The Hot New Rich
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, And how one ought never to think of one's self, And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking.
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! How pleasant it is to have money.
--Arthur Hugh Clough, 1850
Most people dream that they will some day, somehow, strike it rich. They share a pleasurable and innocuous fantasy, akin to pubertal pinings or the hankering of grown men--and women--to sail around the world, learn the Hustle or inhabit the White House. The reality of American life in 1977 might appear to make daydreams of wealth more chimerical than ever in the nation's history. Indeed, in an age of brutal taxation, constricted opportunity and entangling laws, most dreamers of wealth concede that Mars or Margaux might be more attainable than megabucks.
Nonetheless, this remains the Age of the Possible. The wealthy are not an endangered species. It is hard to believe, but true, that more Americans today are making fortunes than ever before. Sharing the riches, 1,149 taxpayers had annual incomes of $1 million or more in 1975--nearly twice as many as in 1970. The number of individuals in the U.S. with a net worth of $ 1 million or more has soared almost fourfold in the past 15 years: from 54,000 in 1962 to nearly 200,000 today--although these figures are somewhat deceptive, since anyone who was worth $1 million in 1962 would need $1.92 million to be as well off today. As Economist Robert Heilbroner wrote in The Quest for Wealth, " 'Rich! I am rich!' is an exultant cry we shall hear down the ages."
The exultant ones in the U.S. today are those who through talent, luck, prescience and drive have amassed fortunes in the past few years, or are about to. They are an uncommonly interesting lot, whose lives and habits illuminate what achievement means today in the society that invented the success ethic. Regardless of the route, those who are making it to the top seem to share a number of personality traits. As a group, the hot new rich work extraordinarily hard. They are more willing to take risks than the average citizen. Many are loners. And, notes Journalist Arthur Louis, who has been FORTUNE'S fortune watcher for the past decade, "none of the self-made rich I've ever met seemed to be stupid and just lucky."
Remarkably few of the new rich live with great ostentation. Most have no perceptible hubris. They do not notably bid for Rembrandts, breed horses or skipper their own one-tonners in the Bermuda race (all of which tend to be the pursuits of old wealth). By and large, they are not socialites. None of the dozens of new plutocrats interviewed by TIME is a gourmet, a connoisseur, a collector of fine furniture, old wine or (for the most part) new lovers--though they do tend to like fancy cars. Their relative austerity suggests not only that they are very busy--which they are--but also that the stimuli and rewards of new wealth lie less in the realization of flamboyant fantasies than in professional prestige and financial security (not a few of TIME'S subjects grew up in poverty). Many simply bank their booty.
Not a few of the overnight opulent are deeply concerned that their new eminence will cost them their friends. They worry a lot about terrorists, IRS investigators, kidnapers and privacy. Then, too, a certain pelf-consciousness envelops swift enrichment. Some of the very uncomfortable cling almost defiantly to old clothes, old habitats, old autos--the insecurity blankets of their past.
Of course, wealth is relative. As the great John Jacob Astor acerbly observed, "A man who has a million dollars is as well off as if he were rich." Moreover, any definition of wealth must take into account the field in which it is earned and the expectations of the aspirant. For example, a novelist or a ballet dancer, a realtor, baker or candymaker can hardly expect to garner the green that grows for conglomorateurs or discoverers of new oil. For the former, wealth--in however many digits--can mean simply the absentia of angst, the farewell forever to dunners, lien servers, repossessors, plaintive dentists, minatory mailgrams from utilities and arsenical missives from the Diners Club. That, pace Astor, is wealth enow.
The jester, juggler or minstrel may earn more today than the merchant, soldier or king. This shift has been vastly enhanced in the past decade by the great Golconda of TV. Its immediate beneficiaries are, of course, the performers --actors, singers, newscasters and athletes, all of whom can make more money by plugging wares than they can in their primary roles. More recently, whole garrets of writers have joined the plutocracy as a result of the convoluted inter-twinings of screen and publishing, whereby books become films that generate huge paperback sales and are transmogrified into prime-time TV series that in turn make the original books runaway hits. Many of the newly minted millions go not to prima-facie talent but to entrepreneurs, managers, agents and packagers (see box).
