Exercise, exercise, exercise, has become the slogan. Magazines are devoted to it. Whole libraries of books are published showing the relationship between exercise and health. Sanitariums multiply whose principal means of cure are located in the gymnasium, in the garden, in the woods, at the wood pile, and on the farm. Fortunes have been made in the manufacture of the equipment for exercise: Indian clubs, dumb bells, and whole shiploads of so-called sporting goods, the object of all of which is to enable the active man to get some relief from the ache of his muscles or nerves due to lack of exercise.



EXERCISE FOR EXERCISE'S SAKE DULL

But the man of muscle is, as we have said, frequently a man of brains. He has common sense; he has a desire for accomplishment and achievement. To such a man, the mere pulling of cords, or the swinging about of his arms and legs, the bending of his back, just for the sake of exercise, seems a trifle stupid.

Very few men of this type ever keep up exercise for exercise's sake for any very long period of time. They read in some magazine about the benefits of exercise. Perhaps, on account of some trouble, they go to their physicians, and exercise is prescribed. So, with a great show of resolution and not a little feeling of martyrdom, they buy a pair of Indian clubs, or wall exercisers, or a weight machine, or, perhaps, merely buy a book of "exercises without apparatus," and make up their minds to take their exercises regularly every morning. At first they attack the task with great enthusiasm—but it is still a task. Perhaps marked improvement is shown. They feel much better. They push out their chests and tell their friends how they get up, take a cold bath every morning, and then take ten or fifteen or twenty minutes of rapid calisthenics. In a righteous glow, they relate how it shakes them up and makes their blood course through their veins; how they breathe deeply; how the process clears out their heads; and how much better they feel They wind up: "You ought to do it, too, old man; it would make you young again."

By and by, however, to stand gazing blankly at the wall of a bathroom, or out of the window of a bed-chamber, and put your arms up five times and then straight forward five times, then repeat five times, etc., etc., grows dull. You lose interest You hate the task—you revolt. Even if, by power of will, you keep it up, you do so under protest. It is a physical truth that that which is disagreeable is also physically harmful. In order to be wholesomely nourishing, food must taste good. The same is true in regard to exercise. There is no very great benefit in exercise which is drudgery.

WHEN GAMES PALL

To take the "task" element out of exercise, many kinds of games have been invented—some indoor, some outdoor, some for men of little activity, some of great strenuousness and even danger. But it requires a particular type of man or woman to take interest in a game, to play it well and profitably, as a form of exercise. To enter into a game whole-heartedly, one must have a keen zest for combat. The man who plays purely for the sport, and not to win, doesn't win. And the man who doesn't win, loses interest. Not all men, not even all active men, have this desire to win. To them a game soon becomes dull—nearly as dull as any other form of exercise. They do not see that they are any further ahead in anything worth while simply because they have knocked a golf ball about more skilfully—or luckily—than some other fellow, or pulled a little stronger oar than their opponents. There are plenty of men to whom it is humiliating to be beaten, who are not good losers, and because they are not good losers they are not very often winners. Such men do not really enjoy games at all, and, as a general rule, do not play them with enthusiasm and persistence.

For those, then, who do not enjoy calisthenics of any kind, who take very little interest in games and contests, there remain, for exercise, gardening, farming, carpentry, forestry, hunting, fishing, mountain climbing, and other such forms of physical activity. All of these, however, require considerable leisure, and some financial investment. They are out of the reach of many of those in lower clerkships and other such employment. These men, by the thousands, work in offices which are, perhaps, not as well ventilated as they should be, under artificial light. They travel to and from their work in crowded street cars and subways, and live in little dark, narrow flats and apartments, with one window opening out on sunlight and fresh air, and all other windows opening on courts and so-called light and air-shafts. Golf, tennis, baseball, rowing, etc., are good forms of exercise for these men—but few of them care for games. Gardening, forestry, carpenter work, mountain climbing, hunting, or fishing are out of the question in a city flat. So the majority jump up in the morning, hurry on their clothes, snatch a bite of breakfast, run for a car, get to work, burrow in the warrens of industry until lunch time, rush out, snatch a sandwich and a cup of coffee at some lunch counter, and back to work again until dinner time. Another dive into the bowels of the earth in the subway, home to the little flat, dinner at seven o'clock or even later, and then the short evening. This little time from eight o'clock until ten at night is practically the only time the worker has for himself, except for holidays and his annual two weeks' vacation. How shall he get sufficient physical exercise during that time to satisfy all his needs? If he is so constituted that he enjoys such things, he may go to a gymnasium or to a bowling alley, but he is just as likely to go to a pool room or to a dance hall. Of course, it is far better for him to play pool or to dance than to sit quietly at home, as many do.

SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM

This whole question is a serious one. Even those who have the time, the means, the opportunity, and the inclination find themselves confronted with problems. Even with all of their opportunities, most of them do not get enough outdoor physical activity. And so they fret, they fume, they beat their wings against the bars, they are unhappy, dissatisfied, and therefore, oftentimes inefficient and unsuccessful. Even when they are successful, they have fallen far below what they might have accomplished had they been engaged in some vocation which would have given them not only physical activity out of doors, but some intense vital interest in the result of that activity. In other words, their vocation should supply them with the necessary physical exercise as part of the day's work. They should see themselves advancing, making money, achieving something worth while, creating something beautiful or useful, making a career for themselves, instead of merely playing or exercising for the sake of exercise. Then they would be happier. Then they would be better satisfied with their lot. They would be more efficient and far more successful.

Current literature abounds in true stories of those who have gone forward to the land and have found help, happiness, and success in the cultivation of the soil. This one has redeemed an abandoned farm in New England. That one has taken a small ten-acre farm in southern California. Another has carved out health, happiness, and a fair degree of fortune for himself on the plains of Washington or Idaho, or among the hills of Oregon. Old southern plantations have been rehabilitated at the same time with their new owners or tenants.



ONE MAN'S "WAY OUT"

Near Gardiner, Maine, is a little forty-five acre poultry and fruit farm which pays its happy owner $3,800 a year clear of all expense. Seven years ago this farm was abandoned by its former owners, who could not make it pay. Five years ago it was purchased by its present owner for a song—and only a half-line of the song was sung at the time. He was a clerk who had lived the little-flat-dark-office-and-subway life until tuberculosis had removed him from his job and threatened his life. Farm work—on his own farm—proved to be a game at which he could play with zest and success. The stakes were a life and a living—and he has won. We—and you, too, no doubt—could multiply narratives from observation and experience, to say nothing of reading.



A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY

All these experiences and the reports of them are both a part of and a stimulus to the "back to the land movement." This movement has its mainspring in two plain economic facts, namely: first, clerical and other indoor vocations have become overcrowded; second, while crops grow bigger year by year, the number of mouths to feed multiplies even faster, and unless more land is tilled and all land cultivated more intensively, we shall eat less and less, as a race, and pay more and more for what we eat. Here is opportunity for the men of bone and muscle—opportunity for health, prosperity, usefulness to humanity, enjoyment and happiness. Other opportunities lie in the conservation of our forests and the planting and development of new timber lands; in the building up of new industries for manufacturing our raw materials; in restoring the American flag to the seas of the world; in extending our foreign trade; in opening and operating inland waterways; in irrigating or draining our millions of square miles of land now lying idle; in the development of Alaska, and the harnessing of our great mines of "white coal"—water-power.

Our foreign trade requires men of this type to travel in all parts of the world as commercial ambassadors, diligently collecting, compiling, and sending back to the United States information necessary in manufacturing goods for foreign consumption; also information regarding credits, prices, shipping, packing—in short, complete and detailed knowledge about commerce with foreign lands, how to secure it and how to hold it.

The world's greatest opportunities to-day, perhaps, lie within the grasp of the men of this active type. Instead of pioneering in exploration, as in former years, they are needed to pioneer in production. From the earliest history of the race, these restless men have been faring westward and ever westward, adding to the wealth and resources of humanity by opening up new lands. But the crest of the westward moving tide has now circumnavigated the globe, and the Far West meets the Far East on the Pacific Ocean. Here and there are comparatively small, neglected tracts of land still to be developed, but there are no longer great new empires, as in former days. The great welling sources of human life have not ceased to flow, even though the final boundaries of its spread have been reached. Population will continue to grow and its demands upon the resources of the earth to increase. The man who discovers a way to make a hundred bushels of wheat grow on an acre of land where only twenty-five bushels grew before is as great a benefactor of the race as the discoverer of a continent. The invention of the electric light, the telephone, the automobile, the trolley car, and the aeroplane have added as much to the products and power of the race as the pioneering of thousands of square miles of fertile hills and plains. The man who can find a cheap and easy way to capture and hold nitrogen from the air will add more to the wealth of the race than all the discoverers of all the gold mines.

