Thank Goodness It's Monday #314

TIMELY– AND TIMELESS – WISDOM

FROM 1915

I’m taking a break from ranting about “negotiation” as I have in the last several TGIMs. (Rousing applause can be heard.)

And, in fact, I’m taking a bit of a break from writing much of anything original. (More applause, even louder.)

What I will do today is apply my editorial experience to share with you bits and pieces of motivation and inspiration gleaned from a terrific little magazine called “The Silent Partner.”

I recently unearthed a copy sorting through a pile of accumulated paper ephemera.

By the way: The cover date of this 7 ¾” x 4 ¼” wonder is January 1915.

The editor and principal writer of “The Silent Partner” was Fred Dewitt Van Amburgh (1866-1944), who started his “clean, wholesome magazine of inspiration and human interest” ten years earlier and apparently had many more years of subscription publishing success. (In this issue the Subscription Rate is listed as “One dollar a year, 10 cents a copy. Advertising rates upon application.”)

You can find F. D. Van Amburgh quotes in many online compilations.

But here – exclusively for TGIM readers and, it appears, available nowhere else in the digital universe – are some slightly longer highlights from the first-of-1915 issue.

Remember when they were written. While the language is a bit dated (Van Amburgh assumes the workplace and his readership is pretty much an all-male bastion) his content is still packed with plenty of meaning for the 21^st Century.

Let’s begin:

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COMMON CLAY

 Time is handing you three hundred and sixty-five pounds of potter’s clay – enough to mould a monument to yourself. What you do with this material this year will be the measure of your moral and material worth in years to come. 

If you fail with this batch of material before you, make up your mind there is something wrong with you and not with the clay. The year 1915 will be your greatest chance for molding something worthwhile. Get a handful of mud and work out something that will faithfully represent you as a doer. 

***

THE WRECKING CREW 

Take two buildings, one in the course of construction, and the other under destruction. The new, modern steel structure attracts the attention of a few men who think; the old brick-and-mortar wreck calls together an idle crowd of down-and-outers. Few things worthwhile are found in the ash can. Keep away from the tearing-down gang, the wrecking crew. Be a modern builder. A man is sure to go where he is thinking.

***

WHAT YOU GIVE 

Did you ever read a good book and fail to think of a friend with whom you would share its value? The more keenly you enjoy anything, the more firmly you wish for a friend to join you. This is proof that you are in sympathy with the world, and it is but fair to assume that you are but a correct measure of most men. Give the world more credit, and it will help you to be happier. You will get exactly what you give, and seldom any more. This is normal, natural. If you expect more than this you are fooling yourself. 

***

THE CORPORATION 

A corporation that is frank and fair with the public, that manages its men in a manner that causes them always to be courteous and polite to the public, and that brings out the best efficiency in the organization, will win the cooperation of its customers, its consumers, the public. 

The right attitude must begin with the corporation. All of the press agents in the country will be of no value to a company unless that company is conducting its business on the right lines.

***

SELF-CONFIDENCE 

Someone said, “Self confidence is the habit of expecting great things of ourselves.” 

If you lack self-confidence, you lack the first factor in success. Unless you have the confidence of others, you cannot for the life of you succeed. Hence it takes two kinds of confidence to win.

Merchants must have confidence. Individuals are conspicuously dependent upon confidence. Confidence is capital. Believe in yourself, make good, and this will make others believe in you. 

There is tremendous power in the conviction you can do things. Think yourself into big things. Raise your own salary, by first having enough self-confidence to start you on your way up.  

***

BASIS TO BUILD ON 

Try to do some brave deed, some sincere, human help, without a witness. Then watch yourself grow in your own estimation. Your own estimation of yourself is of more consequence to you than the opinion of the world. If you are inwardly right, you have a basis to build on. 

TGIM Takeaway: Doubly appropriate for our TGIM wrap-up is Van Amburgh’s last bit of editorial from the January 1915 issue of “The Silent Partner” – 

Economy in correspondence is important. Start your letter with confidence in your wares, and with confidence in yourself. Talk plain, and if, when you have finished, you do not feel that the letter will sell the goods, it certainly won’t. If you have not convinced yourself first, you will not convince the customer.

***

I’m convinced. And I’m convinced that you will be, too, partner.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square
Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com   
 

P.S.  And giving Van Amburgh the final final word: In a January 1915 item he titled THE MAGAZINE -- to which we’ll add, in our 21^st Century way, AN E-BLAST or A BLOG POST -- he observes: 

“When a writer becomes so intellectual … when an  editor parades his special knowledge … when a magazine thinks it all out for you, there is little room for a reader, save to read. 

“It is not necessary to agree with a magazine on all subjects to get good out of it. It is the underlying ideas that are simply suggested, and left for you to think out in your own way, that make a magazine what it is.”