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In some cases, the compilation of cash can only be understood as an intellectual challenge. Take rich Rich Dennis, 28, who is unmarried, lives with his parents in a modest Southside Chicago bungalow and is one of the world's smartest commodity traders. He has made close to $10 million. If you want to get rich, he advises, "you can't have the usual attitude toward money. If you think of every dollar you lose on the commodities market as a bucket of coal you'll have to shovel some day, then you're bound to be a bad trader." A onetime philosophy student at De Paul University, Dennis has observed: "People in my business have a tendency to selfdestruct. I think it's far more important to know what Freud thinks about death wishes than what Milton Friedman thinks about deficit spending."
Few of the rapid self-enrichers seem to be motivated by greed. It seems more likely that they recognize "money, pur et simple," in Bagehot's phrase, as the shortest, speediest route to public recognition, self-esteem and power—or, simply, security in a threatening world.
The dominant personality trait is the willingness to gamble. Ballerina Assoluta Natalia Makarova, who now makes about $300,000 a year from her dancing, took a great risk in defecting from the Kirov Ballet to perform in the alien world of Western ballet. But then Natasha, 36, has always been supremely confident of her talent. Recalling an old Russian proverb, she observes: "It is bad soldier who does not expect to be general."
Avers Real Estate Tycoon Byers: "I could lose my millions tomorrow and I wouldn't care, because I could make it all back in six months. I do just what failures are afraid to do." Coal King Burford puts the probability theory another way: "Failure does not count. If you accept this, you'll be successful. It's what I call the Ty Cobb theory of success. In the same year that Cobb set the record for the number of bases stolen, he also had a lot of failures. There were ten or twelve men who had better percentages of success. What causes most people to fail is that after one failure they just stop trying."
Kipling, Samuel Smiles, Horatio Alger, Dr. Pangloss, J. Paul Getty, John D. Rockefeller, the Carnegies (Andrew and Dale) and countless other evangelists of true grit have all in their time promoted the same if-at-first-you-don't-succeed philosophy for nearly a century. From the evidence, there was probably never a time or place in which their lessons were more applicable or more richly rewarded than they are in the U.S. today. Heigh ho!