America needs to find efficient and profitable methods for manufacturing her own raw materials. Up to the present time, our exports have been coal, petroleum, steel rails, wheat, corn, oats, lumber, and other products which carry out of the country the riches of our soil. We have been exporting raw materials to foreign lands, where they have been refined and fabricated by brain and hand and returned to us at some five hundred to a thousand times the price we received for them. With the increase of population, we need to capitalize more and more the intelligence and skill of our people, and less and less the virgin resources of our lands. Ore beds, coal measures, copper, lead, gold and silver mines, forests, oil wells, and the fertility of our soils can all become exhausted. But the skill of our hands and the power of our intellects grow and increase and yield larger and larger returns the more they are called upon to produce.

The man of bone and muscle—the restless, active, pioneering, constructing man—would do well to consider these things before determining upon his vocation, and especially before entering upon any kind of non-productive work. The world has need of his particular talents and he should find his greatest happiness and greatest success in the exercise of them in response to that need.

We have seen so many men of this active type so badly placed that individual examples seem almost too commonplace for citation. Yet, a few may be instructive and encouraging.

William Carleton's remarkable story, entitled "Rediscovering America," is, in fact, the story of a man who was a middle-aged failure in a clerical position, and who afterward made a remarkable success of his life by taking up contracting and building. James Cook, a misfit as a grocer, afterward became famous as a naval officer and explorer. Henry M. Stanley, office boy to a cotton broker and merchant, afterward won immortal fame as a newspaper correspondent and explorer. What would have become of Theodore Roosevelt had he followed the usual line of occupation of a man in his position and entered a law office instead of becoming a rancher? We might add other experiences of similar importance from the biographies of other great men.

DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVE TYPE

The active type of man is, of course, easily recognized. He has broad, square shoulders, and is well muscled. He is either of the wiry, elastic, exceedingly energetic type, with muscles like steel springs and sinews like steel wire—very agile, very skillful, very quick, and somewhat jerky in his movements—or he is tall, raw-boned, strong, enduring, graceful, easy in his movements rather than quick, and yet with considerable manual skill. Or he may be of the short, stocky type, with broad shoulders, short neck, short arms, short legs, with big, round muscles and an immense capacity for endurance. The railroads of the early days, in this country, were built by Irishmen. They were either the large, raw-boned type or the quick, agile, wiry type. The railroads, subways, and other construction work of to-day are built mostly by Italians, Hungarians, Greeks, and others from the south of Europe. These men are of short, stocky, sturdy, and enduring build. As a general rule, they are far better fitted for this class of work than the tall or medium-sized, large-boned or wiry type. As an evidence of this, take notice of the fact that the Irishmen who built the railroads in the sixties own and manage them to-day.

These active men usually have square faces. That is to say, there is a good development of the outer corners of the lower jaw, which gives to the face a square appearance. Oftentimes their cheek bones are both high and wide. As a general rule, they have large aquiline or Roman noses. When they are of the enduring type and capable of long-sustained muscular activity, they have prominent chins. Their hands are square. Their feet are large. If they have mechanical and constructive ability, as most of them have, their foreheads are comparatively high and wide just above the temple. Professional baseball players, professional dancers, middle-weight and light-weight prize-fighters, most aviators, automobile racers, and athletes belong to the wiry, springy, medium-sized type of this particular class of men. U.S. Grant, Robert E. Peary, Henry M. Stanley, Ty Cobb and Ralph DePalma belong to this type. Abraham Lincoln, W.E. Gladstone, Joseph G. Cannon, William G. McAdoo, Woodrow Wilson, and other men of this build belong to the raw-boned type. Napoleon Bonaparte, with his tremendous activities on only four hours' sleep a day, is a good example of the short, stocky type. While men of these types may make brilliant successes in purely mental vocations, as the result of the development of their intellects, and may keep themselves in a fair degree of health and strength by games, exercise, mountain climbing, farming, or some such avocation, they are, nevertheless, never quite so well satisfied as when they have something to do which not only gives them opportunity for the use of their intellects, but also involves a certain degree of physical activity as a part of their regular work.



CHAPTER VII

SLAVES OF MACHINERY

To multitudes of men and women the lure of levers, cranks, wheels and pinions is as seductive, as insidious, as heavenly in its promises, and as hellish in its performances, as the opium habit. The craving for opium, however, is an acquired taste, while the passion for machinery is born in thousands. We have seen children, while yet in their baby-cabs, fascinated by automobiles, sewing machines, and even little mechanical toys. We knew a boy on a farm who built a fairly workable miniature threshing machine with his own hands before he was old enough to speak the name of it in anything but baby-talk. We have seen boys work in the broiling sun day after day hoeing potatoes, pulling weeds, gathering crops, and doing other hard jobs for small pay, carefully saving every penny to buy a toy steam engine.

Parents usually look upon these evidences of mechanical ability with pleasure. They regard them as sure indications of the vocation of the child and oftentimes do everything in their power to encourage him in these lines. They little realize, however, the supreme danger which attaches to this very manifestation. Nor have they looked far enough ahead to see what is, in so many cases, the lamentable result.

THE RESTLESS "MACHINE CRAZY" BOY

The boy of this type hates to sit quietly on a hard bench in a school and study books. Some of the boys who went to school with us had imitation levers and valve-handles fastened about their desks in an ingenious way, and instead of studying, pretended that they were locomotive engineers. With a careful eye upon the teacher, who was his semaphore, such a boy would work the reverse lever, open and close the throttle, apply and disengage the brakes, test the lubrication, and otherwise go through the motions of running a locomotive with great seriousness and huge enjoyment.

These boys usually have considerable trouble with their teachers. They do not like grammar, frequently do not care for geography and history. They flounder dolefully in these studies and are in a state of more or less continual rebellion and disgrace. Because of their intense activity and restlessness, they irritate the teacher. She wants quiet in the school-room. Their surreptitious playing, rapping and tapping on desks, and other evidences of dammed-up energy and desire for more freedom and more scope of action, interferes with the desired sanctity of silence.

Outside of school hours and during the long vacation, the fatal fascination of machinery draws these young people to factories, railroad yards, machine shops, and other places where they may indulge their fancy and craving for mechanical motion. The boy who hangs around a machine shop or railroad yard is always pressed into voluntary and delighted service by those who work there. In a small town in Wisconsin we once knew a boy who worked willingly and at the hardest kind of labor in a railroad yard for years, voluntarily and without a cent of pay. In time he was entrusted with a small responsibility and given a small salary. Even if the boy does not begin in this way, the result is substantially the same. He may take the bit in his teeth, leave school and go to work at some trade which will give at least temporary satisfaction for his mechanical craving, or he may, through economic necessity, be forced out of school and naturally gravitate into a machine shop or factory. Oftentimes a few dollars a week is a very welcome addition to the family income. To the boy himself, three, four, five or six dollars a week seems like a fortune. Neither the parents nor the boy look ahead. Neither of them sees that when the little salary has increased to fifteen, sixteen, eighteen or twenty-five dollars a week, the boy will have reached the zenith of his possibilities. There will then be no further advancement, unless, during his apprenticeship and journeymanship, or previously to them, he has secured mental training which will enable him to go higher, hold more responsible positions and earn larger pay.

"MAN OR MACHINE—WHICH?"

In former days, the boy who left school and took up employment in a factory learned a trade. He became a shoe-maker, or a harness-maker, or a wheelwright, or a gun-maker. To-day, however, the work on all of these articles has been so subdivided that the boy perhaps becomes stranded in front of a machine which does nothing but punch out the covers for tin cans, or cut pieces of leather for the heels of shoes, or some other finer operation in manufacture. Once he has mastered the comparatively simple method of operating his particular machine, the boy is likely to remain there for all time. His employer—perhaps short-sighted—has no desire to advance him, because this would mean breaking in another boy to handle his machine. Also, it would mean paying more money.

Al Priddy, in his illuminating book, "Man or Machine—Which?"[9] thus describes the case of the slave to the machine:

[Footnote 9: The Pilgrim Press, Boston.]

"The workingman has been taught that his chief asset is skill. It has been his stocks, his bonds, the pride of his life. Poor as to purse and impoverished in his household; his cupboard bare, his last penny spent on a bread crust, he is not humbled; no, he merely stretches out his ten fingers and two callous palms, exactly as a proud king extends his diamond-tipped sceptre, to show you that which upholds him in his birthright. 'My skill is my portion given to the world,' he says. 'I shall not want. See, I am without a penny. I touch this bar of steel, and it becomes a scissors blade. My skill did it. I take this stick of oak and it becomes a chair rung. My skill is the grandest magic on earth, the common magic of every day. By it I live and because of it I hold my head royal high.'

"But the machine now attacks and displaces this skill. The cunning of trained fingers is transferred to cranks, cogs and belts. The trade secrets are objectified in mechanical form; able to mix the product, compound the chemicals, or make the notch at the right place.

