Mary Baker Eddy—businesswoman on the go

Yvonne von Fettweis | from The Christian Science Journal

There were no subways. No cars. But Mary Baker Eddy, who commuted from her home on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay to her college in the South End, often did what a big-city executive would do today who has to get to work in a hurry—she took a cab. It’s just that her cab, like the city omnibus that she sometimes took, was horse drawn.

Take a look at the life of this remarkable woman during the stretch from 1881 to 1899, her sixtieth through her seventy-eighth years—well past an age when many men in her day would have retired—and what emerges is a dynamic portrait of a modern businesswoman on the go. Active? She worked nonstop from morning to night.

The central purpose of Mary Baker Eddy’s life was making the healing message contained in Science and Health universally and permanently available.

The central purpose of Mary Baker Eddy’s life was making the healing message contained in Science and Health, first published in 1875, universally and permanently available. During this 18-year period, she established two businesses to achieve this: the Massachusetts Metaphysical College and The Christian Science Publishing Society (the publisher of this magazine). She started the first one, a teaching college chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in 1881. She taught there, organized its curriculum, and arranged details associated with its staffing and operation. The Publishing Society, which began in the early 1880s and went through several morphs before it came under a Deed of Trust in 1898, also received her frequent and careful attention.

Add to these two high-powered jobs the other activities that she engaged in: ongoing major revisions to Science and Health, work as an active spiritual healer, public speaker, editor and regular contributor to the three magazines she started, structuring a new worldwide church, establishing Christian Science Reading Rooms (where the public could pray, read, and purchase her magazines and books), founding an international daily newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. And much more.

How did she do it? Basically, through a spiritual outlook on life and events, together with the healthy, effective human qualities that sprang from it. In lots of ways, it was an archetypal mix. Like many successful business leaders today, Mary Baker Eddy combined reason, reflection, organization, spontaneity, intuition, and industry with deep ethical values. Out of this sprang the wisdom and energy—the horse sense and courage—to tackle what needed tackling.

Of course, the heart and soul of her endeavor and actions was prayer. She put God first. She turned to God for stamina, zest, confidence, and counsel.

Mary Baker Eddy was a woman with a passionate intellectual and deeply spiritual nature.

If one were to paint the picture in broad strokes, it would look something like this: Mary Baker Eddy was a woman with a passionate intellectual and deeply spiritual nature. She was fueled by a resolute sense of purpose, and she had a lot of irons in the fire that were necessary to support this purpose. She was both a pragmatist and an idealist. She got things done, and got them done right, but only through behavior in accord with deep, basic values. She was fair-minded; she treated other people with respect and integrity—interacting with students, employees, and business people daily in countless consequential ways. She conducted business on the basis of a moral and ethical code that was Bible-based—at the core of which was the Golden Rule.

Mary Baker Eddy exemplified four things that today’s experts, like retired IBM chairman Lou Gerstner, say are essential for successful leadership in the 21st century (see Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2002), pp. 217 and 240). She was focused, she was superb at execution, she had impeccable integrity, and she abounded with personal leadership, which involved being visible every day and rolling up her sleeves to work alongside those who reported to her. Most important, she anchored all of this in spirituality.

Focus

Spirituality was the focus of her life. It was God first. Prayer first. More than anything else, that was the key to her business success. And it’s what gave focus, in turn, to her everyday activities. Out of prayer sprang a confidence in the value of discipline and order. She was well-organized. She worked by a schedule. Not only did she lay things out to do in an orderly way each day—writing, correspondence, editing, teaching preparation, and so forth—she also had set times during the day when she would do each of them.

As in countless other cases throughout her life, she decided that responding to the call for healing was the highest priority.

She was not easily distracted, but she had the capacity to be spontaneous and to shift her focus to the most important need at the moment. For example, on one occasion she interrupted her busy day to help a little girl who had come to the door for healing (see Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1998), pp. 94–95). The operative principle was that Mrs. Eddy would weigh things. She made value judgments. She prioritized. In that particular case, as in countless other cases throughout her life, she decided that responding to the call for healing was the highest priority.

Action

Mrs. Eddy’s financial records (available in the Research Room of The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity), which detail her day-to-day bills and receipts, present a fascinating view of her as someone who thoroughly understood the practical steps needed to achieve her goals. She believed in substance, not smoke. And that meant working hard and maximizing time.

“Success in life,” she said at one point, “depends upon persistent effort, upon the improvement of moments more than upon any other one thing. A great amount of time is consumed in talking nothing, doing nothing, and indecision as to what one should do. If one would be successful in the future, let him make the most of the present” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 230). Not one to be idle, she was always industrious. Make the most of today, she believed. Make the most of the moment. And seize your opportunity. Be alert enough to see it, and then work for it.

