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

by Donna Dale Carnegie and Dorothy Carnegie

Dorothy Carnegie

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

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

“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.

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,

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.

“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

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.

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