"Besides this loss of skill, the workman loses, in the grind of the machine, his sense of the value of his work. Next to his pride of skill the workman has always been proud to be the connoisseur: stand back near the light with his product on his upraised hand, showing to all passers-by what he has done. Perhaps it was a red morocco slipper for a dancer, or a pearl button to go on the cloak of a little child, or maybe it was a horseshoe to go on the mayor's carriage horse. On a day a party of visitors would come to the little shop and the owner would pick up a hand-forged hammer and say, 'See what John made!' But, in our modern industry, no one man ever completes a task. Each task is subdivided into twenty, forty, a hundred or more portions, and a workingman is given just one to work on, day by day, year after year, for a working generation.

"After the time has come when the workman can find no distinct esthetic pleasure in his work, his loyalty to his employers suffers a shock.

"Then, when this indifference or disloyalty is full grown, the employer has full on him acute and formidable labor diseases. The man who should stand at his shoulder faces him, instead, with a hostile poise. The mill full of people over whom he holds power, upon whom he depends for his success, and who, in turn, depend upon his initiative and capital for their bread and butter, is turned into an armed camp of plotting enemies, who, while they work, grumble, and who, while they receive their wages, scheme for the overthrow of the entire concern! His mills, instead of being shelters for his brothers and sisters, are nests of scratching eagles—ready to rend and claw!

"It is further given out that the machine robs man of his industrial initiative; that the complicated and specialized machine decreases his mental alertness. In addition to his skill and his appreciation of his product, the workman has ever prized the appeal his labor has made to his individual intelligence. His work has brought thinking power with it. His day's task has included the excitement of invention and adventure. In the heat and burden of the week has come that thrilling moment when his mind has discovered the fact that a variation in method means a simplification of his task. Or, in the monotonous on-going of his labor, he has suddenly realized that by sheer brain power he has accomplished a third more work than his neighbor. He has counted such results compliments to his initiative, to his thinking power. They have brought a reward three times more satisfying than a mere increase in wage, for, in his eyes, they have been substantial testimonies to the freedom of his mind, something which every reasonable person puts higher than any king's ransom. But the coming of the machine deadens the workman's inclination toward inventive adventure.

"So the multitude of men and women stand before the cunning machinery of industry, in the pose of helplessness before a mechanical finality. They cannot help feeling that in so far as their special task is involved, the machine has said the last word. The challenge dies out of their work. The brain that has ever been on the quiver of adventurous expectancy relaxes its tension, and the workman moodily or indifferently lets his machine do its perfect work, while his undisciplined, unchallenged thoughts wander freely over external, social, or domestic concerns. It may give an indolent, unambitious, selfish type of employee a certain amount of satisfaction to know that the machine frees his mind of initiative, but to the considerate workman it is a day of tragedy when his brain power receives no challenge from his work, and that day has dawned in the minds of millions of men who throng our industries.

"So, then, when this machine-robber, without heart or conscience, makes of little repute the workman's most shining glory—skill; steals rudely from him the esthetic pleasure in his product, and leaves him mentally crippled before his work, how little force has that honored appeal, 'The dignity of labor'! Talk as we will, in this machine-ridden time, the 'dignity of labor' is but a skeleton of its former robust self. Take away the king's throne, the courtier's carpet, the royal prerogative, and then speak about 'The Divine Right'! All that 'dignity of labor' can mean in these days is simply that it is more dignified for a man to earn a wage than it is to be a doorway loafer. The workingman's throne—skill—has gone. His prerogative—skill—has been taken away. The items that have formerly given dignity to labor have been largely displaced, so far as we have adventured, by the machine, and the future holds out no other hope than this, that machines shall more and more increase. There is little 'dignity' in a task that a man does which may be equally well done by his fourteen-year-old boy or girl. There is little 'dignity' in a task which less and less depends upon independent knowledge."

But must these workers remain always slaves of machine? Is there no escape for them? Is there no "underground railroad" by which they may win their way to freedom?

Here is what Al Priddy has to say about it:

"The most convincing way in which man may master the machine is when he invents a new and better one, or improves an old one. This is the real triumph of mind over matter, of skill over machinery.

"With all its arrogance among us, machinery is always final in itself; incapable of change; incapable of progression or retrogression. Till the clouds fade from the sky, or the earth cracks, a machine will remain the same from the day of its creation until the day of its last whirl—unless man says the word to change it. Once started on its mission, there is nothing in the world can change the motion and purpose of a machine save man's mind. So, then, whatever relation man might have toward a machine, this stands sure: he will ever be able to stand before it and say: 'I am thy master. I can change thee, make thee better or worse. I made thee. I can unmake thee. If thou dost accomplish such mighty works, more honor to the mind which conceived thee!"

"But it is suddenly discovered by an industrial diagnosis that the machine has never been properly operated, even by the most skilled operators. It has been proved that 'there is more science in the most "unskilled" task than the man who performs it is capable of understanding.' This dictum of Mr. Taylor, a practical experimenter, has been dramatically proved in many directions. In the task of the sand shoveler, or the iron lifter, for instance, it was proved that by scientifically undertaking such work, fifty selected men, properly drilled, scientifically rested, intelligently manoeuvred, could accomplish a third more than one hundred ill selected and improperly managed men, in less time and under a larger salary. It is suddenly found that, contrary to theory, a machine, to be economically operated, leaves open man's chance for skill and does not rob him of it."

Perhaps a few cases taken from our records will indicate how men of this kind are able to come up from slavery and take successful places in their true vocations.

FROM BOILER-ROOM TO CHIEF ENGINEER'S OFFICE

G—— manifested very early indications of the lure of machinery for him. While yet in his cradle, he would play contentedly for hours with a little pulley or other mechanical trifle. Before he was able to walk, he could drive nails with a hammer sturdily and with more precision than many adults. This also was one of his favorite amusements, and it was necessary to keep him provided with lumber, lest he fill the furniture with nails. As he grew older he became more and more interested in machinery and mechanical things. He took to pieces the family clock and put it together again. He nearly always had the sewing machine partly dismantled, but could always put it together again, and it usually ran better after he had finished his work. He built water-wheels, wind-mills, and other mechanical toys. When he was about fourteen years old he built a steam engine. He used a bicycle pump for the cylinder and pieces of an old sewing machine, a discarded wringer, some brass wires, and other odds and ends for the rest of the parts. So perfect mechanically was this product that when steam was turned on it ran smoothly, and with very little noise, at the rate of three thousand revolutions a minute. In this engine he employed a form of valve motion which he had never seen, and which had never been used before. While not particularly efficient, and therefore not a valuable invention, it at least showed his ability to adapt means to ends mechanically.

After G—— began earning money for himself by mechanical and electrical work, he would go without luxuries, food and clothing, tramping to the shop almost barefoot one entire winter, for the sake of buying tools and equipment to carry on his mechanical experiments. It is not surprising, therefore, that he left school at an early age to engage in actual work in railroad shops. He afterward secured a position as a locomotive fireman. Circumstances arose which made it necessary for him to give up railroading. He secured a position as fireman on a stationary engine.

A HARD FIGHT FOR AN EDUCATION

It was while he was engaged in this kind of work that the suggestion was made to him that he ought not to try to go through life with only the rudiments of an education. It was pointed out that, while he had undoubted mechanical and inventive ability, he would have small opportunity to use it unless he also had the necessary technical and scientific knowledge to go with it. At first his interest in mechanics was so intense and his interest in school in general so comparatively slight, that he did not look with very much favor upon the suggestion. However, as time went on and he saw more and more of the results of such action as he was contemplating, he became more and more interested in completing his education. He therefore entered a good preparatory school and, with some little assistance from relatives, worked his way through by doing electrical and mechanical work about the little college town. In this kind of work he soon became well known and was in constant requisition. Occasionally his ingenuity and resourcefulness enabled him to do successfully work which had puzzled and baffled even those who were called experts. Having finished his preparatory course, he began a course in mechanical and electrical engineering in one of the best known of our universities. About this time practically all assistance from relatives had been withdrawn, owing to changed circumstances, and he was left almost entirely dependent upon his own efforts. The story of his struggles would fill a volume. Oftentimes he was almost entirely without food. There was one month during which he was unable to collect money due him for work done. Because he was a poor university student he had no credit. So he lived the entire month on $1.25. He thus explains how it was done:

LIVING A MONTH ON $1.25

"After visiting all of my clients trying to collect money, I came to the conclusion that it would be useless to expect anything to come in to me for at least thirty days. At this time I had $1.25 in my pocket. My room I had paid for in advance by doing a piece of work for my landlord. I also had about a cord of good oak wood which I had sawed and split and piled in the hallway under the stairs. I had a little sheet-iron stove which I used for both heating and cooking. I sat down and carefully figured out how I could make my $1.25 feed me until I could collect the money due. Twenty-five cents purchased three quarts of strained honey from a bee-keeper friend of mine. The dollar I invested in hominy. Every morning, when I first got up and built the fire, I put on a double boiler with as much hominy as would cook in it. While it was cooking I sat down and studied hard on my calculus. By the time I had got a pretty good hold of the pot-hooks and the bird-tracks in the calculus lesson, the hominy would be ready to eat. Hominy and honey is not a bad breakfast. While perhaps you would like some variety, it is also fairly edible for lunch. If you are very, very hungry, as a growing boy ought to be, and have been hard at work putting up bell wires and arranging batteries, doubtless you would rather eat hominy and honey for dinner than go without. The next morning the combination doesn't taste quite so good, and by lunch time you are beginning to wonder whether hominy and honey will satisfy all your cravings. In the evening, however, you are quite sure that, in the absence of anything else, you will have to have some hominy and honey in order to keep yourself alive. By the end of the first week you feel that you can never even hear the word hominy again without nausea and that you wish never to look a bee in the face. By the end of the second week you have become indifferent to the whole matter and simply take your hominy and honey as a matter of course, trying to think nothing about it and interesting yourself as much as possible in calculus, generator design, strength of materials, and other things that an engineering student has to study.

