The "typical" bank clerk is a good illustration. Pallid from long hours indoors, stooped from his concentration upon interminable columns of figures, dissatisfied, discontented, moving along painfully in a narrow groove, out of which there seems to be no way, underpaid, he is one of the tragedies of our commercial and financial age. While the section-hand may become a section boss, a roadmaster, a division superintendent, a general superintendent, a general manager, and, finally, the president of a railroad; while the stock boy becomes, eventually, a salesman, then a sales manager, and, finally, the head of the corporation; while apprentices to carpenters, bricklayers, and plumbers may become journeymen, and then contractors, and, finally, owners of big buildings; while the farmhand may become a farm owner, then a landlord, and, finally, perhaps, the president of a bank; while a workman in a factory handling a wheelbarrow may afterward become the president of the greatest corporation in the world, the clerk, toiling over his papers and his books, is almost inevitably sentenced to a lifetime of similar toil, with small opportunities for advancement before him.

There are men fitted by inheritance and training for clerical work and what lies beyond and above it. They are so constituted that they have the ability to take advantage of opportunities, to forge to the front from such a beginning, and to rise to commanding positions. But this is not true of the men who have aptitudes which would make them successful in active work with their hands, and afterward with hand and brain. These men of inherent activity and skill of hand, men whose bones and muscles were made for work, whose whole nature calls for the out-of-doors, are doomed to stagnate, grow discontented, and finally lose hope, if compelled by pride or bad judgment to undertake the "white collar man's" job.

SOCIAL VALUE OF THE "WHITE COLLAR MAN"

Regarding the social deficiency of this class of worker Martha Brensley Bruere and Robert W. Bruere, in their excellent book, "Increasing Home Efficiency," have the following to say:

"The output of their domestic factory so far is two sons able to earn living salaries, who are useful to the community undoubtedly, but as easy to replace if damaged as any other standard products that come a dozen to the box. They themselves didn't like the upper reaches of the artisan class where they had spent their lives, so they boosted their sons till they could make a living by the sweat of their brains instead of the sweat of their brows. Society can use the Shaw boys, but is it profitable to produce them at the price? The money that made these boys into a clerk and a stenographer cost twenty years of their parents' brain and muscle. Mrs. Shaw has bred the habit of saving into her own bones till now, when she might shift the flatiron, the cook stove and the sewing machine from her shoulders, she can't let go the $10 a month her 'help' eats and wastes long enough to straighten up her spine. These two boys and a daughter still in the making have cost their father and mother twenty years, which Mr. Shaw sums up by saying:

"'So, you see, the final result of making up your mind to do a thing, including the great trouble of bringing up a family, is just getting down to the ground and grinding.'

"Isn't it just possible that society has lost as much in the parents as it has gained in the children? Couldn't we have got the same product some cheaper way? Or a better product by more efficient home management?"

WOMEN'S WORK

Perhaps the saddest of all the misfits are to be found amongst women, or it may be that their cases seem to us to be saddest because there are so many of them. Under the old-time regime there was but one vocation open to women—that of wife and mother. Regardless of aptitudes, physical strength or weakness, personal likes or dislikes, all women were expected to marry and bear children, and to qualify successfully for a vocation which combined the duties of nursemaid, waitress, laundress, seamstress, baker, cook, governess, purchasing agent, dietitian, accountant, and confectioner. In the early days of this country, in addition to these duties, women were also called upon to be butchers, sausage-makers, tailors, spinners, weavers, shoemakers, candle-makers, cheese-makers, soap-makers, dyers, gardeners, florists, shepherds, bee-keepers, poultry-keepers, brewers, picklers, bottlers, butter-makers, mil-liners, dressmakers, hatters, and first-aid physicians, surgeons and nurses. In more modern times, women have entered nearly all vocations. But even yet there is much prejudice against the woman who "descends" out of her traditional "sphere." The woman who is not a wife, mother, and house-keeper—or a domestic parasite, housekeeping by proxy—loses caste among the patricians. Many men and, on their behalf, their mothers and sisters, shudder at the sordid thought of marrying a girl who has been so base as to "work for her living." And so stenographers, clerks, accountants, saleswomen, factory workers, telephone operators, and all other women in the business world are about 99 per cent temporary workers. Even in executive positions and in the professions, most women look upon wages and salaries as favoring breezes, necessary until they drop anchor in the haven of matrimony. And even those who most sincerely proclaim themselves wedded to their careers, in many instances, exercise their ancient privilege, change their minds, and give up all else for husband and home.

Every normal woman was intended by nature to marry. It is right that she should marry. She does not truly and fully live unless she does marry. She misses deep and true joy who is not happily married—and usually feels cheated. But the same may be said of every normal man. The difference is that, according to tradition, marriage is woman's career, while man may choose a life work according to his aptitudes. Because of prejudice, however, it is rarely that the happily married woman makes a business or professional career. Husbands, except those who do so through necessity or those who are unafraid of convention, do not permit their wives to work outside of the home. Because of false pride, many men say: "I am the bread-winner. If I cannot support my wife as she should be supported, then I do not wish to marry." And so thousands of women sigh away their lives at work they hate while a hungry, sad world suffers for what they would love to do.

The waste of these misfits is threefold: First, the women lose the opportunity for service, profit, and enjoyment which should be theirs. Second, the world loses the excellent services which they might render. Third, oftentimes these women are very poor housekeepers. They simply have not the aptitudes. Their husbands and their families suffer.

WOMEN WITHOUT HOMES

Another very large class of misfits, and, perhaps, even more to be pitied than any other, is composed of the women who are compelled to earn a living in the business world, in the professional world, or elsewhere, whose true place is in the home. Many of these are unmarried, either because the right man has not presented himself, or because there are not enough really desirable men in the community to go around. Others are widows. Still others are women who have been deserted by their mates. Some of them are compelled to support their parents, brothers, and sisters, or even their husbands.

If traditional methods and courses of education miss the needs of many of our young men, what shall we say of conventional education for girls? Well, to tell the truth, we do not know what to say. Educational experts, reformers, philosophers, investigators, and editors have spoken and written volumes on the subject. Women upon whom the different kinds of educational formulae have been tried have also written about it. Some of them have told tragic stories. There has been, and is, much controversy. Some say one thing—some another—but what shall common sense say? After all, education is rather a simple problem—in its essentials. It means development—development of inborn talents. And education ought especially to develop the natural aptitude of most of our girls for efficiency in home-making and child-rearing. Most young women enter upon the vocation of wifehood and motherhood practically without any training for these duties.

It is as unscientific to expect all women to be successful wives and mothers as it would be to expect all men to be successful farmers. It is as tragic to expect an untrained girl to be a successful wife and mother as it would be to expect an untrained boy to be a successful physician and surgeon.

EXECUTIVES AND DETAIL WORKERS

A very broad division of misfits is into those who are fitted to do detail work, trying to do executive work, and those who are natural-born executives compelled to do detail work. This is a very common cause of unfitness.

Some men love detail and can do it well. They naturally see the little things. Their minds are readily occupied with accuracy in what seem to others to be trifles, but which, taken together, make perfection. They are careful; they are dependable; they can be relied upon. Such people, however, do not have a ready grasp for large affairs. They cannot see things in their broader aspect. They are not qualified by nature to outline plans in general for other people to work out in detail. They are the men upon whom the world must depend for the careful working out of the little things so essential if the larger plans are to go through successfully.

On the other hand, there are some people who have no patience with details. They do not like them. They cannot attend to them. If depended upon for exactitude and accuracy, they are broken reeds. They forget detail.

There are many executives holding important positions and making a sad failure of them because they are, by natural aptitudes, excellent detail men but poor planners and executives. The following story illustrates, perhaps, as well as anything we could present, the qualities of these overworked, busy, busy executives who have no right to be executives, but ought to be carrying out the plans of someone else:

HOW SOCRATIC HELPED BRAINERD BUILD BUSINESS

People sometimes bring their business troubles to a friend whom we shall call Socratic. And Socratic helps them out for a consideration. His time is valuable and he bought his wisdom at a high price.

Some months ago a pompous fellow dropped in. We recognized him as Brainerd, one of the leading business men of a small city. His story was this: He had built up a big enterprise during the pioneer boom days of easy money and negligible competition. Now, when margins were closer, the pace hotter, and a half dozen keen fellows were scrambling for their shares of a trade he had formerly controlled jointly with one other conservative house, he found sales falling off and his profits dwindling to a minus quantity.

