The Myth of the Self-Made Man

A little before I left for Galveston, I read an article that made me think about our current socio-economic reality and how it relates to people like Jean and Pierre Laffite and also to their offspring, such as Pierre's children and grandchildren by Marie Villard. But I had no time to sit down and organize my thoughts about this. So I just shared the article on my Twitter feed and moved on.

The article was published on Slate by John Swansburg, and it was called "The Self-Made Man: the Story of America's Most Pliable, Pernicious and Irrepressible Myth."  I have linked the article here, so you can go read it in its entirety. It is very, very long, contains a lot of historical details and is sort of apologetic of the good fortune of some, including the father of the author, who happens to have been one of those "self-made men."

The article is nuanced, has a reasonable tone, is not too dogmatic, but it was basically written to appeal to the progressive sensibility. There's a lot of truth to what it has to say, but at the same time, it misses what to me is the real point of upward mobility and the melting pot.

 Some of the points the author made include these perfectly unobjectionable observations:

• get-rich-quick schemes are a by-product of gullibility in the general public that has allowed itself to swallow the myth that extreme success is open to everyone, regardless of effort, talent or other qualifications.
• The myth of the self-made man has changed over the years from being based on the Puritan work ethic, where industry, hard work and frugality were its basis,  which also allowed for circumstances shaping the man, to some sort of idea of individual drive being the chief qualification, so that if you want it badly enough success will come, and now ambition is in itself a virtue.
• A lot of the self-help industry is based on this myth.
• People who did succeed were not entirely self-made, as they came from families where the skills and virtues that led to success were already taught and part of the socio-economic and cultural heritage of the entrepreneur.

Nobody is self-made, so, of course, taken in its most literal sense, there is no such thing as a self-made man. Our DNA comes from someplace. Our flesh, including our brain cells and our most basic predilections all come from others, passed down through a long chain of ancestors, the earliest of which were not even human.

"You're self made, eh?" the Progressive scoffs. "Well, did you invent bipedalism all by yourself? How about the wheel? Language? Writing? Algebra?" 

In a somewhat less absurd move, Swansburg points out that Jewish immigrants to the United States who became successful in the garment industry already had garment industry experience in Europe, before immigrating. That makes sense. But does it take away from the achievements of the few who succeeded grandly, despite poverty and a language barrier?

Or how about the fact that many East Asian immigrant children come from a culture where literacy and studiousness are already very much valued and encouraged, which is why they tend to excel in academics far and above their Anglo-Saxon classmates, whose ancestors were still illiterate savages at a time when the East had a well developed culture?  Does this mean that we should put quotas on university entry by Asian-Americans?

The fallacy is in thinking that the melting pot and upward mobility in the United States was ever supposed to be based on dispossessing people of the individual advantages that came from belonging to a particular family or ethnic group. The idea was always that you got to compete based on everything you left home with, and that nobody would ever penalize you for what sort of home you had. Rising based on your own merit was not supposed to be tempered by handicapping certain people for coming into the race with certain built-in advantages. In fact, the myth of the self-made man was that everybody was allowed to shine based on their built-in advantages, regardless of anything else.

"But it's not fair that some people come better equipped!" some complain.  Fair to whom? To the consumer who wants to buy inexpensive well-made garments? To the university that seeks the brightest students? To the employer who is looking for the best workers money can buy?

Social Darwinism is frowned upon. as a misunderstanding of the theory of evolution. But the theory of evolution, some have pointed out, is a tautology. It is true by definition. If traits are selected for in future generations based on the survival of the fittest, then how do you determine who the fittest were, except by looking around to see who survived? Fittest does not mean some kind of absolute virtue -- it just means most adapted to the particular environment. When the environment changes, the traits that make us most fit also change.

In today's market, those who are willing to do necessary blue collar work are at an advantage over the merely studious, because the market is flooded with college graduates who have no useful skills. Half a century ago it might have been different. Tinker with the marketplace, and you change the fitness of all the participants.