"The month finally passed. I felt as if I had eaten my way out of a mountain of hominy and waded through a sea of honey. Collections began coming in a little and I went and bought a beefsteak. You may have eaten some palatable viands. I have myself partaken of meals that cost as much as I made in a whole week's work in my school days. But let me assure you that no one ever had a meal that tasted better than the beefsteak and fried potatoes which finally broke the hominy and honey regime."

After this our young friend hired a little larger room, laid in a few cheap dishes and cooking utensils and took two or three of his fellow students to board. He did the marketing and the cooking and made them help him wash the dishes. Two were engineering students and the third was a student in the college of agriculture, all working their way through college. A few cents saved was a memorable event in their lives. Our young engineer furnished table board at $1.25 a week, and out of the $3.75 a week paid him by his boarders was able to buy all of his own food as well as theirs, and pay his room rent.

THE HARD FIGHT JUSTIFIED

After many troubles of this kind, G—— finished his engineering course and secured a position in one of the largest corporations in the United States at a salary of fifty dollars a month. At the time when he went to work for the big corporation there were probably three or four hundred other graduate engineers added to the staff. So keen was his mind along mechanical and engineering lines, and so great were his natural aptitudes, that within a few months his wages had been increased to $60 a month and he had been given far more responsible work. Almost as soon as he took up work with the corporation, he began making improvements in methods, inventing machinery and other devices, and thinking out ways and means for saving labor and making short cuts. Within a few weeks after his joining the force he had invented a bit of apparatus which could be carried in the coat pocket, and which took the place of a clumsy contrivance which required a horse and wagon to carry it. In this way he saved the company the price of horses, wagons, drivers, etc., on a great many operations. From the very first the young man rose very much more rapidly than any of the others who had entered the employ of the company at the time he did. Soon he was occupying an executive position and directing the activities of scores of men. To-day, only nine years after his leaving school, he occupies one of the most important positions in the engineering department of this great corporation, and while he does not have the title, performs nearly all the duties of chief engineer.

The point of all this story is that this young man, while he had plenty of mechanical ability and enjoyed machinery, was not fit to be a locomotive fireman or stationary engine fireman. He had, in addition to his mechanical sense and great skill in the use of his hands, a very keen, wide-awake, energetic, ambitious, accurate intellectual equipment, which did not find any adequate use in his work as a mechanic or fireman. Nor could he ever have found expression for it unless he had taken the initiative as a result of wise counsel and secured for himself the necessary education and training. With all his ingenuity, he would always have been more or less a slave to the machine to be operated unless he had trained his mind to make him the master of thousands of machines and of men.

FROM TURRET LATHE TO TREASURY

About eight years ago, while we were in St. Paul, Minnesota, a young mechanic, J.F., came to us for consultation. He was about twenty years old, and expressed himself as being dissatisfied with his work.

"I don't know just what is the matter with me," he said. "I have loved to play with mechanical things. I was always building machinery and, when I had an opportunity, hanging around machine shops and watching the men work. On account of these things my father was very sure that I had mechanical ability, and when I was fifteen years old took me out of school and apprenticed me in a machine shop. This shop was partly devoted to the manufacture of heavy machinery and partly to repairs of all kinds of machinery and tools. I have now been at work in this shop for five years. I am a journeyman mechanic and making good wages, and yet, somehow or other, I feel that I am in the wrong place. I wish you could tell me what is the matter with me."

After examining the young man and the data submitted, we made the following report:

ANALYSIS OF AN EMBRYO FINANCIER

"While you have undoubted mechanical ability, this is a minor part of your intellectual equipment. You are also qualified for commercial pursuits. You have a good sense of values. You understand the value of a dollar even now and you have natural aptitudes which, with proper training and experience, will make you an excellent financier. You also have executive ability. You like people and you like to deal with them. You like to handle them, and because you enjoy handling people and negotiating with them, you are successful in doing so. While you are fairly active physically, you are very much more active mentally. Your work, therefore, should be mental work, with a fair amount of light physical activity mingled with it, instead of purely physical work. You ought to hold an executive position and ought to have charge of thee finances of some concern which is engaged in the building and selling of machinery. You have worked, up to the present time, with heavy, coarse, crude machinery. But you are of fine texture, refined type, and naturally have a desire to work with that which is fine, delicate and beautiful—something into which you can put some of your natural refinement and artistic ability. You are still young. You have learned a trade at which you can earn fairly good wages. You ought, therefore, to prepare yourself in some way for business. Work during the summer, and then during the winter resume your studies, preparing yourself for an executive position in connection with manufacturing and selling fine machinery. Study accounting, banking, finance, salesmanship, advertising, mechanical engineering and designing. At the earliest possible moment give up your work in a machine shop where heavy machinery is manufactured and begin to get some actual experience in the manufacture of something finer and more artistic; for example, the automobile."

A few years later, in Boston, a young man came to us, well dressed, happy, and prosperous. He said he wished to consult us. After a few minutes' talk with him, we said: "We have given you advice somewhere before. This is not the first time you have consulted us." He smiled, and said: "Yes. I consulted you in St. Paul, some years ago. At that time you advised me to secure an executive position in the automobile business. This advice struck me at the time as being wise, and satisfied my own desires and ambitions. I lost no time in following your directions and was soon engaged as a mechanic in an automobile factory. I attended night-school at first, but finally made arrangements to spend half my time in school and the other half in the factory, learning every part of the business. At the present time I am the vice-president and treasurer of the —— Motor Company, and one of the designers of the —— Motor Car. We are doing an excellent business and making money. Whereas I was certainly misfit in my old job, I am well and happily placed since I have learned my true vocation."

EVOLUTION OF AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

D.B., of Chicago, was a young man admirably endowed with mechanical ability. From his earliest years he was especially interested in matters electrical. His father told us that he always had dry-cell and other batteries around the house. He used to try to make magnetos out of horseshoe magnets, and at one time attempted to build a dynamo. When he was sixteen years of age, having finished grammar school and having had one or two years of high school training, young B. became so ambitious to get into electrical work that his father, thinking that he was intended for exactly this vocation, consented to his leaving high school and taking a position as assistant to the linemen of a telephone company. He worked at this a year or two, and finally became a full-fledged lineman. He did well as a lineman and after a year or so attracted the attention of an electric light and power company, who enticed him away from the telephone company and gave him charge of poles and wires in a residential district. Here his unusual ingenuity and quickness soon became so manifest that he was taken off the outside and placed in charge of a gang of men wiring houses and installing electric fixtures. This was a pretty good job for a young fellow and paid good wages; at least, the wages seemed quite large to young B. at the time. By this time, however, he was twenty-one and decided to marry. He needed more money.

GETTING HIS BEARINGS

He had a long talk with a very kind and wise advisor, who finally said to him: "See here, B., you have abilities that ought to be put to use at something better than stringing wires and hanging bells."

"Why, I am a foreman now," said B.

"Yes, I know you are a foreman, but who plans all the work you do?"

"Why, the Super."

"Yes, the Super hands the plans down to you, but who plans the work for him?"

"Why, the Chief."

"Now, look here; the Chief comes to his office at ten o'clock in the morning. He uses his head until noon. He leaves at noon, and perhaps he doesn't come back until two or three o'clock. He uses his head then until five or, sometimes, until four; then he goes off to play golf. But as the result of those few hours' use of the Chief's head, the Superintendent, and you six or eight foremen, and all the two hundred men under your direction work a whole day or a week, or even a month, as you know. You are merely carrying out in a mechanical, routine kind of a way the thoughts and ideas that another man thinks. Now, you have the ability to think for yourself."

"I could think for myself," said he, "but I can't do all the figuring that is necessary in order to decide just what size wire should go here, and what kind of equipment should go there, and all the different things. That's beyond me."

"Yes, it is beyond you now, but it doesn't need to be beyond you. You have the mental ability to learn to use those formulae just as well as the Chief does. The thing necessary is for you to learn how to do it, to get needful education. Now, you are young, and you're strong, and you've got lots of time before you. If you want to make more money, the way to do it is to learn to use your head and save weeks, months of time, as well as the labor of your hands."

