TWO TYPES OF SELF-MADE MEN.
WHEN on one occasion President Johnson declared him- self to be a "self-made man," it was said by a Member of Congress that the "Almighty was relieved of a great responsibility." Ours is pre-eminently the day of the self- made man, of the great captain of industry who was once a poor workman, of the speculator,—the roving adventurer whose millions give him entrance into a society with which he never dreamed in his earlier days of coming into personal contact. The self-made man is not only conspicuous in industry and commerce, he is well known in politics. An old and very celebrated type recently passed away in the person of Sir Henry Parkes, while Mr. Bryan all at once leaped into fame from an obscure origin. The younger countries are naturally frill of self-made men, who take the lead in all departments of active life, and whose eager vigilance and untamed audacity give little chance in the realm of action to those with generations of culture behind them. In England we do not, as a rule, love self-made men as they are loved in new countries. The English workman would rather have to do with the representative of an old family than with a rich parvenu who a few years ago was a member of his own claw. The high-bred families accept the self-made man as an inevitable fact, and they do not object to sharing his millions by some marriage arrangement, but that they like him is improbable. And yet it may fairly be argued that England would have suffered no small moral and intellectual lose had it not been for the strong types of character among her self- made men during the present century. The truth is that the self-made man may be of two very different types, and as the late Mr. Barnato represented one type, Sir Isaac Holden— whose death, at the age of ninety, has just taken place—was not a bad representative of the more worthy type.
The contrast between the two men was as striking as it could well be. On the one hand was an Anglo-Jewish adventurer, kind-hearted but vulgar, sordid in aim, an "average sensual man," the ex-clown of a circus, the comrade of adventurers of a somewhat low class, his career devoted to mere money-spinning, the victim of overstrained nerves at forty-five. On the other hand is a man who began industrial life at ten, a hard worker, sober, religious, wakened to a new life by Methodism, scrupulously clean-handed, successful in all his efforts, cheery and simple in his old days, and dying, honoured by the world, at the age of ninety,— exactly twice the age of the nerveless, broken-down speculator. Each was what we call a self-made man, each had a keen eye to business, each had a spirit of adventure and a laudable determination to succeed, each had probably some elements of English character in common,—and yet what a contrast ! Read the friendly account of Mr. Barnato written by Mr. Raymond in this month's Contemporary Review, and then read the biographies of Sir Isaac Holden which have appeared in the daily papers. In either case you are reading of the self- made man of business ; but they might, in every other respect, be inhabitants of different planets; the one, you feel, was an utter stranger to all that made life real and important to the ether.
What made this difference, and what is it that makes of the self-made "captain of industry," so common in industrial England, a great and beneficent type of character, without whom England would not be England, without whom ts deep and wide gulf would separate the England of to-day from the England of Cromwell, the England of the powerful, intelligent, manly, and successful middle class ? Suppose our Midland and Northern industrial districts wiped out of existence or pushed back into the condition of three centuries ago, and that English business life was to-day represented to the world by the stockbrokers
and large middlemen of the City of London. We have no desire to be censorious in regard to the City, but does not every one see what an immense gap would have been made, what a reservoir of character—of the character which has so largely made and moulded England—would have disappeared I It is not of the mere industrial loss that we are thinking, it is of the disappearance of a human type, the most characteristic product of present-century England. To the Arkwrights, the Marshalls, the Richardsone, the k Stephensons, the Crossleys, the Salts, the Peases, the Hoidens, we owe not merely or chiefly new methods . of industry, new inventions, the addition of large stores of , wealth to the country, we owe something which weighs . heavier in the destinies than gold, or cotton, or iron. We owe a great character, a fixed purpose, a steadfast and immovable human type which has transformed industrialism, and which has educated the nation more than all her school- masters. One of these great "captains of industry," upon whose shoulders Carlyle laid such high and onerous functions, is, in his way, as true a national hero as Blake or Nelson, because he shows men, from one side at least, what is best in themselves. His career opens up to the workman indefinite possibilities, it almost enlarges the previously known powers of man. From one point of view, it is true, you can say that -a man like Sir Isaac Holden merely wanted to make his fortune, and that he skilfully availed himself of the means that came to his hand. But that is a very imperfect, and almost false, statement of the inner facts. What were the means that came to the hands of the poor boy ? Thousands of other boys had the same means, but made nothing of them, as thousands of people had seen apples fall from trees without a suspicion of the law of gravitation. We may depend upon it that a great employer has great qualities, that his fortune is not luck, that, like Raleigh, he can "toil terribly," that his success involves moral elements. We believe that no small part of the career of a man like Sir Isaac Holden is determined by a certain religious awakening which has affected his whole nature, and• which has called into being latent powers of which he had no conception. The Methodist movement, of which Sir Isaao Holden was so staunch an adherent, is admitted by everybody to have had a great moral effect on England. But no religious movement like Methodism ever stops short at mere moral results ; it stirs up the whole forces of our nature, it rallies and sustains the most subtle and active powers of man. Just as no greater harm was ever done to any nation, whether politically, intellectually, morally, or socially, than was done to France by the banishment of the Huguenots. so no more effective stimulus to activity in every department of life has been applied than in the great religious movements of England. Lollardism, Puritanism, Methodism, all in their turn enlarged the national intellect, and the enlargement is seen just as truly in political and industrial life as in the region of faith and morals. Men are not built in water-tight compartments, but the sea of thought and emotion surges all over man's nature and creates a soul under the ribs of death.
