How to Win Friends and Influence People (27 page)

This chap who was a total failure the first half-dozen

times he tried to speak in public later became my personal

manager. Much of my success has been due to

training under Dale Carnegie.

Young Carnegie had to struggle for an education, for

hard luck was always battering away at the old farm in

northwest Missouri with a flying tackle and a body slam.

Year after year, the “102” River rose and drowned the

corn and swept away the hay. Season after season, the

fat hogs sickened and died from cholera, the bottom fell

out of the market for cattle and mules, and the bank

threatened to foreclose the mortgage.

Sick with discouragement, the family sold out and

bought another farm near the State Teachers’ College at

Warrensburg, Missouri. Board and room could be had in

town for a dollar a day, but young Carnegie couldn’t

afford it. So he stayed on the farm and commuted on

horseback three miles to college each day. At home, he

milked the cows, cut the wood, fed the hogs, and studied

his Latin verbs by the light of a coal-oil lamp until his

eyes blurred and he began to nod.

Even when he got to bed at midnight, he set the alarm

for three o’clock. His father bred pedigreed Duroc-Jersey

hogs - and there was danger, during the bitter

cold nights, that the young pigs would freeze to death;

so they were put in a basket, covered with a gunny sack,

and set behind the kitchen stove. True to their nature,

the pigs demanded a hot meal at 3 A.M. So when the

alarm went off, Dale Carnegie crawled out of the blankets,

took the basket of pigs out to their mother, waited

for them to nurse, and then brought them back to the

warmth of the kitchen stove.

There were six hundred students in State Teachers’

College, and Dale Carnegie was one of the isolated half-dozen

who couldn’t afford to board in town. He was

ashamed of the poverty that made it necessary for him to

ride back to the farm and milk the cows every night. He

was ashamed of his coat, which was too tight, and his

trousers, which were too short. Rapidly developing an

inferiority complex, he looked about for some shortcut

to distinction. He soon saw that there were certain

groups in college that enjoyed influence and prestige - the

football and baseball players and the chaps who won

the debating and public-speaking contests.

Realizing that he had no flair for athletics, he decided

to win one of the speaking contests. He spent months

preparing his talks. He practiced as he sat in the saddle

galloping to college and back; he practiced his speeches

as he milked the cows; and then he mounted a bale of

hay in the barn and with great gusto and gestures harangued

the frightened pigeons about the issues of the

day.

But in spite of all his earnestness and preparation, he

met with defeat after defeat. He was eighteen at the time

- sensitive and proud. He became so discouraged, so

depressed, that he even thought of suicide. And then

suddenly he began to win, not one contest, but every

speaking contest in college.

Other students pleaded with him to train them; and

they won also.

After graduating from college, he started selling

correspondence courses to the ranchers among the sand

hills of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. In spite

of all his boundless energy and enthusiasm, he couldn’t

make the grade. He became so discouraged that he went

to his hotel room in Alliance, Nebraska, in the middle of

the day, threw himself across the bed, and wept in despair.

He longed to go back to college, he longed to

retreat from the harsh battle of life; but he couldn’t. So

he resolved to go to Omaha and get another job. He

didn’t have the money for a railroad ticket, so he traveled

on a freight train, feeding and watering two carloads of

wild horses in return for his passage, After landing in

south Omaha, he got a job selling bacon and soap and

lard for Armour and Company. His territory was up

among the Badlands and the cow and Indian country of

western South Dakota. He covered his territory by

freight train and stage coach and horseback and slept in

pioneer hotels where the only partition between the

rooms was a sheet of muslin. He studied books on salesmanship,

rode bucking bronchos, played poker with the

Indians, and learned how to collect money. And when,

for example, an inland storekeeper couldn’t pay cash for

the bacon and hams he had ordered, Dale Carnegie

would take a dozen pairs of shoes off his shelf, sell the

shoes to the railroad men, and forward the receipts to

Armour and Company.

He would often ride a freight train a hundred miles a

day. When the train stopped to unload freight, he would

dash uptown, see three or four merchants, get his orders;

and when the whistle blew, he would dash down the

street again lickety-split and swing onto the train while

it was moving.

Within two years, he had taken an unproductive territory

that had stood in the twenty-fifth place and had

boosted it to first place among all the twenty-nine car

routes leading out of south Omaha. Armour and Company

offered to promote him, saying: “You have

achieved what seemed impossible.” But he refused the

promotion and resigned, went to New York, studied at

the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and toured the

country, playing the role of Dr. Hartley in
Polly of the

Circus.

He would never be a Booth or a Barrymore. He had

the good sense to recognize that, So back he went to

sales work, selling automobiles and trucks for the Packard

Motor Car Company.

He knew nothing about machinery and cared nothing

about it. Dreadfully unhappy, he had to scourge himself

to his task each day. He longed to have time to study, to

write the books he had dreamed about writing back in

college. So he resigned. He was going to spend his days

writing stories and novels and support himself by teaching

in a night school.

Teaching what? As he looked back and evaluated his

college work, he saw that his training in public speaking

had done more to give him confidence, courage, poise

and the ability to meet and deal with people in business

than had all the rest of his college courses put together,

So he urged the Y.M.C.A. schools in New York to give

him a chance to conduct courses in public speaking for

people in business.

What? Make orators out of business people? Absurd.

The Y.M.C.A. people knew. They had tried such courses

-and they had always failed. When they refused to pay

him a salary of two dollars a night, he agreed to teach on

a commission basis and take a percentage of the net profits

-if there were any profits to take. And inside of three

years they were paying him thirty dollars a night on that

basis - instead of two.

