"Determined men can do anything!"

"At the end of the last war we were operating only in Seattle. We were ambitious. We wanted to expand. We had no money, so the logical thing was to set about to find some source of money. In our quest for money we called upon an investment banker in Seattle named Carstens. Mr Carstens patiently listend to our story. He must have known we were inexperienced in finanacial affairs, and probably in many other ways. We were young - about 30. The banker himself was rather elderly. He listened to our story for a while and then he leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk, and in the next 15 or 20 minutes - perhaps half an hour - he gave us the most enlightening, most inspiring talk on the economics of busines that I have ever heard, or that has since been my privilege to hear."

"One of the remarks that Mr. Carstens made on that occassion was that determined men can do anything. These words struck in my mind. He didn't give us the money we were after, but we expanded into Oakland within two months. And that really was the beginning of the development of our present organization."

"I don't know where Mr. Carstens is today. He was rather elderly man then, and he is probably dead and gone."

"But if Mr. Carstens could be with us here tonight; if he could see what a fine group of people we really are; if he could learn for himself how much we know about our particular subject, and could get some idea of the combined business knowledge that is contained in the minds of those present here; if he could be told of the great nationwide business organization which all of us here together have worked to build, in which all of us have had a part; if he could know, too, that we own that organization ourselves; and if Mr. Carstens were called upon to review the past and to offer a guide to the future, I think he could do no better that to say: Determined men can do anything."

James E Casey - UPS Plant Managers Conference - 1942