During the Great Depression, Babson College founder Roger Babson commissioned unemployed stonecutters to carve inspiring inscriptions on 25 boulders in Dogtown, an abandoned settlement in Gloucester, Massachusetts:

• COURAGE
• IDEAS
• HELP MOTHER
• KINDNESS
• LOYALTY
• IF WORK STOPS, VALUES DECAY
• BE ON TIME
• GET A JOB
• INDUSTRY
• INITIATIVE
• INTEGRITY
• KEEP OUT OF DEBT
• SAVE
• SPIRITUAL POWER
• STUDY
• TRUTH
• WORK
• BE CLEAN
• BE TRUE
• PROSPERITY FOLLOWS SERVICE
• USE YOUR HEAD
• IDEALS
• INTELLIGENCE
• NEVER TRY/NEVER WIN

Babson did some of the work himself. “Another thing I have been doing, which I hope will be carried on after my death, is the carving of mottoes on the boulders at Dogtown, Gloucester, Massachusetts,” he wrote in 1935. “My family says that I am defacing the boulders and disgracing the family with these inscriptions, but the work gives me a lot of satisfaction, fresh air, exercise and sunshine. I am really trying to write a simple book with words carved in stone instead of printed paper. Besides, when on Dogtown common, I revert to a boyhood which I once enjoyed when driving cows there many years ago.”

The boulders are extant today and can be visited on a hiking trail.