How to win megabucks?
In a society less concerned with making things than making money, few inventors or new manufacturers are pulling in fortunes. The fast payoffs in the past few years have gone mostly to individuals in four general, quite arbitrary and sometimes overlapping categories: the gifted, the spotters, the diligent and the promoters. Profiles in making it and spending it in each group:
The Gifted
Favored of face or figure, endowed perhaps with surprising wit or superb hand-eye coordination, lucky in time or place, the gifted are destiny's children, whose achievements and rewards seem as inevitable as they are magical.
Superbug. Steve Cauthen is the kind of folk hero who might have been invented by television. Son of a blacksmith from tiny Walton, Ky., born during Kentucky Derby week, he grew up with the dream of becoming a great jockey. Since May 1, 1976, when he turned 16 and could compete in the big time as an apprentice jockey ("bug" in racing parlance), the kid with the huge hands and rock-solid seat has ridden 217 winners, 187 seconds and 156 thirds for a total of some $3 million in prize money --of which he kept 10%. Steve would have booted home even more booty had he not taken a bad spill at Belmont last month. Recovering from a concussion and a broken rib, wrist and three fingers, he expects to be back in the saddle by mid-July.
Winsome, unspoiled and articulate, the 5-ft. 1-in., 95-lb. jockey is on the verge of making megabucks. CBS plans a half-hour show on A Day in the Life of Steve Cauthen. He has signed a contract with the International Management Group, which packages such superstars as John Havlicek and Arnold Palmer. Major advertisers, including cereal companies, airlines, men's cosmetics manufacturers and automakers are besieging him to appear in commercials for their products. In the works are a biography (The Kid), Cauthen T shirts, bath towels and posters. Steve has also made a record of country and bubble-gum songs, some of which he wrote.
Says Michael Halstead, who is Cauthen's new manager at I.M.G.: "Racing is the biggest spectator sport in the world after soccer. Even in areas where there are no race tracks, millions of people have seen Steve on TV. Clearly, he can make money commensurate with the amounts that TV celebrities earn. Sports figures are the Humphrey Bogarts and Clark Gables of today." Superbug has bought himself a new red Mercury and gave his parents a new couch for Christmas, but his earnings have had little effect on his way of life. "Sure, I think money is important," says Steve. "But as for its being the main thing in my life, it is not."
Outback Odyssey. Friday the 13th is Colleen McCullough's lucky day. On Friday, June 13, 1975, she started work on her second novel, The Thorn Birds, which was officially published in hardcover by Harper & Row on Friday, May 13, and has been ascending the bestseller list for a month. Another lucky Friday was last Feb. 25, when she learned that the paperback rights to her book had been sold in Manhattan for $1.9 million, a publishing record. With her earnings from hard-cover sales, magazine serializations, nine foreign-language editions, plus a TV "maxi-series," "Col" McCullough, 39, will earn at least $5 million in 1977.
The novel, set in McCullough's native Australia, follows three generations of an Outback family through two continents, 54 years and 280,000 words. A riveting evocation of time, place and character, it was pounded out at night while the author worked by day in the Yale University neurology lab.
McCullough was virtually unknown when her Down Under saga hit pay dirt. Says she: "At first I was terribly scared and depressed. I could see right away that it would mean a whole upheaval of my life. I never owned a piece of furniture before; I always lived in furnished rooms. Now I'll have to build a house." Tough. "There's not much point in diamonds and furs--I haven't got the face or figure," adds the Junoesque (200-lb.) Col, who has long, flaming red hair, a vivacious, laughing face. She adds: "I've quit expecting anything ordinary to happen to me."