"If I went off to college or university for two or three years, I don't think Bessie would wait for me," said he. "She wants to get married. I want to, too, and I think we ought to do it."

AN EDUCATION BY CORRESPONDENCE

"Well," said his counselor, "you don't need to go off to school. You can take electrical engineering in a correspondence course, even after you are married. You're making good wages now as a foreman. Your hours of work are only eight a day, and you have plenty of time in the evenings and on holidays and other times to study this subject. Besides, you will probably make better progress studying it while you work at the trade than you would in school and withdrawn from the practical applications of the principles that you are learning."

The result of all this was that D.B. did take a correspondence course in electrical engineering. It was pretty tough work. He had not studied for years. One of the first things he had to learn was how to study; how to concentrate; how to learn the things he had to know without tremendous waste of energy. After a little while he learned how to study. Then he progressed, a little at a time, with the intricate and complicated mathematics of the profession he had determined to make his own. Again and again he was puzzled, perplexed, and almost defeated. But his young wife encouraged him, and when things got so bad that he thought he would have to give it all up, he would go and talk with his counselor, who would inspire him with new ambition, so that he would go to work again. So, month after month, year after year, he struggled away with his correspondence course in electrical engineering. Little by little, he got hold of the technical knowledge necessary for professional engineering work.

A VICTORY FOR THE CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL GRADUATE

At first he was greatly handicapped by the prejudice of some of his superiors against correspondence school courses, which were very much newer at that time than they are now and regarded as much more of an experiment. His superiors were graduates of universities and looked down with contempt upon any merely "practical" man who tried to qualify as an engineer by studying at home at night and without the personal oversight of authorities in a university. But D.B. was dogged in his persistence. Missing no opportunities to improve and advance himself, he was, nevertheless, respectful and diplomatic. And he repeatedly demonstrated his grasp of the subject. Eventually he was promoted to the position of superintendent of the electric light and power company. There was only one man then between him and the desired goal, namely, the chief engineer.

At the time B. became superintendent the chief engineer was a young university graduate, and was perhaps a little too egotistical and dogmatic on account of his degree and honors. Soon after B. took charge as superintendent, the company decided to build a new central power station. The design was left to the young chief engineer, and the practical work of carrying it out to our friend. When, finally, the design was complete and passed on to D.B. for execution, he felt that it was defective in several ways. He spent several nights of hard study on it and became convinced that he was right. He therefore took the whole matter to his superior and tried to explain to him how the design was defective.

"I made that plan, and it is right," said the chief engineer. "Your business isn't to criticize the plan, but to go ahead and carry it out. Now, I don't care to hear any more about it."

"But," said B., "if we carry out this plan the way it stands, it will mean the investment on the part of the company of something like $35,000 which will be practically dead loss. I can't conscientiously go to work and carry out this plan as it stands. I am sure if you will go over it again carefully, pay attention to my suggestions, and consult the proper authorities, you will find that I am right."

"That's what comes of studying a correspondence course," said the chief. "You get a little smattering of knowledge into your head. Part of it is worth while, and part of it is purely theoretical and useless, and because you have had some practical experience, you imagine you know it all. Now, you have lots yet to learn, B., and I am willing to help you, but I want to tell you that that plan and those specifications are technically correct, and all you need to do is to go ahead and carry them out. I'll take the responsibility."

"Very well," said B., "if you want those plans and specifications carried out as they are, you can get someone else to do it. I would rather resign than to superintend this job which I know to be technically wrong."

His resignation had to be passed upon by the general manager, who, before accepting it, sent for him.

"What's the trouble, B.?" said he. "I thought you were getting along fine. We like your work, and we thought you liked the company. Why do you want to leave?"

"I don't like to say anything about it, Mr. Jones," said B., "but the plans passed on to me to carry out in the construction of that new power-house down in Elm Street are technically wrong. They mean an expenditure of $35,000 along certain lines which will be pretty nearly a dead loss. When you come to try to use your equipment there, you will find that it all has to be taken out and replaced by the proper materials.

"Suppose you get the plans, B., and show them to me, and explain just what you mean," said the general manager, who was also a professional engineer of many years' successful experience.

So B. produced the plans and explained his proposition.

"Why, of course you are right," said the general manager. "I'm surprised that Mr. F. should have thought for a moment that he could use that type."

The result was that B. was reinstated and the chief engineer reprimanded. Stung by his reprimand and angered because the correspondence school graduate had bested him, the chief engineer resigned. His resignation was accepted and B. became chief engineer of the company. Later, he was promoted to the position of chief engineer of an even larger corporation, and, finally, occupied an executive position as managing engineer for a municipal light and power plant in one of the large cities of the country.

THE GENESIS OF AN INVENTOR

Some years ago we spent a few months in a very comfortable and homelike hotel in one of the largest cities in the Middle West. Down in a nook of the basement of this hotel was a private electric light plant. In charge of the plant was an old Scotch engineer delightful for his wise sayings and quaint philosophy. The fireman, a young man named T., was rather a puzzle to us. He had all the marks of unusual mechanical ability, and yet he seemed to take only the slightest interest in his work, and was constantly being reproved by his chief for laziness, irresponsibility, and neglect of duty. "What's the use?" he asked us, after we gained his confidence, and had asked him why he did not take greater interest in his work. "What's the use? After years of experience shoveling coal into a firebox and monkeying around these old grease pots, I suppose I might get an engineer's certificate. Then what would I be? Why, just like old Mack there—$75 to $100 a month, sitting around a hot, close basement twelve hours a day or, perhaps, twelve hours at night, nothing to look forward to, no further advancement, no more pay, and, finally, T.B. would carry me off because of the lack of fresh air, sunshine and outdoor exercise. No, thank you!"

"Well, then, why don't you do something else?"

"I don't know what to do. I like mechanics, and some job of this kind is the only thing I know how to do or would care to do. Yet, I don't care for this. I must confess that I am puzzled as to what in the world I was made for, anyhow."

"What you need is to give your time and attention to the intellectual side of engineering rather than the purely mechanical and physical. You are of the intellectual type, and you are as badly placed trying to do mere mechanical work as if you were an eagle trying to cross the country on foot."

"I believe you are right in that. I am going to get an education."

AMBITION, INDUSTRY, AND PERSISTENCE

He began at once with correspondence courses in mechanical and electrical engineering. Twelve hours a day he shoveled coal in his basement boiler-room. Some four to eight hours a day he studied in his little room up under the roof. It takes an immense amount of courage, persistence, and perseverance to complete a correspondence course in engineering, as anyone who has tried it well knows. There is lacking any inspiration from the personality and skill of a teacher. There is no spur to endeavor from association with other students doing the same kind of work and striving for the same degree. There are no glee clubs, athletic games, fraternities, prizes, scholarships, and other aids to the imagination and ambition, such as are found in a university. It is all hard, lonely work. But what the student learns, he knows. And, somehow, he gains a great knack for the practical use of his knowledge. Night after night T. toiled away, until he had finished his course and secured his certificate of graduation.

By this time T.'s ambition began to assume a definite form. He was determined that he should have the honor and the emoluments which would come to him as a result of solving one of the toughest problems in engineering—one which had puzzled both technical and practical men for many years. He therefore saved up a few dollars and, packing his little belongings, departed to complete his education in one of the most famous technical engineering schools of the country. Tuition was high. Board cost a good deal of money. Books were distressingly expensive. Tools, machine shop fees, and other incidentals ate into the little store he had brought with him, and inside of two months it was gone. He hunted around and finally secured a job running an engine. This meant twelve hours in the engine room every night. In addition, he did what other students considered a full day's work attending lectures and carrying on his studies in the laboratories and classroom. He went almost without necessary food and clothing in order to buy books, tools, and other equipment. But he was young, he was strong, and, above all, he was happy in his mental picture of the great object of his ambition. In due time he had taken his degree, having specialized on all subjects bearing upon the solution of his great problem.

PATIENT TOIL HIS GENIUS

Coming back from the university after having finished his course, T. found a position as engineer in an electric light and power plant. Then he began saving up money to purchase the necessary equipment for a laboratory of his own. Finally, he had a little building and was one of the proudest young men we ever saw. Little by little, he added to his apparatus the things he needed. Several nights a week, after his hard day's work in the engine room, he toiled, trying to solve the problem upon which he had fixed his mind. About this time he married, and he and his wife moved into a narrow little flat. Years passed, children came into the little flat, and still he worked at his problem. Again and again, and still again, he failed. Yet, each time he failed, he told us he was coming closer to the solution. At last came the day, after many heart-breaking experiences, when the problem, while not fully solved, had at least revealed a solution which was commercially valuable.

