Chapter 5 of 8 · 74677 words · ~373 min read

PART ONE

ANALYZING CHARACTER IN VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Analyzing Character

## CHAPTER I

CAUSES OF MISFITS

"Blessed is the man who has found his work."--Carlyle.

Only the rarest kind of soul has a clear call to his vocation. Still rarer is he who, knowing his work, can create circumstances which will permit him to do it. Of the thousands of young people who have sought us for counsel, only a very small percentage have had even a vague idea of what they are fitted to do, or even what they wished to do. Strange to say, this lack of definite knowledge as to vocation holds true of those who have just graduated from college or university. Many a college graduate has said to us: "Why, I shall teach for a few years until I have fully made up my mind just what I wish to do. Then I shall take my post-graduate course in preparation for my life work." Even so late a decision as this often proves unsatisfactory.

IGNORANCE AND PURPOSELESSNESS

The causes for uncertainty as to work are many and varied. And yet all the many causes can be traced to two fundamental deficiencies in human nature which are but poorly supplied in our traditional systems of training and education. The first of these is, of course, ignorance--ignorance of self, ignorance of work, ignorance on the part of parents, teachers, and other advisors; ignorance on the part of employers. As a race, we do not know human nature; we do not know how to determine, in advance of actual, painful and costly experience, the aptitudes of any individual. We blunder a good deal even in trying to learn from experience. We do not know work; we do not know its requirements, its conditions, its opportunities, its emoluments. And so, in our ignorance, we go astray; we lead others astray. We neglect important and vital factors in human success and happiness because we do not know how important and how vital they are. Our ignorance of their importance is due to our ignorance of human nature and of work.

A second cause for our uncertainty lies in the almost universal human habit of purposelessness. Drifting, not steering, is the way of nearly all lives. It is hard mental work to plan, to consider, to study, to analyze; in short, to think. Someone has said that the average man would rather lie down and die than to take the trouble really to think. It is easier to await the knock of opportunity than to study her ways and then go out and capture her. She treads paths which may be known. She has a schedule which may be learned. She may thus be met as certainly as by appointment. Those who await her knock at the door may be far from where she passes.

We in America, especially, place altogether too high a value on our ingeniousness, our resourcefulness. We therefore put off the evil day. We say to ourselves: "There is plenty of time. I'll manage somehow or other when the time comes for action." We are rather proud of our ability to meet emergencies. So we do not plan and take precautions, that emergencies may not arise. It is too easy to drift through school and college, taking the traditional, conventional studies that others take, following the lines of least resistance, electing "snap courses," going with the crowd. It is too easy to take the attitude: "First I will get my education and develop myself, and then I will know better what I am fitted to do for a life work." And so we drift, driven by the winds of circumstance, tossed about by the waves of tradition and custom. Eventually, most men find they must be satisfied with "any port in a storm." Sailors who select a port because they are driven to it have scarcely one chance in a thousand of dropping anchor in the right one.

In our ignorance, we do not know how fatal to success and happiness is this lack of purpose. We fail to impress it upon our youth. And, when one demands chart and compass, we cannot supply them. No wonder belief in luck, fate, stars, or a meddling, unreasonable Providence is almost universal!

Ignorance and lack of definite purpose, the two prime causes of misfits, have many different ways of bungling people into the wrong job and keeping them there.

IMMATURE JUDGMENT

The first of these is immaturity of judgment on the part of young people. There is a popular fallacy that the thing which a young man or a young woman wants most to do must be the thing for which he or she is preeminently fitted. "Let him follow his bent," say some advisors, "and he will find his niche." This does not happen often. The average young man is immature. His tastes are not formed. He is undeveloped. His very best talents may have never been discovered by himself or others. It is well known to those who study children that a boy's earliest ambitions are to do something he thinks spectacular and romantic. Boys long to be cab drivers, locomotive engineers, policemen, cowboys, soldiers and aviators.

A little nephew of ours said he wanted to be a ditch-digger. Asked why, he said: "So I can wear dirty clothes, smoke a pipe, and spit tobacco juice in the street." The little fellow is really endowed with an inheritance of great natural refinement and a splendid intellect. As he grows older, his ideals will change and he will discover there is much to ditch-digging besides wearing dirty clothes, smoking a pipe, and expectorating on the public highways. He will also learn that there are things in life far more desirable than these glorious privileges. Of course, these are mere boyish exuberances, and most people do not take them seriously. On the other hand, they illustrate the unwisdom of trusting to the unguided preferences of a youthful mind. The average young man of twenty is only a little more mature than a boy of ten. He still lacks experience and balance.

Those of us who have passed the two-score mark well know how tastes change, judgments grow more mature, ideas develop, and experience softens, ripens or hardens sentiment as the years go by. It is unquestionably true that if children were given full opportunity to develop their tastes and to express themselves in various ways and then given freedom of choice of their vocations, they would choose more wisely than they do under ignorant, prejudiced, or mistaken judgments of parent or teacher. Yet the tragedy of thousands of lives shows how unscientific it is to leave the choice of vocation to the unguided instincts of an immature mind.

INFLUENCE OF ASSOCIATION

Boys and girls often choose their careers because some popular friend or associate exerts an undue influence upon them. George is going to be a doctor. Therefore Joseph decides he, too, will be a doctor. Mary looks forward to being a teacher. Mary is the very intimate chum of Josephine. Then Josephine decides, also, that she is going to be a teacher. We knew one earnest and popular young man in college who persuaded about three dozen of his associates to join him in preparation for the foreign mission field. In one class in college a fad caused several young men to lose good opportunities because they decided to take up the practice of medicine. In one high school class, several young men became railroad employees because the most popular of their number yearned to drive a locomotive. And this enterprising youth, with parental guidance and assistance, became a lawyer.

POOR JUDGMENT OF PARENTS

Parental bad judgment is one of the most frequent causes of misfits. Even when parents are sincere and try to be wise, choice of a child's life work is very difficult for them. In the first place, they either underestimate or overestimate their children. What parent, worthy of the high privilege, can be absolutely impartial in judging the talents of his child? Arthur Brisbane says that Nature makes every baby look like a genius in his mother's eyes, so that she will gladly sacrifice her life, if necessary, for her child. It may be a wise provision, but it does not tend to make parents reliable guides to vocations for their offspring.

Then, many parents do not know work. They do not understand the demands of the different professions. Their point of view is narrowed by their own experiences, which have been, perhaps too harsh, perhaps too easy. Many parents have a narrow, selfish, rather jealous feeling that their children cannot be any more intelligent than they are. "The old farm was good enough for me; it is good enough for my son"; "the old business was good enough for me; it is good enough for my son." This is the attitude. This is why many parents either refuse their children the advantages of an education and insist upon their going to work at an early age, or compel them to take a hated schooling.

On the other hand, there are parents who consider their children prodigies, geniuses, intended to occupy some great and magnificent position in the world. Most frequently they hold their judgment entirely apart from any real talents on the part of the child. Few human woes are more bitter than the disappointment and heartache of both parent and son when a young man who might have been a successful and happy farmer or merchant fails utterly as an artist or writer.

Parents often persuade their children to enter vocations upon the flimsiest possible pretexts. Almost every child takes a pencil and tries to draw, yet there are many parents who spend thousands of dollars in trying to make great artists of children who have only the most mediocre artistic ability. Mere purposeless drawing of faces and figures is an entirely different thing from the drudgery necessary to become a great artist. The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer of any acceptability. Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this preference is an indication of either talent or genius.

A parent's judgment of the requirements of a profession is oftentimes most amusingly erroneous. We remember a father who told us that he was quite certain that his son was born to be a ruler of men. When we asked why, he told us in all seriousness that from early childhood his boy's blood boiled with indignation against people who had committed indignities upon kings and princes. Of course, in one sense of the word, this parent was insane, and yet his bad judgment was scarcely more ridiculous than that of many other parents. We have met parents who seemed to think that success in the practice of law depended wholly upon the ability to make speeches. We have seen other parents who thought that success in banking depended upon the ability to count money and hold on to it. Even intelligent people have the false idea that an architect needs only to be a good draughtsman. The number of people who imagine that success in business is won by shrewdness and sharp practice is very large.

PARENTAL PREJUDICES

Parents are often influenced by the most irrelevant of prejudices in counseling their children as to vocation. A man who has had an unfortunate experience with a lawyer is very likely to oppose strenuously any move on the part of his son to study and practice law. Many practical men have intense prejudices against art, music, literature, and other such professions for their sons. The number of parents who are prejudiced against a college education is legion. On the other hand, there are a goodly number of men who are prejudiced against any vocation for their sons which does not involve a college education.

Many parents who have worked hard and toiled unremittingly at any

## particular profession oftentimes feel that they want their children to do

something easier, something requiring less drudgery, and so bitterly oppose their following in their fathers' footsteps. On the other hand, many fathers are domineering in their determination that their sons shall follow the same vocation in which they made their success.

Parents are often prejudiced in favor of vocations followed by dear friends or by men whom they greatly admire. A successful lawyer, preacher, engineer, or business man will influence the choice of vocations for the children of many of his admiring friends and acquaintances.

Multitudes of parents have foolish prejudices against any kind of work which soils the hands or clothing--even against the dinner-pail. On the other hand, hard-fisted parents may have prejudices against any vocation which keeps the hands soft and white, and the clothing clean and fine.

Thus, in many ways do the prejudices of parents, based upon ignorance, work tragedy in the lives of children. Either through a sense of duty and loyalty or because they have not sufficient solid masonry in their backbones, children follow the wishes of their parents and many all but ruin their lives as a result.

"THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS"

One of the most disastrous prejudices upon the part of parents is that in favor of what are called "the learned professions." To make a lawyer, a physician, or a minister of one's son is held to be the highest ambition on the part of large numbers of otherwise intelligent fathers and mothers. The result of this kind of prejudice on the part of so many parents is that the so-called learned professions are over-crowded--and overcrowded with men and women unfitted for their tasks, both by natural inheritance and by education and training. There follows mediocre Work, poor service, low pay, poverty, disease, and misery.

FAMILY TRADITIONS

There are traditions in some families which carry their curse along with them down through the generations. There are families of preachers, families of soldiers, families of lawyers, families of physicians, families of teachers. Many a young man who would have otherwise been a success in the world has toiled along at a poor, dying rate, trying to live up to the family tradition and make a success of himself as a teacher, or lawyer, when he ought to have been a mechanic, an actor, or a banker.

Another form of parental prejudice is a father's desire to have his son become a success in the vocation which he himself longed to enter, but could not. "My father is a successful business man," said a young man to us not long ago. "When he was a young man he wanted to enter law school and practice law, but because of lack of funds and because he had to support his widowed mother's family, he did not have the opportunity. All his life he has regretted that he was unable to realize his ambition. From my earliest years he has talked to me about becoming a great lawyer; he spent thousands of dollars in sending me through high school, college and law school; he has given me years of post-graduate work in law. I have now been trying to practice law for two years and have made a complete failure of it. Yet, so intense is his desire that I shall realize his ambition, that he is willing to finance me, in the hope that, eventually, I may be able to succeed in the practice of law. And yet I hate it. I hate it so that it seems to me I cannot drive myself ever to enter a law office for another day."

POOR JUDGMENT OF TEACHERS

When bad judgment and prejudice of parents do not interfere with a child's development and his selection of a vocation, he is often turned into wrong channels by the bad judgment of his teacher or teachers. It is natural for many teachers to try to influence their favorite pupils to enter the teaching profession in the same special branch to which the teachers themselves are attached. We once knew a professor of Latin who was an enthusiast on the subject. As the result of his influence, many of his students became teachers of Latin. Teachers, like parents, also frequently fail to see the indications of aptitude where it is very great.

Like parents, teachers also are oftentimes ignorant of the requirements of work. They are frequently narrow in their training and experience, and therefore do not understand much about practical life, practical work, and practical requirements. Many teachers, even college professors, seem to be obsessed with the idea that a student who learns a subject easily will be successful in making a practical application of it. Not long ago a student in engineering in one of our most prominent universities came to us for consultation. He told us that his professors all agreed that he was well fitted to succeed as an engineer. He, however, had no liking for the profession and did not believe that he would either enjoy it or be successful in it. Our observations confirmed his opinions. It turned out that his instructors thought him qualified for engineering merely from the fact that he learned easily the theoretical principles underlying the practice.

ECONOMIC NECESSITY

Perhaps one of the most potent causes of misfits in vocation is economic necessity. The time comes in the life of most boys when they must earn their own living or, perhaps, help support the parental family. In such a case, a search is made for a job. Local conditions, friendship, associations, chance vacancies--almost any consideration but that of personal fitness governs in the choice of the job. Once a boy is in a vocation, he is more than likely to remain in it--or, because of unfitness, to drift aimlessly into another, for which he is even less adapted. An entertaining writer in the "Saturday Evening Post" has shown how the boy who accidentally enters upon his career as a day laborer soon finds it impossible to graduate into the ranks of skilled labor. He remains not only a day laborer, but an occasional laborer, his periods of work interspersed with longer and longer periods of unemployment. Unemployment means bad food, unwholesome sanitary conditions and, worst of all, bad mental and moral states. These are followed by disease, incompetency, inefficiency, weakness, and, in time, the man becomes one of the unemployed and unemployable wrecks of humanity. Crime then becomes practically the only avenue of escape from starvation or pauperism.

Thousands of young men taking a job, no matter how they may dislike the work, feel compelled to remain in it because it is their one hope of income. The longer they remain in it the harder it is for them to make a change. Sad, indeed, is the case of the boy or girl who is compelled, in order to make a living or to help support father, mother, brothers and sisters, to drop into the first vacancy which offers itself.

RESTLESSNESS

The restlessness of many a boy and girl results in his or her choice of an utterly wrong vocation. Boys whose parents would be glad to see them through college or technical school cannot wait to begin their careers. Impatient and restless, they undertake the work which will yield quick results rather than develop their real talents or seek opportunities for advancement of which they are by nature capable. Over and over again those who come to us for consultation say: "Father would have been willing to have put me through school, but I couldn't wait; I simply had to get out and have my own way. I have never ceased to regret it. Now I have to work hard with my hands; with a proper education, and in my right job, I could have used my head." The reader has doubtless heard many such stories from friends and acquaintances. The world is full of misfits who failed of their great opportunity because they were too restless, too impatient, to make proper preparations for their life work. This restlessness, unfortunately, is a characteristic of many of the most energetic, most capable, and most intelligent young people, to whom an education would be worth much, to whom proper training and preparation would bring unusual self-development. It is, therefore, of the highest importance that the young man or young woman and his or her parents or guardian should be especially cautious when there is this feeling of intense eagerness to begin work.

VERSATILITY

Perhaps one of the most difficult causes of misfits to overcome is versatility. He who can do many things well seems always to have great difficulty in fixing upon any one thing and doing that supremely well. The versatile man is usually fond of variety, changeable, fickle; he loves to have many irons in the fire; he likes to turn from one kind of work to another. It is his great failing that he seldom sticks at any one thing long enough to make a marked success of it. Because of his great versatility, too, he is often a serious problem, even for those who can study his case scientifically. It is difficult to give him counsel and it is even more difficult for him to give heed to that counsel when it has been given. The one hope of the exceedingly versatile individual is to find for himself some vocation which has within it an opportunity for the exercise of many different kinds of talents, and for turning quickly from one kind of work to another. Routine, monotony, detail work, and work which is confining in its character and presents a continual sameness of environment, should be avoided by this type of individual.

MEDIOCRITY AND UNGUESSED TALENTS

The inability to do any one thing particularly well is, in its way, as serious a handicap in the selection of a vocation as great versatility. One who can do nothing well finds it just as hard to decide upon a vocation as one who can do everything well. Perhaps the large majority of those who come to us for consultation do so because they feel that they have no particular talent. Oftentimes this is the case. But frequently there are undeniable talents which have simply never been discovered and never developed. Even in the case of those with no particular talent, there is always some combination of aptitudes, characteristics, disposition, and other circumstances which makes one particular vocation far more desirable than any other. It is most important that the individual with only a moderate inheritance of intelligence and ability should learn to invest his little in the most profitable manner possible.

Those who escape wrong choice of vocation on account of their own bad judgment and errors in selection; who are not turned aside into the wrong path by the bad judgment, prejudices, and other errors of parents; who escape from the clutches of sincere and well-meaning, but unwise, teachers; who are not thrown into the nearest possible vacancies by economic necessity; who do not fall short of their full opportunities because of restlessness; who do not have their problems complicated by too great versatility or too little ability, still have many a rock and shoal to avoid.

BLUNDERS OF EMPLOYERS

One very frequent cause of misfits in vocation is the bad judgment of employers. This bad judgment, like that of parents and teachers, arises from ignorance--ignorance of human nature, of the particular individual, and, strange to say, of the requirements of the work to be done. Whole volumes could be written on the bad judgment of employers in selecting, assigning, and handling their employees. This, however, is not the place for them. Neither is this the place for the discussion of the remedies to be applied.

Even after the young man has entered a vocation and found that he does not fit in it, there is plenty of opportunity for him to make a change if he is made of the right stuff and can secure the right kind of counsel and guidance. But this "IF" is a tremendously big one.

Many causes--both inside and outside of himself--tend to prevent the average man from changing from a vocation for which he is not fit to one in which he is fit. Perhaps a brief consideration of some of these factors in the problem may be of assistance to you.

SOCIAL AMBITION

One reason for continuing in the wrong vocation is social ambition. Rightly or wrongly--probably wrongly--there are certain vocations which entitle one to social recognition. There are others which seem, at least, to make it difficult for one to secure social recognition. Social ambition, therefore, causes many a man to cling desperately to the outskirts of some profession for which he is unfitted, in the everlasting hope of making a success of it and thus winning the social recognition which is his supreme desire.

Poor, short-sighted, and even blind, victims of their own folly!

They do not see that any work which is human service is honorable. They miss the big truth that the man who delivers better goods or renders better service than other men is not only entitled to profit, but also has, by divine right, unassailable social standing.

LAZINESS

One of the most potent causes of failure is laziness. And the worst form of the malady is mental laziness. Once a man is in any line of work, he simply remains there by following the lines of least resistance. It requires, in the first place, hard mental effort to decide upon a new line of work. It requires analysis of work, analysis of one's self, of conditions, and of environment, in order to make an intelligent and worthy change. Not only this, but an advantageous change in vocation usually involves additional study, additional training, hard, grinding work in preparation for the new task. And it is altogether too easy for the lazy man to drift along, mediocre and obscure, in some vocation for which he is poorly fitted than to go through the grueling, hard work of preparing himself for one in which he will find an opportunity for the use and development of his highest and best talents.

