Character Is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America

In late nineteenth-century America, a new type of book became commonplace in millions of homes across the country. Volumes sporting such titles as <i>The Way to Win</i> and <i>Onward to Fame and Fortune</i> promised to show young men how to succeed in life. But despite their upbeat titles, success manuals offered neither practical business advice nor a simple celebration of the American Dream. Instead, as Judy Hilkey reveals, they presented a dire picture of an uncertain new age, portraying life in the newly industrialized nation as a brutal struggle for survival, but arguing that adherence to old-fashioned virtues enabled any determined man to succeed. Hilkey offers a cultural history of success manuals and the industry that produced and marketed them. She examines the books appearance, iconography, and intended audience--primarily native-born, rural and small-town men of modest means and education--and explores the genres use of gendered language to equate manhood with success, femininity with failure. Ultimately, argues Hilkey, by articulating a worldview that helped legitimate the new social order to those most threatened by it, success manuals urged readers to accommodate themselves to the demands of life in the industrial age.