Judeo-Christian perspective, but his view of Infinite Intelligence is nonsectarian and widely encompassing. As you read the book, notice how Hill sees Infinite Intelligence at work in the lives of Jesus, Gandhi, and Mohammed, as well as in all individuals whose mental states are “attuned” to the power of Infinite Intelligence. Hill is never “preachy” about Infinite Intelligence and how one should respond to it, but to fully understand and utilize The Think and Grow Rich Philosophy, it is necessary to understand the part that Infinite Intelligence—God—plays in it.

10 Edison, the world’s “Tramp” here means “itinerant,” “roving,” or “traveling.”

11 That tragedy produced Two days after Dickens’ twelfth birthday, his father was jailed in a London debtor’s prison. His mother sent Dickens (1812-1870) to work in a blacking factory, which manufactured black shoe polish. For four to six months, Dickens labored 12-hour days in a dirty, rat-ridden warehouse, earning only six to seven shillings per week. It was the same sort of wretched experience which many of the successful people that Hill studied had undergone early in their lives. Dickens never forgot it and drew upon it many times in his novels, but he never revealed the story to anyone but his wife, and the story did not come out until after his death. The “tragedy” Dickens suffered involved a failed love relationship with one Maria Beadwell, daughter of an English banker. In 1830, when Dickens was 18 and working as a low-paid shorthand reporter in the law courts, he fell madly, hopelessly in love with Maria, who was 19. Her parents considered Dickens unworthy as a suitor and eventually packed Maria off to finishing school in Paris. Dickens loved her for a period of four years, but his passion was unrequited, and Maria treated him with what amounted to heartless indifference. Critics and biographers have speculated that the intense passion and inspiration he felt, followed by such bitter suffering and disappointment, both sharpened his artistic sensibilities and rendered him thereafter immensely sympathetic to the luckless and the downtrodden. Maria Beadwell, it is believed, was the inspiration for the character of Dora in David Copperfield.

12 Once you have Hill originally added the following: “Let Emerson state the thought in these words, ‘Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid and comfort shall surely come home through open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but the great and tender soul in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace.’”

13 I sold him the idea The original manuscript continued: “For example, the teachers in school would observe that he had no ears, and, because of this, they would show him special attention and treat him with extraordinary kindness. They always did. His mother saw to that, by visiting the teachers and arranging with them to give the child the extra attention necessary. I sold him the idea, too, that when be became old enough to sell newspapers, (his older brother had already become a newspaper merchant), he would have a big advantage over his brother, for the reason that people would pay him extra money for his wares, because they could see that he was a bright, industrious boy, despite the fact he had no ears.”

14 He did not go Hill originally wrote, “He [Blair] did not go to a school for the deaf.” Perceptions and attitudes about persons with hearing and other disabilities are today, of course, vastly different from what they were in the era in which Hill wrote. Hill’s whole approach to his son’s disability may have been far different had he faced them today, although that is by no means certain, given Hill’s always positive approach and attitude about overcoming obstacles and meeting challenges. Despite Blair Hill’s disability and apparent lack of facility in signing, he went on to become a highly successful individual.

15 For the first time in his life The first electric hearing aid, the Acousticon, had been patented in 1901. It was an unwieldy apparatus with a telephone-type receiver held to the ear and a large housing for batteries about the size of a large portable radio or a big lunch box. The first hearing aid designed to be worn on the person was the Amplivox, introduced in London in 1935, which weighed two-and-a-half pounds. It is uncertain whether either of these is one of those mentioned by Hill.

16 As this chapter was Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1861-1936) was the most famous contralto of her generation, noted for her big, robust voice. Born in Lieben, Germany, she was selected at age 15 to sing the contralto part in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Graz. Following a successful career in Europe, she made her U. S. debut in 1899 at the Metropolitan Opera as Ortrud in Wagner’s Lohengrun. She headlined there until 1932. She died in Hollywood in 1936 during the time Hill was writing Think and Grow Rich!

Chapter 2
FAITH: Visualization and the Attainment of Desire

1 When FAITH is blended “Vibration of thought” is how Hill chose to describe the complex, little understood process by which electrochemical impulses in the brain create and convey “thoughts” and “emotions.” “Vibration” must be understood in a descriptive and metaphoric, as well as “physical” sense here and elsewhere in Hill’s writings. In any event, what is significant is not the imperfection of the words Hill uses in the effort to describe the process—all language is imperfect—but the insight he offers into how thoughts, bolstered by the power of faith, can affect the subconscious mind and create within it new capabilities and powers of communication. It would be a mistake to attempt to understand such terms as “vibration of thought” in a strictly literal sense. The key is to read and re-read such statements, in context, “moving with the flow” of Hill’s ideas. Doing so will soon produce within you the full sense of what Hill means to convey.

2 Understand this truth Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) and others would go on to popularize this “power of positive thinking,” as did Hill and his later collaborator, friend, and patron, W. Clement Stone, in their book Success through a Positive Mental Attitude (1960). Whenever you listen to a motivational recording of whatever kind, or read a motivational piece, or hear a speaker extolling the virtues of positive thinking and a positive mental attitude, you are listening to an echo from Napoleon Hill.

3 All down the ages Neither here nor anywhere else in his book does Hill engage in “religion bashing.” To the contrary, he has strong beliefs about God, or Infinite Intelligence, but he has little regard for dogmatics and sectarians, those who are convinced that they and they alone understand divine intentions and purposes and religious “truth.” To Hill, nothing—no dogma, creed, or teaching—should stand in the way of, or is necessary to, direct communication between the individual and Infinite Intelligence. It is not religion that bothers Hill. It is religionists.

4 Fourth. I have clearly Examples abound of people’s applying Hill’s ideas and principles to attain great success in life. A fascinating instance of someone who followed Hill’s advice by writing down, in the clearest terms, his definite chief aim in life was found a few years ago on a wall in the Planet Hollywood Restaurant located just off Highway 17 Bypass in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. (Planet Hollywood restaurants were known for their collections of movie and celebrity memorabilia.) On the wall was a handwritten note with the title in red—“My Definite Chief Aim.” Also written in red, at the bottom, was the word “secret,” with the bulk of the note, in blue ink, saying this:

My Definite Chief Aim

I, Bruce Lee, will be the first highest paid Oriental super star in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting 1970 I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession $10,000,000. I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

Bruce Lee
Jan. 1969
(secret)

Lee, of course, went on to achieve his goals, becoming the most famous—and richest—martial arts movie star in the world during his time. His success on the screen spawned a worldwide industry of self-instructional CD, DVD, audio and video tapes. Unfortunately, he died in 1973 at the age of 33 from an adverse brain reaction to a medication—the same year his most famous film, “Enter the Dragon,” was released. Time magazine wrote of him: “With nothing but his hands, feet and a lot of attitude, he turned the little guy into a tough guy.” He clearly attributed a great deal of credit for his success to his belief in The Think and Grow Rich Philosophy.

5 Observe the words Some sources attribute this poem to W.D. Wintle. Others give the author as “Anonymous.”

6 Let us consider Mohandas K. Gandhi (“Mahatma” is a Hindu title of respect meaning “great-souled”) was born in 1869 and assassinated by an Indian extremist in 1948. Considered the “Father of His Country,” he led the Indian nationalist movement for independence from British rule. His philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience has been widely influential, especially on the civil rights movement in the United States. Albert Einstein said this about him: “The moral influence which Gandhi has exercised upon thinking people may be far more durable than would appear likely in our present age, with its exaggeration of brute force. We are fortunate and grateful that fate has bestowed upon us so luminous a contemporary, a beacon to generations to come.” To Hill, Gandhi was the modern epitome of the power of an idea—and the human mind—to change the world.

7 Moreover—and Throughout this discussion, Hill uncannily foreshadows modern participatory management, labor-management teams, productivity programs and profit sharing—just about the whole scope of modern management theory and practice.