LACK OF OPPORTUNITY

Many men do not change their vocations, when they find that they are misfits, because of lack of opportunity. There may be no real chance for them in the locality where they live and conditions may make it almost impossible for them to leave. Of course, the strong, courageous soul can _make_ its own opportunities. Theoretically, perhaps, everyone can create circumstances. But, in real life, there are comparatively few strong, courageous souls--few who can mould conditions to their will. Probably, however, the average man could do much more than he does to improve his opportunities were it not for inertia, lack of self-confidence, and lack of courage, all of which he could overcome if he would.

It is oftentimes the case that the man who desires to make a change feels that the only work which would appeal to him is in a profession or trade already overcrowded. This may be true in the locality where he lives, but there is always room for every competent man in any truly useful kind of work. For the man who is well qualified, by natural aptitudes and training, no profession is overcrowded.

LACK OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Many men of intelligence, who, perhaps, know what their calling should be, are compelled to continue in work which is uncongenial and for which they are poorly fitted because of their lack of education and training. Hundreds of men and women come to us, only to find that they have started in the wrong work and have remained in it so long that a change to their true vocation is practically impossible. They have assumed responsibilities which they cannot shirk. The education and training needed would take too long and would cost too much. Yet many have toiled away at night and in odd moments on correspondence courses or in night schools, and have thus, finally, won their way to their rightful places in the work of the world. But at what a cost!

It is of the highest importance that every individual should learn as early as possible in life what career he is best fitted to undertake. Every year spent in mistaken preparation or uncongenial employment makes proper training more expensive and more difficult. There are many arts which, perhaps, cannot be learned properly after one has reached maturity. It is said that no one has ever become a great violinist who did not begin his study of the instrument before the age of twelve. However that may be, psychologists and anatomists agree in informing us that the brain of a human being is exceedingly plastic in childhood, and that it gradually grows more and more impervious to impressions and changes as the individual matures. Sad, indeed, is the case, therefore, of the individual who waits to learn what his vocational fitness is until he is fully mature and is, perhaps, loaded up with the cares and responsibilities of a family, and cannot take either the time or the money to secure an education which his natural aptitude and his opportunities demand.

DEFICIENT SELF-CONFIDENCE

Many men remain in uncongenial occupations because they lack confidence in themselves. This is distressingly common. Everywhere we find men and women occupying humble positions, doing some obscure work, perhaps actually frittering away their time upon trifles and mere details, doing something which does not require accuracy, care, responsibility, or talent, merely for fear they may not be able to succeed in a career for which they are eminently fitted.

On one occasion a young man of the most undoubted dramatic talent and oratorical ability sought us for counsel. "I have always felt," he said, "a strong inner urge, sometimes almost irresistible, to go upon the platform or the stage. But, because I have lacked confidence in myself, I have always, at the last moment, drawn back. The result is that to-day I am dissatisfied and unhappy in the work I am doing. I do it poorly. I long constantly for an opportunity to express myself in public. Years are going by, I have not developed my talent as I should, and I am beginning to feel that my case is hopeless." This lack of self-confidence is more common by far than many people would imagine. Arthur Frederick Sheldon has said: "Most men accomplish too little because they attempt too little." Our observations incline us to believe that this is the truth. Taking humanity as a whole, far more men fail because they try to do too little than because they try to do too much. Humanity is a great mine of undiscovered and undeveloped talents. It follows that we fall far short of our best because we do not expect and demand enough of ourselves.

CONSERVATISM

A man came to us for consultation in regard to his vocation. Just why he had come, it afterward turned out, it was hard to see. Perhaps he only wanted to settle matters in his own mind without taking definite action upon them. He was engaged in mercantile business, a business left to him by his father. He hated it. After a careful analysis, we informed him that he had undoubted scientific talents, and that, with training, he could make a name for himself in research and discovery. He was overjoyed at this information, but he manifested no disposition to change his vocation. He said: "Much as I dislike the mercantile business, I hate to change. A change will mean selling out, upsetting my whole mode of life and

## activity, removing into a different community, beginning a new life in

many of its phases. I cannot look forward to such a complete revolution with any degree of pleasure, so I guess I will have to keep along in the old store, much as I would like to devote the rest of my life to test-tubes, crucibles, and scales."

There are many such men. Change is more hateful to them than unloved work. They fall into grooves and ruts. They would rather continue in their well-worn ways than to go through the mental anguish of breaking old ties, remaking methods of life and work, moving away from friends and relatives, and otherwise changing environment, conditions, and employment.

LACK OF COURAGE

Many men have self-confidence and yet lack courage. That may seem to be a paradoxical statement, but if the reader will study carefully some of the men he knows, he will understand that this is the truth. Men may have plenty of confidence in themselves, but they may lack the courage to face difficulties, to overcome obstacles, to meet hard conditions, to pass through disagreeable experiences. Such are the men who lack the initiative, the push, the aggressiveness, to do as well as they know how, to do as much as they can, to undertake the high achievement for which they have the ability. The cases of such men would be hopeless were it not for the fact that some powerful incentive, like an emergency or necessity, some tremendous enthusiasm, some strong determination, some deep conviction, urges them on to the expression of the fulness of their powers. Lacking even any of these, it is possible for the man who lacks courage to develop it.

Courage is developed by doing courageous acts. The man who feels that he lacks courage, who knows that he needs to forget his fears and his anxieties, has half won his battle. Knowing his deficiencies, he can by the very power of his will compel himself to courageous words and acts, thus increasing and developing his courage and, as a result, his efficiency.

LACK OF AMBITION

Finally, people do not undertake work in their proper vocations because of a lack of ambition. This is, indeed, a fundamental deficiency. Perhaps it underlies many of those we have already described. Certain it is that we usually obtain what we most earnestly and ardently desire. Someone has said that when a man knows definitely and in detail just exactly what he desires, he is halfway toward attainment. Now, a man does not know definitely and in detail what he wants unless he wants it so intensely that it is always in his mind; he thinks about it, dreams of it, and paints mental pictures of himself enjoying it; perhaps spends hours in working out the detail of it. When a man has an ambition which drives him on to this kind of mental exercise, he usually has one which overcomes his inertia, burns out his laziness, triumphs over his lack of confidence in himself, urges him out of grooves and ruts, and enables him to overcome deficiencies in education and training, is an incentive to him for the creating of opportunities where none exist, gives him courage for anything, and kindles ever afresh his enthusiasm and determination. There is no obstacle so great that it will not dissolve and vanish away into thin air in the heat of such an overwhelming desire and ambition as this.

We need to remind ourselves, however, that even the most ardent ambition goes astray unless it is guided by accurate knowledge. Many a man has attacked his problem with great courage and high ambition, only to meet defeat because, through lack of knowledge, he has chosen a career for which he was unfitted.

These, then, are some of the reasons people go into and remain in vocations where they do not fit. They are the reasons, also, why so many men are failures or near-failures. Any man is a failure in just the degree in which he falls short of developing and using his best and highest talents and powers.

William James, the psychologist, has said that most men use only a very small percentage of their real abilities. Harrington Emerson, efficiency engineer, says that the average man is only twenty-five per cent efficient and that his inefficiency is due to unfitness for the work he is trying to do. Students of economics say that only ten per cent of all men are truly successful. In this chapter we have presented many of the reasons for the misfit and failure. Some of them are chargeable to parents, teachers, and employers. But the most serious belong rightfully at the door of the individual himself. "The fault, dear Brutus," says Cassius, "is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."

It is highly desirable that parents, teachers, and other guides and advisors of the young should fully inform themselves about human nature and about work. They ought to rid their minds of prejudice and thus free themselves from unwise tradition and useless conventionality. Above all, they need to arouse themselves to the vital importance of ideals--of a clear, definite purpose, based upon accurate knowledge and sound judgment--in other words, upon common sense. This is the vocational problem.

FACTORS OF THE VOCATIONAL PROBLEM

The vocational problem consists, first, of the need of accurate vocational analysis; second, of the need of wise vocational counsel; third, of the need of adequate vocational training; fourth, of the need of correct vocational placement.

It is obvious that the vocational problem cannot be adequately solved by dealing with pupils or clients in groups or classes. It is a definite, specific, and individual problem. Group study is interesting and instructive, but, alone, does not give sufficient knowledge of individual peculiarities and aptitudes. It is obvious from the foregoing analysis of the vocational problem that it is practically identical at all points with the problem of scientific employment. Just as the highest efficiency of the employment department depends upon accurate analysis of the job and of the man, so the highest usefulness of the vocational bureau or vocational counsellor depends upon complete and exact knowledge of the requirements in different lines of endeavor, and the ability to analyze human nature accurately. It is obvious that wise counsel cannot be given, adequate training cannot be prescribed, and correct placement is impossible until these analyses have been properly made.

The child or adult of unusual ability, with well-marked inclinations and strong in the fundamentals of character, is never difficult to analyze, counsel, train, or place. If given an opportunity to gain knowledge, and freedom in the exercise of choice, he will almost surely gravitate into his natural line of work. He is not the real problem of the vocational expert. But the vast majority of children are average, or even mediocre. They show little inclination toward any study or any work. They have weaknesses of character that will inevitably handicap them, no matter what vocation they enter. They are the real problem. There is another class, almost equally distressing. They are the people who are brilliant, who learn easily, and who are so adaptable that they can turn their hands to almost anything. They are usually so unstable in temperament that it is difficult for them to persist in any one kind of endeavor long enough to score a success.

METHODS OF ANALYSIS IN USE

The need, in dealing with these problems, for some more reliable guide than the young person's inclinations and preferences has deeply impressed itself upon those engaged in vocational study and vocational work. They are earnestly seeking to find some better way. To this end, we have the questionaire, by which is brought out between the lines, as it were, the

## particular aptitudes and disposition of the subject. And this method is

not without its advantages. We have also psychological tests. These are of fascinating interest and have yielded some valuable results. Some vocational workers use the psychological tests and some do not. Even those who are most enthusiastic for them admit that they are complicated, that they require expensive apparatus and specially trained examiners, and that even the best results obtainable cover a very narrow field in the character and aptitudes of the subject.

UNIFORM METHOD NEEDED

The present need is for some uniform, readily applicable, inexpensive, and comprehensive method of analysis. The advantages of such a method are immediately apparent. First, its uniformity would permit the making of records for comparison, covering a very wide range of subjects, environment, and vocations. Second, even the simplest classifications, which are readily learned and easily applied by the inexpert, would yield tangible and measurable results and would be far better than the present unstandardized and wholly unscientific methods. Third, were such a uniform method adopted and made a part of the vocational work of our institutions; were uniform records to be made and wisely used, we should soon have a body of useful knowledge on this subject. Fourth, as the result of the application of such a uniform method, text books and charts could be prepared which would form the basis of popular education in vocational guidance.

But this book will find its way into the hands of many whose own vocational problems cry out for solution. Such need first to know themselves, to know their aptitudes and talents, whether developed or undeveloped. They need to study vocations--to know everything about the kinds of work they might do, from their requirements to their possibilities twenty, thirty, or forty years in the future. Finally, they need the courage, self-confidence, industry, progressiveness, and ambition to throw off the shackles of circumstance and, in the light of scientific truth, to press forward to the achievement, success, fulness of life, and happiness possible through development and use of all their powers.

## CHAPTER II

ELEMENTS OF FITNESS

In our study are two small pieces of clear white marble. Each of them is decorated with a beautifully designed little flower in natural color. This flower is depicted by the skillful inlaying of semi-precious stones. These marbles came from Agra, India. They are samples of the handiwork which makes the Taj Mahal one of the most beautiful structures in the world. In the fitting of this inlay work the stones--some of them almost as hard as diamonds--are cut and polished to nearly mathematical accuracy of size and shape. But the more carefully and exactly these are made, the more badly they fit and the worse failure is the whole design, unless the spaces intended for them in the marble are likewise cut and prepared with nicety and accuracy. In the selecting of a life work, similarly, the same care must be taken in learning accurately the requirements of work--the exact size and shape, as it were, of each vocation--as is spent upon learning the exact qualifications of each individual. Both require common sense and intelligent judgment.

We measure a man's height in centimeters or inches. Pounds and ounces or grams and centigrams offer us exact standards of measuring his weight. But there are no absolute standards for measuring the man himself, and probably there never can be. Human values, therefore, can be standardized only relatively. By the study of large groups we can, however, ascertain approximately the average or normal. In this way, physical standards have been set up as to pulse rate, temperature, respiration, etc. Chemical analysis determines norms of blood composition, and microscopic investigation determines the average number of blood corpuscles per cubic centimeter. The Binet-Simon mental tests are based upon certain approximate averages of intelligence and mental development established in the same way. The Münsterberg associated-word test of intelligence and other psychological experiments are among the efforts made to establish such standards. These are valuable as far as they go and probably yield all the information that their originators claim for them, which, unfortunately, is not a great deal. By time and motion studies, we are enabled to set up standards of efficiency that work out well in practice. All these, however, still leave us in the dark as to the man himself--his honesty, his loyalty, his highest and best values.

ELEMENTS OF THE VOCATIONAL PROBLEM

But, granted for the moment that we could devise and successfully apply exact and accurate standards of measurement for human beings, our work would be only partially done. Any mechanic knows that it is a sad waste of time and pains to standardize tenons, with micrometer and emery paper, to a thousandth of an inch, so long as the mortises are left unstandardized. A valuable man makes an unusual record on the staff of some employer. Other employers immediately begin to lay plans to entice him away. Transferred to another organization, he may prove mediocre, or even undesirable, in his services. Hiring "stars" away from other employers has proved disastrous so many times that the practice is no longer common. Many a flourishing and fruitful tree has been transplanted, only to wither and die--a tragedy involving the tree itself and both orchards. Measured by every known standard, a man thus enticed away may be close to 100 per cent efficient, but the man is only one ingredient in the compound from which results are expected. To know and to rate his aptitudes, abilities, personality, and possibilities is of the highest importance, but these cannot be rated except in relation to his work and to his environment. These are the other two ingredients in the compound. It is quite obvious that all standards for judging men--and for self-analysis--must vary with relation to the work they are to do and the environment in which they are placed.

The important factors of any vocation may be classified very broadly under three heads, namely, nature, position, and requirements. Chart I gives a classification of work, with a few suggestive subdivisions, under each of these three general heads. The meanings of the subdivisions listed under "Nature" and "Position" are clear.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS

Work has its physical requirements as to size, build, strength, endurance, freedom from tendencies to disease, agility, and inherent capacity for manual and digital skill. It may also have certain requirements as to eyesight, hearing, reaction time, muscular co-ordination, sense of touch, and even, in some particular places, sense of smell and sense of taste. Moral requirements may vary from those of a hired gunman to those of a Y.M.C.A. secretary or a bank cashier.

INTELLECTUAL REQUIREMENTS

Intellectual requirements and requirements in aptitudes, experience, and training vary, of course, with every kind of work, and almost with every

## particular job. One most valuable division of people intellectually is as

to capacity of intellect. Some people have fine intellects, capable of great accomplishments in the way of education and training. They are

## particularly fitted for intellectual work; they have mental grasp; they

comprehend; they reason; they have good judgment; they learn easily; they remember well. In every way their intellects are active, energetic, capable. Other people have only moderate intellectual capacity. They express themselves best in physical activity or in the direct, man-to-man handling of others. Their few intellectual activities may be exceedingly keen and accurate--or slow, dull, and vague. People with small intellectual capacity sometimes have remarkable vigor and clearness of mind in some one direction--such as finance, promotion, commerce; judgment of people, horses, cattle, or other living beings; mechanics, invention, music, art, poetry, or some other narrow specialty. Some intellects, in other words, are simply incompetent--others, merely narrow.

People can also be divided, intellectually, into two other classes, the theoretical and the practical. The man with a theoretical intellect is thoughtful, meditative, reflective. His mind works slowly; it is interested in philosophy, in theories, in abstractions, and is capable of dealing with them. On the other hand, it is not particularly well qualified for observing practical things, and for making a practical application of the theories it learns so easily and in which it takes so great an interest. This is the intellect of the philosopher, the dreamer, the educator, the preacher, the writer, the reformer, the poet. This is

## particularly the intellect of reason, of logic, of ideas and ideals.

Whether found amongst the world's leaders or in the lowliest walks of life, its function is always that of dealing with theory, finding out reasons, putting together logical arguments, teaching others and dealing with abstractions. Oftentimes this type of intellect is so impractical that its possessor never possesses anything else. Literature abounds in the tragic tales of philosophers, poets, reformers, and dreamers who starved beautifully and nobly. Every-day life sees thousands more blundering along, either cursing their luck or wondering why Providence withholds its material gifts from people so deserving as they.

Over against this is the practical, matter-of-fact, analytical intellect--the intellect which demands facts and demands them quickly; the intellect which is quick in its operations, impatient, keen, penetrating, intolerant of mere theories and abstractions, not particularly strong in reason and logic, but exceedingly keen and discriminating in regard to the facts. This is the intellect which deals with things, with the material universe, with laws and principles, based upon accurately determined facts. This is the intellect of the preeminently practical man.

Some intellects are particularly fine in critical powers; some have splendid financial ability; some are artistic and musical; some have almost miraculous instinct in mechanical affairs; some are scientific; others are mechanical; still others are inventive. There are many intellects, of course, which combine two or more of these qualities, as, for instance, an intellect blessed with both financial and organizing ability. This is the intellect of the captain of industry, of the multi-millionaire. Then there is the intellect which combines financial, inventive, and organizing ability. This is the intellect of Edison, of Westinghouse, of Curtis, of the Wright brothers, of Marconi, and of Cyrus McCormick. Herbert Spencer was blessed with an intellect capable of both philosophic and scientific thought, both theoretical and practical. Spencer had also great organizing ability, but he devoted it to the organizing of a system of philosophy based upon his scientific researches.

EMOTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

Emotional requirements are many and varied; even more numerous and of greater variety than intellectual requirements, perhaps. Some vocations require great courage, others not; some require a great deal of sympathy; others demand a certain hardness and control of the sympathies. There are vocations which require a keen sense of justice; others in which the presence or absence of a sense of justice is not essential. And so, there must be taken into consideration requirements for honor, for love, for loyalty, for dependableness, for enthusiasm, for unselfishness, for caution, for prudence, for religion, for faith, for hope, for optimism, for cheerfulness, for contentment, for earnestness, and for reverence.