His years of self-denial and toil seemed to be about to end in success. But he found that he had only begun another long period of discouraging and almost desperate work. It was a struggle to scrape together the necessary funds for securing a patent. If he was to complete and perfect his invention, he must have more capital. So, with his model, he made the rounds of manufacturers of engines, manufacturers who used engines, railroads, steamboat companies, electric light and power companies; in fact, everywhere he thought he might get some encouragement and financial assistance. His little family was living on short rations. He himself had not eaten as he ought for years. One after another, the men in authority said: "Yes, your proposition looks good, but I don't think it can ever be made practical. Some of the brightest men in the engineering profession have spent years trying to solve that problem, and have not found the answer to it. I do not believe that it will ever be found. You seem to have come near it, but yet you have not found it, and we cannot see our way clear to put any money into it."

REAPING HIS REWARD

T. argued, pleaded, and demanded an opportunity for a demonstration, but all in vain. Then, one day, a lawyer, who had been consulted by T., said: "I have no money to invest in anything myself, but I'll tell you frankly and honestly, it looks good to me. Now, I happen to be on very good terms with Mr. J. over at the T. & B. Company. He has been interested in this problem for years and has worked along toward its solution. He understands every phase of it, and I believe he will do something with your device. Unless I am mistaken, he will be interested in it, and will give you an opportunity to demonstrate it. If your demonstration works out as well as you think it will, he has the authority to put you in a position where you can go ahead and perfect it if it is perfectible. I will give you a letter of introduction to him." And thus began T.'s prosperity. He now lives in a beautiful home on a wide boulevard. His invention, still short of perfection, but highly valuable, is coming slowly into use, and would probably be in very widespread use were it not for the fact that he is constantly working on it, perfecting it, improving it, and hoping finally to have a complete solution to the problem.



CHAPTER VIII

THE IMPRACTICAL MAN

"My life is a failure," wrote Sydney Williams to us, "and I do not know why."

In middle life my grandfather Williams moved his family across the Potomac River from Virginia in order to study to enter the ministry. He is said to have freed some slaves at that time, so he must have been a 'planter,' He became a Congregational minister. My grandfather Jacobs was a carpenter; but, as I knew him, and for some years before my birth, he was a helpless invalid from paralysis on one side.

My father graduated from college and then became a minister. He preached for many years, then he took up work with a religious publishing house, finally having charge of the work at St. Paul. He was there, I believe, when he was elected president of a small school for girls. He assumed his new duties in June and I was born the following November. (I am the youngest of eleven children, of whom there are now three boys and five girls still living, three boys having died while still babies before my birth.)

Until I was nearly twelve years old we lived at the girls' school, which father succeeded in greatly enlarging. Mother taught me to read a little and write a little. She and others read to me a great deal. I had no playmates except my nephews and nieces, to whom I was continually being pointed out as a 'model.' Out of the sight of the grown-ups, I was not always such a model as they could have wished; yet I did feel a certain amount of responsibility that was oppressive and repressive. When nearly eleven, I was sent to the public school, where I was soon promoted with two others. The next year father and mother moved into a larger town, so that I had a few months of real home life before my father's death in April, 1893.

Then my mother, her mother, and I went to Wisconsin to live with a married sister of mine whose husband was the Presbyterian minister there. I entered the fourth grade of the public school that fall; but, by the end of the school year, I had completed the fifth grade.

My mother died in May, 1896. I continued to live with my sister. Finished the seventh grade that June, but entered preparatory school that fall. In November, 1897, my brother-in-law moved to Iowa, and I made the mistake of deciding to go with him. While living in Wisconsin, I had become acquainted with a fine lot of boys. One of them organized a small military company; I was elected quarter-master and, later, lieutenant. I now know that that was because we were considered 'rich,' Also in Wisconsin I overcame some of my extreme bashfulness in regard to girls, derived from babyhood experiences. In fact, one reason I decided to leave Wisconsin was the fear that the friendship with one girl might become too serious; I was beginning to shun responsibility.

ATTAINMENTS IN SCHOLARSHIP

In Iowa I entered the high school and completed the tenth grade the next June (1898). My elder brother was my official guardian and he wanted me to make a change. As a result, in September, 1898, I had my first experience of being away alone by entering a famous academy. There I earned the reputation of being a 'grind,' and graduated second in my class in June, 1901. While there I went out for football, and made the third team and even played once on the second. My poor eyesight hindered me somewhat, but still more the fact that I was not eager to fall down on the ball on the hard ground when it did not seem to me necessary. I was quite ready to get hurt, if there was any reason for it. That, too, was a mistake on my part.

That September I entered Harvard University. My father had left some insurance, and mother left some of it to me for a college education. She expected, as did my sisters and brothers, that I would become a minister. By the end of my Freshman year I had decided that I could not do so, but from that time I was unable to decide what I did want to do or could do. Consequently I did not get the good out of a college education that I might have. Moreover, though I stood fairly well in most of my classes, I did not always understand the subjects as well as the professors thought I did. As soon as it became possible to elect subjects, I dropped Latin, Greek, and German, and specialized in history, economics, etc. I graduated 'Cum Laude,' But that was really a failure, considering what I might have done.

But I did well enough to receive recommendation for a $500 fellowship that enabled me to return for another year. I did work which caused me to be recommended for an A.M. degree. But I felt that I had so little in comparison with others, that I was actually ashamed to receive it. Socially, however, that extra year was a very delightful one for me.

During two summers as an undergraduate, I worked at Nantasket Beach selling tickets in the bathing pavilion for $50 a month, besides room and board. I made good, much to the surprise of the superintendent.

HUNTING A JOB

So then I was finally through college in June, 1906. It is almost incredible how very childlike I still was, so far as my attitude toward the world was concerned. I had high ideals, and I wanted to get into business, but where or how I did not know. Moreover, my money was gone. A student gave me a note with which I intended to get his previous summer's job as a starter on an electric car line owned by a railway company. The position was abolished, however, so I became a conductor on a suburban line. Unfortunately, my motorman was a high-strung, nervous Irishman, who made me so nervous that I often could not give the signals properly, and who made life generally unpleasant for me. He professed a liking for me and did prevent one or two serious accidents. At the same time, he said I was the first 'square' conductor he had ever worked with, and, no doubt, he missed his 'extra,' After three weeks of him, and of the general public's idea that I must, of course, be knocking down fares, I resigned. However, the superintendent offered me a job as 'inspector' of registers on the main line, a job that he was just creating. When the rush was over after Labor Day, I was again out of a job. I might have secured a clerkship with the railway company, but I was foolish enough not to try.

A few weeks later found me established in the district office of a correspondence school not very far from New York City as a representative. At first I gave good promise of success, but I lost my enthusiasm and belief in the school and became ashamed to be numbered as one of its workers because of the character of most of the local field force at that time and before my time. The reputation of the school in that place was not very good. Also I was not successful in collecting the monthly payments from those who had hard luck stories or had been lied to by the man who had enrolled them. By the end of two months I was ready to quit, but my immediate superior begged me to stay, in order to keep him from having to break in a new man just then. At the end of about four months I did resign to save being kicked out. Mind you, I was to blame, all right; for I had given up a real continuous effort beyond the merest routine and the attempt to collect the monthly payments. While I was there I did write a few contracts, among them a cash one amounting to $80. But, toward the end, my lack of success was due to my utter disgust with myself for being so blamed poor and for shirking.

AN ATTEMPT IN ORANGE CULTURE

Going back to a brother in New York, I tried to land a job, but, of course, in such a state of mind, I could not. Then I went to my older brother in Cincinnati, where he was, and is, the pastor of a large church. Unfortunately, he did not take me by the back of the neck and kick me into some kind of work, any kind. At last, in March, 1908, he helped me to come out West. I landed in Los Angeles, and indirectly through a friend of his I secured a job on an orange ranch in the San Gabriel Valley, which I held until the end of the season. Once more I was happy and contented. It was certainly a pleasure to work.

That fall, or rather winter (1908), I secured a place near San Diego, where I had shelter and food during the winters and small wages during the active seasons in return for doing the chores and other work.

I had become possessed with a desire for an orange grove, and refused to consider how much it would take to develop one. I was finally able to secure a small tract of unimproved land. But I found that the task of clearing it would be too great for me because of the great trees, so for this and other reasons I snatched at a chance to file on a homestead in the Imperial Valley. This was in May, 1910. Later that summer I was able to sell my piece of land near San Diego at a profit, so that in September I went over to get settled on my homestead. I employed a fellow to help me make a wagon trail for a mile or more and to build my cabin for me. I moved in the first of November. Early in 1912 I decided it would be impossible to irrigate enough land there to make a living at that time. Also the difficulties of living alone so far out in the desert were greater than I had anticipated. With the help of a friend, I was able to make final proof in July and pay the government for the 160 acres, instead of having to continue to live on it. I did stay, however, until the general election in 1912.