Upward mobility at present is at an all time low, some complain. I'm not sure whether that is true or not, but I do know that even during slavery, there was upward mobility for blacks. Marie Villard was a descendant of slaves, but she was a free woman who owned property. Though miscegenation laws prevented Pierre Laffite from marrying her, his children by her were well provided for under a binding contract. After a few generations, the descendants of Marie Villard had been so assimilated into New Orleans society that they did not even know they were black. They remembered they had a famous "pirate" in their lineage, but they conveniently forgot about Marie Villard. (Source: Davis, The Pirates Laffite.)

That is in fact how upward mobility and the American melting pot worked. Though all people have certain advantages inherited from their ancestors, over time we become assimilated to the point where we no longer remember where we came from, and then it may appear that we are entirely self-made. It may be a myth, but it is also one of the advantages of the American culture of the nineteenth century, because by allowing people to forget their origins, society was able to let individuals fully claim every useful trait that came built in, to the advantage of not only the individual, but also society as whole.

Jean Laffite never denied his roots. He was proud of his ancestors and of the way he used what he inherited from them to become a successful entrepreneur, leader and patriot. Was he a self-made man? As much so as anyone ever was. He was just unusually honest about where he came from. That was perhaps his greatest flaw, and the reason he never received the recognition he deserved.

The Price of Living in a House

Should everybody live in a house? Many people believe that this is a basic human right. Never mind that not all humans do live in houses. Some live in tents. Some live in igloos. Some are nomads. Some live in their vehicles or on board their ships. There are so many different ways of living, and who is to say that only one way is right?

Owning real estate is expensive, because it is often a target for robbery or taxation. It is easy to lay siege to someone holed up in a house, and without a standing army to protect the house from those intent on plunder, one might not stand a chance.  Are you willing to pay for that army? Or would you rather just move along? Miss just one payment of your property taxes and your title is gone!

"You can't sail away in a house," Jean Laffite says in Theodosia and the Pirates. Laffite spent most of his early adult life living on board a ship. But he was not unaware that countries such as Britain had vagrancy laws that made it illegal not to live in a house. At one time he and Pierre were arrested and thrown into prison while in England, on charges of vagabondage. Their crime? When questioned by police where they were living, they could not provide an address. They were living on board ship.

Aaron Burr, once the owner of the stately mansion, Richmond Hill, fell on hard times and found himself as a homeless exile in Europe. He often slept in brothels, not for the services offered, but because he needed a place to take shelter. Even when he returned to the United States, he was often in dire straits, and it became standard procedure for him to pawn his watch when in a financial pinch.

Aaron Burr's Watch

No matter how high our current station in life, and how much real estate we may own, it makes sense to remember that owning a house -- or even just renting one  -- is a burden that not everyone can support. Instead of making it a mandatory "human right", we should take into account that it's entirely optional, and there are many other ways of living to choose from.

It's also good to remember that real estate ownership, while sometimes difficult to come by, is open to all, if they can afford it. It is not always the case that powerful, important or famous people own real estate, and that members of minorities who are less powerful do not. At a time when Aaron Burr was destitute and Jean Laffite lived mostly on board ships, Marie Villard, who was a free black woman and the mother of many of Pierre Laffite's children, owned a house on Bourbon Street in New Orleans,

How much did Marie Villard's house cost? In 1819, at a time when the common free laborer was lucky to make a dollar a day, its market value was $9,000.00. This was before VA loans or Fanny Mae, and houses were purchased in cash, or, at best,  in four easy installments, consisting mostly of the principal, with very little interest.

Should a house to live in be a "human right"? I don't think so. Should people be thrown into prison if they don't have a fixed abode? No. Should you have to prove the address where you reside in order to be able to cash a check or take a job? I don't think so. I think you should be able to live any way you choose, provided you are not hurting anyone else.

Sometimes powerful men find themselves homeless, while unassuming single mothers own real estate. This can happen in a relatively free market, where the government does not interfere, and the right to the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed, but not the right to free housing at anyone else's expense.

Property Rights, Education and Suffrage

Somebody said to me yesterday:

Every advance in our culture that you take for granted was protested and fought by conservatives. As a woman, can you vote? Own property in your own name? Attend higher education? Become a doctor or lawyer? Have bank accounts or investments in your name? Serve in the military? Serve in government? 

