As a Dutch boy, one of the cardinal truths taught me was that whatever
was worth doing was worth doing well: that next to honesty came
thoroughness as a factor in success. It was not enough that anything
should be done: it was not done at all if it was not done well. I came
to America to be taught exactly the opposite. The two infernal
Americanisms "That's good enough" and "That will do" were early taught
me, together with the maxim of quantity rather than quality.

It was not the boy at school who could write the words in his copy-book
best who received the praise of the teacher; it was the boy who could
write the largest number of words in a given time. The acid test in
arithmetic was not the mastery of the method, but the number of minutes
required to work out an example. If a boy abbreviated the month January
to "Jan." and the word Company to "Co." he received a hundred per cent
mark, as did the boy who spelled out the words and who could not make
the teacher see that "Co." did not spell "Company."

As I grew into young manhood, and went into business, I found on every
hand that quantity counted for more than quality. The emphasis was
almost always placed on how much work one could do in a day, rather than
upon how well the work was done. Thoroughness was at a discount on every
hand; production at a premium. It made no difference in what direction I
went, the result was the same: the cry was always for quantity,
quantity! And into this atmosphere of almost utter disregard for quality
I brought my ideas of Dutch thoroughness and my conviction that doing
well whatever I did was to count as a cardinal principle in life.

During my years of editorship, save in one or two conspicuous instances,
I was never able to assign to an American writer, work which called for
painstaking research. In every instance, the work came back to me either
incorrect in statement, or otherwise obviously lacking in careful
preparation.

One of the most successful departments I ever conducted in The Ladies'
Home Journal called for infinite reading and patient digging, with the
actual results sometimes almost negligible. I made a study of my
associates by turning the department over to one after another, and
always with the same result: absolute lack of a capacity for patient
research. As one of my editors, typically American, said to me: "It
isn't worth all the trouble that you put into it." Yet no single
department ever repaid the sear