AT WORK IN A SURVEYING CREW

Then I went to Los Angeles to get something to do. The town was full of people seeking work, as usual, most of whom could present better records than I could. To be sure, my friends and even my old correspondence school boss gave me splendid recommendations, but I felt my lack of business training and feared that 999 out of any 1,000 employers would not take a chance with me on such a record as I had. Consequently I did not try very hard. For a while I was with a real estate firm trying to secure applications for a mortgage. The commission was $25, but, naturally, that did not go far toward expenses. It was not long before I was in a bad mental condition again through worrying, self-condemnation, and uncertainty. It would not have been difficult to prove that I was 'insane.'

Finally an acquaintance of mine, a prominent lawyer, took up my case. He has a good personal and business friend who is the general manager of a large oil company with headquarters here in Bakersfield. When first appealed to, this gentleman refused point blank, because he had a bad opinion of college graduates in general (I really don't blame him or other business men); but the lawyer used his influence to the utmost with the result that I came up here in March, 1913, and was sent up into the oil fields. I was put under the civil engineer, and for two months I was sort of 'inspector' and 'force account' man in connection with the building of a supply railroad, but I gradually worked into the regular surveying crew, first as substitute rear chainman, and then as the regular one. Before long I was head chainman. I could have remained a chainman with the same crew to this time, but I left a little over a year ago, as there once more seemed a chance to earn a place in the country.

ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT ORANGE CULTURE

A young fellow, now located near Bakersfield, whom I had known in San Diego, told me great tales that I was too anxious to believe, and finally made some fine promises to help me get a piece of what he said was his land and to bring it to a productive state. But when I reached his place, in February, he was not ready, willing or able to carry out his promises. He kept me hanging on, however, and as I had used up my savings in a month's attendance at the short course of the State agricultural college and in bringing my goods from Bakersfield, I was compelled to get work from him as one of his orchard gang. I helped to set out several hundred trees and berry plants, and later knew what it meant to hoe for ten hours a day. I left him the latter part of July in order to work out a scheme I had thought of.



"The first part of September I moved back to Bakersfield. I tried out my scheme by mail on two of the most prominent men in the country (one of the times when I had plenty of nerve). It did not work and the time did not seem auspicious for trying it on a greater number, especially as I did not have money enough to do it properly.

"While still working for the orchard man, I began to do some work in getting subscriptions for the Curtis publications. I did get a few. Later, about the middle of October, I went to Los Angeles, where I had a booth at an exhibition for three weeks in the interest of a publishing house. But it did not pay expenses, and I was deeper in debt than ever. I landed in Bakersfield nearly 'broke.' Thanks to the kindness of the people where I roomed and boarded, I was able to pull through until I obtained a loan last week, secured by a mortgage on my homestead.

"I was entirely unable to force myself to do any real canvassing while I was absolutely in need of each commission, but, now that I once more have a bank account, I hope to make myself keep at it until I can feel moderately successful. That is the one job I have fallen down on over and over (I have not even mentioned many of the attempts), and I believe I could be a real salesman if I could only get over my fear of approaching people on any proposition of immediate profit to me."

Here we have in detail the old, old story. How often have you heard of the man who graduated with high honors at the head of his class and was unable to make a living afterward? How many men of highest scholarship have you met who could not make a living for themselves and their families? Not long ago we were offered the services of a man who had degrees from several universities in America and Europe, who was master of several languages, and who was glad to offer to do a little translating at twenty-five cents an hour.

AN ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY WILLIAMS

What handicaps these men? They have good intellects, or they would be unable to win high honors in colleges and universities. It is fitting that they should educate themselves highly, since they are so capable of attainment in scholarship. Surely, they ought to do some intellectual work of some kind, because they are not fitted for manual labor. Where do they belong? What is their particular type? What opportunities are there for their unquestioned talents?

Here is what we wrote to Sydney Williams:

"From photographs and data submitted, I should judge your type of organization, character and aptitudes to be as follows:

"You have inherited only a fairly good physical constitution. You will always need to take care of yourself, but there is absolutely no reason why you should worry in regard to your health.

"Under stress and strain your nervous system may give you trouble, and there may be some tendency to digestive disturbances, but if you will practice moderation, live on a well-balanced and sensibly selected diet, and keep yourself from extremes of every kind you will probably maintain very fair health and strength for many years.

"Intellectually you have a good, active mind of the theoretical type. Your mind is quick to grasp theories, ideals, abstractions, and such intangible and purely mental concepts. Your imagination is active, and is inclined to run away with plans, schemes, and inventions, with speculations and with visions of future prospects. However, your plans and inventions are liable to be purely along mental and intellectual lines, rather than practical.

"You do not observe well. You are a little too careless in regard to your facts. You therefore have a tendency to go ahead with your theories and your plans upon insufficient data or upon data which are not accurate because they have not been properly verified.

"This deficiency in observation also handicaps you, because you do not see things in their right relation, and your judgment is, therefore, liable to be erratic and unsound.

"You should compel yourself to get the facts. You should suspend judgment until you have made sure that all of the premises from which you argue to your conclusions are sound and accurate. Take nothing for granted. Compel yourself to stick to the facts. Not only ask yourself the question, 'Will it work?' but make sure that the affirmative answer is absolutely accurate before you go ahead.

"Many of your characteristics are those of immaturity, notwithstanding your years, your education, and your experience. You still retain many youthful tendencies. You are inclined to be impulsive. You are very responsive emotionally, and when your emotions are aroused you are prone to decide important matters without reference to facts, reason, and logic. Another very youthful characteristic in you is your tendency to be headstrong, wilful, stubborn, and opinionated. When you have arrived at one of your swift conclusions you find it very difficult to take advice. Even when you do listen to what others say, you do not listen well. Your mind jumps ahead to conclusions that are erroneous and which were never in the mind of the person giving you the advice.

"As you can readily see, it is this inability to get competent counsel from others, coupled with your own lack of observation and lack of deliberation, that leads you into so many situations that turn out to be undesirable. Here, again, you need to go more slowly, to act more according to your knowledge and less according to impulse, to make sure that you understand what other people say, especially when seeking for advice. As a result of your rather emotional character, you are liable to go to extremes and do erratic things, to be over-zealous for a short period; also, at times, to be high tempered, although your temper quickly evaporates. In all of these things you will see the need for cultivation of more self-control, more poise, more calmness, more maturity of thought, speech, and action.

"You are very idealistic. Your standards are high. You naturally expect much. It is your hope always, when making a change, that you will get into something which will more nearly approach perfection than the thing you are leaving.

"But you are also critical. Indeed, you are inclined to be hypercritical, to find too much fault, to see too many flaws and failures. For this reason, nothing ever measures up to your ideals—you are always being disappointed.

"You need to cultivate far more courage. By this I mean the courage which hangs on, which meets obstacles, which overcomes difficulties, which persists through disagreeable situations. Your impulsiveness leads you into plenty of things, but you are so hypercritical, and you become so easily discouraged when eventualities do not measure up to your ideals, that you fail to finish that which you start.

"Naturally, of course, if you were to be more deliberate and more careful in forming your judgments, you would find things more nearly ideal after you got into them. Then, if you would stick to them, you could make a much greater success of them.

"Your intention to be honest, is, no doubt, above reproach. However, your conduct or the results may at times be equivalent to dishonesty, being so regarded by others. This, of course, is the result of your immaturity, your impulsiveness, and your tendency not to see things through.

"You are very keenly sensitive. With your great love of beauty and refinement, anything which is coarse, crude, and ugly in your environment is very depressing to you. You also find it difficult to associate happily with those who are coarse and crude by nature. Unquestionably, such people frequently hurt you cruelly when they have no intention of doing so. It would be well if you would learn to accept other people for what they are worth, rather than being so critical of them and so easily hurt. Praise and blame are usually meant impersonally and should be so received. In other words, people praise or blame the deed and not the doer.

"Your appreciation of financial and commercial values and methods is deficient. This is due to many different things, but principally to your lack of observation, your inability to see things in their right relations, and your limited sense of values. For these reasons you are not and cannot become vitally interested in financial and commercial affairs. If your wants were supplied, and you had something interesting to do, money would receive practically no consideration from you. For your own sake, you ought to attach more importance to monetary considerations, cultivate a greater sense of values, develop more practical commercial sense. On the other hand, however, you should not attempt any vocation in which a high development of these qualities is necessary.

"In practical affairs, you show a tendency not to learn by experience. This is because of deficiency in your observation of facts. You do not really understand the essential facts of the experiences through which you pass, and, therefore, they do not impress or teach you.

"In your choice of a vocation you should make up your mind once for all that, on account of the qualities I have described, you are not commercial or financial, and, therefore, you do not belong in the industrial or commercial world. Your talents are educational, dramatic, professional, literary. You are decidedly of the mental type. Your world is a mental world, an intellectual world. Ideas, ideals, and theories are the things with which you can deal most successfully.

"Owing to your distaste for detail, and the difficulty you have in applying yourself to a task until it is finished, and also on account of your very keen and sensitive critical faculties, you are probably better fitted for success as a critic than as a producer.