8 If you have any doubt Napoleon Hill obviously was not superstitious, having no qualms about the number 13. It is certainly possible that he chose it intentionally as an attention-grabber, although, more likely, it was simply the number of the most basic “success” principles he arrived at after distilling his years of research and analysis down to the most elemental level. One can almost hear him emphatically saying, “Well, if 13 is how many principles there are, then 13 they shall be!” While Hill at times exhibits mystical qualities, he is first and foremost a rationalist. He states emphatically in Chapter 13: “ I am not a believer in nor an advocate of ‘miracles,’ for the reason that I have enough knowledge of Nature to understand that Nature never deviates from her established laws. Some of her laws are so incomprehensible that they produce what appear to be ‘miracles.’”

9 Even John Pierpoint Morgan Investment banker J. P. Morgan (1837-1913) is the most powerful figure in the history of American finance. He reshaped the landscape of American industry and manufacturing, reorganizing the railroad industry and serving as the driving force behind the creation of the General Electric and International Harvester corporations, and, as will be seen, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation, U. S. Steel.

10 And still later The federal government sued in an attempt to break up U. S. Steel, but the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 1920 that the corporation was not a monopoly that had restrained trade in violation of anti-trust laws. U. S. Steel in 2001 celebrated the centennial of its founding and was at that time the largest integrated steel producer in the United States, with its headquarters in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

11 “If you had asked Morgan also reportedly told Carnegie when the deal was struck: “Mr. Carnegie, I want to congratulate you on being the richest man in the world.”

12 AFTER IT HAD BEEN Approximately $11 billion in today’s dollars (Consumer Price Index inflation adjustment).

Chapter 3
AUTOSUGGESTION: The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind

1 If you repeat a million Coué (1857-1926) was a French pharmacist and psychologist who developed a system of psychotherapy known as “Couéism” that stressed the use of autosuggestion to effect positive changes in the subject’s health and general well-being. The system was characterized by the repetition of the Coué formula, another familiar version of which is “Every day, and in every way, I am becoming better and better.” The power of autosuggestion, bolstered by strong desire and faith, has enormous implications for human mental and physical health. Television commentator-producer Bill Moyers explored the amazing mind-body connection and its role in healing in a popular book and PBS TV series, Healing and the Mind (1993).

2 When visualizing Hill understood the tremendous power of visualization long before it became a staple of modern sports and motivational courses. Jack Nicklaus, who is generally regarded as the greatest golfer in the history of the sport, has often said he never strikes a golf ball until he has an ideal picture, in his mind’s eye, of the ball struck perfectly by his club, flying through the air, and landing precisely where he intends it to land. The visualization technique seems to have worked. Nicklaus has won more major championships, 18, than anyone else in the history of golf.

3 Third. Place a written The value of writing down and repeatedly referring to “action instructions” was brought home to the editor several years ago. A small group of us were having dinner at the Commerce Club in Greenville, South Carolina. The group included an entrepreneur by the name of Leighton Cubbage, who has made a huge fortune in the telecommunications industry; Bill Lee, a national business consultant who was a principal architect of the success of Builder Marts of America, the largest non-cooperative buying group for lumber and building materials in the United States; myself (at that time editor-in-chief of Think & Grow Rich Newsletter); Boo Cheney, president of Imagine, Inc., a publishing firm; and Mike Ritt, who at that time was executive director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation and later became Napoleon Hill’s official biographer. Throughout dinner, Mike was peppered with questions about Napoleon Hill, and at one point I was startled to see Leighton Cubbage reach into his coat pocket and pull out small cards containing quotations from Think and Grow Rich! He said he never left home without them and, in large part, had based his life and founded his businesses upon the ideas and techniques he had learned from studying Think and Grow Rich! Bill Lee said much the same.

Chapter 4
SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE: Personal Experiences or Observations

1 “Colleges and universities Work-study programs, declaring a major, course advisors, and career counseling are, of course, now staples of American campus life.

2 One advantage, in Hill would be delighted, perhaps amazed at today’s self-instructional CD, DVD, MP3, podcast, audio and video industries, whose products enable career people to acquire knowledge and develop new skills both at home and “on the go.”

3 The SELF-DISCIPLINE The original version of the book has the following at this point:

Correspondence schools are highly organized business institutions. Their tuition fees are so low that they are forced to insist upon prompt payments. Being asked to pay, whether the student makes good grades or poor, has the effect of causing one to follow through with the course when he would otherwise drop it. The correspondence schools have not stressed this point sufficiently, for the truth is that their collection departments constitute the very finest sort of training on DECISION, PROMPTNESS, ACTION and the HABIT OF FINISHING THAT WHICH ONE BEGINS.

4 The aggregate annual Hill originally had in mind providing this service to the many thousands of people who were unemployed during the Depression, but his comments are equally valid for people today who find themselves without jobs during periods of corporate downsizing and other economic dislocations. Today’s thriving small-shop graphic arts and desktop publishing firms, which crank out business cards, flyers, logos and letterheads for self-employed people throughout the country, attest to the lasting validity of Hill’s idea.

5 Dan Halpin is Daniel D. Halpin was born June 14, 1906, and grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. He was apparently the first student from New Haven to attend Notre Dame, and on the way out on the train, he stayed up all night in hopes of seeing Indians (he didn’t).

Once on campus, he found several jobs to help defray the cost of his tuition and living expenses. His parents were in no position to pay his college costs, but an uncle, who owned Dunster Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, gave him a number of leather-bound books on the classics, and he was thus known to have one of the finest personal libraries on the campus.

Halpin was fascinated by accounts about the famous Knute Rockne and the Notre Dame football team, which led to his choice of Notre Dame for his college education. He worked his way up the athletic manager system until he was named senior manager at the end of the 1930 school year. He was Rockne’s last manager, and he also served as Rockne’s secretary and what would today be considered a business manager. He became close to the Rockne family and assisted them frequently in their liaison with the university.

Halpin’s son, Dan Halpin, Jr., says, “As to Napoleon Hill, he [the elder Halpin] mentioned him frequently, and as I recall it, Dad was the best man at Mr. Hill’s son’s [Blair Hill’s] wedding. If memory serves me, young Mr. Hill was born without ears, and my Dad was instrumental in providing him with a hearing aid, which allowed for some ability to hear. [See the account on page 39.] Subsequent to that they became friends and remained so, as far as I know. I do remember that he always spoke highly of Napoleon Hill and was quite proud of his inclusion in Think and Grow Rich! Dad mentioned that he thought Think and Grow Rich! was one of the first of a long line of great motivational books for the businessman.”

The Halpins stayed in Manhattan until 1940. His next move was to southern New Jersey and the town of Haddonfield. He was hired as vice president and general manager of sales at the Radio Corporation of America in Camden, N. J. His new role was to market and merchandise a new entertainment system called television. He spent the next 12 years with RCA. In 1952, the family moved to Montclair, N. J., where he became vice president and general manager of DuMont Television. He ended his career as an account executive with Young & Rubicam Advertising, specializing in the General Electric television account.

6 Halpin told me that Knute Rockne was one of America’s most innovative and charismatic football coaches and possessed all the characteristics that Napoleon Hill found necessary for achieving real success in life. Rockne was born March 4, 1888, in Voss, Norway, and died March 31, 1931, in Bazaar, Kansas, when the airplane he was flying on from Kansas City to Los Angeles crashed into the farmlands. He was 43 years old. He was head coach of the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame from 1918 to 1931, during which time Notre Dame won 105 games and six national championships. In 13 years he lost only 12 games and had five ties. His winning percentage of .881 still ranks as the best ever at Notre Dame and ranks at the top of the list for both college and professional football. Rockne is best known for his “Four Horseman” backfield of 1924 and his inspirational “Win One for the Gipper” speech in 1928. In 1999 he was named #10 on ESPN SportsCentury’s list of the ten greatest coaches of all time, in all sports.

