The Science of Getting Rich

Wattles states his terms in the first line of the preface: this book is pragmatical, not philosophical, a practical manual and not a treatise upon theories. It is for people whose most pressing need is money, who want to get rich first and philosophise afterward.

He asks the reader to take the opening statements on faith the way you would take a claim about electricity from an engineer, and then prove them by acting. That is either bracing or presumptuous depending on your temperament, and it is worth knowing before you start.

What is in the book

Seventeen short chapters, published in 1910 by the Elizabeth Towne Company. The titles are the argument: The Right to Be Rich, There Is a Science of Getting Rich, Is Opportunity Monopolized, Increasing Life, Gratitude, Thinking in the Certain Way, Acting in the Certain Way, Efficient Action, Getting Into the Right Business, The Impression of Increase, The Advancing Man.

The word he keeps returning to is certain. His claim is that there is a definite way of thinking and acting, that it works like a method rather than like luck, and that people who get results are following it whether they can name it or not.

His most useful distinction is creative against competitive. Competing assumes a fixed pile and someone losing. Creating assumes you can make something that was not there before. That changes what you do on an ordinary Tuesday, not just how you feel about it.

The instruction most readers skip is the one about acting in your present business. Do what you can, where you are, today, with what is already in front of you. He is emphatic that thinking in the certain way without acting in it produces nothing, which is the part that later prosperity writing quietly dropped.

And there is a fairness test running underneath: give more in use value than you take in cash, so every transaction leaves the other person better off. It is a surprisingly modern idea to find in 1910.

Wallace D. Wattles

Wattles wrote from inside the New Thought movement, which held that mind shapes circumstance, and he was more practical than most of his contemporaries in it. He cites Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel and Emerson in the preface for readers who want a philosophical footing, then tells everyone else to skip that and get on with it.

His book has had an outsized afterlife. Much of the modern literature on wealth and mindset traces back through it, usually with the demand for hard work removed.