Remember the value of names

By the time he was age 10, future business magnate Andrew Carnegie had discovered the excessive value people place on their own names.

The boy had obtained a mother rabbit and soon had a whole litter of rabbits and nothing to feed them. He told other boys in the neighborhood that if they went out and found enough clover and dandelions for the bunnies to eat, he would name each one after a boy.

It worked.

Much later, when he wanted to sell railroad ties to Pennsylvania Railroad president J. Edgar Thomson, Carnegie built a steel mill and called it the Edgar Thomson Steel Works. He got the business.

Likewise, when Carnegie and George Pullman were duking it out over the sleeping-car business, Carnegie proposed merging their companies as the Pullman Palace Car Co. That worked, too.

Lesson: People’s names are for them the most important sound in the language.

— Adapted from How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie, Pocket Books.