EIGHT THINGS THIS BOOK WILL

HELP YOU ACHIEVE

1. Get out of a mental rut, think new thoughts, acquire

new visions, discover new ambitions.

2. Make friends quickly and easily.

3. Increase your popularity.

4. Win people to your way of thinking.

5. Increase your influence, your prestige, your ability

to get things done.

6. Handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your

human contacts smooth and pleasant.

7. Become a better speaker, a more entertaining

conversationalist.

8. Arouse enthusiasm among your associates.

This book has done all these things for more than ten

million readers in thirty-six languages.

This Book Is Dedicated to a Man

Who Doesn’t Need to Read It:-

My Cherished Friend

HOMER CROY

HOW TO

Win Friends

AND

Influence

People

REVISED EDITION

Dale Carnegie

Editorial Consultant: Dorothy Carnegie

Editorial Assistance: Arthur R. Pell, Ph.D.

SIMON AND SCHUSTER

NEW YORK

Copyright 1936 by Dale Carnegie, copyright renewed © 1964

by Donna Dale Carnegie and Dorothy Carnegie

Revised Edition copyright © 1981 by Donna Dale Carnegie and

Dorothy Carnegie

All rights reserved

including the right of reproduction

in whole or in part in any form

Published by Simon and Schuster

A Division of Gulf & Western Corporation

Simon & Schuster Building

Rockefeller Center

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, New York 10020

SIMON AND SCHUSTER and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster

Designed by Stanley S. Drate

Manufactured in the United States of America

17 19 20 18

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Carnegie, Dale, 1888-1955.

How to win friends and influence people.

Includes index.

1. Success. I. Title.

BF637.S8C37         1981       158’. 1     80-28759

ISBN O-671-42517-X

Preface

to Revised Edition

How to Win Friends and Influence People was first published

in 1937 in an edition of only five thousand copies.

Neither Dale Carnegie nor the publishers, Simon and

Schuster, anticipated more than this modest sale. To

their amazement, the book became an overnight sensation,

and edition after edition rolled off the presses to

keep up with the increasing public demand. Now to Win

Friends and InfEuence People took its place in publishing

history as one of the all-time international best-sellers.

It touched a nerve and filled a human need that was

more than a faddish phenomenon of post-Depression

days, as evidenced by its continued and uninterrupted

sales into the eighties, almost half a century later.

Dale Carnegie used to say that it was easier to make a

million dollars than to put a phrase into the English language.

How to Win Friends and Influence People became

such a phrase, quoted, paraphrased, parodied,

used in innumerable contexts from political cartoon to

novels. The book itself was translated into almost every

known written language. Each generation has discovered

it anew and has found it relevant.

Which brings us to the logical question: Why revise a

book that has proven and continues to prove its vigorous

and universal appeal? Why tamper with success?

To answer that, we must realize that Dale Carnegie

himself was a tireless reviser of his own work during his

lifetime. How to Win Friends and Influence People was

written to be used as a textbook for his courses in Effective

Speaking and Human Relations and is still used in

those courses today. Until his death in 1955 he constantly

improved and revised the course itself to make it

applicable to the evolving needs of an every-growing

public. No one was more sensitive to the changing currents

of present-day life than Dale Carnegie. He constantly

improved and refined his methods of teaching;

he updated his book on Effective Speaking several

times. Had he lived longer, he himself would have revised

How to Win Friends and Influence People to better

reflect the changes that have taken place in the world

since the thirties.

Many of the names of prominent people in the book,

well known at the time of first publication, are no longer

recognized by many of today’s readers. Certain examples

and phrases seem as quaint and dated in our social

climate as those in a Victorian novel. The important message

and overall impact of the book is weakened to that

extent.

Our purpose, therefore, in this revision is to clarify

and strengthen the book for a modern reader without

tampering with the content. We have not “changed”

How to Win Friends and Influence People except to

make a few excisions and add a few more contemporary

examples. The brash, breezy Carnegie style is intact-even

the thirties slang is still there. Dale Carnegie wrote

as he spoke, in an intensively exuberant, colloquial,

conversational manner.

So his voice still speaks as forcefully as ever, in the

book and in his work. Thousands of people all over the

world are being trained in Carnegie courses in increasing

numbers each year. And other thousands are reading

and studying How to Win Friends and lnfluence People

and being inspired to use its principles to better their

lives. To all of them, we offer this revision in the spirit

of the honing and polishing of a finely made tool.

Dorothy Carnegie

(Mrs. Dale Carnegie)

How This Book Was

Written-And Why

by Dale Carnegie

During the first thirty-five years of the twentieth century,

the publishing houses of America printed more

than a fifth of a million different books. Most of them

were deadly dull, and many were financial failures.

“Many,” did I say? The president of one of the largest

publishing houses in the world confessed to me that his

company, after seventy-five years of publishing experience,

still lost money on seven out of every eight books

it published.

Why, then, did I have the temerity to write another

book? And, after I had written it, why should you bother

to read it?

Fair questions, both; and I'll try to answer them.

I have, since 1912, been conducting educational

courses for business and professional men and women

in New York. At first, I conducted courses in public

speaking only - courses designed to train adults, by actual

experience, to think on their feet and express their

ideas with more clarity, more effectiveness and more

poise, both in business interviews and before groups.

But gradually, as the seasons passed, I realized that as

sorely as these adults needed training in effective speaking,

they needed still more training in the fine art of

getting along with people in everyday business and social

contacts.

I also gradually realized that I was sorely in need of

such training myself. As I look back across the years, I

am appalled at my own frequent lack of finesse and

understanding. How I wish a book such as this had been

placed in my hands twenty years ago! What a priceless

boon it would have been.

Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem

you face, especially if you are in business. Yes, and that

is also true if you are a housewife, architect or engineer.

Research done a few years ago under the auspices of the

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

uncovered a most important and significant fact - a fact

later confirmed by additional studies made at the Carnegie

Institute of Technology. These investigations revealed

that even in such technical lines as engineering,

about 15 percent of one's financial success is due to

one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due

to skill in human engineering-to personality and the

ability to lead people.

For many years, I conducted courses each season at

the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia, and also courses

for the New York Chapter of the American Institute of

Electrical Engineers. A total of probably more than fifteen

hundred engineers have passed through my

classes. They came to me because they had finally realized,

after years of observation and experience, that the

highest-paid personnel in engineering are frequently

not those who know the most about engineering. One

can for example, hire mere technical ability in engineering,

accountancy, architecture or any other profession

at nominal salaries. But the person who has

technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to

assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among

people-that person is headed for higher earning power.

In the heyday of his activity, John D. Rockefeller said

that “the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a

commodity as sugar or coffee.” “And I will pay more for

that ability,” said John D., “than for any other under the

sun.”

Wouldn’t you suppose that every college in the land

would conduct courses to develop the highest-priced

ability under the sun? But if there is just one practical,

common-sense course of that kind given for adults in

even one college in the land, it has escaped my attention

up to the present writing.

The University of Chicago and the United Y.M.C.A.

Schools conducted a survey to determine what adults

want to study.

That survey cost $25,000 and took two years. The last

part of the survey was made in Meriden, Connecticut. It

had been chosen as a typical American town. Every

adult in Meriden was interviewed and requested to answer

156 questions-questions such as “What is your

business or profession? Your education? How do you

spend your spare time? What is your income? Your hobbies?

Your ambitions? Your problems? What subjects are

you most interested in studying?” And so on. That survey

revealed that health is the prime interest of adults

and that their second interest is people; how to understand

and get along with people; how to make people

like you; and how to win others to your way of thinking.

So the committee conducting this survey resolved to

conduct such a course for adults in Meriden. They

searched diligently for a practical textbook on the subject

and found-not one. Finally they approached one of

the world’s outstanding authorities on adult education

and asked him if he knew of any book that met the needs

of this group. “No,” he replied, "I know what those

adults want. But the book they need has never been

written.”

I knew from experience that this statement was true,

for I myself had been searching for years to discover a

practical, working handbook on human relations.

Since no such book existed, I have tried to write one

for use in my own courses. And here it is. I hope you

like it.

In preparation for this book, I read everything that I

could find on the subject- everything from newspaper

columns, magazine articles, records of the family courts,

the writings of the old philosophers and the new

psychologists. In addition, I hired a trained researcher to

spend one and a half years in various libraries reading

everything I had missed, plowing through erudite tomes

on psychology, poring over hundreds of magazine articles,

searching through countless biographies, trying to

ascertain how the great leaders of all ages had dealt with

people. We read their biographies, We read the life stories

of all great leaders from Julius Caesar to Thomas Edison.

I recall that we read over one hundred biographies

of Theodore Roosevelt alone. We were determined

to spare no time, no expense, to discover every

practical idea that anyone had ever used throughout the

ages for winning friends and influencing people.

I personally interviewed scores of successful people,

some of them world-famous-inventors like Marconi

and Edison; political leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt

and James Farley; business leaders like Owen D.

Young; movie stars like Clark Gable and Mary Pickford;

and explorers like Martin Johnson-and tried to discover

the techniques they used in human relations.

From all this material, I prepared a short talk. I called

it “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I say

“short.” It was short in the beginning, but it soon

expanded to a lecture that consumed one hour and thirty

minutes. For years, I gave this talk each season to the

adults in the Carnegie Institute courses in New York.

I gave the talk and urged the listeners to go out and

test it in their business and social contacts, and then

come back to class and speak about their experiences

and the results they had achieved. What an interesting

assignment! These men and women, hungry for self-

improvement, were fascinated by the idea of working in a

new kind of laboratory - the first and only laboratory of

human relationships for adults that had ever existed.

This book wasn’t written in the usual sense of the

word. It grew as a child grows. It grew and developed

out of that laboratory, out of the experiences of thousands

of adults.

Years ago, we started with a set of rules printed on a

card no larger than a postcard. The next season we

printed a larger card, then a leaflet, then a series of booklets,

each one expanding in size and scope. After fifteen

years of experiment and research came this book.

The rules we have set down here are not mere theories

or guesswork. They work like magic. Incredible as

it sounds, I have seen the application of these principles

literally revolutionize the lives of many people.

To illustrate: A man with 314 employees joined one of

these courses. For years, he had driven and criticized

and condemned his employees without stint or discretion.

Kindness, words of appreciation and encouragement

were alien to his lips. After studying the principles

discussed in this book, this employer sharply altered his

philosophy of life. His organization is now inspired with

a new loyalty, a new enthusiasm, a new spirit of team-

work. Three hundred and fourteen enemies have been

turned into 314 friends. As he proudly said in a speech

before the class: “When I used to walk through my establishment,

no one greeted me. My employees actually

looked the other way when they saw me approaching.

But now they are all my friends and even the janitor

calls me by my first name.”

This employer gained more profit, more leisure and

-what is infinitely more important-he found far more

happiness in his business and in his home.

Countless numbers of salespeople have sharply increased

their sales by the use of these principles. Many

have opened up new accounts - accounts that they had

formerly solicited in vain. Executives have been given

increased authority, increased pay. One executive reported

a large increase in salary because he applied

these truths. Another, an executive in the Philadelphia

Gas Works Company, was slated for demotion when he

was sixty-five because of his belligerence, because of his

inability to lead people skillfully. This training not only

saved him from the demotion but brought him a promotion

with increased pay.

On innumerable occasions, spouses attending the banquet

given at the end of the course have told me that

their homes have been much happier since their husbands

or wives started this training.

People are frequently astonished at the new results

they achieve. It all seems like magic. In some cases, in

their enthusiasm, they have telephoned me at my home

on Sundays because they couldn’t wait forty-eight hours

to report their achievements at the regular session of the

course.

One man was so stirred by a talk on these principles

that he sat far into the night discussing them with other

members of the class. At three o’clock in the morning,

the others went home. But he was so shaken by a realization

of his own mistakes, so inspired by the vista of a

new and richer world opening before him, that he was

unable to sleep. He didn’t sleep that night or the next

day or the next night.

Who was he? A naive, untrained individual ready to

gush over any new theory that came along? No, Far from

it. He was a sophisticated, blasé dealer in art, very much

the man about town, who spoke three languages fluently

and was a graduate of two European universities.

While writing this chapter, I received a letter from a

German of the old school, an aristocrat whose forebears

had served for generations as professional army officers

under the Hohenzollerns. His letter, written from a

transatlantic steamer, telling about the application of

these principles, rose almost to a religious fervor.

Another man, an old New Yorker, a Harvard graduate,

a wealthy man, the owner of a large carpet factory, declared

he had learned more in fourteen weeks through

this system of training about the fine art of influencing

people than he had learned about the same subject during

his four years in college. Absurd? Laughable? Fantastic?

Of course, you are privileged to dismiss this

statement with whatever adjective you wish. I am

merely reporting, without comment, a declaration made

by a conservative and eminently successful Harvard

graduate in a public address to approximately six

hundred people at the Yale Club in New York on the

evening of Thursday, February 23, 1933.

“Compared to what we ought to be,” said the famous

Professor William James of Harvard, “compared to what

we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making

use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources.

Stating the thing broadly, the human individual

thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of

various sorts which he habitually fails to use,”

Those powers which you “habitually fail to use”! The

sole purpose of this book is to help you discover, develop

and profit by those dormant and unused assets,

“Education,” said Dr. John G. Hibben, former president

of Princeton University, “is the ability to meet life’s

situations,”

If by the time you have finished reading the first three

chapters of this book- if you aren’t then a little better

equipped to meet life’s situations, then I shall consider

this book to be a total failure so far as you are concerned.

For “the great aim of education,” said Herbert Spencer,

“is not knowledge but action.”

And this is an action book.

DALE CARNEGIE

1936

Nine Suggestions

on How to Get the Most

Out of This Book

1. If you wish to get the most out of this book, there is

one indispensable requirement, one essential infinitely

more important than any rule or technique. Unless you

have this one fundamental requisite, a thousand rules on

how to study will avail little, And if you do have this

cardinal endowment, then you can achieve wonders

without reading any suggestions for getting the most out

of a book.

What is this magic requirement? Just this: a deep,

driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination to increase

your ability to deal with people.

How can you develop such an urge? By constantly

reminding yourself how important these principles are

to you. Picture to yourself how their mastery will aid you

in leading a richer, fuller, happier and more fulfilling

life. Say to yourself over and over: "My popularity, my

happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent

upon my skill in dealing with people.”

2. Read each chapter rapidly at first to get a bird's-eye

view of it. You will probably be tempted then to rush on

to the next one. But don’t - unless you are reading

merely for entertainment. But if you are reading because

you want to increase your skill in human relations, then

go back and reread each chapter thoroughly. In the long

run, this will mean saving time and getting results.

3. Stop frequently in your reading to think over what

you are reading. Ask yourself just how and when you can

apply each suggestion.

4. Read with a crayon, pencil, pen, magic marker or

highlighter in your hand. When you come across a suggestion

that you feel you can use, draw a line beside it.

If it is a four-star suggestion, then underscore every sentence

or highlight it, or mark it with “****.” Marking and

underscoring a book makes it more interesting, and far

easier to review rapidly.

5. I knew a woman who had been office manager for

a large insurance concern for fifteen years. Every month,

she read all the insurance contracts her company had

issued that month. Yes, she read many of the same contracts

over month after month, year after year. Why? Because

experience had taught her that that was the only

way she could keep their provisions clearly in mind.

I once spent almost two years writing a book on public

speaking and yet I found I had to keep going back over

it from time to time in order to remember what I had

written in my own book. The rapidity with which we

forget is astonishing.

So, if you want to get a real, lasting benefit out of this

book, don’t imagine that skimming through it once will

suffice. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend

a few hours reviewing it every month, Keep it on your

desk in front of you every day. Glance through it often.

Keep constantly impressing yourself with the rich possibilities

for improvement that still lie in the offing. Remember

that the use of these principles can be made

habitual only by a constant and vigorous campaign of

review and application. There is no other way.

6. Bernard Shaw once remarked: “If you teach a man

anything, he will never learn.” Shaw was right. Learning

is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire

to master the principles you are studying in this

book, do something about them. Apply these rules at

every opportunity. If you don’t you will forget them

quickly. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your

mind.

You will probably find it difficult to apply these suggestions

all the time. I know because I wrote the book,

and yet frequently I found it difficult to apply everything

I advocated. For example, when you are displeased, it is

much easier to criticize and condemn than it is to try to

understand the other person’s viewpoint. It is frequently

easier to find fault than to find praise. It is more natural

to talk about what vou want than to talk about what the

other person wants. And so on, So, as you read this book,

remember that you are not merely trying to acquire information.

You are attempting to form new habits. Ah

yes, you are attempting a new way of life. That will require

time and persistence and daily application.

So refer to these pages often. Regard this as a working

handbook on human relations; and whenever you are

confronted with some specific problem - such as handling

a child, winning your spouse to your way of thinking,

or satisfying an irritated customer - hesitate about

doing the natural thing, the impulsive thing. This is usually

wrong. Instead, turn to these pages and review the

paragraphs you have underscored. Then try these new

ways and watch them achieve magic for you.

7. Offer your spouse, your child or some business

associate a dime or a dollar every time he or she catches

you violating a certain principle. Make a lively game out

of mastering these rules.

8. The president of an important Wall Street bank

once described, in a talk before one of my classes, a

highly efficient system he used for self-improvement.

This man had little formal schooling; yet he had become

one of the most important financiers in America, and he

confessed that he owed most of his success to the constant

application of his homemade system. This is what

he does, I’ll put it in his own words as accurately as I

can remember.

“For years I have kept an engagement book showing

all the appointments I had during the day. My family

never made any plans for me on Saturday night, for the

family knew that I devoted a part of each Saturday evening

to the illuminating process of self-examination and

review and appraisal. After dinner I went off by myself,

opened my engagement book, and thought over all the

interviews, discussions and meetings that had taken

place during the week. I asked myself:

‘What mistakes did I make that time?’

‘What did I do that was right-and in what way

could I have improved my performance?’

‘What lessons can I learn from that experience?’

“I often found that this weekly review made me very

unhappy. I was frequently astonished at my own blunders.

Of course, as the years passed, these blunders became

less frequent. Sometimes I was inclined to pat

myself on the back a little after one of these sessions.

This system of self-analysis, self-education, continued

year after year, did more for me than any other one thing

I have ever attempted.

“It helped me improve my ability to make decisions

- and it aided me enormously in all my contacts with

people. I cannot recommend it too highly.”

Why not use a similar system to check up on your

application of the principles discussed in this book? If

you do, two things will result.

First, you will find yourself engaged in an educational

process that is both intriguing and priceless.

Second, you will find that your ability to meet and

deal with people will grow enormously.

9. You will find at the end of this book several blank

pages on which you should record your triumphs in the

application of these principles. Be specific. Give names,

dates, results. Keeping such a record will inspire you to

greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be

when you chance upon them some evening years from

now!

In order to get the most out of this book:

a. Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles

of human relations,

b. Read each chapter twice before going on to the next

one.

c. As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how

you can apply each suggestion.

d. Underscore each important idea.

e. Review this book each month.

f . Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use

this volume as a working handbook to help you

solve your daily problems.

g. Make a lively game out of your learning by offering

some friend a dime or a dollar every time he or she

catches you violating one of these principles.

h. Check up each week on the progress you are mak-ing.

Ask yourself what mistakes you have made,

what improvement, what lessons you have learned

for the future.

i. Keep notes in the back of this book showing how

and when you have applied these principles.

PART O N E

Fundamental Techniques in

Handling People

1

“IF YOU WANT TO GATHER

HONEY, DON’T KICK OVER THE

BEEHIVE”

On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New

York City had ever known had come to its climax. After

weeks of search, “Two Gun” Crowley - the killer, the

gunman who didn’t smoke or drink - was at bay, trapped

in his sweetheart’s apartment on West End Avenue.

One hundred and fifty policemen and detectives laid

siege to his top-floor hideway. They chopped holes in

the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the “cop

killer,” with teargas. Then they mounted their machine

guns on surrounding buildings, and for more than an

hour one of New York’s fine residential areas reverberated

with the crack of pistol fire and the rut-tat-tat of

machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an over-

stuffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand

excited people watched the battle. Nothing like it

ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New

York.

When Crowley was captured, Police Commissioner

E. P. Mulrooney declared that the two-gun desperado

was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered

in the history of New York. “He will kill,” said the

Commissioner, “at the drop of a feather.”

But how did “Two Gun” Crowley regard himself? We

know, because while the police were firing into his

apartment, he wrote a letter addressed “To whom it may

concern, ” And, as he wrote, the blood flowing from his

wounds left a crimson trail on the paper. In this letter

Crowley said: “Under my coat is a weary heart, but a

kind one - one that would do nobody any harm.”

A short time before this, Crowley had been having a

necking party with his girl friend on a country road out

on Long Island. Suddenly a policeman walked up to the

car and said: “Let me see your license.”

Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut

the policeman down with a shower of lead. As the dying

officer fell, Crowley leaped out of the car, grabbed the

officer’s revolver, and fired another bullet into the prostrate

body. And that was the killer who said: “Under my

coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do

nobody any harm.’

Crowley was sentenced to the electric chair. When he

arrived at the death house in Sing Sing, did he say, “This

is what I get for killing people”? No, he said: “This is

what I get for defending myself.”

The point of the story is this: “Two Gun” Crowley

didn’t blame himself for anything.

Is that an unusual attitude among criminals? If you

think so, listen to this:

“I have spent the best years of my life giving people

the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time,

and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”

That’s Al Capone speaking. Yes, America’s most notorious

Public Enemy- the most sinister gang leader who

ever shot up Chicago. Capone didn’t condemn himself.

He actually regarded himself as a public benefactor - an

unappreciated and misunderstood public benefactor.

And so did Dutch Schultz before he crumpled up

under gangster bullets in Newark. Dutch Schultz, one of

New York’s most notorious rats, said in a newspaper interview

that he was a public benefactor. And he believed

it.

I have had some interesting correspondence with

Lewis Lawes, who was warden of New York’s infamous

Sing Sing prison for many years, on this subject, and he

declared that “few of the criminals in Sing Sing regard

themselves as bad men. They are just as human as you

and I. So they rationalize, they explain. They can tell

you why they had to crack a safe or be quick on the

trigger finger. Most of them attempt by a form of reasoning,

fallacious or logical, to justify their antisocial acts

even to themselves, consequently stoutly maintaining

that they should never have been imprisoned at all.”

If Al Capone, “Two Gun” Crowley, Dutch Schultz,

and the desperate men and women behind prison walls

don’t blame themselves for anything - what about the

people with whom you and I come in contact?

John Wanamaker, founder of the stores that bear his

name, once confessed: “I learned thirty years ago that it

is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my

own limitations without fretting over the fact that God

has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.”

Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally

had to blunder through this old world for a third of a

century before it even began to dawn upon me that

ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize

themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it

may be.

Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive

and usually makes him strive to justify himself.

Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s

precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and

arouses resentment.

B. F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved

through his experiments that an animal rewarded for

good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain

what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished

for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that

the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not

make lasting changes and often incur resentment.

Hans Selye, another great psychologist, said, “As

much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation,”

The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize

employees, family members and friends, and still

not correct the situation that has been condemned.

George B. Johnston of Enid, Oklahoma, is the safety

coordinator for an engineering company, One of his re-sponsibilities

is to see that employees wear their hard

hats whenever they are on the job in the field. He reported

that whenever he came across workers who were

not wearing hard hats, he would tell them with a lot of

authority of the regulation and that they must comply.

As a result he would get sullen acceptance, and often

after he left, the workers would remove the hats.

He decided to try a different approach. The next time

he found some of the workers not wearing their hard hat,

he asked if the hats were uncomfortable or did not fit

properly. Then he reminded the men in a pleasant tone

of voice that the hat was designed to protect them from

injury and suggested that it always be worn on the job.

The result was increased compliance with the regulation

with no resentment or emotional upset.

You will find examples of the futility of criticism bristling

on a thousand pages of history, Take, for example,

the famous quarrel between Theodore Roosevelt and

President Taft - a quarrel that split the Republican

party, put Woodrow Wilson in the White House, and

wrote bold, luminous lines across the First World War

and altered the flow of history. Let’s review the facts

quickly. When Theodore Roosevelt stepped out of the

White House in 1908, he supported Taft, who was

elected President. Then Theodore Roosevelt went off to

Africa to shoot lions. When he returned, he exploded.

He denounced Taft for his conservatism, tried to secure

the nomination for a third term himself, formed the Bull

Moose party, and all but demolished the G.O.P. In the

election that followed, William Howard Taft and the Republican

party carried only two states - Vermont and

Utah. The most disastrous defeat the party had ever

known.

Theodore Roosevelt blamed Taft, but did President

Taft blame himself? Of course not, With tears in his

eyes, Taft said: “I don’t see how I could have done any

differently from what I have.”

Who was to blame? Roosevelt or Taft? Frankly, I don’t

know, and I don’t care. The point I am trying to make is

that all of Theodore Roosevelt’s criticism didn’t persuade

Taft that he was wrong. It merely made Taft strive

to justify himself and to reiterate with tears in his eyes:

“I don’t see how I could have done any differently from

what I have.”

Or, take the Teapot Dome oil scandal. It kept the

newspapers ringing with indignation in the early 1920s.

It rocked the nation! Within the memory of living men,

nothing like it had ever happened before in American

public life. Here are the bare facts of the scandal: Albert

B. Fall, secretary of the interior in Harding’s cabinet,

was entrusted with the leasing of government oil reserves

at Elk Hill and Teapot Dome - oil reserves that

had been set aside for the future use of the Navy. Did

secretary Fall permit competitive bidding? No sir. He

handed the fat, juicy contract outright to his friend Edward

L. Doheny. And what did Doheny do? He gave

Secretary Fall what he was pleased to call a “loan” of

one hundred thousand dollars. Then, in a high-handed

manner, Secretary Fall ordered United States Marines

into the district to drive off competitors whose adjacent

wells were sapping oil out of the Elk Hill reserves.

These competitors, driven off their ground at the ends of

guns and bayonets, rushed into court - and blew the lid

off the Teapot Dome scandal. A stench arose so vile that

it ruined the Harding Administration, nauseated an entire

nation, threatened to wreck the Republican party,

and put Albert B. Fall behind prison bars.

Fall was condemned viciously - condemned as few

men in public life have ever been. Did he repent?

Never! Years later Herbert Hoover intimated in a public

speech that President Harding’s death had been due to

mental anxiety and worry because a friend had betrayed

him. When Mrs. Fall heard that, she sprang from her

chair, she wept, she shook her fists at fate and screamed:

"What! Harding betrayed by Fall? No! My husband

never betrayed anyone. This whole house full of gold

would not tempt my husband to do wrong. He is the one

who has been betrayed and led to the slaughter and crucified.”

There you are; human nature in action, wrongdoers,

blaming everybody but themselves. We are all like that.

So when you and I are tempted to criticize someone

tomorrow, let’s remember Al Capone, “Two Gun”

Crowley and Albert Fall. Let’s realize that criticisms are

like homing pigeons. They always return home. Let’s

realize that the person we are going to correct and condemn

will probably justify himself or herself, and condemn

us in return; or, like the gentle Taft, will say: “I

don’t see how I could have done any differently from

what I have.”

On the morning of April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln

lay dying in a hall bedroom of a cheap lodging house

directly across the street from Ford’s Theater, where

John Wilkes Booth had shot him. Lincoln’s long body

lay stretched diagonally across a sagging bed that was

too short for him. A cheap reproduction of Rosa Bonheur’s

famous painting The Horse Fair hung above the

bed, and a dismal gas jet flickered yellow light.

As Lincoln lay dying, Secretary of War Stanton said,

“There lies the most perfect ruler of men that the world

has ever seen.”

What was the secret of Lincoln’s success in dealing

with people? I studied the life of Abraham Lincoln for

ten years and devoted all of three years to writing and

rewriting a book entitled Lincoln the Unknown. I believe

I have made as detailed and exhaustive a study of

Lincoln’s personality and home life as it is possible for

any being to make. I made a special study of Lincoln’s

method of dealing with people. Did he indulge in criticism?

Oh, yes. As a young man in the Pigeon Creek

Valley of Indiana, he not only criticized but he wrote

letters and poems ridiculing people and dropped these

letters on the country roads where they were sure to be

found. One of these letters aroused resentments that

burned for a lifetime.

Even after Lincoln had become a practicing lawyer in

Springfield, Illinois, he attacked his opponents openly

in letters published in the newspapers. But he did this

just once too often.

In the autumn of 1842 he ridiculed a vain, pugnacious

politician by the name of James Shields. Lincoln lamned

him through an anonymous letter published in

Springfield Journal. The town roared with laughter.

Shields, sensitive and proud, boiled with indignation.

He found out who wrote the letter, leaped on his horse,

started after Lincoln, and challenged him to fight a duel.

Lincoln didn’t want to fight. He was opposed to dueling,

but he couldn’t get out of it and save his honor. He was

given the choice of weapons. Since he had very long

arms, he chose cavalry broadswords and took lessons in

sword fighting from a West Point graduate; and, on the

appointed day, he and Shields met on a sandbar in the

Mississippi River, prepared to fight to the death; but, at

the last minute, their seconds interrupted and stopped

the duel.

That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln’s

life. It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art of dealing

with people. Never again did he write an insulting

letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that

time on, he almost never criticized anybody for anything.

Time after time, during the Civil War, Lincoln put a

new general at the head of the Army of the Potomac, and

each one in turn - McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker,

Meade - blundered tragically and drove Lincoln to pacing

the floor in despair. Half the nation savagely condemned

these incompetent generals, but Lincoln, “with

malice toward none, with charity for all,” held his peace.

One of his favorite quotations was “Judge not, that ye be

not judged.”

And when Mrs. Lincoln and others spoke harshly of

the southern people, Lincoln replied: “Don’t criticize

them; they are just what we would be under similar

circumstances.”

Yet if any man ever had occasion to criticize, surely it

was Lincoln. Let’s take just one illustration:

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought during the first

three days of July 1863. During the night of July 4, Lee

began to retreat southward while storm clouds deluged

the country with rain. When Lee reached the Potomac

with his defeated army, he found a swollen, impassable

river in front of him, and a victorious Union Army behind

him. Lee was in a trap. He couldn’t escape. Lincoln

saw that. Here was a golden, heaven-sent opportunity-

the opportunity to capture Lee’s army and end the war

immediately. So, with a surge of high hope, Lincoln ordered

Meade not to call a council of war but to attack

Lee immediately. Lincoln telegraphed his orders and

then sent a special messenger to Meade demanding immediate

action.

And what did General Meade do? He did the very

opposite of what he was told to do. He called a council

of war in direct violation of Lincoln’s orders. He hesitated.

He procrastinated. He telegraphed all manner of

excuses. He refused point-blank to attack Lee. Finally

the waters receded and Lee escaped over the Potomac

with his forces.

Lincoln was furious, “ What does this mean?” Lincoln

cried to his son Robert. “Great God! What does this

mean? We had them within our grasp, and had only to

stretch forth our hands and they were ours; yet nothing

that I could say or do could make the army move. Under

the circumstances, almost any general could have defeated

Lee. If I had gone up there, I could have whipped

him myself.”

In bitter disappointment, Lincoln sat down and wrote

Meade this letter. And remember, at this period of his

life Lincoln was extremely conservative and restrained

in his phraseology. So this letter coming from Lincoln in

1863 was tantamount to the severest rebuke.

My dear General,

I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune

involved in Lee’s escape. He was within our easy

grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection

With our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is,

the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not

safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so

south of the river, when you can take with you very few-

no more than two-thirds of the force you then had in hand?

It would be unreasonable to expect and I do not expect that

you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone,

and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.

What do you suppose Meade did when he read the

letter?

Meade never saw that letter. Lincoln never mailed it.

It was found among his papers after his death.

My guess is - and this is only a guess - that after writing

that letter, Lincoln looked out of the window and

said to himself, “Just a minute. Maybe I ought not to be

so hasty. It is easy enough for me to sit here in the quiet

of the White House and order Meade to attack; but if I

had been up at Gettysburg, and if I had seen as much

blood as Meade has seen during the last week, and if my

ears had been pierced with the screams and shrieks of

the wounded and dying, maybe I wouldn’t be so anxious

to attack either. If I had Meade’s timid temperament,

perhaps I would have done just what he had done. Anyhow,

it is water under the bridge now. If I send this

letter, it will relieve my feelings, but it will make Meade

try to justify himself. It will make him condemn me. It

will arouse hard feelings, impair all his further usefulness

as a commander, and perhaps force him to resign

from the army.”

So, as I have already said, Lincoln put the letter aside,

for he had learned by bitter experience that sharp criticisms

and rebukes almost invariably end in futility.

Theodore Roosevelt said that when he, as President,

was confronted with a perplexing problem, he used to

lean back and look up at a large painting of Lincoln

which hung above his desk in the White House and ask

himself, “What would Lincoln do if he were in my

shoes? How would he solve this problem?”

The next time we are tempted to admonish somebody,

/let’s pull a five-dollar bill out of our pocket, look at Lincoln’s

picture on the bill, and ask. “How would Lincoln

handle this problem if he had it?”

Mark Twain lost his temper occasionally and wrote

letters that turned the Paper brown. For example, he

once wrote to a man who had aroused his ire: “The thing

for you is a burial permit. You have only to speak and I

will see that you get it.” On another occasion he wrote

to an editor about a proofreader’s attempts to “improve

my spelling and punctuation.” He ordered: “Set the

matter according to my copy hereafter and see that the

proofreader retains his suggestions in the mush of his

decayed brain.”

The writing of these stinging letters made Mark Twain

feel better. They allowed him to blow off steam, and the

letters didn’t do any real harm, because Mark’s wife

secretly lifted them out of the mail. They were never

sent.

Do you know someone you would like to change and

regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in

favor of it, But why not begin on yourself? From a purely

selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable than

trying to improve others - yes, and a lot less dangerous.

“Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s

roof,” said Confucius, “when your own doorstep is unclean.”

When I was still young and trying hard to impress

people, I wrote a foolish letter to Richard Harding

Davis, an author who once loomed large on the literary

horizon of America. I was preparing a magazine article

about authors, and I asked Davis to tell me about his

method of work. A few weeks earlier, I had received a

letter from someone with this notation at the bottom:

“Dictated but not read.” I was quite impressed. I felt

that the writer must be very big and busy and important.

I wasn’t the slightest bit busy, but I was eager to make

an impression on Richard Harding Davis, so I ended my

short note with the words: “Dictated but not read.”

He never troubled to answer the letter. He simply

returned it to me with this scribbled across the bottom:

“Your bad manners are exceeded only by your bad manners.”

True, I had blundered, and perhaps I deserved

this rebuke. But, being human, I resented it. I resented

it so sharply that when I read of the death of Richard

Harding Davis ten years later, the one thought that still

persisted in my mind - I am ashamed to admit - was the

hurt he had given me.

If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow

that may rankle across the decades and endure until

death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism-

no matter how certain we are that it is justified.

When dealing with people, let us remember we are

not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with

creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices

and motivated by pride and vanity.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy,

one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature,

to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism

drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide.

Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so

diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was

made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his

success? “I will speak ill of no man,” he said, " . . and

speak all the good I know of everybody.”

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and

most fools do.

But it takes character and self-control to be under-standing

and forgiving.

“A great man shows his greatness,” said Carlyle, “by

the way he treats little men.”

Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent per-former

at air shows, was returning to his home in Los

Angeles from an air show in San Diego. As described in

the magazine Flight Operations, at three hundred feet

in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft maneuvering

he managed to land the plane, but it was

badly damaged although nobody was hurt.

Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to

inspect the airplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the

World War II propeller plane he had been flying had

been fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline.

Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic

who had serviced his airplane. The young man

was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed

down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused

the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused

the loss of three lives as well.

You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could anticipate

the tongue-lashing that this proud and precise pilot

would unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t

scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticize him. Instead,

he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and

said, “To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this

again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.”

Often parents are tempted to criticize their children.

You would expect me to say “don’t.” But I will not, I am

merely going to say, “Before you criticize them, read

one of the classics of American journalism, ‘Father Forgets.’ ”

It originally appeared as an editorial in the People's

Home Journnl. We are reprinting it here with the

author’s permission, as condensed in the Reader’s Digest:

“Father Forgets” is one of those little pieces which-

dashed of in a moment of sincere feeling - strikes an

echoing chord in so many readers as to become a perenial

reprint favorite. Since its first appearance, “Father

Forgets" has been reproduced, writes the author,

W, Livingston Larned, “in hundreds of magazines and

house organs, and in newspapers the country over. It has

been reprinted almost as extensively in many foreign

languages. I have given personal permission to thousands

who wished to read it from school, church, and

lecture platforms. It has been ‘on the air’ on countless

occasions and programs. Oddly enough, college periodicals

have used it, and high-school magazines. Sometimes

a little piece seems mysteriously to ‘click.’ This

one certainly did.”

FATHER FORGETS

W. Livingston Larned

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little

paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily

wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room

alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper

in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me.

Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross

to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because

you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took

you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily

when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You

gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table.

You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you

started off to play and I made for my train, you turned

and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and

I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders

back!”

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I

came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing

marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated

you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to

the house. Stockings were expensive - and if you had to

buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son,

from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library,

how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in

your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at

the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you

want?” I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous

plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed

me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that

God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect

could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the

stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped

from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me.

What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault,

of reprimanding - this was my reward to you for being a

boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected

too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of

my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in

your character. The little heart of you was as big as the

dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your

spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night.

Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bed-side

in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand

these things if I told them to you during your waking

hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum

with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you

laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I

will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a

boy - a little boy!”

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see

you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that

you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s

arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much,

too much.

Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand

them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do.

That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism;

and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To

know all is to forgive all.”

As Dr. Johnson said: “God himself, sir, does not propose

to judge man until the end of his days.”

Why should you and I?

PRINCIPLE 1

Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

2

THE BIG SECRET OF DEALING WITH

PEOPLE

There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody

to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes,

just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Remember, there is no other way.

Of course, you can make someone want to give you his

watch by sticking a revolver in his ribs. YOU can make

your employees give you cooperation - until your back

is turned - by threatening to fire them. You can make a

child do what you want it to do by a whip or a threat. But

these crude methods have sharply undesirable repercussions.

The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving

you what you want.

What do you want?

Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do

springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to

be great.

John Dewey, one of America’s most profound philosophers,

phrased it a bit differently. Dr. Dewey said that

the deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be

important." Remember that phrase: “the desire to be

important." It is significant. You are going to hear a lot

about it in this book.

What do you want? Not many things, but the few

that you do wish, you crave with an insistence

that will not be denied. Some of the things most people

want include:

1. Health and the preservation of life.

2. Food.

3. Sleep.

4. Money and the things money will buy.

5. Life in the hereafter.

6. Sexual gratification.

7. The well-being of our children.

8. A feeling of importance.

Almost all these wants are usually gratified-all except

one. But there is one longing - almost as deep, almost

as imperious, as the desire for food or sleep - which

is seldom gratified. It is what Freud calls “the

desire to be great.” It is what Dewey calls the “desire to

be important.”

Lincoln once began a letter saying: “Everybody likes

a compliment.” William James said: "The deepest principle

in human nature is the craving to be appreciated."

He didn’t speak, mind you, of the “wish” or the “desire”

or the “longing” to be appreciated. He said the "craving”

to be appreciated.

Here is a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and

the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger

will hold people in the palm of his or her hand and

“even the undertaker will be sorry when he dies.”

The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the

chief distinguishing differences between mankind and

the animals. To illustrate: When I was a farm boy out in

Missouri, my father bred fine Duroc-Jersey hogs and .

pedigreed white - faced cattle. We used to exhibit our

hogs and white-faced cattle at the country fairs and live-stock

shows throughout the Middle West. We won first

prizes by the score. My father pinned his blue ribbons

on a sheet of white muslin, and when friends or visitors

came to the house, he would get out the long sheet of

muslin. He would hold one end and I would hold the

other while he exhibited the blue ribbons.

The hogs didn’t care about the ribbons they had won.

But Father did. These prizes gave him a feeling of importance.

If our ancestors hadn’t had this flaming urge for a feeling

of importance, civilization would have been impossible.

Without it, we should have been just about like

animals.

It was this desire for a feeling of importance that led

an uneducated, poverty-stricken grocery clerk to study

some law books he found in the bottom of a barrel of

household plunder that he had bought for fifty cents.

You have probably heard of this grocery clerk. His name

was Lincoln.

It was this desire for a feeling of importance that inspired

Dickens to write his immortal novels. This desire

inspired Sir Christoper Wren to design his symphonies

in stone. This desire made Rockefeller amass millions

that he never spent! And this same desire made the richest

family in your town build a house far too large for its

requirements.

This desire makes you want to wear the latest styles,

drive the latest cars, and talk about your brilliant children.

It is this desire that lures many boys and girls into

joining gangs and engaging in criminal activities. The

average young criminal, according to E. P. Mulrooney,

onetime police commissioner of New York, is filled with

ego, and his first request after arrest is for those lurid

newspapers that make him out a hero. The disagreeable

prospect of serving time seems remote so long as he can

gloat over his likeness sharing space with pictures of

sports figures, movie and TV stars and politicians.

If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance,

I’ll tell you what you are. That determines your character.

That is the most significant thing about you. For

example, John D. Rockefeller got his feeling of importance

by giving money to erect a modern hospital in

Peking, China, to care for millions of poor people whom

he had never seen and never would see. Dillinger, on

the other hand, got his feeling of importance by being a

bandit, a bank robber and killer. When the FBI agents

were hunting him, he dashed into a farmhouse up in

Minnesota and said, “I’m Dillinger!” He was proud of

the fact that he was Public Enemy Number One. “I’m

not going to hurt you, but I’m Dillinger!” he said.

Yes, the one significant difference between Dillinger

and Rockefeller is how they got their feeling of importance.

History sparkles with amusing examples of famous

people struggling for a feeling of importance. Even

George Washington wanted to be called “His Mightiness,

the President of the United States”; and Columbus

pleaded for the title “Admiral of the Ocean and Viceroy

of India.” Catherine the Great refused to open letters

that were not addressed to “Her Imperial Majesty”; and

Mrs. Lincoln, in the White House, turned upon Mrs.

Grant like a tigress and shouted, “How dare you be

seated in my presence until I invite you!”

Our millionaires helped finance Admiral Byrd’s expedition

to the Antarctic in 1928 with the understanding

that ranges of icy mountains would be named after them;

and Victor Hugo aspired to have nothing less than the

city of Paris renamed in his honor. Even Shakespeare,

mightiest of the mighty, tried to add luster to his name

by procuring a coat of arms for his family.

People sometimes became invalids in order to win

sympathy and attention, and get a feeling of importance.

For example, take Mrs. McKinley. She got a feeling of

importance by forcing her husband, the President of the

United States, to neglect important affairs of state while

he reclined on the bed beside her for hours at a time, his

arm about her, soothing her to sleep. She fed her gnawing

desire for attention by insisting that he remain with

her while she was having her teeth fixed, and once created

a stormy scene when he had to leave her alone with

the dentist while he kept an appointment with John

Hay, his secretary of state.

