OrisonSwett Marden (1850-1924)

Orison Swett Marden was a man with a vision.

He was convinced from an early age that ordinary men and women were capable of outstanding success - and he began writing inspirational material when still a student.

His view was that there is no guarantee of success except through one’s own efforts.

In his later years he summarised that particular message as “You will be amazed to find how, the moment you cut off all outside assistance, you will be reinforced by a new power which you never before dreamed you possessed. But it will never come to your aid until you stop leaning and depending - until you throw away all crutches and stand erect on your own feet.”

It was after many years of enormous financial success with his hotel businesses that he made a huge change in his life’s direction.

He finally began to publish his philosophy, and become a full time writer. This was at a time when any outsider would told him to forget the idea of being an author and simply concentrate on what he had already proved he could do well - run hotels.

Outside forces had caused him to lose practically his entire hotel empire - at one, a smallpox outbreak, in another resort, three years of drought - then a fire at the hotel where practically all his manuscripts had been stored. The building was devastated and his writings were destroyed.

Nevertheless, despite lucrative offers to run other peoples' hotels, he decided to pursue what he regarded as his life’s work. He was taking an enormous risk, there being no likelihood of significant financial reward. He wrote "Pushing to the Front: Success Under Difficulties" in 1894, then found an enthusiastic publisher (see below). With very favourable reviews, the book soon became a best seller through repeated printings.

The book related the achievements of men and women from humble backgrounds rising to high positions with honor and integrity.

His brief biographies told the life stories of great men from lowly beginnings, their frequent discouragements, repeated failures then eventual success. Marden’s own experience of becoming orphaned at a very young age and his childhood spent as a hired hand in farms and households where he received little kindness and barely enough food, gave his business achievements even greater status in the eyes of his many readers.

Letters of praise for the encouragement and inspiration the book had given people, convinced Marden that a like-minded magazine was needed.

He determined it should stand for “making a life as well as making a living”.

Success magazine was launched in 1897 “to reach the largest number of people to give them a new philosophy of life.” Marden was determined to tell people that success was possible for anyone who discovered the latent strength and power within themselves to “perform the impossible.”

He offered hope of prosperity to even those in the grip of crushing poverty with the words: “Every human being on this earth could be living in comfort if he knew the powers locked up within himself and were willing to work and make the best use of them.”

Marden’s biographer, Connolly, said of him:

The following text is taken from the publishers’ note at the start of a later edition of Marden’s first book ("Pushing to the Front") is provided in its complete, unabridged form to paid subscribers of Marden's Keys To Success).

“Pushing to the Front is a book with a wonderful history.

The author, Dr. Orison Swett Marden, has risen by his own exertions from poverty and obscurity to affluence and fame. An orphan, bound out from the age of seven to seventeen to work for his board, he suffered every privation — long hours, hard work, scanty care, no bed of any description, few pleasures, and practically no schooling — yet he afterwards worked his way through Boston University with the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Oratory, Master of Arts, Bachelor of Laws, and Doctor of Medicine, and at the time of graduation was earning upward of five thousand dollars a year by operating a fashionable students club.

Dr. Marden traces the inspiration that aroused him to triumph over almost unsurmountable obstacles to the reading of that famous book, “Self-Help,” by Samuel Smiles. (Self Help in it's unabridged form is also available at no extra cost when you subscribe to Marden's Keys To Success)

In recognition of what this and similar books did for him, he has devoted his life to encouraging and inspiring others in like manner in the battle for success.

In 1883, appeared the first edition of this work in a small volume containing but twenty-five chapters, the manuscript, representing years of patient study and labor, having been destroyed by fire, and re-written largely from memory.

The book received instant recognition as a unique contribution to what De Quincy has called the “literature of power,” and the story of its success since that time — the encomiums it has received, the good it has done, and the world-wide manifestations of its uplifting, ambition-stirring, civilization-building power — would fill an entire volume.

Kings, queens, presidents, statesmen, justices of the United States Supreme Court, and other judges, noted authors, educators, clergymen, philanthropists, merchants, scientists, and other eminent people in all parts of the world, have eulogized this book, and united in thanking the author for having given it to the world.

This book has been translated into over a score of foreign languages, and has been widely distributed in China, Japan, India, South America, and in most of the European countries. Both at home and abroad, notably in Japan, in Spain, in Germany, and in Italy, it is extensively used in the public schools, both as a text book, and as a supplementary reader, and its compulsory use — by regularly reading it aloud as a part of the daily school exercises in every high school — has been prominently advocated in several of these countries.

A number of the most prominent business houses in the United States have circulated this book extensively among their employees, in order to promote more loyal and efficient service.

Distinguished educators and statesmen in many parts of the world have commended it as a most powerful civilization builder.

The present enlarged and revised edition of “Pushing to the Front,” containing sixty-two chapters, or more than twice as many chapters as the original volume, which was its forerunner, is the outgrowth of the world-wide popularity of its predecessor, and of a corresponding demand for the extension of its wonderful helpfulness and inspiration.

