"Self-made man" is a classic phrase coined on February 2, 1842 by Henry Clay in the United States Senate, to describe individuals whose success lay within the individuals themselves, not with outside conditions. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, has been described as the greatest exemplar of the self-made man. Inspired by Franklin's autobiography, Frederick Douglass developed the concept of the self-made man in a series of lectures that spanned decades starting in 1879. Originally, the term referred to an individual who arises from a poor or otherwise disadvantaged background to eminence in financial, political or other areas by nurturing qualities, such as perseverance and hard work, as opposed to achieving these goals through inherited fortune, family connections, or other privileges. By the mid-1950s, success in the United States generally implied "business success". In the intellectual and cultural history of the United States, the idea of the self-made man as an archetype or cultural ideal has been criticized by some as being a myth or a cult. Origins Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, has been described as "undoubtedly the original self-made man." and the greatest exemplar of the "self-made man". Both the American Dream and the self-made man concepts are inextricably linked and are rooted in American history. Franklin's autobiography was described by the editor of the 1916 edition, as the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men". His autobiography, which was dedicated to his son William Franklin, with the first chapter based on a 1771 letter to William, was used as illustrative of the journey of the self-made man in the eighteenth century in Colonial United States. Franklin's introduced the archetypal self-made man through his own life story in which in spite of all odds he overcame his low and humble origins and inherited social position—his father was a candle-maker—to re-invent himself through self-improvement based on a set of strong moral values such as "industry, economy, and perseverance" thereby attaining "eminence" in the classic rags to riches narrative. Franklin's maxims as published in his Autobiography provide others, specifically his own son, with strategies for attaining status in the United States, described as a "land of unequaled opportunity" in the last quarter of the 18th century. In his 1954 book The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches, Irvin G. Wyllie described