Socratic heard him through; then said: "I'll look your business over, tell you the troubles, and show you how to remedy them for one hundred dollars."

"Oh, I couldn't afford to pay that much, the way business is now," Brainerd objected.

"How much, then, do you figure it would be worth to you to have your sales and profits climb back to high-water mark?"

"Oh, that would be worth thousands of dollars, of course. But can you guarantee me any such results?"

KEEPING THE APPOINTMENT

"Well, if you carefully study over what I tell you, and faithfully follow my advice, and the results are not satisfactory, you need pay me nothing. Is that agreeable?"

"Sure! If you can show me how to bring my profits back to normal, I'll gladly pay you two hundred."

"It's a go!" said Socratic. "Have the contract drawn up ready to sign when I call to begin my examination. When shall that be?"

"Well, let's see. I'm so all-fired busy it's hard to find time for anything. Say early next week sometime."

"All right. What day?"

"Oh, Tuesday or Wednesday."

"Tuesday will be satisfactory. What hour?"

"Well, some time in the forenoon, I guess."

"Ten o'clock be all right?"

"Yes, ten o'clock will do."

"Very well, I'll be there at ten sharp."

Tuesday morning, at ten sharp, Socratic stood by Brainerd's desk. Brainerd was working away like a busy little high-pressure hoisting-engine. He looked up with a bright smile.

"Oh, it's you, is it? Sorry, but I can't do anything for you to-day. I'm awfully up against it for time. Can't you drop in a little later in the week?"

"What day?" Socratic asked.

"Oh, Thursday or Friday," a little impatiently.

"Thursday is all right. What hour? Ten o'clock do?"

"Yes, yes, that will do," sighed the busy, busy business man, his nose deep in his work.

Socratic turned on his heel and walked out.

THE HEAD CLERK'S SALARY

Thursday morning he was again beside Brainerd's desk. It was easy to see that this little buzz-fly was a mile up in the air. Hi$ coat was off, his cuffs turned back, his collar unbuttoned, his hair mussed, and he had a streak of soot across his nose. He hardly looked up. Just kept chugging away like a motor-cycle going up-grade at fifty miles an hour.

Oh, but he was the busy man!

"Sorry to disappoint you again, Socratic," he jerked out, "but I haven't got time to breathe. You'll have to come in again."

"Making stacks of money with all this strenuous activity, I suppose?" asked Socratic.

"Oh, no! It keeps me on the jump like a toad under a harrow to pay expenses."

"Call that a profitable way to spend time and nervous energy so prodigally?"

"It may not be—I suppose it isn't, but I can't help it."

"Your head clerk draws pretty good pay, doesn't he?" asked Socratic.

"Why, yes," answered Brainerd, staring.

"Probably has a bigger income to handle, personally, than you have?"

"Oh, I guess so" You'll have to excuse me, Socratic. I'm too busy to talk to-day."

"Queer, but your head clerk and cashier seem to have plenty of time for conversation. They have been scrapping for fifteen minutes about chances of the Pirates and the Cubs. You feel happy to pay people big salaries for talking baseball?"

"No; of course not; but how can I help it? A man can't hire reliable help for love or money in this town, and I haven't got time to watch all of 'em."

"How would it do to have the bookkeeper check up those sales-slips you are tearing your hair over, instead of manicuring her pretty paddies and tucking in her scolding locks?"

"Well, she was doing something else when I began. Excuse me a minute."

SOME FOOL EXCUSES

And Brainerd dashed away to the front of the store to wait on a nicely dressed lady who had just come in. When he returned he said: "I'll tell you, Mr. Socratic, I've been thinking over the matter of our contract, and I don't believe I'm prepared to go into that thing at present. Times are so hard and I am so rushed for time, and you would probably recommend a lot of things I couldn't afford, and likely couldn't work in with my present system. I guess I'll have to let it go for the present. It would be a good thing, no doubt, but I guess I'll have to do the best I can without it. Some time later, perhaps, I'll take it up with you. Why, I don't even get time to read the papers, and I certainly wouldn't have time to go into that examination with you."

"I've completed my examination," remarked Socratic.

"Why, how's that?" gasped Brainerd. "When did you do it?"

"The day you were in my office. What I have seen and heard on my two visits here only confirms the diagnosis of your case I made then. But the real purpose of the two calls was to endeavor to make you see your troubles as I see them."

"I don't know what you mean, sir," said Brainerd, piqued by the unmistakable trend of Socratic's remarks.

"I rather think you do, but I'll take no chances. Your business is desperately ill, isn't it?"

"Yes, I guess it is," reluctantly.

"Then it needs a heroic remedy, doesn't it?"

"Possibly."

"And that remedy must be applied to the source of the trouble. Not so?"

"Yes."

And that source is none other than Mr. James H. Brainerd. No, don't blow up with a loud report. Listen to me. You are really too good a business man to go to the wall for the want of a little teachableness. You have foresight, initiative, energy, and perseverance. These are success-qualities of a high order. But you have fallen into some very costly bad habits.

Let me give you the names of six old-fashioned virtues that you are going to start right in to cultivate. When you have developed them, your profits will take care of themselves.

THE REMEDY

The first is Order. You waste seventy-five per cent of your time and nervous energy because you let your work push you instead of planning your work and then pushing your plan.

The second is Punctuality. You lose time, money, friends, temper, and will-power because you are vague and careless about making appointments and slipshod about keeping them.

The third is Courtesy. This has its source in consideration for others and is closely allied to tact. When you ask me to come and help you, and then tell me you are sorry you can do nothing for me, or sorry to disappoint me, that's patronizing. When you ignore a caller and go to reading papers on your desk, that's rudeness. And you can't afford them in your business.

The fourth is Economy. Your time is worth more to this business than that of all the help put together. And when you spend it doing what a ten-dollar-a-week girl could do just as well, it is sinful extravagance. It wastes not only your time, but hers. Worst of all, it undermines your self-respect and her respect for you.

The fifth is Honesty. When you rush away to wait on some customer yourself because that customer has connived with you for some special cut rates, you may not intend it, but you are dishonest. Business must be done at a profit and all those who share in the privileges of buying from this store should share proportionately in paying you your profit. If anyone doesn't pay his share, the others have to make up for it Give everybody a square, equal deal. That will build confidence and increase trade. And then you can leave your salespeople to wait on all customers, giving you more time for real management—generalship.

The sixth is Courage. It's easy enough to see obstacles, to make excuses, to procrastinate. When a hard task has to be done, you will find it no help to begin to catalog the difficulties. Just fear not, and do it.

Now, you are going to cultivate these virtues, Brainerd, because you see that I am right and because, after all, you are a man of good judgment and reason.

"Never mind the contract. When you think my advice has proved its value, send me what you think it is worth."

And he walked out, leaving Brainerd purple in the face with a number of varied emotions, chief among which were outraged dignity and warm gratitude.

While you and we know many Brainerds, there are men capable of handling large affairs who, through lack of training, lack of opportunity, or a choice of a wrong vocation, are sentenced to sit, year after year, working away in an inefficient, fumbling manner, with a mass of details which they hate and which they are not fitted to take care of properly. Such people are often conscientious; they have a great desire to do their work thoroughly and well, and the fact that they so frequently neglect little details, forget things that they ought to do, overlook necessary precautions, and otherwise fail to perform their duties, is a matter not only of supreme regret and humiliation to them, but of great distress to those who depend upon them.

CAREFULNESS AND RECKLESSNESS

Carefulness and prudence are natural aptitudes. The careless man is not wilfully careless. He is careless because he has not the aptitudes which make a man careful. The imprudent man is not wilfully imprudent, but because he does not have the inherent qualifications for prudence, the taking of precautions, the wise and careful scrutinizing of all the elements entering into success. For some work men are required who have the natural aptitudes of carefulness and prudence. The great tragedy is that this kind of work is often entrusted to men who are so constituted that it is very easy for them to take chances. The person who is naturally optimistic and hopeful and always looks on the bright side cheerfully expects whatever he does to "come out all right," as he expresses it. He therefore neglects to take sufficient precautions; he does not exercise care as he should; he takes unnecessary and unwise risks. The result is that oftentimes his optimism turns out to be very poorly justified. When things do go wrong on account of their carelessness, such people may feel distressed about it for a time, but they soon recover. They hope for "better luck next time." They expect, by their ingenuity and resourcefulness, to more than make up for the troubles which have come as the result of their carelessness. On the other hand, those who are naturally careful and dependable do not have much hope of things coming out right without eternal vigilance and foresight. They are inherently somewhat apprehensive. They take precautions, are on their guard, and leave no stone unturned whose turning may insure success.

