Dale Carnegie and Fidelity

             Marc Stuart wrote an interesting letter yesterday -" Fidelity

    needs to hire a new PR man"- in which he referred  ( sneeringly ? )

    to that all time great classic of public relations, Dale Carnegie's " How

    to Win Friends & Influence People ".

            The book has been around for almost 7 decades. Every respectable

    high brow feels compels to dismiss it as contemptible capitalist

    swindling made respectable.

            Just yesterday I came across a condensed version of it in a 1937

    " Reader's Digest " at the URI library.

            I found it still entertaining and still giving even very ordinary

    people sound advice on " getting ahead " not by egoism but by coming

    to terms with natural egoism of human beings.

             Perhaps  Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer could have written it. Did

    not one critic write that Tom - more than Huck -was destined to become

    the town mayor ?

              Readers of "Tom Sawyer " will recall how Tom persuaded his

    friends that there was nothing more exhilarating than white -washing the

    fence - a chore he loathed ?

             Such benign selfishness made this country great - or at least

    made the rich richer.