THE COMPLEXITY OF HONESTY

Honesty is laid down by all authorities on employment as absolutely essential to success in any vocation, but there are many kinds of honesty and many standards of honesty. As a matter of fact, each man has his own standard of honesty. After all, it is, perhaps, not so much a question of what a man's standards are as how well he lives up to them. We recall, especially, the cases of two men associated together in business. One man set his standards high. Intellectually, he knew the value of ethics in conduct. He truly wished to make practical in his dealings the high principles he admired. But his cupidity was strong and his will and courage were weak, so he oftentimes argued himself, by specious casuistry, into words and acts which were untruthful and dishonest. Oftentimes, indeed, they came dangerously near to actual crimes against the laws of the State. The other man had rather limited standards of honesty. His motto was, "Let the buyer beware!" If those with whom he dealt were as strong and intelligent as he, and he was clever enough to take advantage of them, he regarded the spoils as rightfully his. It was all in the game. "I don't squeal when they catch me napping," he said, "and why should I look out for their interests?" But he never took advantage of the weak, the ignorant, the inexperienced, or the too credulous. His word was as good as gold. His principles were few and intensely practical, and he would willingly lose thousands of dollars rather than violate one of them.

Honesty is a complex virtue. It means, fundamentally, just and honorable intentions. But it involves, also, knowledge of what is right, a keen and discriminating sense of justice, a true sense of values, courage and will-power to carry out honest intentions, and, finally, sufficient earning power to meet all righteous obligations. Dishonest acts result far more often from ignorance, warped sense of justice, inability to appreciate values, cowardice, weak will, or incompetence, than from wrong intent. Whether or not any individual is endowed with the necessary honesty for success in any particular vocation is, therefore, a problem which can be settled only by careful analysis of all its requirements. Law and banking both require a high _degree_ of honesty, but the _kinds_ are different.

THE HIGH QUALITY OF COURAGE

Next to honesty, perhaps, courage is most important. The individual who lacks courage shows no initiative; he has no ability to fight his own battles, to stand by his guns, to assert and maintain his convictions and his rights. He is, therefore, always a misfit in any vocation where he is required to take the initiative, to step out and assume responsibilities, to guide and direct the work of others, to meet others in, competition, to discipline others, to defend himself against the attack of others, to defend the rights of those depending upon him as employees, or stockholders, or partners. He may be excellently qualified as a research worker, an experimenter, an administrator of affairs, a teacher, a writer, a lecturer, an artist, or in almost any kind of work where initiative, aggressiveness, and fighting ability are not prime essentials.

PRUDENCE

Almost as important in its bearing upon vocational fitness as honesty and courage is prudence. This is the quality which causes men to bear responsibility faithfully; it is that which makes effective in them a sense of duty. It is the emotional quality which leads men to take precautions, to provide against the future. It is that which prevents them from recklessness in expenditure or speculation, from carelessness, from irresponsibility. It is an absolutely essential quality wherever dependability is required; where one is expected to assume and to carry responsibility, to see that things are done accurately that necessities are provided, that emergencies are prevented.

On the other hand, there are many vocations in which too great prudence, too great caution, is a handicap instead of an advantage. The man who is too cautious, who bears responsibility too heavily, is not fitted for positions and vocations which involve a certain amount of personal danger. He is also likely to be too conservative to enter upon vocations in which a considerable element of speculation is involved. He is not disposed to take chances; he is too apprehensive and too much given to anxiety to be involved in any vocation where there is uncertainty as to outcome. Many vocations also require a fine blending of prudence with a willingness to take chances and a certain degree of recklessness.

THE ELEMENTS OF ENVIRONMENT

Such is any kind of work in which the results are not tangible and immediately and constantly measurable. In our practice we meet many who grow impatient, apprehensive, and even discouraged when knowledge of success of their efforts is deferred--or is even problematical. These people would far rather work in a subordinate position at a small salary, _certain_ to be paid every pay day, than to make twice as much money on a commission basis but not be certain just how much they would be paid on pay day. Thus it is clear that a salesman on a commission basis must have a dash of recklessness in him, and yet, if he is selling high priced goods and wishes to build a permanent business, must be careful and prudent in handling his trade.

The essential elements of environment and their subdivisions are shown in Chart 2. A brief discussion of some of these may clarify the subject.

CHART 2

POLICY AND STANDARDS

For a man faithfully and loyally to live up to and represent the policy of the house is obviously necessary. But oftentimes it takes rather definite characteristics to do this.

Every business institution has, or should have, its moral, commercial, financial, artistic, and other standards with reference to personnel, according to the character of the business and other important considerations. And the man who contemplates work with any firm will examine himself to see whether he can harmonize happily with these standards. In like manner, every profession and art has its traditional standards and ethics, which should be considered.

PHYSICAL SURROUNDINGS

In selecting his vocation, the wise man ascertains his fitness for its physical surroundings. Some men cannot work permanently indoors, underground, in a high altitude, in a hot or cold climate, in a damp or a dry climate, in high or low artificial temperature, in the midst of noise or dust or chemical fumes, or by artificial light, or in a locality where certain social advantages do not exist or where satisfactory homes cannot be rented or purchased. Some men are not fitted for city life; others are not fitted for country life. All these and other facts should be taken into consideration with reference to surroundings.

MANAGEMENT AND SUPERIORS

The management of every place has its personal preferences, not based on efficiency. We once knew a manager who was so distressed by impediments of speech that he could not endure persons with these peculiarities in his organization, although their manner of speech had nothing to do with the quality of their work. Every manager has some more or less marked idiosyncrasies, and these must be known and studied by prospective employees. The personality of the management and its effect upon the worker under its direction and leadership are other important factors. The manager who is a keen, positive driver will get good results with a certain type of people in his organization, but only with a certain type. The efficiency of every man in the organization is also conditioned very largely upon the personal preferences, personality, and methods of his immediate superior--his foreman, gang-boss, or chief. Certain types of men harmonize and work well together. Other types are antagonistic and discordant. By their very nature they cannot work in the harmony which is essential to efficiency. In making choice of work, the man with good judgment scrutinizes all these important elements.

ASSOCIATES AND SOCIAL ADVANTAGES

Every vocation has its social environment. There are fellow employees, or professional associates, inevitable in the work itself; also the

## particular class of society fixed by locality, income, or the standing of

the vocation.

This chart may seem, at first sight, to be complex. It must necessarily be so, since it is arranged to cover all professions and trades and all industrial and commercial positions, from the presidency of a corporation, general managership of a railroad, sales management of a factory, or cashiership of a bank, as well as less exalted jobs, down to those requiring little, if anything, more than brute strength. Obviously, not all of these facts need to be considered by every aspirant, but only those which have a bearing upon his particular case. The tendency, however, is to neglect important factors rather than to waste time over those which are unimportant.

PERSONAL ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM

Having determined, in the manner indicated, the standards of work and of the environment, the man is ready to examine himself to determine where he fits. There are six headings under which he may classify the various items of information needed in fitting himself to work and environment. These are health, character, intelligence, disposition to industry, natural aptitudes, and experience, as shown in Chart 3. This chart does not, of course, present a complete and detailed list, but it is suggestive.[2] It would not be true to say that any one of these is absolutely more important than the other. They are all important. Their relative importance may be determined by the vocation to be considered.

[Footnote 2: See more detailed lists in appendix.]

HEALTH

Consider the question of health. We include all a man's physical attributes under health. The classification is somewhat arbitrary, but it will be understood. A man must consider himself as to his size, as to his strength, as to his endurance, as to his condition of body (which shows habits), as to his predisposition to health, as to disease, as to his moral health, as to his sobriety, as to his sanity, etc.

CHART 3

|Education Experience..............< Training |Previous Record

Without at least fair physical fitness for his work and for his environment, no man can do efficient work in any position.

CHARACTER

The second element is character. A man may rate well in all the six fundamentals with the exception of one, honesty, and he is not worth heat and light and floor space, to say nothing of wages. Dishonest men do not do honest work. The man who is deficient in honesty, in truthfulness, in loyalty, is not really fit for any kind of work in a world where men are interdependent--where the law of compensation is rigidly enforced. We have chosen just a few qualities under the head of character: honesty, truthfulness, loyalty, discretion, prudence, enthusiasm, courage, steadfastness, and dependability. We might go on and on, adding initiative, justice, kindness, good nature, courtesy, punctuality, etc.

INTELLIGENCE

The third criterion is intelligence. Intelligence, of course, relates to mental ability--ability to learn and to understand and follow instructions. Employers are slowly reaching the conclusion that unintelligent labor is the most expensive kind of labor. The man who is unintelligent cannot be taught. Employers cannot give him instructions and feel absolutely sure that he understands them, or, even if he understands them, that he will carry them out properly. Among the qualities which are included under intelligence are judgment and memory, the powers of observation, expression in speaking or in writing, imagination, reasoning power, and all other qualities which are purely intellectual. Most unintelligent people are merely mentally asleep. They need to awaken, to be on the alert, really to take the trouble to think. Many people have capacity for thought who do not use it.

INDUSTRY

The fourth element is disposition to industry. Some wag once said: "All men are lazy, but some are lazier than others." It might sound better to say that all men are industrious, but some men are more industrious than others. There is such a quality of body and mind as the quality of predisposition to action and industry. Industry is very largely dependent upon energy. Energy depends upon oxygen. If one sits in a room that is stuffy and not well ventilated, one soon becomes stupid, sleepy, and not

## particularly acute mentally. In other words, he is partly starved for

oxygen. Now, let him go out into the open air and breathe plenty of oxygen into his lungs. In a little while he raises his chest and brings up the crown of his head and takes the positive physical attitude. He is more energetic. He is eager for activity--for work. Some people are naturally deficient in depth, activity, and quality of lung power. They do not breathe in or use much oxygen, so they are lacking in energy. Such people are not predisposed to industry. Love of work--love of the game that causes a man to be interested in every phase of his work--is not, however, wholly dependent upon energy. It is something in the very heart and fiber of the man. Willingness to work, perseverance in work, and decision come under disposition to industry.

[Illustration: _Photo by F. Gutekunst, Phila_. FIG. 1. Jacob A. Riis, Journalist, Author and Philanthropist. A man of unusual intellectual power, observation, reason, memory, logic, and analysis, with high ideals, great love for humanity, especially the weak and helpless; good powers of expression, sense of humor, courage, and determination. Note large development of upper part of head; fairly well developed brows; high dome over temples; height and width of forehead, especially across center; full lips; well developed nose; strong chin; and alert, poised, kindly expression.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. New York_. FIG. 2. Dr. Booker T. Washington. Very ambitious, practical, energetic, self-reliant, persistent, determined, capable of rule. Note high head; high, sloping forehead, prominent at the brows; large nose, high in the bridge; and long, straight upper lip.]

[Illustration: FIG. 3. James H. Collins, Author. A splendid example of intellectual type with good bone and muscle. Has excellent balance of mechanical and commercial understanding, keen judgment of men, practical sense, and fine determination, with sentiment, sympathy, friendliness, and faith. Note high, medium-wide head, especially high in center above temples and wide and full through center of forehead; prominence of brows; width between eyes; full, cleanly modeled lips; strong nose and chin; and keen, pleasant, friendly, spirited expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4. H.G. Wells, Novelist and Economist. A man of physically frail type, with natural mechanical leanings. Inventive, creative, industrious, humanitarian. Because of his mechanical ability, he uses his creativeness for constructing novels dealing with mechanical invention. Because of his humanitarian instincts, he writes of social and economic world problems. Note large upper portion of head, especially from center of forehead to sides of head; also prominence of brows; large nose, and long head.]

[Illustration: _Copyright American Press Association_. FIG. 5. Mr. Henry Ford, Automobile Manufacturer and Philanthropist. Mr. Ford is of the physically frail type, with a goodly admixture of the bony and muscular element. His natural mechanical bent, therefore, took the intellectual form of invention and organization. His sentiment, responsiveness, sympathy, and idealism are shown by high, rather narrow head, fine texture, height of head just above temples, and gentle, kindly, genial expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 6. Hugo de Vries, Botanist. An example of physically frail type. Very careful, accurate, painstaking, and patient in mental work. Also very thoughtful, mild in disposition, but determined and persistent. Note large development of upper part of head; long, narrow face; long nose; narrowness of head just above ears; slight squareness of chin, and serious, thoughtful expression.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by B.F. McMann_ FIG. 7. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, United States Minister to Holland, Author, Scholar, and Poet. A good example of physically frail type, with slight tendency to bone and muscle. Refined, intellectual, sensitive, responsive, optimistic, but well-balanced, poised, and keenly discriminating. Dr. Van Dyke shows his tendency to physical activity in his love for the out-of-doors. Note large development of upper portion of head; slight squareness of jaw; height of head above temples, especially in center; fine texture; excellent balance of features, and calm, poised, thoughtful, but kindly expression.]

[Illustration: _Photo by American Press Association_. FIG. 8. Dr. Beverly T. Galloway, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. Physically frail, but mentally very active. Said to be one of the greatest living authorities on plant culture. Slight squareness of build indicates tendency to interest in out-of-door matters, which, on account of large development of mental qualities, he expresses in an intellectual way.]

NATURAL APTITUDE

The fifth criterion is natural aptitude. Everyone has observed that some people are naturally commercial. We have seen a boy take a penny to school, buy a slate pencil or a lead pencil with that penny, and trade that for an old pocket knife, the knife for something else, and keep on swapping until he had a gun, a set of chess, a bag of marbles, and several other important boys' acquisitions, all from that one penny. Another boy takes penny after penny to school and he never has anything to show for it You know such boys--and grown people, too. Every individual has some such aptitudes--either latent or developed, either mediocre or marked--and his aptitudes fit him better for some one vocation than for any other.

EXPERIENCE

The sixth point to be considered is experience. One might be fitted for a vocation with all of the five points that we have enumerated, and yet not have either the education or the training for it. What shall he do? Theoretically and ideally, every individual should be carefully and thoroughly trained, from his earliest childhood, for the vocation for which he is physically, mentally, and morally fitted. But this seldom happens--and can happen but seldom so long as parents and teachers remain ignorant of human nature and of work. A hard problem, then, confronts the young man or young woman past school days and not trained for the right calling. He or she must decide whether to compromise upon work as nearly right as possible or to make the necessary sacrifices to obtain education, training, and experience. There is much evidence in favor of choosing either horn of the dilemma. A most successful manufacturer called upon us recently. We told him that, with proper training, he would have been even more successful and far better satisfied in the legal profession. "I know you are right," he said. "I have always regretted that circumstances prevented my taking a law course as a young man. However, I have an extensive law library, do practically all the legal work for my firm, and am often consulted on obscure legal points relative to the manufacturing business by lawyers of some renown."

Abraham Lincoln, the farmhand and flatboatman, began the study of grammar at twenty-two and of law still later. Elihu Burritt, "The Learned Blacksmith," who lectured in both England and America, taught himself languages and sciences while working eleven hours a day at the forge.

We enjoy the acquaintance of a woman physician of considerable prominence who did not enter medical college until she was more than fifty years of age. Henry George was a printer who studied economics after he was twenty-seven years old. Frederick Douglass was a slave until he was twenty-one, yet secured a liberal education, so that he became a noted speaker and writer. The following from "Up from Slavery,"[3] by the late Booker T. Washington, shows what can be done by even a poor black boy, without money or influence, to win an education:

[Footnote 3: Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, New York.]

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON'S STORY

I determined when quite a small child that, if I accomplished nothing else in life, I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common books and newspapers. Soon after we got settled in some manner in our new cabin in West Virginia, I induced my mother to get hold of a book for me. How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she procured an old copy of 'Webster's Blue-back Spelling-book,' which contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as 'ab,' 'ba,' 'ca,' and 'da.' I began at once to devour this book, and I think that it was the first one I ever had in my hands. I had learned from somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it--all, of course, without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me. At that time there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could read, and I was too timid to approach any of the white people. In some way, within a few weeks, I mastered the greater portion of the alphabet. In all my efforts to learn to read my mother shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she could. Though she was totally ignorant so far as mere book knowledge was concerned, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large fund of good hard common sense, which seemed to enable her to meet and master every situation. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.

The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley brought to me one of the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced. I had been working in a salt-furnace for several months, and my stepfather had discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work. This decision seemed to cloud my every ambition. The disappointment was made all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work was where I could see the happy children passing to and from school morning and afternoon. Despite this disappointment, however, I determined that I would learn something anyway. I applied myself with greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the blue-back speller.

My mother sympathized with me in my disappointment and sought to comfort me in all the ways she could and to help me find a way to learn. After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the teacher to give me some lessons at night, after the day's work was done. These night lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more at night than the other children did during the day. My own experiences in the night-school gave me faith in the night-school idea, with which, in after years, I had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee. But my boyish heart was still set upon going to day-school and I let no opportunity slip to push my case. Finally I won, and was permitted to go to the school in the day for a few months, with the understanding that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till nine o'clock, and return immediately after school closed in the afternoon for at least two hours more of work.

The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to work till nine o'clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself in a difficulty. School would always be begun before I reached it, and sometimes my class had recited. To get around this difficulty I yielded to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn me; but since it is a fact, I might as well state it. I have great faith in the power and influence of facts. It is seldom that anything is permanently gained by holding back a fact. There was a large clock in a little office in the furnace. This clock, of course, all the hundred or more workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of beginning and ending the day's work. I got the idea that the way for me to reach school on time was to move the hands from half-past eight up to the nine o'clock mark. This I found myself doing morning after morning, till the furnace 'boss' discovered that something was wrong, and locked the clock in a case. I did not mean to inconvenience anybody. I simply meant to reach that schoolhouse on time.

When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also found myself confronted with two other difficulties. In the first place, I found that all of the other children wore hats or caps on their heads, and I had neither hat nor cap. In fact, I do not remember that, up to the time of going to school, I had ever worn any kind of covering upon my head, nor do I recall that either I or anybody else had even thought anything about the need of covering for my head. But, of course, when I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to feel quite uncomfortable. As usual, I put the case before my mother, and she explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a 'store hat,' which was a rather new institution at that time among the members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young and old to own, but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty. She accordingly got two pieces of 'homespun' (jeans) and sewed them together, and I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap.

My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather, a name. From the time when I could remember anything I had been called simply 'Booker.' Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it was needful or appropriate to have an additional name. When I heard the school roll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least two names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance of having three. I was in deep perplexity, because I knew the teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only one. By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the situation; and so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him 'Booker Washington,' as if I had been called by that name all my life; and by that name I have since been known. Later in my life I found that my mother had given me the name of 'Booker Taliaferro' soon after I was born, but in some way that part of my name seemed to disappear and for a long while was forgotten, but as soon as I found out about it I revived it, and made my full name, 'Booker Taliaferro Washington.' I think there are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that I have.

