Title: Canadian forest industries July-December 1922
Identifier: canadianforjuldec1922donm (find matches)
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors:
Subjects: Lumbering; Forests and forestry; Forest products; Wood-pulp industry; Wood-using industries
Publisher: Don Mills, Ont. : Southam Business Publications
Contributing Library: Fisher - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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CANADA LUMBERMAN 4'J The Poorest Man in the World I would mention the language atmosphere. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of his mouth. "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper the thing whereunto I send it." How much of your personality is your tongue! Language is to the man what bloom is to bread—the complete and perfect flowering of all his effort. The poorest man is the language pauper. There is no more revealing symbol of one's character than one's style of speech. It will be recognized by discerning men more quickly than a Roman nose or a cauliflower ear. I would rather undergo a major operation on my body than to suffer an operation on my language; I would prefer to give up my appendix than to part with the adjectives and adverbs that are necessary to the clarity of my expression; I'll take a lame body in pre- ference to a lame language; weak eyes rather than weak words, and I wouldn't mind having a tin ear if I might have a silver tongue. Now, the remedy for this universal weakness in the per- sonality lies in reading. You are today the same person you were the hour you were born plus the people you have met and the books you have read. Some of the people whom we would like to meet in the flesh are no longer here. Shakes- peare is gone, Macaulay is gone.. Goldsmith is gone, Poe is gone, Riley is gone, Roosevelt is gone; but they are all still here in the written page. So I ask who and what and how do you read? The Apostile Paul and King Solomon were wonderful salesmen as well as writers. How long must we live before somebody will write a saner philosophy or a sounder salesmanship than the King of the Jews, and I think the Apostle Paul was one of the greatest men of all time. I am not thinking of him now as a great ptfeacher; I am think- ing of him as a tent maker and a business man, who went down into Athens when that city had twenty-eight kinds of religion and sold them Christianity. He was the first great letter-writer the world ever knew. He had a follow- up system working on the Corinthians, the Hebrews, the Romans, the Galatians. I sometimes wonder if the Apostle Paul lived today if he might get wrought up over the flapper question and write an epistle to the Goloshians. The Bible is the paragon book of all books for vitalizing your language. Any man can afford to spend much time in studying a book that represented 50 per cent of the education of Abraham Lincoln. May I say a word of the co-operative atmosphere. For after all a man's culture is his philosophy of life which finds expression in his contact with people. Our actions are either centripetal or centrifugal—every man wears a "come hither" or a "go yonder" expression in his face. The final question is are you your brother's keeper or your competitor's enemy. Fifty years ago a merchant only had to be slick or clever to get on. All the responsibility was on the buyer. Today the man who sells as well as the man who buys must beware. The tradesman who speculates with his good will is doing business on the margin, which means a large tornover of customers and an infrequent turnover of capital. Why Do You Neglect Answering? You are, perhaps, one of the few who do not answer let- ters. You like to receive and read them and occasionally consult them. As for acknowledging a social or business communication, why you simply and persistently neglect it and offer all kinds of trivial excuses on meeting the writer. The late President Theodore Roosevelt said that he never made any excuses. He naively remarked that his friends would think he was lying while his enemies would not be- lieve him, yet excuses or apologies of the flimsiest character can be presented for breaches of epistolary etiquette. It is more than passing strange how busy some people are that they cannot attend to their correspondence. The late Hon. W. E. Gladstone, when Prime Minister of Great Britain and the first and foremost figure in the Empire, found time to acknowledge all personal communications and most of the responses were in his own handwriting. Perhaps you are, one who imagines that not replying to a communication is a sign of individuality, independence or strength of character. Such an act on your part as neglect- ing to attend promptly to correspondence evidences nothing but wilful neglect, open discourtesy, mental indolence or sheer selfishness. No other interpretation can be put upon it if you are in the possession of your normal faculties. As for time, you have as much as any person else. There is no favoritism in this respect. Many people complain of the brevity of a day and yet there are occasions when they do not know what to do with themselves in order to pass the fleeting hours. Unless a written communication means something in the way of business prestige or social advantage, there is a great and growing army who never pay any attention to congrat- ulations, greetings or ordinary inquiries. One wonders what their personal or business habits are; how much method, order or arrangement characterize their regular routine? On the other hand, there are many leaders in every line of industry—well-known firms,—who promptly acknowledge all mail that reaches them even to the extent of sending a courteous note of receipt of a calendar, a catalogue or a pamphlet. This is, perhaps, reverting to the other extreme, but far better to err on the side of kindliness, promptness and co-operation than to show the callous disposition and self- centred interests of one who accepts everything and does nothing except from an ulterior motive. Many leading figures in the great Christian world are, asking since the war why more people do not go to church? An equally pertinent query in the business and commercial life of the day is why do not persons answer correspondence?
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