The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Robert
Stewart.

~~~~~

BOOK REVIEW

_Ignorance, Confidence, and Filthy Rich Friends: The Business Adventures of
Mark Twain, Chronic Speculator and Entrepreneur_. Peter Krass. Hoboken,
N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Pp. 278. Cloth, $22.95. ISBN 978-0471933373.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Robert E. Stewart

Copyright (c) 2007 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

Author Peter Krass is no beginner to biographical writing. His previous
works include a biography of Andrew Carnegie (_Carnegie_, 2002 ); a
biography of Jack Daniel, _Blood & Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack
Daniel_, (2004); and _Portrait of War: The U.S. Army's First Combat Artists
and the Doughboys' Experience in WWI_ (2006); along with a seven-book
series called _The Business Wisdom Series_.

In _Ignorance, Confidence, and Filthy Rich Friends_, Krass separates Sam
Clemens from Mark Twain. Mark Twain was a talented wordsmith, both in his
writing and his public speaking. At issue in this work is Sam Clemens and
his efforts to remain financially afloat in a difficult American economic
era. The underlying theme appears to be an idea that Clemens was more
interested in making money than in creating literature. The 278-page volume
is divided into nine chapters, each followed by a short essay headed
"Quirky Habits and Brazen Philosophy," with a subtitle and subject relative
to the chapter. Chapters are in a chronological order to follow Clemens's
life.

The book title is perhaps catchy, but two-thirds of it is not sustained by
the content. Clemens was not an ignorant man. He made some foolish and
unwise decisions regarding investments, but ignorance is not a synonym for
foolishness. There is ample evidence he was confident that his decisions
were right, in some cases overconfidence would be more accurate. "Filthy
rich friends" implies some financial arrangement between more than one rich
acquaintance. Clemens was indeed acquainted with more than one rich
American of his day. How deep each "friendship" went is speculative. And
only one wealthy friend made Clemens a moderate cash loan, although he did
provide Clemens with a whole school of financial guidance and mentoring.
That friend was Henry Rogers, a top officer in the monopolistic Standard
Oil companies. Among many acquaintances, only Rogers would loan Clemens the
$4,000 to stave off bankruptcy. Rogers became a financial advisor offering
Clemens inside information that today would lead to jail time. At the time
the insider game was both legal and common.

Clemens had polyglot interests, many of which did bring him financial
returns. In the wild ups and downs of the stock market during the latter
1800s, he also suffered losses. But there was one project in particular
that he could not let go, despite the best urging of friends--the
typesetting machine. Here is an example of the confidence Krass cites in
the title. Clemens was confident, to the point of foolhardiness, that the
machine would work. A typesetter himself in his early years, Clemens
recognized the importance of such a device. But his blind faith in a
tinkerer-inventor brought him to the edge of ruin. James W. Paige, the man
attempting to create the typesetting machine with Clemens's funding, was in
a competitive race with Ottmar Merganthaler, who was creating the more
successful Linotype machine. Clemens hung on, pumping money into Paige's
invention until 1894, eight years after Mergenthaler had begun production
of what would become the standard of typesetting for the next hundred
years. Another example of Clemens's financial over-confidence was his
investments in a carpet weaving machine.

Clemens did have some successful inventions of his own including a form of
men's suspenders. Another creation, highly remunerative to Clemens, was
Mark Twain's Self-pasting Scrapbook. His publishing business, Webster and
Company, flourished with publication of General Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs,
along with Twain's own writing, only to flounder and finally fail when
Clemens could not let go of another overwhelming project, _The Library of
American Literature_.  Clemens ultimately fell back on the lecture circuit
to pay off his creditors after his market ventures went bust. Showing the
"confidence" of Krass's title, he knew he could succeed on the lecture
circuit.

In too many places Krass's choice of words seem a bit colloquial. Readers a
few years from now may not comprehend the street wording when Krass writes:
"the nature of typesetting molded the boy [Sam Clemens] into an
exacting--you might say anal--perfectionist" (p. 12). In an extraneous
comment about a letter to his business manager (p. 103) Krass gratuitously
offers: "Thankfully [Webster] was spared e-mail signed with a ':)', which
is surely the scourge of the corporate world, sucking away valuable time
(and leaving a tidy trail for snooping district attorneys)." Krass does not
identify the symbol as an "emoticon." The reference to snooping district
attorneys is unclear. On another page he observes that "The exploding
network of railroads--the Gilded Age's equivalent of Internet play and
eventual dot-bombs--provided huge returns for those investors who timed the
market with clairvoyance" (p. 124). The so-called "dot-com bubble" that
burst in 2001 is transient market history. These insertions and aside
comments seem to interrupt the flow of the discussion rather than enhance
it.

