The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1911-02-01
The Literature of Business.

In its monthly bulletin the Carnegie library of
Atlanta announces that 1t has secured among
other new and inviting books. ten volumes de-
voted to the art and science of business Some
OF these titles suggest treatments of technical
character such as Accounting and Office Meth
DDS or Business Correspondence" but others are
evidently so broad and even human in their scope
that they appeal to the general reader. There
IS q book by Andrew Carnegie on Personality IN
Business" another Employer and Employe
The fact that library should fit to make
place among its poets and story tellers and his
torians for books such as these bespeaks great
zeal Tor the dtscernment and progressiyeness or
the library itself. and furthermore it signifies
that the modern business world Is developing a
literature of its own; that it is formulating its
experience into a science and perfecting its meth
DDS into an art
Strangely enough, there was time when BUSH
ness pursuits were reserved for the supposedly
less gifted sons of family In his charming
sketches of Sir Roger De Coveriey, Addison has
portrayed the effects of this seventeenth century
folly In a picture of "Win Wimble.' VIII
had plenty of energy and good sense and a wealth
of good nature, but because he plainly un-
suited to any of the called learned profess
SONS he was allowed to grow up without any
useful occupation, and we find him in middle
life as a mere saunterer training dogs, making
fishing tackle and living at large In idle respect
ability. His parents had considered 1t not quite
the proper thing to put one Of their sons to a
useful trade or commercial training.
How differently is business regarded to-day
1t has TO enlist the talents of the most gift
ed men. and women, too, and most noteworthy
Of all, 1t has developed into great science for
are established, and experiments. akin in spirit
to those of the students laboratory. are conduct
ed.
Business is no longer haphazard pursuit in
which anyone succeed by any sort of meth
cd or no method at all. 1t Is recognized be-
ing subject to certain great laws for the dis
covery and classification of which men striv-
ing and thinking with more and more earnest
George AIDE once remarked that the most beau
tiful women of this age and country to be
found In the advertising pages of our maya
zines. 1t might also be said that much Of the
most readable writing of this age and country
is to be found in those pages and in the adver-
Using columns OF newspapers. The man who
writes advertisements must think and write in
terms Of human interest. He must feel that this
thing We call business" Is far more than mat
ter Of buying and selling. He must know that
it is truly art and a science based upon the
needs and the desires of living and wo-
men, and what he has to say takes on the vital
hue of real life and becomes within Itself bust
ness literature.
These new books on business which the Carne-
gle library has put onto its shelves indeed
acquisition The fact that they have been
written and will be read and turned TO account
in the stores and offices and factories of this city
is most interesting observation-disclosures jour