The time that I was permitted to attend school during the day was short, and my attendance was irregular. It was not long before I had to stop attending day-school altogether, and devote all of my time again to work. I resorted to the night-school again. In fact, the greater part of the education I secured in my boyhood was gathered through the night-school after my day's work was done. I had difficulty often in securing a satisfactory teacher. Sometimes, after I had secured someone to teach me at night, I would find, much to my disappointment, that the teacher knew but little more than I did. Often I would have to walk several miles at night in order to recite my night-school lessons. There was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging the days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me, and that was a determination to secure an education at any cost....

After I had worked in the salt-furnace for some time, work was secured for me in a coal mine, which was operated mainly for the purpose of securing fuel for the salt-furnace.

In those days, and later, as a young man, I used to try to picture in my imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities. I used to envy the white boy who had no obstacle placed in the way of his becoming a Congressman, Governor, Bishop, or President by reason of the accident of his birth or race. I used to picture the way that I would act under such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising until I reached the highest round of success.

One day, while at work in the coal mine, I happened to overhear two miners talking about a great school for colored people somewhere in Virginia. This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little colored school in our town.

In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to the two men talking. I heard one tell the other that not only was the school established for the members of my race, but that opportunities were provided by which poor but worthy students could work out all or a part of the cost of board, and at the same time be taught some trade or industry.

As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute of Virginia, about which these men were talking. I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.

In the fall of 1872, I determined to make an effort to get there, although, as I have stated, I had no definite idea of the direction in which Hampton was, or of what it would cost to go there. I do not think that anyone thoroughly sympathized with me in my ambition to go to Hampton, unless it was my mother, and she was troubled with a grave fear that I was starting out on a wild-goose chase. At any rate, I got only a half-hearted consent from her that I might start. The small amount of money that I had earned had been consumed by my step-father and the remainder of the family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and so I had very little with which to buy clothes and pay my traveling expenses.

Finally, the great day came and I started for Hampton. I had only a small, cheap satchel that contained what few articles of clothing I could get. My mother, at the time, was rather weak and broken in health. I hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more sad. She, however, was very brave through it all. At that time there were no through trains connecting that part of West Virginia with eastern Virginia. Trains ran only a portion of the way, and the remainder of the distance was traveled by stage-coaches.

The distance from Malden to Hampton is about five hundred miles. I had not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to Hampton.

By walking, begging rides, both in wagons and in the cars, in some way, after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about eighty-two miles from Hampton. When I reached there, tired, hungry, and dirty, it was late in the night. I had never been in a large city before, and this rather added to my misery. When I reached Richmond I was completely out of money. I had not a single acquaintance in the place, and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go. I applied at several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and that was what I did not have. Knowing nothing else better to do, I walked the streets. In doing this I passed by many food-stands, where fried chicken and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to present a most tempting appearance. At that time it seemed to me that I would have promised all that I expected to possess in the future to have gotten hold of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies. But I could not get either of these, nor anything else to eat.

I must have walked the streets till after midnight. At last I became so exhausted that I could walk no longer. I was tired; I was hungry; I was everything but discouraged. Just about the time when I reached extreme physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where the board sidewalk was considerably elevated. I waited for a few minutes, till I was sure that no passers-by could see me, and then crept under the sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my satchel of clothing for a pillow. Nearly all night I could hear the tramp of feet above my head. The next morning I found myself somewhat refreshed, but I was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time since I had had sufficient food. As soon as it became light enough for me to see my surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and that this ship seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron. I went at once to the vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload the vessel in order to get money for food. The captain, a white man, who seemed to be kind-hearted, consented. I worked long enough to earn money for my breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to have been about the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.

"My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired, I could continue working for a small amount per day. This I was very glad to do. I continued working on this vessel for a number of days. After buying food with the small wages I received there was not much left to add to the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton. In order to economize in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach Hampton in a reasonable time, I continued to sleep under the same sidewalk that gave me shelter the first night I was in Richmond.

"When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness and started again. Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with a surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education. To me it had been a long, eventful journey, but the first sight of the large, three-story, brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all that I had undergone in order to reach the place.

"It seemed to me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had ever seen. The sight of it seemed to give me new life. I felt that a new kind of existence had now begun--that life would now have a new meaning. I felt that I had reached the promised land, and I resolved to let no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest effort to fit myself to accomplish the most good in the world.

"As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton Institute, I presented myself before the head teacher for assignment to a class. Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and change of clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favorable impression upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp. For some time she did not refuse to admit me; neither did she decide in my favor, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the meantime, I saw her admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as well as they, if I could only get a chance to show her what was in me.

"After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: 'The adjoining recitation room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it,'

"It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive an order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.

"_I_ swept the recitation room three times. Then I got a dusting cloth and I dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting cloth. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner of the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that, in a large measure, my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the head teacher. She was a Yankee woman, who knew just where to look for dirt. She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork, about the walls, and over the table and benches. When she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor, or a particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly remarked: 'I guess you will do to enter this institution.'

"I was one of the happiest souls on earth. The sweeping of that room was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction. I have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt that this was the best one I ever passed."

If Lincoln, Burritt, Booker T. Washington, and thousands of others, with all their handicaps, could secure needed education for their life work, why should any man remain in an uncongenial calling? There is danger that we may give our boys and girls too much help; that life be made too easy for them; that their moral backbones may grow flabby by reason of too much support. Normal young people do not need aid and support. They need guidance and direction--and the majority of them, either the sharp spur of necessity or the relentless urge of an ambition which will not be denied. Almost without exception we have found that the only difference between genius or millionaire and dunce or tramp is a willingness to pay the price.

THE PRICE OF SUCCESS

From an unknown author comes the all-important question to every seeker for success:

"You want success. Are you willing to pay the price for it?

"How much discouragement can you stand?

"How much bruising can you take?

"How long can you hang on in the face of obstacles?

"Have you the grit to try to do what others have failed to do?

"Have you the nerve to attempt things that the average man would never dream of tackling?

"Have you the persistence to keep on trying after repeated failures?

"Can you cut out luxuries? Can you do without things that others consider necessities?

"Can you go up against skepticism, ridicule, friendly advice to quit, without flinching?

"Can you keep your mind steadily on the single object you are pursuing, resisting all temptations to divide your attention?

"Have you the patience to plan all the work you attempt; the energy to wade through masses of detail; the accuracy to overlook no point, however small, in planning or executing?

"Are you strong on the finish as well as quick at the start?

"Success is sold in the open market. You can buy it--I can buy it--any man can buy it who is willing to pay the price for it."

## CHAPTER III

CLASSES OF MISFITS

To the casual observer, humanity seems to be divided into countless different kinds of people. In fact, it is often said that of all the millions of people on the earth, no two are just alike. Some writers on vocational guidance, indeed, express discouragement. They see humanity in such infinite variety that it is impossible ever to classify types. Therefore, they mourn, the vocational expert cannot judge of aptitudes except by trial in various kinds of work until, finally, real native talents appear in actual accomplishment. The anthropologist, however, easily divides mankind by means of several broad classifications, A few distinct variations, easily recognizable by the anthropological expert, put every one of the billion and one-half people on the face of the earth in his particular class.

In the same way, to the casual observer, it no doubt seems that the number and kind of misfits is so great that any attempt to analyze them and classify them must meet with failure. Those, however, who have studied the problem and have met and talked with thousands of those struggling against the handicap of unloved and difficult work, find a few classes which include nearly all of them. Just as there are two fundamental reasons why men and women select wrong vocations, and a few common variations upon these two reasons, so there are just a few general ways in which people select the wrong vocations. An examination of some of these will be illuminating to the reader.

THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL

In the beginning of the life of the race all men hunted, fished, fought, danced, sang, and loafed. These were the only manly vocations. There were no clerks, no doctors, and, perhaps, no priests. In some races and under some conditions to-day, all of the men are hunters and fishers, or shepherds and stock-raisers, or all the men till the field. Some years ago, in our country, practically all the male population worked at the trade of agriculture, there being only a few preachers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, and clerks.

In the nations of Europe to-day people are born to certain professions or born to a certain narrow circle of vocations; some people are born to manual labor, and, having once performed manual labor, are thereby firmly fixed in the class of those who earn their living by their hands; others are born in a class above that, and will suffer almost any privation rather than earn their living by manual labor. In the United States this same feeling is becoming more and more prevalent. Our physical work is nearly all of it done by those who came to us from across the sea, and native-born Americans seek vocations in some other sphere.

The common school is everywhere, and education is compulsory. The high school is also to be found in all parts of the country. There are also business colleges, technical schools, academies, universities, colleges, professional schools, correspondence schools, and other educational institutions of every possible kind. These are patronized by the native-born population as well as by many of those who come to us from foreign lands. The result is that, of the first great class which we shall treat, there are comparatively few in relation to the whole population. Even though this is true, there are all too many.

The first class of misfits is composed of those who are too frail for physical labor and who are not well enough educated to take their places amongst clerical or professional workers. These unfortunates do not like hard, manual work; they cannot do it well; they are outclassed in it. They do not hold any position long; they are frequently unemployed; and they are often compelled to live by their wits. As a general rule, those in this class are well equipped intellectually by nature, and would have responded splendidly to educative efforts if they had been given an opportunity. People of this class lack physical courage. They shrink from hardship and will do almost anything to escape physical suffering. It is this lack of courage, as well as their inability to make a decent living out of their hands and muscles, that leads them, in so many cases, to unlawful means.

As a general rule, people of this type have considerable natural refinement, and refinement is always expensive. They are the kind of people of whom it is often said that they have "champagne tastes and beer incomes." It is difficult for them to finance themselves, with any degree of frugality or economy, upon the small and precarious income they earn at manual labor. This is the class of people who sometimes become counterfeiters, sneak thieves, pickpockets, forgers, gamblers, stool pigeons, second-story workers, and petty criminals along other lines which do not require physical courage, strength, and force. Of course, the great majority of these misfits do not enter upon a life of crime. They are, however, poor, often in need, sometimes pauperized, and, as a general rule, their lives are short and miserable. There are those, also, whose cases are not so extreme. Unfitness for manual labor results merely in bare living, a life of comparative poverty, and general lack of success.

THE FAT MAN

Another class of those who are physically unfit for hard, manual labor are those who are too stout. The fat man is, by nature, fitted to sit in a large, luxurious chair and direct the work of others. He is too heavy on his feet for physical work, as a general rule, and is also too much disinclined to physical effort. It is a well-known fact that, almost without exception, fat men are physically lazy. The natural work, therefore, of the stout man is executive work, banking, finance, merchandising, handling of food products, and the arbitration of differences between his fellow men. Fat men are natural bankers, financiers, lawyers, judges, politicians, managers, bakers, butchers, grocers, restaurant owners, preachers, and orators. If, however, the man of this type does not secure sufficient education and training to enable him to undertake one of these professions, but grows up with no other ways to satisfy his wants than by the exercise of his muscles, he is greatly handicapped in the race for success. It is not usual, however, to find a man of this type amongst the ranks of the poor. Most of them are fairly well supplied with means, and usually have plenty to eat, plenty to wear, and a good place to sleep.

In order to obtain the things he desires, the man who has no aptitude for physical labor on account of his great bulk sometimes turns his attention to crime. This type of man may be a gambler, a grafting politician, a confidence man, a promoter of wild-cat stocks or bonds, the man who sits behind the scenes and directs a band of criminals or, perhaps, a whole community of them, or in some other way preys upon the gullibility of the public.

Naturally, there are fat men, also, who are honest and high-principled in their intentions and who still have not fitted themselves for their true vocation in life. Such men, like those who are physically frail and honest, drag through a miserable existence, never fully realizing their possibilities, or expressing themselves; never finding an outlet for their real talents; never making the success of life which they might have made with sufficient training and in their true vocations.

THE MAN OF BONE AND MUSCLE

Just as there were, doubtless, thousands of men too frail or too corpulent for physical work who were compelled to do it in the days when practically all men were either farmers or carpenters and builders, so to-day there are thousands of men far too active for clerical work who are compelled to do it because certain circles in society have a prejudice against manual labor. There is a type of man whose bony and muscular system predominates in his organization. This type of man loves the out-of-doors; freedom is to him a physical and moral necessity. He hates, and even grows irritable under, restraint. He demands physical activity; his muscles call for exercise; his whole physical being is keen for life in the open, with plenty of activity. Yet this type of man, by thousands, is sentenced to spend his life behind the counter or chained to a desk. He is as unhappy there, and almost as badly placed, as if he were, indeed, in prison. Look around the parks, the roads, the athletic fields, the lakes and streams, the woods, and all out-of-door places in this country and you will find this man taking a brief rest from his prison cell, engaged in strenuous forms of muscular activity--tennis, golf, baseball, football, lacrosse, cross-country running, boating, swimming, yachting, motoring, horseback riding, hunting, fishing, exploring, mountain climbing, ranching--in many ways seeking to find an outlet for his stored-up physical energy.

WORK FOR THE ACTIVE MAN

There is plenty of room for the mental capacity, the executive ability, and the splendid organizing genius of this type of man in outdoor work. Our great forests and fields are not producing twenty-five per cent of the amount of wealth that they should produce, under even such scientific methods as are known at present. But these are only the beginning. There is an opportunity for those with both mental and physical aptitudes to undertake the solution of the problem. The resources of the universe are infinite. There is no parsimony in Nature. There is plenty and to spare for all.

Recently there has been a great deal said about the fact that all of the land on the surface of the earth has now been occupied by mankind; that hereafter, food products will become higher and higher in price; that each of us will have to be satisfied with a little less wealth than formerly; that rents will be higher; that the price of land will steadily increase--that, already, there is not enough of the bare necessities of life to go around. This is cited as the cause of pauperism and given as an excuse for war. May not this attitude be mistaken? We have not yet scratched the surface of the possibilities. These out-of-door men are fitted by nature to take the scientific truths discovered by those better fitted to sit indoors, and make practical application of them to the problems of increasing the wealth of the race. If a boy in Alabama can grow 232 bushels of corn on one acre of ground, then farmers all over the country can grow at least 100 bushels of corn on an acre which now yields an average of 25 to 30 bushels. By scientific methods, Eugene Grubb has grown a thousand bushels of potatoes upon an acre of Wyoming land. A considerable addition will be made to the wealth of the race when a thousand other Eugene Grubbs arise and increase the productivity of thousands of other acres of potatoes.

THE BORN LEADER OF MEN

In his excellent little book, "The Art of Handling Men,"[4] Mr. James H. Collins says:

Broadly speaking, the personal equation is that Something in a man that makes him effective in managing other men.

It is the difference between the fellow who lets a political club, a military company or a factory force go all to pieces, and some other fellow who can put the pieces together again, or rather, draw them together instantly. For the man who reorganizes without this Something is like the chap who cleans his own clock--he usually has a few pieces of the organization left over because they wouldn't fit in anywhere. The personal equation is magnetic. It comes along and acts, and every part falls into place, and the organization is capable of performing a lot of new functions.

Not one person in five hundred possesses the faculty. Those who don't, like to comfort themselves with the assurance that it is a gift which Providence forgot to hand out to them. Innumerable stories grow up around the man who does possess it. One glance from his eagle eye, people say, and he reads you through. One word, and he enforces instant obedience. Thus the personal equation is glorified and mystified. But men who really have this valuable Something seldom make much mystery about it. They insist it is largely a matter of common sense, which everyone ought to have at their disposal.

[Footnote 4: Henry Altemus Company, Philadelphia.]

The personal equation has an interesting way of raising moral issues.

One morning in August, 1863, a young clergyman was called out of bed in a hotel at Lawrence, Kansas. The man who called him was one of Quantrell's guerrillas, and he wanted him to hurry downstairs, and be shot. All over the border town that morning people were being murdered. A band of raiders had ridden in early to perpetrate the Lawrence massacre.

The guerrilla who called the clergyman was impatient. The latter, when fully awake, was horrified by what he saw going on through his window. As he came downstairs the guerrilla demanded his watch and money, and then wanted to know if he was an abolitionist. The clergyman was trembling. But he decided that if he was to die then and there, it would not be with a lie on his lips. So he said, yes, he was, and followed up the admission with a remark that immediately turned the whole affair into another channel.

He and the guerrilla sat down on the porch, while people were being killed through the town, and had a long talk. It lasted until the raiders were ready to leave. When the clergyman's guerrilla mounted to join his confederates he was strictly on the defensive. He handed back the New Englander's valuables and apologized for disturbing him, and asked to be thought well of.

That clergyman lived many years after the Lawrence massacre. What did he say to the guerrilla? What was there in his personality that led the latter to sit down and talk? What did they talk about?

'Are you a Yankee abolitionist?' the guerrilla had asked.

'Yes--I am,' was the reply, 'and you know very well that you ought to be ashamed of what you're doing.'

This drew the matter directly to a moral issue. It brought the guerrilla up roundly. The clergyman was only a stripling beside this seasoned border ruffian. But he threw a burden of moral proof on to the raider, and in a moment the latter was trying to demonstrate that he might be a better fellow than circumstances would seem to indicate.

After waking this New Englander to kill him on account of his politics, he spent twenty minutes on the witness stand trying to prove an alibi. He went into his personal history at length. He explained matters from the time when he had been a tough little kid who wouldn't say his prayers, and became quite sentimental in recalling how one thing had led to another, and that to something worse, and so on, until--well, here he was, and a mighty bad business to be in, pardner. His last request, in riding away, was: 'Now, pardner, don't think too hard of me, will you?'

The personal equation is eternally throwing the burden of proof on the people it controls, and forever raising moral issues. The man who has it may operate by no definite plan, just as this clergyman had none for saving his own life. But he will be a confidence man of the most subtle character. His capacity for expecting things of those under him will be tremendous. Subordinates may never have demanded much of themselves. But for him they will accomplish wonders, just because he expects them to.

Three men were placed at the foreman's desk of a growing factory. Each had technical knowledge enough to run a plant three times the size. But all failed. The first was an autocrat, who tried to boss from a pedestal, and the men didn't like him. The next was a politician, whom the men liked thoroughly--which was his shortcoming, for he tried to run the place as they thought it should be run. As for the third, he tried to run it on nerves, to do everything himself, to be everywhere at once. He didn't fail, really--he snapped like a fiddle-string. By that time working tension was relaxed and production wabbling on the down-peak. Nobody knew who was in charge, or what would happen.

Then along came a fourth candidate, with an abnormally developed bump of expectation. He knew how to approve and encourage. Sometimes he said pleasantly: 'I knew you could do that, Bill,' Again, he put it ironically: 'I didn't think you had it in you.' But his strong point was expectation. With apparent recklessness he gave out work two sizes too large for everybody. If a subordinate was a No. 7 man he handed him a No. 9 job as a matter of course, and usually the latter grew up to it. The politician had tried this same scheme, but introduced it backward. Taking a No. 7 man into a corner, he told him impressively that he was a No. 9 and promoted him on the spot, and warned him to say nothing about it to anybody else. Then the man tried to swell to fit the office instead of growing to fit the work. But this fourth candidate made everybody see that doing No. 9 was more creditable than just being it. So everybody became interested in the work, and nothing else.