But there are certain classes of work which require a willingness to take chances. Such enterprises are speculative. In order to be happy in them, one must have a certain amount of optimism and hopefulness. He must accept temporary failure without discouragement. The heart to look on the bright side of every cloud must be born in one. He must believe always that the future will bring more desirable results. The careless person delights in this kind of work. The element of chance in it appeals to his sporting blood. The danger gives him needed excitement and thrill. The anxious, apprehensive person has no place in such enterprises. Their uncertainties are a drain upon his nervous system. He worries. He makes himself ill with his anxieties and apprehensions. He is unhappy. When disaster does happen, he takes it seriously, feels discouraged, thinks his efforts have been of no avail, can see nothing in the future but black ruin, and otherwise destroys not only his joy in his work, but his efficiency and usefulness in it.

In actual practice we find both prudent and reckless misfits. Such people are unhappy, inefficient, and usually unsuccessful. It is strange that men do not understand, before undertaking a vocation, so elemental and fundamental a thing as the question of carelessness and carefulness. Yet, somehow or other, they do not. We find thousands of men worrying, anxious, distrait, because of the uncertainties of their businesses and the chances they have to take. We find other thousands of men blundering, careless, optimistic, always hopeful for better things in the future, and yet attempting to succeed in a business which requires care, infinite pains and precautions. Thoughtless, impulsive, frivolous people are always trying to do work requiring careful, plodding, painstaking, methodical ways; while thoughtful, philosophic, and deliberate people oftentimes find themselves distressed, bewildered, and inefficient in the hurly-burly of some swift-moving vocation.

SOME OTHER MISFITS

Mild, easy-going, timid, self-conscious men we frequently find in vocations which require aggressiveness, courage, fighting ability, self-confidence, and a considerable amount of hard-headed brutality. On the other hand, we sometimes find the fighting man in a profession which is considered to be quiet and peaceable.

Similarly, we have often seen lawyers, whose profession requires of them a good deal of combativeness, shrewdness, a certain degree of skepticism, and a large amount of hard-headed determination to win, no matter what the cost, handicapped by extreme sensitiveness, sympathy, generosity, non-resistance, credulity, humility, and self-consciousness. Physically, they were wonderfully capable of success as lawyers. Intellectually, they, perhaps, were even better fitted for the profession than many of their brothers in the legal fraternity. But, emotionally, they were absolutely unfit for the competition, the contest, the necessity for combat and severity in the practice of law.

Contrawise, we have often seen hard-headed, shrewd, skeptical, grasping, unprincipled, aggressive, fighting men in professions where they did not belong; in professions requiring sympathy, credulity, kindness, tact, generosity, unselfishness, and other such qualities. We have not, in this chapter, outlined all of the different classes of misfits. That would be impossible. We have, however, referred to the most common of them. Probably nine-tenths of all the misfits which have come under our observation could be classified under one or more of the heads we have outlined in the foregoing chapter.



CHAPTER IV

THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL

Some years ago there came into our offices in Boston a young man twenty-six years of age. He was about medium height, with keen, intelligent face, fine skin, fine hair, delicately modeled features, refined looking hands, and small, well-shaped feet.

He was inexpensively, but neatly, dressed, and, while somewhat diffident, was courteous, affable, and respectful in demeanor. After a little conversation with him, we asked him if he would be willing to appear before one of our classes and permit the students to try to analyze him, decide what his aptitudes were, and for what profession he was best fitted. An evening or two later he appeared and we placed him before the class. After some little examination of his appearance, this is the judgment passed upon him by those present:

"Fairly observant; capable of learning well through his powers of observation; good intellect, of the thoughtful, meditative type; a fair degree of constructive ability; in disposition, optimistic, cheerful; inclined to take chances; sympathetic, generous, sensitive, kindly, well disposed, and agreeable; rather lacking in self-confidence and, therefore, somewhat diffident, but courteous and friendly in contact with others; responsive and, therefore, easily influenced by his associates, and affected by his environment. Lacking in sense of justice and property sense. A man of natural refinement and refined tastes; fond of beauty, elegance and luxury. Energetic and alert mentally, but rather disinclined to physical effort. Somewhat deficient in aggressiveness, but endowed with an excellent constructive imagination, and so great mental energy that he would be able to take the initiative in an intellectual way, especially in the formation of plans and in the devising of means and ways. Fond of change, variety; loves excitement; likes social life, and somewhat deficient in constancy, conservatism, prudence, and responsibility. Keen, alert, somewhat impatient and restless. Well fitted by nature for intellectual work of any kind; with training would have done well as teacher, writer, private secretary or high-class clerical worker, but expression indicates that, through lack of training, he has failed in physical work and has fallen into evil ways."

After this analysis had been carefully made, we excused the young man and explained that thirteen of his twenty-six years had been spent in jail. He had been left an orphan early in life and secured so little education that he was almost entirely illiterate.

THE EASY DESCENT TO CRIME

As soon as he was old enough, he was set to work at the only thing he could do, namely, manual labor. He was small and slight for his age, and the services he was able to render were not worth much. He, therefore, received very small pay. Because of his physical disabilities, he was behind the other boys in his gang and suffered frequently from the tongue-lashings of an unsympathetic foreman. His pay was not commensurate with his tastes. He constantly felt the desire for finer, better, cleaner things than he was able to earn. The work was hard for him; he suffered much from the punishment inflicted upon his tender hands, from muscular soreness and from weariness. As the days rolled on, he grew weaker, rather than stronger, and became weary earlier in the day. Finally, the time came when he felt that he could endure the taunts of his foreman no longer, and he was about to give up when the foreman, exasperated with his inefficiency, his clumsiness, and his weakness, discharged him.

Having been discharged, it was difficult for him to find another place to work. At this critical stage, being out of money, and having fallen in with idlers—and worse—he was influenced to use his keen intellect and ability in plans and schemes, to commit a small crime, which yielded him $10 or $15. Being a novice in crime, not naturally a criminal, he did not protect himself from discovery and punishment, and, as a result, was sent to a reformatory. After a short term in the reformatory, his behavior was so good that he was released. After his release, a kind-hearted person, who had observed him and liked his appearance, secured another position for him. This also was at manual labor. At first he entered upon his new work with a determination to succeed, to live down the stain upon his character caused by his previous speculation, and, therefore, to live an honorable and successful life.

STRUGGLING AGAINST ODDS

He worked hard and did his best, but the best he could do was not good enough. He possessed no manual skill, he had no strength, and little by little he again became physically tired out, mentally discouraged and sore, and, having once committed a crime, found it easy to seek his former associates and drop again into the old ways. An opportunity presented itself to rob a companion's pocket of a few dollars, and he did so. Again he was sent to the reformatory, this time for a longer term. Then, until he came to our office, his career was a repetition of what has already been related. A few months or a year or two in a reformatory, a jail, or a penitentiary, a month or two trying to rehabilitate himself in some form of manual labor, and, then, inefficiency, incompetency, lack of skill, lack of strength, and discharge, to be followed by another attempt to add to his resources by some petty crime.

For several years following this first interview with Mr. L. we followed him, and did our best to assist him to enter upon some vocation for which he was better fitted. Again and again we and other friends of his helped him to secure work, but always it was the old story. His mind was so active, so intelligent, so eager for expression, that the drudgery, the monotony, the routine, the small pay, and the consequent lack of the many elegances and luxuries he so strongly desired were too much for him. His crimes were never serious, and never those requiring great courage. He never stole any very large sums. For this reason much of his time was spent in the work house or in jail, rather than in the penitentiary. In addition to petty thieving, he had acquired some little ability as a confidence man, and was capable of ensnaring small sums from credulous or sympathetic people on various pretexts. The last time we heard of him he had called upon a friend of ours, professed his complete and permanent reform, wept over his former failures, and promised faithfully—and with the greatest possible fervency and apparent sincerity—to do better in the future. He said that he had an opportunity to make a trip on a whaling vessel and he thought this opportunity would be the best thing in the world for him, as it would take him away from his old, evil associates and give him an opportunity to save money and make good in a new life. He wished our friend to give him $4 to buy a ticket to New Bedford. Our friend gave him the money and also a postal card, on which he had written his own address. "Now, L.," he said, "I believe you, and I want you to show me that you are playing square with me. When you get your new position and are about to sail, I want you to write me about it on this postal card, and mail it to me so that I will know that you are carrying out your promises."

