“I was thinking the other day what a great responsibility the newspapers have to assume for the matter they publish,” he said. “There is an ethical study which they owe to the community which I sometimes feel they regard too lightly. These stories about the extent of my wealth, now. They have a very bad effect upon a class of people with whom it is becoming increasingly difficult to deal. Such stories arouse their envy and their hatred, not against the individual so much as against organized society (capitalism). A man does what he can to help his fellow man; but it often happens that all the good he does may be jeopardized by what I hope is thoughtless crisicism by the press.“

[…]

“It is the general trend of affairs which I have in mind. Attempts are constantly being made to array the classes against each other, and the publication of newspapers articles dwelling on the wealth of some met at a time when it is unfortunately true that there is want and suffering in the world tremendously add to the discontent...”

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He continued in another conversation with the same newspaper reporter, with an even more lucid take:

“I can’t emphasize too strongly the harm that is done by the publication of these stories about my wealth,” he said. “They have a tendency to awaken passions which will not do us any good. Newspapers speak of the crime of being rich. It would be a crime if one amassed wealth merely for the sake of its possession, and made use of it for purely selfish purposes. Stop and think,“ he urged, “that wealth is frequently the unavoidable consequence of earnest, unselfish effort.”

“And where wealth comes through the application of a man’s talents along lines which benefits world, and he uses that wealth in turn according to his best judgment for the good of his fellow man, how unjust, how unwise it is to criticize him.”

He thought a while, and then said:

“I make bold to assert that if industrial disturbance on a wide scale ever comes to our country, it will be largely due to these constant, ill-considered attacks upon men whose only crime has been to build up the big industries of the nation and make possible its tremendous industrial development.”

“I am at a loss to account for this tendency. People do not seem to understand that a man can make a fortune by perfectly honest and praiseworthy methods. The hue and cry has been raised against the great industrial combinations, the trusts so-called. I deny emphatical. Iy that opportunity has been restricted or individual effort stilled by reason of the growth of the trusts. On the contrary, they have opened wider avenues and greater opportunities to young men than those any other generation ever enjoyed.”

It is hard to imagine Napoleon as a business man, but I have thought that if he had applied himself to commerce and industry he would have been the greatest business man the world had ever known. My, what a genius for organization! He also had what I have always regarded as a prime necessity for large success in any enterprise - that is a thorough understanding of men and ability to inspire in them confidence in him and what is of equal importance, confidence in themselves. See the men he picked as Marshalls, and the heights to which they rose under his inspiration and leadership.

It is by such traits as these, that men get the world of the world done. It is all a battlefield. Bonaparte, without the able marshals he had about him, would not have been the master of his age. he went into a battle with the knowledge that his marshals could be depended on - that in a given situation they could be relied upon do to the necessary thing. Their devotion to him, coupled with their enthusiasm - that’s another great attribute - and the qualities which his influence upon them brought out, won the fight.

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Another thing about Napoleon was his virility - his humanity. I mean humanity in the broad sense, of course. He was a human being, and virile because he came direct from the ranks of the people. There was none of the stagnant blood of nobility or royalty in his veins. There’s where he had the advantage over the the monarchs of Europe to begin with. He could think quicker and along more individual and original lines than any of them. And being from the people, he was in close touch with the people.

The men with whom he had to combat didn’t understand either him, or the people and it is always hard to successful control what you don’t understand. Napoleon didn’t play the game, as the saying goes, as they understood it. And then, coming direct from the people he had the sympathy; he appealed to their imagination; Europe had not yet been education to the fact that it could get along without any kings at all, and the French people, I believe, reasoned that if they have to have king to rule them, it was better to have a king of their own kind and from their own ranks, than from the breed which had ruled them for a thousand years.

In an age when the people had been but recently released from slavery and had not acquired the art of governing themselves, leaders of their own kind were few, and that made it easier for Napoleon to rise to the heights which he attained. A Napoleon would be impossible in our day. Democracy has educated us away from such a thing. There are too many able and ambitious rivals to hold in check one who aimed too high.

Source: William Hoster, who worked for The New York American paper, was assigned to follow John D. Rockefeller on a trip to France and write a story called “how the richest man in the world plays.” The transcript of their conversations, as reported by Hoster, was send to William Inglis, who was writing a biography on John D. Rockefeller.

I thought of calling the podcast The Outsiders, but wanted to save that name for Will, who has spent much time studying outliers.

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