There was another suggestive point. Taking charge after three foremen had failed, the factory was naturally full of nasty cliques, each with its unhealthy private interest. The new man broke up these cliques by introducing a new interest so big that it swallowed all the little interests, like Aaron's rod. That interest was to turn out work of such quality and in such quantities that the factory could get contracts in competition with an older rival, and provide steady employment.

That this faculty for putting people under obligation is more the man than a method, however, is shown in one of Daudet's delightful little sketches, the story of a head clerk in a French Government bureau who, on getting a fine promotion, wrote home to his father describing his new chief's homely appearance with light-hearted raillery. Next morning on his desk lay his own letter, initialed by his chief. It had been intercepted by the secret service. The chief allowed him to suffer in apprehension one day, and then told him that his indiscretion should rest between themselves. 'Try to make me forget it,' he said, and the incident hung like a dagger over the clerk's head.

Some time after, the latter caught one of his own subordinates stealing from the cash box, and repeated his superior's tactics, even to the formula, 'Try to make me forget it.' With tears in his eyes the subordinate thanked him for his clemency--and a few days later, rifled the safe and fled! The moral of which seems to be that, if the clerk had been enough of a judge of men to use his chief's method effectively, he would never have fallen into the asininity of writing such a letter.

"Those who complain that it is impossible to win the confidence of subordinates might observe the extremely simple fashion in which the man with this Something does the trick--by giving people his own confidence first.

"He has the knack, not only of interesting others, but of keeping up his own interest; in fact, he is often so absorbed in his existence, his work, and the people around him that he is not aware that there is such a malady as lack of interest.

"He has a heartiness and vitality and geniality quite characteristic, or a misanthropy that is hearty, vital, and optimistic--geniality inside out. The milk of human kindness sometimes comes in a dry form."

THE MAN OF SUPREME ABILITY

In his valuable treatise on "The Twelve Principles of Efficiency,"[5] Mr. Harrington Emerson says:

Industrial plants remind me of automobiles. The plants themselves may be more or less good, but on what kind of roads are they running? The philosophy of efficiency is for an industrial plant--for any enterprise,

## activity, or undertaking--what a network of good roads is for automobiles.

Undoubtedly, even on poor roads, automobiles may make some progress, but the worse the road, the more elementary must be the means of locomotion.

[Footnote 5: The Engineering Magazine Company, New York.]

Railroads, high-roads, by-roads, bridle-paths, footpaths, mountain climbs! The unlettered mountaineer of all countries is the best man for the last, and it takes the best kind of trained climbing expert to emulate him; but as the road is improved shoes are exchanged for horses, horses for bicycles, a change from one kind of muscular effort to another; bicycles for automobiles, automobiles for railroad trains, both these latter using incarnate energy instead of muscular or incarnate energy. The all-round skill of the mountaineer becomes the subdivided, specialized skill of many different men, who are supplemented with increasingly complex equipment.

The philosophy of efficiency is to be used to build roads along which any organization can travel with the least friction and the greatest advantage, and the more ramified and involved the business, the more is the philosophy needed.

However, no highly complex automobile, even with the best network of roads, can make any great progress unless in the hands of a skilled directing intelligence; no highly complex human enterprise, though it uses all the principles of efficiency, can make any great progress unless guided by a skilled intelligence.

On personality, on the wisdom of the individual, whether locomotive engineer or von Moltke, whether the manager of a plant employing ten men or Judge Gary, chairman of the board of the gigantic Steel Corporation, will depend the ultimate value of all that creative physical or philosophical ability has brought together.

Recently there was submitted to me in the office of one of Chicago's greatest businesses the draft of its organization. No man can pass on the merits of the details of a complicated organization without long and intimate acquaintance with its workings. Seeing the plan of the Chicago plant, pressed for a suggestion, I said: 'Your chart is upside down; the president belongs at the bottom, sustaining and carrying, through his organization, all the operations of the plant. Because he is in supreme authority he has the responsibility of making available for everyone, down to the tool, all the wisdom in the universe in order that each may fulfil perfectly its special duty and task.'

Whether on the grounds of Long Branch, on the desert trail, in a section, department, division, or plant of a great manufacturing concern or railroad; whether on the deck of a battleship or on a battlefield, what is wanted is a leader who can swing and manage what has been entrusted to him.

It has become the fashion in history to decry the strong-man theory, to turn for understanding to evolution, to explain the strong man as the inevitable accident of the moment. There is evolution; there comes, at last, opportunity, but only rarely does the strong man arise; hence we have England, not Norway or Sweden or Holland; hence we have Prussia, not Saxony; Germany, not Russia; Italy, not Portugal; France, not Spain; Japan, not Siam or Korea.

In 1536 was born in Japan an undersized, monkey-faced boy of good but poor parentage, who, at the age of thirteen, resolved to make himself the chief power in the distracted kingdom. For 200 years the militant barons had warred against each other, each trying to grab, annex, and hold what he could.

The boy, Hideyoshi, deliberately visited the different courts, picked out the baron he thought most endowed with suitable character, succeeded with great difficulty in entering his service in the humblest position, and then steadily and inevitably rose, firstly because he could read human character and always knew almost as soon as they did themselves what his and his lord's enemies were plotting, and secondly, because he was always prepared in advance for any undertaking and skilled in carrying out. Thus, when scarcely more than a child, he reduced the cost of firewood used in the palace to less than one-half; a little later he rebuilt the castle walls in three days, a task estimated as requiring sixty days; again, single-handed, he secured provinces that armies had failed to conquer.

By gifts of tact, of insight, of diligence, of readiness, that each one of us thinks he possesses, that any one of Nippon's 30,000,000 inhabitants might have possessed and exercised, Hideyoshi rose, step by step, until he directed and guided the whole country, his general, Iyeyasu, becoming the first of the Tokugawa dynasty, which lasted from 1603 to 1867, with headquarters at Yeddo (Tokyo).

Temuchin, Jenghis Khan, born in a tent in 1162, son of a petty Mongolian chieftain, succeeded his father when only thirteen years old. Many of the tribes immediately rebelled, but Temuchin held his own in battle and in counsel against open enemies and insidious traitors, until his empire extended from the China Sea to the frontier of Poland--an empire larger than modern Russia, the largest the world has ever seen.

The man of supreme ability is the one who has supernal ideals, who recognizes and uses those underlying principles without which human effort is futile, its results ephemeral. The man of supreme ability is the one who can create and control an organization founded on and using principles to attain and maintain ideals, who then is able to assemble for the use of his organization the incidentals of land, of men and money (Labor and Capital), of buildings and equipment, of methods and devices. All these incidentals make for volume, for quantity, for man's work instead of woman's work, but they do not make for the spirit, nor for the quality, nor for the excellence of work.

THE ELEMENTS OF EXECUTIVE ABILITY

We have quoted thus at length from Mr. Collins and Mr. Emerson to show the inbornness, so to speak, of real executive ability. The art of handling men depends upon certain inherent aptitudes plus a certain amount of the right kind of training. A very large class of executives lacks the aptitude; a still larger class lacks the right kind of training. It is possible, of course, to give training to those who have the aptitude. It is impossible to give training which will make efficient executives of those who are deficient in the natural aptitudes. The result of all this is that we have a very large class of misfits; men who, for some reason or other, have been promoted into executive positions and who do not have the proper qualifications. These men suffer; those under them suffer; those who employ them suffer.

Some men are too active themselves ever to be good directors of the

## activities of other men. They cannot sit back quietly and direct others.

They demand expression in action. They are, therefore, always thrusting aside their subordinates and doing the thing themselves, because they lack the ability to teach others to do the work and to do it correctly. When such men are compelled to wait for others to accomplish things, they grow irritable, impatient, and lose control of themselves and, therefore, of the situation. They are not ideal executives and do not, as a general rule, rise to very high executive positions. They ought not to attempt to do executive work.

There are others who are too easy-going to command men. They permit their men to get too close to them, and they feel too sympathetic toward them. They are likely, also, to be partial, not to demand or exact enough, and, therefore, their departments are always behind, never quite coming up to quota.

TWO TYPES OF EXECUTIVES

There are two distinct types of executives. There is the impatient, driving, quick, keen, positive, irritable type. This man can get good results from a certain type of worker, but he only irritates, frightens, and drives to sullen resistance other types. The other is the mild, kindly, persuasive, patient, enduring, persistent, determined type of executive, who wins his success by attracting to himself the intense loyalty and devotion of his men. Both types are successful, but they are successful with different kinds of men. The employer who selects executives, therefore, needs to bear this in mind, and to select the right type of men to work under his various lieutenants. On the other hand, men who take executive positions should see that they secure for themselves the type of workers from whom they can secure results. This will not be easy, because, as a general rule, an executive tends to surround himself with men of his own type, which is usually a mistake. Men, in selecting positions, should also bear this truth in mind. They should know the kind of executive under whom they can do their best work, and, if at all possible, work under this kind of superior officer.

SLAVES TO MACHINERY

In an earlier chapter of this book we referred to the type of boy or girl who is too restless to study, to continue in school; who is eager to begin his life work; who therefore leaves school at an early age and takes up some work for which he is then fitted, but which, in after life, he finds to be uncongenial and unprofitable. As a general rule, such individuals are ambitious--oftentimes exceedingly ambitious. They find, as they grow older, however, that they have not sufficient education and training to enable them to realize their ambitions. Thousands upon thousands of these condemn themselves to mere unskilled manual labor.

It is not to be wondered at that these boys and girls leave school, because in school they are compelled to sit quietly and to try to learn things in which they are not interested out of dry, unprofitable books. Such pupils need to spend a great part of their time out-of-doors. They can be thus taught far more easily, will take a greater interest in their studies, and can gain both knowledge and skill which will be more valuable to them in the world of work. They also need to be taught indoors manual training, domestic science, printing, laundry work, scientific horticulture, scientific agriculture, dairying, and many other such branches. The recently projected vocational schools, continuation schools, half-time schools, and other such contrivances for giving the boy or the girl an opportunity to learn a useful trade while he is mastering the three R's, are a very important and valuable step in the right direction; With an opportunity thus to find expression for his mechanical ability and his great activity, the boy will be encouraged to remain longer in school.

Those who have left school at an early age on account of restlessness should take very seriously to heart the fates of tens of thousands of men and women before them who have done the same thing and who have made a failure of their lives, because they did not have sufficient education and training with which to realize their aspirations.

THE IMPRACTICAL

It has been frequently remarked that this is a commercial age. Our great captains of industry, our multi-millionaires, have, most of them, made their fortunes in commerce. This is an age, perhaps--especially in the United States--which rather makes a hero of the business man. For this reason there are many who are ambitious for commercial success. Every year thousands upon thousands of young men and women leave school in order to enter business. By a very natural psychological paradox, there seems to be a fascination about commerce and finance for many young people who have little aptitude for these vocations. Many people, feeling their deficiencies, yearn to convince themselves and others that they are not deficient. It is only another phase of the fatality with which a Venus longs to be a Diana and a Minerva a Psyche. Thousands enter business who have no commercial or financial ability. They cannot know the requirements; they cannot understand the fundamental principles of business. Commercially they are babes in the woods. Therefore they go down to bankruptcy and insolvency, to their great detriment and to the injury of many thousands of others.

These young people are too impractical for business. They may have a theoretical understanding of it, and an intellectual desire to succeed. But, as a result of their impractical type of mind, they neglect details, they overlook important precautions, they are, oftentimes, too credulous, too easily influenced. They usually make poor financiers; they do not make collections well; they are incautious in extending credit and in maintaining their own credit; often they are inefficient and wasteful in management; they do not take proper account of all the costs in fixing prices; they enter into foolish contracts; make promises which they are unable to keep, and oftentimes, as a result of too great optimism, undertake far more than is commercially feasible.

HUNGRY FOR FAME

The same strange quirk in human nature which takes the impractical into the marts, takes many ambitious but inherently unfit into art and literature. The stage-struck girl who has not one scintilla of dramatic ability is so common as to be a joke--to all but herself and her friends. Every editor is wearied with his never-ending task of extinguishing lights which glow brightly with ambition but have no gleam of the divine fire. Teachers of art and music, both in this country and abroad, are threatened with insanity because of the hordes of young men and women who come to them with money in their hands, demanding to be made into famous artists and musicians, not having been born with genius. Some of these unfortunates spend years of time and thousands of dollars in money attempting to fit themselves for careers, only to end in utter failure. Some, even after they have made a comparative failure of their education, eke out a tortured existence, hoping against hope for the golden crown of fame and fortune.

In sober truth the fatal lack in most of these disappointed seekers is not that they have no talent, but that they are too lazy mentally to make a real success of the natural aptitudes they have. They lack "the infinite capacity for taking pains." They are deluded by the idea that success depends upon inspiration--that there is no perspiration. Yet every great writer, every great musician, every great actor, every great author, knows that there is no fame, there is no possibility of success, except through the most prolonged and painstaking drudgery.

"LIFE IS BRIEF--ART IS LONG"

Perhaps no actor of modern times had greater dramatic talents inborn than Richard Mansfield, yet here is the story of how Richard Mansfield[6] worked, toiled, starved and suffered in achieving success in his art:

His friends crowded St. George's Hall for his first appearance. It was observed, as he uttered the few lines of the Beadle, that he was excessively nervous. When, later in the evening, he sat down at the piano and struck a preliminary chord, he fainted dead away.

[Footnote 6: From "Richard Mansfield," by Paul Wilstach. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.]

Mr. Reed relieved him of his position at once. In discharging him, he said: 'You are the most nervous man I have ever seen,' It was not all nervousness, however. Mansfield had not eaten for three days. He had fainted from hunger.

"Mansfield was now on evil days, indeed. He moved into obscure quarters and fought the hard fight. It was years before he would speak of these experiences. In fact, he rarely ruminated on the past in the confidences of either conversation or correspondence. Memory troubled him little and by the universal quotation it withheld its pleasures. He dwelt in the present, with his eyes and hopes on the future. It was always the future with him. No pleasure or attainment brought complete satisfaction. He looked to the past only in relation to the future; for experience, for example, for what to avoid.

"Once, when at the meridian of his fame, he was asked to lecture before the faculty and students of the University of Chicago. For his subject he chose, 'On Going on the Stage.' That he might exploit to those before him the reality of the actor's struggle, he lifted for the first time a corner of that veil of mystery which hung between his public and his past, and told of these early London days:

"For years I went home to my little room, if, fortunately, I had one,' he said, 'and perhaps a tallow dip was stuck in the neck of a bottle, and I was fortunate if I had something to cook for myself over a fire, if I had a fire. That was my life. When night came I wandered about the streets of London, and if I had a penny I invested it in a baked potato from the baked-potato man on the corner. I would put these hot potatoes in my pockets, and after I had warmed my hands, I would swallow the potato. That is the truth.'

"At length, his wardrobe became so reduced that attendance at any but the most informal entertainments became out of the question, and finally he had to give up these. Soon he was inking the seams of his coat, and wandered about shunning friends, for fear they would learn to what a condition he was reduced.

"'Often,' he admitted, 'I stayed in bed and slept because when I was awake I was hungry. Footsore, I would gaze into the windows of restaurants, bakeries, and fruit shops, thinking the food displayed in them the most tempting and beautiful sight in the world. There were times when I literally dined on sights and smells,'

"He did every species of dramatic and musical hack work in drawing rooms, in clubs, and in special performances in theatres. Sometimes he got into an obscure provincial company, but he said that his very cleverness was a kind of curse, since the harder he worked and the better the audiences liked him, the quicker he was discharged. The established favorites of these little companies always struck when a newcomer made a hit.

"Richard Barker was the stage manager and Mansfield could never please him. After trying again and again, he once cried: 'Please, Barker, do let me alone. I shall be all right. I have acted the part.' 'Not you,' declared Barker. 'Act? You act, man? You will never act as long as you live!'

"The recollection of the rebuffs, poverty, starvation, inability to find sympathy, because, possibly, of the pride which repelled it, the ill-fortune which snatched the extended opportunity just as he was about to grasp it, the jealousy of established favorites of the encroaching popularity of newcomers, the hardships of provincial travel and life in a part of the country and at a time when the play-actor was still regarded as a kind of vagabond and was paid as such, the severity of the discipline he encountered from the despots over him--all painted pictures on his memory and fed a fire under the furnace of his nature which tempered the steel in his composition to inflexibility. The stern rod of discipline was held over him every moment and often fell with unforgetable severity. He was trained by autocrats in a school of experience more autocratic than anything known to the younger actors of this generation.

"When the part of Chevrial was given to him, Mansfield was fascinated with his opportunity, but he kept his counsel. He applied every resource of his ability to the composition of his performance of the decrepit old rake. He sought specialists on the infirmities of roués; he studied specimens in clubs, on the avenue, and in hospitals; and in the privacy of his own room he practiced make-ups for the part every spare moment. The rehearsals themselves were sufficiently uneventful. He gave evidence of a careful, workmanlike performance, but promise of nothing more.

"While he was working out the part Mansfield scarcely ate or slept. He had a habit of dining with a group of young Bohemians at a table d'hôte in Sixth Avenue. The means of none of them made regularity at these forty-cent banquets possible, so his absence was meaningless. One evening, however, he dropped into his accustomed chair, but tasted nothing.

"'What's the matter, Mansfield?' asked one of the others.

"To-morrow night I shall be famous,' he said. 'Come and see the play,'

"His friends were accustomed to lofty talk from him. His prophecy was answered with a light laugh and it had passed out of their memories as they drifted into the night. This was one of those intuitions to which he often confessed, and it told him that the years of apprenticeship were behind him and the artist in him was on the eve of acknowledgment.

"On the night of January 11, 1883, the theatre was radiant with an expectant audience--half convinced in advance by the record of the Union Square's past, but by the same token exacting to a merciless degree--to see their old friends in the first performance in America of 'A Parisian Romance.'

"Mansfield made his entrance as the Baron Chevrial within a few moments after the rise of the curtain. It was effected in an unconcerned silence on the part of the audience.

"There were, on the other hand, the deserved receptions of old favorites by old friends, as Miss Jewett, Miss Vernon, Miss Carey, Mr. DeBelleville, Mr. Parselle and Mr. Whiting came upon the scene.

