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Bok, Edward William, 1863-1930

"A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After"

With the Dutch stock there is in both of us, there's no limit
to what we can do. Let's go to it." Naturally that talk left the two
firm friends.
Bok felt somehow that he had been given a new draft of Americanism; the
word took on a new meaning for him; it stood for something different,
something deeper and finer than before. And every subsequent talk with
Roosevelt deepened the feeling and stirred Bok's deepest ambitions.
"Go to it, you Dutchman," Roosevelt would say, and Bok would go to it.
A talk with Roosevelt always left him feeling as if mountains were the
easiest things in the world to move.
One of Theodore Roosevelt's arguments which made a deep impression upon
Bok was that no man had a right to devote his entire life to the making
of money. "You are in a peculiar position," said the man of Oyster Bay
one day to Bok; "you are in that happy position where you can make
money and do good at the same time. A man wields a tremendous power
for good or for evil who is welcomed into a million homes and read with
confidence.


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