Cover via Amazon

Wallace Delois Wattles is probably best remembered for his book The Science of Getting Rich, a self-help book ‘intended for the men and women whose most pressing need is for money; who wish to get rich first, and philosophize afterward.’ The book  was first published in 1910 and was a forerunner to Charles F. Haanel’s Master Key System (1912) and Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich (1937). More recently, and nearly 100 years after Wattles’ death, the author Rhonda Byrnne admitted that it was reading The Science of Getting Rich that opened her eyes to ‘the secret’ and inspired her to create The Secret.

In the movie The Secret Bob Proctor states, “The Secret is changing the world.” This may or may not be true, but let us not forget that it was reading Wattles’ book that changed Byrnne’s life, as I am sure it has done to many other lives throughout the last century. If she had not been given a copy of the book, as a gift, from her daughter, The Secret, may have remained just that. But what of this man, who was Wallace Wattles and what inspired him to write the book?

Wallace Wattles was born in 1860, in Illinois, not long after the Civil War. Unfortunately very little is known about his early life, but those who are familiar with American History can probably well imagine the state of the world around him and there were some major political changes going on at that time. One thing that we do know about Wattles’ early life is that he worked as a farm labourer, so the hours would have been long, the pay very poor and the work back-breaking. Instead of letting life beat him down though, Wattles began to study various different religious beliefs and philosophies and looked within himself for an answer to his problems.