COOPERATION 8I1SUCCESS DEMANDS ACTION
All success is based on power, and power grows out of knowledge
that has been organized and expressed in terms of action. The world
pays for but one kind of knowledge-the kind that is expressed in
constructive service.
In addressing the graduating class of a business college, one of
the best-known bankers in America said:
"You ought to feel proud of your diplomas, because they are
evidence that you have been preparing yourselves for action in the
great field of business.
"One of the advantages of a business-college training is that it
prepares you for action! Not to belittle other methods of education,
but to exalt the modern business-college method, I am reminded to
say that there are some colleges in which the majority of the students
are preparing for practically everything else except action.
"You came to this college with but one object in view, and that
object is to learn to render service and earn a living. The latest style
of clothing has been of little interest to you because you have been
preparing yourself for work in which clothes of the latest style will
play no important part. You did not come here to learn how to pour
tea at an afternoon party nor to become masters at affecting friend-
liness while inwardly feeling envy for those who wear finer gowns and
drive costly motor cars. You came here to learn how to work!"
In the graduating class before which this man spoke were thirteen
boys, all of whom were so poor that they had barely enough money
with which to pay their way, a~d some were having to work before
and after school hours.
That was twenty-five years ago. Last summer I met the president
of the business college that these boys attended and he gave me the
history of each one of them, from the time they graduated until the
time I talked with him. One of them is president of one of the big
wholesale drug companies, and a wealthy man; one is a successful