Success
Happenstance & ‘very important’ jobs: Gerber’s career path
Gerber chose to unify his autobiography with the concept of happenstance: from Morris Hillquit’s law clerk being admitted to the bar the day that Gerber & his father went to call on him, to Eisenhower’s need of an assistant, and to meeting a public speaking agent, Mae Norton, who booked speeches for him all over the country. This use of happenstance as an organizing theme diminished the emphasis on other factors that contributed to his achievements. The perception of Gerber as a self-made man filters first through a prism of forces that essentially negate self-making.
Happenstance may be more than just a convenient literary device or a philosophical statement affirming his belief in fate. Using happenstance as a way of negating the self-making aspects implied in the autobiography may have been Gerber’s way of renouncing responsibility for what he achieved in life. Feelings of inadequacy or insecurities may have made it necessary to simultaneously aggrandize his accomplishments as he placed credit for his accomplishments on circumstances rather than himself. The way in which Gerber viewed some of his positions illustrate this contradiction.
After practicing as an attorney prosecuting code violations for the National Recovery Administration, Gerber became legal council for the Securities Exchange Commission. In his duties there he drafted regulations which he described as important for the governing of the way in which securities companies do business. As he was discussing the position however, he also said, “And so I had a job. And so I had an income until my legal career continued.”27 On the one hand he wanted to impress upon his readers the importance of his work, on the other hand he conveyed his perception that since he was not practicing law it was somehow a step down, or interruption of his career path. He presented a similar contradictory view of his early work during the war, initially building it up, then pulling it down when he described his transfer to London by saying, “I was tired of being a routine, legal clerical employee in Washington.”28
With regard to his position as Chief of Administration of the Intelligence Section of the General Staff Gerber said, “That’s a very important position. I didn’t realize it then. I do now. You know I was never awed by importance because basically I was a very simple person. I was never, never conscious of any high position that I held.”29 This comment leads us to question how many of the perceptions Gerber presented were representative of the time of which he spoke, and how many were formed later in life.