During the last eleven years, the great army of the Ahepans have run a great and beautiful race and have reached its goal in record time; thanks to the devotion and determination of the membership and the leaders to cement the forces of Hellenism in the United States into one social body by the adhesive power of mutual respect and mutual confidence.

How well we have succeeded in this effort is so generally acknowledged among the Greeks here and abroad that it is unnecessary for us to adhere any proofs to demonstrate it.

The secret of that phenomenal success in the shortest period of time, after an inheritance of political, social and religious dissensions and hatreds, is due primarily to that class of Greeks in America that has realized early enough that if we were to continue to be divided by theories about Greek politics and Church politics, we would be so hopelessly disorganized that some day that disunion might cost us the fruits of labor of twenty years in our commercial and social activities.

2

Unfortunately, the work of the Ahepa began rather too late to save the Greeks from the grip of the economic crisis that has visited this country. Had Ahepa been founded about twenty years ago, rather than eleven years ago, the condition of the Greeks in America, both socially and commercially, would have been a hundredfold better than it is today.

Now, the next great race of the Order is to make a serious effort to salvage the economic wreckage of the Greek business in the United States. There is no other power, no other organization whose opinion bears weight among all the Greeks, whether Ahepans or non-Ahepans, than our Great Organization.

The Ahepa programme from now on and until we achieve the same degree of economic unity among the Greeks as we have achieved in the social field should be centered on the question of economic unity and collaboration.

3

The time is gone by when the Greek as an individual made a success and amassed enviable fortunes in America. The after-the-war period, especially the period after 1928, marked the new era in American business, the era of large scale commercial enterprises that were destined to eliminate individual experience in business. Only concentrated, large capital, large scale business and efficient and scientific management can now succeed in the American markets.

Here and there a few Ahepans, have adjusted themselves to the new requirements for commercial success and these are today the leaders in their respective trades.

An example of this effort to adjust one's self to the new conditions in the American business world is Brother Emm. Hartofeles of New York.

His vast organization, the H & H. Cafeterias, is a model organization in the restaurant trade.......It is our hope that the Greeks all over the country will study the methods and the system of this Ahepan, a pioneer 4in the field of the new restaurant business, which is destined to supplant completely the individual small restaurant, which the Greek has developed throughout the United States, but which now has become out of date.

E. C. Vaffeus,

Past-District Governor

State of New Jersey.