THE OLD, OLD STORY

L. promised faithfully, and said, "I want to write a letter to my mother, and tell her where I am going. I wish you would let me have an envelope and a stamp." Our friend obliged him with the necessaries, and L. left the office beaming with gratitude and profuse in his promises to return the loan as soon as he came back from his trip on the whaling vessel. A few days later my friend received a postal card, dated at New Bedford, Massachusetts. In one corner of the postal card was the notation, "Received at the post office at New Bedford in an envelope, with a letter, requesting that it be mailed here. (Signed) Postmaster."

Here was a man so well-intentioned by nature, of such a kindly, sympathetic, generous disposition, so intelligent, so naturally capable mentally that, with proper training and properly placed in a vocation in which he could have used his talents, he would doubtless have become an excellent asset to society.

This case is typical of many others. They have natural aptitudes which fit them to become useful, but their talents have never been trained, their aptitudes have never been given an opportunity to develop. They have no inherent tendencies toward crime. In fact, there is no "criminal" type. Most—but not all—criminals fall into their evil ways simply because they have never been taught how to direct their mental and physical energies in a way which will give them pleasure, as well as profit.

DESCRIPTION OF THIS TYPE

The physically frail individual of this type is frail because the brain and nervous system are so highly developed that they require a great deal of his vitality and endurance to nourish them and to sustain their activities. The result is that mental powers grow and thrive at the expense of physical.

Such people have large heads in proportion to their bodies. Their heads also are inclined to be very much larger above the ears and in the neighborhood of the forehead and temples than at the jaw and at the nape of the neck. This gives their heads a rather top-heavy effect—like a pear with the small end down—and their faces a triangular shape. Their jaws are usually fine and slender, and their chins not particularly broad and strong.

Such people have very fine hair and fine skin. Their nerves are sensitive and close to the surface. Their entire build of body is delicate and slender. Their hands and feet also are usually delicately and slenderly fashioned; their shoulders are narrow and oftentimes sloping. It is folly to talk of building up rugged, muscular and bony systems by means of strenuous exercise in people thus endowed. Much, of course, can be done to strengthen and harden the muscles, but they are frail physically, by nature, and can never be anything else.

VOCATIONS FOR THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL

People with this type of organization are not inclined to be skillful with their fingers. They do not care for physical work of any kind; they do not take an interest in it and, therefore, cannot do it well. Properly trained, men and women of this type take their place in the professions. They are teachers, preachers, lawyers, educators, reformers, inventors, authors, and artists. Among those of mediocre abilities we find clerks, secretaries, accountants, salesmen, window trimmers, decorators, advertisers, and others working along similar mental lines. When such people are not trained and educated, they are misfits always, because they do not have opportunities to use to their fullest extent the natural intellectual talents with which they have been endowed.

THE MENTALLY MECHANICAL

There is a type of boy who is oftentimes thrown into the wrong vocation in life, owing to a lack of appreciation of his true abilities on the part of parents or teachers. This boy has a large head and small body, and is intensely interested in machinery. He probably learns to handle tools, after a fashion, at a very early age; spends his spare time in machine shops; is intensely interested in locomotives and steamships, and otherwise manifests a passion for machinery and mechanics. Oftentimes, on account of this, he is very early apprenticed to a mechanic or is given a job in some place where he will have an opportunity to build, operate or repair machinery.

Some years ago we visited in a family in which there was a boy of this type. At that time his chief interest was in locomotives. He had a toy locomotive and took the greatest delight in operating it. Whenever he went near a railroad station he improved every opportunity to examine carefully the parts of a locomotive and, if possible, to induce the engineer to take him up into the cab and show him the levers, valves and other parts to be seen there. As soon as he was old enough, he begged his father to be permitted to go to work in a railroad shop. Fortunately, however, his father was too intelligent and too sensible to be misled by mere surface indications. The boy was encouraged to finish his education. Being a bright, capable youngster, he learned readily and rapidly. By means of proper educational methods, giving him plenty of opportunity for the exercise of his mechanical activities, he was induced to remain in school until he secured an excellent college education. As he grew older his interest in machinery did not wane. He found, however, that it was becoming almost wholly intellectual. He lost all desire to handle, build, operate or repair machinery. When, in later life, he became the owner of an automobile, he was more than willing to leave all of the details of its care to his chauffeur and mechanician.

As he cultivated his mental powers, he became more and more interested in the use of his constructive aptitudes in the formation of ideas. He liked to put ideas together; to work out the mechanics of expression in writing. Instead of building machinery, he loved to build plots. Instead of operating machinery, his abilities turned in the direction of working out the technique of literary expression. Instead of repairing machinery he loved rather to revise and rewrite his stories and plays. In other words, the constructive talent, which he had shown as a child in material mechanics, turned in the direction of mental and intellectual construction as he grew older.

COMMERCIAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS

There are many boys who exhibit in their early years a great love of machinery, and it is usually considered a kindness to them to prepare them for either mechanics or engineering. In mechanical lines, they are misfits, because they are frail and insufficient physically. In engineering lines they are more at home, because the engineer works principally with his brains. But very often they would still be more at home in the realms of literature or oratory.

In a similar way boys often manifest great interest in machinery in their youth, and afterward, if given the right opportunities, show their constructive ability in the organization of business enterprises and the successful devising of plans and schemes for pushing these enterprises to success.

Sometimes those of this type of organization devote themselves rather to invention and improvement than to the direct physical handling of machinery. The following brief story of the struggles of Elias Howe[7] should be an inspiration to every individual who fights physical frailty; also, a lesson to him as to the way in which he should express his mechanical ability:

[Footnote 7: From "Great Fortunes," by James D. McCabe. Published by George Maclean.]

INTELLECTUAL TRIUMPH OF A FRAIL MAN

"Elias Howe was born in the town of Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1819. He was one of eight children, and it was no small undertaking on the part of his father to provide a maintenance for such a household. Mr. Howe, Sr., was a farmer and miller, and, as was the custom at that time in the country towns of New England, carried on in his family some of those minor branches of industry suited to the capacity of children, with which New England abounds. When Elias was six years old, he was set, with his brothers and sisters, to sticking wire teeth through the leather straps used for making cotton cards. When he became old enough, he assisted his father in his saw-mill and grist-mill, and during the winter months picked up a meager education at the district school. He has said that it was the rude and imperfect mills of his father that first turned his attention to machinery. He was not fitted for hard work, however, as he was frail in constitution and incapable of bearing much fatigue. Moreover, he inherited a species of lameness which proved a great obstacle to any undertaking on his part, and gave him no little trouble all through life. At the age of eleven he went to live out on the farm of a neighbor, but the labor proving too severe for him he returned home and resumed his place in his father's mills, where he remained until he was sixteen years old.

"At the age of twenty-one he married. This was a rash step for him, as his health was very delicate, and his earnings were but nine dollars per week. Three children were born to him in quick succession, and he found it no easy task to provide food, shelter and clothing for his little family. The light heartedness for which he had formerly been noted entirely deserted him, and he became sad and melancholy. His health did not improve, and it was with difficulty that he could perform his daily task. His strength was so slight that he would frequently return from his day's work too exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed, and in his agony he wished 'to lie in bed forever and ever,' Still he worked faithfully and conscientiously, for his wife and children were very dear to him; but he did so with a hopelessness which only those who have tasted the depths of poverty can understand.

