146 Materials and Their Handling 



The teaching of experience would have been 

 of little moment in improving the condition of 

 man, if it had not been coupled with the rcc >rJ 

 of that experience in writing and the study of that 

 record by thousands of other men, who were thus 

 enabled to go further instead of having to retrace 

 the steps which had already been taken. 



Learning from Others. When we talk about 

 the value of experience as contrasted with the 

 foolishness of theory and the impracticability of 

 book-knowledge, we are simply showing our ignor- 

 ance of what has gone before and why we are in 

 the position we occupy today. As it stands now, 

 ninety per cent of our efficiency is due to the ability 

 which we have in using the experience of those 

 who have gone before and of others who are 

 practicing in the same fields today. It is very 

 doubtful, indeed, whether we really make ten 

 per cent progress in any decade. Whether these 

 percentages are exactly correct or not, our work 

 would be absolutely impossible were it not for 

 the study which has been given to these matters 

 by hundreds of thousands of men. Men study 

 what those who have practiced these arts, or dis- 

 covered the principles, learned previously and, in 

 addition, they read about the methods adopted by 

 other people in the same lines of industry today 

 and discuss their values. 



Knowing the experience of the past increases 

 our speed of growth, just as the aeroplane would 

 vastly increase our speed in getting to a certain 

 place as compared with the necessity of walking. 