The writer Mary Roberts Rinehart once told me of a

bright, vigorous young woman who became an invalid

in order to get a feeling of importance. “One day,” said

Mrs. Rinehart, “this woman had been obliged to face

something, her age perhaps. The lonely years were

stretching ahead and there was little left for her to anticipate.

“She took to her bed; and for ten years her old mother

traveled to the third floor and back, carrying trays, nursing

her. Then one day the old mother, weary with service,

lay down and died. For some weeks, the invalid

languished; then she got up, put on her clothing, and

resumed living again.”

Some authorities declare that people may actually go

insane in order to find, in the dreamland of insanity, the

feeling of importance that has been denied them in the

harsh world of reality. There are more patients suffering

from mental diseases in the United States than from all

other diseases combined.

What is the cause of insanity?

Nobody can answer such a sweeping question, but we

know that certain diseases, such as syphilis, break down

and destroy the brain cells and result in insanity. In fact,

about one-half of all mental diseases can be attributed to

such physical causes as brain lesions, alcohol, toxins and

injuries. But the other half - and this is the appalling

part of the story - the other half of the people who go

insane apparently have nothing organically wrong with

their brain cells. In post-mortem examinations, when

their brain tissues are studied under the highest-powered

microscopes, these tissues are found to be apparently

just as healthy as yours and mine.

Why do these people go insane?

I put that question to the head physician of one of our

most important psychiatric hospitals. This doctor, who

has received the highest honors and the most coveted

awards for his knowledge of this subject, told me frankly

that he didn’t know why people went insane. Nobody

knows for sure But he did say that many people who go

insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that they

were unable to achieve in the world of reality. Then he

told me this story:

"I have a patient right now whose marriage proved to

be a tragedy. She wanted love, sexual gratification, children

and social prestige, but life blasted all her hopes.

Her husband didn’t love her. He refused even to eat

with her and forced her to serve his meals in his room

upstairs. She had no children, no social standing. She

went insane; and, in her imagination, she divorced her

husband and resumed her maiden name. She now believes

she has married into English aristocracy, and she

insists on being called Lady Smith.

“And as for children, she imagines now that she has

had a new child every night. Each time I call on her she

says: ‘Doctor, I had a baby last night.’ "

Life once wrecked all her dream ships on the sharp

rocks of reality; but in the sunny, fantasy isles of insanity,

all her barkentines race into port with canvas billowing

and winds singing through the masts.

" Tragic? Oh, I don’t know. Her physician said to me:

If I could stretch out my hand and restore her sanity, I

wouldn’t do it. She’s much happier as she is."

If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance

that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what

miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest

appreciation this side of insanity.

One of the first people in American business to be

paid a salary of over a million dollars a year (when there

was no income tax and a person earning fifty dollars a

week was considered well off) was Charles Schwab, He

had been picked by Andrew Carnegie to become the

first president of the newly formed United States Steel

Company in 1921, when Schwab was only thirty-eight

years old. (Schwab later left U.S. Steel to take over the

then-troubled Bethlehem Steel Company, and he rebuilt

it into one of the most profitable companies in America.)

Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a

year, or more than three thousand dollars a day, to

Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius?

No. Because he knew more about the manufacture of

steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told

me himself that he had many men working for him who

knew more about the manufacture of steel than he did.

Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because

of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how

he did it. Here is his secret set down in his own words

- words that ought to be cast in eternal bronze and hung

in every home and school, every shop and office in the

land - words that children ought to memorize instead of

wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of Latin

verbs or the amount of the annual rainfall in Brazil - words

that will all but transform your life and mine if we

will only live them:

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my

people,” said Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and

the way to develop the best that is in a person is by

appreciation and encouragement.

“There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a

person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize any-

one. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I

am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything,

I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my

praise. "

That is what Schwab did. But what do average people

do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they

bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say

nothing. As the old couplet says: “Once I did bad and

that I heard ever/Twice I did good, but that I heard

never.”

“In my wide association in life, meeting with many

and great people in various parts of the world,” Schwab

declared, “I have yet to find the person, however great

or exalted his station, who did not do better work and

put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he

would ever do under a spirit of criticism.”

That he said, frankly, was one of the outstanding reasons

for the phenomenal success of Andrew Carnegie.

Carnegie praised his associates publicly as well as pr-vately.

Carnegie wanted to praise his assistants even on his

tombstone. He wrote an epitaph for himself which read:

“Here lies one who knew how to get around him men

who were cleverer than himself:”

Sincere appreciation was one of the secrets of the first

John D. Rockefeller’s success in handling men. For example,

when one of his partners, Edward T. Bedford,

lost a million dollars for the firm by a bad buy in South

America, John D. might have criticized; but he knew

Bedford had done his best - and the incident was

closed. So Rockefeller found something to praise; he

congratulated Bedford because he had been able to save

60 percent of the money he had invested. “That’s splendid,"

said Rockefeller. “We don’t always do as well as

that upstairs.”

I have among my clippings a story that I know never

happened, but it illustrates a truth, so I’ll repeat it:

According to this silly story, a farm woman, at the end

of a heavy day’s work, set before her menfolks a heaping

pile of hay. And when they indignantly demanded

whether she had gone crazy, she replied: “Why, how

did I know you’d notice? I’ve been cooking for you men

for the last twenty years and in all that time I ain’t heard

no word to let me know you wasn’t just eating hay.”

When a study was made a few years ago on runaway

wives, what do you think was discovered to be the main

reason wives ran away? It was “lack of appreciation.”

And I’d bet that a similar study made of runaway husbands

would come out the same way. We often take our

spouses so much for granted that we never let them

know we appreciate them.

A member of one of our classes told of a request made

by his wife. She and a group of other women in her

church were involved in a self-improvement program.

She asked her husband to help her by listing six things

he believed she could do to help her become a better

wife. He reported to the class: “I was surprised by such

a request. Frankly, it would have been easy for me to list

six things I would like to change about her - my heavens,

she could have listed a thousand things she would

like to change about me - but I didn’t. I said to her, ‘Let

me think about it and give you an answer in the morning.’

“The next morning I got up very early and called the

florist and had them send six red roses to my wife with a

note saying: ‘I can’t think of six things I would like to

change about you. I love you the way you are.’

“When I arrived at home that evening, who do you

think greeted me at the door: That’s right. My wife! She

was almost in tears. Needless to say, I was extremely

glad I had not criticized her as she had requested.

“The following Sunday at church, after she had reported

the results of her assignment, several women

with whom she had been studying came up to me and

said, ‘That was the most considerate thing I have ever

heard.’ It was then I realized the power of appreciation.”

Florenz Ziegfeld, the most spectacular producer who

ever dazzled Broadway, gained his reputation by his

subtle ability to “glorify the American girl.” Time after

time, he took drab little creatures that no one ever

looked at twice and transformed them on the stage into

glamorous visions of mystery and seduction. Knowing

the value of appreciation and confidence, he made

women feel beautiful by the sheer power of his gallantry

and consideration. He was practical: he raised the salary

of chorus girls from thirty dollars a week to as high as

one hundred and seventy-five. And he was also chivalrous;

on opening night at the Follies, he sent telegrams

to the stars in the cast, and he deluged every chorus girl

in the show with American Beauty roses.

I once succumbed to the fad of fasting and went for six

days and nights without eating. It wasn’t difficult. I was

less hungry at the end of the sixth day than I was at the

end of the second. Yet I know, as you know, people who

would think they had committed a crime if they let their

families or employees go for six days without food; but

they will let them go for six days, and six weeks, and

sometimes sixty years without giving them the hearty

appreciation that they crave almost as much as they

crave food.

When Alfred Lunt, one of the great actors of his time,

played the leading role in Reunion in Vienna, he said,

“There is nothing I need so much as nourishment for my

self-esteem.”

We nourish the bodies of our children and friends and

employees, but how seldom do we nourish their selfesteem?

We provide them with roast beef and potatoes

to build energy, but we neglect to give them kind words

of appreciation that would sing in their memories for

years like the music of the morning stars.

Paul Harvey, in one of his radio broadcasts, “The Rest

of the Story,” told how showing sincere appreciation can

change a person’s life. He reported that years ago a

teacher in Detroit asked Stevie Morris to help her find a

mouse that was lost in the classroom. You see, she appreciated

the fact that nature had given Stevie something

no one else in the room had. Nature had given Stevie a

remarkable pair of ears to compensate for his blind eyes.

But this was really the first time Stevie had been shown

appreciation for those talented ears. Now, years later, he

says that this act of appreciation was the beginning of a

new life. You see, from that time on he developed his

gift of hearing and went on to become, under the stage

name of Stevie Wonder, one of the great pop singers and

and songwriters of the seventies.*

* Paul Aurandt, Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story (New York: Doubleday,

1977). Edited and compiled by Lynne Harvey. Copyright © by

Paulynne, Inc.

Some readers are saying right now as they read these

lines: “Oh, phooey! Flattery! Bear oil! I’ve tried that

stuff. It doesn’t work - not with intelligent people.”

Of course flattery seldom works with discerning people.

It is shallow, selfish and insincere. It ought to fail

and it usually does. True, some people are so hungry, so

thirsty, for appreciation that they will swallow anything,

just as a starving man will eat grass and fishworms.

Even Queen Victoria was susceptible to flattery.

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli confessed that he put

it on thick in dealing with the Queen. To use his exact

words, he said he “spread it on with a trowel.” But Disraeli

was one of the most polished, deft and adroit men

who ever ruled the far-flung British Empire. He was a

genius in his line. What would work for him wouldn’t

necessarily work for you and me. In the long run, flattery

will do you more harm than good. Flattery is counterfeit,

and like counterfeit money, it will eventually get you

into trouble if you pass it to someone else.

The difference between appreciation and flattery?

That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere.

One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth

out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally

admired; the other universally condemned.

I recently saw a bust of Mexican hero General Alvaro

Obregon in the Chapultepec palace in Mexico City.

Below the bust are carved these wise words from General

Obregon’s philosophy: “Don’t be afraid of enemies

who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.”

No! No! No! I am not suggesting flattery! Far from it.

I’m talking about a new way of life. Let me repeat. I am

talking about a new way of life.

King George V had a set of six maxims displayed on

the walls of his study at Buckingham Palace. One of

these maxims said: “Teach me neither to proffer nor receive

cheap praise.” That’s all flattery is - cheap praise.

I once read a definition of flattery that may be worth

repeating: “Flattery is telling the other person precisely

what he thinks about himself.”

“Use what language you will,” said Ralph Waldo

Emerson, “you can never say anything but what you

are ."

If all we had to do was flatter, everybody would catch

on and we should all be experts in human relations.

When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite

problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our

time thinking about ourselves. Now, if we stop thinking

about ourselves for a while and begin to think of the

other person’s good points, we won’t have to resort to

flattery so cheap and false that it can be spotted almost

before it is out of the mouth,

One of the most neglected virtues of our daily existence

is appreciation, Somehow, we neglect to praise

our son or daughter when he or she brings home a good

report card, and we fail to encourage our children when

they first succeed in baking a cake or building a birdhouse.

Nothing pleases children more than this kind of

parental interest and approval.

The next time you enjoy filet mignon at the club, send

word to the chef that it was excellently prepared, and

when a tired salesperson shows you unusual courtesy,

please mention it.

Every minister, lecturer and public speaker knows the

discouragement of pouring himself or herself out to an

audience and not receiving a single ripple of appreciative

comment. What applies to professionals applies

doubly to workers in offices, shops and factories and our

families and friends. In our interpersonal relations we

should never forget that all our associates are human

beings and hunger for appreciation. It is the legal tender

that all souls enjoy.

Try leaving a friendly trail of little sparks of gratitude

on your daily trips. You will be surprised how they will

set small flames of friendship that will be rose beacons

on your next visit.

Pamela Dunham of New Fairfield, Connecticut, had

among her responsibilities on her job the supervision of

a janitor who was doing a very poor job. The other employees

would jeer at him and litter the hallways to show

him what a bad job he was doing. It was so bad, productive

time was being lost in the shop.

Without success, Pam tried various ways to motivate

this person. She noticed that occasionally he did a particularly

good piece of work. She made a point to praise

him for it in front of the other people. Each day the job

he did all around got better, and pretty soon he started

doing all his work efficiently. Now he does an excellent

job and other people give him appreciation and recognition.

Honest appreciation got results where criticism

and ridicule failed.

Hurting people not only does not change them, it is

never called for. There is an old saying that I have cut

out and pasted on my mirror where I cannot help but

see it every day:

I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I

can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being,

let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall

not pass this way again.

Emerson said: “Every man I meet is my superior in

some way, In that, I learn of him.”

If that was true of Emerson, isn’t it likely to be a thousand

times more true of you and me? Let’s cease thinking

of our accomplishments, our wants. Let’s try to figure

out the other person’s good points. Then forget flattery.

Give honest, sincere appreciation. Be “hearty in your

approbation and lavish in your praise,” and people will

cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them

over a lifetime - repeat them years after you have forgotten

them.

PRINCIPLE 2

Give honest and sincere appreciation.

3

“HE WHO CAN DO THIS HAS THE

WHOLE WORLD WITH HIM.

HE WHO CANNOT WALKS

A LONELY WAY”

I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer.

Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but

I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer

worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what

I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t

bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled

a worm or a grasshopper in front of the fish and

said: “Wouldn’t you like to have that?”

Why not use the same common sense when fishing for

people?

That is what Lloyd George, Great Britain’s Prime Minister

during World War I, did. When someone asked him

how he managed to stay in power after the other wartime

leaders - Wilson, Orlando and Clemenceau - had been

forgotten, he replied that if his staying on top might be

attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having

learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the

fish .

Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd.

Of course, you are interested in what you want.

You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The

rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we

want.

So the only way cm earth to influence other people is

to talk about what they want and show them how to get

it.

Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get

somebody to do something. If, for example, you don’t

want your children to smoke, don’t preach at them, and

don’t talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes

may keep them from making the basketball team

or winning the hundred-yard dash.

This is a good thing to remember regardless of

whether you are dealing with children or calves or chimpanzees.

For example: one day Ralph Waldo Emerson

and his son tried to get a calf into the barn. But they

made the common mistake of thinking only of what they

wanted: Emerson pushed and his son pulled. But the

calf was doing just what they were doing; he was thinking

only of what he wanted; so he stiffened his legs and

stubbornly refused to leave the pasture. The Irish housemaid

saw their predicament. She couldn’t write essays

and books; but, on this occasion at least, she had more

horse sense, or calf sense, than Emerson had. She

thought of what the calf wanted; so she put her maternal

finger in the calf’s mouth and let the calf suck her finger

as she gently led him into the barn.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you

were born was performed because you wanted something.

How about the time you gave a large contribution

to the Red Cross? Yes, that is no exception to the rule.

You gave the Red Cross the donation because you

wanted to lend a helping hand; you wanted to do a beautiful,

unselfish, divine act. " Inasmuch as ye have done it

unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done

it unto me.”

If you hadn’t wanted that feeling more than you

wanted your money, you would not have made the contribution.

Of course, you might have made the contribution

because you were ashamed to refuse or because a

customer asked you to do it. But one thing is certain. You

made the contribution because you wanted something.

Harry A, Overstreet in his illuminating book Influencing

Human Behavior said; “Action springs out of what

we fundamentally desire . . . and the best piece of advice

which can be given to would-be persuaders,

whether in business, in the home, in the school, in politics,

is: First, arouse in the other person an eager want.

He who can do this has the whole world with him. He

who cannot walks a lonely way.”

Andrew Carnegie, the poverty-stricken Scotch lad

who started to work at two cents an hour and finally gave

away $365 million, learned early in life that the only

way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the

other person wants. He attended school only four years;

yet he learned how to handle people.

To illustrate: His sister-in-law was worried sick over

her two boys. They were at Yale, and they were so busy

with their own affairs that they neglected to write home

and paid no attention whatever to their mother’s frantic

letters.

Then Carnegie offered to wager a hundred dollars that

he could get an answer by return mail, without even

asking for it. Someone called his bet; so he wrote his

nephews a chatty letter, mentioning casually in a post-script

that he was sending each one a five-dollar bill.

He neglected, however, to enclose the money.

Back came replies by return mail thanking “Dear

Uncle Andrew” for his kind note and-you can finish

the sentence yourself.

Another example of persuading comes from Stan

Novak of Cleveland, Ohio, a participant in our course.

Stan came home from work one evening to find his

youngest son, Tim, kicking and screaming on the living

room floor. He was to start kindergarten the next day and

was protesting that he would not go. Stan’s normal reaction

would have been to banish the child to his room

and tell him he’d just better make up his mind to go. He

had no choice. But tonight, recognizing that this would

not really help Tim start kindergarten in the best frame

of mind, Stan sat down and thought, “If I were Tim, why

would I be excited about going to kindergarten?” He

and his wife made a list of all the fun things Tim would

do such as finger painting, singing songs, making new

friends. Then they put them into action. “We all started

finger-painting on the kitchen table-my wife, Lil, my

other son Bob, and myself, all having fun. Soon Tim was

peeping around the corner. Next he was begging to participate.

‘Oh, no! You have to go to kindergarten first to

learn how to finger-paint.’ With all the enthusiasm I

could muster I went through the list talking in terms he

could understand-telling him all the fun he would

have in kindergarten. The next morning, I thought I was

the first one up. I went downstairs and found Tim sitting

sound asleep in the living room chair. ‘What are you

doing here?’ I asked. ‘I’m waiting to go to kindergarten.

I don’t want to be late.’ The enthusiasm of our entire

family had aroused in Tim an eager want that no amount

of discussion or threat could have possibly accomplished.”

Tomorrow you may want to persuade somebody to do

something. Before you speak, pause and ask yourself:

“How can I make this person want to do it?”

That question will stop us from rushing into a situation

heedlessly, with futile chatter about our desires.

At one time I rented the grand ballroom of a certain

New York hotel for twenty nights in each season in order

to hold a series of lectures.

At the beginning of one season, I was suddenly informed

that I should have to pay almost three times as

much rent as formerly. This news reached me after the

tickets had been printed and distributed and all announcements

had been made.

Naturally, I didn’t want to pay the increase, but what

was the use of talking to the hotel about what I wanted?

They were interested only in what they wanted. So a

couple of days later I went to see the manager.

"I was a bit shocked when I got your letter,” I said,

“but I don’t blame you at all. If I had been in your position,

I should probably have written a similar letter myself.

Your duty as the manager of the hotel is to make all

the profit possible. If you don’t do that, you will be fired

and you ought to be fired. Now, let’s take a piece of

paper and write down the advantages and the disadvantages

that will accrue to you, if you insist on this increase

in rent.”

Then I took a letterhead and ran a line through the

center and headed one column “Advantages” and the

other column “Disadvantages.”

I wrote down under the head “Advantages” these

words: “Ballroom free.” Then I went on to say: “You

will have the advantage of having the ballroom free to

rent for dances and conventions. That is a big advantage,

for affairs like that will pay you much more than you can

get for a series of lectures. If I tie your ballroom up

for twenty nights during the course of the season, it is

sure to mean a loss of some very profitable business to

you.

“Now, let’s ‘consider the disadvantages. First, instead

of increasing your income from me, you are going to

decrease it. In fact, you are going to wipe it out because

I cannot pay the rent you are asking. I shall be forced to

hold these lectures at some other place.

“There’s another disadvantage to you also. These lectures

attract crowds of educated and cultured people to

your hotel. That is good advertising for you, isn’t it? In

fact, if you spent five thousand dollars advertising in the

newspapers, you couldn’t bring as many people to look

at your hotel as I can bring by these lectures. That is

worth a lot to a hotel, isn’t it?”

As I talked, I wrote these two “disadvantages” under

the proper heading, and handed the sheet of paper to

the manager, saying: "I wish you would carefully consider

both the advantages and disadvantages that are

going to accrue to you and then give me your final decision.”

I received a letter the next day, informing me that my

rent would be increased only 50 percent instead of 300

percent.

Mind you, I got this reduction without saying a word

about what I wanted. I talked all the time about what

the other person wanted and how he could get it.

Suppose I had done the human, natural thing; suppose

I had stormed into his office and said, “What do you

mean by raising my rent three hundred percent when

you know the tickets have been printed and the announcements

made? Three hundred percent! Ridiculous!

Absurd! I won’t pay it!”

What would have happened then? An argument would

have begun to steam and boil and sputter - and you

know how arguments end. Even if I had convinced him

that he was wrong, his pride would have made it difficult

for him to back down and give in.

Here is one of the best bits of advice ever given about

the fine art of human relationships. “If there is any one

secret of success,” said Henry Ford, “it lies in the ability

to get the other person’s point of view and see things

from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

That is so good, I want to repeat it: "If there is any one

secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other

person's point of view and see things from that person’s

angle as well as from your own.”

That is so simple, so obvious, that anyone ought to see

the truth of it at a glance; yet 90 percent of the people

on this earth ignore it 90 percent of the time.

An example? Look at the letters that come across your

desk tomorrow morning, and you will find that most of

them violate this important canon of common sense.

Take this one, a letter written by the head of the radio

department of an advertising agency with offices scattered

across the continent. This letter was sent to the

managers of local radio stations throughout the country.

(I have set down, in brackets, my reactions to each paragraph.)

Mr. John Blank,

Blankville,

Indiana

Dear Mr. Blank:

The ------ company desires to retain its position in advertising

agency leadership in the radio field.

[Who cares what your company desires? I am worried

about my own problems. The bank is foreclosing the

mortage on my house, the bugs are destroying the hollyhocks,

the stock market tumbled yesterday. I missed

the eight-fifteen this morning, I wasn’t invited to the

Jones’s dance last night, the doctor tells me I have high

blood pressure and neuritis and dandruff. And then what

happens? I come down to the office this morning worried,

open my mail and here is some little whippersnapper

off in New York yapping about what his company

wants. Bah! If he only realized what sort of impression

his letter makes, he would get out of the advertising

business and start manufacturing sheep dip.]

This agency’s national advertising accounts were the

bulwark of the network. Our subsequent clearances of

station time have kept us at the top of agencies year after

year.

[You are big and rich and right at the top, are you? So

what? I don’t give two whoops in Hades if you are as big

as General Motors and General Electric and the General

Staff of the U.S. Army all combined. If you had as much

sense as a half-witted hummingbird, you would realize

that I am interested in how big I am - not how big you

are. All this talk about your enormous success makes me

feel small and unimportant.]

We desire to service our accounts with the last word on

radio station information.

[You desire! You desire. You unmitigated ass. I’m not

interested in what you desire or what the President of

the United States desires. Let me tell you once and for

all that I am interested in what I desire - and you

haven’t said a word about that yet in this absurd letter of

yours .]

Will you, therefore, put the ---------- company on your

preferred list for weekly station information - every single

detail that will be useful to an agency in intelligently booking

time.

[“Preferred list.” You have your nerve! You make me

feel insignificant by your big talk about your company

- nd then you ask me to put you on a “preferred” list,

and you don’t even say “please” when you ask it.]

A prompt acknowledgment of this letter, giving us your

latest “doings,” will be mutually helpful.

[You fool! You mail me a cheap form letter - a letter

scattered far and wide like the autumn leaves - and you

have the gall to ask me, when I am worried about the

mortgage and the hollyhocks and my blood pressure, to

sit down and dictate a personal note acknowledging your

form letter - and you ask me to do it “promptly.” What

do you mean, “promptly”.? Don’t you know I am just as

busy as you are - or, at least, I like to think I am. And

while we are on the subject, who gave you the lordly

right to order me around? . . . You say it will be “mutually

helpful.” At last, at last, you have begun to see my

viewpoint. But you are vague about how it will be to my

advantage.]

Very truly yours,

John Doe

Manager Radio Department

P.S. The enclosed reprint from the Blankville Journal will

be of interest to you, and you may want to broadcast it over

your station.

[Finally, down here in the postscript, you mention

something that may help me solve one of my problems.

Why didn’t you begin your letter with - but what’s the

use? Any advertising man who is guilty of perpetrating

such drivel as you have sent me has something wrong

with his medulla oblongata. You don’t need a letter giving

our latest doings. What you need is a quart of iodine

in your thyroid gland.]

Now, if people who devote their lives to advertising

and who pose as experts in the art of influencing people

to buy - if they write a letter like that, what can we expect

from the butcher and baker or the auto mechanic?

Here is another letter, written by the superintendent

of a large freight terminal to a student of this course,

Edward Vermylen. What effect did this letter have on

the man to whom it was addressed? Read it and then I'll

tell you.

A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc.

28 Front St.

Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201

Attention: Mr. Edward Vermylen

Gentlemen:

The operations at our outbound-rail-receiving station are

handicapped because a material percentage of the total

business is delivered us in the late afternoon. This condition

results in congestion, overtime on the part of our forces,

delays to trucks, and in some cases delays to freight. On

November 10, we received from your company a lot of 510

pieces, which reached here at 4:20 P.M.

We solicit your cooperation toward overcoming the undesirable

effects arising from late receipt of freight. May we

ask that, on days on which you ship the volume which was

received on the above date, effort be made either to get the

truck here earlier or to deliver us part of the freight during

the morning?

The advantage that would accrue to you under such an

arrangement would be that of more expeditious discharge

of your trucks and the assurance that your business would

go forward on the date of its receipt.

Very truly yours,

J----- B ----- Supt.

After reading this letter, Mr. Vermylen, sales manager

for A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc., sent it to me with the following

comment:

This letter had the reverse effect from that which was

intended. The letter begins by describing the Terminal’s

difficulties, in which we are not interested, generally speaking.

Our cooperation is then requested without any thought

as to whether it would inconvenience us, and then, finally,

in the last paragraph, the fact is mentioned that if we do

cooperate it will mean more expeditious discharge of our

trucks with the assurance that our freight will go forward on

the date of its receipt.

In other words, that in which we are most interested is

mentioned last and the whole effect is one of raising a spirit

of antagonism rather than of cooperation.

Let’s see if we can’t rewrite and improve this letter.

Let’s not waste any time talking about our problems. As

Henry Ford admonishes, let’s “get the other person’s

point of view and see things from his or her angle, as

well as from our own.”

Here is one way of revising the letter. It may not be

the best way, but isn’t it an improvement?

Mr. Edward Vermylen

% A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc.

28 Front St.

Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201

Dear Mr. Vermylen:

Your company has been one of our good customers for

fourteen years. Naturally, we are very grateful for your patronage

and are eager to give you the speedy, efficient service

you deserve. However, we regret to say that it isn’t

possible for us to do that when your trucks bring us a large

shipment late in the afternoon, as they did on November

10. Why? Because many other customers make late afternoon

deliveries also. Naturally, that causes congestion. That

means your trucks are held up unavoidably at the pier and

sometimes even your freight is delayed.

That’s bad, but it can be avoided. If you make your deliveries

at the pier in the morning when possible, your trucks

will be able to keep moving, your freight will get immediate

attention, and our workers will get home early at night to

enjoy a dinner of the delicious macaroni and noodles that

you manufacture.

Regardless of when your shipments arrive, we shall always

cheerfully do all in our power to serve you promptly.

You are busy. Please don’t trouble to answer this note.

Yours truly,

J----- B-----, supt.

Barbara Anderson, who worked in a bank in New

York, desired to move to Phoenix, Arizona, because of

the health of her son. Using the principles she had

learned in our course, she wrote the following letter to

twelve banks in Phoenix:

Dear Sir:

My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to

a rapidly growing bank like yours.

In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers

Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment

as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all

phases of banking including depositor relations, credits,

loans and administration.

I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can

contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix

the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity

to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals.

Sincerely,

Barbara L. Anderson

Do you think Mrs. Anderson received any response

from that letter? Eleven of the twelve banks invited her

to be interviewed, and she had a choice of which bank’s

offer to accept. Why? Mrs. Anderson did not state what

she wanted, but wrote in the letter how she could help

them, and focused on their wants, not her own.

Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements

today, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why?

Because they are always thinking only of what they

want. They don’t realize that neither you nor I want to

buy anything. If we did, we would go out and buy it. But

both of us are eternally interested in solving our problems.

And if salespeople can show us how their services

or merchandise will help us solve our problems, they

won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy. And customers like to

feel that they are buying - not being sold.

Yet many salespeople spend a lifetime in selling without

seeing things from the customer’s angle. For example,

for many years I lived in Forest Hills, a little

community of private homes in the center of Greater

New York. One day as I was rushing to the station, I

chanced to meet a real-estate operator who had bought

and sold property in that area for many years. He knew

Forest Hills well, so I hurriedly asked him whether or

not my stucco house was built with metal lath or hollow

tile. He said he didn’t know and told me what I already

knew - that I could find out by calling the Forest Hills

Garden Association. The following morning, I received

a letter from him. Did he give me the information I

wanted? He could have gotten it in sixty seconds by a

telephone call. But he didn’t. He told me again that I

could get it by telephoning, and then asked me to let

him handle my insurance.

He was not interested in helping me. He was interested

only in helping himself.

J. Howard Lucas of Birmingham, Alabama, tells how

two salespeople from the same company handled the

same type of situation, He reported:

“Several years ago I was on the management team of

a small company. Headquartered near us was the district

office of a large insurance company. Their agents were

assigned territories, and our company was assigned to

two agents, whom I shall refer to as Carl and John.

“One morning, Carl dropped by our office and casually

mentioned that his company had just introduced a

new life insurance policy for executives and thought we

might be interested later on and he would get back to us

when he had more information on it.

“The same day, John saw us on the sidewalk while

returning from a coffee break, and he shouted: ‘Hey

Luke, hold up, I have some great news for you fellows.’

He hurried over and very excitedly told us about an executive

life insurance policy his company had introduced

that very day. (It was the same policy that Carl

had casually mentioned.) He wanted us to have one of

the first issued. He gave us a few important facts about

the coverage and ended saying, ‘The policy is so new,

I’m going to have someone from the home office come

out tomorrow and explain it. Now, in the meantime, let’s

get the applications signed and on the way so he can

have more information to work with.’ His enthusiasm

aroused in us an eager want for this policy even though

we still did not have details, When they were made

available to us, they confirmed John’s initial understanding

of the policy, and he not only sold each of us a policy,

but later doubled our coverage.

“Carl could have had those sales, but he made no effort

to arouse in us any desire for the policies.”

The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking.

So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to

serve others has an enormous advantage. He has little

competition. Owen D. Young, a noted lawyer and one of

America’s great business leaders, once said: “People

who can put themselves in the place of other people

who can understand the workings of their minds, need

never worry about what the future has in store for

them.”

If out of reading this book you get just one thing - an

increased tendency to think always in terms of other

people’s point of view, and see things from their angle

- if you get that one thing out of this book, it may

easily prove to be one of the building blocks of your

career.

Looking at the other person’s point of view and arousing

in him an eager want for something is not to be

construed as manipulating that person so that he will do

something that is only for your benefit and his detriment.

Each party should gain from the negotiation. In the letters

to Mr. Vermylen, both the sender and the receiver

of the correspondence gained by implementing what

was suggested. Both the bank and Mrs. Anderson won

by her letter in that the bank obtained a valuable employee

and Mrs. Anderson a suitable job. And in the

example of John’s sale of insurance to Mr. Lucas, both

gained through this transaction.

Another example in which everybody gains through

this principle of arousing an eager want comes from Michael

E. Whidden of Warwick, Rhode Island, who is a

territory salesman for the Shell Oil Company. Mike

wanted to become the Number One salesperson in his

district, but one service station was holding him back. It

was run by an older man who could not be motivated to

clean up his station. It was in such poor shape that sales

were declining significantly.

This manager would not listen to any of Mike’s pleas

to upgrade the station. After many exhortations and

heart-to-heart talks - all of which had no impact - Mike

decided to invite the manager to visit the newest Shell

station in his territory.

The manager was so impressed by the facilities at the

new station that when Mike visited him the next time,

his station was cleaned up and had recorded a sales increase.

This enabled Mike to reach the Number One

spot in his district. All his talking and discussion hadn’t

helped, but by arousing an eager want in the manager,

by showing him the modern station, he had accomplished

his goal, and both the manager and Mike benefited.

Most people go through college and learn to read Virgil

and master the mysteries of calculus without ever

discovering how their own minds function. For instance:

I once gave a course in Effective Speaking for the young

college graduates who were entering the employ of the

Carrier Corporation, the large air-conditioner manufacturer.

One of the participants wanted to persuade the

others to play basketball in their free time, and this is

about what he said: "I want you to come out and play

basketball. I like to play basketball, but the last few

times I’ve been to the gymnasium there haven’t been

enough people to get up a game. Two or three of us got

to throwing the ball around the other night - and I got a

black eye. I wish all of you would come down tomorrow

night. I want to play basketball.”

Did he talk about anything you want? You don’t want

to go to a gymnasium that no one else goes to, do you?

You don’t care about what he wants. You don’t want to

get a black eye.

Could he have shown you how to get the things you

want by using the gymnasium? Surely. More pep.

Keener edge to the appetite. Clearer brain. Fun. Games.

Basketball.

To repeat Professor Overstreet’s wise advice: First,

arouse in the other person an eager want He who can

do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot

walks a lonely way.

One of the students in the author’s training course was

worried about his little boy. The child was underweight

and refused to eat properly. His parents used the usual

method. They scolded and nagged. “Mother wants you

to eat this and that.” "Father wants you to grow up to be

a big man.”

Did the boy pay any attention to these pleas? Just

about as much as you pay to one fleck of sand on a sandy

beach.

No one with a trace of horse sense would expect a

child three years old to react to the viewpoint of a father

thirty years old. Yet that was precisely what that father

had expected. It was absurd. He finally saw that. So he

said to himself: “What does that boy want? How can I

tie up what I want to what he wants?”

It was easy for the father when he starting thinking

about it. His boy had a tricycle that he loved to ride up

and down the sidewalk in front of the house in Brooklyn.

A few doors down the street lived a bully - a bigger boy

who would pull the little boy off his tricycle and ride it

himself.

Naturally, the little boy would run screaming to his

mother, and she would have to come out and take the

bully off the tricycle and put her little boy on again, This

happened almost every day.

What did the little boy want? It didn’t take a Sherlock

Holmes to answer that one. His pride, his anger, his

desire for a feeling of importance - all the strongest

emotions in his makeup - goaded him to get revenge, to

smash the bully in the nose. And when his father explained

that the boy would be able to wallop the daylights

out of the bigger kid someday if he would only eat

the things his mother wanted him to eat - when his father

promised him that - there was no longer any problem

of dietetics. That boy would have eaten spinach,

sauerkraut, salt mackerel - anything in order to be big

enough to whip the bully who had humiliated him so

often.

After solving that problem, the parents tackled another:

the little boy had the unholy habit of wetting his bed.

He slept with his grandmother. In the morning, his

grandmother would wake up and feel the sheet and say:

“Look, Johnny, what you did again last night.”

He would say: “No, I didn’t do it. You did it.”

Scolding, spanking, shaming him, reiterating that the

parents didn’t want him to do it - none of these things

kept the bed dry. So the parents asked: “How can we

make this boy want to stop wetting his bed?”

What were his wants? First, he wanted to wear pajamas

like Daddy instead of wearing a nightgown like

Grandmother. Grandmother was getting fed up with his

nocturnal iniquities, so she gladly offered to buy him a

pair of pajamas if he would reform. Second, he wanted a

bed of his own. Grandma didn’t object.

His mother took him to a department store in Brooklyn,

winked at the salesgirl, and said: “Here is a little

gentleman who would like to do some shopping.”

The salesgirl made him feel important by saying:

“Young man, what can I show you?”

He stood a couple of inches taller and said: “I want to

buy a bed for myself.”

When he was shown the one his mother wanted him

to buy, she winked at the salesgirl and the boy was persuaded

to buy it.

The bed was delivered the next day; and that night,

when Father came home, the little boy ran to the door

shouting: “Daddy! Daddy! Come upstairs and see my

bed that I bought!”

The father, looking at the bed, obeyed Charles

Schwab’s injunction: he was “hearty in his approbation

and lavish in his praise.”

“You are not going to wet this bed, are you?” the father

said. " Oh, no, no! I am not going to wet this bed.” The boy

kept his promise, for his pride was involved. That was

his bed. He and he alone had bought it. And he was

wearing pajamas now like a little man. He wanted to act

like a man. And he did.

Another father, K. T. Dutschmann, a telephone engineer,

a student of this course, couldn’t get his three-year

old daughter to eat breakfast food. The usual scolding,

pleading, coaxing methods had all ended in futility. So

the parents asked themselves: “How can we make her

want to do it?”

The little girl loved to imitate her mother, to feel big

and grown up; so one morning they put her on a chair

and let her make the breakfast food. At just the psychological

moment, Father drifted into the kitchen while

she was stirring the cereal and she said: “Oh, look,

Daddy, I am making the cereal this morning.”

She ate two helpings of the cereal without any coaxing,

because she was interested in it. She had achieved

a feeling of importance; she had found in making the

cereal an avenue of self-expression.

William Winter once remarked that "self-expression is

the dominant necessity of human nature.” Why can’t we

adapt this same psychology to business dealings? When

we have a brilliant idea, instead of making others think

it is ours, why not let them cook and stir the idea themselves.

They will then regard it as their own; they will

like it and maybe eat a couple of helpings of it.

Remember: “First, arouse in the other person an eager

want. He who can do this has the whole world with him.

He who cannot walks a lonely way."

PRINCIPLE 3

Arouse in the other person an eager want.

In a Nutshell

FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN

HANDLING PEOPLE

PRINCIPLE 1

Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

PRINCIPLE 2

Give honest and sincere appreciation.

PRINCIPLE 3

Arouse in the other person an eager want.

PART TWO

Ways to Make People

Like You

1

DO THIS AND YOU’LL BE WELCOME

ANYWHERE

Why read this book to find out how to win friends? Why

not study the technique of the greatest winner of friends

the world has ever known? Who is he? You may meet

him tomorrow coming down the street. When you get

within ten feet of him, he will begin to wag his tail. If

you stop and pat him, he will almost jump out of his skin

to show you how much he likes you. And you know that

behind this show of affection on his part, there are no

ulterior motives: he doesn’t want to sell you any real

estate, and he doesn’t want to marry you.

Did you ever stop to think that a dog is the only animal

that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen has to lay

eggs, a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing.

But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but

love.

When I was five years old, my father bought a little

yellow-haired pup for fifty cents. He was the light and

joy of my childhood. Every afternoon about four-thirty,

he would sit in the front yard with his beautiful eyes

staring steadfastly at the path, and as soon as he heard

my voice or saw me swinging my dinner pail through

the buck brush, he was off like a shot, racing breathlessly

up the hill to greet me with leaps of joy and barks of

sheer ecstasy.

Tippy was my constant companion for five years. Then

one tragic night - I shall never forget it - he was killed

within ten feet of my head, killed by lightning. Tippy’s

death was the tragedy of my boyhood.

You never read a book on psychology, Tippy. You

didn’t need to. You knew by some divine instinct that

you can make more friends in two months by becoming

genuinely interested in other people than you can in two

years by trying to get other people interested in you. Let

me repeat that. You can make more friends in two

months by becoming interested in other people than you

can in two years by trying to get other people interested

in you.

Yet I know and you know people who blunder through

life trying to wigwag other people into becoming interested

in them.

Of course, it doesn’t work. People are not interested

in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested

in themselves - morning, noon and after dinner.

The New York Telephone Company made a detailed

study of telephone conversations to find out which word

is the most frequently used. You have guessed it: it is

the personal pronoun “I.” “I.” I.” It was used 3,900

times in 500 telephone conversations. "I.” “I.” “I.” "I.”

When you see a group photograph that you are in,

whose picture do you look for first?

If we merely try to impress people and get people

interested in us, we will never have many true, sincere

friends. Friends, real friends, are not made that way.

Napoleon tried it, and in his last meeting with Josephine

he said: “Josephine, I have been as fortunate as

any man ever was on this earth; and yet, at this hour, you

are the only person in the world on whom I can rely.”

And historians doubt whether he could rely even on

her.

Alfred Adler, the famous Viennese psychologist, wrote

a book entitled What Life Should Mean to You. In that

book he says: “It is the individual who is not interested

in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life

and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from

among such individuals that all human failures spring.”

You may read scores of erudite tomes on psychology

without coming across a statement more significant for

you and for me. Adler’s statement is so rich with meaning

that I am going to repeat it in italics:

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow

men who has the greatest difjculties in life and provides

the greutest injury to others. It is from umong such individuals

that all humun failures spring.

I once took a course in short-story writing at New York

University, and during that course the editor of a leading

magazine talked to our class. He said he could pick up

any one of the dozens of stories that drifted across his

desk every day and after reading a few paragraphs he

could feel whether or not the author liked people. “If

the author doesn’t like people,” he said, “people won’t

like his or her stories.”

This hard-boiled editor stopped twice in the course of

his talk on fiction writing and apologized for preaching

a sermon. “I am telling you,” he said, “the same things

your preacher would tell you, but remember, you have

to be interested in people if you want to be a successful

writer of stories.”

If that is true of writing fiction, you can be sure it is

true of dealing with people face-to-face.

I spent an evening in the dressing room of Howard

Thurston the last time he appeared on Broadway -

Thurston was the acknowledged dean of magicians. For forty

years he had traveled all over the world, time and again,

creating illusions, mystifying audiences, and making

people gasp with astonishment. More than 60 million

people had paid admission to his show, and he had made

almost $2 million in profit.

I asked Mr. Thurston to tell me the secret of his success.

His schooling certainly had nothing to do with it,

for he ran away from home as a small boy, became a

hobo, rode in boxcars, slept in haystacks, begged his

food from door to door, and learned to read by looking

out of boxcars at signs along the railway.

Did he have a superior knowledge of magic? No, he

told me hundreds of books had been written about legerdemain

and scores of people knew as much about it as

he did. But he had two things that the others didn’t have.

First, he had the ability to put his personality across the

footlights. He was a master showman. He knew human

nature. Everything he did, every gesture, every intonation

of his voice, every lifting of an eyebrow had been

carefully rehearsed in advance, and his actions were

timed to split seconds. But, in addition to that, Thurston

had a genuine interest in people. He told me that many

magicians would look at the audience and say to themselves,

“Well, there is a bunch of suckers out there, a

bunch of hicks; I’ll fool them all right.” But Thurston’s

method was totally different. He told me that every time

he went on stage he said to himself: “I am grateful because

these people come to see me, They make it possible

for me to make my living in a very agreeable way.

I’m going to give them the very best I possibly can.”

He declared he never stepped in front of the footlights

without first saying to himself over and over: “I love my

audience. I love my audience.” Ridiculous? Absurd?

You are privileged to think anything you like. I am

merely passing it on to you without comment as a recipe

used by one of the most famous magicians of all time.

George Dyke of North Warren, Pennsylvania, was

forced to retire from his service station business after

thirty years when a new highway was constructed over

the site of his station. It wasn’t long before the idle days

of retirement began to bore him, so he started filling in

his time trying to play music on his old fiddle. Soon he

was traveling the area to listen to music and talk with

many of the accomplished fiddlers. In his humble and

friendly way he became generally interested in learning

the background and interests of every musician he met.