Platinum Spinner. One hit LP has made Peter Frampton, 26, a multimillionaire in a mere 18 months. Frampton Comes Alive! has sold 11 million copies, earning the transplanted British rock star $6.4 million; in addition, he grossed $3.5 million in S.R.O. concerts across the U.S. last year. It took the wispy (5 ft. 7 in., 120 lbs.) guitarist ten hard years of experimentation and road tours before he hit platinum. Says he: "I would never have believed 18 months ago that I'd be driving around in limos, own a Rolls and live this way."
Living this way, for the tax exile, also means pads in Beverly Hills and Long Island, as well as a 53-acre estate in New York's Westchester County. Life hasn't changed that much, he insists: "I still watch a lot of TV and play with the dogs." Frampton," whose melodic soft-rock Frampton Comes Alive! won him Rolling Stone's 1976 "Artist of the Year" award, has a newly released album I'm in You and will embark next week on a four-month tour. He is also starring in a movie version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, based on the Beatles' album. "I've earned every penny of the money," he maintains. "I guess I'm just a capitalist at heart."
The Spotters
Call them seers, diviners, futurists or just plain heads-up smart. The spotters are entrepreneurs of fast mind and slim purse who have, early on, discerned a social trend, a cultural drift or an economic imperative-- and made it from noodle to boodle.
King Pong. Nolan Bushnell, 34, saw a future in video computer games. In 1976 his four-year-old company, Atari Inc., the maker of Pong and other electronic entertainments, was sold to Warner Communications Inc. for $28 million; Bushnell remains chairman of the Sunnyvale, Calif., company with a six-figure salary.
Bushnell started Atari in 1972, when he was 27; the firm was financed by Bushnell and a partner with $500. By the end of 1973 the company's sales were $11 million; they had reached $36 million by 1975.
The 6-ft. 4-in., 200-lb. tycoon says of his success: "Not many people have the obscure combination of engineering education, knowledge of video syntheses, and a background of work in an amusement park. I do. Add to that courses in economics at college and a sense of how the financial system works, and you get success." In his case, that has meant a 15-acre estate atop San Francisco Bay, a 41-ft. sailboat named, of course, Pong, a Lake Tahoe ski cabin and a Mercedes 450 SL. A former Mormon who has been divorced since 1973, Bushnell admits to "liking girls." Says he: "I find I have phone numbers in a lot of cities." King Pong hopes ultimately to work for the Government in such areas as energy and law.
Superstripper. Then there is the saga of Frank Burford, who as recently as 1973 was making $19,000 a year. In 1976 his income was more than $4 million. He became a superstripper--of coal. A former Emory University law professor, Burford returned home to West Virginia in 1967 to liquidate his ailing father's highway-construction business. Instead, he and a cousin revved up the company, branched into trucking and started hauling coal. The partners took over a money-losing coal company and started acquiring leases on vast carboniferous acreage. When coal prices soared in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Burford struck it rich. He struck it even richer last fall by selling his biggest holdings for $10 million, retaining royalty rights that could net him and his partner another $10 million. The sad thing, says Burford, is that "nobody else can do what I did. The regulatory facts of life have made it impossible." To get a strip-mining permit in 1972, for example, cost only $5,000 or so; today it takes $50,000 and up.
Burford, now 47, still lives with his wife Fern in a subdivision house in Elkins, W. Va., but is planning a six-bedroom chalet at Snowshoe, a big new ski resort near by. He owns that too.
Street Smart. Spotting stock market trends takes a special kind of clairvoyance. Marc Howard is, at 36, one of the most successful investors on Wall Street. Though the past three years have been lean and mean for many on the Street, Howard in that time has taken home millions. His secret: "I'm concerned more with the market's perception of a stock than with the reality of the stock itself. I can't afford to buy a stock today because I think it's going to have great earnings in 1982. I buy on the basis of what other people are going to think of that stock in six months."