"When Chevrial, finding himself alone with Tirandel and Laubaniere, exposed his amusingly cynical views of life and society, some attention was paid to a remarkable portrait of a polished, but coarse, gay, though aging, voluptuary. The scene was short and he was soon off, though not without a little impudent touch, in passing the maid in the doorway, that did not slip unnoticed. The dramatic disclosures which followed brought the act to a close with applause that augured well. Henri, Marcelle, and Mme. De Targy were called forward enthusiastically.

"The second act revealed the Baron's chambers. With the exception of two minutes, he was on the stage until the curtain fell. The Baron's effort, so precisely detailed, to reach and raise the dumb-bells from the floor; the inveterate libertine's interview with shrewd Rosa, the danseuse, who took the tips he expected would impoverish her and thus put her in his power, for the purpose of playing them the other way: the biting deliberation of his interview with his good Baroness and Henri, who comes to ruin himself to save his family's honor--all held the audience with a new sensation. As he pushed his palsied arms into his coat and pulled himself fairly off his feeble feet in his effort to button it, turned up to his door humming like a preying bumble-bee, faced slowly about again, his piercing little pink eyes darting with anticipation, and off the trembling old lips droned the telling speech: 'I wonder how his pretty little wife will bear poverty. H'm! We shall see'--the curtain fell to applause which was for the newcomer alone. He had interested the audience and was talked about between the acts.

"Mr. Palmer rushed back to his dressing-room and found him studiously adding new touches to his make-up for the next act. 'Young man,' exclaimed the manager, 'do you know you're making a hit?' 'That's what I'm paid for,' replied Mansfield, without lowering the rabbit's foot.

"The third act was largely Marcelle's. The Baron was on for an episodic interval, but succeeded, in that he did not destroy the impression already created.

"The fourth act revealed a magnificent banquet hall with a huge table laden with crystal, silver, snowy linens, flowers, and lights. At the top of a short stairway at the back was a gallery and an arched window through which one looked up the green aisle of the Champs-Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe, dimly visible in the moonlight. The Baron entered for one last glance over the preparations for his _petit souper_ for Rosa and her sister of the ballet at the Opera.

"The effectiveness of his entrance was helped by his appearance behind a colonnade, and there he stood, only half revealed, swaying unsteadily while his palsied hand adjusted his monocle to survey the scene. There was a flutter of applause from the audience but, appreciatively, it quickly hushed itself. He dragged himself forward. The cosmetic could not hide the growing pallor of the parchment drawn over the old reprobate's skull. He crept around the table and, with a marvellous piece of 'business' by which he held his wobbly legs while he slowly swung a chair under him, collapsed. The picture was terrible, but fascinating. People who would, could not turn their heads. His valet was quick with water and held the glass in place on the salver while he directed it to the groping arm. The crystal clinked on Chevrial's teeth as he sucked the water.

"Presently he found his legs again and tottered up to the staircase. The picture of the black, shrivelled little man dragging his lifeless legs up to the gallery step by step was never forgotten by anyone who saw it. At the top he turned and said in ominous tones: 'I do not wish to be disturbed in the morning. I shall need a long sleep'; and dragged himself out of sight. He had been on the stage five minutes and had said scarcely fifty words. The picture and the effect were unmistakable. The audience capitulated. There was a roar of applause which lasted several minutes.

"The whispered discussion of this scene was such that scarcely any attention was paid to the stage until the Baron returned. Almost immediately afterward the ballet girls pirouetted into the hall in a flutter of gauze, and the places at the tables were filled. No one listened to the lines; all eyes in the house were focussed on the withered, shrunken, flaccid little old Baron, who sat at Rosa's right, ignored by everyone about him as they gorged on his food and drank his wines.

"Soon he drew himself up on his feet and, raising his glass, said: 'Here's to the god from whom our pleasures come. Here's to Plutus and a million!"

"The gay throng about the table echoed the toast: To Plutus and a million!' and Chevrial continued:

"'While I am up I will give a second toast: 'Here's to Rosa! The most splendid incarnation that I know!'

"Placing the glass to her lips for a first sip, the lecherous old pagan's own lips sought the spot, sipped, and he sank back into his chair.

"What else went on till he rose again no one knew or minded. No eye in the house could wander from the haggard, evil, smiling, but sinister, old face. Presently he was up once more and, with his raised goblet brimming with champagne, he offered a third toast:

"'Here's to material Nature, the prolific mother of all we know, see, or hear. Here's to the matter that sparkles in our glasses, and runs through our veins as a river of youth; here's to the matter that our eyes caress as they dwell on the bloom of those young cheeks. Here's to the matter that--here's to--here's--the matter--the matter that--here's--'

"The attack had seized him. Terrible and unforgetable was the picture of the dissolution. The lips twitched, the eyes rolled white, the raised hand trembled, the wine sputtered like the broken syllables which the shattered memory would not send and the swollen tongue suddenly could not utter. For one moment of writhing agony he held the trembling glass aloft; then his arm dropped with a swiftness that shattered the crystal. Instinctively he groped up to the stairs for light and air. He reeled as if every step would be his last. Rosa helped him up to the window, but recoiled from him with a shriek. Again his hand flew up, but there was neither glass, wine, nor words. He rolled helplessly and fell to the floor, dead. The curtain fell.

"It was probably the most realistically detailed figure of refined moral and physical depravity, searched to its inevitable end, the stage has ever seen. For a moment after the curtain fell there was a hush of awe and surprise. Then the audience found itself and called Mansfield to the footlights a dozen times. But neither then nor thereafter would he appear until he had removed the wig and make-up of the dead Baron. There was no occasion to change his clothes; he wore the conventional evening suit. The effect of shrivelled undersizedness was purely a muscular effect of the actor. The contrast between the figure that fell at the head of the stairs and the athletic young gentleman who acknowledged the applause was no anti-climax.

"Mansfield had come into his own. The superb art of his performance had dwarfed all about it; the play was killed, but he was from that moment a figure to be reckoned with in the history of the theatre."

It is said that when Paderewsky played before Queen Victoria, she said to him: "Mr. Paderewsky, you are a genius." "Ah, your Majesty," he replied, "perhaps. But before I was a genius, I was a drudge." And this is true. It is said that Paderewsky spent hours every day, even after achieving his fame, practising the scale, improving his technique, and keeping himself in prime condition.

Study the life and achievement of any great man of genius. His genius has consisted principally in his wonderful capacity to labor for perfection in the most minute detail. And yet most ambitious misfits are unwilling to work hard. Their products always show lack of finish due to slipshod methods, unwillingness to spend time, to take pains to bring what they do up to a standard of beautiful perfection, so far as perfection is humanly possible. Those who are mentally lazy do not belong in an artistic vocation. There are probably many things that they can do and do well in some less spectacular lines, some calling that does not require such mental effort.

MISFITS IN THE PROFESSIONS

In the traditional educational system the common school is not

## particularly adapted to prepare its pupils for life, but rather to prepare

them for either a high school or a preparatory school. Passing on to the high school, the same condition prevails. The whole question in every high school and every preparatory school is whether the training will accredit one to certain colleges and universities. So the traditional high school graduate is not prepared for life; he is prepared for college or the university. He goes on to the university. There he finds that he is being prepared chiefly for four or five learned professions--the law, the ministry, medicine, engineering, and teaching. In the beginning, the university was supposed to train a man, not for work, but for leisure. The very word scholar means a man of leisure. People were trained, therefore, not for usefulness, but for show; not to earn their living in the world, but rather, their living having been provided for them by a thoughtful government or a kind-hearted parent, to present evidences of the fact. One of the chief of such evidences was the ability to go to a college or university and to take the time to learn a great deal of useless knowledge about dead languages, philosophies, and dry-as-dust sciences. While this is not true to so great an extent to-day, there is still much of the old tradition clinging about colleges and universities, and we are training men and women, not for commercial or industrial or agricultural lines, but rather, for the learned professions.

THE "WHITE COLLAR MAN"

In England and other European countries no man is held to be a gentleman who has ever earned his living by the work of his hands. No one is accredited with standing as an amateur athlete who has ever "lost caste" in this way. While this caste feeling is not so strong in America as it is abroad, it still has a considerable influence upon parents and their children in the selection of a vocation. While one does not lose caste by doing manual labor, temporarily or as a makeshift, he suffers socially, in certain circles, who chooses deliberately a vocation which requires him to wear soiled clothing, to carry a plebeian dinner-pail, and to work hard with his hands. Because of this, many bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, plasterers, plumbers, and other workers, ambitious socially for their sons, instead of teaching them trades in which they might excel and in which there might be an unrestricted future for them, train them for clerical and office work. Having felt the social handicap themselves, these men and their wives determine that their children shall belong to the class which wears good clothes, has soft, white hands, and eats luncheon at a cafeteria--or from a paper parcel which can be respectably hidden in an inside coat pocket. And so there are armies of "white collar men" who would be healthier, wealthier, more useful, and happier if they wore overalls and jumpers.

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

There are men fitted by inheritance and training for clerical work and what lies beyond and above it. They are so constituted that they have the ability to take advantage of opportunities, to forge to the front from such a beginning, and to rise to commanding positions. But this is not true of the men who have aptitudes which would make them successful in

## active work with their hands, and afterward with hand and brain. These men

of inherent activity and skill of hand, men whose bones and muscles were made for work, whose whole nature calls for the out-of-doors, are doomed to stagnate, grow discontented, and finally lose hope, if compelled by pride or bad judgment to undertake the "white collar man's" job.

SOCIAL VALUE OF THE "WHITE COLLAR MAN"

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

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

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

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

WOMEN'S WORK

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

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

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

WOMEN WITHOUT HOMES

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

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

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

EXECUTIVES AND DETAIL WORKERS

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

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

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

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

HOW SOCRATIC HELPED BRAINERD BUILD BUSINESS

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

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

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

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

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

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

KEEPING THE APPOINTMENT

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

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

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

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

"All right. What day?"

"Oh, Tuesday or Wednesday."

"Tuesday will be satisfactory. What hour?"

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

"Ten o'clock be all right?"

"Yes, ten o'clock will do."

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

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

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

"What day?" Socratic asked.

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

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

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

Socratic turned on his heel and walked out.

THE HEAD CLERK'S SALARY

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

Oh, but he was the busy man!

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why, yes," answered Brainerd, staring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOME FOOL EXCUSES

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I guess it is," reluctantly.

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

"Possibly."

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

"Yes."

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

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

THE REMEDY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CAREFULNESS AND RECKLESSNESS

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

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

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

SOME OTHER MISFITS

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

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

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

## CHAPTER IV

THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL

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

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

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

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

THE EASY DESCENT TO CRIME

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

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

STRUGGLING AGAINST ODDS

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

For several years following this first interview with Mr. L. we followed him, and did our best to assist him to enter upon some vocation for which he was better fitted. Again and again we and other friends of his helped him to secure work, but always it was the old story. His mind was so

## active, so intelligent, so eager for expression, that the drudgery, the

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

THE OLD, OLD STORY

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

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

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

DESCRIPTION OF THIS TYPE

The physically frail individual of this type is frail because the brain and nervous system are so highly developed that they require a great deal of his vitality and endurance to nourish them and to sustain their

## activities. The result is that mental powers grow and thrive at the

expense of physical.

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

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

VOCATIONS FOR THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL

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

THE MENTALLY MECHANICAL

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

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

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

COMMERCIAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS

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

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

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

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

INTELLECTUAL TRIUMPH OF A FRAIL MAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

STARVED BY HIS HANDS, ENRICHED BY HIS HEAD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: Photo by Marceau, N.Y. FIG. 9. Richard Mansfield, Actor-Manager. A fine, balanced combination of artistic talent, creative power, and capacity for great emotion, with good judgment, financial sense, great energy, great determination, uncompromising devotion to ideals, fine powers of expression, and executive ability of the driving, compelling, rigid type. Note high head, domed above temples and wide across center of forehead; large nose; long, straight upper lip; firm mouth; prominent chin; long line from point of chin to crown of head; intense expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 10. Hon. A.I. Cutting (same as FIG. 11). Intellectual, idealistic, yet practical; mild, but very shrewd and persistent; good-natured, friendly, social, sympathetic, kindly, yet with good commercial and financial judgment. Observe height of head, with dome above temples; moderate width of head; pleasant, but firm-set, mouth; fine texture and fine chiseling of features; strong, prominent chin, and genial, kindly, friendly expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 11. Hon. A.L. Cutting. Ambitious, aspiring, hopeful, cheerful, friendly, social. A good public speaker. Excellent planner, prudent, far-sighted, and deliberate in speech and action. Note high head, both at crown and above temples, long behind ears; high forehead; well-formed eyes and nose, and prominent chin.]

[Illustration: FIG. 12. The late Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Unusually keen analytical powers, unaffected by sentiment or irrelevant considerations. Great ability to get down to essentials. Note fullness of brows and of upper corners of forehead; keen, penetrating eyes, and long nose with depressed tip.]

[Illustration: FIG. 13. Frank A. Vanderlip, President of National City Bank, of New York. A man of both financial and political acumen--also humanitarian. Note high, domed head; width across center and lower part of forehead; inclination to stoutness; large, well-formed features; long lines of face.]

[Illustration: _Copyright American Press Association_. FIG. 14. Hon. Joseph W. Folk, of Missouri. A keen politician, shrewd lawyer, and hard fighter. Note height and width of head; large, prominent nose; square, firm jaw; long upper lip; dogged set of mouth; unflinching eyes, and inclination to stoutness.]

[Illustration: FIG. 15. The late Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island. Keen, practical observation, financial judgment, diplomacy, shrewdness, energy, intellect, industry, courage, determination, and command. Note well-developed brows; height and width of forehead, especially across center; long, well-developed nose; straight, firm mouth; broad, square, prominent chin; long ears; long line from point of chin to crown of head, and keen, shrewd, alert, penetrating expression of eye.]

[Illustration: FIG. 16. Showing large, well-developed base of brain, usually an indication of a tendency to stoutness. Note fullness of back of head at nape of neck.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

## particularly when the snow lies on the grass in the park, and stand

watching them awhile, to find all things coming right. It is Bob who stands by and watches with me then, as on that night."

TALENT IN THE BUD AND BLOSSOM

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

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

## CHAPTER V

THE FAT MAN

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

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

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

FAT MEN RULE THE WORLD

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

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

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

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

HE PLANS WORK FOR OTHERS

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

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

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

THE SLENDER SCHOLAR AND THE RUGGED SOLDIER

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

THE FAT MAN'S MODERN THRONE

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

THE FAT MAN'S VALUABLE SERVICE

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

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

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

FINANCIER AND JUDGE

With some exceptions, neither the deep thinker nor the hard physical worker is capable of handling finances. They are lacking in financial acumen, due, no doubt, to the fact that the thinker is interested chiefly in the object of his thought, the worker chiefly in the exercise of his powerful muscles. Neither of them is sufficiently eager for the good things of life to have a true and unerring sense of financial values. The lean man is nervous. He is inclined to be irritable; he probably lacks patience. Therefore, he is not well qualified to judge impartially. The

## active, energetic, restless man is not contented to sit quietly for hours

at a time and listen to the troubles of other people. He must get away, be out of doors, have something to do to exercise those splendid muscles of his. Therefore, it is left to the fat man to sit upon the bench, to listen to tiresome details of the woe of those who have had trouble with one another. Because he is neither nervous nor irritable; because his mind is at rest; because he is well fed and well clothed and has no need to be anxious, he can take time to be impartial and to judge righteous judgment between his fellowmen. And so you will find fat men on the bench, in politics, in the halls of legislature, on the police force, and in other places where they have an opportunity to use their judicial ability.

HOW MISFITS HAPPEN

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

A FAT MAN'S SUCCESS

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

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

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

SUCCESS IN EXECUTIVE CAPACITY

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

POLITICAL PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES

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

FINANCIAL ACUMEN

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

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

INDICATIONS OF APPROACHING STOUTNESS

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: FIG. 17. Beaumont, Aviator. His square jaw, strong chin, large nose, large ear, convex profile, and alert, keen expression all indicate activity, energy, love of motion, desire for speed, and physical courage.]

[Illustration: Photo by Paul Thompson. N. FIG. 18. The late Lincoln Beachy, Aviator. A man of consummate physical courage and coolness. Note long lines of face and unusually long, prominent chin.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by Harris & Ewing_. FIG. 19. Col. George W. Goethals, Builder of the Panama Canal and Governor of Canal Zone. Of the intellectual but bony and muscular type. Short, stocky, enduring, and resistant. Finer and kindlier than FIG. 20 or FIG. 21, as shown by texture and expression, but firm, dogged, and just. A natural-born executive for construction or mechanical work. Note firm mouth and chin, with slight droop at corners, showing determination and self-control.]

[Illustration: _Copyright American Press Association_. FIG. 20. Field Marshal von Hindenberg, of the German Army. A splendid example of the bony, muscular type. Unusually determined, persistent, enduring, and resistant. Prudent, far-sighted, dogged, unsentimental, capable of enduring great hardship. Note short, stocky build; big, square chin and jaw; long, square head; relentless expression of mouth and eyes; coarse texture, and big, heavy-tipped nose. A great executive, especially as a relentless driver and rigid disciplinarian.]

[Illustration: _Copyright American Press Association_. FIG. 21. Rear Admiral Frank E. Beatty, of the American Navy. A fine example of the bony and muscular type. Rugged and enduring, keen, alert, and resourceful. Finer and kindlier than von Hindenberg, but not quite so fine, intellectual and kindly as Goethals. Just and determined as an executive, of which he is an excellent type. Note finer texture and more genial expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 22. William Lloyd Garrison, the Great Abolitionist. A man of the bony and muscular type, with the passion of his type for freedom. A man of high ideals, great courage, determination, and perseverance. Note large, well-formed features; forehead prominent at brows; long upper lip, and high, spirited expression. Such a man cannot be overlooked.]

[Illustration: _Photo by Pach, N.Y._ FIG. 23. Samuel Rea, Railroad Builder and Executive. Very alert, keen, practical, matter-of-fact, hard-headed; a good observer, a quick thinker. Very decisive, determined, and persistent. Understands construction, mechanics, and operation. Note well-developed brows; moderately low, square forehead; height of crown; width of head; large, well-formed nose, mouth, chin, jaw, and ears, and keen, but calm, self-possessed expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 24. Lon Wescott Beck, the Sign Poster of Death Valley. An out-of-doors man. Loves grandeur of scenery, wide spaces. Note long, square, prominent chin; long lines of face; width between eyes, and width at top of head.]

## CHAPTER VI

THE MAN OF BONE AND MUSCLE

Consider the record of the man of action.