7 That is why so Hill originally added at this point:

With the changed conditions ushered in by the world economic collapse, came also the need for newer and better ways of marketing PERSONAL SERVICES. It is hard to determine why someone had not previously discovered this stupendous need, in view of the fact that more money changes hands in return for personal services than for any other purpose. The sum paid out monthly, to people who work for wages and salaries, is so huge that it runs into hundreds of millions, and the annual distribution amounts to billions.

8 Woolworth’s Five Were he writing now, Hill might have chosen as examples such latter-day entrepreneurs as Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Ray Kroc of McDonald’s, Steven Jobs of Apple Computers, or Bill Gates of Microsoft. Also, at this point in the original manuscript Hill included a further lengthy discussion about the woman who prepared the personal services marketing plan for her son. He wrote:

Those seeing OPPORTUNITY lurking in this suggestion will find valuable aid in the chapter on Organized Planning. Incidentally, an efficient merchandiser of personal services would find a growing demand for his services wherever there are men and women who seek better markets for their services. By applying the Master Mind Principle, a few people with suitable talent, could form an alliance, and have a paying business very quickly. One would need to be a fair writer, with a flair for advertising and selling, one handy at typing and hand lettering, and one should be a first class business getter who would let the world know about the service. If one person possessed all these abilities, he might carry on the business alone, until it outgrew him.

The woman who prepared the “Personal Service Sales Plan” for her son now receives requests from all parts of the country for her cooperation in preparing similar plans for others who desire to market their personal services for more money. She has a staff of expert typists, artists, and writers who have the ability to dramatize the case history so effectively that one’s personal services can be marketed for much more money than the prevailing wages for similar services. She is so confident of her ability that she accepts, as the major portion of her fee, a percentage of the increased pay she helps her clients to earn.

1 It is the faculty In an interview in Parade Magazine, singer-songwriter Lionel Ritchie provided an excellent description of how Creative Imagination works. Asked, “Where do your melodies come from?,” he replied: “I wish I knew…It’s like radio stations playing in my head. I’m in the shower singing along to this great song, and then I stop one moment and go, ‘Hey, it’s not on the radio.’ What’s frightening about it is I’m not singing a song, I’m singing along with the song that’s playing in my head.” Asked if it were true that he considers God to be his co-writer, Ritchie said, “Absolutely. I believe that in life, if you’re lucky enough, the universe gives you something that nobody else can do but you.”

2 It was the product At this point in the original version of Think and Grow Rich!, Hill launches into what is virtually a commercial advertisement for the famous soft drink, complete with praises for its “mind stimulation” attributes. (The soda’s caffeine had a stimulative effect that cola consumers of the time felt but likely did not fully understand. Until 1892 the drink contained cocaine.) Here’s what Hill wrote: “Now that you know the content of the Enchanted Kettle is a world famous drink, it is fitting that the author confess that the home city of the drink [Atlanta] supplied him with a wife, also that the drink itself provides him with stimulation of thought without intoxication, and thereby it serves to give the refreshment of mind which an author must have to do his best work.”

3 Whoever you are Asa Candler (1851-1929) was one of the most imaginative salesmen and marketing geniuses the world has ever seen. In 1891 he quit his Atlanta, Georgia, drugstore, took a poorly selling stimulant and headache remedy he bought the right to, and went on to make it known worldwide—as “The Real Thing.” He worked 14-hour days, slept only five hours at night, and was an indefatigable spokesman and pitchman for his product. He was fond of saying, “A sale of Coca-Cola lost today is not a sale that may be made tomorrow,” and if one of his customers wanted only a single gallon of Coca-Cola syrup, he would prepare it himself just to make the sale. He passed out free Cokes on elevators. He gave businesses free “Push” and “Pull” signs with the Coke logo printed on them to go on their doors. His advertising budget was bigger than his sales for several years, and by 1909 Coca-Cola had become America’s best-advertised consumer product., with Coke ads on 2.5 million square feet of walls of buildings in the nation.

Candler was a prototypical “Think and Grow Rich” entrepreneur. He “set and wrote goals for everything. He set sales goals by the month—both sequentially and year by year. He never started a business meeting without first writing down how he wanted the meeting to be resolved. A devout Methodist, Candler also wrote down his spiritual goals—such as his prayer topics and Bible readings…. When Candler made a plan, he stuck by it. ‘He didn’t think he could fail. He refused to accept it,’[Elizabeth Candler, his great-great-granddaughter] Graham said…. He lacked formal training, but he was always searching for ways to expand his mind. As a teen-ager, landing a job as a pharmacy clerk, he read medical books and studied Latin and Greek at night. All told, it was Candler’s determination—not his training or intelligence—that built his business and made him a success….” (Michael Tarsala, “Coca-Cola’s Asa Candler,” Investor’s Business Daily, February 1, 1999, p. A-8.) Candler, like so many successful entrepreneurs who amass great fortunes, spent the last 10 years of his life as a philanthropist donating to hospitals, orphanages, and educational institutions. He gave $8 million—more than $80 million in today’s dollars—to Emory University in Atlanta.

4 My name is Armour (1832-1901) was a meat packer who developed the Chicago Stockyards. He pioneered in shipping hogs to Chicago for slaughter, then canning and exporting the meat. His son, J. Ogden Armour (1863-1927), later made Armour and Company the world’s largest and most successful meatpacking firm. The Armour Institute of Technology, which P. D. Armour would go on to fund with almost $2 million, opened in December 1892, with Frank W. Gunsaulus as its first president. Mrs. P. D. Armour and her son, J. Ogden, would later give another $1 million to the school. The Armour Institute later merged with the Lewis Institute and became the Illinois Institute of Technology. Gunsaulus died in 1921 at age 65.

5 This book describes This entire anecdote demonstrates several of Hill’s most significant points and principles—the power and “reach” of the subconscious mind to get the job done, the blending of a burning desire and strong faith to create a “prayer-like” state of mind, the ability of the subconscious mind, “vibrating” or operating at peak intensity, to leap out and connect with the mind of another human being in a spirit of harmony. Dr. Gunsaulus’s story is the embodiment of Napoleon Hill’s ideas.

6 when they saw them In the original version of the book, Hill at this point presents a discourse on the future of radio, suggesting to his readers that this would be a fruitful field to consider entering. His predictions about marketing-based advertising and how the demands of the new medium would affect the advertising industry turned out to be highly accurate. However, what he refers to as radio’s “crooners and light chatter artists” are still very much with us today, and serious public programming never has succeeded in moving light entertainment off center stage. Here is what Hill had to say:

The next flock of millionaires will grow out of the radio business, which is new and not overburdened with men of keen imagination. The money will be made by those who discover or create new and more meritorious radio programs and have the imagination to recognize merit, and to give the radio listeners a chance to profit by it.

Another thing that might as well be understood by those who contemplate entering this new field of opportunity [is that] radio advertising is going to be handled by an entirely new group of advertising experts, separate and distinct from the old time newspaper and magazine advertising agency men. The old timers in the advertising game cannot read the modern radio scripts because they have been schooled to SEE ideas. The new radio technique demands men who can interpret ideas from a written manuscript in terms of SOUND! It cost the author a year of hard labor, and many thousands of dollars to learn this.

1 Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm After his crushing defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon ended up in lonely exile on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated his throne in 1918 after Germany was defeated in World War I and went into exile in Holland, where he lived quietly until his death in 1942. In early 1917, Nicholas II, last czar of Russia, was forced to abdicate his throne. He was subsequently executed along with his family. Spain’s Alfonso XIII was deposed in 1931 following a decade of political upheaval. He died in exile 10 years later.

2 That means, of course, Hill was decades ahead of his time. He touted the value of the art of delegating long before it became a management buzzword.

3 SELFISHNESS. Leaders who It is tempting to believe that Think and Grow Rich! may have had some influence, direct or indirect, on Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant (1913-1983), who led the University of Alabama to six national football titles and ended his career with 323 wins, only 85 losses, and 17 ties. One of his most characteristic sayings—“When we win, the team did it; when we lose, it was my fault”—is a virtual paraphrase of No. 6 here and No. 10 of the 11 Major Factors of Leadership listed earlier. Bryant was 24 years old when Think and Grow Rich! was first published.

