Both companies created a line of high quality motivational materials that business owners could subscribe to (new posters and cards would arrive each month) and hang up and hand out in the workplace. were at the forefront of this burgeoning motivation business. Two (now defunct) printing companies - Parker-Holladay Company and Mather & Co. Business owners hoped that these posters and cards would help boost productivity and morale and inculcate uneducated and immigrant workers with the virile values needed to thrive in the world of business. There were even trading cards with similar “go get-em” language and inspirational quotes that were handed out to employees like baseball cards. During this time, businesses began hanging beautifully illustrated posters with the same slogans that authors like Orison Swett Marden shared with readers a decade earlier. Pithy maxims were popular (for example, Henry Ford was fond of saying, “Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice”), and it was felt that constructive encouragement and motivational quotes could help folks from any walk of life improve themselves. ![]() It was a time of idealism and optimism, and people were bullish both about the future of the economy and people’s ability to change their behavior and develop their character. ![]() This new, entrepreneurial definition of manhood reached a peak in the decade before the Great Depression. This brings us to these vintage motivational posters… Marden’s works redefined manhood in terms of character traits that led to personal success, and his books are filled with essays encouraging men to develop their manhood fully, and to test that manhood by hustling their way to the top. The most influential author to come out of this period was Orison Swett Marden who published 19 books with steely titles like Pushing to the Front, Architects of Fate, and The Man You Long to Be (We actually included a few excerpts from Marden’s books in our Manvotionals anthology). Helping men navigate this new economy and new definition of manhood were hundreds of self-help books and pamphlets that offered advice on how to be successful in life and in business. Men have always competed with each other for status, and the new way to the top was to climb the business ladder - to become a Titan of Industry and call your own shots. “Harder” skills became less important than personal qualities like thrift, hard work, persistence, and reliability. But to grasp these opportunities required a new set of skills - while their fathers had wrestled with external obstacles in struggling to tame the land, young men looked inward and sought to master themselves. Opportunities were waiting in new businesses and in new places far from home. Young men who wanted to be a success could no longer hang around the family farm and wait to inherit a piece of land from their fathers or apprentice at the village tannery before opening their own shop. This was when the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” ideal really took root in the country. ![]() The Self-Made Man archetype of manliness represented a profound change in how Americans saw manhood. Instead of the Genteel Patriarch or Heroic Artisan archetype defining manhood in America, a new archetype took center stage during this time of rapid change: the Self-Made Man. But as factories and industrial farming put small artisans and independent farmers out of business, men began leaving the family farm and shop in search for work in the burgeoning urban centers of America. As we discussed in our series on the Archetypes of American Manliness, for most of America’s early history, manhood was rooted in community and family ties, land ownership, and producerism. Not only that, but motivational posters from the first few decades of the 20th century provide a window into America’s changing idea of manhood.ĭuring the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rapid industrialization in the West transformed all aspects of life, including our concept of manliness. But back in your grandpa’s day, they were an art form. Today’s business motivational posters - symbolized most prominently by “ Successories” - are the butt of many a joke.
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