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
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