The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1915-09-01
IMPROVEMENT ASSN
(Continued)

have all seen organizations which
make a great deal of fuss in a COM
munity, hold a great many meetings
and have a good deal of interest and
the same state that it was before the
fuss was made. A church may go on
promoting activity, holding meetings
and going through all the regular
forms and yet at the end of ten years
the community in which that church
is located may be identically the
same sort of a community that it
would have been if the church had
never existed. In such case that
church is a failure and no other word
will express it. Promoting activity
is not securing results. Running an
office and keeping several steno-
graphers busy is not producing re-
suits. Securing newspaper publicity
is not securing results. A man can
take hold of an organization, draw
his salary there for five years, pub
lish a report half as big as diction-
airy and yet not accomplish one iden-
tical thing. Long hours of hard work
do not necessarily signify results,
altho it is one of the means of obtain
ing results. Many men in executive
positions would multiply their output
several times if they would work
only one-half as many hours and
ho1 of tl,ttc
in thinking, in purposeful, intelli-
gent thinking.
Securing results means changing
things. Securing results means that
if an organization remains in com
munity for two, or five, Or ten years,
that at the end Of that time that com
munity is not as it was. A short
time ago we conducted a campaign
in small town. The test OF wheth-
err or not we accomplished anything
in that town is not the number of
people who came out to our meetings,
is not the organizations that were
formed, but the test of the success of
that campaign is whether or not that
is different town than it was before
we went there. Are people in that
town taking a better hold of commun-
ity interest than they did before?
Are people in that town giving more
money to support public institutions?
Are there men, that before the cam
paign, were edgewise toward each
other, who are now working togeth-
er? The test of the results of that
campaign is whether or not that is
different kind of a town than it was
when we went there.
But they say you can't secure re-
suits. People are so set in their
ways, you can't do it," Well, we, can
do it. The world is full Of men who
believe they can do it, and who do do
it, When Raymond Robbins started
out to clean up portion of Chicago
everyone said You can't do it." But
he did do it. | can refer you to a
little city in the east in which a few
years ago some public spirited men
started out to revive the Board of
Trade, Business men said You
can't do it, But they believed they
could do it and in very few years
they have made that little city one of
the most progressive cities of its
size in the whole country. You can
produce results.
For real results we must look deep.
er than TO material things. We must
look to character To illustrate
what mean: In the campaign
which | have just mentioned we as
sisted the community in raising suf-
ficient money to put new roof on
the community church. That was
perhaps the most glaring accomplish
ment of the week, but that in itself is
not worth the effort. The real re-
suits were shown when from various
quarters we heard intimatlons on the
part OF different citizens to the effect
that now we have a new roof on the
church we will have to raise money
to paint it." The results of that
campaign are not that we helped to
roof on the church but that in doing
it we developed the sort of character
in the citizens of that town that led
them to start out to provide other i'm
proyements for themselves, An agr
cultural agent may show farmer the
most improved method of handling a
certain crop and may double the
yield per acre and in this way put
several hundred dollars into the peck
ct Of the farmer but such a result
alone would not be worth visiting the
mans farm. However, if in doing
this he produces the sort of character
in the farmer and his neghbors that
Will cause them to go back to their
farms and promote the same methods
every year and seek to learn scientif-
ic methods of raising other crops,
then there is great accomplishment
Perhaps the place where the actual
work that an association can do will
count more for the community than
anywhere else is in the building of
roads, But even here the greatest
work that a county road engineer
can do is not to build certain roads
but is to arouse throughout the coun-
ty great interest on the part of the
public in roads, which will cause