She felt the same way about money: Don’t waste it. She wasn’t stingy, but she was careful in how she used it. Money was a by-product for her, not an objective. And it was important to use it well and wisely in achieving her goals. This point of view rubbed off on those around her. Joseph Armstrong, one of her loyal students, said that as soon as he became interested in Christian Science “he lost all interest in business the object of which was moneymaking.” He believed that “the only real value is Spirit—God; that when we reflect the true substance of our daily lives, our daily needs, both temporal and spiritual, will be bountifully supplied” (Joseph Armstrong and Margaret Williamson, Building of The Mother Church (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1980), p. 87).

Leadership and integrity

Like many true leaders, Mrs. Eddy had the capacity to simultaneously hold the vision and work out the details. She saw the big picture—ensuring the universal availability and longevity of Science and Health—but she also tackled the endless nitty-gritty practical steps that were essential for her to realize the vision. Her trust in the capabilities of others was also vital. William Dana Orcutt, who worked with Mrs. Eddy and was involved for over half a century in publishing her books, gives a glimpse of the balance she eventually struck: “… the relief which came to this indefatigable woman from the lifting of the burden of comparatively unimportant but essential details did not remove her insistence to continue her personal responsibility. She was content to permit others to gather together the salient facts, and to reduce them to such a point that she could visualize all the angles, but the final decision must be hers” (William Dana Orcutt, Mary Baker Eddy and Her Books (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1978), pp. 58–59). In other words, she knew how to delegate, but the buck stopped with her.

The basis of her business acumen and conduct was personal integrity and the spiritual morality behind it.

One of the ways she led best was by example. And that’s certainly true when it came to integrity. At one point, Mrs. Eddy mentioned some of the qualities that she thought are manifested by a good business person: that their dealings are sound, that they’re legal, that they’re honest, that they’re decent and orderly (A10386, undated manuscript, Mary Baker Eddy Library). The basis of her business acumen and conduct was personal integrity and the spiritual morality behind it. She was as ethical in her business relationships as she was in her personal relationships. She was a typical New Englander in that she believed “your word was your bond.” That’s not to say that she didn’t believe in contracts. She did. Or that there weren’t deeds of trust or other legal documents to set up different areas of business that she herself established. There were. But the bottom line was that she did whatever a typical sharp, intelligent New England business person would have done, and that’s also how she arrived at agreements.

Her concept of business integrity involved an alternative philosophy to competition, one that might be called commitment to excellence. She believed that doing one’s best, and having a product worthy to be sold or worthy for the marketplace, was the objective. Excellence doesn’t necessarily have a competitive component.

Ethics versus expediency, excellence versus competition, fairness versus favoritism, integrity versus greed—these values were at the core of Mrs. Eddy’s business life. The way she described the object of her newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, which she started when she was eighty-seven—“to injure no man, but to bless all mankind” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 353)—sums it up.

She turned to God for the tenacity, confidence, and courage she needed to meet the challenges.

Writer, editor, publisher, teacher—in addition to church organizer and Christian healer—Mrs. Eddy achieved what she did only through integrity and the ability to focus, expedite, and lead; these capacities, as well as her model work ethic and abiding sense of purpose, were shaped by listening to God’s good and constructive guidance. Her achievements were hard won. She worked relentlessly through her life to accomplish what she did. She faced obstacles—economic hardship, ill-health, incessant and stinging public and private criticism, domestic instability (a fractured family life and homelessness), lawsuits, and betrayal. But she turned to God for the tenacity, confidence, and courage she needed to meet the challenges. She eventually achieved prosperity, health, stability, and security not only for herself but for her endeavors. She was tireless and energetic, with a stamina and zest that never waned. She wrote in Science and Health that “… business men and cultured scholars have found that Christian Science enhances their endurance and mental powers, enlarges their perception of character, gives them acuteness and comprehensiveness and an ability to exceed their ordinary capacity” (Science and Health, p. 128). Her own life was proof that was true.

Mrs. Eddy wasn’t the first or the only woman to break into the business world. Opportunities for education, at least for middle and upper income women, were on the rise during the late 1800s. And although this education was not focused on training for a business career, many women found ways to use their smarts and break barriers.

Mrs. Eddy’s business ventures include numerous worldwide activities of The Church of Christ, Scientist, and The Christian Science Publishing Society that still exist today. The Publishing Society at that time produced The Christian Science Journal, the Christian Science Quarterly, the Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Herald of Christian Science. Today, there are also radio, shortwave, television, and Internet versions of some of these publications. That they are still alive and flourishing is a tribute to her uniqueness—both as a woman and as a businesswoman.

Yvonne von Fettweis, coauthor with Robert Townsend Warneck of Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, was Church Historian for many years and has been President of The Mother Church.