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 searcher more for his pains. Save for
assistance derived from a single person, I had to do the work myself
for all the years that the department continued. It was apparently
impossible for the American to work with sufficient patience and care
to achieve a result.
We all have our pet notions as to the particular evil which is "the
curse of America," but I always think that Theodore Roosevelt came
closest to the real curse when he classed it as a lack of thoroughness.
Here again, in one of the most important matters in life, did America
fall short with me; and, what is more important, she is falling short
with every foreigner that comes to her shores.
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