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

## ACTIVITY AND SPEED

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

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

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

THE MAN OF MUSCLE GROWS A BRAIN

In the early days of the race, the man of this type had little intelligence. He was supposed to be, principally, bone and muscle with no brain. He did the physical work which was assigned to him and other men did the thinking, the planning, and the directing. But, as the race has increased in intelligence, the man of bone and muscle has developed a brain. Manual skill, educators tell us, is one of the best of all means for gaining knowledge and increasing intelligence. So now the muscular man can think, now he can plan, now, especially, does he manifest his thinking, planning and constructive ability along lines for increasing speed, getting more out of machinery, buildings, inventions, manufacture, agriculture, horticulture, transportation. In all these lines the man of

## action is also a man of thought. This is well; this is an improvement, and

our active, hustling, pioneer type of man is happier, more efficient, more prosperous in his intelligent state than he was in his purely physical state. But here, also, he gets into trouble. So long as his mental

## activity is accompanied by considerable physical activity, his health is

good, he is satisfied, he enjoys his work and he is successful in it. But the time comes when the work to be done by brain becomes so important that many men of this type give up physical activity entirely and devote all of their time to mental work.

THE ACTIVE MAN'S DILEMMA

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

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.

[Illustration: FIG. 25. "Sydney Williams." For analysis see pages 206 to 210. Here is a fine, capable intellect, good sense of humor, optimism, cheerfulness, great refinement, and excellent critical powers in art and literature. But there is a deficiency of practicability. Note smallness and flatness of brows, narrowness of head just above the ears, fineness of features and height of head in center, above temples.]

[Illustration: FIG. 26. "Sydney Williams." Note flatness of brows; smallness and fineness of features; fineness of texture; height of forehead and crown.]

[Illustration: FIG. 27. Prof. Adolf von Menzel, Sociologist. A man of great intellect, especially interested in theoretical and statistical studies of people, in the mass, but not greatly interested in practical, material affairs. Note immense dome of forehead and head, with flatness at brows.]

[Illustration: FIG. 28. Edgar Allan Poe, Poet. Impractical, deficient in financial sense, but keenly alive to a world of fancy, ideals, dreams, imagery, beauty, mysticism and tragedy. Note high forehead, wide above, flat at brows and concave at sides; small nose and mouth, deep-set, gloomy eyes; dark complexion; and lack of symmetry and balance in head and features.]

[Illustration: FIG. 29. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Author. Highly intellectual, sentimental, impractical, sensitive, emotional. A man of high ideals and beautiful thoughts, and creative power. Note high, dome-shaped head; flat, high brows, fine, delicate features; weak mouth, and general softness of contour and expression.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by Harper & Brothers, N. Y_. FIG. 30. Thomas De Quincy, Author. A man of fine, discriminating, logical intellect along purely mental lines, but impractical in material affairs. Note high, prominent forehead, with flat, poorly-developed brows, weak nose and mouth and narrow head.]

[Illustration: FIG. 31. O. Henry, at the age of thirty. Impractical, lacking in desire for money and financial judgment. Creative, humorous, a lover of human nature, mild, rather easy-going, idealistic, constant. Note high forehead, flat at brows, full at sides along top, concave nose, full lips, prominent chin.]

[Illustration: FIG. 32. Edwin Reynolds, of Wisconsin. Of the practical, matter-of-fact, literal type of intellect. Interested in facts, keenly observant, quick in thought, alert and positive in his mental activities. Note high, sloping forehead, very prominent at the brows, large nose, high in the bridge and well-developed.]

"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.

HOW TO BECOME MORE PRACTICAL

When the impractical man learns his limitations he is all too likely to go to extremes in depreciating his own business ability. Many such people are seemingly proud of their deficiencies in business sense. "I am no business man. You attend to it, I'll trust you," they say. While a lack of natural business ability may not be a man's fault, it is nothing to be proud of. You may not be born with keen, financial sense, but that is no reason why you may not develop more and more of it and make yourself a better business man. As a matter of fact, every man is in business--he has something to sell which he wishes the rest of the world to buy from him. He has himself, at least, to support, and more than likely he has others dependent upon him. He has no right, therefore, to neglect business affairs and to permit others to impose upon him and to steal from him and from those dependent upon him the proper reward for his labor.

Even the youth who is poor in mathematics can learn something about geometry, algebra, and trigonometry; even he who "has no head for language" can learn to speak a foreign tongue and even to read Latin or Greek. It is not easy for either one of them and perhaps the one can never become a great mathematician nor the other a great linguist, but both can learn something, both can improve their grasp of the difficult subject. There are probably few readers of these pages who have not in their school days overcome just such handicaps in some particular subject of study.

In a similar way those who are impractical and have little business sense can improve in this respect and they ought to. Such people ought to study practical affairs, ought to give their attention to financial matters. In fact, one of the best ways to increase financial judgment is to form the intimate acquaintance of some one who has a keen sense of financial values. If such a person can be persuaded to talk about what he knows, the impractical man will do well to take a keen interest in what he says, to qualify himself to understand it, and, if possible, to get the point of view from which a good business man approaches his problems and studies his affairs. Actual practice is, of course, necessary for development, and the impractical man ought to take an interest in his affairs and ought to do his best to handle them. Naturally, he needs to seek competent counsel in regard to them, but he should pay some attention to the counsel given, try to learn something from it, watch results of every course of action and in every possible way study to make himself more practical and less theoretical and abstract in his attitude toward life in general and toward business affairs in particular.

Not long ago we attended a meeting of two and three hundred of the most prominent authors, poets, and playwrights in America. We were not at all surprised to note that nearly every one of those who had made a financial success of his art was a man of the practical, commercial type who had developed his business sense along with his artistic or literary talent.

A PAUPER, HE DREAMED OF MILLIONS

Some years ago we formed the acquaintance of a delightful man who is so typical of a certain class of the impractical that his story is instructive. When we first formed the acquaintance of this gentleman he was about thirty years of age, rather handsome in appearance, with great blue eyes, very fine silky blonde hair, and a clear, pink, and white complexion. His head, somewhat narrow just above the ears, indicated a mild, easy-going, gentle disposition. The large, rounded dome just above temples was typical of the irrepressible optimist. His forehead, very full and bulging just below the hair line, showed him to be of the thoughtful, meditative, drearily type, while flatness and narrowness at the brows told as plainly as print of the utter impracticability of his roseate dreams.

True to his exquisite blonde coloring, this man was eager, buoyant, irrepressible, impatient of monotony, routine, and detail--social and friendly. True to his fine texture, he shrank from hardship, was sensitive, refined, beauty loving and luxury loving. Because of his mild disposition and optimism and also because of his love of approval, he was suave, affable, courteous, agreeable. He made acquaintances easily and had many of the elements of popularity.

Because he was ambitious to occupy a position of prominence and distinction, because he wished to gratify his luxurious and elegant tastes, and because in his irrepressible optimism it seemed so absurdly easy to do, he was eager to make a large fortune. Lacking the aggressiveness, energy, willingness to undergo hardship and to work hard and long, patiently enduring the hours and days of drudgery over details that could not be neglected, he dreamed of making millions by successful speculation.

LOOKING FOR A SHORT CUT TO WEALTH

It is easy to see why a man of this type, with his futile dreams of easy conquests in the field of finance, should have scorned the slow and painful process of acquiring an education. Yet the tragedy of his life was that his only hope of usefulness in the world was through the careful cultivation and development of his really fine intellect. It is also easy to see why such a man would lack the patience to learn a trade even if he had had the manual skill to carry on any trade successfully--which he had not. For the same reasons he would not take pains to qualify himself for any occupation, although he might have made a fair success in retail salesmanship perhaps, notwithstanding his far greater fitness for educational, ministerial, or platform work. On the contrary, he roamed about the country occupying himself at odd times with such bits of light mental or physical work as came his way. Being without training and taking no real interest in his work, he never retained any job long. Sometimes, lured by the will-o'-the-wisp of some fancied opportunity to make a million, he gave up his work. Sometimes he merely got tired of working and quit. But most often he was discharged for his incompetence. It is difficult indeed for any man to attend properly to the cent-a-piece details of an ordinary job when he is dreaming of the easy thousands he is going to make next week.

This charming gentleman was always out of funds. Although he carefully tonsured the ends of his trouser legs, inked the cuffs of his coat, blackened and polished his hose and even his own, fine, fair skin where it showed through the holes of his shoes, and turned his collars and ties again and again, he was nearly always shabby. On rare and ever rarer occasions he would do some relative or friend the inestimable favor and honor of accepting a small loan, "to be repaid in a few days, as soon as a big deal I now have under way is consummated." These loans were his only successes in the realm of practical finance. Inasmuch as the repayment of them was contingent upon the closing of an ever-imminent, but never consummated, "big deal," they cost him nothing for either principal or interest. For a few weeks after the successful negotiation of one of these loans, he would be resplendent, opulent, fastidious, even generous. All too soon the last dollar would slip through his unheeding fingers. If during a period of affluence he had succeeded in establishing a little semblance of credit, he would maintain his regal style of living as long as it lasted. Then he would come down to the hall bedroom or even the ten-cent lodging house, the lunch wagon, and the pawn shop. But even at the lowest ebb of his fortunes, he never seemed to lose his cheerfulness, his good nature, his grand manners, and his easy, confident hope and conviction about the huge sums that were to come into his possession "within a few days."

A DILETTANTE IN REAL ESTATE

Do not imagine that this man's dreams of great and easy fortunes were mere idle fancies--far from it. He was nearly always engaged in negotiations for some big deal. One of his favorite pastimes was to hunt up large holdings of real estate offered for sale, go to the owners, represent himself as a real estate broker, and secure permission to put these properties on his "list." This permission obtained, he would go about trying to find buyers. But his ideas of real estate values, of the adaptation of properties to purchasers, of the details of a real estate transaction and of salesmanship were so vague and so impractical that if he ever succeeded in selling a piece of real estate, we have not yet heard of it. He lacked the practical sense necessary to inform himself upon such important matters as taxes, assessments, insurance rates, trend of population, direction and character of commercial expansion, bank clearings, freight shipments, volume of retail and wholesale business, projected municipal and public service improvements, crop reports, output of manufacturies, and many other items which form the basis for intelligent negotiation, in a real estate deal. He could talk only in glittering generalities, and his suggestions were usually so impracticable that he failed to secure the confidence of those who were in a position to purchase properties so valuable as those he invariably hit upon for his ambitious projects.

AN UNDESERVED BAD REPUTATION

Here, then, was a man of unusual intelligence and capacity along theoretical, abstract, philosophical, and spiritual lines. His intentions were good. He was kindly, sympathetic, generous to a fault, refined, ambitious, high principled at heart and a thorough gentleman by birth, training, and instinct. Yet, because of a lack of clear knowledge, his life has been one of hardship, privation, disappointment, disillusionment, galling poverty, and utter failure. He has been subjected to ridicule and the even more blighting cruelty of good-natured, patronizing, contemptuous tolerance. His reputation is that of a lazy, good-for-nothing, disreputable dead beat and loafer. And yet, in a sense, nothing is further from the truth. Notwithstanding his many disappointments, no one could have been more sincere than he in believing that just around the corner fortune awaited him.

DIAGNOSIS OF THE IMPRACTICAL MAN'S CASE

The fundamental difficulty with the impractical man is two fold. First, his powers of observation are so deficient that it is difficult for him to obtain facts. It is an axiom of conscious life that there is pleasure and satisfaction in the use of well-developed powers and a disinclination to use powers which are deficient in development. Because it is difficult for the impractical man to obtain facts, he has little desire to obtain them. He takes little interest in them, does not appreciate their value. He, therefore, assumes his facts, takes them for granted or proceeds almost wholly without them. Even when he does take the trouble to ascertain the facts, he is inclined to be hasty and slipshod in his methods. He, therefore does not obtain all of the necessary information bearing upon his problem. He does not painstakingly verify his knowledge through repeated observations, under all kinds of conditions. So he is frequently mistaken and reasons to his conclusions upon supposed facts which are not facts at all.

Second, the impractical man, as a general rule, has well-developed powers of reason, logic, and imagination. His mind easily and unerringly leaps from premises to conclusion and weaves long and beautiful chains of reasoning, each link perfectly formed. The only trouble is that none of the chains are attached to anything solid and substantial at either end. With highly developed powers of imagination, it follows that the impractical man loves to dream, to build castles in the air. When he attempts to form a judgment or reach a conclusion, he may possibly begin by attempting to ascertain the facts. But observation for him is a slow and painful process. He does not enjoy it. He has no patience with it. Mere facts restrict him. Practical reasoning is like walking painfully, step by step, along a narrow, steep pathway, leading to a fixed destination at which the traveler arrives whether he wills it or not. The impractical man's form of reasoning, starting at the same place, soars into the air, dips and sweeps in magnificent and inspiring curves and finally sets him down at whatever destination seems most desirable to him. His well-developed powers of imagination are usually more than willing to supply the deficiencies in his powers of observation. In his own realm he is a valuable member of society--often becomes rich and famous. But he is a misfit in any vocation which deals wholly with concrete things.

DESCRIPTION OF THE IMPRACTICAL MAN

The impractical man is easily recognized. He may be blonde or brunette, large or small, fine textured or coarse textured, energetic or lazy, aggressive or mild, friendly or unfriendly, ambitious or unambitious, honest or dishonest--but his mark is upon his forehead. If his brows are flat or if his forehead immediately above and at the sides of his eyes is undeveloped or only a little developed, his powers of observation are deficient. He is not interested in facts and his judgment is based upon hasty and mistaken premises. As a general rule, in such cases, the upper part of the forehead is well developed. This is always the case if the man is intelligent. If the forehead is both low and retreating and flat at the brows, then the individual lacks both power of observation and reasoning power, and is very deficient in intellect.

Figures 27 and 28 and 29 and 30 show some very common types of the impractical man. Note the flatness of the brows in every case. Figures 32, 50, and 54 show the foreheads of practical men.

## CHAPTER IX

HUNGRY FOR FAME

The born artist has a passion for creation. This is true whether his art expresses itself through paints and brushes, through chisel and stone, on the stage, through musical tones, through bricks and mortar, or through the printed page. The born artist may or may not have, as companion to his passion for creation, a hunger for fame, an ear which adores applause. Few artists, however, have ever become famous who were not spurred on by an eager desire for the plaudits of their fellows.

It is possible to have the passion for creation without the hunger for fame. It is also possible to have a hunger for fame without the passion for creation. In the "Light That Failed," Kipling tells of little Maisie, who toiled and struggled, not to create beauty, but for success. Yet, poor Dick, who loved her, was forced to admit that there was no special reason why her work should be done at all.

Horace Annesley Vachell, in "Brothers," tells the story of Mark Samphire's tragedy. "When, after three years of most gruelling, hard work as an art student, he turned to his great master and asked: 'When you were here last you said to a friend of mine that it was fortunate for me that I had independent means. You are my master; you have seen everything I have done. Pynsent knows my work, too, every line of it. I ask you both: Am I wasting my time?'

"Neither answered.

"'No mediocre success will content me,' continued Mark. 'I ask you again: Am I wasting my time?'

"'Yes,' said the master gruffly. He put on his hat and went out.

"'He's not infallible,' Pynsent muttered angrily.

"'Then you advise me to go on? No, you are too honest to do that. I shall not go on, Pynsent; but I do not regret the last three years. They would have been wasted, indeed, if they had blinded me to the truth concerning my powers.'"

WHEN THE DIVINE FIRE IS NOT AFLAME

The art schools of Paris! History, fiction, reminiscence, your own knowledge, perhaps your own experience, join in piling mountain-high the tale of wasted years, blasted ambitions, broken hopes and shattered ideals. Worse than this, perhaps, they tell of homes, galleries and shops disfigured with mediocre work and criminally hideous daubs.

The music studios of Paris, Berlin, New York, and other large cities, the schools of dramatic art, the theological seminaries, and the departments of literature in our universities could add their sad testimony. Theatrical managers, editors of magazines, publishers, art dealers, and lyceum bureaus are besieged by armies of aspiring misfits.

Probably there is no more difficult and hazardous undertaking in all the experience of the vocational counsellor than that presented by people of this type. The mere fact that a young man has painted scores of pictures which have been rejected has no bearing on the case. Artistic and literary history is studded with the glorious names of those who struggled through years of failure and rejection to final success. This is, in fact, true of nearly all of the great artists and writers. True, the mere dictum of any authority, however high, would have very little effect in turning the true creative artist from his life work, but what a pity it would have been if Richard Mansfield, Booth Tarkington, Mark Twain, and a host of others had paid any attention to the advice of those who told them they never could succeed! And yet, unless the vocational counsellor can encourage and urge on those who have the divine spark, and turn back from their quest those who have it not, he has failed in one of his most important tasks.

ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS IN ART

Let us, therefore, examine some of the elements of success in art. We have seen that the born artist has a passion for creation. He _must_ draw, or paint, or act, or sing, or write. That which is within him demands expression and will not be denied. His love is for the work and not for the reward or the applause. These are but incidental. His visions and dreams are of ever greater achievements and not of an ever increasing income or wider popularity. Work well done and the conscious approval of his own mind are the sweetest nectar to his soul.

But this passion of creation is, perhaps, not enough in itself. "Art is a jealous mistress." Even the passion for creation must wait upon slowly and painfully acquired technique, and, in the case of painting, sculpture, instrumental music, and some other forms of art, upon inherent capacity and manual skill. Many an artist's soul is imprisoned in a clumsy body which will not do its bidding.

"Art is long," and he who is unwilling or unable to keep alive the divine spark through years of poverty had better turn back before he sets forth upon the great adventure. Searching the portraits of the world's great artists, living and dead, you will not find a lazy man amongst them.

AN ATTEMPT TO MIX INDOLENCE AND POETRY

During our school days we made the acquaintance of Larime Hutchinson, then a lad of twenty, shy, self-conscious, pathetically credulous, and hobbled by a prodigious ineptitude which made him a favorite butt for schoolboy jokes and pranks. Larime was in great disfavor with the teachers because he almost never had his lessons. He was also in disfavor with the college treasurer because he did not pay his bills. Larime's father was a country minister and could send him only a few dollars a month. The rest of his financial necessities he was supposed to meet by sawing wood, mowing lawns, attending furnaces, and other such odd jobs. But Larime never could hold these jobs because he was too lazy to do them well. He was also in high disfavor with his schoolmates, first, because of his timidity and self-consciousness; second, because of the strange air of superiority which, paradoxically enough, he managed to affect even in spite of these handicaps. A little confidential consorting with this peculiar young man soon revealed the fact that he yearned to be heralded with great acclaim as "The Poet of the New World." Not only did he yearn; he confidently expected it. Nay, more; he already was "The Poet of the New World," and awaited only the day of his acknowledgment by those who, despite their prejudices and envy, would eventually be compelled to accord him his true position. To prove his claims, Larime read us some of his "poetry." It was bad, very bad, and yet it was not quite bad enough to be good.