"About this time he heard it said that the great necessity of the age was a machine for doing sewing. The immense amount of fatigue incurred and the delay in hand sewing were obvious, and it was conceded by all who thought of the matter at all that the man who could invent a machine which would remove these difficulties would make a fortune. Howe's poverty inclined him to listen to these remarks with great interest. No man needed money more than he, and he was confident that his mechanical skill was of an order which made him as competent as any one else to achieve the task proposed. He set to work to accomplish it, and, as he knew well the dangers which surround an inventor, kept his own counsel. At his daily labor, in all his waking hours, and even in his dreams, he brooded over this invention. He spent many a wakeful night in these meditations, and his health was far from being benefitted by this severe mental application. Success is not easily won in any great undertaking, and Elias Howe found that he had entered upon a task which required the greatest patience, perseverance, energy and hopefulness. He watched his wife as she sewed, and his first effort was to devise a machine which should do what she was doing. He made a needle pointed at both ends, with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the cloth, and carry the thread through at each thrust, but his elaboration of this conception would not work satisfactorily. It was not until 1844, fully a year after he began the attempt to invent the machine, that he came to the conclusion that the movement of a machine need not of necessity be an imitation of the performance by hand. It was plain to him that there must be another stitch by the aid of a shuttle and a curved needle with the eye near the point. This was the triumph of his skill. He had now invented a perfect sewing machine, and had discovered the essential principles of every subsequent modification of his conception. Satisfied that he had at length solved the problem, he constructed a rough model of his machine of wood and wire, in October, 1844, and operated it to his perfect satisfaction.

"It has been stated by Professor Renwick and other scientists that Elias Howe 'carried the invention of the sewing machine further on toward its complete and final utility than any other inventor has ever brought a first-rate invention at the first trial.' ...

"Having patented his machine, Howe endeavored to bring it into use. He was full of hope, and had no doubt that it would be adopted at once by those who were so much interested in the saving of labor. He first offered it to the tailors of Boston; but they, while admitting its usefulness, told him it would never be adopted by their trade, as it would ruin them. Considering the number of machines now used by the tailoring interests throughout the world, this assertion seems ridiculous. Other efforts were equally unsuccessful. Every one admitted and praised the ingenuity of the machine, but no one would invest a dollar in it. Fisher (Howe's partner) became disgusted and withdrew from his partnership, and Howe and his family moved back to his father's house. Thoroughly disheartened, he abandoned his machine. He then obtained a place as engineer on a railroad, and drove a locomotive until his health entirely broke down....

"In 1850 Howe removed to New York, and began in a small way to manufacture machines to order. He was in partnership with a Mr. Bliss, but for several years the business was so unimportant that upon the death of his partner, in 1855, he was enabled to buy out that gentleman's interest, and thus became the sole proprietor of his patent. Soon after this his business began to increase, and continued until his own proper profits, and the royalty which the courts compelled other manufacturers to pay him for the use of his invention, grew from $300 to $200,000 per annum. In 1867, when the extension of his patent expired, it is stated that he had earned a total of two millions of dollars by it."

STARVED BY HIS HANDS, ENRICHED BY HIS HEAD

Robert Burns was a failure as plowman and farmer. Rousseau was a failure at every kind of physical work. Henry George nearly starved himself and his family to death trying to make a living as a journeyman printer. The following extract from the autobiography of Jacob Riis[8]—another excellent example of this type of organization—shows how useless it was for him to attempt to make his living at physical labor:

[Footnote 8: From "The Making of an American," by Jacob A. Riis. Macmillan & Company, New York.]

A missionary in Castle Garden was getting up a gang of men for the Brady's Bend Iron Works on the Allegheny River, and I went along. We started a full score, with tickets paid, but only two of us reached the Bend. The rest calmly deserted in Pittsburgh and went their own way....

The iron works company mined its own coal. Such as it was, it cropped out of the hills right and left in narrow veins, sometimes too shallow to work, seldom affording more space to the digger than barely enough to permit him to stand upright. You did not go down through a shaft, but straight in through the side of a hill to the bowels of the mountain, following a track on which a little donkey drew the coal to the mouth of the mine and sent it down the incline to run up and down a hill a mile or more by its own gravity before it reached the place of unloading. Through one of these we marched in, Adler and I, one summer morning with new pickaxes on our shoulders and nasty little oil lamps fixed in our hats to light us through the darkness where every second we stumbled over chunks of slate rock, or into pools of water that oozed through from above. An old miner, whose way lay past the fork in the tunnel where our lead began, showed us how to use our picks and the timbers to brace the slate that roofed over the vein, and left us to ourselves in a chamber perhaps ten feet wide and the height of a man.

We were to be paid by the ton, I forget how much, but it was very little, and we lost no time in getting to work. We had to dig away the coal at the floor with our picks, lying on our knees to do it, and afterward drive wedges under the roof to loosen the mass. It was hard work, and, entirely inexperienced as we were, we made but little headway.

When toward evening we quit work, after narrowly escaping being killed by a large stone that fell from the roof in consequence of our neglect to brace it up properly, our united efforts had resulted in barely filling two of the little carts, and we had earned, if I recollect aright, something like sixty cents each. The fall of the roof robbed us of all desire to try mining again....

Up the railroad track I went, and at night hired out to a truck farmer, with the freedom of his hay-mow for my sleeping quarters. But when I had hoed cucumbers three days in a scorching sun, till my back ached as if it were going to break, and the farmer guessed he would call it square for three shillings, I went farther. A man is not necessarily a philanthropist, it seems, because he tills the soil. I did not hire out again. I did odd jobs to earn my meals, and slept in the fields at night....

The city was full of idle men. My last hope, a promise of employment in a human-hair factory, failed, and, homeless and penniless, I joined the great army of tramps, wandering about the streets in the daytime with the one aim of somehow stilling the hunger that gnawed at my vitals, and fighting at night with vagrant curs or outcasts as miserable as myself for the protection of some sheltering ash-bin or doorway. I was too proud in all my misery to beg. I do not believe I ever did.

There was until last winter a doorway in Chatham Square, that of the old Barnum clothing store, which I could never pass without recalling those nights of hopeless misery with the policeman's periodic 'Get up there! move on!' reinforced by a prod of his club or the toe of his boot. I slept there, or tried to when crowded out of the tenements in the Bend by their utter nastiness. Cold and wet weather had set in, and a linen duster was all that covered my back. There was a woolen blanket in my trunk which I had from home—the one, my mother had told me, in which I was wrapped when I was born; but the trunk was in the 'hotel' as security for money I owed for board, and I asked for it in vain. I was now too shabby to get work, even if there had been any to get. I had letters still to friends of my family in New York who might have helped me, but hunger and want had not conquered my pride. I would come to them, if at all, as their equal, and, lest I fall into temptation, I destroyed the letters. So, having burned my bridges behind me, I was finally and utterly alone in the city, with the winter approaching and every shivering night in the streets reminding me that a time was rapidly coming when such a life as I led could no longer be endured.

Not in a thousand years would I be likely to forget the night when it came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the 'castle,' with its refined ways, between her, in her dainty girlhood, and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my senses with my courage. There was warmth and cheer where she was. Here an overpowering sense of desolation came upon me. I hitched a little nearer to the edge. What if——? Would they miss me much or long at home if no word came from me? Perhaps they might never hear. What was the use of keeping it up any longer, with, God help us, everything against, and nothing to back, a lonely lad?...

It was not only breakfast we lacked. The day before we had had only a crust together. Two days without food is not good preparation for a day's canvassing. We did the best we could. Bob stood by and wagged his tail persuasively while I did the talking; but luck was dead against us, and 'Hard Times' stuck to us for all we tried. Evening came and found us down by the Cooper Institute, with never a cent. Faint with hunger, I sat down on the steps under the illuminated clock, while Bob stretched himself at my feet. He had beguiled the cook in one of the last houses we called at, and his stomach was filled. From the corner I had looked on enviously. For me there was no supper, as there had been no dinner and no breakfast. To-morrow there was another day of starvation. How long was this to last? Was it any use to keep up a struggle so hopeless? From this very spot I had gone, hungry and wrathful, three years before when the dining Frenchmen for whom I wanted to fight thrust me forth from their company. Three wasted years! Then I had one cent in my pocket, I remembered. To-day I had not even so much. I was bankrupt in hope and purpose. Nothing had gone right; and worse, I did not care. I drummed moodily upon my book. Wasted! Yes, that was right. My life was wasted, utterly wasted.

A voice hailed me by name, and Bob sat up, looking attentively at me for his cue as to the treatment of the owner of it. I recognized in him the principal of the telegraph school where I had gone until my money gave out. He seemed suddenly struck by something.



"'Why, what are you doing here?' he asked. I told him Bob and I were just resting after a day of canvassing.

"'Books!' he snorted. 'I guess that won't make you rich. Now, how would like to be a reporter, if you have got nothing better to do? The manager of a news agency downtown asked me to-day to find him a bright young fellow whom he could break in. It isn't much—$10 a week to start with. But it is better than peddling books, I know,'

"He poked over the book in my hand and read the title. 'Hard Times,' he said, with a little laugh. 'I guess so. What do you say? I think you will do. Better come along and let me give you a note to him now.'