No such universal popularity and wide-spread demand has arisen, perhaps, at any time, for any other work except the Scriptures, and next to the inspired volume, no other work than this has ever been the turning point in so many lives. Next to the Bible, this has been called the most valuable work ever placed in human hands.

At bottom “Pushing to the Front” is biographical. Carlyle says “Biography is the soul of history,” and Emerson, “There is, properly speaking, no history except biography.”

Dr. Marden has analyzed the world’s biography, and presents its essence in the compass of a single volume. He gives all that is significant in the life stories of the great leaders in the forefront of the world’s thought and action. “One anecdote of a man,” says Channing, “is worth a volume of biography.” In these pages there are thousands of such stirring and dramatic anecdotes, grand examples and object lessons from the lives of men and women who have brought things to pass under tremendous obstacles.

The pages sparkle with the most fascinating of all romances, the romances of achievement under difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant endings, of dramatic struggles and triumphs, of those turning points of the world’s history in which push and grit and principle have wrought civilization out of barbarism, and brought the world up from the level of its Hottentots to that of its Gladstones and its Lincolns.

Much emphasis is laid upon the fact that the cradles of the giants of the race have often been rocked by hardship and by poverty, that many of the world’s heroes have been persons of average ability who, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose, by the use of ordinary means, have seized common occasions and made them great.

By numerous examples it shows that the most renowned achievements have been triumphs of mediocrity, and that even invalids and cripples have overcome by perseverance seemingly insuperable difficulties.

The key notes of this work are encouragement, helpfulness, inspiration; its aim is to encourage every human being, regardless of age, color, or condition, who aspires to make the most of himself; to inspire the reader to act the Columbus to his own undiscovered possibilities; to urge him not to wait for opportunities, but, as Lincoln and countless others have done, to make them.

The author teaches that neither poverty nor humble birth, nor illness nor forbidding environment, nor any obstacles, can keep back grit and perseverance; that no limits can be placed on the career of one who has push and who has learned the alphabet; that no barriers can say to aspiring talent, “Thus far, and no farther“, that there can be no limit to the career of the youth who has the right stuff in him.

The book teaches the doctrine of the equality implied in the constitution of the United States, which opens the way, even to the President’s chair, for a Lincoln or a Garfield, or for any one who will pay the price of study and of struggle.

It teaches that there are bread and success for every youth under the American flag who has the grit and pluck to seize his opportunities; and that there was never a place in the world, nor a time in the world’s history, when opportunities for young men and women with brain, brawn, and grit were as numerous as they now are in America.

The author makes a special appeal to the aimless, the discouraged, the despondent. He seeks to raise to honorable exertion those who are drifting without aim; to awaken dormant ambition in all who have grown discouraged in the struggle for success; to encourage and stimulate the despondent; to help the sidetracked man or woman to get back upon the way to success again; and to give new courage to those of early life, or even past middle life, who regard themselves as failures, and show them how to extend their mental horizon, to become larger and better men and women, and to stand for something in their communities.

It aims to assist even the dull, the weak, the vacillating, who have so often been told by parents, teachers, and others of their deficiencies as to have lost confidence in themselves, by showing that many of the greatest and ablest men in the world were dull at school, and were regarded as failures until they learned just what vocations they were best fitted for, just what they ought to do in life, and. how to find their place and fill it.

It shows that many of the world’s leaders were not above the average of ability, but were only ordinary people, with extraordinary persistence and perseverance.

It teaches those who regard themselves as failures neither to brood over the past, nor idly dream of the future, but to seize the present moment and get their lesson from the passing hour.

The author’s aim may be summed up in the ideal of character building that he advocates. He enters a perpetual protest against dollar chasing and over-reaching greed. He shows that there is something more honorable in every occupation than mere money getting; and teaches that there is something infinitely better than making, a living, and that is the making of a life.

He shows how men may make millions and still be utter failures; that men who sacrifice their friendships, their families, their home life, their honor, health, reputation, everything, for dollars, are failures, however much money they may accumulate.

He also teaches that one may succeed without becoming a president or a millionaire; that the highest and best achievement is noble manhood; that the achievement of true integrity and well-rounded character is in itself success, and that, in truth, there is no other.

“Pushing to the Front” has to an extraordinary degree the quality of universality. It appeals to men and women as such, whatever their occupations; but, in especial, this book has proved helpful to self-made men and women, to parents, to clergymen, to educators, and to employers of labor.

To men who considered themselves badly handicapped or crippled by lack of early education, and to all who find themselves in middle life without liberal culture and without time to spend upon non-essentials, this book will prove a godsend. Especially to youths handicapped by lack of opportunity for education, and to aspiring students, will this work prove a storehouse of noble incentive, a treasury of precious sayings.

It touches the highest springs of aspiration and inspires to the highest ideals of living. Its pages are enriched with precious lessons that broaden the horizon of the home student, and enable him to secure a practical, helpful, and successful education in his odd moments and half holidays.

With this single book for instruction and inspiration, any man or woman may win to the farthest goal of ambition or desire.