Although he was not a great fiddler himself, he made

many friends in this pursuit. He attended competitions

and soon became known to the country music fans in the

eastern part of the United States as “Uncle George, the

Fiddle Scraper from Kinzua County.” When we heard

Uncle George, he was seventy-two and enjoying every

minute of his life. By having a sustained interest in other

people, he created a new life for himself at a time when

most people consider their productive years over.

That, too, was one of the secrets of Theodore Roosevelt’s

astonishing popularity. Even his servants loved

him. His valet, James E. Amos, wrote a book about him

entitled Theodore Roosevelt, Hero to His Valet. In that

book Amos relates this illuminating incident:

My wife one time asked the President about a bobwhite.

She had never seen one and he described it to her fully.

Sometime later, the telephone at our cottage rang. [Amos

and his wife lived in a little cottage on the Roosevelt estate

at Oyster Bay.] My wife answered it and it was Mr. Roosevelt

himself. He had called her, he said, to tell her that there

was a bobwhite outside her window and that if she would

look out she might see it. Little things like that were so

characteristic of him. Whenever he went by our cottage,

even though we were out of sight, we would hear him call

out: “Oo-oo-oo, Annie?” or “Oo-oo-oo, James!” It was just a

friendly greeting as he went by.

How could employees keep from liking a man like

that? How could anyone keep from liking him?

Roosevelt called at the White House one day when

the President and Mrs. Taft were away. His honest liking

for humble people was shown by the fact that he

greeted all the old White House servants by name, even

the scullery maids.

“When he saw Alice, the kitchen maid,” writes Archie

Butt, “he asked her if she still made corn bread. Alice

told him that she sometimes made it for the servants, but

no one ate it upstairs.

"‘They show bad taste,’ Roosevelt boomed, ‘and I’ll

tell the President so when I see him.’

“Alice brought a piece to him on a plate, and he went

over to the office eating it as he went and greeting gardeners

and laborers as he passed. . .

“He addressed each person just as he had addressed

them in the past. Ike Hoover, who had been head usher

at the White House for forty years, said with tears in his

eyes: ‘It is the only happy day we had in nearly two

years, and not one of us would exchange it for a hundred-dollar

bill.’ ”

The same concern for the seemingly unimportant people

helped sales representative Edward M. Sykes, Jr., of

Chatham, New Jersey, retain an account. “Many years

ago,” he reported, “I called on customers for Johnson

and Johnson in the Massachusetts area. One account was

a drug store in Hingham. Whenever I went into this

store I would always talk to the soda clerk and sales

clerk for a few minutes before talking to the owner to

obtain his order. One day I went up to the owner of the

store, and he told me to leave as he was not interested in

buying J&J products anymore because he felt they were

concentrating their activities on food and discount stores

to the detriment of the small drugstore. I left with my

tail between my legs and drove around the town for several

hours. Finally, I decided to go back and try at least

to explain our position to the owner of the store.

“When I returned I walked in and as usual said hello

to the soda clerk and sales clerk. When I walked up to

the owner, he smiled at me and welcomed me back. He

then gave me double the usual order, I looked at him

with surprise and asked him what had happened since

my visit only a few hours earlier. He pointed to the

young man at the soda fountain and said that after I had

left, the boy had come over and said that I was one of the

few salespeople that called on the store that even bothered

to say hello to him and to the others in the store. He

told the owner that if any salesperson deserved his business,

it was I. The owner agreed and remained a loyal

customer. I never forgot that to be genuinely interested

in other people is a most important quality for a sales-person

to possess - for any person, for that matter.”

I have discovered from personal experience that one

can win the attention and time and cooperation of even

the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested

in them. Let me illustrate.

Years ago I conducted a course in fiction writing at the

Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and we wanted

such distinguished and busy authors as Kathleen Norris,

Fannie Hurst, Ida Tarbell, Albert Payson Terhune and

Rupert Hughes to come to Brooklyn and give us the

benefit of their experiences. So we wrote them, saying

we admired their work and were deeply interested in

getting their advice and learning the secrets of their success.

Each of these letters was signed by about a hundred

and fifty students. We said we realized that these authors

were busy - too busy to prepare a lecture. So we enclosed

a list of questions for them to answer about themselves

and their methods of work. They liked that. Who

wouldn’t like it? So they left their homes and traveled to

Brooklyn to give us a helping hand.

By using the same method, I persuaded Leslie M.

Shaw, secretary of the treasury in Theodore Roosevelt’s

cabinet; George W. Wickersham, attorney general in

Taft’s cabinet; William Jennings Bryan; Franklin D.

Roosevelt and many other prominent men to come to

talk to the students of my courses in public speaking.

All of us, be we workers in a factory, clerks in an office

or even a king upon his throne - all of us like people

who admire us. Take the German Kaiser, for example. At

the close of World War I he was probably the most savagely

and universally despised man on this earth. Even

his own nation turned against him when he fled over

into Holland to save his neck. The hatred against him

was so intense that millions of people would have loved

to tear him limb from limb or burn him at the stake. In

the midst of all this forest fire of fury, one little boy wrote

the Kaiser a simple, sincere letter glowing with kindliness

and admiration. This little boy said that no matter

what the others thought, he would always love Wilhelm

as his Emperor. The Kaiser was deeply touched by his

letter and invited the little boy to come to see him. The

boy came, so did his mother - and the Kaiser married

her. That little boy didn’t need to read a book on how to

win friends and influence people. He knew how instinctively.

If we want to make friends, let’s put ourselves out to

do things for other people - things that require time, energy,

unselfishness and thoughtfulness. When the Duke

of Windsor was Prince of Wales, he was scheduled to

tour South America, and before he started out on that

tour he spent months studying Spanish so that he could

make public talks in the language of the country; and

the South Americans loved him for it.

For years I made it a point to find out the birthdays of

my friends. How? Although I haven’t the foggiest bit of

faith in astrology, I began by asking the other party

whether he believed the date of one’s birth has anything

to do with character and disposition. I then asked him or

her to tell me the month and day of birth. If he or she

said November 24, for example, I kept repeating to myself,

“November 24, November 24.” The minute my

friend’s back was turned, I wrote down the name and

birthday and later would transfer it to a birthday book.

At the beginning of each year, I had these birthday dates

scheduled in my calendar pad so that they came to my

attention automatically. When the natal day arrived,

there was my letter or telegram. What a hit it made! I

was frequently the only person on earth who remembered.

If we want to make friends, let’s greet people with

animation and enthusiasm. When somebody calls you on

the telephone use the same psychology. Say “Hello” in

tones that bespeak how pleased YOU are to have the person

call. Many companies train their telephone operatars

to greet all callers in a tone of voice that radiates

interest and enthusiasm. The caller feels the company is

concerned about them. Let’s remember that when we

answer the telephone tomorrow.

Showing a genuine interest in others not only wins

friends for you, but may develop in its customers a loyalty

to your company. In an issue of the publication of

the National Bank of North America of New York, the

following letter from Madeline Rosedale, a depositor,

was published: *

* Eagle, publication of the Natirmal Bank of North America, h-ew York,

March 31, 1978.

“I would like you to know how much I appreciate

your staff. Everyone is so courteous, polite and helpful.

What a pleasure it is, after waiting on a long line, to have

the teller greet you pleasantly.

“Last year my mother was hospitalized for five

months. Frequently I went to Marie Petrucello, a teller.

She was concerned about my mother and inquired about

her progress.”

Is there any doubt that Mrs. Rosedale will continue to

use this bank?

Charles R. Walters, of one of the large banks in New

York City, was assigned to prepare a confidential report

on a certain corporation. He knew of only one person

who possessed the facts he needed so urgently. As Mr.

Walters was ushered into the president’s office, a young

woman stuck her head through a door and told the president

that she didn’t have any stamps for him that day.

"I am collecting stamps for my twelve-year-old son,”

the president explained to Mr. Walters.

Mr. Walters stated his mission and began asking questions.

The president was vague, general, nebulous. He

didn’t want to talk, and apparently nothing could persuade

him to talk. The interview was brief and barren.

“Frankly, I didn’t know what to do,” Mr. Walters said

as he related the story to the class. “Then I remembered

what his secretary had said to him - stamps, twelve-year-

old son. . . And I also recalled that the foreign department

of our bank collected stamps - stamps taken

from letters pouring in from every continent washed by

the seven seas.

“The next afternoon I called on this man and sent in

word that I had some stamps for his boy. Was I ushered

in with enthusiasm? Yes sir, He couldn’t have shaken

my hand with more enthusiasm if he had been running

for Congress. He radiated smiles and good will. ‘My

George will love this one,’ he kept saying as he fondled

the stamps. ‘And look at this! This is a treasure.’

“We spent half an hour talking stamps and looking at

a picture of his boy, and he then devoted more than an

hour of his time to giving me every bit of information I

wanted - without my even suggesting that he do it. He

told me all he knew, and then called in his subordinates

and questioned them. He telephoned some of his associates.

He loaded me down with facts, figures, reports

and correspondence. In the parlance of newspaper reporters,

I had a scoop.”

Here is another illustration:

C. M. Knaphle, Jr., of Philadelphia had tried for years

to sell fuel to a large chain-store organization. But the

chain-store company continued to purchase its fuel from

an out-of-town dealer and haul it right past the door of

Knaphle’s office. Mr, Knaphle made a speech one night

before one of my classes, pouring out his hot wrath

upon chain stores, branding them as a curse to the

nation.

And still he wondered why he couldn’t sell them.

I suggested that he try different tactics. To put it

briefly, this is what happened. We staged a debate between

members of the course on whether the spread of

the chain store is doing the country more harm than

good.

Knaphle, at my suggestion, took the negative side; he

agreed to defend the chain stores, and then went straight

to an executive of the chain-store organization that he

despised and said: “I am not here to try to sell fuel. I

have come to ask you to do me a favor.” He then told

about his debate and said, “I have come to you for help

because I can’t think of anyone else who would be more

capable of giving me the facts I want. I’m anxious to win

this debate, and I’ll deeply appreciate whatever help

you can give me.”

Here is the rest of the story in Mr. Knaphle’s own

words:

I had asked this man for precisely one minute of his time.

It was with that understanding that he consented to see me.

After I had stated my case, he motioned me to a chair and

talked to me for exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes.

He called in another executive who had written a book on

chain stores. He wrote to the National Chain Store Association

and secured for me a copy of a debate on the subject.

He feels that the chain store is rendering a real service to

humanity. He is proud of what he is doing for hundreds of

communities. His eyes fairly glowed as he talked, and I

must confess that he opened my eyes to things I had never

even dreamed of. He changed my whole mental attitude.

As I was leaving, he walked with me to the door, put his

arm around my shoulder, wished me well in my debate, and

asked me to stop in and see him again and let him know

how I made out. The last words he said to me were: “Please

see me again later in the spring. I should like to place an

order with you for fuel.”

To me that was almost a miracle. Here he was offering to

buy fuel without my even suggesting it. I had made more

headway in two hours by becoming genuinely interested in

him and his problems than I could have made in ten years

trying to get him interested in me and my product.

You didn’t discover a new truth, Mr. Knaphle, for a

long time ago, a hundred years before Christ was born

a famous old Roman poet, Publilius Syrus, remarked;

“We are interested in others when they are interested in us."

A show of interest, as with every other principle of

human relations, must be sincere. It must pay off not

only for the person showing the interest, but for the person

receiving the attention. It is a two-way street-both

parties benefit.

Martin Ginsberg, who took our Course in Long Island

New York, reported how the special interest a nurse took

in him profoundly affected his life:

“It was Thanksgiving Day and I was ten years old. I

was in a welfare ward of a city hospital and was scheduled

to undergo major orthopedic surgery the next day.

I knew that I could only look forward to months of confinement,

convalescence and pain. My father was dead;

my mother and I lived alone in a small apartment and

we were on welfare. My mother was unable to visit me

that day.

“As the day went on, I became overwhelmed with the

feeling of loneliness, despair and fear. I knew my

mother was home alone worrying about me, not having

anyone to be with, not having anyone to eat with and not

even having enough money to afford a Thanksgiving

Day dinner.

“The tears welled up in my eyes, and I stuck my head

under the pillow and pulled the covers over it, I cried

silently, but oh so bitterly, so much that my body racked

with pain.

“A young student nurse heard my sobbing and came

over to me. She took the covers off my face and started

wiping my tears. She told me how lonely she was, having

to work that day and not being able to be with her

family. She asked me whether I would have dinner with

her. She brought two trays of food: sliced turkey, mashed

a potatoes, cranberry sauce and ice cream for dessert. She

talked to me and tried to calm my fears. Even though

she was scheduled to go off duty at 4 P.M., she stayed on

her own time until almost 11 P.M. She played games

with me, talked to me and stayed with me until I finally

fell asleep.

“Many Thanksgivings have come and gone since I

was ten, but one never passes without me remembering

that particular one and my feelings of frustration, fear,

loneliness and the warmth and tenderness of the

stranger that somehow made it all bearable.”

If you want others to like you, if you want to develop

real friendships, if you want to help others at the

same time as you help yourself, keep this principle in

mind:

PRINCIPLE 1

Become genuinely interested in other people.

2

A SIMPLE WAY TO MAKE A GOOD

FIRST IMPRESSION

At a dinner party in New York, one of the guests, a

woman who had inherited money, was eager to make

a pleasing impression on everyone. She had squandered

a modest fortune on sables, diamonds and pearls. But

she hadn’t done anything whatever about her face. It

radiated sourness and selfishness. She didn’t realize

what everyone knows: namely, that the expression one

wears on one’s face is far more important than the

clothes one wears on one’s back.

Charles Schwab told me his smile had been worth a

million dollars. And he was probably understating the

truth. For Schwab’s personality, his charm, his ability to

make people like him, were almost wholly responsible

for his extraordinary success; and one of the most delightful

factors in his personality was his captivating

smile.

Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, “I

like you, You make me happy. I am glad to see you.”

That is why dogs make such a hit. They are so glad to

see us that they almost jump out of their skins. So, naturally,

we are glad to see them.

A baby’s smile has the same effect.

Have you ever been in a doctor’s waiting room and

looked around at all the glum faces waiting impatiently

to be seen? Dr, Stephen K. Sproul, a veterinarian in Raytown,

Missouri, told of a typical spring day when his

waiting room was full of clients waiting to have their

pets inoculated. No one was talking to anyone else, and

all were probably thinking of a dozen other things they

would rather be doing than “wasting time” sitting in that

office. He told one of our classes: “There were six or

seven clients waiting when a young woman came in

with a nine-month-old baby and a kitten. As luck would

have it, she sat down next to a gentleman who was more

than a little distraught about the long wait for service.

The next thing he knew, the baby just looked up at him

with that great big smile that is so characteristic of babies.

What did that gentleman do? Just what you and I

would do, of course; he-smiled back at the baby. Soon

he struck up a conversation with the woman about her

baby and his grandchildren, and soon the entire reception

room joined in, and the boredom and tension were

converted into a pleasant and enjoyable experience.”

An insincere grin? No. That doesn’t fool anybody. We

know it is mechanical and we resent it. I am talking

about a real smile, a heartwarming smile, a smile that

comes from within, the kind of smile that will bring a

good price in the marketplace.

Professor James V. McConnell, a psychologist at the

University of Michigan, expressed his feelings about a

smile. “People who smile,” he said, “tend to manage

teach and sell more effectively, and to raise happier

children. There’s far more information in a smile than a

frown. That’s why encouragement is a much more effective

teaching device than punishment.”

The employment manager of a large New York department

store told me she would rather hire a sales clerk

who hadn’t finished grade school, if he or she has a

pleasant smile, than to hire a doctor of philosophy with

a somber face.

The effect of a smile is powerful - even when it is

unseen. Telephone companies throughout the United

States have a program called “phone power” which is

offered to employees who use the telephone for selling

their services or products. In this program they suggest

that you smile when talking on the phone. Your “smile”

comes through in your voice.

Robert Cryer, manager of a computer department for a

Cincinnati, Ohio, company, told how he had successfully

found the right applicant for a hard-to-fill position:

“I was desperately trying to recruit a Ph.D. in computer

science for my department. I finally located a

young man with ideal qualifications who was about to

be graduated from Purdue University. After several

phone conversations I learned that he had several offers

from other companies, many of them larger and better

known than mine. I was delighted when he accepted my

offer. After he started on the job, I asked him why he

had chosen us over the others. He paused for a moment

and then he said: ‘I think it was because managers in the

other companies spoke on the phone in a cold, business-like

manner, which made me feel like just another business

transaction, Your voice sounded as if you were glad

to hear from me . . . that you really wanted me to be part

of your organization. ’ You can be assured, I am still answering

my phone with a smile.”

The chairman of the board of directors of one of the

largest rubber companies ‘in the United States told me

that, according to his observations, people rarely succeed

at anything unless they have fun doing it. This

industrial leader doesn’t put much faith in the old adage

that hard work alone is the magic key that will unlock

the door to our desires, “I have known people,” he said,

“who succeeded because they had a rip-roaring good

time conducting their business. Later, I saw those people

change as the fun became work. The business had

grown dull, They lost all joy in it, and they failed.”

You must have a good time meeting people if you expect

them to have a good time meeting you.

I have asked thousands of business people to smile at

someone every hour of the day for a week and then come

to class and talk about the results. How did it work?

Let’s see. . . Here is a letter from William B. Steinhardt,

a New York stockbroker. His case isn’t isolated. In fact,

it is typical of hundreds of cases.

“1 have been married for over eighteen years,” wrote

Mr. Steinhardt, “and in all that time I seldom smiled at

my wife or spoke two dozen words to her from the time

I got up until I was ready to leave for business. I was

one of the worst grouches who ever walked down Broadway.

“When you asked me to make a talk about my experience

with smiles, I thought I would try it for a week. So

the next morning, while combing my hair, I looked at

my glum mug in the mirror and said to myself, ‘Bill, you

are going to wipe the scowl off that sour puss of yours

today. You are going to smile. And you are going to begin

right now.’ As I sat down to breakfast, I greeted my wife

with a ‘Good morning, my dear,’ and smiled as I said

it.

“You warned me that she might be surprised. Well,

you underestimated her reaction. She was bewildered.

She was shocked. I told her that in the future she could

expect this as a regular occurrence, and I kept it up every

morning.

“This changed attitude of mine brought more happiness

into our home in the two months since I started

than there was during the last year.

“As I leave for my office, I greet the elevator operator

in the apartment house with a ‘Good morning’ and a

smile, I greet the doorman with a smile. I smile at the

cashier in the subway booth when I ask for change. As I

stand on the floor of the Stock Exchange, I smile at people

who until recently never saw me smile.

“I soon found that everybody was smiling back at me,

I treat those who come to me with complaints or grievances

in a cheerful manner, I smile as I listen to them

and I find that adjustments are accomplished much easier.

I find that smiles are bringing me dollars, many dollars

every day.

“I share my office with another broker. One of his

clerks is a likable young chap, and I was so elated about

the results I was getting that I told him recently about

my new philosophy of human relations. He then confessed

that when I first came to share my office with his

firm he thought me a terrible grouch - and only recently

changed his mind. He said I was really human when I

smiled.

“I have also eliminated criticism from my system. I

give appreciation and praise now instead of condemnation.

I have stopped talking about what I want. I am now

trying to see the other person’s viewpoint. And these

things have literally revolutionized my life. I am a totally

different man, a happier man, a richer man, richer in

friendships and happiness - the only things that matter

much after all.”

You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Two things.

First, force yourself to smile. If you are alone, force yourself

to whistle or hum a tune or sing. Act as if you were

already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.

Here is the way the psychologist and philosopher William

James put it:

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and

feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which

is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly

regulate the feeling, which is not.

“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if

our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act

and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. . . .”

Every body in the world is seeking happiness - and

there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling

your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward

conditions. It depends on inner conditions.

It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are

or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy.

It is what you think about it. For example, two people

may be in the same place, doing the same thing; both

may have about an equal amount of money and prestige

- and yet one may be miserable and the other happy.

Why? Because of a different mental attitude. I have seen

just as many happy faces among the poor peasants toiling

with their primitive tools in the devastating heat of the

tropics as I have seen in air-conditioned offices in New

York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

“There is nothing either good or bad,” said Shakespeare,

“but thinking makes it so.”

Abe Lincoln once remarked that “most folks are about

as happy as they make up their minds to be.” He was

right. I saw a vivid illustration of that truth as I was

walking up the stairs of the Long Island Railroad station

in New York. Directly in front of me thirty or forty crippled

boys on canes and crutches were struggling up the

stairs. One boy had to be carried up. I was astonished at

their laughter and gaiety. I spoke about it to one of.the

men in charge of the boys. “Oh, yes,” he said, “when a

boy realizes that he is going to be a cripple for life, he is

shocked at first; but after he gets over the shock, he usually

resigns himself to his fate and then becomes as

happy as normal boys.”

I felt like taking my hat off to those boys. They taught

me a lesson I hope I shall never forget.

Working all by oneself in a closed-off room in an office

not only is lonely, but it denies one the opportunity of

making friends with other employees in the company.

Señora Maria Gonzalez of Guadalajara, Mexico, had

such a job. She envied the shared comradeship of other

people in the company as she heard their chatter and

laughter. As she passed them in the hall during the first

weeks of her employment, she shyly looked the other

way.

After a few weeks, she said to herself, “Maria, you

can’t expect those women to come to you. You have to

go out and meet them. ” The next time she walked to the

water cooler, she put on her brightest smile and said,

“Hi, how are you today” to each of the people she met.

The effect was immediate. Smiles and hellos were returned,

the hallway seemed brighter, the job friendlier.

Acquaintanceships developed and some ripened into

friendships. Her job and her life became more pleasant

and interesting.

Peruse this bit of sage advice from the essayist and

publisher Elbert Hubbard - but remember, perusing it

won’t do you any good unless you apply it:

Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the

crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost;

drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and

put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood

and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies.

Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to

do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move

straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid

things you would like to do, and then, as the days go

gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing

upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment

of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running

tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able,

earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you

hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual.

. . . Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude -

the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer.

To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire

and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that

on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the

crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.

The ancient Chinese were a wise lot - wise in the

ways of the world; and they had a proverb that you and

I ought to cut out and paste inside our hats. It goes like

this: “A man without a smiling face must not open a

shop.”

Your smile is a messenger of your good will. Your

smile brightens the lives of all who see it. To someone

who has seen a dozen people frown, scowl or turn their

faces away, your smile is like the sun breaking through

the clouds. Especially when that someone is under pressure

from his bosses, his customers, his teachers or parents

or children, a smile can help him realize that all is

not hopeless - that there is joy in the world.

Some years ago, a department store in New York City,

in recognition of the pressures its sales clerks were

under during the Christmas rush, presented the readers

of its advertisements with the following homely philosophy:

THE VALUE OF A SMILE AT CHRISTMAS

It costs nothing, but creates much.

It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those

who give.

It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts

forever,

None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so

poor but are richer for its benefits.

It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a

business, and is the countersign of friends.

It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine

to the sad, and Nature’s best antidote fee trouble.

Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it

is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is

given away.

And if in the last-minute rush of Christmas buying some of

our salespeople should be too tired to give you a smile,

may we ask you to leave one of yours?

For nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none

left to give!

PRINCIPLE 2

Smile.

3

IF YOU DON’T DO THIS, YOU ARE

HEADED FOR TROUBLE

Back in 1898, a tragic thing happened in Rockland

County, New York. A child had died, and on this particular

day the neighbors were preparing to go to the funeral.

Jim Farley went out to the barn to hitch up his

horse. The ground was covered with snow, the air was

cold and snappy; the horse hadn’t been exercised for

days; and as he was led out to the watering trough, he

wheeled playfully, kicked both his heels high in the air,

and killed Jim Farley. So the little village of Stony Point

had two funerals that week instead of one.

Jim Farley left behind him a widow and three boys,

and a few hundred dollars in insurance.

His oldest boy, Jim, was ten, and he went to work in a

brickyard, wheeling sand and pouring it into the molds

and turning the brick on edge to be dried by the sun.

This boy Jim never had a chance to get much education.

But with his natural geniality, he had a flair for making

people like him, so he went into politics, and as the

years went by, he developed an uncanny ability for remembering

people’s names.

He never saw the inside of a high school; but before

he was forty-six years of age, four colleges had honored

him with degrees and he had become chairman of the

Democratic National Committee and Postmaster General

of the United States.

I once interviewed Jim Farley and asked him the secret

of his success. He said, “Hard work,” and I said,

“Don’t be funny.”

He then asked me what I thought was the reason for

his success. I replied: "I understand you can call ten

thousand people by their first names.”

“No. You are wrong, " he said. “I can call fifty thousand

people by their first names.”

Make no mistake about it. That ability helped Mr. Farley

put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House when

he managed Roosevelt’s campaign in 1932.

During the years that Jim Farley traveled as a salesman

for a gypsum concern, and during the years that he

held office as town clerk in Stony Point, he built up a

system for remembering names.

In the beginning, it was a very simple one. Whenever

he met a new acquaintance, he found out his or her complete

name and some facts about his or her family, business

and political opinions. He fixed all these facts well

in mind as part of the picture, and the next time he met

that person, even if it was a year later, he was able to

shake hands, inquire after the family, and ask about the

hollyhocks in the backyard. No wonder he developed a

following!

For months before Roosevelt’s campaign for President

began, Jim Farley wrote hundreds of letters a day to

people all over the western and northwestern states.

Then he hopped onto a train and in nineteen days covered

twenty states and twelve thousand miles, traveling

by buggy, train, automobile and boat. He would drop

into town, meet his people at lunch or breakfast, tea or

dinner, and give them a “heart-to-heart talk.” Then he’d

dash off again on another leg of his journey.

As soon as he arrived back East, he wrote to one person

in each town he had visited, asking for a list of all

the guests to whom he had talked. The final list contained

thousands and thousands of names; yet each person

on that list was paid the subtle flattery of getting a

personal letter from James Farley. These letters began

“Dear Bill” or “Dear Jane,” and they were always

signed "Jim."

Jim Farley discovered early in life that the average

person is more interested in his or her own name than

in all the other names on earth put together. Remember

that name and call it easily, and you have paid a subtle

and very effective compliment. But forget it or misspell

it - and you have placed yourself at a sharp disadvantage.

For example, I once organized a public-speaking

course in Paris and sent form letters to all the American

residents in the city. French typists with apparently little

knowledge of English filled in the names and naturally

they made blunders. One man, the manager of a

large American bank in Paris, wrote me a scathing rebuke

because his name had been misspelled.

Sometimes it is difficult to remember a name, particularly

if it is hard to pronounce. Rather than even try to

learn it, many people ignore it or call the person by an

easy nickname. Sid Levy called on a customer for some

time whose name was Nicodemus Papadoulos. Most

people just called him “Nick.” Levy told us: “I made a

special effort to say his name over several times to myself

before I made my call. When I greeted him by his

full name: 'Good afternoon, Mr. Nicodemus Papadoulos,’

he was shocked. For what seemed like several minutes

there was no reply from him at all. Finally, he said

with tears rolling down his cheeks, ‘Mr. Levy, in all the

fifteen years I have been in this country, nobody has

ever made the effort to call me by my right name.’ "

What was the reason for Andrew Carnegie’s success?

He was called the Steel King; yet he himself knew

little about the manufacture of steel. He had hundreds

of people working for him who knew far more about

steel than he did.

But he knew how to handle people, and that is what

made him rich. Early in life, he showed a flair for organization,

a genius for leadership. By the time he was ten,

he too had discovered the astounding importance people

place on their own name. And he used that discovery to

win cooperation. To illustrate: When he was a boy back

in Scotland, he got hold of a rabbit, a mother rabbit.

Presto! He soon had a whole nest of little rabbits - and

nothing to feed them. But he had a brilliant idea. He told

the boys and girls in the neighborhood that if they would

go out and pull enough clover and dandelions to feed

the rabbits, he would name the bunnies in their honor.

The plan worked like magic, and Carnegie never forgot

it.

Years later, he made millions by using the same psychology

in business. For example, he wanted to sell

steel rails to the Pennsylvania Railroad. J. Edgar Thomson

was the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad then.

So Andrew Carnegie built a huge steel mill in Pittsburgh

and called it the “Edgar Thomson Steel Works.”

Here is a riddle. See if you can guess it. When the

Pennsylvania Railroad needed steel rails, where do you

suppose J. Edgar Thomson bought them?. . , From

Sears, Roebuck? No. No. You’re wrong. Guess again.

When Carnegie and George Pullman were battling

each other for supremacy in the railroad sleeping-car

business, the Steel King again remembered the lesson

of the rabbits.

The Central Transportation Company, which Andrew

Carnegie controlled, was fighting with the company that

Pullman owned. Both were struggling to get the sleeping-

car business of the Union Pacific Railroad, bucking

each other, slashing prices, and destroving all chance of

profit. Both Carnegie and Pullman had gone to New

York to see the board of directors of the Union Pacific.

Meeting one evening in the St. Nicholas Hotel, Carnegie

said: “Good evening, Mr. Pullman, aren’t we making

a couple of fools of ourselves?”

“What do you mean.?" Pullman demanded.

Then Carnegie expressed what he had on his mind - a

merger of their two interests. He pictured in glowing

terms the mutual advantages of working with, instead of

against, each other. Pullman listened attentively, but he

was not wholly convinced. Finally he asked, “What

would you call the new company?” and Carnegie replied

promptly: “Why, the Pullman Palace Car Company,

of course.”

Pullman’s face brightened. “Come into my room,” he

said. “Let’s talk it over.” That talk made industrial history.

This policy of remembering and honoring the names

of his friends and business associates was one of the

secrets of Andrew Carnegie’s leadership. He was proud

of the fact that he could call many of his factory workers

by their first names, and he boasted that while he was

personally in charge, no strike ever disturbed his flaming

steel mills.

Benton Love, chairman of Texas Commerce Banc-

shares, believes that the bigger a corporation gets, the

colder it becomes. " One way to warm it up,” he said, “is

to remember people’s names. The executive who tells

me he can’t remember names is at the same time telling

me he can’t remember a significant part of his business

and is operating on quicksand.”

Karen Kirsech of Rancho Palos Verdes, California, a

flight attendant for TWA, made it a practice to learn the

names of as many passengers in her cabin as possible

and use the name when serving them. This resulted in

many compliments on her service expressed both to her

directly and to the airline. One passenger wrote: "I

haven’t flown TWA for some time, but I’m going to start

flying nothing but TWA from now on. You make me feel

that your airline has become a very personalized airline

and that is important to me.”

People are so proud of their names that they strive to

perpetuate them at any cost. Even blustering, hard-boiled

old P. T. Barnum, the greatest showman of his

time, disappointed because he had no sons to carry on

his name, offered his grandson, C. H. Seeley, $25,000

dollars if he would call himself “Barnum” Seeley.

For many centuries, nobles and magnates supported

artists, musicians and authors so that their creative works

would be dedicated to them.

Libraries and museums owe their richest collections

to people who cannot bear to think that their names

might perish from the memory of the race. The New

York Public Library has its Astor and Lenox collections.

The Metropolitan Museum perpetuates the names of

Benjamin Altman and J. P. Morgan. And nearly every

church is beautified by stained-glass windows commemorating

the names of their donors. Many of the buildings

on the campus of most universities bear the names of

donors who contributed large sums of money for this

honor.

Most people don’t remember names, for the simple

reason that they don’t take the time and energy necessary

to concentrate and repeat and fix names indelibly in

their minds. They make excuses for themselves; they are

too busy.

But they were probably no busier than Franklin D.

Roosevelt, and he took time to remember and recall

even the names of mechanics with whom he came into

contact.

To illustrate: The Chrysler organization built a special

car for Mr. Roosevelt, who could not use a standard car

because his legs were paralyzed. W. F. Chamberlain and

a mechanic delivered it to the White House. I have in

front of me a letter from Mr. Chamberlain relating his

experiences. "I taught President Roosevelt how to handle

a car with a lot of unusual gadgets, but he taught me

a lot about the fine art of handling people.

"When I called at the White House,” Mr. Chamberlain

writes, “the President was extremely pleasant and

cheerful. He called me by name, made me feel very

comfortable, and particularly impressed me with the fact

that he was vitally interested in things I had to show him

and tell him. The car was so designed that it could be

operated entirely by hand. A crowd gathered around to

look at the car; and he remarked: ‘I think it is marvelous.

All you have to do is to touch a button and it moves away

and you can drive it without effort. I think it is grand - I

don’t know what makes it go. I’d love to have the time to

tear it down and see how it works.’

“When Roosevelt’s friends and associates admired the

machine, he said in their presence: ‘Mr. Chamberlain, I

certainly appreciate all the time and effort you have

spent in developing this car. It is a mighty fine job.’ He

admired the radiator, the special rear-vision mirror and

clock, the special spotlight, the kind of upholstery, the

sitting position of the driver’s seat, the special suitcases

in the trunk with his monogram on each suitcase. In

other words, he took notice of every detail to which he

knew I had given considerable thought. He made a point

of bringing these various pieces of equipment to the attention

of Mrs. Roosevelt, Miss Perkins, the Secretary of

Labor, and his secretary. He even brought the old White

House porter into the picture by saying, ‘George, you

want to take particularly good care of the suitcases.’

“When the driving lesson was finished, the President

turned to me and said: ‘Well, Mr. Chamberlain, I have

been keeping the Federal Reserve Board waiting thirty

minutes. I guess I had better get back to work.’

"I took a mechanic with me to the White House. He

was introduced to Roosevelt when he arrived. He didn’t

talk to the President, and Roosevelt heard his name only

once. He was a shy chap, and he kept in the background.

But before leaving us, the President looked for the mechanic,

shook his hand, called him by name, and

thanked him for coming to Washington. And there was

nothing perfunctory about his thanks. He meant what he

said. I could feel that.

“A few days after returning to New York, I got an autographed

photograph of President Roosevelt and a little

note of thanks again expressing his appreciation for my

assistance. How he found time to do it is a mystery to

me ."

Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that one of the simplest,

most obvious and most important ways of gaining good

will was by remembering names and making people feel

important - yet how many of us do it?

Half the time we are introduced to a stranger, we chat

a few minutes and can’t even remember his or her name

by the time we say goodbye.

One of the first lessons a politician learns is this: “To

recall a voter’s name is statesmanship. To forget it is

oblivion.”

And the ability to remember names is almost as important

in business and social contacts as it is in politics.

Napoleon the Third, Emperor of France and nephew

of the great Napoleon, boasted that in spite of all his

royal duties he could remember the name of every person

he met.

His technique? Simple. If he didn’t hear the name

distinctly, he said, “So sorry. I didn’t get the name

clearly.” Then, if it was an unusual name, he would say,

“How is it spelled?”

During the conversation, he took the trouble to repeat

the name several times, and tried to associate it in his

mind with the person’s features, expression and general

appearance.

If the person was someone of importance, Napoleon

went to even further pains. As soon as His Royal Highness

was alone, he wrote the name down on a piece of

paper, looked at it, concentrated on it, fixed it securely

in his mind, and then tore up the paper. In this way, he

gained an eye impression of the name as well as an ear

impression.

All this takes time, but “Good manners,” said Emerson,

"are made up of petty sacrifices.”

The importance of remembering and using names is

not just the prerogative of kings and corporate executives.

It works for all of us. Ken Nottingham, an employee

of General Motors in Indiana, usually had lunch

at the company cafeteria. He noticed that the woman

who worked behind the counter always had a scowl on

her face. “She had been making sandwiches for about

two hours and I was just another sandwich to her. I told

her what I wanted. She weighed out the ham on a little

scale, then she gave me one leaf of lettuce, a few potato

chips and handed them to me.

“The next day I went through the same line. Same

woman, same scowl. The only difference was I noticed

her name tag. I smiled and said, ‘Hello, Eunice,’ and

then told her what I wanted. Well, she forgot the scale,

piled on the ham, gave me three leaves of lettuce and

heaped on the potato chips until they fell off the plate.”

We should be aware of the magic contained in a name

and realize that this single item is wholly and completely

owned by the person with whom we are dealing

and nobody else. The name sets the individual apart;

it makes him or her unique among all others. The information

we are imparting or the request we are making

takes on a special importance when we approach the

situation with the name of the individual. From the waitress

to the senior executive, the name will work magic

as we deal with others.

PRINCIPLE 3

Remember that a person’s name is to that

person the sweetest and most important

sound in any language.

4

AN EASY WAY TO BECOME A

GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST

Some time ago, I attended a bridge party. I don’t play

bridge - and there was a woman there who didn’t play

bridge either. She had discovered that I had once been

Lowell Thomas’ manager before he went on the radio

and that I had traveled in Europe a great deal while

helping him prepare the illustrated travel talks he was

then delivering. So she said: “Oh, Mr. Carnegie, I do

want you to tell me about all the wonderful places you

have visited and the sights you have seen.”

As we sat down on the sofa, she remarked that she and

her husband had recently returned from a trip to Africa.

“Africa!” I exclaimed. “How interesting! I’ve always

wanted to see Africa, but I never got there except for a

twenty-four-hour stay once in Algiers. Tell me, did you

visit the big-game country? Yes? How fortunate. I envy

you. Do tell me about Africa.”

That kept her talking for forty-five minutes. She never

again asked me where I had been or what I had seen.

She didn’t want to hear me talk about my travels. All she

wanted was an interested listener, so she could expand

her ego and tell about where she had been.

Was she unusual? No. Many people are like that.

For example, I met a distinguished botanist at a dinner

party given by a New York book publisher. I had never

talked with a botanist before, and I found him fascinating.

I literally sat on the edge of my chair and listened

while he spoke of exotic plants and experiments in

developing new forms of plant life and indoor gardens (and

even told me astonishing facts about the humble potato).

I had a small indoor garden of my own - and he was

good enough to tell me how to solve some of my problems.

As I said, we were at a dinner party. There must have

been a dozen other guests, but I violated all the canons

of courtesy, ignored everyone else, and talked for hours

to the botanist.

Midnight came, I said good night to everyone and

departed. The botanist then turned to our host and

paid me several flattering compliments. I was “most

stimulating.” I was this and I was that, and he ended by

saying I was a “most interesting conversationalist.”

An interesting conversationalist? Why, I had said

hardly anything at all. I couldn’t have said anything if I

had wanted to without changing the subject, for I didn’t

know any more about botany than I knew about the anatomy

of a penguin. But I had done this: I had listened

intently. I had listened because I was genuinely interested.

And he felt it. Naturally that pleased him. That

kind of listening is one of the highest compliments we

can pay anyone. “Few human beings,” wrote Jack

Woodford in Strangers in Love, “few human beings are

proof against the implied flattery of rapt attention.” I

went even further than giving him rapt attention. I was

“hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”

I told him that I had been immensely entertained and

instructed - and I had. I told him I wished I had his

knoledge - and I did. I told him that I should love to

wander the fields with him - and I have. I told him I

must see him again - and I did.

And so I had him thinking of me as a good conversationalist

when, in reality, I had been merely a good listener

and had encouraged him to talk.

What is the secret, the mystery, of a successful business

interview? Well, according to former Harvard president

Charles W. Eliot, “There is no mystery about

successful business intercourse. . . . Exclusive attention

to the person who is speaking to you is very important.

Nothing else is so flattering as that.”

Eliot himself was a past master of the art of listening,

Henry James, one of America’s first great novelists, recalled:

“Dr. Eliot’s listening was not mere silence, but a

form of activity. Sitting very erect on the end of his spine

with hands joined in his lap, making no movement except

that he revolved his thumbs around each other

faster or slower, he faced his interlocutor and seemed to

be hearing with his eyes as well as his ears. He listened

with his mind and attentively considered what you had

to say while you said it. . . . At the end of an interview

the person who had talked to him felt that he had had

his say.”

Self-evident, isn’t it? You don’t have to study for four

years in Harvard to discover that. Yet I know and you

know department store owners who will rent expensive

space, buy their goods economically, dress their windows

appealingly, spend thousands of dollars in advertising

and then hire clerks who haven’t the sense to be

good listeners - clerks who interrupt customers, contradict

them, irritate them, and all but drive them from the

store.

A department store in Chicago almost lost a regular

customer who spent several thousand dollars each year

in that store because a sales clerk wouldn’t listen. Mrs.

Henrietta Douglas, who took our course in Chicago, had

purchased a coat at a special sale. After she had brought

it home she noticed that there was a tear in the lining.

She came back the next day and asked the sales clerk to

exchange it. The clerk refused even to listen to her complaint.

“You bought this at a special sale,” she said. She

pointed to a sign on the wall. “Read that,” she exclaimed.

" 'All sales are final.' Once you bought it, you

have to keep it. Sew up the lining yourself.”

“But this was damaged merchandise,” Mrs. Douglas

complained.

“Makes no difference,” the clerk interrupted. “Final’s

final "

Mrs. Douglas was about to walk out indignantly,

swearing never to return to that store ever, when she

was greeted by the department manager, who knew her

from her many years of patronage. Mrs. Douglas told her

what had happened.

The manager listened attentively to the whole story,

examined the coat and then said: “Special sales are

‘final’ so we can dispose of merchandise at the end of

the season. But this 'no return’ policy does not apply to

damaged goods. We will certainly repair or replace the

lining, or if you prefer, give you your money back.”

What a difference in treatment! If that manager had

not come along and listened to the Customer, a long-term

patron of that store could have been lost forever.

Listening is just as important in one's home life as in

the world of business. Millie Esposito of Croton-on-Hudson,

New York, made it her business to listen carefully

when one of her children wanted to speak with her.

One evening she was sitting in the kitchen with her son,

Robert, and after a brief discussion of something that

was on his mind, Robert said: "Mom, I know that you

love me very much.”

Mrs. Esposito was touched and said: “Of course I love

you very much. Did you doubt it?”

Robert responded: "No, but I really know you love me

because whenever I want to talk to you about something

you stop whatever you are doing and listen to me.”

The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will

frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a

patient, sympathetic listener - a listener who will he silent

while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra

and spews the poison out of his system. To illustrate:

The New York Telephone Company discovered a few

years ago that it had to deal with one of the most vicious

customers who ever cursed a customer service representative.

And he did curse. He raved. He threatened to tear

the phone out by its roots. He refused to pay certain

charges that he declared were false. He wrote letters to

the newspapers. He filed innumerable complaints with

the Public Service Commission, and he started several

suits against the telephone company.

At last, one of the company’s most skillful “trouble-shooters”

was sent to interview this stormy petrel. This

“troubleshooter” listened and let the cantankerous customer

enjoy himself pouring out his tirade. The telephone

representative listened and said “yes” and

sympathized with his grievance.

“He raved on and I listened for nearlv three hours,”

the “troubleshooter” said as he related his experiences

before one of the author’s classes. “Then I went back

and listened some more. I interviewed him four times,

and before the fourth visit was over I had become a

charter member of an organization he was starting. He

called it the ‘Telephone Subscribers’ Protective Association.'

I am still a member of this organization, and, so

far as I know, I’m the only member in the world today

besides Mr. ----.