In some instances, Krass's research seems shallow. Having discussed John
Marshall Clemens's belief that land would appreciate rapidly in value, on
page 6 he tells us of the elder Clemens's purchase in Missouri: "Land was
cheap, too--$1.25 an acre if bought in bulk--as the government sold off the
Louisiana Purchase, which presented yet another chance for Marshall to
mercilessly overextend himself. Betting little Florida [Missouri] would
eventually host a railroad depot, he bought hundreds of surrounding acres.
Unfortunately, the railroad was built through Paris, Missouri, 10 miles
away. Ah, location, location, location." However, records on the websites
of the Bureau of Land Management and the Secretary of State of Missouri
indicate John Marshall Clemens purchased only 160 acres of federal land at
$1.25 and two purchases of 40 acres each, one at $2.52 per acre and the
other at $4.025 per acre, both from the State School Lands grant. Two
hundred twenty acres is not what the word "hundreds" conjures up in the
reader's mind.

Krass is also guilty of making the same geographic error Ron Powers made in
_Mark Twain, A Life_ (2005). Both Powers and Krass seem to think the
Humboldt mining district and the Esmeralda mining district were in the same
location in Nevada. Krass says (p. 34) "After spending nearly a year of
toil and futile hope in Humboldt County... [Clemens and Higbie] stumble
across a blind lead...." Clemens was in the Humboldt district east of the
Comstock for a few days. The blind lead was in Esmeralda district, about 65
air miles south of the Comstock (Virginia City) while the Humboldt district
is about 108 air miles northeast of the Comstock. Clemens spent about six
months in Aurora, Esmeralda mining district, and only a few days in the
Humboldt mining district. Clemens never spent "nearly a year" as a miner at
any one mining camp.

Krass goes on to tell us Clemens's partner Cal Higbie left to "investigate
a cement-making operation...." There was no cement, and no operation, it
was a "lost" mining claim in which the gold and silver were embedded in ore
as though locked in cement. These are errors of research which lead to
questions about the balance of Krass's study.

For some sources, Krass cites the convenient online Gutenberg Project file
of Mark Twain letters as compiled in 1917 by Albert Bigelow Paine
(http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=3199), as
well as a number of secondary works. The Gutenberg Project presents about
500 letters. We can only wonder what Krass missed by failing to review the
2,300-plus annotated letters published by the Mark Twain Project at the
Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. A full volume
of the UC series is devoted to the Twain-Rogers correspondence.

A recent volume by another publisher and author, _Hatching Ruin: Mark
Twain's Road to Bankruptcy_ by Charles H. Gold (University of Missouri,
2003) focuses more directly on Clemens's business failures than does
Krass's _Ignorance, Confidence, and Filthy Rich Friends_. Gold's
bibliography is also more extensive than Krass's. Krass tries to take a
broader look at Clemens's business ventures than does Gold, but Krass seems
to fall a bit short on the positive side of Sam Clemens and his money.
Krass does compile much information about Clemens and his business
ventures, and in a highly readable narrative. In _Ignorance, Confidence and
Filthy Rich Friends_ the reader will find a reasoned overview of Clemens's
business ventures. A hard-nosed editor would have improved the flow,
removing the extraneous comments and gratuitous insertions. For the casual
reader who is mildly curious about Sam Clemens's financial life, Krass's
volume works as long as it is not taken as well-researched scholarship. No
compelling argument is presented to convince us that writing was less
important to Mark Twain than making money. For the serious Clemens/Twain
student, seeking to understand how Mark Twain's financial ups and downs
might have affected his literary efforts, it falls short.

_____

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Robert Stewart is a long-time resident of Nevada and
author of _Aurora, Nevada's Ghost City of the Dawn_ (Nevada Publications,
Reno, 2004). Mark Twain's ties to Aurora, a now-vanished mining camp, first
sparked Stewart's interest in researching Twain's adventures in Nevada, and
then Mark Twain in general.