To parents this book is as essential as saw or hammer to the carpenter, or trowel to the mason. It speaks for the father and mother, saying to their children just what they would wish to say, if their outlook on life, and their personal experiences, were sufficiently broad and varied.

It speaks, moreover, with an authority born of adequate knowledge and deep experience of life and of the things that make for happiness and morality.

This book represents a lifetime of thought, study, observation, and experience upon the part of a man who has a world-wide reputation as the most expert living specialist upon these matters. Hence its helpful advice, its encouragement, its solution of problems that, although ages old, are ever recurring, make it the most valuable single volume besides the Bible, that could be put into the hands of growing members of the family.

To clergymen this book is especially helpful in the preparation of sermons and lectures to the young. Many clergymen use it regularly in their services for young people, in Sunday School, and as a basis for courses of lectures.

Scores have commended “Pushing to the Front” from their pulpits and advised all to read it who aspire to do something and be somebody in the world.

Teachers also testify to the inspiration they have received from this publication, and many have written the author that they habitually read it to their pupils as a regular school exercise.

This book, in fact, is universally recognized by educators for its great value in. character building, and is more frequently used as a prize in schools and academies than perhaps any other volume. Prominent educators in many parts of the world have written the author that his writings have changed public sentiment and have been of material help in passing legislative bills for public institutions, schools, libraries, and the like, and in securing needed legislation along all educational lines.

To employers of labor this work has been of enormous benefit by arousing the ambition of employees and increasing their efficiency.

Tens of thousands of business men have purchased this work; thousands have ordered copies for friends, or for distribution among their employees; and a number of the largest employers of labor in the United States actively promote the reading of this book by their sales people and other employees as a means of increasing their enthusiasm, loyalty and efficiency.

The author has received letters from readers of “ Pushing to the Front” in all parts of the world, testifying that this book has aroused their ambition, changed their ideals and aims, spurred them to achievements which they had previously thought impossibilities, and telling how, as a consequence, they have been advanced in their positions, have earned larger salaries, have gained a better standing in their communities.

And according to their own testimony, this book has helped multitudes of poor boys and girls, who had never thought a liberal education possible, to pay their way through college; has sent back to school or college with renewed determination many thousands of youths who in moments of discouragement had abandoned their ambitions; and has kept scores of men and women from failure even after they had given up all hope.

Some of the letters received by Dr. Marden are most extraordinary.

A Chicago business man testifies that his firm was saved from bankruptcy by a copy of this volume which he chanced to pick up, after having decided that he could go no farther in business, but must make an assignment the next day. Something in what he read so aroused and encouraged him that he determined to make another trial, with the result that within one year the firm was again upon a paying basis,

A college president in India states that while a poor student, absolutely stranded in America and trying to work his way through an American school, he read a copy of this book, and under its inspiration and encouragement completed his course, returned to India, raised the money for the building of the college over which he now presides. This institution now has over 200 students, by whom this volume is regularly employed as a textbook.

A multitude of such examples could be cited, from every part of the world. A number of single chapters from this volume have been reprinted by private individuals and circulated by them by thousands, as a means of inspiration and uplift.

In short, the influence of its contents to arouse hope in the despondent, and show the way to those whose horizon is narrowed by circumstances, is testified to by all classes of people, in all walks of life.

“Pushing to the Front” is essentially a book of seed thoughts which, sown in the good ground of an inquiring mind, will spring up and yield an hundredfold harvest.

All values are relative. Food, clothing, shelter, and like necessities are essential to all, and at times a piano, a sewing machine, or some agricultural implement, or other article of luxury or of convenience may seem indispensable.

But as compared with a book the contents of which, mixed with the brains in an ordinary boy’s head, may lift him out of the hayfield and lodge him in the White House — or in some other position of affluence and influence — all ordinary values sink into insignificance.

Benjamin Franklin says, “To the reading of one good book I am indebted for all that I have become”; and Henry Clay, “To the fact that my mother in the midst of her poverty denied herself to furnish me with good books, do I attribute my success in life.”

The merchant prince, John Wanamaker, has said that he would rather have deprived himself as a boy, of one of his meals each day, if necessary, than go without this book. Certainly no American family in ordinary circumstances can afford not to possess a copy.

If you are deficient in education, if you are lacking in early advantages, if you are deficient in nerve, grit or courage, if you are timid, sensitive, lack initiative, this volume will help you to overcome these defects.

If you feel that your life has been a failure, that you have never found your place, that there is success for others, but not for you, if you have lost your grip on life, your confidence in yourself, in your fellow-man, you will find new encouragement and fresh inspiration in these pages.

To introduce this volume to an individual or family is one of the greatest philanthropies that any human being can accomplish. It is the torch that will kindle the smoking flax of ambition into a living flame, that will lead the seemingly helpless and hopeless into the paths of self-confidence and prosperity.”

I hope the publishers note, reprinted above, gives you an indication of how “Pushing to the Front” created such a sensation in America – and that was just the first of Marden’s many books.

Take the time now to see the wealth of inspirational material available at Marden's Keys to Success.

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