"As in a dream. I walked across the street with him to his office and got the letter which was to make me, half starved and homeless, rich as Croesus, it seemed to me.

"When the sun rose I washed my face and hands in a dog's drinking trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, and went with Bob to his new home. The parting over, I walked down to 23 Park Row and delivered my letter to the desk editor in the New York News Association up on the top floor.

"He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the early hours I kept told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk, bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments; and with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays that go to make up the sum of the life of the metropolis, it exercises the old spell over me yet. If my sympathies need quickening, my point of view adjusting, I have only to go down to Park Row at eventide, when the crowds are hurrying homeward and the City Hall clock is lighted, particularly when the snow lies on the grass in the park, and stand watching them awhile, to find all things coming right. It is Bob who stands by and watches with me then, as on that night."

TALENT IN THE BUD AND BLOSSOM

The big important lesson underlying all of these concrete examples is that the individual of this type never ought to attempt to do any kind of work in which success depends upon physical effort. Whatever talents he may have will express themselves always best in an intellectual way. It may be art, it may be music, it may be machinery, it may be business, it may be mining or agriculture, it may be any one of many other active pursuits which have also a purely intellectual side. In his early youth his mind naturally turns to the more material manifestation of his talent. But, with proper training and given the proper opportunities, he will always gravitate surely to the mental and intellectual phases of his bent. The boy who is interested in machinery may become an inventor or he may become a playwright or an author. The boy who is interested in plants and flowers may become a botanist or a naturalist, or, perhaps, even a poet. The boy who is deeply interested in battles and fighting may be far better adapted to the profession of historian than to the trade of soldier. The boy who likes to build houses and factories in his play, and seems to be deeply interested in the construction of edifices, may not be fitted to become a contractor or a draughtsman. If he is of this intellectual type, he is far more likely to become an architect, or, perhaps, to idealize his talents even further and devote himself to literature on the subject of architecture, home planning, and home decoration. The boy of this type, who in his youth seems to take a particular interest in horses, cattle, dogs, and other animals, may not necessarily be best qualified for a stock breeder or a dairyman. Possibly he should become a veterinarian or even a physician and surgeon. Or his bent may be in the direction of science, so that he makes a name as a naturalist.

The first and most important thing for people of this type, and for parents having children of this type, is to get it firmly fixed in their minds, once for all, that they are not fitted for hard physical work. The next important thing, of course, is to secure a broad and complete education along general lines. If there is any striking and particular talent along any one line, such an education is more than likely to bring it out and to cause it to seek further development. In case there is no such distinct predilection manifested, further and more minute study of the individual will have to be made in order to determine just what kind of intellectual work will give him the best opportunities for success and happiness. Even in the want of such a careful analysis, it is, nevertheless, true that an individual of this type, who has no marked inclination toward any one form of mental activity, is always far better placed, far happier, and far more successful if trained to do any kind of intellectual work than if left untrained and compelled to try to earn his own living by the use of his bones and muscles.



CHAPTER V

THE FAT MAN

When we were children and went to the circus, our favorite performer in the sawdust ring was always the clown, and our favorite clown was the fat one. In fact, we do not remember ever having seen a clown who was not a fat man.

Alas! how many were the tribulations of our rotund friend! How he was buffeted, and paddled, and slapped! How often he tumbled and fell! How maliciously inanimate objects flew up and hit him in the face! How constantly his best efforts went for naught, how invariably he was misunderstood! How great was the glee with which everybody persecuted him and knocked him about the ring! And yet, notwithstanding all his troubles, did he win from us a sympathetic sigh or even the fraction of a tear, except tears of laughter? All his troubles seemed funny to us.

Millions are still laughing at the comic tribulations of dear old John Bunny, although he has gone beyond the power of things to trouble him. We have laughed and are still laughing at Thomas Wise. From the days of Falstaff down to those of the "movies," we have enjoyed laughing at the plights of a fat man on the stage.

FAT MEN RULE THE WORLD

In real life it is much the same. Every fat man knows that only by unusual patience, good nature, and friendly tolerance can he live with his fellows. He is the butt of all jokes; he must smile at a constant patter of pleasantries about his unusual size. He hears the same old stupid japes over and over and over again. If he weren't the prince of good fellows and the best-natured man in the world, it would fare ill for those who torment him.

As a matter of fact, it may be better for the rest of us than for the fat man that he is good natured, easy going, genial, fond of a good laugh; because fat men rule the world. Perhaps that is why it is so funny to us to see them in trouble. It is one of the foibles of humanity always to find pleasure in the mishaps of its rulers and superiors. The pranks of the schoolboy are intended to cause perplexity and distress to his teacher. This is true of the college youth in his playfulness. The same human trait manifests itself in a thousand other ways.

The fat man was born to rule. He enjoys the good things of life. He is fond of luxuries. He has a keenly developed sense of taste, and a nice discrimination of flavor. He likes to wear good clothing. He likes soft, upholstered chairs, comfortable beds, a goodly shelter. Like old King Cole (always pictured in our nursery books with a Garguntian girth), he enjoys "his pipe and his bowl and his fiddlers three." He is fond of a good joke, and laughs more heartily than any one else at it. In fact, enjoyment and pleasure may be said to be the keynote of the typical fat man's personality. But he is too heavy for physical activity. His feet are too small for the weight of his body. He does not care for strenuous physical exercise. It is not his idea of a good time to follow a golf ball all over a twenty-acre field. He does it only because he thus hopes to reduce his flesh and enable himself to become once more the romantic figure he was in his youth. For, while the fat man may be a master of comedy, and while he may be a ruler of the people, he is not romantic. The big fellows do not well sustain romantic roles, except in grand opera, where nearly everything but the music is illusion and elusive. Our novelists all tell us that as soon as a man's girth begins to increase, he looks ridiculous in a fine frenzy. J.M. Barrie makes a very keen point of this in his story of Tommy and Grizel. It was the increasing size of his waist band that drove poor Tommy to such extreme measures as to cause his final downfall and death. His one great aim in life was to be romantic, and when the lady of his desires giggled about his increasing size it was too much.

Scientific research, philosophy, and the more strenuous and concentrated forms of mental activity seem to require a certain degree of asceticism in order to be wholly efficient. We are told that the person who feeds too well causes his mind to grow rather ponderous in its movements. He is inclined to fall asleep if he remains quiet and practices severe mental concentration for too long a time.

HE PLANS WORK FOR OTHERS

If, therefore, the fat man cannot work at physical labor, if he is not fitted for romance, if he is incapacitated by his love of the good things of life for severe mental labor, what can he do to fill his purse, supply his table, clothe his portly person, and surround himself with the elegancies and luxuries which are so dear to his heart?

Evidently the fat man found out long ago that the eager, active, restless, energetic, muscular, raw-boned soldier and workman was far more interested in the exercise of his muscles and in outdoor activity than he was in securing niceties and luxuries. He also learned that the thinker, the philosopher, the scientific experimenter, and all who took delight in mental effort were more deeply interested in their studies, in their research, in their philosophies, and in their religions than they were in money, food, clothing, and shelter. So he set about it, with his jovial personality, his persuasiveness, and keen sense of values, to organize the thinkers and philosophers under his direction, so that he could take and use for himself the product of their mental labors. He was perfectly willing to agree to feed and take care of them, to clothe and shelter them, in return for what they could give him. They didn't eat much. They didn't care much for fine clothing. They were perfectly satisfied in very plain and rather ascetic surroundings. They were, therefore, a rather inexpensive lot of people for him to keep.

Taking the plans, schemes, inventions, and discoveries from those who thought them out, the fat man carried them to the muscular fellows, who were just spoiling for a fight or for some opportunity to exercise their physical powers. These he organized into armies—to fight, to till the soil, and to build and manufacture. These armies carried out the ideas the fat man got for them from the lean and hungry thinkers. They gloried in hardship. They rather enjoyed roughing it, and took delight in privation. Therefore, they also were a comparatively easy burden on the hands of the fat man; who was thus enabled to sit upon a golden throne, in a comfortable palace, surrounded by all the beauties and luxuries gathered from the four winds, and enjoy himself while directing the work of both the intellectual giant and the physical giant.

