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A self-made man is a person whose success is of nouveau riche.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, has been described as the greatest exemplar of the self-made man. Inspired by Franklin's autobiography, Frederick Douglass developed the concept of the self-made man in a Self-Made Men that spanned decades starting in 1879.
Originally, the term referred to an individual who arises from a poor or otherwise disadvantaged background to eminence in financial, political or other areas by nurturing qualities, such as perseverance and diligence, as opposed to achieving these goals through inheritance old money, nepotism, or other privileges. By the mid-1950s, success in the United States generally implied "business success".
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The phrase "self-made man" in its modern sense can be found in both American and British periodicals in the 1820s. General Samuel Blackburn running for office in Virginia in 1824 used it to describe himself."Parliamentary Portraits," Harpers Ferry Free Press, 11 Feb. 1824, 1.[1] The English writer William Hazlitt described Lord Chatham in The New Monthly Magazine in 1826 as "a self-made man, bred in a camp, not in a court."William, "Conversation of Lords," New Monthly Magazine 16 (Apr. 1826), 371.[2] An 1831 obituarist in The Liberator describing Rev. Thomas Paul wrote, "As a self-made man, (and, in the present age, every colored man, if made at all, must be self-made,) he was indeed a prodigy." "Deaths," The Liberator, 16 Apr. 1831, 63
An oft-repeated but no longer credible claim is that the term "self-made man" was "coined" on February 2, 1832, by Henry Clay in the United States Senate. (Historian Irvin G. Wyllie used Clay's Senate speech on that date as his first example of its use in his 1954 book, The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches, stating that it "was first applied" on that occasion).
F. W. Pine wrote in his introduction of the 1916 publication of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, that Franklin's biography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar of the "self-made man".
Franklin and Frederick Douglass, describe the "self-made man in similar language: "Being possessionless and unencumbered by authority is the necessary beginning state for the potential self-made man. One cannot be "made" by the help of a father, teacher, mentor, etc. ..., but must rise by one's own grit, determination, discipline, and opportunism. The irony is that they have made themselves free from bounds and possessions, in a sense impoverished, so that they can then begin to acquire power and wealth on their own. The key is to acquire those possessions and power without help. The goal, then, is not to become famous or wealthy in the literal sense, but to participate in something precise and mythical."
Frederick Douglass developed the concepts in a series of lectures "Self-Made Men" from 1859 onward, for example 1895,Folder 1 of 16 (Series: Speech, Article, and Book File—B: Frederick Douglass, Undated) which were published and archived in "The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress". In his 1872 lecture Douglass noted that there were "no such men as self-made men. That term implies an individual independence of the past and present which can never exist ... Our best and most valued acquisitions have been obtained either from our contemporaries or from those who have preceded us in the field of thought and discovery. We have all either begged, borrowed or stolen. We have reaped where others have sown, and that which others have strown, we have gathered." However, he then provided one of his most detailed descriptions of the self-made man,
Abraham Lincoln, Michael Faraday, George Stephenson, Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, P. T. Barnum, Booker T. Washington, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Ford have also been described as self-made men. Both Carnegie and Lee Iacocca acknowledge that their own autobiographies were influenced by Franklin's. In theirs, both Lincoln and Ronald Reagan described their own origins as somewhat disadvantaged to reflect the narrative of self-made men. Blumenthal began his 2016 biography of Lincoln— A Self-Made Man—with the phrase, "I used to be a slave", referring to Lincoln's claim in 1856 that his "domineering and uneducated father" "exploited" young Lincoln by "renting" him out to "rural neighbors in Indiana." Following his escape from servitude, Lincoln re-invented himself. Lincoln was inspired by Franklin's Autobiography.
The Industrial Revolution spurred the growth of new businesses formed by self-made men in various industries that appeared in towns and cities throughout Britain. According to food historian Polly Russell: "Manufacturers such as Huntley & Palmers in Reading, Carr's of Carlisle and McVitie's in Edinburgh transformed from small family-run businesses into state-of-the-art operations". In addition to goods being sold in the growing number of stores, street sellers were common in an increasingly Urbanization country. The soft drinks company, R. White's Lemonade, began in 1845 by selling drinks in London streets in a wheelbarrow. As the spa town of Harrogate, England, grew in size and prosperity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the self-made men Richard Ellis, George Dawson, (2026). 9781859362389, Carnegie Publishing. ISBN 9781859362389 and David Simpson, became rich property developers, and draper's apprentice John Turner became even more prosperous as the town's moneylender.
In an 1893 article in a railway magazine, Eugene V. Debs offered Andrew Johnson (18081875), the 17th President of the United States, Henry Wilson (1812–1875) was the 18th Vice President of the United States (1873–1875), Daniel Webster (17821852) who served twice as United States Secretary of State, Edward Everett, and Rufus Choate as exemplary nineteenth-century self-made men. Debs contrasted the successful self-made men to those whose "illiteracy, stupidity, lack of ambition, forever keeps them at the bottom ... who prefer pool to school, and choose to hammer coal and shovel it into a fire-box rather than employ their leisure in learning what they must know if they expect to rise." He calls on them to "resolve upon a change of habits — renounce follies and vices, obtain elementary books and study."
In John G. Cawelti's 1965 book Apostles of the self-made man, he listed Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horatio Alger, and John Dewey as individuals "who either played a major role in shaping the success ideal or were associate with it in the public mind."
In the restaurant business Frank Giuffrida, the owner and manager of the Hilltop Steak House which opened in Saugus 1961 and became the biggest restaurant in the United States by the 1980s, is described as self-made man in the Slate article. Frank Giuffrida's parents were Sicily immigrants who lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He began to work before he completed high school to run the family butcher shop when his father died. He opened the Hilltop Steakhouse after he sold the family store. His innovative strategy was to offer large size portions in a large scale restaurant, making up for the extra cost of generous portions by the economy of scale. According to the New York Times, the "Hilltop exceeded $27 million gross" in 1987.
In the field of modern art, Arshile Gorky has been described as a self-made man who rose from "a dark, rich peasant culture" to prominence among "New York modern artists" through his "self-taught erudition and aggressive principles."
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is a philanthropist and self-made entrepreneur in India's biotechnology industry. She is the founder, executive chairperson, and former managing director of Biocon, a biopharmaceutical company based in Bengaluru.a company she founded out of her garage in Bengaluru.
In 1947, the Alexandria, Virginia-based Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, which was named after Horatio Alger, to honor the importance of perseverance and hard work. The Association grants scholarships and gives the Horatio Alger Award annually. All scholarships are funded by the generosity of the members of the Horatio Alger Association.
In September 2011, US Senator Elizabeth Warren challenged the concept of the self-made man in a video that went viral, garnering over one million views on YouTube. Warren stated that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody". LiveSmartVideos
In his book The Roots of American Individualism, Alex Zakaras describes the notion of a 'self-made man' as one of the three foundational myths of American individualism. He criticizes the concept of 'self-made' in American society as ignoring the role of social structures, privilege, and luck in shaping individual outcomes.
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