146 THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-MASTERY
Here is an example of what may happen when groups form an
alliance for the purpose of placing the combined power of the group
behind each individual. The alliance has brought both material and
moral advantages to the city of Shelby such as are enjoyed by few other
cities of its size in America. The plan has worked so effectively and so
satisfactorily that a movement is now under way to extend it into other
cities throughout America.
COMMENTARY
E. Colin Lindsey was a shoe salesman for the Belk Brothers store in Charlotte,
North Carolina. There were many other clerks in that store, but Lindsey had the
idea of proposing a new store in cooperation with the Belk family. Forty years
later, he headed the thirty-five-store chain of Belk Lindsey department stores in
the South, while the other salespeople he worked with still wondered what had
happened. All that happened was that Lindsey applied organized effort and the
others did not.
Jean Nidetch was one of millions of overweight people in America during the
1960s, and she knew many other people who were in a similar position. She
realized how powerful it would be to bring those people together to inspire each
other, to share experiences in losing weight. So Jean Nidetch founded Weight
Watchers. From a first meeting with just fifty people, Weight Watchers grew into
an organization of more than a million members-because Nidetch understood
the importance of organized effort in helping others.AlliancesIn order that you may gain a still more concrete vision of just how this
principle of organized iffort can be made powerfUl, stop for a moment
and try to imagine what would likely be the result if every church and
every newspaper and every Rotary Club and every Kiwanis Club and
every advertising club and every women's club and every other civic
organization of a similar nature, in your city or in any other city in the