SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE WANT ACTION AND WORDS ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE

"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing or good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

John Gardner

Sec. of Health,

Education and Welfare

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Our company was honored to receive the community 1992 "Commitment to Excellence Award" at the Cape Chamber Industrial Appreciation Dinner Thursday night.

I'd like to publicly thank all of our associates and to point out that 7 of our 8 original department heads are still with us along with many who've contributed over 15-20 years.

In my acceptance I mentioned a number of past and present successful business and industrial leaders from this community who had basically started their companies from scratch. I could easily add 7 or 8 more people to that list.

But, my observation that 70% of them did NOT graduate from college has always interested me ... (most of the people I'm referring to have become millionaires).

You would think a combination of education coupled with the free enterprise, entrepreneurial spirit combined with honesty and hard work, would be a potent combination for success.

Hopefully, it's not because education seems to place people in "molds" and often rewards uniformity of thinking and "acceptable" actions which could limit the flexibility of vision and problem solving approaches to an issue.

Education is where new ideas are supposed to be studied ... but basics are also to be learned (the reading, writing, arithmetic fundamentals). Could it be that other essential traits such as honesty, completion of a task, hard work, keeping your word, admitting a mistake and correcting it ... perseverance, competition ... play til the last out; desire for quality and doing your best ... (fundamental values) are requisites that education has downplayed? Do too many "educated people" think appearing to do or say the right thing will bring success ... regardless of performance? Knowing what to do does not finally replace "JUST DOING IT" and successful people want action, not words.

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An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and it's knowing how to use the information you get.

Attributed to William Feather

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I caught a C-Span television speech by PAUL HARVEY this week given to an electronic media convention. Here are the highlights:

OUR ECONOMY IS THE

WORLD'S BEST

The United States has been getting a bum rap!

Politicians and economists, with the ever-willing complicity of a hyper-critical media, have been talking about the recession in the United States as though it were ours alone.

The recession is worldwide.

It is less acute in the United States than elsewhere.

Japan's economy is shrinking while ours is growing.

Britain's economy is shrinking while ours is growing.

Italy's national debt is proportionately twice what ours is.

The 10 nations of Europe all have jobless rates higher than our 7.7 (now 7.5) percent. Each of them has at least 10 percent jobless.

I AM NOT MAKING this comparison to strengthen anybody's political position but because, political considerations being what they are in an election year, our nation's leadership could adopt some short-term stimuli to our long-term disadvantage.

Recent economic sluggishness has been global.

Uncle Sam has been warming himself and much of the rest of the world for decades with a bonfire of American dollars.

Again, our economy, in a steady slow-grow mode, is performing better than any other in the world.

Even our neighbor, Canada, is stagnating.

It sounds rude and inhospitable in a land that has always prided itself on its "open door," but our nation's employment is essentially the same now as a year ago. Unemployment has increased because our population has increased,and much of the increase reflects immigration, legal and other.

Yet, instead of praising our nation for its selfless generosity--taking in hundreds of thousands from other worse-off countries--our own country has been mean-mouthed by partisan politicians and myriad social-service organizations seeking to justify their own existence.

There is growing hostility to immigrants in Europe, with uninvited outsiders systematically evicted from England and France.

Immigrants from Muslim nations are considered a threat on Europe's southern flank.

THEY TAKE SCARCE jobs from home-folks. Or they seek and get unemployment pay from governments that already impose much higher tax rates than ours.

The whole southern rim of the old Soviet empire could soon backslide into Islamic fundamentalism, which has a history of keeping backward nations backward.

Nothing in this accumulation of facts will force American politicians to fight fair.

Outs wanting in will continue to emphasize homelessness and joblessness and recession.

And how can ins wanting to stay in possibly ignore or dismiss such charges--knowing we do have homeless and we do have jobless and our economy is less vigorous than it was.

But somebody outside the political arena should keep reminding us that, all things considered, our nation in its present condition is the envy of the rest of the world.