The imperfect science of getting rich

It's not impossible to enter the gates of prosperity if one wills it. Revisiting a bestseller by Wallace D Wattles on how to make money

Hardnews Special Delhi

It is tempting to make this declaration: All those who read this article would be able to get richer honestly by the end of this year. After all, Rhonda Byrne, author of the monumentally successful book The Secret, not only got extremely wealthy revisiting the formula succinctly elucidated by Wallace D Wattles 100 years ago in his tome The science of getting rich. Wallace may have presented this prescription as an a priori truth as he based it on the simplistic understanding of monastic religious thoughts, but we are in no position to vouch for its efficacy now. Maybe at the end of 2008, when we have something to show up for putting Wallace's and Byrne's ideas into practice, then we can truly tell the world that the mere idea of being rich can make one rich.

Till then, we thought, why not take along our readers on this journey? There will be comfort in numbers if we all sink together if this thesis proves like many other 'get quick rich' schemes that abound. On the contrary, if this advise works then surely these pages of Hardnews could work as the bible of the future.

Wallace D Wattles's book, which woke Rhonda Byrne from her stupor and depression and put her on the journey to get rich, is one of the early books in self-improvement and how to fortify an individual mentally. Wallace begins from this premise that “it is not possible to live a complete and successful life till one is rich”. He believes that a market-driven economy is so ordered that an individual's full talent can actualise only if he has the money. It is an individual's inalienable right to be rich. Celebrating the quest of an individual to acquire more, he says no one should be satisfied with little if he has in him the desire and the potential to own and earn more. He believes that there is a science in getting rich, which is as well-defined as algebra and geometry. This science, in his reckoning, can be mastered if people follow the “Certain Way”.

He is convinced that everyone can get rich and it is not confined to a city or an environment. At times there are two individuals who are in the same vocation; whereas one gets rich, the other proves to be a laggard. Wallace feels that the person who does not succeed is not doing things right or following the science in letter and spirit. He discounts suggestions that people who save money are rich and those who don't are poor. Free spenders, too, in his reckoning, are also wealthy.

There is a causality involved in getting rich. If one does certain things right then the outcome, like in any scientific experiment, would lead to certain positive outcomes. Everyone, Wallace believes, can get rich: the talented, ordinary, healthy, sick, poor, all can get rich if they follow his advise. Capital scarcity can be surmounted. He declares with finality, “You may be the poorest man on the continent, and be deeply in debt, you may have neither friends, influence, nor resources, but if you begin to do things this way, you must infallibly begin to get rich, for like causes must produce like effects. If you have no capital, you can get capital, if you are in the wrong business, you can get into the right business.”

This seems a grand promise: the fact is that opportunities do not come to people in our country, or in the poor countries of Latin America and Africa, especially to all those who are mired in back-breaking poverty and there is no promise of the next meal. What about the millions who are literally outside this growth-driven economy in rural and urban India, who are not even counted by the Sensex-stock market driven economy of getting rich?

Wallace's science of getting wealthy was honed in early 20th century in the US. But if it is a science then surely it should be applied in all environs. It should work in India, too, where governments and the elite have abdicated their responsibility towards the poor and the needy, and have just become entities to skew riches in favour of the rich and fat cats.

Wallace's “Certain Way” is Calvinist and works well when people are god-fearing, but determined to take control over their own destinies. Although many may find some of his ideas archaic, even juvenile, they make the readers feel good and reaffirms their ability to transcend obstacles. The advice is home-grown and simple: visualising what a person wants and then working towards achieving it. Such tactics are used by sports psychologists and other mind-benders to achieve certain fixed targets in a fixed or flexible paradigm. Thought is the only power that can produce tangible riches in the world. We fashion in reality what exists in our mind.

There is a long laundry list of what Wallace expects of his readers. His work is available on the internet under the title The science of getting rich. He gives examples of people getting what they want — from sewing machines to fancy houses.

A lot of people might scoff at such suggestions when thousands of people in India are asking the State and the elite to withdraw polices that pauperise and condemn them. Indeed, what about the millions who don't have education or resources or family background? How can they work the system? What about red-tapism and patronage and family inheritance?

What about the nexus of the government and political establishment with big business that marginalises, exploits and uproots people, using brute force if necessary, in this era of globalisation?

The people in Nandigram and Kalinganar will not agree with him, but Wallace would want people to go with the flow and join industry if agriculture is becoming unviable. He suggests that workers must mobilise to put pressure on the moneybags to force them to see reason. His advise is to shift to new sectors if they are not getting their due wages. These market forces work in India too. Ever wondered why Punjab farmers are forced to pay through their nose to keep labourers from Bihar? They fear that if they do not provide good wages, workers will move to Andhra Pradesh or even to South Africa. 

Many of the success stories that we have followed in our special issue probably had its origin in a small idea that germinated in the minds of these individuals. We have also chronicled the traditional wealth-creators in our society like the Marwaris, Gujaratis and Chettiars. We hope there is something in this package to renew our readers' faith in their own abilities and rethink the current model of economy at a time when the governments and the elite have left the vast masses to fend for themselves.

It's not necessary to agree with Wallace D Wattles, the idea is to have the will to push the threshold of optimism. Why shouldn't the poor get out of their poverty, genuine talent get its due or the collective reach greater heights of achievements, prosperity and ambition? And who else would know this better than Karl Marx, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

Endnote: We recommend getting rich this new year without cheating, robbing, stealing, frauding, lying compulsively, money-laundering, arms/drugs/human trafficking, harming friends and strangers, militarising, monopolising, sexual or other forms of violence, oppressing and brutalising people, exploiting workers and farmers, emotional blackmailing, mental torture, rejecting basic ethics and values, and routine prostitution of body and soul.