Howard runs a private investment portfolio--known as "a hedge fund"-that has earned more than 1,000% on its original investment in 1969. His firm's current assets: $20 million plus. Anyone who gave Howard $10,000 to invest then would have upwards of $100,000 today. But then, who would have trusted Marc Howard to handle a $2 bet? A college dropout who had held 25 different jobs between 1962 and 1969, he started Howard Associates on begged and borrowed money in a one-bedroom apartment in Flatbush. Not until 1973 did he feel that he could afford a downtown office and staff. He is behind his desk by 8 o'clock most mornings, burrowing through 4-ft. piles of research reports. "I've been out for lunch once in the last five years," he laments.
Since he made his Marc, Howard has made two significant changes in his lifestyle. "The first one is that I can walk into the office looking like this," he says, waving at his jeans, the American Indian jewelry hanging from his neck, and the Coyote T shirt bought at the Second Annual Hookers' Ball in Manhattan this year. The other major change: "The freedom to do things without regard to what they cost." The things include frequent trips abroad with his wife Monique, a twelve-cylinder Jaguar and a new-found taste for Laphroaig, a Scotch malt whisky that sells for $11 a fifth. "Five years ago," he says, "I didn't know what this stuff was."
The Diligent
Hard work and its just rewards are part of the American dream, a part that for some still pays off with a ringading jackpot. The diligent rich are those who have clearly known what they wanted to be and could do--and have risen from plod to plutocracy.
Class Distinction. Consider the lustrous case history of Fred Furth, 43. He was a relatively unheralded young San Francisco attorney in 1967 when he realized the potential rewards of a massive class-action antitrust suit. The case he ultimately fought involved more than 5,000 plaintiffs who dealt in and used wallboards; the defendants, charged with price fixing, were seven manufacturers of gypsum products. Furth spent 6 1/2 years and 5,677 hours on the case. In the final settlement, which awarded $82.9 million to the plaintiffs, Furth collected $4.2 million in legal fees.
Reared in poverty in a northern Illinois steel town, Furth now has a booming law firm (twelve attorneys, 28 other employees) and is, as he puts it, "someone to reckon with." One of the few new-rich big spenders, he boasts a maroon Rolls-Royce, a gold-plated sink and faucets in his office, a $400,000, 15-room mansion in the exclusive Sea Cliff section of San Francisco, and a 522-acre cattle ranch in Sonoma County--and he pilots his own Beechcraft Bonanza A36 plane. More important, he says, wealth "has given me the control over my life I always wanted."
Short-Order Cook. Dr. Robin Cook, 36, has never been quite sure what he wanted to do, and he still isn't. Archaeology once interested him, but he decided "there weren't many buried cities left." A proficient diver, skier and oil painter, he went from medical school into the U.S. Navy. On submarine duty, Lieut. Commander Cook staved off boredom by teaching his shipmates art history--and writing a novel. The Year of the Intern sold fairly well (250,000 copies) when it was published in 1972, and Cook was hooked. Three years later, he undertook six months of grinding through 100 bestsellers to decide what would "capture the interest of the largest group of people."
The answer: a medical-mystery-thriller. Cook spent six weeks writing Coma. Published April 26, it is the June Literary Guild Selection, has been on the bestseller list for three weeks, and is now being made into a movie. Advances from hardcover, paperback and movie deals have topped the million-dollar mark. A highly regarded ophthalmological surgeon with a medical income of $75,000, Bachelor Cook has acquired a house on Beacon Hill, which he has restored himself, a 1970 Mercedes 280 SE convertible, which he bought as "a classic," and a new Volkswagen Scirocco. He would like to buy "some real art" and own a restaurant ("so I'll have some place to eat"). And, the author confesses hesitantly (he is a modest fellow), "some day I would like to be ambassador to France."
The Red Baron. Joe Morgan exudes confidence. He always has. At 33, he is the best player in baseball. The National League's Most Valuable Player for two straight years, Morgan says proudly: "I want people to expect a lot of Joe Morgan. Success scares some people. Me, I have to have it." The Cincinnati Reds' cocky second baseman has a three-year contract with the club that will net him nearly $1.5 million, but he could add substantially to his earnings by endorsing more products (he stars in several TV commercials) and making personal appearances. However, he maintains, "I'm a private guy. The less I do after the World Series, the more privacy I have and the more time to spend with my family."