4 They must cease Newspapers today are certainly less “organs of propaganda” for advertisers than they used to be, but the scandal-mongering and lewd-picture papers are still thriving. “Eventually” could mean a very long time.

5 APPLICATION THROUGH Almost half a century “ahead of the pack,” Hill was recommending that people master the art of networking.

6 In the future, Some people will occasionally suggest that Think and Grow Rich! is too materialistic, with its emphasis on wealth-building skills, and too self-centered, with its emphasis on self-reliance, personal achievement, and getting ahead in the world. Such people fail to understand how “spiritual” and altruistic Hill’s philosophy of success is at heart. The Golden Rule holds immense significance for Hill. In 1921 he began publishing, in Chicago, Napoleon Hill’s Magazine, subtitled “A National Monthly Magazine of Business Philosophy” and selling for a quarter a copy. Here is its editorial policy. Note the positive, nondiscriminatory, inclusive, “inspirational” nature of his remarks (“men and women together…regardless of race or creed…. rendering service which helps to ameliorate the hardships of humanity”)—all the more remarkable since he was writing decades before the civil rights or women’s movements would begin.

This Magazine is the outgrowth of an idea that found a lodging in its editor’s mind more than twenty years ago; namely, the belief that the GOLDEN RULE ought to become the guiding star in all human relationships, and especially in business, industry and commerce.

The sole object in publishing this magazine is to bring men and women together in a spirit of closer co-operation, regardless of race or creed, and cause them to realize the award which awaits all who place principle above the dollar and humanity above the individual; to inspire those who have not yet “arrived” and help them to realize that the rainbow’s end can be found only by the pathway which leads through the field of useful service; to teach men and women the uselessness and folly of hatred and envy and intolerance; to bring men to realize that success lies not so much in owning property, as in rendering service which helps to ameliorate the hardships of humanity and deposits something to the credit of posterity; to find the secret doorway to its readers’ hearts and plant wholesome thoughts where destructive ones existed before.

At the bottom of the page upon which this policy appears is this statement: “No Wealth or Position Can Permanently Endure Unless Founded Upon Truth and Justice.” In another place, an “EDITORS’ CREED” states: “Your editors pledge themselves, without reservation, to the task of helping people see the necessity of placing principle above the dollar and humanity above the selfish individual whose only object in life is to get without giving.” It is against a backdrop of such sentiments that Hill was busy conducting his research for Think and Grow Rich!, which he would publish 16 years later. As a side note, it is interesting that Stuart Austin Wier is listed as “Associate Editor” of Napoleon Hill’s Magazine. For more information on Wier, see page 314. (The last sentence above beginning “This magazine is in no way connected…” refers to Hill’s Golden Rule magazine, which he launched in 1919, but lost control of in October 1920, when the publisher took full control in a heated dispute.)

7 —THE PUBLIC THEY SERVED. Hill originally added:

The depression served as a mighty protest from an injured public, whose rights had been trampled upon in every direction by those who were clamoring for individual advantages and profits. When the debris of the depression shall have been cleared away, and business shall have been once again restored to balance, both employers and employees will recognize that they are NO LONGER PRIVILEGED TO DRIVE BARGAINS AT THE EXPENSE OF THOSE WHOM THEY SERVE.

8 This should be kept Excellence in customer service would recapture the spotlight, beginning in the 1980s. In his original manuscript, Hill used railroads and streetcars as an example of the negative effects of poor service:

Nearly every railroad in America is in financial difficulty. Who does not remember the day when if a citizen inquired at the ticket office [about] the time of departure of a train, he was abruptly referred to the bulletin board instead of being politely given the information?

The street car companies have experienced a “change of times” also. There was a time not so very long ago when street car conductors took pride in giving argument to passengers. Many of the street car tracks have been removed and passengers ride on a bus, whose driver is “the last word in politeness.” All over the country, street car tracks are rusting from abandonment or have been taken up. Wherever street cars are still in operation, passengers may now ride without argument, and one may even hail the car in the middle of the block, and the motorman will OBLIGINGLY pick him up.

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED! That is just the point I am trying to emphasize. TIMES HAVE CHANGED! Moreover, the change is reflected not merely in railroad offices and on streetcars, but in other walks of life as well. The “public-be-damned” policy is now passé. It has been supplanted by the “we-are-obligingly-at-your-service, sir” policy.

9 -your service, sir” policy. The original manuscript at this point included the following:

The bankers have learned a thing or two during this rapid change which has taken place during the past few years. Impoliteness on the part of a bank official, or bank employee today is as rare as it was conspicuous a dozen years ago. In the years past, some bankers (not all of them, of course), carried an atmosphere of austerity which gave every would-be borrower a chill when he even thought of approaching his banker for a loan.

10 privilege of serving. Hill had originally written here:

We can all remember the time when the gas-meter reader pounded on the door hard enough to break the panels. When the door was opened, he pushed his way in, uninvited, with a scowl on his face which plainly said, “what-the-hell-did-you-keep-me-waiting-for?” All that has undergone a change. The meter-man now conducts himself as a gentleman who is “delighted-to-be-at-your-service-sir.” Before the gas companies learned that their scowling meter-men were accumulating liabilities never to be cleared away, the polite salesmen of oil burners came along and did a land office business.

11 and city taxes! The original manuscript included this curious statement about taxes and politicians:

(Here is a fact the politicians did not mention when they were crying out to the voters to throw their opponents out of office because the people were being taxed to death).

12 we in America enjoy It is unclear why Hill felt compelled here to add a parenthetical remark (italics his):

(And this is neither political nor economic propaganda).

13 In Germany Hill originally added, “In Germany, Russia, Italy, and most of the other European and Oriental countries, the people cannot travel with so much freedom and at so little cost,” which is not quite the case today.

14 For decades, it Andrew Carnegie once said: “It will be a great mistake for the community to shoot the millionaires, for they are the bees that make the most honey, and contribute most to the hive even after they have gorged themselves full.”

15 ARE GETTING IT. Hill originally added this wry comment: “Their idea of their rights of freedom was demonstrated in New York City, where violent complaint was registered with the Postmaster by a group of ‘relief beneficiaries’ because the Postmen awakened them at 7:30 a.m. to deliver Government relief checks. They DEMANDED that the time of delivery be set up to l0:00 o’clock.”

16 Always there are Hill cited three examples—Germany and Italy, which at that time were ruled by fascist dictators, and Russia, which was under the Communist “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

17 If it is riches This and following figures are from 2001 data, Statistical Abstract of the Untied States. Hill’s original comments are interesting for comparison:

If it is riches you are seeking, do not overlook the possibilities of a country whose citizens are so rich that women, alone, spend over two hundred million dollars annually for lip-sticks, rouge and cosmetics. Think twice, you who are seeking riches, before trying to destroy the Capitalistic System of a country whose citizens spend over fifty million dollars a year for GREETING CARDS, with which to express their appreciation of their FREEDOM.

If it is money you are seeking, consider carefully a country that spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually for cigarettes, the bulk of the income from which goes to only four major companies engaged in supplying this national builder of “nonchalance” and “quiet nerves.”

18 We have never The reference is to the crushing of individual freedoms under Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.

19 There is no way It would be fascinating to hear Napoleon Hill’s comments about the national debt situation facing the United States today.

20 It is the point The reference is to mortgage foreclosures, on both residential and commercial properties, resulting from bankruptcy proceedings. The Depression was devastating, to families and businesses. For example, from 1929 to 1932, average per capita income (net) on family farms in America plunged from $2,297 to $74—an incredible drop of almost 97 percent.

Chapter 7
DECISION: The Mastery of Procrastination

1 This is important. Napoleon Hill enjoyed getting in the occasional “dig” at crooks and crooked politicians as shown by the parenthetical remark he tossed in at this point in the original book: “(Racketeers and dishonest politicians have prostituted the honor for which such men as Adams died).”

