QST APRIL 1936

THE REASON WHY

By Hiram Percy Maxim President ARRL
reprinted from QST Sept 1927

Sitting back in the old armchair with the last issue of QST  read from
cover to cover and with everybody else in the house asleep hours ago, I
fell to thinking of amateur radio today and amateur  radio of other days.
As the blue smoke curls slowly upward from the old pipe, vision of early
ARRL Director's Meetings float before me.

I see those old timers grappling
with the  problems of organization  with QRM, WITH TRUNK- LINE TRAFFIC, AND
RIVAL AMATEUR LEAGUES. I SEE SINISTER COMMERCIAL AND GOVERNMENT INTERESTS
AT WORK SEEKING TO EXTERMINATE AMATEUR RADIO. They were dark days , those
early ones.

Today I see amateur radio an institution  recognized by our American
government an on the road  to recognition by the other governments of the
world. I see a fine LOYAL ARRL membership of  20,000 standing shoulder to
shoulder and believing in each other and still blazing the way in radio
communications. I see a rapidly developing world wide amateur radio
brotherhood taking shape in the form of our IARU.

And as the last embers of the  old pipe turn to grey ash, I ask how it all
came about: that the ARRL  should have succeeded and all its opponents failed.

The answer is clear. It is because with our opponents there was always some
kind of a  selfish motive to be served for someone , whereas in our ARRL ,
WE  INSISTED from the  beginning that NO selfish motives for anybody  or
anything should EVER  prevail. Everything that the ARRL undertakes MUST be
100% for the General good. That policy  bred LOYALTY and CONFIDENCE. With
those two things an organization can prosper FOREVER.

SIGNED W1AW.