THE SLENDER SCHOLAR AND THE RUGGED SOLDIER

Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Spencer, Emerson, and Bergson were philosophers, and were all lean and slender men. Lord Kelvin, Lister, Darwin, Curie, Francis Bacon, Michelson, Loeb, Burbank, and most of our other scientists are also of the thin, lean type. Shakespeare, Longfellow, Holmes, Ruskin, Tindall, Huxley, and a long list of other intellectual and spiritual writers were men who never put on much flesh. James Watt, Robert Fulton, Elias Howe, Eli Whitney, S.F.B. Morse, Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers, and nearly all of our other great inventors have also been men whose habit was slender. Alexander, Napoleon, Washington, Grant, Kitchener, and most of our other great soldiers, while robust, are of the raw-boned, muscular type. They do not belong in the list of the fat men. The same is true of our great railroad builders, of Stanley, Peary, Livingston, and other explorers, of De Palma, Oldfield, Anderson, Cooper, Resta, and our other automobile racing kings. You look in vain among the aviators for a huge, rotund figure. Spend a week in New York City looking over subway workers, structural iron workers, guards, brakemen, motormen, carpenters, bricklayers, truckmen, stevedores, and boatmen. Go out into the country, look over the farm hands, the gardeners, the woodsmen, and all who work with their hands in the midst of nature, and in all the list you will find very few, if any, fat men. Fat men are, therefore, doing neither the actual intellectual nor the actual physical work of the world.

THE FAT MAN'S MODERN THRONE

Study butchers, bakers, chefs, provision merchants, and others who deal in food products. Among them you will find a good many corpulent figures. They are interested in good things to eat. They know how to handle them. They know how to purchase them, and they know how to sell them. They are able to tickle the palate of the lean and hungry scholar, of the robust and active soldier or worker, and, especially, of men as epicurean as themselves. They are, therefore, successful in the handling of food products. Go a little further—study foremen, superintendents, managers, and presidents of corporations. In many a large upholstered chair, which represents, in our modern life, the golden throne of the olden days, you will find a fat man. Here, as of old, they are taking the ideas of the thinkers and the muscular powers of the workers, and combining the two to make profit for themselves. At the same time, they are finding for the thinker a market for his ideas that he himself could never find. Unless the fat man fed him, the lean man would become so lean that he would finally die of starvation. The big fellow is also finding a market for the muscular power, energy, and skill of the worker; a market which the worker, by himself, could never find.

THE FAT MAN'S VALUABLE SERVICE

Recently we made a study of a large corporation. Amongst other things, we found it required ten thousand dollars capital to provide the building, machinery, help, tools, advertising, selling, and other necessities of that business for every employee on the payroll. It also required unusual organizing ability and unusual selling ability to gather together the means for manufacturing the product and getting it into the hands of the consumer. It also required considerable genius to collect the money for the product and apply it to the needs of the workers in the form of payroll. These services of the fat man are often forgotten by those who work under his direction.

In order that huge industries may be built up and employment secured for hundreds of thousands of men, large bodies of capital must be gathered together. This is a work for financiers. Go down into Wall Street, in New York; La Salle Street, in Chicago; State Street, in Boston, and look over the financiers there. A considerable number of them are fat men. Because thinkers and workers cannot appreciate financial value, many of them complain loudly because the fat man sits in an easy chair and reaps the profits from their efforts. They restlessly agitate for an economic system which will yield them all the profits from their ideas and labor. They want to eliminate the capitalist—to condemn the fat man to a choice between scholarship or working as they work and starvation. They know human aptitudes so vaguely that they want to turn the corpulent into farm hands or philosophers and the great mass of lean and bony into financial rulers.

There is a prevalent notion among the unthinking that capital takes about four-fifths of the products of labor's hands and keeps it. A committee of the American Civic Federation, after three years of careful investigation in industries employing an aggregate of ten million workers, found that this idea is based upon the assumption that capital gets and keeps all the gross income from production except what is paid to labor. It leaves out of account the cost of raw materials, the upkeep of buildings and machinery, and miscellaneous expenses. When these are subtracted from gross income, the committee found, labor receives two-thirds of the remainder in wages and salaries, capital one-third for interest, upkeep of capital, and profit.

FINANCIER AND JUDGE

With some exceptions, neither the deep thinker nor the hard physical worker is capable of handling finances. They are lacking in financial acumen, due, no doubt, to the fact that the thinker is interested chiefly in the object of his thought, the worker chiefly in the exercise of his powerful muscles. Neither of them is sufficiently eager for the good things of life to have a true and unerring sense of financial values. The lean man is nervous. He is inclined to be irritable; he probably lacks patience. Therefore, he is not well qualified to judge impartially. The active, energetic, restless man is not contented to sit quietly for hours at a time and listen to the troubles of other people. He must get away, be out of doors, have something to do to exercise those splendid muscles of his. Therefore, it is left to the fat man to sit upon the bench, to listen to tiresome details of the woe of those who have had trouble with one another. Because he is neither nervous nor irritable; because his mind is at rest; because he is well fed and well clothed and has no need to be anxious, he can take time to be impartial and to judge righteous judgment between his fellowmen. And so you will find fat men on the bench, in politics, in the halls of legislature, on the police force, and in other places where they have an opportunity to use their judicial ability.

HOW MISFITS HAPPEN

So unerring is the fat man's judgment of values, as a general rule, that it is not at all likely that he would ever find himself a misfit were it not for the fact that many men are lean and slender or muscular and robust up to the age of 30 or 40, and after that put on flesh rapidly. These men, therefore, are often deceived in regard to themselves. In the slenderness of youth, they feel active and are active. In short, they have the qualities, in these early periods of their life, which we should expect in men of similar build. They are, therefore, too likely to enter upon vocations for which they will find themselves unfitted as the years go by and they put on more flesh. It often happens that men of this class graduate from the ranks of thinkers or workers into the ranks of managers, financiers, bankers, and judges, as they put on flesh and become better and better adapted for that particular kind of work. The only trouble is that sometimes they are not well enough trained—they do not have sufficient education for the higher positions. In these cases they remain misfits. Oftentimes they succeed in getting into positions of comparatively mediocre executive nature, when they could assume and make a success of very much higher positions if they had a true knowledge of their vocations.

A FAT MAN'S SUCCESS

The story of Hon. Alfred L. Cutting, of Weston, Massachusetts, perhaps illustrates as well as any other in our records the aptitudes and vocational possibilities of this type. Mr. Cutting comes of good old New England stock, his ancestors on both sides having settled in Massachusetts comparatively early in the seventeenth century. His father and his grandfather before him were merchants, and young Alfred began working in the parental general store as soon as he had finished school.

As a youth, Mr. Cutting was quite distinctly of the bony and muscular type, being very active, fond of rowing and fishing, a great lover of nature and of long tramps through the beautiful hills of eastern Massachusetts. As he entered manhood, however, he began to put on more flesh and to take less interest in strenuous outdoor sports. At the same time, he began to take a hand, in a quiet, modest way, in the town politics of Weston. While still a comparatively young man, he was elected a member of the board of selectmen of this town and has held this position with singular acceptability to his fellow-citizens almost continuously ever since.

For a number of years, Mr. Cutting was associated with his father and brother in the general store, but, as time went on, he became ambitious to enlarge his activities. He, therefore, assisted in the organization of the New England branch of the Sheldon School, of Chicago, and was its manager for a number of years. When he first undertook this work, Mr. Cutting had never made a public speech in his life, and, while he was interested in politics and ambitious for success along this line, he felt greatly handicapped by what he considered to be his inability to face an audience acceptably. It was at about this time that we first formed the acquaintance of Mr. Cutting and, upon consultation, informed him of his natural aptitudes and talents. He immediately began a careful study of public speaking, supplementing this study with actual practice both in politics and in his capacity as manager of the Sheldon School. In 1908 and 1909 he was a member of the House of Representatives for the State of Massachusetts, gaining credit for himself as a member of important committees and rendering to his own constituency unusually faithful and efficient service.