Little Joe, as he has been called since high school days in Oakland (he is 5 ft. 7 in., 162 lbs.), pilots a blue-and-green 1977 Cadillac these days and is building a four-bedroom house on 2.6 acres above San Francisco Bay. "But I haven't changed," he insists. "I'm still concerned about doing well. I have a chance for a batting title this year. It keeps me pushing." Joe, who has been married for ten years to his high school sweetheart, says that he would marry her again tomorrow. He takes college courses in physical education when he is not hitting home runs and stealing bases, and plans to be a junior-college baseball coach when he retires from the game. Morgan vows: "I'll never be a fat cat. I'll always do constructive things." He feels not the slightest twinge of guilt about making more money than the President. "When people ask me that," he says, paraphrasing a famed riposte by Babe Ruth, "my answer is: 'Can the President hit Tom Seaver?' "
The Promoters
Beyond sheer diligence and hard work, there is a particular American tradition of salesmanship. The genre lives on among those hyperkinetic promoters who have latched or lucked onto a product of no special utility or promise and hustled the hell out of it.
Cookie Pusher. Chocolate chip cookies are not exactly new: they date back to colonial times, when they were known as tollhouse cookies. It took Cookie Pusher Wally Amos, 40, to put chic into chips.
Amos, who was the first black talent agent to be hired by William Morris, fell upon hard times in Los Angeles and rose again on his Aunt Delia's recipe for guess-what. Thanks to salivating promotion, he is baking six tons of his Famous Amos cookies each week at a factory in Nutley, N.J., and his original shop on Sunset Boulevard; the chewy entremets are sold in bon ton stores from Bloomingdale's to Neiman-Marcus, J.L. Hudson's to Robinson's.
Amos got his backing from show biz cookie freaks, notably Marvin Gaye and Jeff Wald and his wife Helen Reddy, who jointly put up $11,000. Says Wald: "We invested in it for love, but as it turns out, it will probably be a better investment than any we ever made. It could be worth a few million in a couple of years." Amos is in the chips (his two-year-old company grosses more than $1 million a year), but he frets incessantly about costs (pecans and chocolate have more than doubled in price in two years). "I'm a hero in Los Angeles," he complains, "but back in Nutley I'm going nuts paying for nuts."
The Ultimate Gumball. Chewing gum is no novelty, either. Only Alan Silverstone, 35, has made it so. He sees himself as a real-life Willie Wonka. He even dresses the part of the fictional candymaker, donning velvet tuxedo, ruffled shirt, red velvet bow tie, top hat and cane. It seems a bizarre role for a onetime Wall Street investment banker with degrees in law, business administration and economics. But Uncle Al, the Kiddies' Pal, as he thinks of himself, is not just living out a childhood fantasy. The owner of Oakland's U.S. Chewing Gum Manufacturing Co. since 1974, he pumps gum like Fuller pumped brushes. "We'll do about $6 million this year," he says happily. "About 1.5 billion gumballs." Early in 1976 Uncle Al became a millionaire. He has jawbreaking novelties such as a nonmelting ice cream cone in 28 flavors, the solid-chicle Pterodactyl Egg ("You sit on it for 800 days nonstop"), Purple Poppers, Puckeroos, Powies and, most recently, Fu Man Chews, which are chewable Chinese checkers. Bachelor Silverstone says, "My life hasn't changed very much, but I'm enjoying it more all the time."
Vietnamization. Rick Byers, 28, is a supersalesman who stumbled into real estate. He makes it all sound simple: "All there is to real estate is running your mouth a bit, knocking on doors and asking people if they want to sell their house. I could take any wino off Fifth and Main and make him a millionaire salesman." By running, knocking, asking and recruiting, Byers has acquired more than $5 million worth of property in Southern California's Orange County, which boasts some of the nation's highest-priced real estate.