Chapter 8
PERSISTENCE: The Sustained Effort Necessary to Induce Faith

1 WITH PERSISTENCE An “attitude is everything” conviction characterizes just about every page Napoleon Hill wrote throughout his long career. Marilyn vos Savant, who has one of the highest IQs in the world, agrees. She writes in “Ask Marilyn” (her widely read column),“While I feel completely confident that normal intellectual capacity is far greater than is necessary for nearly all jobs, I also feel completely confident that nearly all of us reach our limits of motivation, hard work and perseverance far before we reach our limits of intelligence. In other words, our attitudes hold us back more than our aptitudes.”

2 The secret of how Fannie Hurst (1889-1968) was a novelist, dramatist, and screenwriter. By her mid-20s, she had become an established author, writing for and about working women. Several of her works were made into motion pictures, including Back Street and Imitation of Life, the latter twice, in 1933 and 1959.

3 Kate Smith would Kate Smith (1909-1986) was known as “The First Lady of Radio.” “The Kate Smith Show” ran on CBS Radio from 1931 to 1947, and she hosted television’s “The Kate Smith Hour” from 1950 to 1954. Her career began with singing parts in assorted vaudeville shows. At age 8 she was entertaining troops in Washington, D. C., during World War I. She had two “signature” songs: “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain,” which was her theme song, and “God Bless America,” the Irving Berlin hit which she first recorded in 1938 and which he wrote exclusively for her. Although she had no formal vocal training, her full, robust soprano voice became one of the most recognized in the entertainment industry, and she recorded more than 3,000 songs during her long career.

4 During the Depression W. C. Fields (born William Claude Dukenfield in 1880) ran away from home at age 11 and within three years had become well-known as a vaudeville juggler. From 1915 to 1921 he performed as a comic juggler in the Ziegfield Follies. He made the transition to the stage in 1923 in Poppy and by 1931 had moved to Hollywood and was writing, directing, and starring in his own films. One of America’s greatest comedians and masters of timing and the delayed response, he is remembered for such films as The Bank Dick (1940), My Little Chickadee (1940), and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). He died in 1946.

5 Marie Dressler found Marie Dressler (1869-1934) was one of Hollywood’s most popular screen personalities in the early 1930s. She specialized in playing strong, self-sufficient, humorous old women. Her film debut was in the 1914 Tillie’s Punctured Romance, a Mack Sennett film in which Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Norman also appeared. Dressler won an Academy Award as best actress for her work in the 1931 film Min and Bill, which co-starred Wallace Beery.

6 Eddie Cantor lost Saucer-eyed Eddie Cantor (born Edward Israel Iskowitz in 1892) did it all, starring in vaudeville, burlesque, on the legitimate stage, radio, and television. Orphaned at age two on the Lower East Side of New York City, he was raised by his grandmother. As a lad, he clowned and sang for coins on street corners. He was a black-face song and dance performer in vaudeville, later toured with several theater companies, appeared in Broadway reviews, was a hit with The Chase and Sanborn Hour on radio beginning in 1931 and running through 1949, and he hosted the half-hour The Eddie Cantor Variety Theater on television, a show that was syndicated in 1955. He died in 1964.

7 The only “break” “You know, it’s a funny thing. The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get.” This quote attributed to golfer Arnold Palmer (and in variations to many other professional athletes and other personalities) sums up what Hill means when he talks about “self-made” breaks that result from persistence that is derived from a clear, well-defined and strong sense of purpose.

8 I have no way The affair between the twice-divorced Wallace Warfield Simpson and Edward, Duke of Windsor, who gave up his throne to marry her, remains the love story of the 20th century. Edward (1894-1972) held the title of Prince of Wales in 1931, when he first met Mrs. Simpson (1896-1986), born a British subject but by then a U. S. citizen. Over time, he fell hopelessly in love. When she divorced her second husband—wealthy shipping magnate Ernest Simpson—in October 1936, Edward had been King of England for a scant nine months. His announced intention to marry Wallace Simpson offended both British traditionalists and the Church of England hierarchy and provoked a governmental crisis. On December 10, 1936, Edward abdicated the throne in a radio broadcast to the nation, with, in part, these words: “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.” The new king, George VI, created the title of Duke of Windsor for his older brother, and on June 3, 1937, Edward and Wallace were married in France. In a slight to Wallace that Edward never forgave, King George refused to grant her the title of Duchess of Windsor. From 1937 to 1939 and after 1945 when World War II ended, the Duke and “Duchess” resided mainly in France, lived a café-society existence, and became the subject of countless magazine articles and books through the years. Her memoirs, The Heart Has Its Reasons, were published in 1959. After the Duke’s death in 1972, Wallace kept on her dressing room table a gold-framed message from the Duke. It read:

9 And what of King The Duke of Windsor-Wallace Simpson affair was an international scandal of the most notorious sort, setting tongues wagging on six continents. Today it seems almost innocent and pristine compared to the shenanigans conducted by the younger members of the British Royal Family in the early 1990s.

10 crying out for expression. The original manuscript included the following lofty paragraph:

And when he met a kindred spirit, crying out for this same Holy privilege of expression, he recognized it, and without fear or apology, opened his heart and bade it enter. All the scandal-mongers in the world cannot destroy the beauty of this international drama, through which two people found love, and had the courage to face open criticism, renounce ALL ELSE to give it holy expression.

11 price was too great. Hill originally inserted here this aside:

Surely not He who said, “He among you who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”

12 the price demanded. Hill waxed eloquent at this point:

If Europe had been blessed with more rulers with the human heart and the traits of honesty of ex-king Edward, for the past century, that unfortunate hemisphere now seething with greed, hate, lust, political connivance, and threats of war, would have a DIFFERENT AND BETTER STORY TO TELL. A story in which Love and not Hate would rule.

13 we demand of life. The original version of Think and Grow Rich! contains the following curious footnote, which comes at the end of the story about the Duke of Windsor and his bride: “*Mrs. Simpson read and approved this analysis.” Presumably, Hill had submitted this portion of his manuscript for her comments and suggestions.

Chapter 9
POWER OF THE MASTER MIND: The Driving Force

1 The “Master Mind” may W. Clement Stone, who worked closely with Napoleon Hill for a decade, had this to say about the principle: “During our ten-year association, I learned the missing number to my combination for worldwide successful achievement—the Master Mind Principle, two or more persons working together in complete harmony toward a mutual goal or goals….Napoleon Hill’s philosophy teaches you what you were never taught, specifically, how to recognize, relate, assimilate, and apply principles whereby you can achieve any goal whatsoever that doesn’t violate Universal Law—the Law of God and the rights of your fellow man” (“Editorial Reviews,” Amazon.com website, November 12, 2003). Stone, who died in 2002 at age 100, founded Combined Insurance Co. The company merged in 1982 with Ryan Insurance, which was re-named Aon Corp. in 1987. Stone, one of the wealthiest individuals in America, was also the president and driving force behind the Napoleon Hill Foundation for a number of years.

2 It absorbs energy In the original version of the book, Hill uses the now obsolete term (and concept) of “ether,” instead of “Unifying Force.” Physicists and mathematicians today, almost half a century after Einstein’s death, still labor to develop the “unified theory” Einstein was seeking which would explain what “ties together” the universe—from the gravitational force that structures the galaxies and space itself down to the tiniest forces found in the smallest corners of the subatomic world. Hill, of course, had little understanding of these matters, but he was confident that something, some mysterious force by which all things are connected, is at work in the universe. Because he was dealing with concepts that would have been, and still are, extremely difficult to comprehend and explain, he was forced to resort to analogies such as the one presented here.

