Monkeys And Men

Bg Jack Dionne

I saw a Movie the other day that I got a wonderful "kick" out of.

In my talks on associational activities, and business co-operation, I have long used the comparison that "the chief difference between monkeys and men is that men can and do profit by the experiences of others, while monkeys cannot."

And there, in those pictures of Borneo monkeys, I found visual proof of that axiom. The natives made harmless and painless traps of cocoanuts. They cut the tops ofi, hollowed them, and down in the cavity placed a nut of which monkeys are inordinately fond. Then they put a slip knot with a trigger on it over the hole in the top of the nut, tied the other end of the string, and went back to the camera.

The monkeys' curiosity and love for the nut they smelled soon overcame their timidity, and shortly one of them thrust his paw into the top in a cocoanut. Instantly the trigger sprang, and he was tied tight by the wrist. His cries and antics were most enthusiastic.

Then what did the other monkeys do? They fairly crowded in to get their fists into the tops of other traps that had been set near the first one, fairly dying with curiosity to find out what in the world had made that first monkey cry so, the others would shove both paws into the cocoanut to find out. And they DID.

Now, if monkeys had the associational sense, that couldn't have happened.

Each business man works out his business problems, has his own experiences, bitter and sweet, and they are filed in his memory, and on his accounts.

Each other man does the same thing. To each of them come experiences, ideas, thoughts and things, that come to no other man. Separately, that fact helps only himself.

But COLLECTMLY it helps them ALL. Because they join themselves together co-operatively. My experience becomes that of all the rest. The experience of each of the others becomes MINE.

Living only one life and handling only my own business, f am nevertheless enabled to incorporate into my affairs the experiences, the failures, the successes, the ideas, the plans and the thoughts of many other men. I would have to live a hundred years to get all the experience that I get in ONE YEAR by belonging to an active organization of one hundred men.

THAT is the Association IDEA. It is the co-operative idea. In short, it is simply the difference between savagery and civilization.

It is the difference between monkeys and men.