A Viet Nam veteran who employs 30 Vietvets as salesmen, Byers in the past four years has sold more houses than any other real estate agent in the county. A bachelor, he inhabits some fancy real estate of his own in Newport Beach and several days a month jets off to wherever sun or snow may beckon. Byers' secret has been to specialize in selling fellow veterans relatively inexpensive homes with VA-guaranteed loans. Says he: "We sell an average of 100 houses a month in the $60,000-and-below market. We make money on volume, not high-priced individual units. We're kind of like McDonald's."
And how are the newly rich different --from their previous selves, from their visions of opulence, from their once and future friends? Not a great deal.
Despite her $1 million-a-year contract with ABC-TV, Barbara Walters still lives in the midtown Manhattan apartment that she has occupied for 15 years. "You'd think she'd buy a house in the country," says one close friend. "But no, she barely has time for weekends."
Or consider Henry Kissinger. Understandably, Citizen K's style has changed perceptibly from that of the shuttle diplomat. To be sure, he jets by choice these days to Mexico rather than the Middle East, and has trimmed the embonpoint. Nonetheless, says an old Washington pal, "Henry's still doing the same things--it's just that he's paying for most of them now."
He can afford to: Author K's revenues from his memoirs are expected to reach the $5 million mark, to which his five-year contract with NBC may add another $1.5 million. Indeed, Henry the K seems to be holding down half the top jobs in the country. He has joined Chase Manhattan's board of international consultants, is booked for several "substantially paid" speaking engagements later this year, and will take a one-year appointment as professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University.
For others megamoola can be, literally, an embarras de richesse. Novelist Stephen King, 29, who in three years and three books (Carrie, Salem's Lot and his latest, The Shining) has deposited $2 million in advances, says plaintively: "Somebody ought to give a correspondence course on what to do with sudden wealth." King wants to take tennis lessons, but is "afraid of looking nouveau riche."
Other megabuckers have not had breathing space to adjust to the reality of wealth. Laments Harriet Selwyn, 46, who built her California fashion firm Fragments into a million-a-year enterprise last year (TIME, Feb. 21): "One really needs two lives. One to get to the top. The other to enjoy it all."
For Farrah Fawcett-Majors, fame and fortune at 30 means that she and Husband Lee Majors (Six Million Dollar Man) can hardly poke their heads out of their big Bel Air home without being mobbed. Says the Texas-born prima inter pares star of TV's Charlie's Angels: "The spontaneity is gone. We used to be able to fly to Las Vegas for a night. Now if we want to go away we have to rent a place on a desert island as Mr. and Mrs. Doe." Los Angeles Author Nicholas Meyer, also 30 and a new millionaire, finds that his loot has made little difference to his life. Despite the immense success of his two Sherlock Holmesian pastiches, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (he also scripted the film) and The West End Horror, Meyer observes: "Everyone has this one fantasy about success and money, that it will solve all his problems. Money will do this in the short term: it will pay the bills. But it throws the real problems into sharp relief. Like, why can't one sustain a relationship?"
The harvest of Roots has yet to make Author Alex Haley feel relaxed. Though he will garner at least $5 million from his book, Haley's comet is sputtering. He is dead tired. He has been out on the lecture circuit or visiting Gambia or receiving honorary degrees almost every day of the month. As for his megabucks, Haley says that so far they have enabled him only to get out of debt--a feat that might in itself rank as the differentiating factor between the rich and the merely upwardly mobile.
Whether or not they are happy, it seems almost an axiom that the rapidly rich fritter few hours frivolously. They mostly abhor time-consuming activities like heading Kiwanis drives, playing golf, drinking till dawn, and being sick in bed. Though they often complain about their limited playtime, almost all the nouveaux share a drive to accumulate assets beyond any expectation of liquidating the lucre.
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!
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