3 Go a step further Harvey S. Firestone (1868-1938) founded Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in 1900 with an investment of $10,000, which made him half owner of the business. The company originally sold rubber tires for carriages. In 1904 they began making tires for an emerging new form of transportation, the automobile. Firestone developed several techniques for the manufacture of pneumatic tires, which were used on Ford Motor Company’s Model T. John Burroughs (1837-1921) was a nationally prominent naturalist. After a successful early career as a treasury clerk and national bank examiner, he devoted the remainder of his years to writing and fruit growing. The author of such books as Signs and Seasons, Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt, and The Breath of Life, Burroughs was a Thoreau-like figure who went on celebrated camping trips with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and fellow naturalist John Muir. Luther Burbank was the father of modern scientific plant breeding.

4 If you find Research has consistently shown that maintaining a positive attitude—about yourself and about life—can affect more than your financial condition. It can help you live longer. In a study of 1,500 boys conducted in California beginning in 1921, researchers found that “pessimists” in the group were 25 percent more likely to die before age 65 than positive thinkers. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin’s Brain Imaging and Behavior Laboratory found that positive-thinking, optimistic subjects had higher levels of “killer-cells” and had less of a decline in immune system response when faced with stressful situations. “Self-esteem has to do with self-valuing, self-respect, a kind of confidence and a willingness to speak one’s truth,” says Emmett E. Miller, author of Deep Healing: The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine, in a USA Weekend article. “That’s a tonic to the immune system, to all the organs of the body.”

1 When “harnessed” Hill’s analysis leans toward the metaphysical, yet has an eminently practical aspect. “Harnessed” and “redirected” refer not only to subconscious, subliminal forces that can be mastered. They also caution the reader: “Keep sex in proper proportion in your life. Enjoy it, give it expression. But use it, control it, don’t let it control you.”

2 Destroy the sex glands Anyone who has ever had a pet neutered or spayed understands the effect described. While Hill generalizes the effect to include human beings who may have had similar surgical procedures, he was writing, of course, long before the advent of hormone replacement therapy, which can counteract the effects.

3 When asked why These kinds of meditative moments, drawing upon the Creative Imagination to contact “a source of superior intelligence”(or Infinite Intelligence), are given an excellent, more complete explanation in an editorial that appeared in the August 5, 1994, Christian Science Monitor (page 17), which uses language evocative of Napoleon Hill:

Whether you are solitary or just alone in your thought, you make the most of thinking time when you let God direct your thinking. We can turn to God for direction, inspiration, ideas. Because God is divine Mind, which gives us our intelligence, it comes from God by reflection. We can “hear” Mind’s ideas, feel God’s presence, and be assured of His guidance…

Prayerful thinking time is not only practical for solving problems and for gaining serenity; it is essential for doing creative work. Inspiration comes with beautiful precision when we know it comes from Mind, God, and listen for His direction. Ideas, whether they come slowly or in deluges, need to be wisely considered. They need to be nurtured by a feeling of closeness to God. Then we perceive which ideas are right for our present use.

4 In his laboratory A similar process is described by broadcast journalist David Brinkley in his book Washington Goes to War (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). Brinkley recounts the story of how one Beardsley Ruml, treasurer of R. H. Macy & Company, came up with the idea of income tax withholding—“pay-as-you-go” taxation—which was a radical innovation in the year 1940: “Ruml’s habit, when he perceived a problem, was to lock himself in a room away from distractions—no newspapers, magazines, radio or people—recline for a few hours in a deeply upholstered chair, and allow his mind to float freely in what he called ‘a state of dispersed attention.’ It was during such a session that the idea of tax ‘withholding’ was born.” Ruml may or may not have read Think and Grow Rich! and its account of Dr. Elmer Gates, but he availed himself of the same technique it advocates.

5 ELBERT HUBBARD Napoleon Hill was intimately acquainted with the work of Elbert Green Hubbard (1856-1915), who published the popular “Little Journey” booklets, which presented biographical essays on famous and successful people—similar, though nothing like as extensive, as the work Hill himself had undertaken. In 1899, Hubbard published the sensationally popular essay “A Message to Garcia” in his avant-garde magazine The Philistine. This may have had a profound effect on Hill, stressing as it did so powerfully the importance of perseverance in the face of adversity. The essay drew upon an incident from the Spanish American War. Hubbard died in 1915 when the liner Lusitania on which he was traveling was sunk by a German U-boat off the Irish coast.

6 ELBERT H. GARY Elbert H. Gary (1846-1927), an attorney and the first mayor of Wheaton, Illinois, gained lasting fame by helping to organize U. S. Steel Corp. He eventually became the first chairman and chief executive officer of the company.

7 JOHN H. PATTERSON John H. Patterson (1844-1922) was an innovative entrepreneur who popularized the “modern” cash register, the kind that “rang a bell” and popped open the cash drawer when a sale was entered. He entered the cash register business indirectly. Convinced that clerks in his retail store had their fingers in the till, he purchased some of the newfangled registers. Realizing their potential, he bought out the individual whose firm manufactured them, renamed the enterprise the National Cash Register Company (later NCR), and proceeded to take the retail business by storm. Patterson is credited with introducing the idea of exclusive territories for his salespeople, opening the world’s first sales training school, and pioneering the use of direct mail ads and big commissions for sales representatives. He promoted employee welfare programs and better working conditions in an era when to do so was considered all but unethical by the greater business community.

8 ENRICO CARUSO Caruso (1873-1921) was the most famous operatic tenor in the world in the early 1900s. Born in Naples, Italy, the eighteenth of 20 children, Caruso had no formal vocal training until he was 18. He made his American debut on November 23, 1903, in Rigoletto at the opening night of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He would open each season there for the next 17 years. Caruso was the first major musician or singer to record his work on gramophone recordings.

9 into the “genius mode.” Hill’s original manuscript at this point contains these intriguing lines:

One of America’s most able business leaders frankly admitted that his attractive secretary was responsible for most of the plans he created. He admitted that her presence lifted him to heights of creative imagination, such as he could experience under no other stimulus.

One of the most successful men in America owes most of his success to the influence of a very charming young woman, who has served as his source of inspiration for more than twelve years. Everyone knows the man to whom this reference is made, but not everyone knows the REAL SOURCE of his achievements.

It is uncertain to whom Hill was referring in these paragraphs. The sentiments expressed may seem ingenuous to today’s reader, but they convey vividly Hill’s contention that sex drive has an enormous influence upon human behavior and motivation in the business world, a point which more dispassionate behavioral research has borne out.

10 James Whitcomb Riley Nicknamed “The Hoosier Poet,” Riley (1849-1916) was famous for his poems and lecture circuit anecdotes about life in small town, rural America and particularly his home state of Indiana. A born mimic, he regaled audiences with rustic stories and imitations of Hoosier accents. Despite severe attacks of stage fright, which he never conquered, he went on to become one of the country’s most popular lecturers. He also created the Little Orphan Annie character in The Orphant Annie Book [sic] (1908), and he published books of poetry such as The Old Swimmin’ Hole and ‘Leven More Poems, the latter of which sold a half-million copies. Before beginning his career as an author, he worked as an itinerant sign painter, actor, Bible salesman, musician, and newspaper reporter. That he wrote under some sort of special “influence,” Riley himself agreed: “My work did itself. I’m only the ‘willer’ [willow] bark through which the whistle comes.”

11 But let it be Narcotics and alcohol seem to play a catalytic role in the lives of many creative people. They also often spell their doom. Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, actor-singer Cory Monteith, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, comedian Chris Farley, actress Judy Garland, rock legend Jim Morrison of The Doors, poet Dylan Thomas, novelist Ernest Hemingway, playwright Tennessee Williams, rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, author Truman Capote, “Beat Generation” chronicler Jack Kerouac, comedian John Belushi, actor River Phoenix—the list goes on and on of outstanding artists whose addictions ultimately cost them their lives.

12 James J. Hill James J. Hill (1838-1916) was a financier and railroad magnate. He was president and subsequently chairman of Great Northern Railway. He later assumed control of the First and Second National banks of St. Paul, Minnesota. Hill wrote a popular book, Highways of Progress, which was published in 1910.

13 It is a well-known fact Common table salt is the most common example. Sodium and chlorine by themselves are highly toxic substances, whereas sodium chloride is sprinkled on food every day in kitchens and at tables around the world.

