The Self-Made Nitwit

Speaking as a nonbusinessman and total failure whose name has mysteriously found its way onto the mailing lists of a whole gaggle of firms catering to the tycoon trade, I can only say I am amazed at how much help a businessman seems to need to succeed today. By help I mean gadgets; I’m not even counting all those books on how to become a millionaire over the next rainy weekend.

The remarkable thing about these gadgets is that just about every one of them appears to be based on the premise that our average big-business man is something of a tumbled gypsy, an absentminded and disorganized bungler who, unless everything is spelled out for him in block letters, is not even likely to get a haircut, let alone a million dollars. His only hope, to judge from the advertisements I’ve been reading, lies in such manufactured aids as:

a Pocket-Planner to remind him automatically “what to do next”;

a desk-top Memo Master (“ten reminders in view at all times”);

an automated Data/Board (“Correct costly mistakes ahead of time”);

a pocket Day-Timer that breaks down his business day into onetenth-hour units and “won’t let him forget!”

What a sorry image of native incompetence is reflected by such props. The great tycoon in his executive suite is suddenly revealed as a mistake-prone noddy who muddles through from nine to five in onetenth-hour units, waiting to be told automatically what to do next and then probably forgetting to do it. That such a flibbertigibbet can get a credit rating hardly seems possible, but he must, because still another advertised help is a Credit Card Organizer that holds and displays twenty-four credit cards. Lacking such an organizer, our tycoon no doubt carries all his credit cards around loose in a paper bag and watches helplessly as they blow away in the first high wind.

If all of these helps really are necessary, then what has become of the “self-made man”?

Time was — or so I like to think — when all one needed to succeed was a ruthless streak. The tycoon of great-grandfather’s day simply foreclosed on his friends, waved them off to the poorhouse, then put on a fresh collar and dropped in at Delmonico’s to make some new friends. Whatever he may have lacked in lovable traits, he more than made up for in self-reliance. Plans for “what to do next” fairly sprouted under his beaver hat, and he could steal an entire transcontinental railroad or throw Wall Street into panic without the help of a single pocket-reminder system. Efficiency — as with penmanship and other petty details — was left to frightened, underpaid clerks, who perched on high stools and nibbled quill pens while the tycoon who hired them was out getting things done.

This was a nabob worth tugging one’s forelock at, and I hate to find out now that his breed has been replaced by a weakened strain in constant need of jacking up through patented planning aids. I am quite resigned to the fact that my own income always falls well below the national average, but I’d prefer to think that the bulk of the wealth goes to deserving cases who will squander it on gold-headed canes rather than on glorified memo pads.

What probably disturbs me most about these helpful gadgets for businessmen is their sickening emphasis on efficiency. Being efficient is all very well for people like myself who have nothing better to do with their time. Even so, I wonder if it is only my lack of efficiency-inducing gadgets which stands between me and a bank account.

Suppose I were to invest in some automated device to plan my workdays; might I not still find myself nodding and dozing all afternoon following a 100-proof lunch?

If I did purchase a Credit Card Organizer, is there any reason to assume that charge-account managers would rush to fill it for me?

What if I sent off for a wafer-thin, morocco-grained pocket secretary; would it alter my present circumstances? I doubt it. Once I was given a vest-pocket diary, but before I got around to writing down anything I lost it — along with my vest.

There is no place in big business for efficiency. We live in a disorganized world, and any attempt at organizing our confusion through artificial aids is the height of folly. Business thrives on complete disorganization. If it doesn’t, then how did my name get on those businessmen’s mailing lists in the first place?