"I listened and sympathized with him on every point

that he made during these interviews. He had never had

a telephone representative talk with him that way before,

and he became almost friendly. The point on which

I went to see him was not even mentioned on the first

visit, nor was it mentioned on the second or third, but

upon the fourth interview, I closed the case completely,

he paid all his bills in full, and for the first time in the

history of his difficulties with the telephone company he

voluntarily withdrew his complaints from the Public

Service Commission.”

Doubtless Mr. ----- had considered himself a holy

crusader, defending the public rights against callous exploitation.

But in reality, what he had really wanted was

a feeling of importance. He got this feeling of importance

at first by kicking and complaining. But as soon as

he got his feeling of importance from a representative of

the company, his imagined grievances vanished into

thin air.

One morning years ago, an angry customer stormed

into the office of Julian F. Detmer, founder of the Detmer

Woolen Company, which later became the world’s

largest distributor of woolens to the tailoring trade.

“This man owed us a small sum of money,” Mr. Detmer

explained to me. “The customer denied it, but we

knew he was wrong. So our credit department had insisted

that he pay. After getting a number of letters from

our credit department, he packed his grip, made a trip to

Chicago, and hurried into my office to inform me not

only that he was not going to pay that bill, but that he

was never going to buy another dollar’s worth of goods

from the Detmer Woolen Company.

"I listened patiently to all he had to say. I was tempted

to interrupt, but I realized that would be bad policy, So

I let him talk himself out. When he finally simmered

down and got in a receptive mood, I said quietly: ‘I want

to thank vou for coming to Chicago to tell me about this.

You have done me a great favor, for if our credit department

has annoyed you, it may annoy other good customers,

and that would be just too bad. Believe me, I am far

more eager to hear this than you are to tell it.’

“That was the last thing in the world he expected me

to say. I think he was a trifle disappointed, because he

had come to Chicago to tell me a thing or two, but here

I was thanking him instead of scrapping with him. I assured

him we would wipe the charge off the books and

forget it, because he was a very careful man with only

one account to look after, while our clerks had to look

after thousands. Therefore, he was less likely to be

wrong than we were.

“I told him that I understood exactly how he felt and

that, if I were in his shoes, I should undoubtedly feel

precisely as he did. Since he wasn’t going to buy from

us anymore, I recommended some other woolen houses.

“In the past, we had usually lunched together when

he came to Chicago, so I invited him to have lunch with

me this day. He accepted reluctantly, but when we came

back to the office he placed a larger order than ever

before. He returned home in a softened mood and, wanting

to be just as fair with us as we had been with him,

looked over his bills, found one that had been mislaid,

and sent us a check with his apologies.

"Later, when his wife presented him with a baby boy,

he gave his son the middle name of Detmer, and he

remained a friend and customer of the house until his

death twenty-two years afterwards.”

Years ago, a poor Dutch immigrant boy washed the

windows of a bakery shop after school to help support

his family. His people were so poor that in addition he

used to go out in the street with a basket every day and

collect stray bits of coal that had fallen in the gutter

where the coal wagons had delivered fuel. That boy,

Edward Bok, never got more than six years of schooling

in his life; yet eventually he made himself one of the

most successful magazine editors in the history of American

journalism. How did he do it? That is a long story,

but how he got his start can be told briefly. He got his

start by using the principles advocated in this chapter.

He left school when he was thirteen and became an

office boy for Western Union, but he didn’t for one moment

give up the idea of an education. Instead, he

started to educate himself, He saved his carfares and

went without lunch until he had enough money to buy

an encyclopedia of American biography - and then he

did an unheard-of thing. He read the lives of famous

people and wrote them asking for additional information

about their childhoods. He was a good listener. He

asked famous people to tell him more about themselves.

He wrote General James A. Garfield, who was then running

for President, and asked if it was true that he was

once a tow boy on a canal; and Garfield replied. He

wrote General Grant asking about a certain battle, and

Grant drew a map for him and invited this fourteen-year

old boy to dinner and spent the evening talking to him.

Soon our Western Union messenger boy was corresponding

with many of the most famous people in the

nation: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes,

Longfellow, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, Louisa May Alcott,

General Sherman and Jefferson Davis. Not only did he

correspond with these distinguished people, but as soon

as he got a vacation, he visited many of them as a welcome

guest in their homes. This experience imbued him

with a confidence that was invaluable. These men and

women fired him with a vision and ambition that shaped

his life. And all this, let me repeat, was made possible

solely by the application of the principles we are discussing

here.

Isaac F. Marcosson, a journalist who interviewed

hundreds of celebrities, declared that many people fail

to make a favorable impression because they don’t listen

attentively. “They have been so much concerned with

what they are going to say next that they do not keep

their ears open. . . . Very important people have told me

that they prefer good listeners to good talkers, but the

ability to listen seems rarer than almost any other good

trait ."

And not only important personages crave a good listener,

but ordinary folk do too. As the Reader’s Digest

once said: “Many persons call a doctor when all they

want is an audience,”

During the darkest hours of the Civil War, Lincoln

wrote to an old friend in Springfield, Illinois, asking him

to come to Washington. Lincoln said he had some problems

he wanted to discuss with him. The old neighbor

called at the White House, and Lincoln talked to him for

hours about the advisability of issuing a proclamation

freeing the slaves. Lincoln went over all the arguments

for and against such a move, and then read letters and

newspaper articles, some denouncing him for not

freeing the slaves and others denouncing him for fear he

was going to free them. After talking for hours, Lincoln

shook hands with his old neighbor, said good night, and

sent him back to Illinois without even asking for his

opinion. Lincoln had done all the talking himself. That

seemed to clarify his mind. “He seemed to feel easier

after that talk,” the old friend said. Lincoln hadn’t

wanted advice, He had wanted merely a friendly, sympathetic

listener to whom he could unburden himself.

That’s what we all want when we are in trouble. That is

frequently all the irritated customer wants, and the dissatisfied

employee or the hurt friend.

One of the great listeners of modern times was Sigmund

Freud. A man who met Freud described his manner

of listening: “It struck me so forcibly that I shall

never forget him. He had qualities which I had never

seen in any other man. Never had I seen such concentrated

attention. There was none of that piercing ‘soul

penetrating gaze’ business. His eyes were mild and genial.

His voice was low and kind. His gestures were few.

But the attention he gave me, his appreciation of what I

said, even when I said it badly, was extraordinary,

You've no idea what it meant to be listened to like that.”

If you want to know how to make people shun you and

laugh at you behind your back and even despise you,

here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk

incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the

other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish:

bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.

Do you know people like that? I do, unfortunately;

and the astonishing part of it is that some of them are

prominent.

Bores, that is all they are - bores intoxicated with their

own egos, drunk with a sense of their own importance.

People who talk only of themselves think only of

themselves. And “those people who think only of themselves,”

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, longtime president

of Columbia University, said, "are hopelessly uneducated.

They are not educated,” said Dr. Butler, “no matter

how instructed they may be.”

So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an

attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask

questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage

them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.

Remember that the people you are talking to are a

hundred times more interested in themselves and their

wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.

A person’s toothache means more to that person

than a famine in China which kills a million people. A

boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty earthquakes

in Africa. Think of that the next time you start a

conversation.

PRINCIPLE 4

Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk

about themselves.

5

HOW TO INTEREST PEOPLE

Everyone who was ever a guest of Theodore Roosevelt

was astonished at the range and diversity of his knowledge.

Whether his visitor was a cowboy or a Rough

Rider, a New York politician or a diplomat, Roosevelt

knew what to say. And how was it done? The answer

was simple. Whenever Roosevelt expected a visitor, he

sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in

which he knew his guest was particularly interested.

For Roosevelt knew, as all leaders know, that the royal

road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or

she treasures most.

The genial William Lyon Phelps, essayist and professor

of literature at Yale, learned this lesson early in life.

"When I was eight years old and was spending a

weekend visiting my Aunt Libby Linsley at her home in

Stratford on the Housatonic,” he wrote in his essay on

Human Nature, “a middle-aged man called one evening,

and after a polite skirmish with my aunt, he devoted his

attention to me. At that time, I happened to be excited

about boats, and the visitor discussed the subject in a

way that seemed to me particularly interesting. After he

left, I spoke of him with enthusiasm. What a man! My

aunt informed me he was a New York lawyer, that he

cared nothing whatever about boats - that he took not

the slightest interest in the subject. ‘But why then did

he talk all the time about boats?’

" ‘Because he is a gentleman. He saw you were interested

in boats, and he talked about the things he knew

would interest and please you. He made himself agreeable.’ "

And William Lyon Phelps added: "I never forgot my

aunt’s remark.”

As I write this chapter, I have before me a letter from

Edward L. Chalif, who was active in Boy Scout work.

“One day I found I needed a favor,” wrote Mr. Chalif.

“A big Scout jamboree was coming off in Europe, and I

wanted the president of one of the largest corporations

in America to pay the expenses of one of my boys for the

trip.

“Fortunately, just before I went to see this man, I

heard that he had drawn a check for a million dollars,

and that after it was canceled, he had had it framed.

“So the first thing I did when I entered his office was

to ask to see the check. A check for a million dollars! I

told him I never knew that anybody had ever written

such a check, and that I wanted to tell my boys that I had

actually seen a check for a million dollars. He gladly

showed it to me; I admired it and asked him to tell me

all about how it happened to be drawn.”

You notice, don’t you, that Mr. Chalif didn’t begin by

talking about the Boy Scouts, or the jamboree in Europe,

or what it was he wanted? He talked in terms of what

interested the other man. Here’s the result:

“Presently, the man I was interviewing said: ‘Oh, by

the way, what was it you wanted to see me about?’ So I

told him.

“To my vast surprise,” Mr. Chalif continues, “he not

only granted immediately what I asked for, but much

more. I had asked him to send only one boy to Europe,

but he sent five boys and myself, gave me a letter of

credit for a thousand dollars and told us to stay in Europe

for seven weeks. He also gave me letters of introduction

to his branch presidents, putting them at our service,

and he himself met us in Paris and showed us the town.

Since then, he has given jobs to some of the boys whose

parents were in want, and he is still active in our group.

“Yet I know if I hadn’t found out what he was interested

in, and got him warmed up first, I wouldn’t have

found him one-tenth as easy to approach.”

Is this a valuable technique to use in business? Is it?

Let’s see, Take Henry G. Duvernoy of Duvemoy and

Sons, a wholesale baking firm in New York.

Mr. Duvernoy had been trying to sell bread to a certain

New York hotel. He had called on the manager

every week for four years. He went to the same social

affairs the manager attended. He even took rooms in the

hotel and lived there in order to get the business. But he

failed.

“Then,” said Mr. Duvernoy, “after studying human

relations, I resolved to change my tactics. I decided to

find out what interested this man - what caught his enthusiasm.

“I discovered he belonged to a society of hotel executives

called the Hotel Greeters of America. He not only

belonged, but his bubbling enthusiasm had made him

president of the organization, and president of the International

Greeters. No matter where its conventions were

held, he would be there.

“So when I saw him the next day, I began talking

about the Greeters. What a response I got. What a response!

He talked to me for half an hour about the

Greeters, his tones vibrant with enthusiasm. I could

plainly see that this society was not only his hobby, it

was the passion of his life. Before I left his office, he had

‘sold’ me a membership in his organization.

“In the meantime, I had said nothing about bread. But

a few days later, the steward of his hotel phoned me to

come over with samples and prices.

" ‘I don’t know what you did to the old boy,’ the steward

greeted me, ‘but he sure is sold on you!’

“Think of it! I had been drumming at that man for four

years - trying to get his business - and I’d still be drumming

at him if I hadn’t finally taken the trouble to find

out what he was interested in, and what he enjoyed talking

about.”

Edward E. Harriman of Hagerstown, Maryland, chose

to live in the beautiful Cumberland Valley of Maryland

after he completed his military service. Unfortunately,

at that time there were few jobs available in the area. A

little research uncovered the fact that a number of companies

in the area were either owned or controlled by an

unusual business maverick, R. J. Funkhouser, whose

rise from poverty to riches intrigued Mr. Harriman.

However, he was known for being inaccessible to job

seekers. Mr. Harriman wrote:

"I interviewed a number of people and found that his

major interest was anchored in his drive for power and

money. Since he protected himself from people like me

by use of a dedicated and stern secretary, I studied her

interests and goals and only then I paid an unannounced

visit at her office. She had been Mr. Funkhouser’s orbiting

satellite for about fifteen years. When I told her I

had a proposition for him which might translate itself

into financial and political success for him, she became

enthused. I also conversed with her about her constructive

participation in his success. After this conversation

she arranged for me to meet Mr. Funkhouser.

“I entered his huge and impressive office determined

not to ask directly for a job. He was seated behind a large

carved desk and thundered at me, ‘How about it, young

man?' I said, ‘Mr. Funkhouser, I believe I can make

money for you.’ He immediately rose and invited me to

sit in one of the large upholstered chairs. I enumerated

my ideas and the qualifications I had to realize these

ideas, as well as how they would contribute to his personal

success and that of his businesses.

" 'R. J.,' as he became known to me, hired me at once

and for over twenty years I have grown in his enterprises

and we both have prospered.”

Talking in terms of the other person’s interests pays

off for both parties. Howard Z. Herzig, a leader in the

field of employee communications, has always followed

this principle. When asked what reward he got from it,

Mr. Herzig responded that he not only received a different

reward from each person but that in general the reward

had been an enlargement of his life each time he

spoke to someone.

PRINCIPLE 5

Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

6

HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU

INSTANTLY

I was waiting in line to register a letter in the post office

at Thirty-third Street and Eighth Avenue in New York. I

noticed that the clerk appeared to be bored with the job

-weighing envelopes, handing out stamps, making

change, issuing receipts - the same monotonous grind

year after year. So I said to myself: "I am going to try to

make that clerk like me. Obviously, to make him like

me, I must say something nice, not about myself, but

about him. So I asked myself, ‘What is there about him

that I can honestly admire?’ " That is sometimes a hard

question to answer, especially with strangers; but, in

this case, it happened to be easy. I instantly saw something

I admired no end.

So while he was weighing my envelope, I remarked

with enthusiasm: "I certainly wish I had your head of

hair.”

He looked up, half-startled, his face beaming with

smiles. "Well, it isn’t as good as it used to be,” he said

modestly. I assured him that although it might have lost

some of its pristine glory, nevertheless it was still magnificent.

He was immensely pleased. We carried on a

pleasant little conversation and the last thing he said to

me was: “Many people have admired my hair.”

I’ll bet that person went out to lunch that day walking

on air. I’ll bet he went home that night and told his wife

about it. I’ll bet he looked in the mirror and said: “It is a

beautiful head of hair.”

I told this story once in public and a man asked me

afterwards: “‘What did you want to get out of him?”

What was I trying to get out of him!!! What was I trying

to get out of him!!!

If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can’t radiate

a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation

without trying to get something out of the other person

in return - if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples,

we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.

Oh yes, I did want something out of that chap. I

wanted something priceless. And I got it. I got the feeling

that I had done something for him without his being

able to do anything whatever in return for me. That is a

feeling that flows and sings in your memory lung after

the incident is past.

There is one all-important law of human conduct. If

we obey that law, we shall almost never get into trouble.

In fact, that law, if obeyed, will bring us countless

friends and constant happiness. But the very instant we

break the law, we shall get into endless trouble. The law

is this: Always make the other person feel important.

John Dewey, as we have already noted, said that the

desire to be important is the deepest urge in human

nature; and William James said: “The deepest principle

in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” As I

have already pointed out, it is this urge that differentiates

us from the animals. It is this urge that has been

responsible for civilization itself.

Philosophers have been speculating on the rules of

human relationships for thousands of years, and out of

all that speculation, there has evolved only one important

precept. It is not new. It is as old as history. Zoroaster

taught it to his followers in Persia twenty-five

hundred years ago. Confucius preached it in China

twenty-four centuries ago. Lao-tse, the founder of

Taoism, taught it to his disciples in the Valley of the

Han. Buddha preached it on the bank of the Holy

Ganges five hundred years before Christ. The sacred

books of Hinduism taught it a thousand years before

that. Jesus taught it among the stony hills of Judea nineteen

centuries ago. Jesus summed it up in one thought

-probably the most important rule in the world: “Do

unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

You want the approval of those with whom you come

in contact. You want recognition of your true worth. You

want a feeling that you are important in your little world.

You don’t want to listen to cheap, insincere flattery, but

you do crave sincere appreciation. You want your friends

and associates to be, as Charles Schwab put it, “hearty

in their approbation and lavish in their praise.” All of us

want that.

So let’s obey the Golden Rule, and give unto others

what we would have others give unto us,

How? When? Where? The answer is: All the time,

everywhere.

David G. Smith of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, told one of

our classes how he handled a delicate situation when he

was asked to take charge of the refreshment booth at a

charity concert,

“The night of the concert I arrived at the park and

found two elderly ladies in a very bad humor standing

next to the refreshment stand. Apparently each thought

that she was in charge of this project. As I stood there

pondering what to do, me of the members of the sponsoring

committee appeared and handed me a cash

box and thanked me for taking over the project. She

introduced Rose and Jane as my helpers and then ran

off.

"A great silence ensued. Realizing that the cash box

was a symbol of authority (of sorts), I gave the box to

Rose and explained that I might not be able to keep the

money straight and that if she took care of it I would feel

better. I then suggested to Jane that she show two teenagers

who had been assigned to refreshments how to

operate the soda machine, and I asked her to be responsible

for that part of the project.

“The evening was very enjoyable with Rose happily

counting the money, Jane supervising the teenagers, and

me enjoying the concert.”

You don’t have to wait until you are ambassador to

France or chairman of the Clambake Committee of your

lodge before you use this philosophy of appreciation.

You can work magic with it almost every day.

If, for example, the waitress brings us mashed potatoes

when we have ordered French fried, let’s say: “I’m sorry

to trouble you, but I prefer French fried.” She’ll probably

reply, “No trouble at all” and will be glad to change

the potatoes, because we have shown respect for her.

Little phrases such as “I’m sorry to trouble you,”

“Would you be so kind as to ----? " "Won't you

please?” " Would you mind?” “Thank you” - little courtesies

like these oil the cogs of the monotonous grind of

everyday life- and, incidentally, they are the hallmark

of good breeding.

Let’s take another illustration. Hall Caine’s novels-The

Christian, The Deemster, The Manxman, among

them - were all best-sellers in the early part of this century.

Millions of people read his novels, countless millions.

He was the son of a blacksmith. He never had

more than eight years’ schooling in his life; yet when he

died he was the richest literary man of his time.

The story goes like this: Hall Caine loved sonnets and

ballads; so he devoured all of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s

poetry. He even wrote a lecture chanting the praises of

Rossetti’s artistic achievement-and sent a copy to Rossetti

himself. Rossetti was delighted. “Any young man

who has such an exalted opinion of my ability,” Rossetti

probably said to himself, “must be brilliant,” So Rossetti

invited this blacksmith’s son to come to London and act

as his secretary. That was the turning point in Hall

Caine’s life; for, in his new position, he met the literary

artists of the day. Profiting by their advice and inspired

by their encouragement, he launched upon a career that

emblazoned his name across the sky.

His home, Greeba Castle, on the Isle of Man, became

a Mecca for tourists from the far corners of the world,

and he left a multimillion dollar estate. Yet - who knows

- he might have died poor and unknown had he not

written an essay expressing his admiration for a famous

man.

Such is the power, the stupendous power, of sincere,

heartfelt appreciation.

Rossetti considered himself important. That is not

strange, Almost everyone considers himself important,

very important.

The life of many a person could probably be changed

if only someone would make him feel important. Ronald

J. Rowland, who is one of the instructors of our course

in California, is also a teacher of arts and crafts. He wrote

to us about a student named Chris in his beginning

crafts class:

Chris was a very quiet, shy boy lacking in self-confidence,

the kind of student that often does not receive the

attention he deserves. I also teach an advanced class that

had grown to be somewhat of a status symbol and a privilege

for a student to have earned the right to be in it.

On Wednesday, Chris was diligently working at his desk.

I really felt there was a hidden fire deep inside him. I asked

Chris if he would like to be in the advanced class. How I

wish I could express the look in Chris’s face, the emotions

in that shy fourteen-year-old boy, trying to hold back his

tears.

“Who me, Mr. Rowland? Am I good enough?”

“Yes, Chris, you are good enough.”

I had to leave at that point because tears were coming to

my eyes. As Chris walked out of class that day, seemingly

two inches taller, he looked at me with bright blue eyes and

said in a positive voice, “Thank you, Mr. Rowland.”

Chris taught me a lesson I will never forget-our deep

desire to feel important. To help me never forget this rule,

I made a sign which reads “YOU ARE IMPORTANT." This

sign hangs in the front of the classroom for all to see and to

remind me that each student I face is equally important.

The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people

you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way,

and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realize in

some subtle way that you recognize their importance,

and recognize it sincerely.

Remember what Emerson said: “Every man I meet is

my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.”

And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who

have the least justification for a feeling of achievement

bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit

which is truly nauseating. As Shakespeare put it: ". . .

man, proud man,/Drest in a little brief authority,/ . . .

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven/As make

the angels weep.”

I am going to tell you how business people in my own

courses have applied these principles with remarkable

results. Let’s take the case of a Connecticut attorney (because

of his relatives he prefers not to have his name

mentioned).

Shortly after joining the course, Mr. R----- drove to

Long Island with his wife to visit some of her relatives.

She left him to chat with an old aunt of hers and ther

rushed off by herself to visit some of the younger relatives.

Since he soon had to give a speech professionally

on how he applied the principles of appreciation, he

thought he would gain some worthwhile experience

talking with the-elderly lady. So he looked around the

house to see what he could honestly admire.

“This house was built about 1890, wasn’t it?” he inquired.

“Yes,” she replied, “that is precisely the year it was

built.”

“It reminds me of the house I was born in,” he said.

“It’s beautiful. Well built. Roomy. You know, they don’t

build houses like this anymore.”

“You’re right,” the old lady agreed. “The young folks

nowadays don’t care for beautiful homes. All they want

is a small apartment, and then they go off gadding about

in their automobiles.

“This is a dream house,” she said in a voice vibrating

with tender memories. “This house was built with love.

My husband and I dreamed about it for years before we

built it. We didn’t have an architect. We planned it all

ourselves."

She showed Mr. R----- about the house, and he expressed

his hearty admiration for the beautiful treasures

she had picked up in her travels and cherished over a

lifetime - paisley shawls, an old English tea set, Wedgwood

china, French beds and chairs, Italian paintings,

and silk draperies that had once hung in a French chateau.

After showing Mr. R----- through the house, she took

him out to the garage. There, jacked up on blocks, was a

Packard car - in mint condition.

"My husband bought that car for me shortly before he

passed on,” she said softly. “I have never ridden in it

since his death. . . . You appreciate nice things, and I’m

going to give this car to you.”

“Why, aunty,” he said, “you overwhelm me. I appreciate

your generosity, of course; but I couldn’t possibly

accept it. I’m not even a relative of yours. I have a new

car, and you have many relatives that would like to have

that Packard.”

“Relatives!” she exclaimed. “Yes, I have relatives who

are just waiting till I die so they can get that car. But

they are not going to get it.”

“If you don’t want to give it to them, you can very

easily sell it to a secondhand dealer,” he told her.

“Sell it!” she cried. “Do you think I would sell this

car? Do you think I could stand to see strangers riding

up and down the street in that car - that car that my

husband bought for me? I wouldn’t dream of selling it.

I’m going to give it to you. You appreciate beautiful

things."

He tried to get out of accepting the car, but he couldn’t

without hurting her feelings.

This lady, left all alone in a big house with her paisley

shawls, her French antiques, and her memories, was

starving for a little recognition, She had once been

young and beautiful and sought after She had once built

a house warm with love and had collected things from

all over Europe to make it beautiful. Now, in the isolated

loneliness of old age, she craved a little human warmth,

a little genuine appreciation - and no one gave it to her.

And when she found it, like a spring in the desert, her

gratitude couldn’t adequately express itself with anything

less than the gift of her cherished Packard.

Let’s take another case: Donald M. McMahon, who

was superintendent of Lewis and Valentine, nurserymen

and landscape architects in Rye, New York, related

this incident:

“Shortly after I attended the talk on ‘How to Win

Friends and Influence People,’ I was landscaping the

estate of a famous attorney. The owner came out to give

me a few instructions about where he wished to plant a

mass of rhododendrons and azaleas.

“I said, ‘Judge, you have a lovely hobby. I've been

admiring your beautiful dogs. I understand you win a lot

of blue ribbons every year at the show in Madison

Square Garden.’

“The effect of this little expression of appreciation was

striking.

" ‘Yes,’ the judge replied, ‘I do have a lot of fun with

my dogs. Would you like to see my kennel?’

“He spent almost an hour showing me his dogs and

the prizes they had won. He even brought out their

pedigrees and explained about the bloodlines responsible

for such beauty and intelligence.

“Finally, turning to me, he asked: ‘Do you have any

small children?’

" ‘Yes, I do,’ I replied, ‘I have a son.’

" ‘Well, wouldn’t he like a puppy?’ the judge inquired.

" ‘Oh, yes, he’d be tickled pink.’

" ‘All right, I’m going to give him one,' the . judge announced.

He started to tell me how to feed the puppy. Then he

paused. ‘You’ll forget it if I tell you. I’ll write it out.’ So

the judge went in the house, typed out the pedigree and

feeding instructions, and gave me a puppy worth several

hundred dollars and one hour and fifteen minutes of his

valuable time largely because I had expressed my honest

admiration for his hobby and achievements.”

George Eastman, of Kodak fame, invented the transparent

film that made motion pictures possible, amassed

a fortune of a hundred million dollars, and made himself

one of the most famous businessmen on earth. Yet in

spite of all these tremendous accomplishments, he

craved little recognitions even as you and I.

To illustrate: When Eastman was building the Eastman

School of Music and also Kilbourn Hall in Rochester,

James Adamson, then president of the Superior

Seating Company of New York, wanted to get the order

to supply the theater chairs for these buildings. Phoning

the architect, Mr. Adamson made an appointment to see

Mr. Eastman in Rochester.

When Adamson arrived, the architect said: "I know

you want to get this order, but I can tell you right now

that you won’t stand a ghost of a show if you take more

than five minutes of George Eastman’s time. He is a

strict disciplinarian. He is very busy. So tell your story

quickly and get out.”

Adamson was prepared to do just that.

When he was ushered into the room he saw Mr. Eastman

bending over a pile of papers at his desk. Presently,

Mr. Eastman looked up, removed his glasses, and

walked toward the architect and Mr. Adamson, saying:

“Good morning, gentlemen, what can I do for you?”

The architect introduced them, and then Mr. Adamson

said: “While we’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Eastman,

I’ve been admiring your office. I wouldn’t mind working

in a room like this myself. I’m in the interior-woodworking

business, and I never saw a more beautiful office in

all my life.”

George Eastman replied: “You remind me of something

I had almost forgotten. It is beautiful, isn’t it? I

enjoyed it a great deal when it was first built. But I come

down here now with a lot of other things on my mind

and sometimes don’t even see the room for weeks at a

time ."

Adamson walked over and rubbed his hand across a

panel. “This is English oak, isn’t it? A little different

texture from Italian oak.”

“Yes,” Eastman replied. “Imported English oak. It

was selected for me by a friend who specializes in fine

woods ."

Then Eastman showed him about the room, commenting

on the proportions, the coloring, the hand carving

and other effects he had helped to plan and execute.

While drifting about the room, admiring the wood-work,

they paused before a window, and George Eastman,

in his modest, soft-spoken way, pointed out some

of the institutions through which he was trying to help

humanity: the University of Rochester, the General Hospital,

the Homeopathic Hospital, the Friendly Home,

the Children’s Hospital. Mr. Adamson congratulated

him warmly on the idealistic way he was using his

wealth to alleviate the sufferings of humanity. Presently,

George Eastman unlocked a glass case and pulled out

the first camera he had ever owned - an invention he

had bought from an Englishman.

Adamson questioned him at length about his early

struggles to get started in business, and Mr. Eastman

spoke with real feeling about the poverty of his childhood,

telling how his widowed mother had kept a boardinghouse

while he clerked in an insurance office. The

terror of poverty haunted him day and night, and he

resolved to make enough money so that his mother

wouldn’t have to work, Mr. Adamson drew him out with

further questions and listened, absorbed, while he related

the story of his experiments with dry photographic

plates. He told how he had worked in an office all day,

and sometimes experimented all night, taking only brief

naps while the chemicals were working, sometimes

working and sleeping in his clothes for seventy-two

hours at a stretch.

James Adamson had been ushered into Eastman’s office

at ten-fifteen and had been warned that he must not

take more than five minutes; but an hour had passed,

then two hours passed. And they were still talking.

Finally, George Eastman turned to Adamson and said,

“The last time I was in Japan I bought some chairs,

brought them home, and put them in my sun porch. But

the sun peeled the paint, so I went downtown the other

day and bought some paint and painted the chairs myself.

Would you like to see what sort of a job I can do

painting chairs? All right. Come up to my home and have

lunch with me and I’ll show you.”

After lunch, Mr. Eastman showed Adamson the chairs

he had brought from Japan. They weren’t worth more

than a few dollars, but George Eastman, now a multimillionaire,

was proud of them because he himself had

painted them.

The order for the seats amounted to $90,000. Who do

you suppose got the order - James Adamson or one of

his competitors?

From the time of this story until Mr. Eastman’s death,

he and James Adamson were close friends.

Claude Marais, a restaurant owner in Rouen, France,

used this principle and saved his restaurant the loss of a

key employee. This woman had been in his employ for

five years and was a vital link between M. Marais and

his staff of twenty-one people. He was shocked to receive

a registered letter from her advising him of her

resignation.

M. Marais reported: "I was very surprised and, even

more, disappointed, because I was under the impression

that I had been fair to her and receptive to her needs.

Inasmuch as she was a friend as well as an employee, I

probably had taken her too much for granted and maybe

was even more demanding of her than of other employees.

"I could not, of course, accept this resignation without

some explanation. I took her aside and said, ‘Paulette,

you must understand that I cannot accept your resignation

You mean a great deal to me and to this company,

and you are as important to the success of this restaurant

as I am.’ I repeated this in front of the entire staff, and I

invited her to my home and reiterated my confidence in

her with my family present.

“Paulette withdrew her resignation, and today I can

rely on her as never before. I frequently reinforce this

by expressing my appreciation for what she does and

showing her how important she is to me and to the restaurant.”

“Talk to people about themselves,” said Disraeli, one

of the shrewdest men who ever ruled the British Empire.

“Talk to people about themselves and they will

listen for hours ."

PRINCIPLE 6

Make the other person feel important-and

do it sincerely.

In a Nutshell

SIX WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU

PRINCIPLE 1

Become genuinely interested in other people.

PRINCIPLE 2

Smile.

PRINCIPLE 3

Remember that a person’s name is to that person the

sweetest and most important sound in any language.

PRINCIPLE 4

Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about

themselves.

PRINCIPLE 5

Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

PRINCIPLE 6

Make the other person feel important-and do it sincerely.

Part THREE

How to Win People to Your

Way of Thinking

1

YOU CAN’T WIN AN ARGUMENT

Shortly after the close of World War I, I learned an invaluable

lesson one night in London. I was manager at

the time for Sir Ross Smith. During the war, Sir Ross had

been the Australian ace out in Palestine; and shortly

after peace was declared, he astonished the world by

flying halfway around it in thirty days. No such feat had

ever been attempted before. It created a tremendous

sensation. The Australian government awarded him fifty

thousand dollars; the King of England knighted him;

and, for a while, he was the most talked-about man

under the Union Jack. I was attending a banquet one

night given in Sir Ross’s honor; and during the dinner,

the man sitting next to me told a humorous story which

hinged on the quotation “There’s a divinity that shapes

our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”

The raconteur mentioned that the quotation was from

the Bible. He was wrong. I knew that, I knew it positively.

There couldn’t be the slightest doubt about it.

And so, to get a feeling of importance and display my

superiority, I appointed myself as an unsolicited and unwelcome

committee of one to correct him. He stuck to

his guns. What? From Shakespeare? Impossible! Absurd! That quotation was from the Bible. And he knew it.

The storyteller was sitting on my right; and Frank

Gammond, an old friend of mine, was seated at my left.

Mr. Gammond had devoted years to the study of Shakespeare,

So the storyteller and I agreed to submit the

question to Mr. Gammond. Mr. Gammond listened,

kicked me under the table, and then said: “Dale, you are

wrong. The gentleman is right. It is from the Bible.”

On our way home that night, I said to Mr. Gammond:

“Frank, you knew that quotation was from Shakespeare,”

“Yes, of course,” he replied, "Hamlet, Act Five, Scene

Two. But we were guests at a festive occasion, my dear

Dale. Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to

make him like you? Why not let him save his face? He

didn’t ask for your opinion. He didn’t want it. Why argue

with him? Always avoid the acute angle.” The man who

said that taught me a lesson I’ll never forget. I not

only had made the storyteller uncomfortable, but had

put my friend in an embarrassing situation. How much

better it would have been had I not become argumentative.

It was a sorely needed lesson because I had been an

inveterate arguer. During my youth, I had argued with

my brother about everything under the Milky Way.

When I went to college, I studied logic and argumentation

and went in for debating contests. Talk about being

from Missouri, I was born there. I had to be shown.

Later, I taught debating and argumentation in New

York; and once, I am ashamed to admit, I planned to

write a book on the subject. Since then, I have listened

to, engaged in, and watched the effect of thousands of

arguments. As a result of all this, I have come to the

conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven

to get the best of an argument - and that is to avoid it .

Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes.

Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of

the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he

is absolutely right.

You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you

lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why?

Well, suppose you triumph over the other man and shoot

his argument full of holes and prove that he is non compos

mentis. Then what? You will feel fine. But what

about him? You have made him feel inferior. You have

hurt his pride. He will resent your triumph. And -

A man convinced against his will

Is of the same opinion still.

Years ago Patrick J. O’Haire joined one of my classes.

He had had little education, and how he loved a scrap!

He had once been a chauffeur, and he came to me because

he had been trying, without much success, to sell

trucks. A little questioning brought out the fact that he

was continually scrapping with and antagonizing the

very people he was trying to do business with, If a prospect

said anything derogatory about the trucks he was

selling, Pat saw red and was right at the customer’s

throat. Pat won a lot of arguments in those days. As he

said to me afterward, "I often walked out of an office

saving: ‘I told that bird something.’ Sure I had told him

something, but I hadn’t sold him anything.”

Mv first problem was not to teach Patrick J. O’Haire to

talk. My immediate task was to train him to refrain from

talking and to avoid verbal fights.

Mr. O’Haire became one of the star salesmen for the

White Motor Company in New York. How did he do it?

Here is his story in his own words: “If I walk into a

buyer’s office now and he says: ‘What? A White truck?

They’re no good! I wouldn’t take one if you gave it to

me. I’m going to buy the Whose-It truck,’ I say, ‘The

Whose-It is a good truck. If you buy the Whose-It, you’ll

never make a mistake. The Whose-Its are made by a fine

company and sold by good people.’

“He is speechless then. There is no room for an argument.

If he says the Whose-It is best and I say sure it is,

he has to stop. He can’t keep on all afternoon saying,

‘It’s the best’ when I’m agreeing with him. We then get

off the subject of Whose-It and I begin to talk about the

good points of the White truck.

“There was a time when a remark like his first one

would have made me see scarlet and red and orange. I

would start arguing against the Whose-It; and the more

I argued against it, the more my prospect argued in favor

of it; and the more he argued, the more he sold himself

on my competitor’s product.

“As I look back now I wonder how I was ever able to

sell anything. I lost years of my life in scrapping and

arguing. I keep my mouth shut now. It pays.”

As wise old Ben Franklin used to say:

If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve

a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because

you will never get your opponent’s good will.

So figure it out for yourself. Which would you rather

have, an academic, theatrical victory or a person’s good

will? You can seldom have both.

The Boston Transcript once printed this bit of significant

doggerel:

Here lies the body of William Jay, .

Who died maintaining his right of way-

He was right, dead right, as he sped along,

But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.

You may be right, dead right, as you speed along in

your argument; but as far as changing another’s mind is

concerned, you will probably be just as futile as if you

were wrong.

Frederick S. Parsons, an income tax consultant, had

been disputing and wrangling for an hour with a gover-ment

tax inspector. An item of nine thousand dollars was

at stake. Mr. Parsons claimed that this nine thousand

dollars was in reality a bad debt, that it would never be

collected, that it ought not to be taxed. “Bad debt, my

eye !" retorted the inspector. “It must be taxed.”

“This inspector was cold, arrogant and stubborn,” Mr.

Parsons said as he told the story to the class. “Reason

was wasted and so were facts. . . The longer we argued,

the more stubborn he became. So I decided to avoid

argument, change the subject, and give him appreciation.

"I said, ‘I suppose this is a very petty matter in comparison

with the really important and difficult decisions

you’re required to make. I’ve made a study of taxation

myself. But I’ve had to get my knowledge from books.

You are getting yours from the firing line of experience.

I sometime wish I had a job like yours. It would teach

me a lot.’ I meant every word I said.

“Well.” The inspector straightened up in his chair,

leaned back, and talked for a long time about his work,

telling me of the clever frauds he had uncovered. His

tone gradually became friendly, and presently he was

telling me about his children. As he left, he advised me

that he would consider my problem further and give me

his decision in a few days.

“He called at my office three days later and informed

me that he had decided to leave the tax return exactly as

it was filed.”

This tax inspector was demonstrating one of the most

common of human frailties. He wanted a feeling of importance; and as long as Mr. Parsons argued with him,

he got his feeling of importance by loudly asserting his

authority. But as soon as his importance was admitted

and the argument stopped and he was permitted to expand

his ego, he became a sympathetic and kindly

human being.

Buddha said: “Hatred is never ended by hatred but by

love," and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument

but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic

desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.

Lincoln once reprimanded a young army officer for

indulging in a violent controversy with an associate. “No

man who is resolved to make the most of himself,” said

Lincoln, "can spare time for personal contention. Still

less can he afford to take the consequences, including

the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self-control.

Yield larger things to which you show no more than

equal rights; and yield lesser ones though clearly your

own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by

him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog

would not cure the bite.”

In an article in Bits and Pieces,* some suggestions are

made on how to keep a disagreement from becoming an

argument:

Welcome the disagreement. Remember the slogan, “When

two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.” If

there is some point you haven’t thought about, be thankful

if it is brought to your attention. Perhaps this disagreement

is your opportunity to be corrected before you make a serious

mistake.

Distrust your first instinctive impression. Our first natural

reaction in a disagreeable situation is to be defensive. Be

careful. Keep calm and watch out for your first reaction. It

may be you at your worst, not your best.

Control your temper. Remember, you can measure the size

of a person by what makes him or her angry.

Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them

finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers.

Try to build bridges of understanding. Don’t build

higher barriers of misunderstanding.

Look for areas of agreement. When you have heard your

opponents out, dwell first on the points and areas on which

you agree.

Be honest, Look for areas where you can admit error and

say so. Apologize for your mistakes. It will help disarm your

opponents and reduce defensiveness.

Promise to think over your opponents’ ideas and study

them carefully. And mean it. Your opponents may be right.

It is a lot easier at this stage to agree to think about their

points than to move rapidly ahead and find yourself in a

position where your opponents can say: “We tried to tell

you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone

who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the

same things you are. Think of them as people who really

want to help you, and you may turn your opponents into

friends.

Postpone action to give both sides time to think through

the problem. Suggest that a new meeting be held later that

day or the next day, when all the facts may be brought to bear. In preparation for this meeting, ask yourself some hard questions:

Could my opponents be right? Partly right? Is there truth

or merit in their position or argument? Is my reaction one

that will relieve the problem, or will it just relieve any frustration?

Will my reaction drive my opponents further away

or draw them closer to me? Will my reaction elevate the

estimation good people have of me? Will I win or lose?

What price will I have to pay if I win? If I am quiet about it,

will the disagreement blow over? Is this difficult situation

an opportunity for me?

* Bits and Pieces, published by The Economics Press, Fairfield, N.J.

Opera tenor Jan Peerce, after he was married nearly

fifty years, once said: "My wife and I made a pact a long

time ago, and we’ve kept it no matter how angry we’ve

grown with each other. When one yells, the other should

listen-because when two people yell, there is no communication,

just noise and bad vibrations.”

PRINCIPLE 1

The only way to get the best of an argument

is to avoid it.

2

A SURE WAY OF MAKING ENEMIES

-AND HOW TO AVOID IT

When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he

confessed that if he could be right 75 percent of the time,

he would reach the highest measure of his expectation.

If that was the highest rating that one of the most distinguished

men of the twentieth century could hope to

obtain, what about you and me?

If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the

time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million

dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55

percent of the time, why should you tell other people

they are wrong?

You can tell people they are wrong by a look or an

intonation or a gesture just as eloquently as you can in

words - and if you tell them they are wrong, do you

make them want to agree with you? Never! For you have

struck a direct blow at their intelligence, judgment,

pride and self-respect. That will make them want to

strike back. But it will never make them want to change

their minds. You may then hurl at them all the logic of a

Plato or an Immanuel Kant, but you will not alter their

opinions, for you have hurt their feelings.

Never begin by announcing "I am going to prove so-and-

so to you.” That’s bad. That’s tantamount to saying:

“I’m smarter than you are, I’m going to tell you a thing

or two and make you change your mind.”

That is a challenge. It arouses opposition and makes

the listener want to battle with you before you even

start.

It is difficult, under even the most benign conditions,

to change people’s minds. So why make it harder? Why

handicap yourself?

If you are going to prove anything, don’t let anybody

know it. Do it so subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel

that you are doing it. This was expressed succinctly by

Alexander Pope:

Men must be taught as if you taught them not

And things unknown proposed as things forgot.

Over three hundred years ago Galileo said:

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only

help him to find it within himself.

As Lord Chesterfield said to his son:

Be wiser than other people if you can;

but do not tell them so.

Socrates said repeatedly to his followers in Athens:

One thing only I know, and that

is that I know nothing.

Well, I can’t hope to be any smarter than Socrates, so

I have quit telling people they are wrong. And I find that

it pays.

If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong

- yes, even that you know is wrong - isn’t it better to

begin by saying: “Well, now, look, I thought otherwise,

but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong,

I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.”

There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: "I

may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.”

Nobody in the heavens above or on earth beneath

or in the waters under the earth will ever object to your

saying: "I may be wrong. Let’s examine the facts.”

One of our class members who used this approach in

dealing with customers was Harold Reinke, a Dodge

dealer in Billings, Montana. He reported that because of

the pressures of the automobile business, he was often

hard-boiled and callous when dealing with customers’

complaints. This caused flared tempers, loss of business

and general unpleasantness.

He told his class: “Recognizing that this was getting

me nowhere fast, I tried a new tack. I would say something

like this: ‘Our dealership has made so many mistakes

that I am frequently ashamed. We may have erred

in your case. Tell me about it.’