14 When any negative emotion This statement, in a nutshell, represents the genesis of the positive mental attitude—or PMA—philosophy, which Napoleon Hill and later his patron, W. Clement Stone, would devote their lives to spreading.

15 Love is, without The power of love is much more than a romantic cliché, according to Emmett E. Miller, author of Deep Healing: The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine. “The evidence is piling up in many ways: Having a relationship protects against disease. When you’re happy and joyful and feeling love, and feel loved and happy to be alive, you and your life are valued, that message gets transmitted right down to the immune cells.” (“How we feel changes how we…feel,” Patty Rhule, USA Weekend, September 24-26, 1999.)

Chapter 11
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND: The Connecting Link

1 Ella Wheeler Wilcox Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born in 1850 into an impoverished Wisconsin farm family. She seemed destined for a literary career from childhood, completing her first “novel” at the age of 10. After high school she studied at the University of Wisconsin, but left to return home, the source of her literary inspiration and aspirations. By age 18 her professional writings were earning enough money to double the family’s income. Her 1883 Poems of Passion was originally rejected as immoral by publishers, but a Chicago house eventually accepted it, and it became a bestseller. Her works are filled with imagery of sexual passion, often symbolized in the figure of a tiger. She became a leader in what was known as “The Erotic School” and once remarked that “heart, not art” is what makes good poetry. She was also an essayist and editorialist, with pieces appearing in such publications as the New York Journal and Cosmopolitan. Napoleon Hill was no doubt attracted to Wilcox’s work, given his strong belief in the power of romantic love and the important role the sex drive plays in human achievement. She died in 1919.

2 Only by following Herbert Benson of Harvard University’s Mind/Body Medical Institute suggests the following technique to overcome the physical effects of negative emotions (from “How we feel changes how we…feel,” by Patty Rhule, USA Weekend, September 24-26, 1999):

1. Choose a word, sound, prayer or phrase that fits your belief system; for instance, “peace” or “the Lord is my shepherd.”

2. Sit comfortably, close your eyes, relax muscles.

3. Breathe slowly. On each out breath, refocus your word. Do 10 to 20 minutes once or twice a day; before breakfast or before dinner is best.

3. Moreover, there is evidence In these sorts of discussions, which occur at a couple of key points in Think and Grow Rich!, Hill relies upon the now-outdated and discarded scientific concept of “the ether” as an invisible medium through which electromagnetic energy is transmitted throughout the universe. However, it is interesting to note that, philosophically and fundamentally, Hill’s description of the characteristics of “space” and “energy” comes very close to that of the latest scientific theory—so-called “string theory,” which suggests that space, energy, and matter are manifestations of unbelievably tiny, one-dimensional, vibrating “strings”—calculated to be a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter (10^-33 centimeter). When Hill writes of “this living, pulsating, ‘vibratory’ energy which permeates every atom of matter and fills every niche of space,” he could well be describing the kind of ultimate reality that string theory envisions. Instead of being a quiet void or vacuum, a tiny region of space at the ultramicroscopic level is a roiling, churning, violently fluctuating “place” whose environment is so frenzied that it is described as “quantum foam,” according to string theory. Physicist-mathematician Brian Greene’s excellent book, The Elegant Universe (1999), gives the best explanation of string theory to date and is something Napoleon Hill would surely have read had it been available in his time.

Chapter 12
THE BRAIN: A Broadcasting and Receiving Station for Thought

1 Creative Imagination is The phenomenon is perhaps aptly illustrated in the example of a championship professional basketball team, whose members seem to be able to anticipate each other’s every move, response, and intention—no matter how fast the pace or complicated the circumstances—during stretches of top-flight play. The same is true with members of an outstanding jazz ensemble when they improvise at their most creative level, or with members of a scientific team during “eureka moments” of mutual discovery and simultaneous insight.

2 If you understand This technique would today be described as “brainstorming,” although Hill’s concept of brainstorming—among the members of a Master Mind Group—assumes a significantly higher level of mental process and results than merely “kicking ideas around.”

Chapter 13
THE SIXTH SENSE: The Door to the Temple of Wisdom

1 This principle is In addition to The 13 Steps to Riches, Hill would later develop, along with W. Clement Stone, The 17 Success Principles, which were taught in classes and a popular correspondence course called PMA Science of Success. The 17 Success Principles are (they have been variously stated, and ordered, in different works):

1. A Positive Mental Attitude

2. Definiteness of Purpose

3. Going the Extra Mile

4. Accurate Thinking

5. Self-Discipline

6. The Master Mind Principal

7. Applied Faith

8. A Pleasing Personality

9. Personal Initiative

10. Enthusiasm

11. Controlled Attention (or Concentration)

12. Teamwork

13. Learning from Adversity and Defeat

14. Creative Vision (Imagination)

15. Budgeting Time and Money

16. Maintaining Sound Physical and Mental Health

17. The Law of Cosmic Habit Force (the use of universal law)

Hill and Stone’s book, Success through a Positive Mental Attitude (written in 1960 and revised in 1977) provides a good explanation of The 17 Success Principles, as does Your Right to Be Rich, an interactive study guide first published in 1961.

2 Realizing as I did Hill was born October 26, 1883, in a two-room log cabin in the mountains of Wise County, Virginia. It was a region marked by illiteracy, grinding poverty, and superstition. Its people led a hardscrabble existence, struggling to eke out a living by farming on difficult soils and challenging terrain. Most people born here lived their entire lives without ever leaving the mountains. Hill was one of the few who escaped and go on to travel the nation and live in some of its great cities.

3 He smiled broadly This is a mystical moment in the story of Think and Grow Rich! As usual when he delves into metaphysical matters, Hill grasps for appropriate words to describe that which, in the end, cannot be described. It is interesting to note that Thomas Edison once answered a question about his religious beliefs during an interview by discussing “life forces” in terms remarkably similar to those Hill uses here. The published interview was quite controversial, and it is unclear how literally Edison meant his remarks to be taken. Presumably, Hill had either read the interview or else heard Edison describe the same ideas during one of his own interviews with the inventor. (For a further discussion of the incident, see Robert Conot, A Streak of Luck, Seaviews Books, New York, 1979, page 427, or Wyn Wachhorst, Thomas Alva Edison: An American Myth, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1981, pages 137-138.)

4 in physical bodies. In the original version of the book, this chapter ends with the following paragraph:

The Ghost of the Fear of Poverty, which seized the minds of millions of people in 1929, was so real that it caused the worst business depression this country has ever known. Moreover, this particular ghost still frightens some of us out of our wits.

Epilogue
HOW TO OUTWIT THE SIX GHOSTS OF FEAR

1 The remainder of Napoleon Hill devoted his life to disseminating The Think and Grow Rich Philosophy and teaching people how to put it to practical use. W. Clement Stone, Hill’s collaborator and patron, played a key role in that purpose. “From 1952 to 1962 I employed Napoleon Hill and acted as his general manager,” said Stone. “We were dedicated to spreading Hill’s philosophy. He had previously authored Law of Success, Think and Grow Rich, and many other works. A few of the numerous achievements of our Master Mind Alliance were co-founding Success Unlimited magazine, co-authoring Success through a Positive Mental Attitude, developing the ‘PMA Science of Achievement Course,’ and, most importantly, laying the foundation that guaranteed the achievement of Hill’s Definite Major Purpose in Life. Hill’s Definite Major Purpose was to spread the philosophy of achievement…worldwide and to future generations. Together we influenced untold millions of persons on every continent” (source: Motivational Speakers Hall of Fame website at joshhinds.com/motspeakers.htm.)

2 Just following the war, The international epidemic referred to was the deadly Spanish influenza that struck in the autumn of 1918. By the time the epidemic had run its course in July 1919, more than 20 million people had been infected and more than 500,000 were dead. The flu and its virulent companion, pneumonia, killed half as many U. S. troops at home as died in combat in World War I. During the height of the epidemic, schools and churches were closed, and many people ventured outside only when wearing cotton masks. An elderly gentleman, reminiscing about “The Flu” epidemic at Clemson University in South Carolina, recalled the campus Trustee House being used as a temporary infirmary. “They were just bringing the bodies in like firewood,” he exclaimed.

