Born Losers: A History of Failure in America

Scott Sandage
Harvard University Press (2005)
Reviewed by D.T. Cochrane

This poetic book of history is about those who found themselves on the wrong side of the American Dream. Specifically, it examines the thoughts by and about the striving, and mostly failing, businessmen who exemplified the ‘entrepreneurial spirit.’ It is essentially a genealogy of capitalist ideals of success and failure and the American individualist ideology.

Scott Sandage’s ultimate argument is that these ‘losers’ are vital figures in the tales of capitalist success, which can only be understood in relation to failure. The winners, and their sycophants, justify their own successes with moral judgements about their losing counterparts, locating the reason for failure ‘in the man.’ Sandage describes the response of the ‘losers,’ who frequently identify the interdependence that contributed to their bankruptcy, but many of whom still decry their inability to work that little bit harder or put in a bit more effort. As Sandage notes, no successful businessman was as moralistic as one who had previously gone bankrupt, taking P. T. Barnum as one example. These failures turned success were living proof that stick-to-it-ness was all that was needed.

The ideology around failure was that it is moral in origins. The panics and crisis that losers blamed for their misfortunes were held to be not the cause, but the consequence of these moral shortcomings. To an outside observer, both the inner moral failings and the crises they engendered seemed uncertain and impossible to predict. But, moral failings, being ‘in the man’ could supposedly be unearthed if only an accurate assessment of the individual could be made. Sandage notes the rise of portrait photography, phrenology and the credit bureau as supposed means to capturing what is ‘in the man’ and hopefully bringing stability, avoiding placing excessive trust in those not worthy. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book is Sandage’s history of the rise of the first credit bureau, a much under-examined, but central capitalist institution.

Whatever truth there was to the myth of the intrepid and hard-working entrepreneur, it ended with the rise of the corporate behemoths of the early 20th century. One cannot help but marvel at the honesty of John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil and, thereby, one of the father’s of American ‘Big Business’ when he declares, “Individualism is gone, never to return” (251). Of course, this did not end the celebration of the resilient and determined individual, guaranteed of success if only he (and now, she) tries hard enough. Nor did it end failure’s necessary balance to success or the moralization over such failure as ‘in the man.’

Activists have frequently come from the ranks of and to the defence of society’s ‘losers.’ Histories of such people that acknowledge them as ‘losers’ are few and far between. Sandage’s book is one small corrective. At the same time, it also gives a needed glimpse into the mindset of capitalism’s winners. Finally, it reminds us that such winners can, as recent events attest, suddenly find themselves on the other side of the ledger.