"Men who accomplish great things in the industrial world are the ones who have faith in the money producing power of ideas"
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Capital may run the factory, but Fillmore is trying to crown the mind as the real foreman. Written in the long shadow of America’s industrial boom, his line flatters the era’s new saints: inventors, organizers, and strivers who believed the next process, patent, or pitch could reorganize the world. The hook is the phrase “faith in the money producing power of ideas” - a deliberately spiritual verb stapled to a bluntly commercial outcome. Fillmore, best known in metaphysical and self-help circles, smuggles a religious posture (faith) into the supposedly rational engine room of industry, making success feel less like accounting and more like conversion.
The intent is motivational, but not neutral. By locating “great things” in “faith,” he implies that material success is earned first as an inner stance: conviction before evidence. That reframes risk as virtue and doubt as failure of character. It also performs a neat ideological trick: it turns industrial winners into proof of a worldview. If ideas generate money, then those with money must have had better ideas - a comforting story for an industrial society anxious about inequality and volatility.
The subtext is aspirational and disciplining at once. It tells the would-be entrepreneur to stop pleading for resources and start believing in themselves; it also tells the worker or the unlucky that the bottleneck is internal. “Industrial world” grounds the claim in modernity, but “faith” keeps it tethered to Fillmore’s broader project: translating spiritual practice into a personal prosperity ethic, where the marketplace becomes a stage for moral worth.
The intent is motivational, but not neutral. By locating “great things” in “faith,” he implies that material success is earned first as an inner stance: conviction before evidence. That reframes risk as virtue and doubt as failure of character. It also performs a neat ideological trick: it turns industrial winners into proof of a worldview. If ideas generate money, then those with money must have had better ideas - a comforting story for an industrial society anxious about inequality and volatility.
The subtext is aspirational and disciplining at once. It tells the would-be entrepreneur to stop pleading for resources and start believing in themselves; it also tells the worker or the unlucky that the bottleneck is internal. “Industrial world” grounds the claim in modernity, but “faith” keeps it tethered to Fillmore’s broader project: translating spiritual practice into a personal prosperity ethic, where the marketplace becomes a stage for moral worth.
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| Topic | Entrepreneur |
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