3 Fears are nothing more At this point in the original manuscript, Hill related the following anecdotal material:

Physicians, as everyone knows, are less subject to attack by disease than ordinary laymen, for the reason that physicians DO NOT FEAR DISEASE. Physicians, without fear or hesitation, have been known to physically contact hundreds of people daily who were suffering from such contagious diseases as smallpox without becoming infected. Their immunity against the disease consisted, largely, if not solely, in their absolute lack of FEAR.

While traditional medical research may suggest other explanations, it is notable that researchers and physicians have come more and more to emphasize the influence of positive attitudes on health, healing, and general well-being. The specific example Hill uses here may not hold up. The general principle does.

4 What this sort Pegler was a caustic newspaper columnist whose invective and tirades against public programs were carried in more than 170 newspapers. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1941 for his crusading pieces on labor union corruption, but his later writing focused less and less on exposing misdeed and more and more on expressing scorn—for New Deal administrators, labor leaders, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt family especially. Charles Fisher in The Columnists (Howell, Soskin Publishers, 1944) wrote this about Pegler: “Having read the newspapers in bed, he breakfasts and retires early to his study, whence emerges bad language, the sound of copy paper being yanked from the typewriter and ripped to bits, and considerable quantities of cigarette smoke. He spends perhaps six hours a day on a piece and has been known to hunt forty-five minutes for a word.” Pegler died June 24, 1969, at the age of 74. (The New York World-Telegram was created in 1931 by the merger of the World and the Evening Telegram. The Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, owners of United Press International, bought the Sun in 1950 and merged it to form the New York World-Telegram-Sun. The paper ceased publication in 1966.)

5 be himself again.” At this point in the text, Hill originally included the following indignant remarks about the way some employers treated down-on-their-luck people during the Depression:

Some employers take the most shocking advantage of people who are down and out. The agencies hang out little colored cards offering miserable wages to busted men—$2 a week, $15 a week. An $18 a week job is a plum, and anyone with $25 a week to offer does not hang the job in front of an agency on a colored card. I have a want ad clipped from a local paper demanding a clerk, a good, clean penman, to take telephone orders for a sandwich shop from 11 A.M. to 2 P.M. for $8 a month—not $8 a week but $8 a month. The ad says also, “State religion.” Can you imagine the brutal effrontery of anyone who demands a good, clean penman for 11 cents an hour inquiring into the victim’s religion? But that is what busted people are offered.

6 The Fear of Criticism At this point in the original manuscript, Hill offered this analysis:

Bald-headed men, for example, are bald for no other reason than their fear of criticism. Heads become bald because of the tight fitting bands of hats which cut off the circulation from the roots of the hair. Men wear hats, not because they actually need them, but mainly because “everyone is doing it.” The individual falls into line and does likewise, lest some other individual CRITICIZE him. Women seldom have bald heads, or even thin hair, because they wear hats which fit their heads loosely, the only purpose of the hats being adornment.

But it must not be supposed that women are free from the fear of criticism. If any woman claims to be superior to man with reference to this fear, ask her to walk down the street wearing a hat of the vintage of 1890.

Hill was not infallible—if for no other reason than the fact that medical scientists in his day understood little about the relationship between genetics and male pattern baldness.

7 Playing upon this Collier’s (which ceased publication in 1957) enjoyed a long history and was once America’s leading general interest magazine. It was founded in April 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier as Once a Week and sold along with his biweekly Collier’s Library, which printed short novels and popular stories at “bargain rates”—7 cents for 16 pages. The first edition featured pieces by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, James Whitcomb Riley, and H. Rider Haggard, the author of King Solomon’s Mines, She, and other adventure stories. Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie, Pearl Buck, and Neville Shute are just a few of the many authors whose works would grace the magazine’s pages over the years. Collier’s gradually evolved into a weekly newsmagazine. Its crusade against injurious patent medicines—for example, a remedy called “liquozone” that was advertised to cure everything from cancer to dandruff—was a major impetus behind passage of the U. S. Food and Drug Act. Poor management and consistent red ink resulted in the magazine’s sale to the Cowles publishing organization, which buried the publication and rolled its subscribers over into Look magazine in 1957.

8 This form of Hill believed firmly in “mind over matter” when it came to health issues, and medical research has since demonstrated conclusively that state of mind does play an important role in good health. However, whether he actually believed the following anecdote which he uses in the original Think and Grow Rich!—or was simply using it to make a crucial point—is unclear:

During the “flu” epidemic which broke out during the world war, the mayor of New York City took drastic steps to check the damage which people were doing themselves through their inherent fear of ill health. He called in the newspaper men and said to them, “Gentlemen, I feel it necessary to ask you not to publish any scare headlines concerning the ‘flu’ epidemic. Unless you cooperate with me, we will have a situation which we cannot control.” The newspapers quit publishing stories about the “flu,” and within one month the epidemic had been successfully checked.

9 A psychotherapist Hill used the term “specialist in suggestive therapeutics.”

10 SUSCEPTIBILITY TO ILLNESS Immune system research has since demonstrated conclusively the negative effects of stress on the body’s immune system.

11 The most common cause “Poorhouse” is a concept alien to more recent generations in the United States. Prior to the advent of federal and state welfare programs, impoverished citizens who had no money or property often ended up living in county poorhouses, where their labor helped them “work off” their room and board. Except for imprisonment or confinement in an insane asylum, the pauper’s life in the poorhouse was about as low as a person could fall in American society.

12 I once interviewed Hill worked for several years as a journalist. It was in that capacity that he interviewed Andrew Carnegie and was set on course to researching and writing Think and Grow Rich!

13 The vibrations of fear Hill believed absolutely in the reality of extrasensory perception: “Mental telepathy is a reality. Thoughts pass from one mind to another, voluntarily, whether or not this fact is recognized by either the person releasing the thoughts or the persons who pick up those thoughts.”

14 Do you neglect Autointoxication is a term popular in Hill’s day to describe “poisoning” by toxic substances formed in the body itself, as, for example, during the digestive process. Proper “internal bathing” is accomplished by adequate daily intake of water and fiber and may also refer to enemas or colonic treatments.

15 He knew that he Hill would later refine this idea into what is perhaps his most famous statement—the bedrock concept of The Think and Grow Rich Philosophy: “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” (An earlier incarnation had it “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Perhaps Hill’s earliest expression of the idea is found in the third sentence of Chapter 5: “It has been said that anything can be created which a human being can imagine.”) His collaborations with W. Clement Stone sometimes added the phrase “…with PMA” (Positive Mental Attitude) after “achieve,” as in their book Success through a Positive Mental Attitude. In many of their later writings, Hill and Stone also added another qualifying phrase: “…so long as it does not violate the laws of God or the rights of others.” Whatever its variation, the CONCEIVE-BELIEVE-ACHIEVE formula has become one of the most notable and widely used motivational “affirmations” in history. It even shows up in popular music. R Kelly’s hit song “I Believe I Can Fly” in the late 1990s is filled with Think and Grow Rich! aphorisms:

If I can see it, then I can do it. / If I just believe it,
there’s nothing to it…

If I can see it, then I can be it. / If I just believe it,
there’s nothing to it.

I believe I can fly.

Song by R Kelly, from the movie Space Jam

Copyright © 1996 WEA/Atlantic

16 RICHER THAN CROESUS. Croesus, who died in 546 B.C., was the last king of Lydia, famous for his tremendous wealth. He conquered the Greeks of Ionia, but later fell to the Persians. Croseus was the central figure in a tale by Herodotus, who had the king meet the renowned Athenian lawgiver Solon. The latter chastised Croseus, emphasizing that it is good fortune, not riches in themselves, that is the basis for true happiness.