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IT'S A GOOD TIME TO LIVE* These exercises signalize the fact that many of the employees of International Business Machines have completed an additional course of training. I congratulate the members of this group for their efforts in enchancing their effectiveness through education. By your own efforts you have not only increased your general and vocational competence but you have also enriched your own personal lives, as the future will show. This educational program conducted under the auspices of the organization of which you are all a part is something unique in American business and industry I am told that some fifty-four thousand persons are at present engaged in one or another type of educational activity. The benefits to the individual are incalculable, but I think it is also a sound business policy upon which this program rests, namely, that the strength of the Company stems from the sum total of the human beings which make it up, and therefore anything that improves them improves the organization. The topic which I have chosen - "It's a Good Time to Live" - in a real sense reflects the spirit, dynamism, and the forward-looking character of the International Business Machines==8 spirit strong even in the face of adverse circumstances. Back in April of 1932 when the Nation was. in the pit of a deep depression, Lafayette College held a meeting on its campus to which administrative officers and trustees of colleges and universities were invited. Many of these institutions were then in severe financial difficulties from decreased enrolments as well as from losses of other types of income. *Address by Earl J. McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D.C., at the Endicott IBM School, Endicott, New York, on the evening of June.25, 1952.