How To Win Friends And Influence People | Page 7

intriguing and priceless.

Second, you will find that your ability to meet and deal with people
will grow enormously.

9. You will find at the end of this book several blank pages on which
you should record your triumphs in the application of these
principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a
record will inspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these
entries will be when you chance upon them some evening years from
now!

In order to get the most out of this book:

• a. Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of human
relations,
• b. Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one.
• c. As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply
each suggestion.
• d. Underscore each important idea.
• e. Review this book each month.
• f. Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a
working handbook to help you solve your daily problems.
• g. Make a lively game out of your learning by offering some friend
a dime or a dollar every time he or she catches you violating one of
these principles.
• h. Check up each week on the progress you are mak-ing. Ask
yourself what mistakes you have made, what improvement, what
lessons you have learned for the future.
• i. Keep notes in the back of this book showing how and when you
have applied these principles.

------------------------------

A Shortcut to Distinction

by Lowell Thomas

This biographical information about Dale Carnegie was written as an
introduction to the original edition of How to Win Friends and
Influence People. It is reprinted in this edition to give the readers
additional background on Dale Carnegie.

It was a cold January night in 1935, but the weather couldn't keep
them away. Two thousand five hundred men and women thronged
into the grand ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. Every
available seat was filled by half-past seven. At eight o'clock, the
eager crowd was still pouring in. The spacious balcony was soon
jammed. Presently even standing space was at a premium, and
hundreds of people, tired after navigating a day in business, stood
up for an hour and a half that night to witness - what?


A fashion show?

A six-day bicycle race or a personal appearance by Clark Gable?

No. These people had been lured there by a newspaper ad. Two
evenings previously, they had seen this full-page announcement in
the New York Sun staring them in the face:

Learn to Speak Effectively Prepare for Leadership


Old stuff? Yes, but believe it or not, in the most sophisticated town
on earth, during a depression with 20 percent of the population on
relief, twenty-five hundred people had left their homes and hustled
to the hotel in response to that ad.

The people who responded were of the upper economic strata -
executives, employers and professionals.

These men and women had come to hear the opening gun of an
ultramodern, ultrapractical course in "Effective Speaking and
Influencing Men in Business"- a course given by the Dale Carnegie
Institute of Effective Speaking and Human Relations.

Why were they there, these twenty-five hundred business men and
women?

Because of a sudden hunger for more education because of the
depression?

Apparently not, for this same course had been playing to packed
houses in New York City every season for the preceding twenty-four
years. During that time, more than fifteen thousand business and
professional people had been trained by Dale Carnegie. Even large,
skeptical, conservative organizations such as the Westinghouse

Electric Company, the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, the Brooklyn
Union Gas Company, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the New York
Telephone Company have had this training conducted in their own
offices for the benefit of their members and executives.

The fact that these people, ten or twenty years after leaving grade
school, high school or college, come and take this training is a
glaring commentary on the shocking deficiencies of our educational
system.

What do adults really want to study? That is an important question;
and in order to answer it, the University of Chicago, the American
Association for Adult Education, and the United Y.M.C.A. Schools
made a survey over a two-year period.

That survey revealed that the prime interest of adults is health. It
also revealed that their second interest is in developing skill in
human relationships - they want to learn the technique of getting
along with and influencing other people. They don't want to become
public speakers, and they