“This approach becomes quite disarming, and by the

time the customer releases his feelings, he is usually

much more reasonable when it comes to settling the

matter. In fact, several customers have thanked me for

having such an understanding attitude. And two of them

have even brought in friends to buy new cars. In this

highly competitive market, we need more of this type of

customer, and I believe that showing respect for all customers’

opinions and treating them diplomatically and

courteously will help beat the competition.”

You will never get into trouble by admitting that you

may be wrong. That will stop all argument and inspire

your opponent to be just as fair and open and broad-minded

as you are. It will make him want to admit that

he, too, may be wrong.

If you know positively that a person is wrong, and you

bluntly tell him or her so, what happens? Let me illustrate.

Mr. S---- a young New York attorney, once argued

a rather important case before the United States

Supreme Court (Lustgarten v. Fleet Corporation 280

U.S. 320). The case involved a considerable sum of

money and an important question of law. During the

argument, one of the Supreme Court justices said to him:

“The statute of limitations in admiralty law is six years,

is it not?”

Mr. S---- stopped, stared at the Justice for a moment,

and then said bluntly: “Your Honor, there is no statute

of limitations in admiralty.”

"A hush fell on the court,” said Mr. S---- as he related

his experience to one of the author’s classes, “and the

temperature in the room seemed to drop to zero. I was

right. Justice - was wrong. And I had told him so. But

did that make him friendly? No. I still believe that I had

the law on my side. And I know that I spoke better than

I ever spoke before. But I didn’t persuade. I made the

enormous blunder of telling a very learned and famous

man that he was wrong.”

Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and

biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions,

with jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy and pride. And

most citizens don’t want to change their minds about

their religion or their haircut or communism or their favorite

movie star. So, if you are inclined to tell people

they are wrong, please read the following paragraph

every morning before breakfast. It is from James Harvey

Robinson’s enlightening book The Mind in the Making.

We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without

any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told we

are wrong, we resent the imputation and harden our hearts.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs,

but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them

when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It

is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us,

but our self-esteem which is threatened. . . . The little word

“my” is the most important one in human affairs, and properly

to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the

same force whether it is “my” dinner, “my” dog, and "my"

house, or “my” father, “my” country, and “my” God. We

not only resent the imputation that our watch is wrong, or

our car shabby, but that our conception of the canals of

Mars, of the pronunciation of “Epictetus,” of the medicinal

value of salicin, or of the date of Sargon I is subject to revision.

We like to continue to believe what we have been

accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused

when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to

seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is

that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments

for going on believing as we already do.

Carl Rogers, the eminent psychologist, wrote in his

book On Becoming a Person:

I have found it of enormous value when I can permit

myself to understand the other person. The way in which I

have worded this statement may seem strange to you, Is it

necessary to permit oneself to understand another? I think

it is. Our first reaction to most of the statements (which we

hear from other people) is an evaluation or judgment, rather

than an understanding of it. When someone expresses some

feeling, attitude or belief, our tendency is almost immediately

to feel “that’s right,” or “that’s stupid,” “that’s abnormal,”

“that’s unreasonable,” “that’s incorrect,” “that’s not

nice ." Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand

precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other

person.*

* Adapted from Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1961), pp. 18ff.

I once employed an interior decorator to make some

draperies for my home. When the bill arrived, I was

dismayed.

A few days later, a friend dropped in and looked at the

draperies. The price was mentioned, and she exclaimed

with a note of triumph: “What? That’s awful. I am afraid

he put one over on you.”

True? Yes, she had told the truth, but few people like

to listen to truths that reflect on their judgment. So,

being human, I tried to defend myself. I pointed out that

the best is eventually the cheapest, that one can’t expect

to get quality and artistic taste at bargain-basement

prices, and so on and on.

The next day another friend dropped in, admired the

draperies, bubbled over with enthusiasm, and expressed

a wish that she could afford such exquisite creations for

her home. My reaction was totally different. “Well, to

tell the truth,” I said, "I can’t afford them myself. I paid

too much. I’m sorry I ordered them,”

When we are wrong, we may admit it to ourselves.

And if we are handled gently and tactfully, we may

admit it to others and even take pride in our frankness

and broad-mindedness. But not if someone else is trying

to ram the unpalatable fact down our esophagus.

Horace Greeley, the most famous editor in America

during the time of the Civil War, disagreed violently

with Lincoln’s policies. He believed that he could drive

Lincoln into agreeing with him by a campaign of argument,

ridicule and abuse. He waged this bitter campaign

month after month, year after year. In fact, he wrote a

brutal, bitter, sarcastic and personal attack on President

Lincoln the night Booth shot him.

But did all this bitterness make Lincoln agree with

Greeley? Not at all. Ridicule and abuse never do.

If you want some excellent suggestions about dealing

with people and managing yourself and improving your

personality, read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography -

one of the most fascinating life stories ever written, one

of the classics of American literature. Ben Franklin tells

how he conquered the iniquitous habit of argument and

transformed himself into one of the most able, suave and

diplomatic men in American history.

One day, when Ben Franklin was a blundering youth,

an old Quaker friend took him aside and lashed him with

a few stinging truths, something like this:

Ben, you are impossible. Your opinions have a slap in

them for everyone who differs with you. They have become

so offensive that nobody cares for them. Your friends find

they enjoy themselves better when you are not around. You

know so much that no man can tell you anything. Indeed,

no man is going to try, for the effort would lead only to

discomfort and hard work. So you are not likely ever to

know any more than you do now, which is very little.

One of the finest things I know about Ben Franklin is

the way he accepted that smarting rebuke. He was big

enough and wise enough to realize that it was true, to

sense that he was headed for failure and social disaster.

So he made a right-about-face. He began immediately to

change his insolent, opinionated ways.

"I made it a rule,” said Franklin, “to forbear all direct

contradiction to the sentiment of others, and all positive

assertion of my own, I even forbade myself the use of

every word or expression in the language that imported

a fix’d opinion, such as ‘certainly,’ ‘undoubtedly,’ etc.,

and I adopted, instead of them, ‘I conceive,’ ‘I apprehend,

’ or ‘I imagine’ a thing to be so or so, or ‘it so

appears to me at present.’ When another asserted something

that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure

of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing

immediately some absurdity in his proposition: and in

answering I began by observing that in certain cases or

circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the

present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference,

etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in

my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more

pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my

opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction;

I had less mortification when I was found to

be in the wrong, and I more easily prevaile'd with others

to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened

to be in the right.

“And this mode, which I at first put on with some

violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy,

and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years

past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape

me. And to this habit (after my character of integrity)

I think it principally owing that I had earned so

much weight with my fellow citizens when I proposed

new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much

influence in public councils when I became a member;

for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to

much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in

language, and yet I generally carried my points.”

How do Ben Franklin’s methods work in business?

Let’s take two examples.

Katherine A, Allred of Kings Mountain, North Carolina,

is an industrial engineering supervisor for a yarn-processing

plant. She told one of our classes how she

handled a sensitive problem before and after taking our

training:

“Part of my responsibility,” she reported, “deals with

setting up and maintaining incentive systems and standards

for our operators so they can make more money by

producing more yarn. The system we were using had

worked fine when we had only two or three different

types of yarn, but recently we had expanded our inventory

and capabilities to enable us to run more than

twelve different varieties. The present system was no

longer adequate to pay the operators fairly for the work

being performed and give them an incentive to increase

production. I had worked up a new system which would

enable us to pay the operator by the class of yam she

was running at any one particular time. With my new

system in hand, I entered the meeting determined to

prove to the management that my system was the right

approach. I told them in detail how they were wrong

and showed where they were being unfair and how I

had all the answers they needed. To say the least, I

failed miserably! I had become so busy defending my

position on the new system that I had left them no opening

to graciously admit their problems on the old one.

The issue was dead.

“After several sessions of this course, I realized all too

well where I had made my mistakes. I called another

meeting and this time I asked where they felt their problems

were. We discussed each point, and I asked them

their opinions on which was the best way to proceed.

With a few low-keyed suggestions, at proper intervals, I

let them develop my system themselves. At the end of

the meeting when I actually presented my system, they

enthusiastically accepted it.

"I am convinced now that nothing good is accomplished

and a lot of damage can be done if you tell a

person straight out that he or she is wrong. You only

succeed in stripping that person of self-dignity and making

yourself an unwelcome part of any discussion.”

Let’s take another example - and remember these

cases I am citing are typical of the experiences of thousands

of other people. R. V. Crowley was a salesman for

a lumber company in New York. Crowley admitted that

he had been telling hard-boiled lumber inspectors for

years that they were wrong. And he had won the arguments

too. But it hadn’t done any good. “For these lumber

inspectors,” said Mr. Crowley, "are like baseball

umpires. Once they make a decision, they never change

it,”

Mr. Crowley saw that his firm was losing thousands of

dollars through the arguments he won. So while taking

my course, he resolved to change tactics and abandon

arguments. With what results? Here is the story as he

told it to the fellow members of his class:

“One morning the phone rang in my office. A hot and

bothered person at the other end proceeded to inform

me that a car of lumber we had shipped into his plant

was entirely unsatisfactory. His firm had stopped unloading

and requested that we make immediate arrangements

to remove the stock from their yard. After about

one-fourth of the car had been unloaded, their lumber

inspector reported that the lumber was running 55 percent

below grade. Under the circumstances, they refused

to accept it.

"I immediately started for his plant and on the way

turned over in my mind the best way to handle the situation.

Ordinarily, under such circumstances, I should

have quoted grading rules and tried, as a result of my

own experience and knowledge as a lumber inspector,

to convince the other inspector that the lumber was actually

up to grade, and that he was misinterpreting the

rules in his inspection. However, I thought I would

apply the principles learned in this training.

“When I arrived at the plant, I found the purchasing

agent and the lumber inspector in a wicked humor, both

set for an argument and a fight. We walked out to the car

that was being unloaded, and I requested that they continue

to unload so that I could see how things were

going. I asked the inspector to go right ahead and lay out

the rejects, as he had been doing, and to put the good

pieces in another pile.

“After watching him for a while it began to dawn on

me that his inspection actually was much too strict and

that he was misinterpreting the rules. This particular

lumber was white pine, and I knew the inspector was

thoroughly schooled in hard woods but not a competent,

experienced inspector on white pine. White pine happened

to be my own strong suit, but did I offer any

objection to the way he was grading the lumber? None

whatever. I kept on watching and gradually began to ask

questions as to why certain pieces were not satisfactory.

I didn’t for one instant insinuate that the inspector was

wrong. I emphasized that my only reason for asking was

in order that we could give his firm exactly what they

wanted in future shipments. wanted in future shipments.

“By asking questions in a very friendly, cooperative

spirit, and insisting continually that they were right in

laying out boards not satisfactory to their purpose, I got

him warmed up, and the strained relations between us

began to thaw and melt away. An occasional carefully

put remark on my part gave birth to the idea in his mind

that possibly some of these rejected pieces were actually

within the grade that they had bought, and that their

requirements demanded a more expensive grade. I was

very careful, however, not to let him think I was making

an issue of this point.

“Gradually his whole attitude changed. He finally admitted

to me that he was not experienced on white pine

and began to ask me questions about each piece as it

came out of the car, I would explain why such a piece

came within the grade specified, but kept on insisting

that we did not want him to take it if it was unsuitable

for their purpose. He finally got to the point where he

felt guilty every time he put a piece in the rejected pile.

And at last he saw that the mistake was on their part for

not having specified as good a grade as they needed.

“The ultimate outcome was that he went through the

entire carload again after I left, accepted the whole lot,

and we received a check in full.

“In that one instance alone, a little tact, and the determination

to refrain from telling the other man he was

wrong, saved my company a substantial amount of cash,

and it would be hard to place a money value on the good

will that was saved.”

Martin Luther King was asked how, as a pacifist, he

could be an admirer of Air Force General Daniel "Chappie”

James, then the nation’s highest-ranking black officer.

Dr. King replied, "I judge people by their own

principles - not by my own.”

In a similar way, General Robert E. Lee once spoke to

the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, in the

most glowing terms about a certain officer under his

command. Another officer in attendance was astonished.

“General,” he said, " do you not know that the man of

whom you speak so highly is one of your bitterest enemies

who misses no opportunity to malign you?” "Yes,"

replied General Lee, “but the president asked my opinion

of him; he did not ask for his opinion of me.”

By the way, I am not revealing anything new in this

chapter. Two thousand years ago, Jesus said: “Agree

with thine adversary quickly.”

And 2,200 years before Christ was born, King Akhtoi

of Egypt gave his son some shrewd advice - advice that

is sorely needed today. “Be diplomatic,” counseled the

King. “It will help you gain your point.”

In other words, don’t argue with your customer or your

spouse or your adversary. Don’t tell them they are

wrong, don’t get them stirred up. Use a little diplomacy.

PRINCIPLE 2

Show respect for the other person’s opinions.

Never say, "You're wrong.”

3

IF YOU’RE WRONG, ADMIT IT

Within a minute’s walk of my house there was a wild

stretch of virgin timber, where the blackberry thickets

foamed white in the springtime, where the squirrels

nested and reared their young, and the horseweeds grew

as tall as a horse’s head. This unspoiled woodland was

called Forest Park - and it was a forest, probably not

much different in appearance from what it was when

Columbus discovered America. I frequently walked in

this park with Rex, my little Boston bulldog. He was a

friendly, harmless little hound; and since we rarely met

anyone in the park, I took Rex along without a leash or a

muzzle.

One day we encountered a mounted policeman in the

park, a policeman itching to show his authority.

“‘What do you mean by letting that dog run loose in

the park without a muzzle and leash?” he reprimanded

me. “Don’t you know it’s against the law?”

“Yes, I know it is,” I replied softy, “but I didn’t think

he would do any harm out here.”

"You didn’t think! You didn’t think! The law doesn’t

give a tinker’s damn about what you think. That dog

might kill a squirrel or bite a child. Now, I’m going to let

you off this time; but if I catch this dog out here again

without a muzzle and a leash, you’ll have to tell it to the

judge ."

I meekly promised to obey.

And I did obey - for a few times. But Rex didn’t like

the muzzle, and neither did I; so we decided to take a

chance. Everything was lovely for a while, and then we

struck a snag. Rex and I raced over the brow of a hill one

afternoon and there, suddenly - to my dismay - I saw

the majesty of the law, astride a bay horse. Rex was out

in front, heading straight for the officer.

I was in for it. I knew it. So I didn’t wait until the

policeman started talking. I beat him to it. I said: “Officer,

you’ve caught me red-handed. I’m guilty. I have no

alibis, no excuses. You warned me last week that if I

brought the dog out here again without a muzzle you

would fine me.”

"Well, now,” the policeman responded in a soft tone.

“I know it’s a temptation to let a little dog like that have

a run out here when nobody is around.”

“Sure it’s a temptation,” I replied, “but it is against

the law.”

“Well, a little dog like that isn’t going to harm anybody,”

the policeman remonstrated.

"No, but he may kill squirrels,” I said.

“Well now, I think you are taking this a bit too seriously,”

he told me. “I’ll tell you what you do. You just

let him run over the hill there where I can’t see him - and

we’ll forget all about it.”

That policeman, being human, wanted a feeling of importance;

so when I began to condemn myself, the only

way he could nourish his self-esteem was to take the

magnanimous attitude of showing mercy.

But suppose I had tried to defend myself - well, did

you ever argue with a policeman?

But instead of breaking lances with him, I admitted

that he was absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong;

I admitted it quickly, openly, and with enthusiasm. The

affair terminated graciously in my taking his side and his

taking my side. Lord Chesterfield himself could hardly

have been more gracious than this mounted policeman,

who, only a week previously, had threatened to have the

law on me.

If we know we are going to be rebuked anyhow, isn’t

it far better to beat the other person to it and do it ourselves?

Isn’t it much easier to listen to self-criticism than

to bear condemnation from alien lips?

Say about yourself all the derogatory things you know

the other person is thinking or wants to say or intends to

say - and say them before that person has a chance to

say them. The chances are a hundred to one that a generous,

forgiving attitude will be taken and your mistakes

will be minimized just as the mounted policeman did

with me and Rex.

Ferdinand E. Warren, a commercial artist, used this

technique to win the good will of a petulant, scolding

buyer of art.

“It is important, in making drawings for advertising

and publishing purposes, to be precise and very exact,”

Mr. Warren said as he told the story.

“Some art editors demand that their commissions be

executed immediately; and in these cases, some slight

error is liable to occur. I knew one art director in particular

who was always delighted to find fault with some

little thing. I have often left his office in disgust, not

because of the criticism, but because of his method of

attack. Recently I delivered a rush job to this editor, and

he phoned me to call at his office immediately. He said

something was wrong. When I arrived, I found just what

I had anticipated - and dreaded. He was hostile, gloating

over his chance to criticize. He demanded with heat

why I had done so and so. My opportunity had come to

apply the self-criticism I had been studying about. So I

said: ''Mr. So-and-so, if what you say is true, I am at fault

and there is absolutely no excuse for my blunder. I have

been doing drawings for you long enough to know bet-ter.

I’m ashamed of myself.’

“Immediately he started to defend me. ‘Yes, you’re

right, but after all, this isn’t a serious mistake. It is

only -'

"I interrupted him. ‘Any mistake,’ I said, ‘may be

costly and they are all irritating.’

“He started to break in, but I wouldn’t let him. I was

having a grand time. For the first time in my life, I was

criticizing myself - and I loved it.

" ‘I should have been more careful,’ I continued. ‘You

give me a lot of work, and you deserve the best; so I’m

going to do this drawing all over.’

" ‘No! No!’ he protested. ‘I wouldn’t think of putting

you to all that trouble.’ He praised my work, assured me

that he wanted only a minor change and that my slight

error hadn’t cost his firm any money; and, after all, it was

a mere detail - not worth worrying about.

“My eagerness to criticize myself took all the fight out

of him. He ended up by taking me to lunch; and before

we parted, he gave me a check and another commission”

There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the

courage to admit one’s errors. It not only clears the air of

guilt and defensiveness, but often helps solve the problem

created by the error.

Bruce Harvey of Albuquerque, New Mexico, had incorrectly

authorized payment of full wages to an employee

on sick leave. When he discovered his error, he

brought it to the attention of the employee and explained

that to correct the mistake he would have to

reduce his next paycheck by the entire amount of the

overpayment. The employee pleaded that as that would

cause him a serious financial problem, could the money

be repaid over a period of time? In order to do this,

Harvey explained, he would have to obtain his supervisor's

approval. “And this I knew,” reported Harvey,

“would result in a boss-type explosion, While trying to

decide how to handle this situation better, I realized that

the whole mess was my fault and I would have to admit I

it to my boss.

“I walked into his office, told him that I had made a

mistake and then informed him of the complete facts.

He replied in an explosive manner that it was the fault

of the personnel department. I repeated that it was my

fault. He exploded again about carelessness in the accounting

department. Again I explained it was my fault.

He blamed two other people in the office. But each time

I reiterated it was my fault. Finally, he looked at me and

said, ‘Okay, it was your fault. Now straighten it out.’ The

error was corrected and nobody got into trouble. I felt

great because I was able to handle a tense situation and

had the courage not to seek alibis. My boss has had more

respect for me ever since.”

Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes - and

most fools do - but it raises one above the herd and gives

one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one’s

mistakes. For example, one of the most beautiful things

that history records about Robert E. Lee is the way he

blamed himself and only himself for the failure of Pickett’s

charge at Gettysburg.

Pickett’s charge was undoubtedly the most brilliant

and picturesque attack that ever occurred in the Western

world. General George E. Pickett himself was picturesque.

He wore his hair so long that his auburn locks

almost touched his shoulders; and, like Napoleon in his

Italian campaigns, he wrote ardent love-letters almost

daily while on the battlefield. His devoted troops

cheered him that tragic July afternoon as he rode off

jauntily toward the Union lines, his cap set at a rakish

angle over his right ear. They cheered and they followed

him, man touching man, rank pressing rank, with banners

flying and bayonets gleaming in the sun. It was a

gallant sight. Daring. Magnificent. A murmur of admiration

ran through the Union lines as they beheld it.

Pickett’s troops swept forward at any easy trot, through

orchard and cornfield, across a meadow and over a ravine.

All the time, the enemy’s cannon was tearing

ghastly holes in their ranks, But on they pressed, grim,

irresistible.

Suddenly the Union infantry rose from behind the

stone wall on Cemetery Ridge where they had been hiding

and fired volley after volley into Pickett's onrushing

troops. The crest of the hill was a sheet of flame, a

slaughterhouse, a blazing volcano. In a few minutes, all

of Pickett’s brigade commanders except one were down,

and four-fifths of his five thousand men had fallen.

General Lewis A. Armistead, leading the troops in the

final plunge, ran forward, vaulted over the stone wall,

and, waving his cap on the top of his sword, shouted:

“Give ‘em the steel, boys!”

They did. They leaped over the wall, bayoneted their

enemies, smashed skulls with clubbed muskets, and

planted the battleflags of the South on Cemetery Ridge.

The banners waved there only for a moment. But that

moment, brief as it was, recorded the high-water mark of

the Confederacy.

Pickett’s charge - brilliant, heroic - was nevertheless

the beginning of the end. Lee had failed. He could not

penetrate the North. And he knew it.

The South was doomed.

Lee was so saddened, so shocked, that he sent in his

resignation and asked Jefferson Davis, the president of

the Confederacy, to appoint "a younger and abler man.”

If Lee had wanted to blame the disastrous failure of

Pickett’s charge on someone else, he could have found a

score of alibis. Some of his division commanders had

failed him. The cavalry hadn’t arrived in time to support

the infantry attack. This had gone wrong and that had

gone awry.

But Lee was far too noble to blame others. As Pickett’s

beaten and bloody troops struggled back to the Confederate

lines, Robert E. Lee rode out to meet them all

alone and greeted them with a self-condemnation that

was little short of sublime. “All this has been my fault,”

he confessed. "I and I alone have lost this battle.”

Few generals in all history have had the courage and

character to admit that.

Michael Cheung, who teaches our course in Hong

Kong, told of how the Chinese culture presents some

special problems and how sometimes it is necessary to

recognize that the benefit of applying a principle may be

more advantageous than maintaining an old tradition.

He had one middle-aged class member who had been

estranged from his son for many years. The father had

been an opium addict, but was now cured. In Chinese

tradition an older person cannot take the first step. The

father felt that it was up to his son to take the initiative

toward a reconciliation. In an early session, he told the

class about the grandchildren he had never seen and

how much he desired to be reunited with his son. His

classmates, all Chinese, understood his conflict between

his desire and long-established tradition. The father felt

that young people should have respect for their elders

and that he was right in not giving in to his desire, but to

wait for his son to come to him.

Toward the end of the course the father again addressed

his class. “I have pondered this problem,” he

said. “Dale Carnegie says, ‘If you are wrong, admit it

quickly and emphatically.’ It is too late for me to admit

it quickly, but I can admit it emphatically. I wronged my

son. He was right in not wanting to see me and to expel

me from his life. I may lose face by asking a younger

person’s forgiveness, but I was at fault and it is my responsibility

to admit this.” The class applauded and

gave him their full support. At the next class he told how

he went to his son’s house, asked for and received forgiveness

and was now embarked on a new relationship

with his son, his daughter-in-law and the grandchildren

he had at last met.

Elbert Hubbard was one of the most original authors

who ever stirred up a nation, and his stinging sentences

often aroused fierce resentment. But Hubbard with his

rare skill for handling people frequently turned his enemies

into friends.

For example, when some irritated reader wrote in to

say that he didn’t agree with such and such an article

and ended by calling Hubbard this and that, Elbert Hubbard

would answer like this:

Come to think it over, I don’t entirely agree with it myself.

Not everything I wrote yesterday appeals to me today. I am

glad to learn what you think on the subject. The next time

you are in the neighborhood you must visit us and we’ll get

this subject threshed out for all time. So here is a handclasp

over the miles, and I am,

Your sincerely,

What could you say to a man who treated you like

that?

When we are right, let’s try to win people gently and

tactfully to our way of thinking, and when we are wrong

- and that will be surprisingly often, if we are honest

with ourselves - let’s admit our mistakes quickly and

with enthusiasm. Not only will that technique produce

astonishing results; but, believe it or not, it is a lot more

fun, under the circumstances, than trying to defend oneself.

Remember the old proverb: "By fighting you never

get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.”

PRINCIPLE 3

If you are wrong, admit it quickly and

emphatically.

4

A DROP OF HONEY

If your temper is aroused and you tell ‘em a thing or two,

you will have a fine time unloading your feelings. But

what about the other person? Will he share your pleasure?

Will your belligerent tones, your hostile attitude,

make it easy for him to agree with you?

“If you come at me with your fists doubled,” said

Woodrow Wilson, “I think I can promise you that mine

will double as fast as yours; but if you come to me and

say, ‘Let us sit down and take counsel together, and, if

we differ from each other, understand why it is that we

differ, just what the points at issue are,’ we will presently

find that we are not so far apart after all, that the

points on which we differ are few and the points on

which we agree are many, and that if we only have the

patience and the candor and the desire to get together,

we will get together.”

Nobody appreciated the truth of Woodrow Wilson’s

statement more than John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Back in

1915, Rockefeller was the most fiercely despised man in

Colorado, One of the bloodiest strikes in the history of

American industry had been shocking the state for two

terrible years. Irate, belligerent miners were demanding

higher wages from the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company;

Rockefeller controlled that company. Property had

been destroyed, troops had been called out. Blood had

been shed. Strikers had been shot, their bodies riddled

with bullets.

At a time like that, with the air seething with hatred,

Rockefeller wanted to win the strikers to his way of

thinking. And he did it. How? Here’s the story. After

weeks spent in making friends, Rockefeller addressed

the representatives of the strikers. This speech, in its

entirety, is a masterpiece. It produced astonishing results.

It calmed the tempestuous waves of hate that

threatened to engulf Rockefeller. It won him a host of

admirers. It presented facts in such a friendly manner

that the strikers went back to work without saying another

word about the increase in wages for which they

had fought so violently.

The opening of that remarkable speech follows. Note

how it fairly glows with friendliness. Rockefeller, remember,

was talking to men who, a few days previously,

had wanted to hang him by the neck to a sour apple tree;

yet he couldn’t have been more gracious, more friendly

if he had addressed a group of medical missionaries. His

speech was radiant with such phrases as I am proud to

be here, having visited in your homes, met many of your

wives and children, we meet here not as strangers, but

as friends . . . spirit of mutual friendship, our common

interests, it is only by your courtesy that I am here.

“This is a red-letter day in my life,” Rockefeller

began. “It is the first time I have ever had the good

fortune to meet the representatives of the employees of

this great company, its officers and superintendents, together,

and I can assure you that I am proud to be here,

and that I shall remember this gathering as long as I live.

Had this meeting been held two weeks ago, I should

have stood here a stranger to most of you, recognizing a

few faces. Having had the opportunity last week of

visiting all the camps in the southern coal field and

of talking individually with practically all of the

representatives, except those who were away; having

visited in your homes, met many of your wives and children,

we meet here not as strangers, but as friends, and

it is in that spirit of mutual friendship that I am glad to

have this opportunity to discuss with you our common

interests.

“Since this is a meeting of the officers of the company

and the representatives of the employees, it is only by

your courtesy that I am here, for I am not so fortunate as

to be either one or the other; and yet I feel that I am

intimately associated with you men, for, in a sense, I

represent both the stockholders and the directors.”

Isn’t that a superb example of the fine art of making

friends out of enemies?

Suppose Rockefeller had taken a different tack. Suppose

he had argued with those miners and hurled devastating

facts in their faces. Suppose he had told them by

his tones and insinuations that they were wrong Suppose

that, by all the rules of logic, he had proved that

they were wrong. What would have happened? More

anger would have been stirred up, more hatred, more

revolt.

If a man's heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling

toward you, you can’t win him to your way of thinking

with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents

and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging

wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change

their minds. They can’t he forced or driven to agree

with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we

are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so

friendly.

Lincoln said that, in effect, over a hundred years ago.

Here are his words:

It is an old and true maxim that "a drop of honey catches

more flies than a gallon of gall." So with men, if you would

win a man to you cause, first convince him that you are his

sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his

heart; which, say what you will, is the great high road to

his reason.

Business executives have learned that it pays to be

friendly to strikers. For example, when 2,500 employees

in the White Motor Company’s plant struck for higher

wages and a union shop, Robert F. Black, then president

of the company, didn’t lose his temper and condemn and

threaten and talk of tryanny and Communists. He actually

praised the strikers. He published an advertisement

in the Cleveland papers, complimenting them on

“the peaceful way in which they laid down their tools.”

Finding the strike pickets idle, he bought them a couple

of dozen baseball bats and gloves and invited them to

play ball on vacant lots. For those who preferred bowling,

he rented a bowling alley.

This friendliness on Mr. Black’s part did what friendliness

always does: it begot friendliness. So the strikers

borrowed brooms, shovels, and rubbish carts, and began

picking up matches, papers, cigarette stubs, and cigar

butts around the factory. Imagine it! Imagine strikers

tidying up the factory grounds while battling for higher

wages and recognition of the union. Such an event had

never been heard of before in the long, tempestuous

history of American labor wars. That strike ended with a

compromise settlement within a week-ended without

any ill feeling or rancor.

Daniel Webster, who looked like a god and talked like

Jehovah, was one of the most successful advocates who

ever pleaded a case; yet he ushered in his most powerful

arguments with such friendly remarks as: “It will be for

the jury to consider,” “This may perhaps be worth

thinking of,” " Here are some facts that I trust you will

not lose sight of,” or “You, with your knowledge of

human nature, will easily see the significance of these

facts.” No bulldozing. No high-pressure methods. No attempt

to force his opinions on others. Webster used the

soft-spoken, quiet, friendly approach, and it helped to

make him famous.

You may never be called upon to settle a strike or

address a jury, but you may want to get your rent reduced.

Will the friendly approach help you then? Let’s

see.

0. L. Straub, an engineer, wanted to get his rent reduced.

And he knew his landlord was hard-boiled. "I

wrote him,” Mr. Straub said in a speech before the class,

“notifying him that I was vacating my apartment as soon

as my lease expired. The truth was, I didn’t want to

move. I wanted to stay if I could get my rent reduced.

But the situation seemed hopeless. Other tenants had

tried - and failed. Everyone told me that the landlord

was extremely difficult to deal with. But I said to myself,

‘I am studying a course in how to deal with people, so

I’ll try it on him - and see how it works.’

“He and his secretary came to see me as soon as he

got my letter. I met him at the door with a friendly greeting.

I fairly bubbled with good will and enthusiasm. I

didn’t begin talking about how high the rent was. I

began talking about how much I liked his apartment

house. Believe me, I was ‘hearty in my approbation and

lavish in my praise.' I complimented him on the way he

ran the building and told him I should like so much to

stay for another year but I couldn’t afford it.

“He had evidently never had such a reception from a

tenant. He hardly knew what to make of it.

“Then he started to tell me his troubles. Complaining

tenants. One had written him fourteen letters, some of

them positively insulting. Another threatened to break

his lease unless the landlord kept the man on the floor

above from snoring. ‘What a relief it is,’ he said, ‘to have

a satisfied tenant like you.’ And then, without my even

asking him to do it, he offered to reduce my rent a little.

I wanted more, so I named the figure I could afford to

pay, and he accepted without a word.

“As he was leaving, he turned to me and asked, ‘What

decorating can I do for you?’

“If I had tried to get the rent reduced by the methods

the other tenants were using, I am positive I should have

met with the same failure they encountered. It was the

friendly, sympathetic, appreciative approach that won.”

Dean Woodcock of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is the

superintendent of a department of the local electric company.

His staff was called upon to repair some equipment

on top of a pole. This type of work had formerly

been performed by a different department and had only

recently been transferred to Woodcock’s section Although

his people had been trained in the work, this was

the first time they had ever actually been called upon to

do it. Everybody in the organization was interested in

seeing if and how they could handle it. Mr. Woodcock,

several of his subordinate managers, and members of

other departments of the utility went to see the operation.

Many cars and trucks were there, and a number of

people were standing around watching the two lone

men on top of the pole.

Glancing around, Woodcock noticed a man up the

street getting out of his car with a camera. He began

taking pictures of the scene. Utility people are extremely

conscious of public relations, and suddenly Woodcock

realized what this setup looked like to the man with the

camera - overkill, dozens of people being called out to

do a two-person job. He strolled up the street to the

photographer.

"I see you’re interested in our operation.”

“Yes, and my mother will be more than interested.

She owns stock in your company. This will be an eye-opener

for her. She may even decide her investment was

unwise. I’ve been telling her for years there’s a lot of

waste motion in companies like yours. This proves it.

The newspapers might like these pictures, too.”

“It does look like it, doesn’t it? I’d think the same

thing in your position. But this is a unique situation, . . .”

and Dean Woodcock went on to explain how

this was the first job of this type for his department and

how everybody from executives down was interested.

He assured the man that under normal conditions two

people could handle the job. The photographer put away

his camera, shook Woodcock’s hand, and thanked him

for taking the time to explain the situation to him.

Dean Woodcock’s friendly approach saved his company

much embarrassment and bad publicity.

Another member of one of our classes, Gerald H. Winn

of Littleton, New Hampshire, reported how by using a

friendly approach, he obtained a very satisfactory settlement

on a damage claim.

“Early in the spring,” he reported, “before the ground

had thawed from the winter freezing, there was an unusually

heavy rainstorm and the water, which normally

would have run off to nearby ditches and storm drains

along the road, took a new course onto a building lot

where I had just built a new home.

“Not being able to run off, the water pressure built up

around the foundation of the house. The water forced

itself under the concrete basement floor, causing it to

explode, and the basement filled with water. This ruined

the furnace and the hot-water heater. The cost to repair

this damage was in excess of two thousand dollars. I had

no insurance to cover this type of damage.

“However, I soon found out that the owner of the subdivision

had neglected to put in a storm drain near the

house which could have prevented this problem I made

an appointment to see him. During the twenty-five-mile

trip to his office, I carefully reviewed the situation and,

remembering the principles I learned in this course, I

decided that showing my anger would not serve any

worthwhile purpose, When I arrived, I kept very calm

and started by talking about his recent vacation to the

West Indies; then, when I felt the timing was right, I

mentioned the ‘little’ problem of water damage. He

quickly agreed to do his share in helping to correct the

problem.

“A few days later he called and said he would pay for

the damage and also put in a storm drain to prevent the

same thing from happening in the future.

“Even though it was the fault of the owner of the subdivision,

if I had not begun in a friendly way, there

would have been a great deal of difficulty in getting him

to agree to the total liability.”

Years ago, when I was a barefoot boy walking through

the woods to a country school out in northwest Missouri,

I read a fable about the sun and the wind. They quarreled

about which was the stronger, and the wind said,

"I'll prove I am. See the old man down there with a

coat? I bet I can get his coat off him quicker than you

can.”

So the sun went behind a cloud, and the wind blew

until it was almost a tornado, but the harder it blew, the

tighter the old man clutched his coat to him.

Finally, the wind calmed down and gave up, and then

the sun came out from behind the clouds and smiled

kindly on the old man. Presently, he mopped his brow

and pulled off his coat. The sun then told the wind that

gentleness and friendliness were always stronger than

fury and force.

The use of gentleness and friendliness is demonstrated

day after day by people who have learned that a

drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.

F. Gale Connor of Lutherville, Maryland, proved this

when he had to take his four-month-old car to the service

department of the car dealer for the third time. He told

our class: “It was apparent that talking to, reasoning with

or shouting at the service manager was not going to lead

to a satisfactory resolution of my problems.

“I walked over to the showroom and asked to see the

agency owner, Mr. White. After a short wait, I was ushered

into Mr. White’s office. I introduced myself and

explained to him that I had bought my car from his

dealership because of the recommendations of friends

who had had previous dealings with him. I was told that

his prices were very competitive and his service was

outstanding. He smiled with satisfaction as he listened

to me. I then explained the problem I was having with

the service department. ‘I thought you might want to be

aware of any situation that might tarnish your fine reputation,’

I added. He thanked me for calling this to his

attention and assured me that my problem would be

taken care of. Not only did he personal get involved,

but he also lent me his car to use while mine was being

repaired.”

Aesop was a Greek slave who lived at the court of

Croesus and spun immortal fables six hundred years before

Christ. Yet the truths he taught about human nature

are just as true in Boston and Birmingham now as they

were twenty-six centuries ago in Athens. The sun can

make you take off your coat more quickly than the wind;

and kindliness, the friendly approach and appreciation

can make people change their minds more readily than

all the bluster and storming in the world.

Remember what Lincoln said: “A drop of honey

catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”

PRINCIPLE 4

Begin in a friendly way.

5

THE SECRET OF SOCRATES

In talking with people, don’t begin by discussing the

things on which you differ. Begin by emphasizing - and

keep on emphasizing - the things on which you agree.

Keep emphasizing, if possible, that you are both striving

for the same end and that your only difference is one of

method and not of purpose.

Get the other person saying “Yes, yes” at the outset.

Keep your opponent, if possible, from saying “No.”

A “No” response, according to Professor Overstreet,*

is a most difficult handicap to overcome. When you have

said “No,” all your pride of personality demands that

you remain consistent with yourself. You may later feel

that the “No” was ill-advised; nevertheless, there is your

precious pride to consider! Once having said a thing,

you feel you must stick to it. Hence it is of the very

greatest importance that a person be started in the affirmative

direction.

* Harry A. Overstreet, lnfluencing Humun Behavior (New York: Norton,

1925).

The skillful speaker gets, at the outset, a number of

“Yes” responses. This sets the psychological process of

the listeners moving in the affirmative direction. It is

like the movement of a billiard ball. Propel in one direction,

and it takes some force to deflect it; far more force

to send it back in the opposite direction.

The psychological patterns here are quite clear. When

a person says “No” and really means it, he or she is

doing far more than saying a word of two letters. The

entire organism - glandular, nervous, muscular -

gathers itself together into a condition of rejection. There is,

usually in minute but sometimes in observable degree,

a physical withdrawal or readiness for withdrawal. The

whole neuromuscular system, in short, sets itself on

guard against acceptance. When, to the contrary, a person

says “Yes,” none of the withdrawal activities takes

place. The organism is in a forward - moving, accepting,

open attitude. Hence the more “Yeses” we can, at the

very outset, induce, the more likely we are to succeed in

capturing the attention for our ultimate proposal.

It is a very simple technique - this yes response. And

yet, how much it is neglected! It often seems as if people

get a sense of their own importance by antagonizing others

at the outset.

Get a student to say “No” at the beginning, or a customer,

child, husband, or wife, and it takes the wisdom

and the patience of angels to transform that bristling

negative into an affirmative.

The use of this “yes, yes” technique enabled James

Eberson, who was a teller in the Greenwich Savings

Bank, in New York City, to secure a prospective customer

who might otherwise have been lost.

“This man came in to open an account,” said Mr.

Eberson, “and I gave him our usual form to fill out. Some

of the questions he answered willingly, but there were

others he flatly refused to answer.

“Before I began the study of human relations, I would

have told this prospective depositor that if he refused to

give the bank this information, we should have to refuse

to accept this account. I am ashamed that I have been

guilty of doing that very thing in the past. Naturally, an

ultimatum like that made me feel good. I had shown

who was boss, that the bank’s rules and regulations

couldn’t be flouted. But that sort of attitude certainly

didn’t give a feeling of welcome and importance to the

man who had walked in to give us his patronage.

“I resolved this morning to use a little horse sense. I

resolved not to talk about what the bank wanted but

about what the customer wanted. And above all else, I

was determined to get him saying ‘yes, yes’ from the

very start. So I agreed with him. I told him the information

he refused to give was not absolutely necessary.

" ‘However,’ I said, ‘suppose you have money in this

bank at your death. Wouldn’t you like to have the bank

transfer it to your next of kin, who is entitled to it according

to law?’

" ‘Yes, of course,’ he replied.

" ‘Don’t you think,’ I continued, ‘that it would be a

good idea to give us the name of your next of kin so that,

in the event of your death, we could carry out your

wishes without error or delay?’

“Again he said, ‘Yes.’

“The young man’s attitude softened and changed

when he realized that we weren’t asking for this information

for our sake but for his sake. Before leaving the

bank, this young man not only gave me complete information

about himself but he opened, at my suggestion,

a trust account, naming his mother as the beneficiary for

his account, and he had gladly answered all the questions

concerning his mother also.

"I found that by getting him to say ‘yes, yes’ from the

outset, he forgot the issue at stake and was happy to do

all the things I suggested.”

Joseph Allison, a sales representative for Westinghouse

Electric Company, had this story to tell: “There

was a man in my territory that our company was most

eager to sell to. My predecessor had called on him for

ten years without selling anything When I took over the

territory, I called steadily for three years without getting

an order. Finally, after thirteen years of calls and sales

talk, we sold him a few motors. If these proved to be all

right, an order for several hundred more would follow.

Such was my expectation,

“Right? I knew they would be all right. So when I

called three weeks later, I was in high spirits.

“The chief engineer greeted me with this shocking

announcement: ‘Allison, I can’t buy the remainder of the

motors from you.’

" ‘Why?’ I asked in amazement. ‘Why?’

" ‘Because your motors are too hot. I can’t put my hand

on them,’

"I knew it wouldn’t do any good to argue. I had tried

that sort of thing too long. So I thought of getting the

'yes, yes' response.

" ‘Well, now look, Mr. Smith,’ I said. ‘I agree with you

a hundred percent; if those motors are running too hot,

you ought not to buy any more of them. You must have

motors that won’t run any hotter than standards set by

the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. Isn’t

that so?’

“He agreed it was. I had gotten my first ‘yes.’

" ‘The Electrical Manufacturers Association regulations

say that a properly designed motor may have a

temperature of 72 degrees Fahrenheit above room temperature.

Is that correct?’

" ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That’s quite correct. But your motors

are much hotter.’

"I didn’t argue with him. I merely asked: ‘How hot is

the mill room?’

" ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘about 75 degrees Fahrenheit.’

" ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘if the mill room is 75 degrees and

you add 72 to that, that makes a total of 147 degrees

Fahrenheit. Wouldn’t you scald your hand if you held it

under a spigot of hot water at a temperature of 147 degrees

Fahrenheit?’

“Again he had to say ‘yes.’

" ‘Well,’ I suggested, ‘wouldn’t it he a good idea to

keep your hands off those motors?’

" ‘Well, I guess you’re right,’ he admitted. We continued

to chat for a while. Then he called his secretary and

lined up approximately $35,000 worth of business for

the ensuing month.

“It took me years and cost me countless thousands of

dollars in lost business before I finally learned that it

doesn’t pay to argue, that it is much more profitable and

much more interesting to look at things from the other

person’s viewpoint and try to get that person saying ‘yes, yes.' "

Eddie Snow, who sponsors our courses in Oakland,

California, tells how he became a good customer of a

shop because the proprietor got him to say “yes, yes.”

