The Washington herald., 1922-01-01

to reach other communities. When an ex-
pertinent was tried and shown to be right the
results were just as likely to remain unknown
to others. When, however. we established
q clearing house for information as between
all these communities we began to compile
great quantities of information as to just
what ideas had been shown by experience
to be right and just what ideas had been
shown by this same experience to be un-
-"orkable.
Here is an example: decade and a
half ago chambers of commerce throughout
the United States were largely busy upon
the idea Of getting factories established in
their communities The method then fol-
lowed of accomplishing this result was that
OF Offering free factory sites and Of offering
bonuses for the establishment of factories.
Experience proved, however, that 1t was
the spectators and not the competent man
ufacturers who availed themselves of these
offers. Industries so established were
likely to fail and stand as a disbursement
to others. They hurt the communities that
had attempted to establish them. The scheme
was shown by experience to be wrong and
has been abandoned The communities
which have succeeded in gathering industrial
plants unto themselves, it has likewise been
shown by experience, are. those that have
established favorable facilities, such as those
OF adequate transportation and terminals,
and have appealed to bona fde industrials
as proper communities in which to locate"
"T,HE first problem of a chamber of COM
merce." he went on, land. in fact tb.
universal problem wherever a chamber NAV
be located, is that of establishing and main.
tanning membership. This is problem
which, of course, had been worked upon
by every chamber in existence. Naturally
there was great mass of experience In
the broad field of the Nation and the ad-
visibility OF classifying and studying that
experience was obvious. As the study pro-
sressed it was found, of course, that GER
tain ideas bad failed here, there and every
where and that seemed quite generally TO
tend toward success. The task became that Of
sitting out the unsuccessful ideas and show.
ing all over the world how and why tbey
would not work and of sitting out the sue
essful schemes and making them available
10 whoever wanted to use them.
From this mass of experience we even.
tuaily evolved plan Of maintaining mem.
bershlp which we have laid down and had
tried and proven all over the country BY
chambers Of commerce We now think that
we can tell any community how to build up
and maintain the membershi- of its cham
Der.
The method that has proved successful
is called the icontinuous solicitation,
plan. 1t is coming into general use every.
where as substitute. for. the membership
drive plan which used to be REGARDED as the
best method Of procedure. 1t has been
shown that the membership drive, which was
based upon the development of much enthu-
siasm at a given time. could not be sus-
tanned and was likely to be followed by re-
actions which were to the detrimcnt of an
organization. .-a,,
Under the continuous solicitation plan a
committee is appointed Of, say, ten, members
Of the chamber. Each of these members is
pledged to devote two hours a month to this
work until he has brought ter new members
into the organization. He is not allowed to
60 out hit or miss in his solicitation of mem
bers, but 10 given By the secretary . definite