Language for men of affairs

After  a  person  has  collected  data  and  studies  a  proposi- 
tion with  great  care  so  that  his  own  mind  is  made  up  as  to 
the  best  solution  for  the  problem,  he  is  apt  to  feel  that  his 
work  is  about  completed.  Usually,  however,  when  his  own 
mind  is  made  up,  his  task  is  only  half  done.  The  larger  and 
more  difficult  part  of  the  work  is  to  convince  the  minds  of 
others  that  the  proposed  solution  is  the  best  one  —  that  all 
the  recommendations  are  really  necessary.  Time  after  time 
it  happens  that  some  ignorant  or  presumptuous  member  of  a 
committee  or  a  board  of  directors  will  upset  the  carefully- 
thought-out  plan  of  a  man  who  knows  the  facts,  simply  be- 
cause the  man  with  the  facts  cannot  present  his  facts  readily 
enough  to  overcome  the  opposition.  It  is  often  with  im- 
potent exasperation  that  a  person  having  the  knowledge  sees 
some  fallacious  conclusion  accepted,  or  some  wrong  policy 
adopted,  just  because  known  facts  cannot  be  marshalled  and 
presented  in  such  manner  as  to  be  effective. 


Business  depends,  we  say,  upon  the  swift  and  accurate 
working  of  the  vast  systems  of  communication  and  transpor- 
tation —  on  the  mail  service,  the  telegraph  and  telephone,  the 
steamship  and  railway.  But  language,  the  means  of  communi- 
cation between  man  and  man  in  daily  life,  is  itself  the  basis  of 
all  these  devices.     It  is  the  common  carrier  for  all  business. 

We  speak  of  money  as  the  medium  of  exchange,  in  terms 
of  which  all  property  values  are  measured  and  transfers  de- 
termined. With  equal  truth  we  may  say  that  the  actual  me- 
dium of  human  exchange  is  language,  in  which  every  human 
thought  must  be  minted  before  it  is  intelligible  to  other  people. 


A  ready  and  full  command  of  language  is  essential  for  the 
business  man  in  two  ways