Eddie had become interested in bow hunting and had

spent considerable money in purchasing equipment and

supplies from a local bow store. When his brother was

visiting him he wanted to rent a bow for him from this

store. The sales clerk told him they didn’t rent bows, so

Eddie phoned another bow store. Eddie described what

happened:

“A very pleasant gentleman answered the phone. His

response to my question for a rental was completely different

from the other place. He said he was sorry but

they no longer rented bows because they couldn’t afford

to do so. He then asked me if I had rented before. I

replied, ‘Yes, several years ago.’ He reminded me that I

probably paid $25 to $30 for the rental. I said ‘yes’ again.

He then asked if I was the kind of person who liked to

save money. Naturally, I answered ‘yes.’ He went on to

explain that they had bow sets with all the necessary

equipment on sale for $34.95. I could buy a complete set

for only $4.95 more than I could rent one. He explained

that is why they had discontinued renting them. Did I

think that was reasonable? My ‘yes’ response led to a

purchase of the set, and when I picked it up I purchased

several more items at this shop and have since become

a regular customer.”

Socrates, “the gadfly of Athens,” was one of the greatest

philosophers the world has ever known. He did

something that only a handful of men in all history have

been able to do: he sharply changed the whole course of

human thought; and now, twenty-four centuries after his

death, he is honored as one of the wisest persuaders who

ever influenced this wrangling world.

His method? Did he tell people they were wrong? Oh,

no, not Socrates. He was far too adroit for that. His whole

technique, now called the “Socratic method,” was based

upon getting a “yes, yes” response. He asked questions

with which his opponent would have to agree. He kept

on winning one admission after another until he had an

armful of yeses. He kept on asking questions until finally,

almost without realizing it, his opponents found

themselves embracing a conclusion they would have bitterly

denied a few minutes previously.

The next time we are tempted to tell someone he or

she is wrong, let’s remember old Socrates and ask a

gentle question - a question that will get the “yes, yes”

response.

The Chinese have a proverb pregnant with the age-old

wisdom of the Orient: “He who treads softly goes

far.”

They have spent five thousand years studying human

nature, those cultured Chinese, and they have garnered

a lot of perspicacity: “He who treads softly goes far.”

PRINCIPLE 5

Get the other person saying “yes, yes”

immediately.

6

THE SAFETY VALVE IN HANDLING

COMPLAINTS

Must people trying to win others to their way of thinking

do too much talking themselves. Let the other people

talk themselves out. They know more about their business

and problems than you do. So ask them questions.

Let them tell you a few things.

If you disagree with them you may be tempted to interrupt.

But don’t. It is dangerous. They won’t pay attention

to you while they still have a lot of ideas of their

own crying for expression. So listen patiently and with

an open mind. Be sincere about it. Encourage them to

express their ideas fully.

Does this policy pay in business? Let’s see. Here is

the story of a sales representative who was forced to try

it.

One of the largest automobile manufacturers in the

United States was negotiating for a year’s requirements

of upholstery fabrics. Three important manufacturers

had worked up fabrics in sample bodies. These had all

been inspected by the executives of the motor company,

and notice had been sent to each manufacturer saying

that, on a certain day, a representative from each supplier

would be given an opportunity to make a final plea

for the contract.

G.B.R., a representative of one manufacturer, arrived

in town with a severe attack of laryngitis. “When it came

my turn to meet the executives in conference,” Mr.

R---- said as he related the story before one of my

classes, “I had lost my voice. I could hardly whisper. I

was ushered into a room and found myself face to face

with the textile engineer, the purchasing agent, the director

of sales and the president of the company. I stood

up and made a valiant effort to speak, but I couldn’t do

anything more than squeak.

“They were all seated around a table, so I wrote on a

pad of paper: ‘Gentlemen, I have lost my voice. I am

speechless.’

" ‘I’ll do the talking for you,’ the president said. He

did. He exhibited my samples and praised their good

points. A lively discussion arose about the merits of my

goods. And the president, since he was talking for me,

took the position I would have had during the discussion

My sole participation consisted of smiles, nods and

a few gestures.

“As a result of this unique conference, I was awarded

the contract, which called for over half a million yards of

upholstery fabrics at an aggregate value of $1,600,000 -

the biggest order I had ever received.

"I know I would have lost the contract if I hadn’t lost

my voice, because I had the wrong idea about the whole

proposition. I discovered, quite by accident, how richly

it sometimes pays to let the other person do the talking.'

Letting the other person do the talking helps in family

situations as well as in business. Barbara Wilson's relationship

with her daughter, Laurie, was deteriorating

rapidly. Laurie, who had been a quiet, complacent child,

had grown into an uncooperative, sometimes belligerent

teenager. Mrs. Wilson lectured her, threatened her and

punished her, but all to no avail.

“One day,” Mrs. Wilson told one of our classes, "I just

gave up. Laurie had disobeyed me and had left the

house to visit her girl friend before she had completed

her chores. When she returned I was about to scream at

her for the ten-thousandth time, but I just didn’t have

the strength to do it. I just looked at her and said sadly,

‘Why, Laurie, Why?’

“Laurie noted my condition and in a calm voice asked,

‘Do you really want to know?’ I nodded and Laurie told

me, first hesitantly, and then it all flowed out. I had

never listened to her. I was always telling her to do this

or that. When she wanted to tell me her thoughts, feelings,

ideas, I interrupted with more orders. I began to

realize that she needed me - not as a bossy mother, but

as a confidante, an outlet for all her confusion about

growing up. And all I had been doing was talking when

I should have been listening. I never heard her.

“From that time on I let her do all the talking she

wanted. She tells me what is on her mind, and our relationship

has improved immeasurably. She is again a cooperative

person.”

A large advertisement appeared on the financial page

of a New York newspaper calling for a person with unusual

ability and experience. Charles T. Cubellis answered

the advertisement, sending his reply to a box

number. A few days later, he was invited by letter to call

for an interview. Before he called, he spent hours in

Wall Street finding out everything possible about the

person who had founded the business. During the interview,

he remarked: "I should be mighty proud to be

associated with an organization with a record like yours.

I understand you started twenty-eight years ago with

nothing but desk room and one stenographer. Is that

true?”

Almost every successful person likes to reminisce

about his early struggles. This man was no exception.

He talked for a long time about how he had started with

$450 in cash and an original idea. He told how he had

fought against discouragement and battled against ridicule,

working Sundays and holidays, twelve to sixteen

hours a day; how he had finally won against all odds

until now the most important executives on Wall Street

were coming to him for information and guidance. He

was proud of such a record. He had a right to be, and he

had a splendid time telling about it. Finally, he questioned

Mr. Cubellis briefly about his experience, then

called in one of his vice presidents and said: “I think

this is the person we are looking for.”

Mr. Cubellis had taken the trouble to find out about

the accomplishments of his prospective employer. He

showed an interest in the other person and his problems.

He encouraged the other person to do most of the talking

- and made a favorable impression.

Roy G. Bradley of Sacramento, California, had the opposite

problem. He listened as a good prospect for a

sales position talked himself into a job with Bradley’s

firm, Roy reported:

“Being a small brokerage firm, we had no fringe benefits,

such as hospitalization, medical insurance and pensions.

Every representative is an independent agent. We

don’t even provide leads for prospects, as we cannot advertise

for them as our larger competitors do.

“Richard Pryor had the type of experience we wanted

for this position, and he was interviewed first by my

assistant, who told him about all the negatives related to

this job. He seemed slightly discouraged when he came

into my office. I mentioned the one benefit of being associated

with my firm, that of being an independent contractor

and therefore virtually being self-employed.

“As he talked about these advantages to me, he talked

himself out of each negative thought he had when he

came in for the interview. Several times it seemed as

though he was half talking to himself as he was thinking

through each thought. At times I was tempted to add to

his thoughts; however, as the interview came to a close

I felt he had convinced himself, very much on his own,

that he would like to work for my firm.

“Because I had been a good listener and let Dick do

most of the talking, he was able to weigh both sides

fairly in his mind, and he came to the positive conclusion,

which was a challenge he created for himself. We

hired him and he has been an outstanding representative

for our firm,”

Even our friends would much rather talk to us about

their achievements than listen to us boast about ours.

La Rochefoucauld, the French philosopher, said: “If

you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want

friends, let your friends excel you.”

Why is that true? Because when our friends excel us,

they feel important; but when we excel them, they - or

at least some of them - will feel inferior and envious.

By far the best-liked placement counselor in the Mid-town

Personnel Agency in New York City was Henrietta

G ---- It hadn’t always been that way. During the first

few months of her association with the agency, Henrietta

didn’t have a single friend among her colleagues. Why?

Because every day she would brag about the placements

she had made, the new accounts she had opened, and

anything else she had accomplished.

"I was good at my work and proud of it,” Henrietta

told one of our classes. " But instead of my colleagues

sharing my triumphs, they seemed to resent them. I

wanted to be liked by these people. I really wanted

them to be my friends. After listening to some of the

suggestions made in this course, I started to talk about

myself less and listen more to my associates. They also

had things to boast about and were more excited about

telling me about their accomplishments than about listening

to my boasting. Now, when we have some time

to chat, I ask them to share their joys with me, and I only

mention my achievements when they ask.”

PRINCIPLE 6

Let the other person do a great deal of the

talking.

7

HOW TO GET COOPERATION

Don’t you have much more faith in ideas that you discover

for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you

on a silver platter? If so, isn’t it bad judgment to try to

ram your opinions down the throats of other people?

Isn’t it wiser to make suggestions - and let the other person

think out the conclusion?

Adolph Seltz of Philadelphia, sales manager in an automobile

showroom and a student in one of my courses,

suddenly found himself confronted with the necessity of

injecting enthusiasm into a discouraged and disorganized

group of automobile salespeople. Calling a sales

meeting, he urged his people to tell him exactly what

they expected from him. As they talked, he wrote their

ideas on the blackboard. He then said: “I’ll give you all

these qualities you expect from me. Now I want you to

tell me what I have a right to expect from you.” The

replies came quick and fast: loyalty, honesty, initiative,

optimism, teamwork, eight hours a day of enthusiastic

work, The meeting ended with a new courage, a new

inspiration - one salesperson volunteered to work fourteen

hours a day - and Mr. Seltz reported to me that the

increase of sales was phenomenal.

“The people had made a sort of moral bargain with

me, " said Mr. Seltz, “and as long as I lived up to my part

in it, they were determined to live up to theirs. Consulting

them about their wishes and desires was just the shot

in the arm they needed.”

No one likes to feel that he or she is being sold some-

thing or told to do a thing. We much prefer to feel that

we are buying of our own accord or acting on our own

ideas. We like to be consulted about our wishes, our

wants, our thoughts.

Take the case of Eugene Wesson. He lost countless

thousands of dollars in commissions before he learned

this truth. Mr. Wesson sold sketches for a studio that

created designs for stylists and textile manufacturers.

Mr. Wesson had called on one of the leading stylists in

New York once a week, every week for three years. “He

never refused to see me,” said Mr. Wesson, “but he

never bought. He always looked over my sketches very

carefully and then said: ‘No, Wesson, I guess we don’t

get together today.' "

After 150 failures, Wesson realized he must be in a

mental rut, so he resolved to devote one evening a week

to the study of influencing human behavior, to help him

develop new ideas and generate new enthusiasm.

He decided on this new approach. With half a dozen

unfinished artists’ sketches under his arm, he rushed

over to the buyer’s office. "I want you to do me a little

favor, if you will,” he said. “‘Here are some uncompleted

sketches. Won’t you please tell me how we could finish

them up in such a way that you could use them?”

The buyer looked at the sketches for a while without

uttering a word. Finally he said: “Leave these with me

for a few days, Wesson, and then come back and see

me.”

Wesson returned three davs later, got his suggestions,

took the sketches back to the studio and had them finished

according to the buyer’s ideas. The result? All accepted.

After that, this buyer ordered scores of other sketches

from Wesson, all drawn according to the buyer’s ideas.

“I realized why I had failed for years to sell him,” said

Mr. Wesson. " I had urged him to buy what I thought he

ought to have. Then I changed my approach completely.

I urged him to give me his ideas. This made him feel

that he was creating the designs. And he was. I didn’t

have to sell him. He bought.”

Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or

hers not only works in business and politics, it works in

family life as well. Paul M. Davis of Tulsa, Oklahoma,

told his class how he applied this principle:

“My family and I enjoyed one of the most interesting

sightseeing vacation trips we have ever taken. I had long

dreamed of visiting such historic sites as the Civil War

battlefield in Gettysburg, Independence Hall in Philadelphia,

and our nation’s capital. Valley Forge, James-town

and the restored colonial village of Williamsburg

were high on the list of things I wanted to see.

“In March my wife, Nancy, mentioned that she had

ideas for our summer vacation which included a tour of

the western states, visiting points of interest in New

Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada. She had

wanted to make this trip for several years. But we

couldn’t obviously make both trips.

“Our daughter, Anne, had just completed a course in

U.S. history in junior high school and had become very

interested in the events that had shaped our country’s

growth. I asked her how she would like to visit the

places she had learned about on our next vacation. She

said she would love to.

“Two evenings later as we sat around the dinner table,

Nancy announced that if we all agreed, the summer’s

vacation would be to the eastern states, that it would he

a great trip for Anne and thrilling for all of us. We all

concurred.”

This same psychology was used by an X-ray manufacturer

to sell his equipment to one of the largest hospitals

in Brooklyn This hospital was building an addition and

preparing to equip it with the finest X-ray department in

America. Dr. L----, who was in charge of the X-ray department,

was overwhelmed with sales representatives,

each caroling the praises of his own company’s equipment.

One manufacturer, however, was more skillful. He

knew far more about handling human nature than the

others did. He wrote a letter something like this:

Our factory has recently completed a new line of X-ray

equipment. The first shipment of these machines has just

arrived at our office. They are not perfect. We know that,

and we want to improve them. So we should be deeply

obligated to you if you could find time to look them over

and give us your ideas about how they can be made more

serviceable to your profession. Knowing how occupied you

are, I shall be glad to send my car for you at any hour you

specify.

"I was surprised to get that letter,” Dr. L ---- said as

he related the incident before the class. “I was both

surprised and complimented. I had never had an X-ray

manufacturer seeking my advice before. It made me feel

important. I was busy every night that week, but I canceled

a dinner appointment in order to look over the

equipment. The more I studied it, the more I discovered

for myself how much I liked it.

“Nobody had tried to sell it to me. I felt that the idea

of buying that equipment for the hospital was my own. I

sold myself on its superior qualities and ordered it installed.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Self-Reliance”

stated: “In every work of genius we recognize our own

rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain

alienated majesty.”

Colonel Edward M. House wielded an enormous influence

in national and international affairs while Woodrow

Wilson occupied the White House. Wilson leaned

upon Colonel House for secret counsel and advice more

than he did upon even members of his own cabinet.

What method did the Colonel use in influencing the

President? Fortunately, we know, for House himself revealed

it to Arthur D. Howden Smith, and Smith quoted

House in an article in The Saturday Evening Post.

" ‘After I got to know the President,’ House said, ‘I

learned the best way to convert him to an idea was to

plant it in his mind casually, but so as to interest him in

it - so as to get him thinking about it on his own account.

The first time this worked it was an accident. I had been

visiting him at the White House and urged a policy on

him which he appeared to disapprove. But several days

later, at the dinner table, I was amazed to hear him trot

out my suggestion as his own.’ "

Did House interrupt him and say, “That’s not your

idea. That’s mine” ? Oh, no. Not House. He was too

adroit for that. He didn’t care about credit. He wanted

results. So he let Wilson continue to feel that the idea

was his. House did even more than that. He gave Wilson

public credit for these ideas.

Let’s remember that everyone we come in contact

with is just as human as Woodrow Wilson. So let’s use

Colonel House’s technique.

A man up in the beautiful Canadian province of New

Brunswick used this technique on me and won my patronage.

I was planning at the time to do some fishing

and canoeing in New Brunswick. So I wrote the tourist

bureau for information. Evidently my name and address

were put on a mailing list, for I was immediately overwhelmed

with scores of letters and booklets and printed

testimonials from camps and guides. I was bewildered.

I didn’t know which to choose. Then one camp owner

did a clever thing. He sent me the names and telephone

numbers of several New York people who had stayed at

his camp and he invited me to telephone them and discover

for myself what he had to offer.

I found to my surprise that I knew one of the men on

his list. I telephoned him, found out what his experience

had been, and then wired the camp the date of my arrival.

The others had been trying to sell me on their service,

but one let me sell myself. That organization won.

Twenty-five centuries ago, Lao-tse, a Chinese sage,

said some things that readers of this book might use

today:

" The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage

of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below

them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain

streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth

himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth

himself behind them. Thus, though his place be

above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place

be before them, they do not count it an injury.”

PRINCIPLE 7

Let the other person feel that the idea is his or

hers.

8

A FORMULA THAT WILL WORK

WONDERS FOR YOU

Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But

they don’t think so. Don’t condemn them. Any fool can

do that. Try to understand them. Only wise, tolerant,

exceptional people even try to do that.

There is a reason why the other man thinks and acts

as he does. Ferret out that reason - and you have the key

to his actions, perhaps to his personality

.

Try honestly to put yourself in his place.

If you say to yourself, “How would I feel, how would

I react if I were in his shoes?” you will save yourself

time and irritation, for “by becoming interested in the

cause, we are less likely to dislike the effect.” And, in

addition, you will sharply increase your skill in human

relationships.

“Stop a minute,” says Kenneth M. Goode in his book

How to Turn People Into Gold, “stop a minute to contrast

your keen interest in your own affairs with your

mild concern about anything else. Realize then, that

everybody else in the world feels exactly the same way!

Then, along with Lincoln and Roosevelt, you will have

grasped the only solid foundation for interpersonal relationships;

namely, that success in dealing with people

depends on a sympathetic grasp of the other persons’

viewpoint.”

Sam Douglas of Hempstead, New York, used to tell

his wife that she spent too much time working on their

lawn, pulling weeds, fertilizing, cutting the grass twice

a week when the lawn didn’t look any better than it had

when they moved into their home four years earlier. Naturally,

she was distressed by his remarks, and each time

he made such remarks the balance of the evening was

ruined.

After taking our course, Mr. Douglas realized how

foolish he had been all those years. It never occurred to

him that she enjoyed doing that work and she might

really appreciate a compliment on her diligence.

One evening after dinner, his wife said she wanted to

pull some weeds and invited him to keep her company.

He first declined, but then thought better of it and went

out after her and began to help her pull weeds. She was

visibly pleased, and together they spent an hour in hard

work and pleasant conversation.

After that he often helped her with the gardening and

complimented her on how fine the lawn looked, what a

fantastic job she was doing with a yard where the soil

was like concrete. Result: a happier life for both because

he had learned to look at things from her point of view

- even if the subject was only weeds.

In his book Getting Through to People, Dr. Gerald S.

Nirenberg commented: "Cooperativeeness in conversation

is achieved when you show that you consider the

other person’s ideas and feelings as important as your

own. Starting your conversation by giving the other person

the purpose or direction of your conversation, governing

what you say by what you would want to hear if

you were the listener, and accepting his or her viewpoint

will encourage the listener to have an open mind

to your ideas.” *

* Dr Gerald S. Nirenberg, Getting Through to People (Englewood Cliffs,

N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 31.

I have always enjoyed walking and riding in a park

near my home. Like the Druids of ancient Gaul, I all but

worship an oak tree, so I was distressed season after

season to see the young trees and shrubs killed off by

needless fires. These fires weren’t caused by careless

smokers. They were almost all caused by youngsters

who went out to the park to go native and cook a frankfurter

or an egg under the trees. Sometimes, these fires

raged so fiercely that the fire department had to be called

out to fight the conflagration.

There was a sign on the edge of the park saying that

anyone who started a fire was liable to fine and imprisonment,

but the sign stood in an unfrequented part of the

park, and few of the culprits ever saw it. A mounted

policeman was supposed to look after the park; but he

didn’t take his duties too seriously, and the fires continued

to spread season after season. On one occasion, I

rushed up to a policeman and told him about a fire

spreading rapidly through the park and wanted him to

notify the fire department, and he nonchalantly replied

that it was none of his business because it wasn’t in his

precinct! I was desperate, so after that when I went riding,

I acted as a self-appointed committee of one to protect

the public domain. In the beginning, I am afraid I

didn’t even attempt to see the other people’s point of

view. When I saw a fire blazing under the trees, I was so

unhappy about it, so eager to do the right thing, that I

did the wrong thing. I would ride up to the boys, warn

them that they could be jailed for starting a fire, order

with a tone of authority that it be put out; and, if they

refused, I would threaten to have them arrested. I was

merely unloading my feelings without thinking of their

point of view.

The result? They obeyed - obeyed sullenly and with

resentment. After I rode on over the hill, they probably

rebuilt the fire and longed to burn up the whole park.

With the passing of the years, I acquired a trifle more

knowledge of human relations, a little more tact, a somewhat

greater tendency to see things from the other person’s

standpoint. Then, instead of giving orders, I would

ride up to a blazing fire and begin something like this:

“Having a good time, boys? What are you going to

cook for supper? . . . I loved to build fires myself when I

was a boy - and I still love to. But you know they are

very dangerous here in the park. I know you boys don’t

mean to do any harm, but other boys aren’t so careful.

They come along and see that you have built a fire; so

they build one and don’t put it out when they go home

and it spreads among the dry leaves and kills the trees.

We won’t have any trees here at all if we aren’t more

careful, You could be put in jail for building this fire. But

I don’t want to be bossy and interfere with your pleasure.

I like to see you enjoy yourselves; but won’t you

please rake all the leaves away from the fire right now

- and you’ll be careful to cover it with dirt, a lot of dirt,

before you leave, won’t you? And the next time you want

to have some fun, won’t you please build your fire over

the hill there in the sandpit? It can’t do any harm there.

. . . Thanks so much, boys. Have a good time.”

What a difference that kind of talk made! It made the

boys want to cooperate. No sullenness, no resentment.

They hadn’t been forced to obey orders. They had saved

their faces. They felt better and I felt better because I

had handled the situation with consideration for their

point of view.

Seeing things through another person’s eyes may ease

tensions when personal problems become overwhelming.

Elizabeth Novak of New South Wales, Australia,

was six weeks late with her car payment. “On a Friday,”

she reported, "I received a nasty phone call from the

man who was handling my account informing me if I did

not come up with $122 by Monday morning I could anticipate

further action from the company. I had no way

of raising the money over the weekend, so when I received

his phone call first thing on Monday morning I

expected the worst. Instead of becoming upset I looked

at the situation from his point of view. I apologized most

sincerely for causing him so much inconvenience and

remarked that I must be his most troublesome customer

as this was not the first time I was behind in my payments.

His tone of voice changed immediately, and he

reassured me that I was far from being one of his really

troublesome customers. He went on to tell me several

examples of how rude his customers sometimes were,

how they lied to him and often tried to avoid talking to

him at all. I said nothing. I listened and let him pour out

his troubles to me. Then, without any suggestion from

me, he said it did not matter if I couldn’t pay all the

money immediately. It would be all right if I paid him

$20 by the end of the month and made up the balance

whenever it was convenient for me to do so.”

Tomorrow, before asking anyone to put out a fire or

buy your product or contribute to your favorite charity,

why not pause and close your eyes and try to think the

whole thing through from another person’s point of

view? Ask yourself: “Why should he or she want to do

it?” True, this will take time, but it will avoid making

enemies and will get better results - and with less friction

and less shoe leather.

"I would rather walk the sidewalk in front of a person’s

office for two hours before an interview,” said

Dean Donham of the Harvard business school, “than

step into that office without a perfectly clear idea of what

I was going to say and what that person - from my

knowledge of his or her interests and motives - was

likely to answer.”

That is so important that I am going to repeat it in

italics for the sake of emphasis.

I would rather walk the sidewalk in front of a person’s

office for two hours before an interview than step

into that office without a perfectly clear idea of what I

was going to say and what that persob - from my

knowledge of his or her interests and motives - was

likely to answer.

If, as a result of reading this book, you get only one

thing - an increased tendency to think always in terms

of the other person’s point of view, and see things from

that person’s angle as well as your own - if you get only

that one thing from this book, it may easily prove to be

one of the stepping - stones of your career.

PRINCIPLE 8

Try honestly to see things from the other

person’s point of view.

9

WHAT EVERYBODY WANTS

Wouldn't you like to have a magic phrase that would

stop arguments, eliminate ill feeling, create good will,

and make the other person listen attentively?

Yes? All right. Here it is: "I don’t blame you one iota

for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly

feel just as you do.”

An answer like that will soften the most cantankerous

old cuss alive. And you can say that and be 100 percent

sincere, because if you were the other person you, of

course, would feel just as he does. Take Al Capone, for

example. Suppose you had inherited the same body and

temperament and mind that Al Capone had. Suppose

you had had his environment and experiences. You

would then be precisely what he was - and where he

was. For it is those things - and only those things - that

made him what he was. The only reason, for example,

that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and

father weren’t rattlesnakes.

You deserve very little credit for being what you are

- and remember, the people who come to you irritated,

bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for

being what they are. Feel sorry for the poor devils. Pity

them. Sympathize with them. Say to yourself: “There,

but for the grace of God, go I.”

Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are

hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them,

and they will love you.

I once gave a broadcast about the author of Little

Women, Louisa May Alcott. Naturally, I knew she had

lived and written her immortal books in Concord, Massachusetts.

But, without thinking what I was saying, I

spoke of visiting her old home in Concord. New Hampshire.

If I had said New Hampshire only once, it might

have been forgiven. But, alas and alack! I said it twice, I

was deluged with letters and telegrams, stinging messages

that swirled around my defenseless head like a

swarm of hornets. Many were indignant. A few insulting.

One Colonial Dame, who had been reared in Concord,

Massachusetts, and who was then living in Philadelphia,

vented her scorching wrath upon me. She couldn’t have

been much more bitter if I had accused Miss Alcott of

being a cannibal from New Guinea. As I read the letter,

I said to myself, “Thank God, I am not married to that

woman.” I felt like writing and telling her that although

I had made a mistake in geography, she had made a far

greater mistake in common courtesy. That was to be just

my opening sentence. Then I was going to roll up my

sleeves and tell her what I really thought. But I didn’t.

I controlled myself. I realized that any hotheaded

fool could do that - and that most fools would do just

that.

I wanted to be above fools. So I resolved to try to turn

her hostility into friendliness. It would be a challenge, a

sort of game I could play. I said to myself, "After all, if

I were she, I would probably feel just as she does.”

So, I determined to sympathize with her viewpoint.

The next time I was in Philadelphia, I called her on the

telephone. The conversation went something like

this:

ME:      Mrs. So-and-So, you wrote me a letter a few weeks

ago, and I want to thank you for it.

SHE:    (in incisive, cultured, well-bred tones): To whom

have I the honor of speaking?

ME:      I am a stranger to you. My name is Dale Carnegie.

You listened to a broadcast I gave about Louisa May

Alcott a few Sundays ago, and I made the unforgivable

blunder of saying that she had lived in Concord,

New Hampshire. It was a stupid blunder, and

I want to apologize for it. It was so nice of you to

take the time to write me.

SHE :   I am sorry, Mr. Carnegie, that I wrote as I did. I lost

my temper. I must apologize.

ME:      No! No! You are not the one to apologize; I am. Any

school child would have known better than to have

said what I said. I apologized over the air the following

Sunday, and I want to apologize to you personally

now.

SHE :   I was born in Concord, Massachusetts. My family

has been prominent in Massachusetts affairs for two

centuries, and I am very proud of my native state. I

was really quite distressed to hear you say that Miss

Alcott had lived in New Hampshire. But I am really

ashamed of that letter.

ME:      I assure you that you were not one-tenth as distressed

as I am. My error didn’t hurt Massachusetts,

but it did hurt me. It is so seldom that people of

your standing and culture take the time to write

people who speak on the radio, and I do hope you

will write me again if you detect an error in my

talks.

SHE:    You know, I really like very much the way you have

accepted my criticism. You must be a very nice person.

I should like to know you better.

So, because I had apologized and sympathized with

her point of view, she began apologizing and sympathizing

with my point of view, I had the satisfaction of

controlling my temper, the satisfaction of returning

kindness for an insult. I got infinitely more real fun out

of making her like me than I could ever have gotten out

of telling her to go and take a jump in the Schuylkill

River,

Every man who occupies the White House is faced

almost daily with thorny problems in human relations.

President Taft was no exception, and he learned from

experience the enormous chemical value of sympathy in

neutralizing the acid of hard feelings. In his book Ethics

in Service, Taft gives rather an amusing illustration of

how he softened the ire of a disappointed and ambitious

mother.

“A lady in Washington,” wrote Taft, “whose husband

had some political influence, came and labored with me

for six weeks or more to appoint her son to a position.

She secured the aid of Senators and Congressmen in

formidable number and came with them to see that they

spoke with emphasis. The place was one requiring technical

qualification, and following the recommendation

of the head of the Bureau, I appointed somebody else. I

then received a letter from the mother, saying that I was

most ungrateful, since I declined to make her a happy

woman as I could have done by a turn of my hand. She

complained further that she had labored with her state

delegation and got all the votes for an administration bill

in which I was especially interested and this was the

way I had rewarded her.

“When you get a letter like that, the first thing you do

is to think how you can be severe with a person who has

committed an impropriety, or even been a little impertinent.

Then you may compose an answer. Then if you

are wise, you will put the letter in a drawer and lock the

drawer. Take it out in the course of two days - such communications

will always bear two days’ delay in answering

- and when you take it out after that interval, you

will not send it. That is just the course I took. After that,

I sat down and wrote her just as polite a letter as I could,

telling her I realized a mother’s disappointment under

such circumstances, but that really the appointment was

not left to my mere personal preference, that I had to

select a man with technical qualifications, and had,

therefore, to follow the recommendations of the head of

the Bureau. I expressed the hope that her son would go

on to accomplish what she had hoped for him in the

position which he then had. That mollified her and she

wrote me a note saying she was sorry she had written as

she had.

“But the appointment I sent in was not confirmed at

once, and after an interval I received a letter which purported

to come from her husband, though it was in the

the same handwriting as all the others. I was therein

advised that, due to the nervous prostration that had followed

her disappointment in this case, she had to take

to her bed and had developed a most serious case of

cancer of the stomach. Would I not restore her to health

by withdrawing the first name and replacing it by her

son’s? I had to write another letter, this one to the husband,

to say that I hoped the diagnosis would prove to

be inaccurate, that I sympathized with him in the sorrow

he must have in the serious illness of his wife, but that it

was impossible to withdraw the name sent in. The man

whom I appointed was confirmed, and within two days

after I received that letter, we gave a musicale at the

White House. The first two people to greet Mrs. Taft and

me were this husband and wife, though the wife had so

recently been in articulo mortis."

Jay Mangum represented an elevator-escalator main-tenance

company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which had the

maintenance contract for the escalators in one of Tulsa’s

leading hotels. The hotel manager did not want to shut

down the escalator for more than two hours at a time

because he did not want to inconvenience the hotel’s

guests. The repair that had to be made would take at

least eight hours, and his company did not always have

a specially qualified mechanic available at the convenience

of the hotel.

When Mr. Mangum was able to schedule a top-flight

mechanic for this job, he telephoned the hotel manager

and instead of arguing with him to give him the necessary

time, he said:

“Rick, I know your hotel is quite busy and you would

like to keep the escalator shutdown time to a minimum.

I understand your concern about this, and we want to do

everything possible to accommodate you. However, our

diagnosis of the situation shows that if we do not do a

complete job now, your escalator may suffer more serious

damage and that would cause a much longer shutdown.

I know you would not want to inconvenience

your guests for several days.”

The manager had to agree that an eight-hour shut

down was more desirable than several days'. By sympathizing

with the manager’s desire to keep his patrons

happy, Mr. Mangum was able to win the hotel manager

to his way of thinking easily and without rancor.

Joyce Norris, a piano teacher in St, Louis, Missouri,

told of how she had handled a problem piano teachers

often have with teenage girls. Babette had exceptionally

long fingernails. This is a serious handicap to anyone

who wants to develop proper piano-playing habits.

Mrs. Norris reported: “I knew her long fingernails

would be a barrier for her in her desire to play well.

During our discussions prior to her starting her lessons

with me, I did not mention anything to her about her

nails. I didn’t want to discourage her from taking lessons,

and I also knew she would not want to lose that

which she took so much pride in and such great care to

make attractive.

“After her first lesson, when I felt the time was right,

I said: ‘Babette, you have attractive hands and beautiful

fingernails. If you want to play the piano as well as you

are capable of and as well as you would like to, you

would be surprised how much quicker and easier it

would be for you, if you would trim your nails shorter.

Just think about it, Okay?’ She made a face which was

definitely negative. I also talked to her mother about this

situation, again mentioning how lovely her nails were.

Another negative reaction. It was obvious that Babette’s

beautifully manicured nails were important to her.

“The following week Babette returned for her second

lesson. Much to my surprise, the fingernails had been

trimmed. I complimented her and praised her for making

such a sacrifice. I also thanked her mother for influencing

Babette to cut her nails. Her reply was ‘Oh, I had

nothing to do with it. Babette decided to do it on her

own, and this is the first time she has ever trimmed her

nails for anyone.’ "

Did Mrs. Norris threaten Babette? Did she say she

would refuse to teach a student with long fingernails?

No, she did not. She let Babette know that her finger-

nails were a thing of beauty and it would be a sacrifice

to cut them. She implied, “I sympathize with you - I

know it won’t be easy, but it will pay off in your better

musical development.”

Sol Hurok was probably America’s number one impresario.

For almost half a century he handled artists - such

world-famous artists as Chaliapin, Isadora Duncan, and

Pavlova. Mr. Hurok told me that one of the first lessons

he had learned in dealing with his temperamental stars

was the’ necessity for sympathy, sympathy and more

sympathy with their idiosyncrasies.

For three years, he was impresario for Feodor Chaliapin -

one of the greatest bassos who ever thrilled the

ritzy boxholders at the Metropolitan, Yet Chaliapin was

a constant problem. He carried on like a spoiled child.

To put it in Mr. Hurok’s own inimitable phrase: “He

was a hell of a fellow in every way.”

For example, Chaliapin would call up Mr. Hurok

about noun of the day he was going to sing and say, “Sol,

I feel terrible. My throat is like raw hamburger. It is

impossible for me to sing tonight.” Did Mr. Hurok argue

with him? Oh, no. He knew that an entrepreneur

couldn’t handle artists that way. So he would rush over

to Chaliapin’s hotel, dripping with sympathy. “What a

pity, "  he would mourn. “What a pity! My poor fellow.

Of course, you cannot sing. I will cancel the engagement

at once. It will only cost you a couple of thousand dollars,

but that is nothing in comparison to your reputation."

Then Chaliapin would sigh and say, “Perhaps you had

better come over later in the day. Come at five and see

how I feel then.”

At five o’clock, Mr. Hurok would again rush to his

hotel, dripping with sympathy. Again he would insist on

canceling the engagement and again Chaliapin would

sigh and say, “Well, maybe you had better come to see

me later. I may be better then.”

At seven-thirty the great basso would consent to sing,

only with the understanding that Mr. Hurok would walk

out on the stage of the Metropolitan and announce that

Chaliapin had a very bad cold and was not in good voice.

Mr. Hurok would lie and say he would do it, for he

knew that was the only way to get the basso out on the

stage.

Dr. Arthur I. Gates said in his splendid book Educational

Psychology: “Sympathy the human species universally

craves. The child eagerly displays his injury; or

even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant

sympathy. For the same purpose adults . . . show their

bruises, relate their accidents, illness, especially details

of surgical operations. ‘Self-pity’ for misfortunes real or

imaginary is in some measure, practically a universal

practice."

So, if you want to win people to your way of thinking,

put in practice . . .

PRINCIPLE 9

Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas

and desires.

10

AN APPEAL THAT EVERYBODY LIKES

I was reared on the edge of the Jesse James country out

in Missouri, and I visited the James farm at Kearney,

Missouri, where the son of Jesse James was then

living.

His wife told me stories of how Jesse robbed trains

and held up banks and then gave money to the neighboring

farmers to pay off their mortgages.

Jesse James probably regarded himself as an idealist

at heart, just as Dutch Schultz, "Two Gun” Crowley, Al

Capone and many other organized crime “godfathers”

did generations later. The fact is that all people you meet

have a high regard for themselves and like to be fine and

unselfish in their own estimation.

J. Pierpont Morgan observed, in one of his analytical

interludes, that a person usually has two reasons for

doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one.

The person himself will think of the real reason. You

don’t need to emphasize that. But all of us, being idealists

at heart, like to think of motives that sound good.

So, in order to change people, appeal to the nobler

motives.

Is that too idealistic to work in business? Let’s see.

Let’s take the case of Hamilton J. Farrell of the Farrell-Mitchell

Company of Glenolden, Pennsylvania. Mr. Farrell

had a disgruntled tenant who threatened to move.

The tenant’s lease still had four months to run; nevertheless,

he served notice that he was vacating immediately,

regardless of lease.

"These people had lived in my house all winter - the

most expensive part of the year,” Mr. Farrell said as he

told the story to the class, “and I knew it would be difficult

to rent the apartment again before fall. I could see

all that rent income going over the hill and believe me,

I saw red.

“Now, ordinarily, I would have waded into that tenant

and advised him to read his lease again. I would have

pointed out that if he moved, the full balance of his rent

would fall due at once - and that I could, and would,

move to collect.

“However, instead of flying off the handle and making

a scene, I decided to try other tactics. So I started like

this: ‘Mr. Doe,’ I said, ‘I have listened to your story,

and I still don’t believe you intend to move. Years in

the renting business have taught me something about

human nature, and I sized you up in the first place as

being a man of your word. In fact, I’m so sure of it that

I’m willing to take a gamble.

" ‘Now, here’s my proposition. Lav your decision on

the table for a few days and think it over. If you come

back to me between now and the first of the month,

when your rent is due, and tell me you still intend to

move, I give you my word I will accept your decision as

final. I will privilege you to move and admit to myself

I’ve been wrong in my judgment. But I still believe

you’re a man of your word and will live up to your contract.

For after all, we are either men or monkeys - and

the choice usually lies with ourselves!’

“Well, when the new month came around, this gentleman

came to see me and paid his rent in person. He and

his wife had talked it over, he said - and decided to stay.

They had concluded that the only honorable thing to do

was to live up to their lease.”

When the late Lord Northcliffe found a newspaper

using a picture of him which he didn’t want published,

he wrote the editor a letter. But did he say, “Please do

not publish that picture of me any more; I don’t like it”?

No, he appealed to a nobler motive. He appealed to the

respect and love that all of us have for motherhood. He

wrote, “Please do not publish that picture of me any

more. My mother doesn’t like it.”

When John D. Rockefeller, Jr., wished to stop newspaper

photographers from snapping pictures of his children,

he too appealed to the nobler motives. He didn’t,

say: “I don’t want their pictures published.” No, he appealed

to the desire, deep in all of us, to refrain from

harming children. He said: “You know how it is, boys.

You’ve got children yourselves, some of you. And you

know it’s not good for youngsters to get too much publicity.”

When Cyrus H. K. Curtis, the poor boy from Maine,

was starting on his meteoric career, which was destined

to make him millions as owner of The Saturday Evening

Post and the Ladies’ Home Journal, he couldn’t afford to

pay his contributors the prices that other magazines

paid. He couldn’t afford to hire first-class authors to

write for money alone. So he appealed to their nobler

motives. For example, he persuaded even Louisa May

Alcott, the immortal author of Little Women, to write for

him when she was at the flood tide of her fame; and he

did it by offering to send a check for a hundred dollars,

not to her, but to her favorite charity.

Right here the skeptic may say: “Oh, that stuff is all

right for Northcliffe and Rockefeller or a sentimental

novelist. But, I’d like to see you make it work with the

tough babies I have to collect bills from!”

You may be right. Nothing will work in all cases - and

nothing will work with all people. If you are satisfied

with the results you are now getting, why change? If you

are not satisfied, why not experiment?

At any rate, I think you will enjoy reading this

true story told by James L. Thomas, a former student of

mine:

Six customers of a certain automobile company refused

to pay their bills for servicing. None of the customers

protested the entire bill, but each claimed that some

one charge was wrong. In each case, the customer had

signed for the work done, so the company knew it was

right - and said so. That was the first mistake.

Here are the steps the men in the credit department

took to collect these overdue bills. Do you suppose they

succeeded?

1. They called on each customer and told him

bluntly that they had come to collect a bill that was

long past due.

2. They made it very plain that the company was

absolutely and unconditionally right; therefore he,

the customer, was absolutely and unconditionally

wrong.

3. They intimated that they, the company, knew

more about automobiles than he could ever hope to

know. So what was the argument about?

4. Result: They argued.

Did any of these methods reconcile the customer and

settle the account? You can answer that one yourself.

At this stage of affairs, the credit manager was about to

open fire with a battery of legal talent, when fortunately

the matter came to the attention of the general manager.

The manager investigated these defaulting clients and

discovered that they all had the reputation of paying

their bills promptly, Something was wrong here - something

was drastically wrong about the method of collection.

So he called in James L. Thomas and told him to

collect these “uncollectible” accounts.

Here, in his words, are the steps Mr. Thrrmas took:

1. My visit to each customer was likewise to collect a bill

long past due - a bill that we knew was absolutely right.

But I didn’t say a word about that. I explained I had called

to find out what it was the company had done, or failed to

do.

2. I made it clear that, until I had heard the customer’s

story, I had no opinion to offer. I told him the company

made no claims to being infallible.

3. I told him I was interested only in his car, and that he

knew more about his car than anyone else in the world; that

he was the authority on the subject.

4. I let him talk, and I listened to him with all the interest

and sympathy that he wanted - and had expected.

5. Finally, when the customer was in a reasonable mood,

I put the whole thing up to his sense of fair play. I appealed

to the nobler motives. “First,” I said, "I want you to know

I also feel this matter has been badly mishandled. You’ve

been inconvenienced and annoyed and irritated by one of

our representatives. That should never have happened. I’m

sorry and, as a representative of the company, I apologize.

As I sat here and listened to your side of the story, I could

not help being impressed by your fairness and patience.

And now, because you are fair - minded and patient, I am

going to ask you to do something for me. It’s something that

you can do better than anyone else, something you know

more about than anyone else. Here is your bill; I know it is

safe for me to ask you to adjust it, just as you would do if

you were the president of my company. I am going to leave

it all up to you. Whatever you say goes.”

Did he adjust the bill? He certainly did, and got quite a

kick out of it, The bills ranged from $150 to $400 - but did

the customer give himself the best of it? Yes, one of them

did! One of them refused to pay a penny of the disputed

charge; but the other five all gave the company the best of

it! And here’s the cream of the whole thing: we delivered

new cars to all six of these customers within the next two

years!

“Experience has taught me,” says Mr. Thomas, "that

when no information can be secured about the customer,

the only sound basis on which to proceed is to assume

that he or she is sincere, honest, truthful and willing and

anxious to pay the charges, once convinced they are correct.

To put it differently and perhaps mare clearly, people

are honest and want to discharge their obligations.