"A position in a house publishing books and magazines, where your duty would be to read, analyze, and criticise manuscripts, would offer you far better opportunities than anything you have yet attempted.

"You could probably do well in a mail-order house as correspondent.

"You also have some dramatic ability which, if developed and trained, might make you a success, either on the stage or in the pulpit. In this connection, I merely call your attention, in passing, to the opportunities in the motion picture drama. Here is where dramatic ability is everything and the heavier demands upon the actor in the ordinary drama, especially in the way of physical development, voice, etc., do not enter.

"Another line which might possibly interest you would be that of a salesman in an art or music store, where customers come to you, or in a book store. You probably would do better selling to women than to men.

"Whatever you do, you should work under direction, under the direction of some one whose judgment, wisdom, honesty, and high principles you respect. Under wise leadership you have your very best opportunities for success. In attempting to be your own manager and to go your own way, you suffer from the serious handicaps to which I have already referred.

"In selecting from among the vocations I have enumerated the one that is best for you, you will, of course, be guided very largely by opportunities. At this distance I do not know just which is your best opportunity, and, therefore, cannot counsel you definitely to undertake any one of these vocations in preference to the others. If the opportunity is at hand, perhaps the position of literary or dramatic critic with a publishing house would be most congenial for you and offer you the best future. If not, then one of the others. You might even undertake a position as salesman in a book store or an art store while preparing or waiting for an opening in one of the other lines suggested.

"Whatever you undertake, however, compel yourself, in spite of obstacles, in spite of your very natural criticisms of the situation, to stick to it until you make a success of it.

"As you grow older, if you will patiently and conscientiously cultivate more deliberation, more practical sense, more self-control, and more poise, you will become more mature in judgment and gradually overcome to a greater and greater degree the handicaps which have so far interfered with your progress and the best and highest expression of your personality."



HANDICAPS OF THIS TYPE

To make a long story short, Sydney Williams and men of his type have unusual intellectual powers of analysis, criticism, memory, abstraction, and philosophy. They can master hypotheses, higher mathematics, and Hebrew irregular verbs, but they are babes in all practical affairs. They have some such conception of the plain facts of human nature, ordinary financial values, and efficient methods of commerce as a man with color blindness has of the art of Corot. Like the children they are, these people seldom suspect their deficiencies. Oftentimes they are ambitious to make a success in a commercial way. They try salesmanship, or, if they have a little capital, they may embark in some ambitious business project on their own account. They even go into farming or agriculture or poultry raising, or some kind of fancy fruit producing, with all of the optimism and cheerfulness and confidence in their ability that Sydney Williams felt for his orange growing. When they fail, it is more often through their own incompetence than because some one comes along who is mean enough to take candy from a baby. They usually dissipate their assets by impracticable schemes before the unscrupulous can take them. The only hope for such men is to learn their limitations; to learn that, even though they may be ambitious for commercial success, they are utterly unqualified for it; that, although they may wish to do something in the way of production or selling, they have neither talent, courage, secretiveness, persistence, nor other qualities necessary for a success in these lines. They are too credulous. They are too impractical. They are too lacking in fighting qualities, and, therefore, too easily imposed upon. They are usually lazy physically and find disagreeable situations hard, so that they are out of place in the rough-and-tumble, strenuous, hurly-burly of business, manufacturing, or ordinary professional life.

Perhaps a few stories would indicate what these men can do, do well, and what they can be happy and satisfied in doing. There is a real need for them in the world.



A CAREER IN MUSIC

George R. came to us late one evening in a little town in Illinois. He was nervous, weak, and diffident.

"I am now," he said, "a salesman in a dry goods store. But I have only held the job three months and do not expect that I will be permitted to remain more than a week or so longer. I have been warned several times by the floor-walker that my errors will cost me my position. God knows, I do my best to succeed in the work, but it is like all the other positions I've held. Somehow or other I don't seem to be able to give satisfaction. While I am on my guard and as alert as I know how to be against one of the things I've been told not to do, I am just as sure as sunshine to go and do some other thing which is against the rules. If I don't do something against the rules, then I forget to do something I was told to do. If I don't forget to do something I've been told to do, then I am quite likely to make some outlandish mistake that no one ever thought of framing a rule to fit. The result of it all is that in about another week or, at the most, two, I'll be out of employment again. I have tried driving a delivery wagon. I've tried grocery stores. I've tried doing collections. I began once as clerk in a bank. Immediately after leaving college, I started in as newspaper reporter. I've been a newsboy on railroad trains. I sold candies and peanuts in a fair ground. I have been night clerk in a hotel. I've been steward on a steamboat. I've been a shipping clerk in a publishing house, and I have been fired from every job I have ever had. True enough, I've hated them all, but, nevertheless; I have tried to do my best in them. Why I cannot succeed with any of them, I don't know, and yet I have a feeling that somehow, somewhere, sometime, I will find something to do that I will love, and that I can do well."

"Music," we said, "unquestionably music."

"Do you think I could?" he said wistfully. "Music has been my passion all my life long. It has been my one joy, my one solace in all my wanderings and all my failures. But I have always been afraid I would fail also in that, and, if I should, it would break my heart sure. But if you think I have the talent, then I shall give my whole time, my whole thought, my whole energy to music hereafter."

It was rather late in life for this young man to begin a musical career. While he had always been fond of music, he had been sent to college for a classical course by parents to whom a classical course meant everything that was desirable in an education. He had learned to play the piano, the violin, the guitar, the mandolin, and some other instruments, without education, because of his natural musical talent. He played them all as he had opportunity, for his own amusement, but, because of his ambition for commercial success, had never thought of music as a career. We wish we might tell you that this young man was now one of the foremost composers or conductors of his time. It would make an excellent story. Such, however, is not the case.

He devoted himself to securing a thorough musical education, supporting himself and paying his expenses in the mean-while by playing in churches, musicales, motion picture shows, and other places. He also received a few dollars nearly every week for playing the violin for dances and other functions in a semi-professional orchestra. Truly this was not "art for art's sake." Any critical musician could probably tell you that such use of his musical talent forever shut off any hopes of his becoming a true artist. On the other hand, it did fill his stomach and clothe him while he was securing a sufficient musical education to enable him to make a very fair living as teacher on various musical instruments and as a performer at popular concerts, recitals, etc. Best of all, he was happy in his work, felt himself growing in success and, while there were probably heights which he never could scale and to which he may have turned his longing eyes, he doubtless got a considerable amount of satisfaction out of the fact that he was no longer being kicked around from pillar to post in the commercial world.



VOCATIONS FOR THE IMPRACTICAL

Herbert Spencer felt that he was a complete and utter failure as a civil engineer, but he made a magnificent success as a scientist, essayist, and philosopher.

The number of great authors, scientists, philosophers, poets, actors, preachers, teachers, lecturers, and musicians who were ludicrously impractical is legion. Literature abounds in stories of their idiosyncrasies. These people deal with abstractions, ideas, with theories, and with emotions. They may be very successful in the spinning of theories, in the working out of clever ideas, and in their appeal to the emotions of their fellow-men. They may write poetry which is the product of genius; they may devise profound philosophy. This is their realm. Here is where they are supreme, and it is in this kind of work they find an expression for all of their talent.

Right here there is need for careful distinction. There is a great difference between the impractical man who has energy, courage, and persistence, and the impractical man who is lazy and cowardly. No matter what a man's natural talent may be, it takes hard work to be successful in such callings as art, music, the pulpit, the stage, the platform, and the pen. Inspiration may seem to have a great deal to do with success. But even in the writing of a poem inspiration is probably only about five per cent.; hard work constitutes the other ninety-five per cent. It is one thing to have vague, beautiful dreams, to be an admirer of beauty, to enjoy thrills in contemplation of beautiful thoughts or beautiful pictures. It is quite another thing to have the energy, the courage, and the dogged persistence necessary to create that which is beautiful.



NO EASY ROAD TO SUCCESS

We offer no golden key which unlocks the doors to success. Much as we regret to disappoint many aspiring young men and women, we must be truthful and admit that there is no magic way in which some wonderful, unguessed talent can be discovered within them and made to blossom forth in a night, as it were. Many people of this type come to us for consultation, evidently with the delectable delusion that we can point out to them some quick and easy way to fame and fortune. Again we must make emphatic by repetition the hard, uncompromising truth that laziness, cowardice, weakness, and vacilation are incompatible with true success. No matter what a man's other aptitudes may be, no matter how great his talent or his opportunities, we can suggest absolutely no vocation in which he can be successful unless he has the will to overcome these deficiencies in his character.

Many a man is deluded into the fond supposition that he is not successful because he does not fit into the vocation where he finds himself. The truth is that he probably is in as desirable a vocation as could possibly be found for him. The reason he is not successful is because he has failed to develop the fundamental qualities of industry, courage, and persistence.