rom
active affairs." And then, instances were pointed out as notable
examples. "A year of retirement and he was through," was the picture
given of one retired man. "In two years, he was glad to come back,"
and so the examples ran on. "No big man ever retired from active
business and did great work afterwards," Bok was told.

"No?" he answered. "Not even Cyrus W. Field or Herbert Hoover?"

And all this time Edward Bok's failure to be entirely Americanized was
brought home to his consciousness. After fifty years, he was still not
an American! He had deliberately planned, and then had carried out his
plan, to retire while he still had the mental and physical capacity to
enjoy the fruits of his years of labor! For foreign to the American
way of thinking it certainly was: the protestations and arguments of
his friends proved that to him. After all, he was still Dutch; he had
held on to the lesson which his people had learned years ago; that the
people of other European countries had learned; that the English had
discovered: that the Great Adventure of Life was something more than
material work, and that the time to go is while the going is good!

For it cannot be denied that the pathetic picture we so often see is
found in American business life more frequently than in that of any
other land: men unable to let go--not only for their own good, but to
give the younger men behind them an opportunity. Not that a man should
stop work, for man was born to work, and in work he should find his
greatest refreshment. But so often it does not occur to the man in a
pivotal position to question the possibility that at sixty or seventy
he can keep steadily in touch with a generation whose ideas are
controlled by men twenty years younger. Unconsciously he hangs on
beyond his greatest usefulness and efficiency: he convinces himself
that he is indispensable to his business, while, in scores of cases,
the business would be distinctly benefited by his retirement and the
consequent coming to the front of the younger blood.

Such a man in a position of importance seems often not to see that he
has it within his power to advance the fortunes of younger men by
stepping out when he has served his time, while by refusing to let go
he often works dire injustice and even disaster to his younger
associates.

The sad fact is that in all too many instances the average American
business man is actually afraid to let go because he realizes