The exceptions to that rule are comparatively few, and I

am convinced that the individuals who are inclined to

chisel will in most cases react favorably if you make

them feel that you consider them honest, upright and fair."

PRINCIPLE 10

Appeal to the nobler motives.

11

THE MOVIES DO IT. TV DOES IT.

WHY DON’T YOU DO IT?

Many years ago, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin was

being maligned by a dangerous whispering campaign. A

malicious rumor was being circulated. Advertisers were

being told that the newspaper was no longer attractive

to readers because it carried too much advertising and

too little news. Immediate action was necessary. The

gossip had to be squelched.

But how?

This is the way it was done.

The Bulletin clipped from its regular edition all reading

matter of all kinds on one average day, classified it,

and published it as a book. The book was called One

Day. It contained 307 pages - as many as a hard-covered

book; yet the Bulletin had printed all this news and feature

material on one day and sold it, not for several dollars,

but for a few cents.

The printing of that book dramatized the fact that the

Bulletin carried an enormous amount of interesting

reading matter. It conveyed the facts more vividly, more

interestingly, more impressively, than pages of figures

and mere talk could have done.

This is the day of dramatization. Merely stating a truth

isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting,

dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do

it. Television does it. And you will have to do it if you

want attention.

Experts in window display know the power of dramazation.

For example, the manufacturers of a new rat

poison gave dealers a window display that included two

live rats. The week the rats were shown, sales zoomed

to five times their normal rate.

Television commercials abound with examples of the

use of dramatic techniques in selling products. Sit down

one evening in front of your television set and analyze

what the advertisers do in each of their presentations.

You will note how an antacid medicine changes the

color of the acid in a test tube while its competitor

doesn’t, how one brand of soap or detergent gets a greasy

shirt clean when the other brand leaves it gray. You’ll

see a car maneuver around a series of turns and curves

- far better than just being told about it. Happy faces

will show contentment with a variety of products. All of

these dramatize for the viewer the advantages offered by

whatever is being sold - and they do get people to buy

them.

You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any

other aspect of your life. It’s easy. Jim Yeamans, who

sells for the NCR company (National Cash Register) in

Richmond, Virginia, told how he made a sale by dramatic

demonstration.

“Last week I called on a neighborhood grocer and saw

that the cash registers he was using at his checkout

counters were very old-fashioned. I approached the

owner and told him: ‘You are literally throwing away

pennies every time a customer goes through your line.’

With that I threw a handful of pennies on the floor.

He quickly became more attentive. The mere words

should have been of interest to him, but the sound of

Pennies hitting the floor really stopped him. I was able

to get an order from him to replace all of his old

machines.”

It works in home life as well. When the old-time lover

Proposed to his sweetheart, did he just use words of

love? No! He went down on his knees. That really

showed he meant what he said. We don’t propose on our

knees any more, but many suitors still set up a romantic

atmosphere before they pop the question.

Dramatizing what you want works with children as

well. Joe B. Fant, Jr., of Birmingham, Alabama, was having

difficulty getting his five-year-old boy and three-year-

old daughter to pick up their toys, so he invented a

“train.” Joey was the engineer (Captain Casey Jones) on

his tricycle. Janet’s wagon was attached, and in the evening

she loaded all the “coal” on the caboose (her

wagon) and then jumped in while her brother drove her

around the room. In this way the room was cleaned up

- without lectures, arguments or threats.

Mary Catherine Wolf of Mishawaka, Indiana, was having

some problems at work and decided that she had to

discuss them with the boss. On Monday morning she

requested an appointment with him but was told he was

very busy and she should arrange with his secretary for

an appointment later in the week. The secretary indicated

that his schedule was very tight, but she would try

to fit her in.

Ms. Wolf described what happened:

"I did not get a reply from her all week long. Whenever

I questioned her, she would give me a reason why

the boss could not see me. Friday morning came and I

had heard nothing definite. I really wanted to see him

and discuss my problems before the weekend, so I asked

myself how I could get him to see me.

“What I finally did was this. I wrote him a formal letter.

I indicated in the letter that I fully understood how

extremely busy he was all week, but it was important

that I speak with him. I enclosed a form letter and a self-

addressed envelope and asked him to please fill it out or

ask his secretary to do it and return it to me. The form

letter read as follows:

Ms. Wolf - I will be able to see you on __________ a t

__________A.M/P.M. I will give you _____minutes of

my time.

"I put this letter in his in-basket at 11 A.M. At 2 P.M. I

checked my mailbox. There was my self-addressed envelope.

He had answered my form letter himself and

indicated he could see me that afternoon and could give

me ten minutes of his time. I met with him, and we

talked for over an hour and resolved my problems.

“If I had not dramatized to him the fact that I really

wanted to see him, I would probably be still waiting for

an appointment.”

James B. Boynton had to present a lengthy market report.

His firm had just finished an exhaustive study for a

leading brand of cold cream. Data were needed immediately

about the competition in this market; the prospective

customer was one of the biggest - and most

formidable - men in the advertising business.

And his first approach failed almost before he began.

“The first time I went in,” Mr. Boynton explains, "I

found myself sidetracked into a futile discussion of the

methods used in the investigation. He argued and I argued.

He told me I was wrong, and I tried to prove that

I was right.

"I finally won my point, to my own satisfaction - but

my time was up, the interview was over, and I still

hadn’t produced results.

"The second time, I didn’t bother with tabulations of

figures and data, I went to see this man, I dramatized my

facts I.

“As I entered his office, he was busy on the phone.

While he finished his conversation, I opened a suitcase

and dumped thirty-two jars of cold cream on top of his

desk - all products he knew - all competitors of his

cream.

“On each jar, I had a tag itemizing the results of the

trade investigation, And each tag told its story briefly,

dramatically.

“What happened?

“There was no longer an argument. Here was something

new, something different. He picked up first one

and then another of the jars of cold cream and read the

information on the tag. A friendly conversation developed.

He asked additional questions. He was intensely

interested. He had originally given me only ten minutes

to present my facts, but ten minutes passed, twenty minutes,

forty minutes, and at the end of an hour we were

still talking.

“I was presenting the same facts this time that I had

presented previously. But this time I was using dramatization,

showmanship - and what a difference it made.”

PRINCIPLE 11

Dramatize your ideas.

12

WHEN NOTHING ELSE WORKS,

TRY THIS

Charles Schwab had a mill manager whose people

weren’t producing their quota of work.

“How is it,” Schwab asked him, “that a manager as

capable as you can’t make this mill turn out what it

should?”

"I don’t know,” the manager replied. “I’ve coaxed the

men, I’ve pushed them, I’ve sworn and cussed, I’ve

threatened them with damnation and being fired. But

nothing works. They just won’t produce.”

This conversation took place at the end of the day, just

before the night shift came on. Schwab asked the manager

for a piece of chalk, then, turning to the nearest

man, asked: “How many heats did your shift make

today?”

"Six."

Without another word, Schwab chalked a big figure

six on the floor, and walked away.

When the night shift came in, they saw the “6” and

asked what it meant.

“The big boss was in here today,” the day people said.

“He asked us how many heats we made, and we told

him six. He chalked it down on the floor.”

The next morning Schwab walked through the mill

again. The night shift had rubbed out “6” and replaced

it with a big “7.”

When the day shift reported for work the next morning,

they saw a big “7” chalked on the floor. So the night

shift thought they were better than the day shift did

they? Well, they would show the night shift a thing or

two. The crew pitched in with enthusiasm, and when

they quit that night, they left behind them an enormous,

swaggering "10." Things were stepping up.

Shortly this mill, which had been lagging way behind

in production, was turning out more work than any other

mill in the plant.

The principle?

Let Charles Schwab say it in his own words: “The

way to get things done,” say Schwab, “is to stimulate

competition. I do not mean in a sordid, money-getting

way, but in the desire to excel.”

The desire to excel! The challenge! Throwing down

the gauntlet! An infallible way of appealing to people of

spirit.

Without a challenge, Theodore Roosevelt would never

have been President of the United States. The Rough

Rider, just back from Cuba, was picked for governor of

New York State. The opposition discovered he was no

longer a legal resident of the state, and Roosevelt,

frightened, wished to withdraw. Then Thomas Collier

Platt, then U.S. Senator from New York, threw down the

challenge. Turning suddenly on Theodore Roosevelt, he

cried in a ringing voice: “Is the hero of San Juan Hill a

coward?”

Roosevelt stayed in the fight - and the rest is history.

A challenge not only changed his life; it had a real effect

upon the future of his nation.

“All men have fears, but the brave put down their

fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to

victory” was the motto of the King’s Guard in ancient

Greece. What greater challenge can be offered than the

opportunity to overcome those fears?

When Al Smith was governor of New York, he was up

against it. Sing Sing, at the time the most notorious pen-

itentiary west of Devil's Island, was without a warden.

Scandals had been sweeping through the pristin walls,

scandals and ugly rumors. Smith needed a strong man to

rule Sing Sing - an iron man. But who? He sent for

Lewis E. Lawes of New Hampton.

“How about going up to take charge of Sing Sing?” he

said jovially when Lawes stood before him. “They need

a man up there with experience.”

Lawes was flabbergasted. He knew the dangers of

Sing Sing. It was a political appointment, subject to the

vagaries of political whims. Wardens had come and gone

- one had lasted only three weeks. He had a career to

consider. Was it worth the risk?

Then Smith, who saw his hesitation, leaned back in

his chair and smiled. “Young fellow,” he said, “I don’t

blame you for being scared. It’s a tough spot. It’ll take a

big person to go up there and stay.”

So Smith was throwing down a challenge, was he?

Lawes liked the idea of attempting a job that called for

someone “big.”

So he went. And he stayed. He stayed, to become the

most famous warden of his time. His book 20,000 Years

in Sing Sing sold into the hundred of thousands of copies.

His broadcasts on the air and his stories of prison

life have inspired dozens of movies. His “humanizing”

of criminals wrought miracles in the way of prison reform.

“I have never found,” said Harvey S. Firestone,

founder of the great Firestone Tire and Rubber Company,

“that pay and pay alone would either bring together

or hold good people. I think it was the game

itself.”

Frederic Herzberg, one of the great behavorial scientists,

concurred. He studied in depth the work attitudes

of thousands of people ranging from factory workers to

senior executives. What do you think he found to be the

most motivating factor - the one facet of the jobs that

was most stimulating? Money? Good working conditions?

Fringe benefits? No - not any of those. The one

major factor that motivated people was the work itself. If

the work was exciting and interesting, the worker looked

forward to doing it and was motivated to do a good job.

That is what every successful person loves: the game.

The chance for self-expression. The chance to prove his

or her worth, to excel, to win. That is what makes foot-races

and hog-calling and pie-eating contests. The desire

to excel. The desire for a feeling of importance.

PRINCIPLE 12

Throw down a challenge.

I n a N u t s h e l l

WIN PEOPLE TO YOUR WAY OF THINKING

PRINCIPLE 1

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

PRINCIPLE 2

Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say,

“You’re wrong.”

PRINCIPLE 3

If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

PRINCIPLE 4

Begin in a friendly way.

PRINCIPLE 5

Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.

PRINCIPLE 6

Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.

PRINCIPLE 7

Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.

PRINCIPLE 8

Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of

view.

PRINCIPLE 9

Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.

PRINCIPLE 10

Appeal to the nobler motives.

PRINCIPLE 11

Dramatize your ideas.

PRINCIPLE 12

Throw down a challenge.

PART FOUR

Be a Leader: How to Change

People Without Giving

Offense or Arousing

Resentment

1

IF YOU MUST FIND FAULT, THIS IS

THE WAY TO BEGIN

A friend of mine was a guest at the White House for a

weekend during the administration of Calvin Coolidge.

Drifting into the President’s private office, he heard

Coolidge say to one of his secretaries, “That’s a pretty

dress you are wearing this morning, and you are a very

attractive young woman.”

That was probably the most effusive praise Silent Cal

had ever bestowed upon a secretary in his life. It was so

unusual, so unexpected, that the secretary blushed in

confusion. Then Coolidge said, “Now, don’t get stuck

up. I just said that to make you feel good. From now on,

I wish you would be a little bit more careful with your

Punctuation.”

His method was probably a bit obvious, but the psychology

was superb. It is always easier to listen to unpleasant

things after we have heard some praise of our

good points.

A barber lathers a man before he shaves him; and that

is precisely what McKinley did back in 1896, when he

was running for President. One of the prominent Republicans

of that day had written a campaign speech that he

felt was just a trifle better than Cicero and Patrick Henry

and Daniel Webster all rolled into one. With great glee,

this chap read his immortal speech aloud to McKinley.

The speech had its fine points, but it just wouldn’t do. It

would have raised a tornado of criticism. McKinley

didn’t want to hurt the man’s feelings. He must not kill

the man’s splendid enthusiasm, and yet he had to say

"no." Note how adroitly he did it.

"My friend, that is a splendid speech, a magnificent

speech,” McKinley said. “No one could have prepared a

better one. There are many occasions on which it would

be precisely the right thing to say, but is it quite suitable

to this particular occasion? Sound and sober as it is from

your standpoint, I must consider its effect from the

party’s standpoint. Now you go home and write a speech

along the lines I indicate, and send me a copy of it.”

He did just that. McKinley blue-penciled and helped

him rewrite his second speech, and he became one of

the effective speakers of the campaign.

Here is the second most famous letter that Abraham

Lincoln ever wrote. (His most famous one was written to

Mrs. Bixby, expressing his sorrow for the death of the

five sons she had lost in battle.) Lincoln probably dashed

this letter off in five minutes; yet it sold at public auction

in 1926 for twelve thousand dollars, and that, by the

way, was more money than Lincoln was able to save

during half a century of hard work. The letter was written

to General Joseph Hooker on April 26, 1863, during

the darkest period of the Civil War. For eighteen

months, Lincoln’s generals had been leading the Union

Army from one tragic defeat to another. Nothing but futile,

stupid human butchery. The nation was appalled.

Thousands of soldiers had deserted from the army, and

en the Republican members of the Senate had revolted

and wanted to force Lincoln out of the White House.

“We are now on the brink of destruction,” Lincoln

said. It appears to me that even the Almighty is

against us. I can hardly see a ray of hope.” Such was the

black sorrow and chaos out of which this letter

came.

I am printing the letter here because it shows how

Lincoln tried to change an obstreperous general when

the very fate of the nation could have depended upon

the general’s action.

This is perhaps the sharpest letter Abe Lincoln wrote

after he became President; yet you will note that he

praised General Hooker before he spoke of his grave

faults.

Yes, they were grave faults, but Lincoln didn’t call

them that. Lincoln was more conservative, more diplomatic.

Lincoln wrote: “There are some things in regard

to which I am not quite satisfied with you.” Talk about

tact! And diplomacy!

Here is the letter addressed to General Hooker:

I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac.

Of course, I have done this upon what appears to me to be

sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know

that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite

satisfied with you.

I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of

course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with

your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence

in yourself, which is a valuable if not an indispensable

quality.

You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds,

does good rather than harm, But I think that during General

Burnside’s command of the army you have taken counsel of

your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in

which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most

meritorious and honorable brother officer.

I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently

saying that both the army and the Government

needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite

of it, that I have given you command.

Only those generals who gain successes can set up as

dictators. What I now ask of you is military success and I

will risk the dictatorship.

The Government will support you to the utmost of its

ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and

will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which

you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their

commander and withholding confidence from him, will

now turn upon you. I shall assist you, as far as I can, to put

it down.

Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could

get any good out of an army while such spirit prevails in it,

and now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with

energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

You are not a Coolidge, a McKinley or a Lincoln. You

want to know whether this philosophy will operate for

you in everyday business contacts. Will it? Let’s see.

Let’s take the case of W. P. Gaw of the Wark Company,

Philadelphia.

The Wark Company had contracted to build and complete

a large office building in Philadelphia by a certain

specified date. Everything was going along well; the

building was almost finished, when suddenly the sub-contractor

making the ornamental bronze work to go on

the exterior of this building declared that he couldn’t

make delivery on schedule. What! An entire building

held up! Heavy penalties! Distressing losses! All because

of one man!

Long-distance telephone calls. Arguments! Heated

conversations! All in vain. Then Mr. Gaw was sent to

New York to beard the bronze lion in his den.

“Do you know you are the only person in Brooklyn

with your name,?" Mr Gaw asked the president of the

subcontracting firm shortly after they were introduced.

The president was surprised. “No, I didn’t know

that.”

“Well,” said Mr. Gaw, “when I got off the train this

morning, I looked in the telephone book to get your

address, and you’re the only person in the Brooklyn

phone book with your name.”

“I never knew that,” the subcontractor said. He

checked the phone book with interest. “Well, it’s an unusual

name,” he said proudly. "My family came from

Holland and settled in New York almost two hundred

years ago. " He continued to talk about his family and his

ancestors for several minutes. When he finished that,

Mr. Gaw complimented him on how large a plant he had

and compared it favorably with a number of similar

plants he had visited. “It is one of the cleanest and neatest

bronze factories I ever saw,” said Gaw.

“I’ve spent a lifetime building up this business,” the

subcontractor said, “and I am rather proud of it. Would

you like to take a look around the factory?”

During this tour of inspection, Mr. Gaw complimented

the other man on his system of fabrication and

told him how and why it seemed superior to those of

some of his competitors. Gaw commented on some unusual

machines, and the subcontractor announced that

he himself had invented those machines. He spent considerable

time showing Gaw how they operated and the

superior work they turned out. He insisted on taking his

visitor to lunch. So far, mind you, not a word had been

said about the real purpose of Gaw’s visit.

After lunch, the subcontractor said, “Now, to get down

to business. Naturally, I know why you’re here. I didn’t

expect that our meeting would be so enjoyable. You can

go back to Philadelphia with my promise that your material

will be fabricated and shipped, even if other orders

have to be delayed.”

Mr. Gaw got everything that he wanted without even

asking for it. The material arrived on time, and the building

was completed on the day the completion contract

specified.

Would this have happened had Mr. Gaw used the

hammer-and-dynamite method generally employed on

such occasions?

Dorothy Wrublewski, a branch manager of the Fort

Monmouth, New Jersey, Federal Credit Union, reported

to one of our classes how she was able to help one of her

employees become more productive.

“We recently hired a young lady as a teller trainee.

Her contact with our customers was very good. She was

accurate and efficient in handling individual transactions.

The problem developed at the end of the day

when it was time to balance out.

“The head teller came to me and strongly suggested

that I fire this woman. ‘She is holding up everyone else

because she is so slow in balancing out. I’ve shown her

over and over, but she can’t get it. She’s got to go.’

“The next day I observed her working quickly and

accurately when handling the normal everyday transactions,

and she was very pleasant with our customers.

“It didn’t take long to discover why she had trouble

balancing out. After the office closed, I went over to talk

with her. She was obviously nervous and upset. I

praised her for being so friendly and outgoing with the

customers and complimented her for the accuracy and

speed used in that work. I then suggested we review the

procedure we use in balancing the cash drawer. Once

she realized I had confidence in her, she easily followed

my suggestions and soon mastered this function. We

have had no problems with her since then.”

Beginning with praise is like the dentist who begins

his work with Novocain. The patient still gets a drilling,

but the Novocain is pain-killing. A leader will use . . .

PRINCIPLE 1

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.

2

HOW TO CRITICIZE-AND NOT BE

HATED FOR IT

Charles Schwab was passing through one of his steel

mills one day at noon when he came across some of his

employees smoking. Immediately above their heads was

a sign that said “No Smoking.” Did Schwab point to the

sign and say, “Can’t you read.? Oh, no not Schwab. He

walked over to the men, handed each one a cigar, and

said, “I’ll appreciate it, boys, if you will smoke these on

the outside.” They knew that he knew that they had

broken a rule - and they admired him because he said

nothing about it and gave them a little present and made

them feel important. Couldn’t keep from loving a man

like that, could you?

John Wanamaker used the same technique. Wanamaker

used to make a tour of his great store in Philadelphia

every day. Once he saw a customer waiting at a

counter. No one was paying the slightest attention to

her. The salespeople? Oh, they were in a huddle at the

far end of the counter laughing and talking among themselves.

Wanamaker didn’t say a word. Quietly slipping

behind the counter, he waited on the woman himself

and then handed the purchase to the salespeople to be

wrapped as he went on his way.

Public officials are often criticized for not being accessible

to their constituents. They are busy people, and

the fault sometimes lies in overprotective assistants who

don’t want to overburden their bosses with too many

visitors. Carl Langford, who has been mayor of Orlando,

Florida, the home of Disney World, for many years, frequently

admonished his staff to allow people to see him.

clamed he had an “open-door” policy; yet the citizens

of his community were blocked by secretaries and

administrators when they called.

Finally the mayor found the solution. He removed the

door from his office! His aides got the message, and the

mayor has had a truly open administration since the day

his door was symbolically thrown away.

Simply changing one three-letter word can often spell

the difference between failure and success in changing

people without giving offense or arousing resentment.

Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise

followed by the word “but” and ending with a critical

statement. For example, in trying to change a child’s

careless attitude toward studies, we might say, “We’re

really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this

term. But if you had worked harder on your algebra, the

results would have been better.”

In this case, Johnnie might feel encouraged until he

heard the word “but.” He might then question the sincerity

of the original praise. To him, the praise seemed

only to be a contrived lead-in to a critical inference of

failure. Credibility would be strained, and we probably

would not achieve our objectives of changing Johnnie’s

attitude toward his studies.

This could be easily overcome by changing the word

"but" to "and." “We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for

raiseing your grades this term, and by continuing the

same conscientious efforts next term, your algebra grade

can be up with all the others.”

Now, Johnnie would accept the praise because there

was no follow-up of an inference of failure. We have

called his attention to the behavior we wished to change

indirectly and the chances are he will try to live up to

our expectations.

Calling attention to one’s mistakes indirectly works

wonders with sensitive people who may resent bitterly

any direct criticism. Marge Jacob of Woonsocket, Rhode

Island, told one of our classes how she convinced some

sloppy construction workers to clean up after themselves

when they were building additions to her house.

For the first few days of the work, when Mrs. Jacob

returned from her job, she noticed that the yard was

strewn with the cut ends of lumber. She didn’t want to

antagonize the builders, because they did excellent

work. So after the workers had gone home, she and her

children picked up and neatly piled all the lumber debris

in a corner. The following morning she called the

foreman to one side and said, “I’m really pleased with

the way the front lawn was left last night; it is nice and

clean and does not offend the neighbors.” From that day

forward the workers picked up and piled the debris to

one side, and the foreman came in each day seeking

approval of the condition the lawn was left in after a

day’s work.

One of the major areas of controversy between members

of the army reserves and their regular army trainers

is haircuts. The reservists consider themselves civilians

(which they are most of the time) and resent having to

cut their hair short.

Master Sergeant Harley Kaiser of the 542nd USAR

School addressed himself to this problem when he was

working with a group of reserve noncommissioned officers.

As an old-time regular-army master sergeant, he

might have been expected to yell at his troops and

threaten them. Instead he chose to make his point indirectly.

“Gentlemen,” he started, “you are leaders. You will

be most effective when you lead by example. You must

be the example for your men to follow. You know what

the army regulations say about haircuts. I am going to

get my hair cut today, although it is still much shorter

than some of yours. You look at yourself in the mirror,

and if you feel you need a haircut to be a good example,

we'll arrange time for you to visit the post barbership.”

The result was predictable. Several of the candidates

did look in the mirror and went to the barbershop that

afternoon and received “regulation” haircuts. Sergeant

Kaiser commented the next morning that he already

could see the development of leadership qualities in

some of the members of the squad.

On March 8, 1887, the eloquent Henry Ward Beecher

died. The following Sunday, Lyman Abbott was invited

to speak in the pulpit left silent by Beecher’s passing.

Eager to do his best, he wrote, rewrote and polished his

sermon with the meticulous care of a Flaubert. Then he

read it to his wife. It was poor - as most written speeches

are. She might have said, if she had had less judgment,

“Lyman, that is terrible. That’ll never do. You’ll put people

to sleep. It reads like an encyclopedia. You ought to

know better than that after all the years you have been

preaching. For heaven’s sake, why don’t you talk like a

human being? Why don’t you act natural? You’ll disgrace

yourself if you ever read that stuff.”

That’s what she might have said. And, if she had, you

know what would have happened. And she knew too.

So, she merely remarked that it would make an excellent

article for the North American Review. In other words,

she praised it and at the same time subtly suggested that

it wouldn’t do as a speech. Lyman Abbott saw the point,

tore up his carefully prepared manuscript and preached

without even using notes.

An effective way to correct others’ mistakes is . . .

PRINCIPLE 2

Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.

3

TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN

MISTAKES FIRST

My niece, Josephine Carnegie, had come to New York

to be my secretary. She was nineteen, had graduated

from high school three years previously, and her business

experience was a trifle more than zero. She became

one of the most proficient secretaries west of Suez, but

in the beginning, she was - well, susceptible to improvement.

One day when I started to criticize her, I

said to myself: “Just a minute, Dale Carnegie; just a

minute. You are twice as old as Josephine. You have had

ten thousand times as much business experience. How

can you possibly expect her to have your viewpoint, your

judgment, your initiative - mediocre though they may

be? And just a minute, Dale, what were you doing at

nineteen? Remember the asinine mistakes and blunders

you made? Remember the time you did this . . . and

that . . . ?"

After thinking the matter over, honestly and impartially,

I concluded that Josephine’s batting average at

nineteen was better than mine had been - and that, I’m

sorry to confess, isn’t paying Josephine much of a compliment.

So after that, when I wanted to call Josephine’s attention

to a mistake, I used to begin by saying, “You have

made a mistake, Josephine, but the Lord knows, it’s no

worse than many I have made. You were not born with

judgment. That comes only with experience, and you are

better than I was at your age. I have been guilty of so

many stupid, silly things myself, I have very little incliion

to criticize you or anyone. But don’t you think it

would have been wiser if you had done so and so?"

It isn’t nearly so difficult to listen to a recital of your

faults if the person criticizing begins by humbly admitting

that he, too, is far from impeccable.

E. G. Dillistone, an engineer in Brandon, Manitoba,

Canada, was having problems with his new secretary.

Letters he dictated were coming to his desk for signature

with two or three spelling mistakes per page. Mr. Dillistone

reported how he handled this:

“Like many engineers, I have not been noted for my

excellent English or spelling. For years I have kept a

little black thumb - index book for words I had trouble

spelling. When it became apparent that merely pointing

out the errors was not going to cause my secretary to do

more proofreading and dictionary work, I resolved to

take another approach. When the next letter came to my

attention that had errors in it, I sat down with the typist

and said:

" ‘Somehow this word doesn’t look right. It’s one of

the words I always have had trouble with. That’s the reason

I started this spelling book of mine. [I opened

the book to the appropriate page.] Yes, here it is. I’m

very conscious of my spelling now because people do

judge us by our letters and misspellings make us look

less professional.

"I don't know whether she copied my system or not,

but since that conversation, her frequency of spelling

errors has been significantly reduced.”

The polished Prince Bernhard von Bülow learned the

sharp necessity of doing this back in 1909. Von Bülow

was then the Imperial Chancellor of Germany, and on

the throne sat  Wilhelm II-Wilhelm, the haughty; Wilhelm

the arrogant; Wilhelm, the last of the German Kaisers,

building an army and navy that he boasted could

whip their weight in wildcats

Then an astonishing thing happened. The Kaiser said

things, incredible things, things that rocked the continent

and started a series of explosions heard around the

world. To make matters infinitely worse, the Kaiser

made silly, egotistical, absurd announcements in public,

he made them while he was a guest in England, and he

gave his royal permission to have them printed in the

Daily Telegraph. For example, he declared that he was

the only German who felt friendly toward the English;

that he was constructing a navy against the menace of

Japan; that he, and he alone, had saved England from

being humbled in the dust by Russia and France; that it

had been his campaign plan that enabled England’s

Lord Roberts to defeat the Boers in South Africa; and so

on and on.

No other such amazing words had ever fallen from the

lips of a European king in peacetime within a hundred

years. The entire continent buzzed with the fury of a

hornet’s nest. England was incensed. German statesmen

were aghast. And in the midst of all this consternation,

the Kaiser became panicky and suggested to Prince von

Bülow, the Imperial Chancellor, that he take the blame.

Yes, he wanted von Bülow to announce that it was all

his responsibility, that he had advised his monarch to

say these incredible things.

“But Your Majesty,” von Bülow protested, “it seems

to me utterly impossible that anybody either in Germany

or England could suppose me capable of having advised

Your Majesty to say any such thing.”

The moment those words were out of von Bülow's

mouth, he realized he had made a grave mistake. The

Kaiser blew up.

“You consider me a donkey,” he shouted, “capable of

blunders you yourself could never have committed!”

Von Bülow's knew that he ought to have praised before

he condemned; but since that was too late, he did the

next best thing. He praised after he had criticized. And

it worked a miracle.

"I'm far from suggesting that,” he answered respectfully.

“Your Majesty surpasses me in manv respects; not

only of course, in naval and military knowledge but

above all, in natural science. I have often listened in

admiration when Your Majesty explained the barometer,

or wireless telegraphy, or the Roentgen rays. I am

shamefully ignorant of all branches of natural science,

have no notion of chemistry or physics, and am quite

incapable of explaining the simplest of natural phenomena.

But,” von Büllow continued, “in compensation, I

possess some historical knowledge and perhaps certain

qualities useful in politics, especially in diplomacy.”

The Kaiser beamed. Von Bulow had praised him. Von

Bülow had exalted him and humbled himself. The Kaiser

could forgive anything after that. “Haven’t I always

told you," he exclaimed with enthusiasm, “that we complete

one another famously? We should stick together,

and we will!"

He shook hands with von Bülow, not once, but several

times. And later in the day he waxed so enthusiastic that

he exclaimed with doubled fists, “If anyone says anything

to me against Prince von Bülow, I shall punch him

in the nose.”

Von Bülow saved himself in time - but, canny diplomat

that he was, he nevertheless had made one error: he

should have begun by talking about his own shortcomings

and Wilhelm’s superiority - not by intimating that

the Kaiser was a half-wit in need of a guardian.

If a few sentences humbling oneself and praising the

other party can turn a haughty, insulted Kaiser into a

staunch friend, imagine what humility and praise can do

for you and me in our daily contacts. Rightfully used,

they will work veritable miracles in human relations.

Admitting one’s own mistakes - even when one hasn’t

corrected them - can help convince somebody to change

his behavior. This was illustrated more recently by Clarence

Zerhusen of Timonium, Maryland, when he discovered

his fifteen-year-old son was experimenting with

cigarettes.

“Naturally, I didn’t want David to smoke,” Mr. Zerhusen

told us, “but his mother and I smoked cigarettes;

we were giving him a bad example all the time. I explained

to Dave how I started smoking at about his age

and how the nicotine had gotten the best of me and now

it was nearly impossible for me to stop. I reminded him

how irritating my cough was and how he had been after

me to give up cigarettes not many years before.

"I didn’t exhort him to stop or make threats or warn

him about their dangers. All I did was point out how I

was hooked on cigarettes and what it had meant to me.

“He thought about it for a while and decided he

wouldn’t smoke until he had graduated from high

school. As the years went by David never did start smoking

and has no intention of ever doing so.

“As a result of that conversation I made the decision

to stop smoking cigarettes myself, and with the support

of my family, I have succeeded.”

A good leader follows this principle:

PRINCIPLE 3

Talk about your own mistakes before

criticizing the other person.

4

NO ONE LIKES TO TAKE ORDERS

I once had the pleasure of dining with Miss Ida Tarbell,

the dean of American biographers. When I told her I was

writing this book, we began discussing this all-important

subject of getting along with people, and she told me

that while she was writing her biography of Owen D.

Young, she interviewed a man who had sat for three

years in the same office with Mr. Young. This man declared

that during all that time he had never heard Owen

D. Young give a direct order to anyone. He always gave

suggestions, not orders. Owen D. Young never said, for

example, “Do this or do that,” or “Don’t do this or don’t

do that.” He would say, “You might consider this,” or

“Do you think that would work?” Frequently he would

say, after he had dictated a letter, “What do you think of

this?” In looking over a letter of one of his assistants, he

would say, “Maybe if we were to phrase it this way it

would be better.” He always gave people the opportunity

to do things themselves; he never told his assistants

to do things; he let them do them, let them learn from

their mistakes.

A technique like that makes it easy for a person to

correct errors. A technique like that saves a person’s

pride and gives him or her a feeling of importance. It

encourages cooperation instead of rebellion.

Resentment caused by a brash order may last a long

time -even if the order was given to correct an obviously

bad situation. Dan Santarelli, a teacher at a vocational

school in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, told one of

our classes how one of his students had blocked the entrance

way to one of the school’s shops by illegally parking

his car in it. One of the other instructors stormed into

the classroom and asked in an arrogant tone, “Whose car

is blocking the driveway?" When the student who

owned the car responded, the instructor screamed:

“Move that car and move it right now, or I’ll wrap a

chain around it and drag it out of there.”

Now that student was wrong. The car should not have

been parked there. But from that day on, not only did

that student resent the instructor’s action, but all the

students in the class did everything they could to give

the instructor a hard time and make his job unpleasant.

How could he have handled it differently? If he had

asked in a friendly way, “Whose car is in the driveway?”

and then suggested that if it were moved, other cars

could get in and out, the student would have gladly

moved it and neither he nor his classmates would have

been upset and resentful.

Asking questions not only makes an order more palatable;

it often stimulates the creativity of the persons

whom you ask. People are more likely to accept an order

if they have had a part in the decision that caused the

order to be issued.

When Ian Macdonald of Johannesburg, South Africa,

the general manager of a small manufacturing plant specializing

in precision machine parts, had the opportunity

to accept a very large order, he was convinced that he

would not meet the promised delivery date. The work

already scheduled in the shop and the short completion

time needed for this order made it seem impossible for

him to accept the order.

Instead of pushing his people to accelerate their work

and rush the order through, he called everybody together,

explained the situation to them, and told them

how much it would mean to the company and to them if

they could make it possible to produce the order on

time. Then he started asking questions:

“Is there anything we can do to handle this order?”

“Can anyone think of different ways to process it

through the shop that will make it possible to take the

order?”

“Is there any way to adjust our hours or personnel

assignments that would help?”

The employees came up with many ideas and insisted

that he take the order. They approached it with a “We

can do it” attitude, and the order was accepted, produced

and delivered on time.

An effective leader will use . . .

PRINCIPLE 4

Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.

5

LET THE OTHER PERSON SAVE FACE

Years ago the General Electric Company was faced with

the delicate task of removing Charles Steinmetz from

the head of a department. Steinmetz, a genius of the first

magnitude when it came to electricity, was a failure as

the head of the calculating department. Yet the company

didn’t dare offend the man. He was indispensable - and

highly sensitive. So they gave him a new title. They

made him Consulting Engineer of the General Electric

Company - a new title for work he was already doing -

and let someone else head up the department.

Steinmetz was happy.

So were the officers of G.E. They had gently maneuvered

their most temperamental star, and they had done

it without a storm - by letting him save face.

Letting one save face! How important, how vitally important

that is! And how few of us ever stop to think of

it! We ride roughshod over the feelings of others, getting

our own way, finding fault, issuing threats, criticizing a

child or an employee in front of others, without even

considering the hurt to the other person’s pride.

Whereas a few minutes’ thought, a considerate word or

two, a genuine understanding of the other person’s attitude,

would go so far toward alleviating the sting!

Let’s remember that the next time we are faced with

the distasteful necessity of discharging or reprimanding

an employee.

“Firing employees is not much fun. Getting fired is

even less fun.” (I’m quoting now from a letter written

me by Marshall A. Granger, a certified public accountant.)

“Our business is mostly seasonal. Therefore we

have to let a lot of people go after the income tax rush is

over.

It’s a byword in our profession that no one enjoys

wielding the ax. Consequently, the custom has developed

of getting it over as soon as possible, and usually

in the following way: ‘Sit down, Mr. Smith. The season’s

over, and we don’t seem to see any more assignments for

you. Of course, you understood you were only employed

for the busy season anyhow, etc., etc.’

“The effect on these people is one of disappointment

and a feeling of being ‘let down.’ Most of them are in the

accounting field for life, and they retain no particular

love for the firm that drops them so casually.

“I recently decided to let our seasonal personnel go

with a little more tact and consideration. So I call each

one in only after carefully thinking over his or her work

during the winter. And I’ve said something like this:

‘Mr. Smith, you’ve done a fine job (if he has). That time

we sent you to Newark, you had a tough assignment.

You were on the spot, but you came through with flying

colors, and we want you to know the firm is proud of

you. You’ve got the stuff - you’re going a long way,

wherever you’re working. This firm believes in you, and

is rooting for you, and we don’t want you to forget it.’

“Effect? The people go away feeling a lot better about

being fired. They don’t feel ‘let down.’ They know if we

had work for them, we’d keep them on. And when we

need them again, they come to us with a keen personal

affection.”

At one session of our course, two class members discussed

the negative effects of faultfinding versus the

positive effects of letting the other person save face.

Fred Clark of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told of an incident

that occurred in his company: “At one of our production

meetings, a vice president was asking very

pointed questions of one of our production supervisors

regarding a production process. His tone of voice was

aggressive and aimed at pointing out faulty performance

on the part of the supervisor. Not wanting to be embarrassed

in front of his peers, the supervisor was evasive

in his responses. This caused the vice president to lose

his temper, berate the supervisor and accuse him of

lying.

“Any working relationship that might have existed

prior to this encounter was destroyed in a few brief moments.

This supervisor, who was basically a good

worker, was useless to our company from that time on. A

few months later he left our firm and went to work for a

competitor, where I understand he is doing a fine job.”

Another class member, Anna Mazzone, related how a

similar incident had occurred at her job - but what a

difference in approach and results! Ms. Mazzone, a marketing

specialist for a food packer, was given her first

major assignment - the test-marketing of a new product.

She told the class: “When the results of the test came in,

I was devastated. I had made a serious error in my planning,

and the entire test had to be done all over again.

To make this worse, I had no time to discuss it with my

boss before the meeting in which I was to make my

report on the project.

“When I was called on to give the report, I was shaking

with fright. I had all I could do to keep from breaking

down, but I resolved I would not cry and have all those

men make remarks about women not being able to handle

a management job because they are too emotional. I

made my report briefly and stated that due to an error I

would repeat the study before the next meeting. I sat

down, expecting my boss to blow up.

“Instead, he thanked me for my work and remarked

that it was not unusual for a person to make an error on

a new project and that he had confidence that the repeat

survey would be accurate and meaningful to the company.

He Assured me, in front of all my colleagues, that

he had faith in me and I knew I had done my best, and

that my lack of experience, not my lack of ability, was

the reason for the failure.

I left that meeting with my head in the air and

with the determination that I would never let that boss

of mine down again.”

Even if we are right and the other person is definitely

wrong, we only destroy ego by causing someone to lose

face. The legendary French aviation pioneer and author

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote: "I have no right to say

or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes.

What matters is not what I think of him, but what he

thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a

crime.”

A real leader will always follow . . .

PRINCIPLE 5

Let the other person save face.

6

HOW TO SPUR PEOPLE ON

TO SUCCESS

Pete Barlow was an old friend of mine. He had a dog-and-

pony act and spent his life traveling with circuses

and vaudeville shows. I loved to watch Pete train new

dogs for his act. I noticed that the moment a dog showed

the slightest improvement, Pete patted and praised

him and gave him meat and made a great to-do about

it.

That’s nothing new. Animal trainers have been using

that same technique for centuries.

Why, I wonder, don’t we use the same common sense

when trying to change people that we use when trying

to change dogs? Why don’t we use meat instead of a

whip? Why don’t we use praise instead of condemnation?

Let us praise even the slightest improvement. That

inspires the other person to keep on improving.

In his book I Ain’t Much, Baby-But I’m All I Got,

the psychologist Jess Lair comments: “Praise is like sunlight

to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and

grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too

ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we

are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine

of praise.” *

* Jess Lair, I Ain’t Much, Baby - But I’m All I Got (Greenwich, Conn.:

Fawcett, 1976), p . 248.

I can look back at my own life and see where a few

words of praise have sharply changed my entire future.

Can’t you say the same thing about your life? History is

replete with striking illustrations of the sheer witchery

raise.

For example, many years ago a boy of ten was working

in a factory in Naples, He longed to be a singer, but his

first teacher discouraged him. “You can’t sing,” he said.

"You haven’t any voice at all. It sounds like the wind in

the shutters.”

But his mother, a poor peasant woman, put her arms

about him and praised him and told him she knew he

could sing, she could already see an improvement, and

she went barefoot in order to save money to pay for his

music lessons. That peasant mother’s praise and encouragement

changed that boy’s life. His name was Enrico

Caruso, and he became the greatest and most

famous opera singer of his age.

In the early nineteenth century, a young man in London

aspired to be a writer. But everything seemed to be

against him. He had never been able to attend school

more than four years. His father had been flung in jail

because he couldn’t pay his debts, and this young man

often knew the pangs of hunger. Finally, he got a job

pasting labels on bottles of blacking in a rat-infested

warehouse, and he slept at night in a dismal attic room

with two other boys - guttersnipes from the slums of

London. He had so little confidence in his ability to

write that he sneaked out and mailed his first manuscript

in the dead of night so nobody would laugh at him. Story

after story was refused. Finally the great day came when

one was accepted. True, he wasn’t paid a shilling for it,

but one editor had praised him. One editor had given

him recognition. He was so thrilled that he wandered

aimlessly around the streets with tears rolling down his

cheeks.

The praise, the recognition, that he received through

getting one story in print, changed his whole life, for if

it hadn’t been for that encouragement, he might have

spent his entire life working in rat-infested factories.

You may have heard of that boy. His name was Charles

Dickens.

Another boy in London made his living as a clerk in a

dry-goods store. He had to get up at five o’clock, sweep

out the store, and slave for fourteen hours a day. It was

sheer drudgery and he despised it. After two years, he

could stand it no longer, so he got up one morning and,

without waiting for breakfast, tramped fifteen miles to

talk to his mother, who was working as a housekeeper.

He was frantic. He pleaded with her. He wept. He

swore he would kill himself if he had to remain in the

shop any longer. Then he wrote a long, pathetic letter to

his old schoolmaster, declaring that he was heartbroken,

that he no longer wanted to live. His old schoolmaster

gave him a little praise and assured him that he really

was very intelligent and fitted for finer things and offered

him a job as a teacher.

That praise changed the future of that boy and made a

lasting impression on the history of English literature.

For that boy went on to write innumerable best-selling

books and made over a million dollars with his pen.

You’ve probably heard of him. His name: H. G. Wells.

Use of praise instead of criticism is the basic concept

of B. F. Skinner’s teachings. This great contemporary

psychologist has shown by experiments with animals

and with humans that when criticism is minimized and

praise emphasized, the good things people do will be

reinforced and the poorer things will atrophy for lack of

attention.

John Ringelspaugh of Rocky Mount, North Carolina,

used this in dealing with his children. It seemed that, as

in so many families, mother and dad’s chief form of communication

with the children was yelling at them. And,

as in so many cases, the children became a little worse

rather than better after each such session - and so did

the parents. There seemed to be no end in sight for this

problem.