That person was a "progressive," and he would like to attribute any rights that anybody has to the agitation of people like himself. But he is wrong. Progress does not necessarily happen in a straight line progression. Sometimes as some rights are gained, other rights are lost. Trying to imagine what our life would be like in an earlier historical period depends very much on who we might have been, because different people during the same period find themselves in situations that are as different as night from day.

Of course, we could always imagine that we might have been wealthy and prosperous and have belonged to the ruling class, and a lot of historical fantasies are based on that. What would it have been like to be Queen Elizabeth the First? How would we have handled that kind of power? Even though most women of her day and age were uneducated, without property or a say in their government, this woman was not only highly educated but a successful ruler of men.

Marie Laveau
by Frank Schneider

Other fantasies are exercises in self-subjugation and humiliation. What would it be like to be a slave girl on a plantation with a very harsh and inhumane master? How could we maintain our human dignity while having so little control over our own persons? Would it be possible?

But most people's lives, during whatever period they happen to live in, do not fall into either extreme. They are not entirely helpless and without political and economic power. And they are also not rich or royalty or commanders of great armies and fleets. In Theodosia and the Pirates, I explored some of the in-between spaces. I described middle class people of different ethnic groups with varying degrees of education, property ownership and power.

Do you imagine that during a time when the insititution of slavery was intact every black woman was powerless, enslaved and not a property owner? Would it surprise you to know that there were many eminent free, property owning, business-running, influential women of color living in the 19th century prior to the emancipation proclamation? Do you think they waited helplessly for Abraham Lincoln to come and free them?

Take Marie Laveau, for instance:

http://www.voodoomuseum.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=18

She was not only free, she was born free! Both her parents were free, and her children were born free. She owned property. She ran businesses. She was wealthy and influential. Her power exceeded that of many white men and women of her time. But most importantly, she was an individual. Her life, like the life of any person during any period, was shaped by her own decisions, within the context of the society in which she lived. You or I placed into her shoes might not have fared as well.

I didn't write about Marie Laveau in Theodosia and the Pirates, but I did include Marie Villard as a supporting character. Marie Villard was not nearly as powerful or influential as Marie Laveau, but she, too, was a woman of color who was free, owned property and enjoyed a relationship of plaçage with a relatively important man: Pierre Laffite. Plaçage guaranteed Marie the ownership of a home of her own and the acknowledgement of her children. It was better than marriage. It left Marie free, while guaranteeing her financial and social security. And all because miscegenation laws did not allow for legal marriage between races.

This is one of the ironies of anarchy versus lawful living: oftentimes the contractual agreements arrived at by free people to get around a law that will not allow them to do something can be much more fair than the legal thing they weren't allowed to do. If Marie Villard had married Pierre, she might not have been able to own property and be financially independent. But because she could not marry him, she was able to negotiate what amounts to a very nice settlement that provided for herself and her children.

A white woman, either married to or having an affair with a white man, found herself under quite a different situation. Theodosia Burr did not own property. She did not run a business. She was highly educated, but in many ways helpless to determine her own fate.

But even the question of education is a complicated one. Before mandatory state-run education was instituted, just how much of an education anybody got was very much dependent on who was the head of the household and how highly that person valued education. Aaron Burr saw to it that his daughter, Theodosia, was better educated than many men of her day. He also educated his slaves.

But just in case you think this was a complete aberration on Burr's part, please consider that his own mother, Esther Edwards Burr, the daughter of the preacher Jonathan Edwards, was also highly educated. Her diary reveals a witty, fluent and expressive writer. If conservatism is to be equated with keeping women in the dark, why was Esther Edwards better educated than most young high school students today of either gender?

These are complex issues. Education, property ownership and  the right to vote do  not mean anything, unless they are seen in the context of the society in which they arise and the personal abilities of the individual who receives them. We are not all better off because of universal suffrage, universal education and the emancipation proclamation. Not all black people were slaves. Not all women were illiterate or lacking in property rights before women's lib. Not all gained by the change in society. Having free education available actually makes it harder for some to educate their children than it was before this "right" was granted to all.

There is an ebb and flow to all things in human affairs. We take two steps forward and three steps back. Things do not always get better, there is not just one side to every argument, and looking into the lives of many different people both in the past and the present will show you how much progress we really are making. That's why I think historical fiction is worth exploring.