The self-made man of the type affected by religion must, . therefore, be differentiated from the vulgar money-spinner who has never once felt the stirring of any higher power. He is also very different in another way. We have said that the. character of England would be changed were the Stock Exchange to take the place of the factory and workshop as the sole representative to the world of English business life. The , late Mr. Barnato never had the satisfaction of knowing that he was aiding in the world's actual production of useful commodities. His business was finance pure and simple ; he had to run stocks up and down, to buy and to clear out at what is called the "psychological moment." He was tempted to look at his fellow-creatures as dupes to be taken in,, or as dangerous enemies to be fought. His ethics were those , of the prize-ring, his aims those of the gambler, his code was cynically anti-Christian, if not at times anti-human. His instincts were necessarily predatory because he so very rarely came in contact with men on purely human grounds. The men he generally saw about him wereeither greedy adventurers who wanted to "stand in" with him, or human sheep who were to be shorn. He saw habitually the very worst side of human nature, and even had he been a man of a higher type, it would inevitably have affected his own character. Such is one type. of the "self-made man," and it must be confessed it is
unattractive enough even to many who belong to the class. But the "captain of industry" who, like Sir Isaac Holden, has the diligence, capacity, and moral power to rise from a humble origin to the post of leader of an industrial army has the constant sense of co-operation with his fellows for a great purpose. He daily and hourly bolds intercourse with men, not to "corner" a product or to relieve others of their hard earn- ings, but to carry out a great joint effort which will add to the solid wealth of mankind. We do not say that all employers of labour feel that, for if they did an industrial paradise would be almost in sight ; but they have, as the mere financier has not, the opportunity of feeling so. The situation is forced on a reflecting mind. Indeed, if we may say so reverently, the honest and humane "captain of industry" may well feel himself to be a fellow-worker with God, and, let us add, our industrial troubles will not cease until he does feel this. Who can doubt that such a feeling, born of the simple sense of duty, will have in the future the highest influence on character ? Our civilisation is said to be indus- trial, as distinguished from the military or caste or feudal civilisations of other lands and times. Then the leaders of industry must be its natural heads, and, to a very great degree, its real rulers ; and as the democratic spirit of the age gives a free scope and equal chances to everybody to become industrial captains, evidently the self-made man will become more and more a great social influence. Carlyle was, therefore, right in his memorable appeal to the "captains of industry" to accept their duties in a high and worthy spirit. The most insidious influ- ence of the time is the method by which business is slipping into the hands of the mere speculators in money. In America this sinister development has reached enormous proportions, and it has called up a spirit which bodes ill to the healthy moral life of the Republic. In England we see the same tendency, but it is checked by social forces which are little known or felt on the other side of the Atlantic. There the mere wrecker, the "self-made man" of the lower type, is all too prevalent and powerful ; but we may hope that, alike there and here, he represents nothing more than a passing phase of things in a strange epoch of expansion and sudden changes. We cannot—given a democratic organisa- tion of society—prevent the growth of the "self-made man ; " it must be for society to give every encouragement to the right type, for that type has, in England, developed new sources of social and moral power.
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