SUCCESS IN EXECUTIVE CAPACITY

As manager for the Sheldon School, Mr. Cutting selected and trained a number of salesmen and assistants in the leadership of whom he did excellent work, he himself delivering lectures before boards of trade, chambers of commerce, trade conventions, and other such bodies in all parts of New England. He has since, however, given up this particular line of work to devote himself to politics, to his civic duties, and to the management of his growing mercantile business. He is, at present, chairman of the board of selectmen for the town of Weston, an office which he has held with distinction for five years. He is also a member of the executive committee of the Republican Club of Massachusetts. In 1913 he was the Republican candidate for representative in Congress for the thirteenth district, at the special election held during that year to fill the vacancy caused by the promotion of the Hon. John W. Weeks to the United States Senate. This was the year when the Progressive vote was very large and the Republican candidate for governor in Massachusetts was thousands of votes behind the Progressive. Notwithstanding this unusual political situation, Mr. Cutting, though not elected, led his Progressive opponent by more than 3,000 votes, and, by his splendid leadership, helped lay the foundation for the Republican victory in the same district the following year. At this writing, Mr. Cutting has just won a notable victory at the polls, having been elected a member of the board of county commissioners for Middlesex County by a very large plurality. He carried every district in the county except two, and in nearly every district he ran far ahead of his ticket.

POLITICAL PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES

Mr. Cutting's ability, however, is by no means fully indicated by the offices which he has held. He has never been an office seeker, but has preferred rather to work as a political leader. His great interest in politics arises, first, from his ardent desire for excellence and efficiency in the public service. Under his leadership, the town of Weston has built and maintains more miles of excellent roads, at less cost to the tax payer, than any other town of its area in the State. Its schools and other public institutions are similarly efficient and conducted with a similar degree of economy. Second, Mr. Cutting enjoys politics because he loves the game. Like all true sportsmen, he plays to win, but is neither chagrined or cast down if he loses. He is always able to rejoice with the victor if beaten in a fair fight.

FINANCIAL ACUMEN

Mr. Cutting is one of the organizers of the Metropolitan Bank of Boston, and a prominent member of its board of directors, thus indicating his growing interest in financial matters.

The portraits of Mr. Cutting, shown on pages 126 and 127, are well worthy of study. In them are evident his cheerfulness, his geniality, his shrewdness, his friendliness, and his honesty of purpose. These are shown largely in the expression, but also in the full, found development of his head just above the temples, in his long back head, and in the general squareness of the head. This squareness, especially in the back, indicates also his prudence, his tendency to take precautions and, through foresight, to forestall disaster. The narrowness of the head, just above the ears, indicates mildness of disposition and an ability to secure his ends by tact, diplomacy, and intellectual mastery rather than by open combat and belligerency. The fulness of the eyes indicates Mr. Cutting's command of language, and the broad, square chin his determination and deliberation; the long line from the point of the chin to the crown of the head, his love of authority and his ability to lead and to rule.

INDICATIONS OF APPROACHING STOUTNESS

The man of slender build who has indications clearly marked and easily recognizable of approaching stoutness should prepare himself for executive, financial, judicial, or merchandising work. He should study law, economics, finance, banking, politics, political economy, public speaking and other such branches. If he has the ability to write, he should prepare himself to write on financial or political subjects. Many of our most noted political writers are fat men. Such writers as Alfred G. Lewis, Samuel G. Blythe, and others are good examples of this type.

Indications of approaching stoutness are not difficult to detect. Heredity has a powerful influence. The young man who resembles his father in facial appearance and coloring, will probably grow stout if his father is a fat man. When the face inclines to be round, the cheeks rather full, and the lips full, there is a fair probability that the individual will take on flesh. A concave form of face is also another good indication. The concave face is shown in Figure 31. It will be seen that it is prominent at the point of the chin, and not so prominent at the mouth, and prominent at the top of the forehead, near the hair line, and not so prominent at the brows. The nose, also, is inclined to be sway backed. Another indication which should have a bearing in the choice of a vocation is the thickness of the neck, especially, at the back, and a fulness of the back head, at the base of the brain. Such fulness is shown in Figure 16.

Wideness of the head, in comparison with length and height, is also another indication that the individual may put on flesh as he grows older. The man or woman who has a majority of these indications will do well to prepare himself or herself for a position of command.

The world is a richer, pleasanter, better fed, better clothed, and happier place because of its fat men. It is true, they enjoy the good things of life themselves, but, as a general rule, they also like to see others enjoy them, and well deserve the rich rewards they reap. We are glad that so few of them are ever poor and hungry.



CHAPTER VI

THE MAN OF BONE AND MUSCLE

Consider the record of the man of action.

He built the pyramids and temples of Egypt, raised up the monuments and artistic triumphs of Greece, fared forth across the plains of Arabia and the deserts of Africa on horses and camels before the dawn of history. He wore the coat of mail of the Roman legion; he penetrated through the northernmost forest of Europe; he pioneered in barbarous England. Thousands of years ago he built ships and sailed them, and, finally, drove them across the sea. Thus he found two new continents. In America, he cut down forests, built roads, established industry, fought battles for freedom, invented and built steamships, telephones, telegraphs, cotton gins, aeroplanes, railroads, submarines thousands of electric light and power stations, and millions of shops and factories. He explored darkest Africa; found both the North and the South Poles. This man drives his steamships at thirty knots an hour, his locomotives at 70 miles an hour, his automobiles at 100, and his aeroplanes at 120. He is setting higher and yet higher records for running, leaping, swimming, rowing, throwing weights, and driving horses. He has organized great athletic contests, baseball leagues, tennis associations, golf clubs, and other organizations for the promotion of physical activity. The man of bone and muscle has climbed to the peaks of all the mountains of the world; has dug down into the depths of the earth after her treasures of gold and silver and the baser metals, precious stones, and other products of the mines. This man tills the fields, manufactures all fabricated products, and carries goods to the ends of the earth. This active type mans navies, fills the ranks of armies, erects great buildings, and cut through the backbone of a continent.



ACTIVITY AND SPEED

This man loves motion. He is not satisfied with slow, languid motion, but demands speed, greater and ever greater speed. And so his horses, his locomotives, the machines in his factory, his automobiles, his aeroplanes, his motor-cycles, his farm implements, his ocean liners, his motor boats, are being constantly studied, constantly improved, and constantly raised to higher and higher performances in speed of production, speed of transportation, speed of accomplishment.

This man not only demands speed, but he demands space. The man who can travel at a hundred miles an hour needs many hundred miles in which to travel. This is why nearly all of his activities are in the big out-of-doors; this is why he is constantly exploring and pioneering in order to extend his boundaries. He has a craving for more space in which to breathe, more scope of action.

This ardent and irrepressible desire for physical freedom, for physical liberty of action, also leads to the desire for political and economical freedom. All of our great liberators, from Moses down to Lincoln, have been men of this active, muscular, bony, type. Because they desire freedom for themselves, they want freedom for everyone else. They often go to extremes and strive to secure freedom for those who have no use for it, who do not care for it after it is won for them, and who only abuse it when they should enjoy its blessings.

THE MAN OF MUSCLE GROWS A BRAIN

In the early days of the race, the man of this type had little intelligence. He was supposed to be, principally, bone and muscle with no brain. He did the physical work which was assigned to him and other men did the thinking, the planning, and the directing. But, as the race has increased in intelligence, the man of bone and muscle has developed a brain. Manual skill, educators tell us, is one of the best of all means for gaining knowledge and increasing intelligence. So now the muscular man can think, now he can plan, now, especially, does he manifest his thinking, planning and constructive ability along lines for increasing speed, getting more out of machinery, buildings, inventions, manufacture, agriculture, horticulture, transportation. In all these lines the man of action is also a man of thought. This is well; this is an improvement, and our active, hustling, pioneer type of man is happier, more efficient, more prosperous in his intelligent state than he was in his purely physical state. But here, also, he gets into trouble. So long as his mental activity is accompanied by considerable physical activity, his health is good, he is satisfied, he enjoys his work and he is successful in it. But the time comes when the work to be done by brain becomes so important that many men of this type give up physical activity entirely and devote all of their time to mental work.



THE ACTIVE MAN'S DILEMMA

Strange that we have not learned that any faculty possessed must be exercised or the possessor surely falls into evil ways. Strange that we have not seen that the man who explores the unknown world in mighty pioneering work, who frees it from oppression, who carries on its tremendous physical and industrial development, could never be satisfied if imprisoned within the four walls of an office. Thus hampered and confined, unless he finds expression for his speed mania, he grows irritable, ill, nervous, depressed. He troops, by the thousand, into the consulting rooms of the physician and surgeon. And always and always is the same prescription given: "You must get away from your work; you must get out into the open; you must get plenty of outdoor exercise."