During my years of editorship, save in one or two conspicuous instances,
I was never able to assign to an American writer, work which called for
painstaking research. In every instance, the work came back to me either
incorrect in statement, or otherwise obviously lacking in careful
preparation.
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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