Mr. Ringelspaugh determined to use some of the principles

he was learning in our course to solve this situation.

He reported: “We decided to try praise instead of

harping on their faults. It wasn’t easy when all we could

see were the negative things they were doing; it was

really tough to find things to praise. We managed to find

something, and within the first day or two some of the

really upsetting things they were doing quit happening.

Then some of their other faults began to disappear. They

began capitalizing on the praise we were giving them.

They even began going out of their way to do things

right. Neither of us could believe it. Of course, it didn’t

last forever, but the norm reached after things leveled

off was so much better. It was no longer necessary to

react the way we used to. The children were doing far

more right things than wrong ones.” All of this was a

result of praising the slightest improvement in the children

rather than condemning everything they did wrong.

This works on the job too. Keith Roper of Woodland

Hills, California, applied this principle to a situation in

his company. Some material came to him in his print

shop which was of exceptionally high quality. The

printer who had done this job was a new employee who

had been having difficulty adjusting to the job. His supervisor

was upset about what he considered a negative

attitude and was seriously thinking of terminating his

services.

When Mr. Roper was informed of this situation, he

personally went over to the print shop and had a talk

with the young man. He told him how pleased he was

with the work he had just received and pointed out it

was the best work he had seen produced in that shop for

some time. He pointed out exactly why it was superior

and how important the young man’s contribution was to

the company,

Do you think this affected that young printer’s attitude

toward the company? Within days there was a complete

turnabout. He told several of his co-workers about the

conversation and how someone in the company really

appreciated good work. And from that day on, he was a

loyal and dedicated worker.

What Mr. Roper did was not just flatter the young

printer and say “You’re good.” He specifically pointed

out how his work was superior. Because he had singled

out a specific accomplishment, rather than just making

general flattering remarks, his praise became much more

meaningful to the person to whom it was given. Everybody

likes to be praised, but when praise is specific, it

comes across as sincere - not something the other person

may be saying just to make one feel good.

Remember, we all crave appreciation and recognition,

and will do almost anything to get it. But nobody wants

insincerity. Nobody wants flattery.

Let me repeat: The principles taught in this book will

work only when they come from the heart. I am not

advocating a bag of tricks. I am talking about a new way

of life.

Talk about changing people. If you and I will inspire

the people with whom we come in contact to a realization

of the hidden treasures they possess, we can do far

more than change people. We can literally transform

them.

Exaggeration? Then listen to these sage words from

William James, one of the most distinguished psychologists

and philosophers America has ever produced:

Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half

awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical

and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the

human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses

powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.

Yes, you who are reading these lines possess powers

of various sorts which you habitually fail to use; and one

of these powers you are probably not using to the fullest

extent is your magic ability to praise people and inspire

them with a realization of their latent possibilities.

Abilities wither under criticism; they blossom under

encouragement. To become a more effective leader of

people, apply . . .

PRINCIPLE 6

Praise the slightest improvement and praise

every improvement. Be “hearty in your

approbation and lavish in your praise.”

7

GIVE A DOG A GOOD NAME

What do you do when a person who has been a good

worker begins to turn in shoddy work? You can fire him

or her, but that really doesn’t solve anything. You can

berate the worker, but this usually causes resentment.

Henry Henke, a service manager for a large truck dealership

in Lowell, Indiana, had a mechanic whose

work had become less than satisfactory. Instead of

bawling him out or threatening him, Mr. Henke called

him into his office and had a heart-to-heart talk with

him.

“Bill,” he said, “you are a fine mechanic. You have

been in this line of work for a good number of years. You

have repaired many vehicles to the customers’ satisfaction.

In fact, we’ve had a number of compliments about

the good work you have done. Yet, of late, the time you

take to complete each job has been increasing and your

work has not been up to your own old standards. Because

you have been such an outstanding mechanic in

the past, I felt sure you would want to know that I am

not happy with this situation, and perhaps jointly we

could find some way to correct the problem.”

Bill responded that he hadn’t realized he had been

falling down in his duties and assured his boss that the

work he was getting was not out of his range of expertise

and he would try to improve in the future.

Did he do it? You can be sure he did. He once again

became a fast and thorough mechanic. With that reputation

Mr. Henke had given him to live up to, how could

he do anything else but turn out work comparable to that

which he had done in the past.

“The average person,” said Samuel Vauclain, then

president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, "can be

led readily if you have his or her respect and if you show

that you respect that person for some kind of ability.”

In short, if you want to improve a person in a certain

spect, act as though that particular trait were already

one of his or her outstanding characteristics. Shakespeare

said “Assume a virtue, if you have it not.” And it

might be well to assume and state openly that other people

have the virtue you want them to develop. Give

them a fine reputation to live up to, and they will make

prodigious efforts rather than see you disillusioned.

Georgette Leblanc, in her book Souvenirs, My Life

with Maeterlinck, describes the startling transformation

of a humble Belgian Cinderella.

“A servant girl from a neighboring hotel brought my

meals,” she wrote. “She was called ‘Marie the Dish

washer’ because she had started her career as a scullery

assistant. She was a kind of monster, cross-eyed, bandylegged,

poor in flesh and spirit.

“One day, while she was holding my plate of macaroni

in her red hand, I said to her point-blank, ‘Marie, you do

not know what treasures are within you.’

“Accustomed to holding back her emotion, Marie

waited a few moments, not daring to risk the slightest

gesture for fear of a castastrophe. Then she put the dish

on the table, sighed and said ingenuously, ‘Madame, I

would never have believed it.’ She did not doubt, she

did not ask a question. She simply went back to the

kitchen and repeated what I had said, and such is the

force of faith that no one made fun of her. From that day

on, she was even given a certain consideration. But the

most curious change of all occurred in the humble Marie

herself. Believing she was the tabernacle of unseen marvels, she began taking care of her face and body so carefully that her starved youth seemed to bloom and

modestly hide her plainness.

“Two months later, she announced her coming marriage

with the nephew of the chef. ‘I’m going to be a

lady,’ she said, and thanked me. A small phrase had

changed her entire life.”

Georgette Leblanc had given “Marie the Dishwasher”

a reputation to live up to - and that reputation had transformed

her.

Bill Parker, a sales representative for a food company

in Daytona Beach, Florida, was very excited about the

new line of products his company was introducing and

was upset when the manager of a large independent

food market turned down the opportunity to carry it in

his store. Bill brooded all day over this rejection and

decided to return to the store before he went home that

evening and try again.

“Jack,” he said, “since I left this morning I realized I

hadn’t given you the entire picture of our new line, and

I would appreciate some of your time to tell you about

the points I omitted. I have respected the fact that you

are always willing to listen and are big enough to change

your mind when the facts warrant a change.”

Could Jack refuse to give him another hearing? Not

with that reputation to live up to.

One morning Dr. Martin Fitzhugh, a dentist in Dublin,

Ireland, was shocked when one of his patients

pointed out to him that the metal cup holder which she

was using to rinse her mouth was not very clean. True,

the patient drank from the paper cup, not the holder, but

it certainly was not professional to use tarnished equipment.

When the patient left, Dr. Fitzhugh retreated to his

private office to write a note to Bridgit, the charwoman,

who came twice a week to clean his office. He wrote:

My dear Bridgit,

I see you so seldom, I thought I’d take the time to thank

you for the fine job of cleaning you’ve been doing. By the

way, I thought I’d mention that since two hours, twice a

week, is a very limited amount of time, please feel free to

work an extra half hour from time to time if you feel you

need to do those “once-in-a-while” things like polishing

the cup holders and the like. I, of course, will pay you for

the extra time.

“The next day, when I walked into my office,” Dr.

Fitzhugh reported, "My desk had been polished to a

mirror-like finish, as had my chair, which I nearly slid

out of. When I went into the treatment room I found the

shiniest, cleanest chrome-plated cup holder I had ever

seen nestled in its receptacle. I had given my char-woman

a fine reputation to live up to, and because of

this small gesture she outperformed all her past efforts.

How much additional time did she spend on this? That’s

right-none at all ."

There is an old saying: “Give a dog a bad name and

you may as well hang him.” But give him a good name

- and see what happens!

When Mrs. Ruth Hopkins, a fourth-grade teacher in

Brooklyn, New York, looked at her class roster the first

day of school, her excitement and joy of starting a new

term was tinged with anxiety. In her class this year she

would have Tommy T., the school’s most notorious “bad

boy.” His third-grade teacher had constantly complained

about Tommy to colleagues, the principal and

anyone else who would listen. He was not just mischievous;

he caused serious discipline problems in the class,

picked fights with the boys, teased the girls, was fresh to

the teacher, and seemed to get worse as he grew older.

His only redeeming feature was his ability to learn rapidly

and master the-school work easily.

Mrs. Hopkins decided to face the “Tommy problem”

immediately. When she greeted her new students, she

made little comments to each of them: “Rose, that’s a

pretty dress you are wearing,” “Alicia, I hear you draw

beautifully.” When she came to Tommy, she looked him

straight in the eyes and said, “Tommy, I understand you

are a natural leader. I’m going to depend on you to help

me make this class the best class in the fourth grade this

year.” She reinforced this over the first few days by complimenting

Tommy on everything he did and commenting

on how this showed what a good student he was.

With that reputation to live up to, even a nine-year-old

couldn’t let her down - and he didn’t.

If you want to excel in that difficult leadership role of

changing the attitude or behavior of others, use . . .

PRINCIPLE 7

Give the other person a fine reputation to live

up to.

8

MAKE THE FAULT SEEM

EASY TO CORRECT

A bachelor friend of mine, about forty years old, became

engaged, and his fiancée persuaded him to take some

belated dancing lessons. “The Lord knows I needed

dancing lessons,” he confessed as he told me the story,

“for I danced just as I did when I first started twenty

years ago. The first teacher I engaged probably told me

the truth. She said I was all wrong; I would just have to

forget everything and begin all over again. But that took

the heart out of me. I had no incentive to go on. So I quit

her.

“The next teacher may have been lying, but I liked it.

She said nonchalantly that my dancing was a bit old-fashioned

perhaps, but the fundamentals were all right,

and she assured me I wouldn’t have any trouble learning

a few new steps. The first teacher had discouraged me

by emphasizing my mistakes. This new teacher did the

opposite. She kept praising the things I did right and

minimizing my errors. ‘You have a natural sense of

rhythm,’ she assured me. ‘You really are a natural-born

dancer.’ Now my common sense tells me that I always

have been and always will be a fourth-rate dancer; yet,

deep in my heart, I still like to think that maybe she

meant it. To be sure, I was paying her to say it; but why

bring that up?

“At any rate, I know I am a better dancer than I would

have been if she hadn’t told me I had a natural sense of

rhythm. That encouraged me. That gave me hope. That

made me want to improve.”

Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he

or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for

it, and is doing it all wrong, and you have destroyed

almost every incentive to try to improve. But use the

opposite technique - be liberal with your encouragement,

make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person

know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that

he has an undeveloped flair for it - and he will practice

until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.

Lowell Thomas, a superb artist in human relations,

used this technique, He gave you confidence, inspired

you with courage and faith. For example, I spent a weekend

with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas; and on Saturday night,

I was asked to sit in on a friendly bridge game before a

roaring fire. Bridge? Oh, no! No! No! Not me. I knew

nothing about it. The game had always been a black

mystery to me, No! No! Impossible!

“Why, Dale, it is no trick at all,” Lowell replied.

“There is nothing to bridge except memory and judgment.

You’ve written articles on memory. Bridge will be

a cinch for you. It’s right up your alley.”

And presto, almost before I realized what I was doing,

I found myself for the first time at a bridge table. All

because I was told I had a natural flair for it and the

game was made to seem easy.

Speaking of bridge reminds me of Ely Culbertson,

whose books on bridge have been translated into a

dozen languages and have sold more than a million copies.

Yet he told me he never would have made a profession

out of the game if a certain young woman hadn’t

assured him he had a flair for it.

When he came to America in 1922, he tried to get a job

teaching in philosophy and sociology, but he couldn’t.

Then he tried selling coal, and he failed at that

Then he tried selling coffee, and he failed at that, too.

He had played some bridge, but it had never occurred

to him in those days that someday he would teach it. He

was not only a poor card player, but he was also very

stubborn. He asked so many questions and held so many

post-mortem examinations that no one wanted to play

with him.

Then he met a pretty bridge teacher, Josephine Dillon,

fell in love and married her. She noticed how carefully

he analyzed his cards and persuaded him that he

was a potential genius at the card table. It was that encouragement

and that alone, Culbertson told me, that

caused him to make a profession of bridge.

Clarence M. Jones, one of the instructors of our course

in Cincinnati, Ohio, told how encouragement and making

faults seem easy to correct completely changed the

life of his son.

“In 1970 my son David, who was then fifteen years

old, came to live with me in Cincinnati. He had led a

rough life. In 1958 his head was cut open in a car accident,

leaving a very bad scar on his forehead. In 1960

his mother and I were divorced and he moved to Dallas,

Texas, with his mother. Until he was fifteen he had spent

most of his school years in special classes for slow learners

in the Dallas school system. Possibly because of the

scar, school administrators had decided he was brain-injured

and could not function at a normal level. He was

two years behind his age group, so he was only in the

seventh grade. Yet he did not know his multiplication

tables, added on his fingers and could barely read.

“There was one positive point. He loved to work on

radio and TV sets. He wanted to become a TV technician.

I encouraged this and pointed out that he needed

math to qualify for the training. I decided to help him

become proficient in this subject. We obtained four sets

of flash cards: multiplication, division, addition and subtraction.

As we went through the cards, we put the correct

answers in a discard stack. When David missed one,

I gave him the correct answer and then put the card in

the repeat stack until there were no cards left. I made a

big deal out of each card he got right, particularly if he

had missed it previously. Each night we would go

through the repeat stack until there were no cards left.

Each night we timed the exercise with a stop watch. I

promised him that when he could get all the cards correct

in eight minutes with no incorrect answers, we

would quit doing it every night. This seemed an impossible

goal to David. The first night it took 52 minutes,

the second night, 48, then 45, 44, 41 then under 40 minutes.

We celebrated each reduction. I’d call in my wife,

and we would both hug him and we’d all dance a jig. At

the end of the month he was doing all the cards perfectly

in less than eight minutes. When he made a small improvement

he would ask to do it again. He had made the

fantastic discovery that learning was easy and fun.

“Naturally his grades in algebra took a jump. It is

amazing how much easier algebra is when you can multiply.

He astonished himself by bringing home a B in

math. That had never happened before. Other changes

came with almost unbelievable rapidity. His reading improved

rapidly, and he began to use his natural talents

in drawing. Later in the school year his science teacher

assigned him to develop an exhibit. He chose to develop

a highly complex series of models to demonstrate the

effect of levers. It required skill not only in drawing and

model making but in applied mathematics. The exhibit

took first prize in his school’s science fair and was entered

in the city competition and won third prize for the

entire city of Cincinnati.

“That did it. Here was a kid who had flunked two

grades, who had been told he was ‘brain-damaged,’ who

had been called ‘Frankenstein’ by his classmates and

told his brains must have leaked out of the cut on his

head. Suddenly he discovered he could really learn and

accomplish things. The result? From the last quarter of

the eighth grade all the way through high school, he

never failed to make the honor roll; in high school he

was elected to the national honor society. Once he found

learning was easy, his whole life changed.”

If you want to help others to improve, remember . . .

PRINCIPLE 8

Use encouragement. Make the fault seem

easy to correct.

9

MAKING PEOPLE GLAD TO DO

WHAT YOU WANT

Back in 1915, America was aghast. For more than a year,

the nations of Europe had been slaughtering one another

on a scale never before dreamed of in all the

bloody annals of mankind. Could peace be brought

about? No one knew. But Woodrow Wilson was determined

to try. He would send a personal representative,

a peace emissary, to counsel with the warlords of Europe.

William Jennings Bryan, secretary of state, Bryan, the

peace advocate, longed to go. He saw a chance to perform

a great service and make his name immortal. But

Wilson appointed another man, his intimate friend and

advisor Colonel Edward M. House; and it was House’s

thorny task to break the unwelcome news to Bryan without

giving him offense.

“Bryan was distinctly disappointed when he heard I

was to go to Europe as the peace emissary,” Colonel

House records in his diary. “He said he had planned to

do this himself . . .

"I replied that the President thought it would be unwise

for anyone to do this officially, and that his going

would attract a great deal of attention and people

would wonder why he was there. . . ."

You see the intimation? House practically told Bryan

that he was too important for the job - and Bryan was

satisfied.

Colonel House, adroit, experienced in the ways of the

world, was following one of the important rules of

human relations: Always make the other person happy

about doing the thing you suggest.

Woodrow Wilson followed that policy even when inviting

William Gibbs McAdoo to become a member of

his cabinet. That was the highest honor he could confer

upon anyone, and yet Wilson extended the invitation in

such a way as to make McAdoo feel doubly important.

Here is the story in McAdoo's own words: “He [Wilson]

said that he was making up his cabinet and that he would

be very glad if I would accept a place in it as Secretary

of the Treasury. He had a delightful way of putting

things; he created the impression that by accepting this

great honor I would be doing him a favor.”

Unfortunately, Wilson didn’t always employ such taut.

If he had, history might have been different. For example,

Wilson didn’t make the Senate and the Republican

Party happy by entering the United States in the League

of Nations. Wilson refused to take such prominent Republican

leaders as Elihu Root or Charles Evans Hughes

or Henry Cabot Lodge to the peace conference with

him. Instead, he took along unknown men from his own

party. He snubbed the Republicans, refused to let them

feel that the League was their idea as well as his, refused

to let them have a finger in the pie; and, as a result of

this crude handling of human relations, wrecked his own

career, ruined his health, shortened his life, caused

America to stay out of the League, and altered the history

of the world.

Statesmen and diplomats aren’t the only ones who use

this make-a-person-happy-yo-do-things-you-want-them-to-

do approach. Dale O. Ferrier of Fort Wayne, Indiana,

told how he encouraged one of his young children to

willingly do the chore he was assigned.

“One of Jeff’s chores was to pick up pears from under

the pear tree so the person who was mowing underneath

wouldn’t have to stop to pick them up. He didn’t like

this chore, and frequently it was either not done at all or

it was done so poorly that the mower had to stop and

pick up several pears that he had missed. Rather than

have an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation about it, one

day I said to him: ‘Jeff, I’ll make a deal with you. For

every bushel basket full of pears you pick up, I’ll pay

you one dollar. But after you are finished, for every pear

I find left in the yard, I’ll take away a dollar. How does

that sound?’ As you would expect, he not only picked up

all of the pears, but I had to keep an eye on him to see

that he didn’t pull a few off the trees to fill up some of

the baskets.”

I knew a man who had to refuse many invitations to

speak, invitations extended by friends, invitations coming

from people to whom he was obligated; and yet he

did it so adroitly that the other person was at least contented

with his refusal. How did he do it? Not by merely

talking about the fact that he was too busy and too-this

and too-that. No, after expressing his appreciation of the

invitation and regretting his inability to accept it, he suggested

a substitute speaker. In other words, he didn’t

give the other person any time to feel unhappy about the

refusal, He immediately changed the other person’s

thoughts to some other speaker who could accept the

invitation.

Gunter Schmidt, who took our course in West Germany,

told of an employee in the food store he managed

who was negligent about putting the proper price tags

on the shelves where the items were displayed. This

caused confusion and customer complaints. Reminders,

admonitions, confrontations, with her about this did not

do much good. Finally, Mr. Schmidt called her into his

office and told her he was appointing her Supervisor of

Price Tag Posting for the entire store and she would be

responsible for keeping all of the shelves properly

tagged. This new responsibility and title changed her

attitude completely, and she fulfiled her duties satisfactorily

from then on.

Childish? Perhaps. But that is what they said to Napoleon

when he created the Legion of Honor and distributed

15,000 crosses to his soldiers and made

eighteen of his generals “Marshals of France” and called

his troops the “Grand Army.” Napoleon was criticized

for giving “toys” to war-hardened veterans, and Napoleon

replied, “Men are ruled by toys.”

This technique of giving titles and authority worked

for Napoleon and it will work for you. For example, a

friend of mine, Mrs. Ernest Gent of Scarsdale, New

York, was troubled by boys running across and destroying

her lawn. She tried criticism. She tried coaxing. Neither

worked. Then she tried giving the worst sinner in

the gang a title and a feeling of authority. She made him

her “detective” and put him in charge of keeping all

trespassers off her lawn. That solved her problem. Her

“detective” built a bonfire in the backyard, heated an

iron red hot, and threatened to brand any boy who

stepped on the lawn.

The effective leader should keep the following guidelines

in mind when it is necessary to change attitudes or

behavior:

1. Be sincere. Do not promise anything that you

cannot deliver. Forget about the benefits to yourself

and concentrate on the benefits to the other person.

2. Know exactly what it is you want the other person

to do.

3. Be empathetic. Ask yourself what is it the other

person really wants.

4. Consider the benefits that person will receive

from doing what you suggest.

5. Match those benefits to the other person’s wants.

6. When you make your request, put it in a form

that will convey to the other person the idea that he

personally will benefit. We could give a curt order like

this: " John, we have customers coming in tomorrow

and I need the stockroom cleaned out. So sweep it out,

put the stock in neat piles on the shelves and polish

the counter.” Or we could express the same idea by

showing John the benefits he will get from doing the

task: “John, we have a job that should be completed

right away. If it is done now, we won’t be faced with

it later. I am bringing some customers in tomorrow to

show our facilities. I would like to show them the

stockroom, but it is in poor shape. If you could sweep

it out, put the stock in neat piles on the shelves, and

polish the counter, it would make us look efficient and

you will have done your part to provide a good company

image.”

Will John be happy about doing what you suggest?

Probably not very happy, but happier than if you had not

pointed out the benefits. Assuming you know that John

has pride in the way his stockroom looks and is interested

in contributing to the company image, he will be

more likely to be cooperative. It also will have been

pointed out to John that the job would have to be done

eventually and by doing it now, he won’t be faced with

it later.

It is naïve to believe you will always get a favorable

reaction from other persons when you use these approaches,

but the experience of most people shows that

you are more likely to change attitudes this way than by

not using these principles - and if you increase your successes

by even a mere 10 percent, you have become 10

percent more effective as a leader than you were before

- and that is your benefit.

People are more likely to do what you would like them

to do when you use . . .

PRINCIPLE 9

Make the other person happy about doing

the thing you suggest.

In a Nutshell

BE A LEADER

A leader’s job often includes changing your people’s

attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish

this:

PRINCIPLE 1

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.

PRINCIPLE 2

Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.

PRINCIPLE 3

Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other

person.

PRINCIPLE 4

Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.

PRINCIPLE 5

Let the other person save face.

PRINCIPLE 6

Praise the slightest improvement and praise every

improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in

your praise.”

PRINCIPLE 7

Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.

PRINCIPLE 8

Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.

PRINCIPLE 9

Make the other person happy about doing the thing you

suggest.

A Shortcut to

Distinction

by Lowell Thomas

This biographical information about Dale Carnegie was

written as an introduction to the original edition of

How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is reprinted

in this edition to give the readers additional

background on Dale Carnegie.

It was a cold January night in 1935, but the weather

couldn’t keep them away. Two thousand five hundred

men and women thronged into the grand ballroom of the

Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. Every available seat

was filled by half-past seven. At eight o’clock, the eager

crowd was still pouring in. The spacious balcony was

soon jammed. Presently even standing space was at a

premium, and hundreds of people, tired after navigating

a day in business, stood up for an hour and a half that

night to witness - what?

A fashion show?

A six-day bicycle race or a personal appearance by

Clark Gable?

No. These people had been lured there by a newspaper

ad. Two evenings previously, they had seen this

full-page announcement in the New York Sun staring

them in the face:

Learn to Speak Effectively

Prepare for Leadership

Old stuff? Yes, but believe it or not, in the most sophisticated

town on earth, during a depression with 20

percent of the population on relief, twenty-five hundred

people had left their homes and hustled to the hotel in

response to that ad.

The people who responded were of the upper economic

strata - executives, employers and professionals.

These men and women had come to hear the opening

gun of an ultramodern, ultrapractical course in “Effective

Speaking and Influencing Men in Business”- a

course given by the Dale Carnegie Institute of Effective

Speaking and Human Relations.

Why were they there, these twenty-five hundred business

men and women?

Because of a sudden hunger for more education because

of the depression?

Apparently not, for this same course had been playing

to packed houses in New York City every season for the

preceding twenty-four years. During that time, more

than fifteen thousand business and professional people

had been trained by Dale Carnegie. Even large, skeptical,

conservative organizations such as the Westinghouse

Electric Company, the McGraw-Hill Publishing

Company, the Brooklyn Union Gas Company, the

Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the American Institute

of Electrical Engineers and the New York Telephone

Company have had this training conducted in

their own offices for the benefit of their members and

executives.

The fact that these people, ten or twenty years after

leaving grade school, high school or college, come and

take this training is a glaring commentary on the shocking

deficiencies of our educational system.

What do adults really want to study?  That is an important

question; and in order to answer it, the University

of Chicago, the American Association for Adult Education,

and the United Y.M.C.A. Schools made a survey

over a two-year period.

That survey revealed that the prime interest of adults

is health. It also revealed that their second interest is in

developing skill in human relationships - they want to

learn the technique of getting along with and influencing

other people. They don’t want to become public

speakers, and they don’t want to listen to a lot of high

sounding talk about psychology; they want suggestions

they can use immediately in business, in social contacts

and in the home.

So that was what adults wanted to study, was it?

“All right,” said the people making the survey. "Fine.

If that is what they want, we’ll give it to them.”

Looking around for a textbook, they discovered that

no working manual had ever been written to help people

solve their daily problems in human relationships.

Here was a fine kettle of fish! For hundreds of years,

learned volumes had been written on Greek and Latin

and higher mathematics - topics about which the average

adult doesn’t give two hoots. But on the one subject

on which he has a thirst for knowledge, a veritable passion

for guidance and help - nothing!

This explained the presence of twenty-five hundred

eager adults crowding into the grand ballroom of the

Hotel Pennsylvania in response to a newspaper advertisement.

Here, apparently, at last was the thing for

which they had long been seeking.

Back in high school and college, they had pored over

books, believing that knowledge alone was the open sesame

to financial - and professional rewards.

But a few years in the rough-and-tumble of business

and professional life had brought sharp dissillusionment.

They had seen some of the most important business

successes won by men who possessed, in addition

to their knowledge, the ability to talk well, to win people

to their way of thinking, and to "sell" themselves and

their ideas.

They soon discovered that if one aspired to wear the

captain’s cap and navigate the ship of business, personality

and the ability to talk are more important than a

knowledge of Latin verbs or a sheepskin from Harvard.

The advertisement in the New York Sun promised that

the meeting would be highly entertaining. It was.

Eighteen people who had taken the course were marshaled

in front of the loudspeaker - and fifteen of them

were given precisely seventy-five seconds each to tell

his or her story. Only seventy-five seconds of talk, then

“bang” went the gavel, and the chairman shouted,

“Time! Next speaker!”

The affair moved with the speed of a herd of buffalo

thundering across the plains. Spectators stood for an

hour and a half to watch the performance.

The speakers were a cross section of life: several sales

representatives, a chain store executive, a baker, the

president of a trade association, two bankers, an insurance

agent, an accountant, a dentist, an architect, a druggist

who had come from Indianapolis to New York to

take the course, a lawyer who had come from Havana in

order to prepare himself to give one important three-minute

speech.

The first speaker bore the Gaelic name Patrick J.

O'Haire. Born in Ireland, he attended school for only

four years, drifted to America, worked as a mechanic,

then as a chauffeur.

Now, however, he was forty, he had a growing family

and needed more money, so he tried selling trucks. Suffering

from an inferiority complex that, as he put it, was

eating his heart out, he had to walk up and down in front

of an office half a dozen times before he could summon

up enough courage to open the door. He was so discouraged

as a salesman that he was thinking of going back to

working with his hands in a machine shop, when one

day he received a letter inviting him to an organization

meeting of the Dale Carnegie Course in Effective

Speaking.

He didn’t want to attend. He feared he would have to

associate with a lot of college graduates, that he would

be out of place.

His despairing wife insisted that he go, saying, “It

may do you some good, Pat. God knows you need it.”

He went down to the place where the meeting was to be

held and stood on the sidewalk for five minutes before

he could generate enough self-confidence to enter the

room.

The first few times he tried to speak in front of the

others, he was dizzy with fear. But as the weeks drifted

by, he lost all fear of audiences and soon found that he

loved to talk - the bigger the crowd, the better. And he

also lost his fear of individuals and of his superiors. He

presented his ideas to them, and soon he had been advanced

into the sales department. He had become a valued

and much liked member of his company. This night,

in the Hotel Pennsylvania, Patrick O'Haire stood in front

of twenty-five hundred people and told a gay, rollicking

story of his achievements. Wave after wave of laughter

swept over the audience. Few professional speakers

could have equaled his performance.

The next speaker, Godfrey Meyer, was a gray-headed

banker, the father of eleven children. The first time he

had attempted to speak in class, he was literally struck

dumb. His mind refused to function. His story is a vivid

illustration of how leadership gravitates to the person

who can talk.

He worked on Wall Street, and for twenty-five years

he had been living in Clifton, New Jersey. During that

time, he had taken no active part in community affairs

and knew perhaps five hundred people.

Shortly after he had enrolled in the Carnegie course,

he received his tax bill and was infuriated by what he

considered unjust charges. Ordinarily, he would have

sat at home and fumed, or he would have taken it out in

grousing to his neighbors. But instead, he put on his hat

that night, walked into the town meeting, and blew off

steam in public.

As a result of that talk of indignation, the citizens of

Clifton, New Jersey, urged him to run for the town council.

So for weeks he went from one meeting to another,

denouncing waste and municipal extravagance.

There were ninety-six candidates in the field. When

the ballots were counted, lo, Godfrey Meyer’s name led

all the rest. Almost overnight, he had become a public

figure among the forty thousand people in his community.

As a result of his talks, he made eighty times more

friends in six weeks than he had been able to previously

in twenty-five years.

And his salary as councilman meant that he got a return

of 1,000 percent a year on his investment in the

Carnegie course.

The third speaker, the head of a large national association

of food manufacturers, told how he had been unable

to stand up and express his ideas at meetings of a

board of directors.

As a result of learning to think on his feet, two astonishing

things happened. He was soon made president of

his association, and in that capacity, he was obliged to

address meetings all over the United States. Excerpts

from his talks were put on the Associated Press wires

and printed in newspapers and trade magazines

throughout the country.

In two years, after learning to speak more effectively,

he received more free publicity for his company and its

products than he had been able to get previously with a

quarter of a million dollars spent in direct advertising.

This speaker admitted that he had formerly hesitated to

telephone some of the more important business executives

in Manhattan and invite them to lunch with him.

But as a result of the prestige he had acquired by his

talks, these same people telephoned him and invited

him to lunch and apologized to him for encroaching on

his time.

The ability to speak is a shortcut to distinction. It puts

a person in the limelight, raises one head and shoulders

above the crowd. And the person who can speak acceptably

is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion

to what he or she really possesses.

A movement for adult education has been sweeping

over the nation; and the most spectacular force in that

movement was Dale Carnegie, a man who listened to

and critiqued more talks by adults than has any other

man in captivity. According to a cartoon by "Believe-It-or-

Not” Ripley, he had criticized 150,000 speeches. If

that grand total doesn’t impress you, remember that it

meant one talk for almost every day that has passed since

Columbus discovered America. Or, to put it in other

words, if all the people who had spoken before him had

used only three minutes and had appeared before him

in succession, it would have taken ten months, listening

day and night, to hear them all.

Dale Carnegie’s own career, filled with sharp contrasts,

was a striking example of what a person can accomplish

when obsessed with an original idea and afire

with enthusiasm.

Born on a Missouri farm ten miles from a railway, he

never saw a streetcar until he was twelve years old; yet

by the time he was forty-six, he was familiar with the far-flung

corners of the earth, everywhere from Hong Kong

to Hammerfest; and, at one time, he approached closer

to the North Pole than Admiral Byrd’s headquarters at

Little America was to the South Pole.

This Missouri lad who had once picked strawberries

and cut cockleburs for five cents an hour became the

highly paid trainer of the executives of large corporations

in the art of self-expression.

This erstwhile cowboy who had once punched cattle

and branded calves and ridden fences out in western

South Dakota later went to London to put on shows

under the patronage of the royal family.

This chap who was a total failure the first half-dozen

times he tried to speak in public later became my personal

manager. Much of my success has been due to

training under Dale Carnegie.

Young Carnegie had to struggle for an education, for

hard luck was always battering away at the old farm in

northwest Missouri with a flying tackle and a body slam.

Year after year, the “102” River rose and drowned the

corn and swept away the hay. Season after season, the

fat hogs sickened and died from cholera, the bottom fell

out of the market for cattle and mules, and the bank

threatened to foreclose the mortgage.

Sick with discouragement, the family sold out and

bought another farm near the State Teachers’ College at

Warrensburg, Missouri. Board and room could be had in

town for a dollar a day, but young Carnegie couldn’t

afford it. So he stayed on the farm and commuted on

horseback three miles to college each day. At home, he

milked the cows, cut the wood, fed the hogs, and studied

his Latin verbs by the light of a coal-oil lamp until his

eyes blurred and he began to nod.

Even when he got to bed at midnight, he set the alarm

for three o’clock. His father bred pedigreed Duroc-Jersey

hogs - and there was danger, during the bitter

cold nights, that the young pigs would freeze to death;

so they were put in a basket, covered with a gunny sack,

and set behind the kitchen stove. True to their nature,

the pigs demanded a hot meal at 3 A.M. So when the

alarm went off, Dale Carnegie crawled out of the blankets,

took the basket of pigs out to their mother, waited

for them to nurse, and then brought them back to the

warmth of the kitchen stove.

There were six hundred students in State Teachers’

College, and Dale Carnegie was one of the isolated half-dozen

who couldn’t afford to board in town. He was

ashamed of the poverty that made it necessary for him to

ride back to the farm and milk the cows every night. He

was ashamed of his coat, which was too tight, and his

trousers, which were too short. Rapidly developing an

inferiority complex, he looked about for some shortcut

to distinction. He soon saw that there were certain

groups in college that enjoyed influence and prestige - the

football and baseball players and the chaps who won

the debating and public-speaking contests.

Realizing that he had no flair for athletics, he decided

to win one of the speaking contests. He spent months

preparing his talks. He practiced as he sat in the saddle

galloping to college and back; he practiced his speeches

as he milked the cows; and then he mounted a bale of

hay in the barn and with great gusto and gestures harangued

the frightened pigeons about the issues of the

day.

But in spite of all his earnestness and preparation, he

met with defeat after defeat. He was eighteen at the time

- sensitive and proud. He became so discouraged, so

depressed, that he even thought of suicide. And then

suddenly he began to win, not one contest, but every

speaking contest in college.

Other students pleaded with him to train them; and

they won also.

After graduating from college, he started selling

correspondence courses to the ranchers among the sand

hills of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. In spite

of all his boundless energy and enthusiasm, he couldn’t

make the grade. He became so discouraged that he went

to his hotel room in Alliance, Nebraska, in the middle of

the day, threw himself across the bed, and wept in despair.

He longed to go back to college, he longed to

retreat from the harsh battle of life; but he couldn’t. So

he resolved to go to Omaha and get another job. He

didn’t have the money for a railroad ticket, so he traveled

on a freight train, feeding and watering two carloads of

wild horses in return for his passage, After landing in

south Omaha, he got a job selling bacon and soap and

lard for Armour and Company. His territory was up

among the Badlands and the cow and Indian country of

western South Dakota. He covered his territory by

freight train and stage coach and horseback and slept in

pioneer hotels where the only partition between the

rooms was a sheet of muslin. He studied books on salesmanship,

rode bucking bronchos, played poker with the

Indians, and learned how to collect money. And when,

for example, an inland storekeeper couldn’t pay cash for

the bacon and hams he had ordered, Dale Carnegie

would take a dozen pairs of shoes off his shelf, sell the

shoes to the railroad men, and forward the receipts to

Armour and Company.

He would often ride a freight train a hundred miles a

day. When the train stopped to unload freight, he would

dash uptown, see three or four merchants, get his orders;

and when the whistle blew, he would dash down the

street again lickety-split and swing onto the train while

it was moving.

Within two years, he had taken an unproductive territory

that had stood in the twenty-fifth place and had

boosted it to first place among all the twenty-nine car

routes leading out of south Omaha. Armour and Company

offered to promote him, saying: “You have

achieved what seemed impossible.” But he refused the

promotion and resigned, went to New York, studied at

the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and toured the

country, playing the role of Dr. Hartley in Polly of the

Circus.

He would never be a Booth or a Barrymore. He had

the good sense to recognize that, So back he went to

sales work, selling automobiles and trucks for the Packard

Motor Car Company.

He knew nothing about machinery and cared nothing

about it. Dreadfully unhappy, he had to scourge himself

to his task each day. He longed to have time to study, to

write the books he had dreamed about writing back in

college. So he resigned. He was going to spend his days

writing stories and novels and support himself by teaching

in a night school.

Teaching what? As he looked back and evaluated his

college work, he saw that his training in public speaking

had done more to give him confidence, courage, poise

and the ability to meet and deal with people in business

than had all the rest of his college courses put together,

So he urged the Y.M.C.A. schools in New York to give

him a chance to conduct courses in public speaking for

people in business.

What? Make orators out of business people? Absurd.

The Y.M.C.A. people knew. They had tried such courses

-and they had always failed. When they refused to pay

him a salary of two dollars a night, he agreed to teach on

a commission basis and take a percentage of the net profits

-if there were any profits to take. And inside of three

years they were paying him thirty dollars a night on that

basis - instead of two.

The course grew. Other "Ys" heard of it, then other

cities. Dale Carnegie soon became a glorified circuit

rider covering New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and

later London and Paris. All the textbooks were too academic

and impractical for the business people who

flocked to his courses. Because of this he wrote his own

book entitled Public Speaking and Influencing Men in

Business. It became the official text of all the Y.M.C.A.s

as well as of the American Bankers’ Association and the

National Credit Men’s Association.

Dale Carnegie claimed that all people can talk when

they get mad. He said that if you hit the most ignorant

man in town on the jaw and knock him down, he would

get on his feet and talk with an eloquence, heat and

emphasis that would have rivaled that world famous orator

William Jennings Bryan at the height of his career.

He claimed that almost any person can speak acceptably

in public if he or she has self-confidence and an idea

that is boiling and stewing within.

The way to develop self-confidence, he said, is to do

the thing you fear to do and get a record of successful

experiences behind you. So he forced each class member

to talk at every session of the course. The audience

is sympathetic. They are all in the same boat; and, by

constant practice, they develop a courage, confidence

and enthusiasm that carry over into their private speaking.

Dale Carnegie would tell you that he made a living all

these years, not by teaching public speaking - that was

incidental. His main job was to help people conquer

their fears and develop courage.

He started out at first to conduct merely a course in

public speaking, but the students who came were business

men and women. Many of them hadn’t seen the

inside of a classroom in thirty years. Most of them were

paying their tuition on the installment plan. They

wanted results and they wanted them quick - results

that they could use the next day in business interviews

and in speaking before groups.

So he was forced to be swift and practical. Consequently,

he developed a system of training that is

unique - a striking combination of public speaking,

salesmanship, human relations and applied psychology.

A slave to no hard-and-fast rules, he developed a

course that is as real as the measles and twice as much

fun.

When the classes terminated, the graduates formed

clubs of their own and continued to meet fortnightly for

years afterward. One group of nineteen in Philadelphia

met twice a month during the winter season for seventeen

years. Class members frequently travel fifty or a

hundred miles to attend classes. One student used to

commute each week from Chicago to New York.

Professor William James of Harvard used to say that

the average person develops only 10 percent of his latent

mental ability. Dale Carnegie, by helping business men

and women to develop their latent possibilities, created

one of the most significant movements in adult education

LOWELL THOMAS

1936

THE DALE CARNEGIE COURSES

THE DALE CARNEGIE COURSE IN

EFFECTIVE SPEAKING AND HUMAN RELATIONS

Probably the most popular program ever offered in developing

better interpersonal relations, this course is designed to

develop self-confidence, the ability to get along with others

in one’s family and in social and occupational relations, to

increase ability to communicate ideas, to build positive attitudes,

increase enthusiasm, reduce tension and anxiety and to

increase one’s enjoyment of life. Not only do many thousands

of individuals enroll in this course each year, but it has been

used by companies, government agencies and other organizations

to develop the potential of their people.

THE DALE CARNEGIE SALES COURSE

This in-depth participative program is designed to help persons

currently engaged in sales or sales management to become

more professional and successful in their careers. It

covers the vital but little understood element of customer motivation

and its application to any product or service that is

being sold. Salespeople are put on the firing line of actual

sales situations and learn to use motivational selling methods.

THE DALE CARNEGIE MANAGEMENT SEMINAR

This program sets forth the Dale Carnegie principles of

human relations and applies them to business. The importance

of balancing results attained with the development of

people-potential to assure long-term growth and profit is highlighted.

Participants construct their own position descriptions

and learn how to stimulate creativity in their people, motivate,

delegate and communicate, as well as solve problems and

make decisions in a systematic manner. Application of these

principles to each person’s own job is emphasized.

If you are interested in any of these courses, details on

when and where they are offered in your community can

be obtained by writing to:

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc.

1475 Franklin Ave.

Garden City, N.Y. 11530

OTHER BOOKS

How to Stop Worrying & Start Living by Dale Carnegie

A practical, concrete, easy-to-read, inspiring handbook on

conquering work and fears.

Simon & Schuster, 1230 Ave. of the Americas, N.Y.C

10020

Lincoln the Unknown by Dale Carnegie

A fascinating story of little-known facts and insights about

this great American.

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., 1475 Franklin Ave.,

Garden City, N.Y. 11530

The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Dorothy

Carnegie

Principles and practical implementation of expressing one-self

before groups of people.

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., 1475 Franklin Ave.,

Garden City, N.Y. 11530

The Dale Carnegie Scrapbook edited by Dorothy Carnegie

A collection of quotations that Dale Carnegie found inspirational

interspersed with nuggets from his own writings.

Simon & Schuster, 1230 Ave. of the Americas, N.Y.C.

10020

Don’t Grow Old-Grow Up by Dorothy Carnegie

How to stay young in spirit as you grow older.

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., 1475 Franklin Ave.,

Garden City, N.Y. 11530

Managing Through People by Dale Carnegie & Associates,

Inc

The application of Dale Carnegie’s principles of good

human relations to effective management.

Simon & Schuster, 1230 Ave. of the Americas, N.Y.C.

10020

Enrich Your Life, The Dale Carnegie Way by Arthur R. Pell,

Ph.D.

An inspirational and exciting narrative. Tells how people

from all walks of life have applied the principles that Dale

Carnegie and his successors have taught and, as a result,

have made their lives more satisfactory and fulfilling.

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., 1475 Franklin Ave.,

Garden City, N.Y. 11530