How To Win Friends And Influence People | Page 3

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