The course grew. Other "Ys" heard of it, then other

cities. Dale Carnegie soon became a glorified circuit

rider covering New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and

later London and Paris. All the textbooks were too academic

and impractical for the business people who

flocked to his courses. Because of this he wrote his own

book entitled
Public Speaking and Influencing Men in

Business
. It became the official text of all the Y.M.C.A.s

as well as of the American Bankers’ Association and the

National Credit Men’s Association.

Dale Carnegie claimed that all people can talk when

they get mad. He said that if you hit the most ignorant

man in town on the jaw and knock him down, he would

get on his feet and talk with an eloquence, heat and

emphasis that would have rivaled that world famous orator

William Jennings Bryan at the height of his career.

He claimed that almost any person can speak acceptably

in public if he or she has self-confidence and an idea

that is boiling and stewing within.

The way to develop self-confidence, he said, is to do

the thing you fear to do and get a record of successful

experiences behind you. So he forced each class member

to talk at every session of the course. The audience

is sympathetic. They are all in the same boat; and, by

constant practice, they develop a courage, confidence

and enthusiasm that carry over into their private speaking.

Dale Carnegie would tell you that he made a living all

these years, not by teaching public speaking - that was

incidental. His main job was to help people conquer

their fears and develop courage.

He started out at first to conduct merely a course in

public speaking, but the students who came were business

men and women. Many of them hadn’t seen the

inside of a classroom in thirty years. Most of them were

paying their tuition on the installment plan. They

wanted results and they wanted them quick - results

that they could use the next day in business interviews

and in speaking before groups.

So he was forced to be swift and practical. Consequently,

he developed a system of training that is

unique - a striking combination of public speaking,

salesmanship, human relations and applied psychology.

A slave to no hard-and-fast rules, he developed a

course that is as real as the measles and twice as much

fun.

When the classes terminated, the graduates formed

clubs of their own and continued to meet fortnightly for

years afterward. One group of nineteen in Philadelphia

met twice a month during the winter season for seventeen

years. Class members frequently travel fifty or a

hundred miles to attend classes. One student used to

commute each week from Chicago to New York.

Professor William James of Harvard used to say that

the average person develops only 10 percent of his latent

mental ability. Dale Carnegie, by helping business men

and women to develop their latent possibilities, created

one of the most significant movements in adult education

LOWELL THOMAS

1936

THE DALE CARNEGIE COURSES

THE DALE CARNEGIE COURSE IN

EFFECTIVE SPEAKING AND HUMAN RELATIONS

Probably the most popular program ever offered in developing

better interpersonal relations, this course is designed to

develop self-confidence, the ability to get along with others

in one’s family and in social and occupational relations, to

increase ability to communicate ideas, to build positive attitudes,

increase enthusiasm, reduce tension and anxiety and to

increase one’s enjoyment of life. Not only do many thousands

of individuals enroll in this course each year, but it has been

used by companies, government agencies and other organizations

to develop the potential of their people.

THE DALE CARNEGIE SALES COURSE

This in-depth participative program is designed to help persons

currently engaged in sales or sales management to become

more professional and successful in their careers. It

covers the vital but little understood element of customer motivation

and its application to any product or service that is

being sold. Salespeople are put on the firing line of actual

sales situations and learn to use motivational selling methods.

THE DALE CARNEGIE MANAGEMENT SEMINAR

This program sets forth the Dale Carnegie principles of

human relations and applies them to business. The importance

of balancing results attained with the development of

people-potential to assure long-term growth and profit is highlighted.

Participants construct their own position descriptions

and learn how to stimulate creativity in their people, motivate,

delegate and communicate, as well as solve problems and

make decisions in a systematic manner. Application of these

principles to each person’s own job is emphasized.

If you are interested in any of these courses, details on

when and where they are offered in your community can

be obtained by writing to:

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc.

1475 Franklin Ave.

Garden City, N.Y. 11530

OTHER BOOKS

How to Stop
Worrying &
Start Living
by Dale Carnegie

A practical, concrete, easy-to-read, inspiring handbook on

conquering work and fears.

Simon & Schuster, 1230 Ave. of the Americas,
N.Y.C

10020

Lincoln the Unknown
by Dale Carnegie

A fascinating story of little-known facts and insights about

this great American.

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., 1475 Franklin Ave.,

Garden City, N.Y. 11530

The Quick and Easy
Way
to Effective Speaking
by Dorothy

Carnegie

Principles and practical implementation of expressing one-self

before groups of people.

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., 1475 Franklin Ave.,

Garden City, N.Y. 11530

The
Dale Carnegie
Scrapbook
edited by Dorothy Carnegie

A collection of quotations that Dale Carnegie found inspirational

interspersed with nuggets from his own writings.

Simon & Schuster, 1230 Ave. of the Americas, N.Y.C.

10020

Don’t
Grow
Old-Grow Up
by Dorothy Carnegie

How to stay young in spirit as you grow older.

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., 1475 Franklin Ave.,

Garden City, N.Y. 11530

Managing Through People
by Dale Carnegie & Associates,

Inc

The application of Dale Carnegie’s principles of good

human relations to effective management.

Simon & Schuster, 1230 Ave. of the Americas, N.Y.C.

10020

Enrich
Your
Life, The Dale Carnegie Way
by Arthur R. Pell,

Ph.D.

An inspirational and exciting narrative. Tells how people

from all walks of life have applied the principles that Dale

Carnegie and his successors have taught and, as a result,

have made their lives more satisfactory and fulfilling.

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., 1475 Franklin Ave.,

Garden City, N.Y. 11530