Such visions of glory as obscured Larime Hutchinson's sensible view of the practical world are, perhaps, common enough in adolescence, and, as a general rule, work no serious harm. There were, however, two fatal defects of character in this case. The first was that Larime continued to dream and to write what he thought was verse, when he ought to have been at work plowing corn, for he had qualities which, with industry, would have made him a successful farmer. Second, he was mentally too lazy for the drudgery even the greatest poet must perform if he is to perfect his technique.

A MIND FOCUSSED ON DETAILS

The case of Marshall Mears, a young man who consulted us a few years ago with reference to his ambition to become a journalist and author, well illustrates a different phase of this same problem. This young man was of the tall, raw-boned, vigorous, active, energetic, industrious type. There was not a lazy bone in his body. In addition to his energy, he had unusual powers of endurance, so that he could work fifteen, eighteen, or twenty hours a day for weeks at a time without seeming to show any signs of fatigue. He was ambitious for success as a writer. He was willing to work, to work hard, to work long, to wait for recognition through years of constant effort. He had secured a fairly good education and, in many ways, seemed well fitted for the vocation he had chosen to pursue.

A careful examination, however, showed two fundamental deficiencies in Marshall Mears which training could only partially overcome. First, his was one of those narrow-gauge, single-track minds. He was incapable of any breadth of vision. His mind was completely obsessed with details. He would go to a lecture, or to a play, and invariably, instead of grasping the main argument of the lecture, or the lesson of the play, he saw only a few inconsequential details of action in the play, and remembered only stray and somewhat irrelevant statements made by the lecturer. A novel or an essay appealed to him in the same way. Present to him a business proposition and his whole attention would be absorbed by some chance remark. He was a devoted admirer of the late Elbert Hubbard and he had longed for years to hear the great man lecture. Finally his opportunity came and he was greatly elated, and not a little excited, as he looked forward to what he believed to be one of the treats of a lifetime. When he returned from the lecture, as we had feared, instead of being uplifted and delighted, he was manifestly disappointed.

"Didn't you like the lecture?" we asked.

"I cannot understand," he complained, "why as intelligent a man as Hubbard should split his infinitives."

Naturally, a man with a mind like this could not construct a plot or outline an article. His writings, like his conversations, were long drawn out, meandering and painfully tiresome recitations of trifling and, for the most part, irrelevant detail.

We counselled him to lay aside his pen and take hold of plow handles instead. He has since become a successful farmer, perfectly happy, working out all the infinitude of minutiae in connection with the intensive cultivation of small fruits.

LACK OF DISCRIMINATION A HANDICAP

Still another phase of this problem is presented by the case of N.J.F. This man also wanted to be an editor and writer. He was a big, fine-looking fellow, fairly well educated, had some ability in written expression, and frequent good ideas. With his aptitudes, training, and talents, it seemed, at first sight, that he certainly ought to be able to succeed in an editorial capacity. Further examination showed, however, a lamentable lack of discrimination, a deficient sense of the fitness of things, and consequently, unreliable judgment. These deficiencies are worse than handicaps to an editor. They are absolute disqualifications. An editor's first duty is to discriminate, to sift, to winnow the few grains of wheat out of the bushels of chaff that come to his mill. Editors must have a very keen sense of the fitness of things. It is true that the discriminating reader of newspapers and magazines may be tempted to feel at times that this sense of the fitness of things is very rare in editors. Unquestionably, it could be improved in many cases, and yet, on the whole, it must be admitted that newspaper and magazine editors perform at least one important function with a very fair degree of acceptability, namely, they purvey material which is at least interesting to the particular class of readers to whom they wish to appeal. If readers could be induced to wade through for a week the masses of uninteresting material which is submitted, they would doubtless have far greater respect for the intelligence, criticism, peculiarities, and sense of fitness of things of the editors.

But we digress. N.J.F. was incapable of sound judgment, not because he did not know the facts, but because, instead of reasoning logically to his conclusion, in accordance with the facts, he was entirely governed by his rather erratic feelings. In other words, he could not reason well from cause to effect; he did not understand people, and so could not sense what would interest them, and his powers of criticism, such as he possessed, were destructive rather than constructive.

Contrary to our advice, N.J.F. persisted in his editorial ambitions and in time managed to persuade the owner of a certain publication to entrust him with its editorial management. Almost immediately the periodical began to lose subscribers. Down, down, down went its circulation until it almost reached the vanishing point. Finally, it expired. The trouble was not that its pages contained anything bad, harmful or illiterate, but simply that there was page after page of dry, discursive, uninteresting, valueless material. It was a pity, because, under a competent editor, the periodical in question had occupied an important and useful place in the current literature of the period, and also because, as a dealer in coal, lumber, lime, and building materials, N.J. F. would have been a useful and successful member of the community.

[Illustration: FIG. 33. John Masefield, Poet. Idealistic, sentimental, dreamy, impractical, but intensely responsive to beauty, rhythm and imagery. Has creative power. Note high, straight forehead, very high head, fine texture, finely chiseled features, and dreamy, mystic expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 34. Edward DeReszke, Opera Singer. Great artistic and musical talent, with capacity for sentiment and emotion. Note width of brows; dome of head over temples; fulness of eyes, curves of nose, cheeks and lips, Also large physical frame, especially chest and abdomen.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by A. Dupont, N.Y._ FIG. 35. Puccini. Composer. Has artistic talent and creative ability together with, energy, ambition, persistence, courage, determination. Rather mild in disposition. Not a particularly good business man. More interested in music than in money. Note width of forehead at eyes and at upper corners and its narrowness between; high nose; brunette color; square, strong jaw and chin; straight, firm mouth, and calm, determined expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 36. John S. Sargent, R.A., Portrait Painter. Keen powers of observation, high ambition, great energy, fine discrimination, excellent powers of expression, and social qualities. Note unusual development of brows, height of head; fulness of forehead at center; fulness of eyes, large, high nose, and fulness of backhead.]

[Illustration: _Photo by American Press Association._ FIG. 37. Pietro Mascagni. Composer. Musical, emotional sensuous, impulsive, spasmodically energetic. Note width of forehead at brows, full lips, dimpled chin, heavy cheeks, thick-lidded eyes, large nose, and intense, ardent expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 38. Richard Burton. Author. Has fine, sentimental, idealistic, artistic and literary talents, intellectual, creative and inventive ability, together with energy, determination, and ambition. Note height and width of forehead; fulness back of upper corners; large, but finely chiseled features, and thoughtfully intense, but calm, serious, poised expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 39. Mendelssohn, Composer. Very refined, sensitive, responsive, emotional and delighted with appreciation and applause. Creative, musical, capable of great industry and perseverance. Note width of forehead at brows; large, glowing eyes; finely chiseled, regular features; short upper lip; beautifully curved lips; high head, rounded above temples. Compare this with Figure 20.]

[Illustration: FIG. 40. Massenet, Composer. Artistic ability, backed up by ambition, energy, determination, courage, and persistence. Note width of lower portion of forehead; large, well-formed nose; firm mouth, jaw and chin; height and width of head; square hands and finger-tips. Also very emotional and intense nature. Note round, dome-shaped head, smooth fingers, and dreamy expression.]

THE INSANITY OF GENIUS

The greatest artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers are men of genius and are, therefore, in a sense, abnormal. Lombroso, in his work, "The Man of Genius," produces a great deal of interesting evidence showing the similarity between the manifestations of genius and those of insanity. Lombroso's conclusions have been more or less discredited, but later investigations and practically all students agree that the true genius is more or less an abnormality. In his case, some one or two faculties are developed out of all reasonable proportion to the others. Naturally enough, in such cases there is no need for a vocational counsellor. The genius devotes himself to his music, or his painting, or his writing, because there is nothing else he can do, nothing else in which he takes any interest, and because the inner urge is so powerful as to be irresistible.

But grossly deceived are those who imagine that the fire of genius burns away any necessity for drudgery. On the other hand, genius seems to consist very largely of a capacity for almost infinite drudgery. A prominent engineer once said to us that all great inventions which become commercially practicable are the joint product of a genius and a drudge, or rather, of a genius and a corps of drudges. The genius, in a flash of inspiration, conceives a new idea. Having conceived it, he can only sit down and wait for a new inspiration, while the drudges take his idea, work out its details, modify and conform it to conditions, and, finally, harness it to the commercial wagon. This sounded well and has a great deal of truth in it. Yet the most slavish drudge in the Edison laboratories and factories is Edison himself. The hardest worker in all the Westinghouse plant was Westinghouse. And who but the Wright brothers themselves made a commercial success of the aeroplane? Sometimes, it is true, one man conceives an idea which he is unable to work out and which must be made practical by others, but more often than not he stumbles on the idea more by accident than because he is looking for it. So the young man or the young woman who has hopes of winning fame in the world of art, music, or literature should assay himself or herself first of all for a willingness to work, to work hard, and to work endlessly.

INDICATIONS OF ENERGY

Such energy is indicated by the large nose, high in the bridge, which admits large quantities of oxygen into the lungs; by high cheek bones, oftentimes by a head wide just above the ears, by square hands and square-tipped fingers, by hard or elastic consistency of fibre. Persistence and patience are indicated by brunette coloring and plodding by a well-developed and rather prominent jaw and chin. Havelock Ellis and other anthropologists have noted the fact that dark coloring is more frequently found in artists and actors than light hair, eyes, and skin.

Artistic, musical, and literary ability are as various in their indications as they are in their manifestations. One man is a painter, another a sculptor, another an architect. One man paints flowers, another landscapes, another portraits, another allegorical scenes, and still another the rough, virile, vigorous, or even horrible and gruesome aspects of life. One musician sings, another plays the violin, still another the piano, and another the pipe organ. One conducts a grand opera, another conducts a choir. One musician composes lyrics, another oratorios, another ragtime, and still another symphonies. One man writes poetry, another stories, another essays, another history, another philosophy, and still another the hard, dry, mathematical facts of science. Obviously, it would only confuse the reader were we to attempt to describe the physical appearance of all these different classes.

INDICATIONS OF ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT

In general, we may say that an appreciation of form, color, proportion, size, and distance is indicated by well-developed brows, broad and full at the outer angles, and by eyes set rather widely apart. But size, form, color, and proportion are but the mediums through which the artist's soul conveys its message. Whether or not one has the soul which can conceive a worthy message is indicated by the expression of the eyes, an expression which cannot be described but which, once seen and recognized, can never afterward be mistaken.

Inherent capacity for music is indicated by a forehead wide at the brows. Going over the portraits of all the famous composers and performers, you will find that while they differ in most other particulars, they are all alike in the proportionate width of the forehead at the brows. The kind and quality of music one may create depends partially upon training and

## partially upon the kind and quality of his soul, which, again, expresses

itself in the eyes.

Capacity for literature and expression is indicated by fulness of the eye, by heighth and width of the forehead, and, perhaps, especially by the development of the head and forehead at the sides just above the temples and back of the hair line. Any portrait gallery of great authors will show this development in nine out of ten (see figures).

The artistic, musical, or literary man with fine, silken hair, fine, delicate skin, small and finely chiselled features, and a general daintiness of build will express refinement, beauty, tender sentiments, and sensitiveness in his work, while the man with coarse, bushy or wavy hair, coarse, thick skin, large, rugged features, and a general ruggedness and clumsiness of build, even when his size is small, will express vigor, virility, ruggedness, and even gruesomeness and horror, in his work. There may be in his productions a wild, virile type of beauty, as in the music of Wagner and the sculpture of Rodin, but the keynote of his work is elemental force.

The dilettante has conical hands, with small, tapering fingers; this is the hand which is popularly supposed to accompany artistic temperament. He loves art. He appreciates art. He may even win fame and fortune as a competent critic of art, but he cannot create it. Your true artist has square, competent hands, with blunt, square-tipped fingers. The hands shown in figure 57 page 317 are those of a music lover who can neither play nor sing. Those in figure 58 are the hands of a true artist on the piano and pipe organ. The true producing artist nearly always has square hands, with large thumbs set near the wrist, thus giving a wide reach between tip of thumb and tip of forefinger, as shown in figure 58. Actors and operatic singers sometimes have conical hands, with tapering fingers. They express emotion and beauty with voice, gesture, and facial expression rather than with their hands.

In the world of art and literature many are called but few are chosen. The pathway to the heights is steep and rugged and there are many pitfalls. There are many by-paths. Furthermore, it is cold and lonesome on the mountain-top. Before anyone sets out on the perilous journey he should read Jack London's "Martin Eden," Louis M. Alcott's autobiography, the story of Holman Hunt, the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and the biographies of others who have attained fame in these fields.

## CHAPTER X

WASTE OF TALENT IN THE PROFESSIONS

In the old days the physician was often a priest. There was mystery, magic, authority, and power in the profession. There were almost royal privileges, prerogatives, robes, insignia, and emoluments.

Humanity sheds its superstitions slowly. Science and common sense have smitten and shattered them for centuries, yet many fragments remain. And so there is still a good deal of mysticism, magic, and awe connected with both the art of healing and the priesthood. Hence, the lure of these professions. Romantic and ambitious youth longs to enter into the holy of holies, looks forward with trembling eagerness to the day when authority shall clothe him like a garment, when his simple-hearted people, gathered about him, will look up to him with adoration in eyes which say, "When you speak, God speaks."

There are other appeals to aspiration in the professions. When the layman seeks for social preferment, he must bring with him either the certificate of gentle birth or the indorsement of his banker. The professional man has a standing, however, far in excess of what he might command as the result of his financial standing.

The profession of law, in like manner, has, in the minds of the common people, always set a man apart from his fellows. About his profession, too, there is the charm of mystery, the thought of thrilling flights of oratory and high adventure in the courts of law, of opportunities for great financial success, and for political preferment.

Of late years the profession of engineering has called to the youth of the land with an almost irresistible voice. The development of steam and gasoline engines, of the electric current, and of a welter of machinery called for engineers. The specialization of engineering practice into production, chemical, industrial, municipal, efficiency, mining, construction, concrete, drainage, irrigation, landscape, and other phases, has still further increased the demand. Some few engineers, by means of keen financial ability in addition to extraordinary powers in the engineering field, have made themselves names of international fame, as well as great fortunes. All these things have fired the ambitions of our youth, and the engineering schools are full.

OVER-CROWDING OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

Our colleges and universities, in their academic courses, do not fit their students for business, neither do they fit them for any of the professions. They are graduated "neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring," so far as vocation goes. Being an educated man, in his own estimation, the bearer of a college degree cannot go into business, he cannot "go back" into manual labor. So he must go forward. There is no way for him to go forward, so far as he knows, except to enter some technical school and prepare himself for one of the "learned professions."

Go into the graduating class in any college or university, and ask the young men what their plans for the future are. How many of them will reply that they are going into business? How many of them that they are going into agriculture? How many that they are going into manufacturing? Our experience is a very small percentage. Many of them have not yet made up their minds what they will do. The great majority of those who have made up their minds are headed toward the law, medicine, the ministry, or engineering. This is a great pity. Why should the teachers and counselors of these young men encourage them in preparing themselves for professions which are already over-crowded and which bid fair, within the next ten years, to become still more seriously congested? Perhaps the professors do not know these things. If so, a little common sense would suggest that it is their business to find out. Nor would the truth be difficult to learn.

In "Increasing Home Efficiency," by Martha Brensley Bruere and Robert W. Bruere, we read:

"We have pretty definitely grasped the idea that the labor market must be organized, because it is for the social advantage that the trades should be neither over-nor under-supplied with workers; but it seems to shock people inexpressibly to think that the demand for ministers and teachers and doctors should be put in the class with that for bricklayers and plumbers. And yet the problem is quite as acute in the middle class as among the wage-workers. Take the profession of medicine, for instance, a calling of the social value of which there can be no question, and which is largely recruited from the middle class. The introduction of the Carnegie Foundation's Report on Medical Education says:

"'In a society constituted as are our Middle States, the interests of the social order will he served best when the number of men entering a given profession reaches and does not exceed a certain ratio.... For twenty-five years past there has been an enormous over-production of medical practitioners. This has been in absolute disregard of the public welfare. Taking the United States as a whole, physicians are four or five times as numerous in proportion to population as in older countries, like Germany.... In a town of 2,000 people one will find in most of our States from five to eight physicians, where two well-trained men could do the work efficiently and make a competent livelihood. When, however, six or eight physicians undertake to gain a living in a town which will support only two, the whole plane of professional conduct is lowered in the struggle which ensues, each man becomes intent upon his own practice, public health and sanitation are neglected, and the ideals and standards of the profession tend to demoralization.... It seems clear that as nations advance in civilization they will be driven to ... limit the number of those who enter (the professions) to some reasonable estimate of the number who are actually needed,'

"And in the face of this there were, in 1910, 23,927 students in preparation to further congest the profession of medicine! It's an inexcusable waste, for, though there's much the statistician hasn't done, there's little he can't do when he sets his mind to it. If he can estimate the market for the output of a shoe factory, why not the market for the output of a professional school? It ought to be possible to tell how many crown fillings the people of Omaha will need in their teeth in 1920 and just how many dentists must be graduated from the dental schools in time to do it."

PROBLEMS FOR LAWYERS AND PREACHERS

So much for the physician. While we have not at hand any exact statistics in regard to lawyers, there is a pretty general feeling amongst all who have studied the subject that the legal profession is even more over-crowded than the medical. God alone knows all the wickednesses that are perpetrated in this old world because there are too many lawyers for proper and necessary legal work and so, many of them live just as close to the dead line of professional ethics as is possible without actual disbarment. And yet, with all their devices and vices, the average lawyer is compelled to get along upon an income of less than $1,000 a year.

The ministry is, perhaps, even more over-crowded than either medicine or law. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, there are from four to a dozen churches in most places where one would render far better service. These churches are, many of them, poorly supported, and, therefore, inefficient. Yet each must have a pastor. Second, the fact that a theological or pre-theological student can secure aid in pursuing his education tempts many young men into the ministry. Recently a university student called upon us. He told us he was working his way through the university by supplying pulpits on Sunday. "But it's hard work," he confessed, "particularly when one must enthusiastically proclaim things he does not believe." This young man was, doubtless, an exception, but we have seen many poorly equipped for the ministry, "studying theology because they could not afford to take some other post-graduate work."

How greatly over-crowded this ancient and honorable profession has become may be guessed by the fact that a fine, intelligent man may spend four years in preparatory school, four years in college, and three years in a theological seminary, may acquire twenty-five years of successful experience, and still receive for his services only $500 a year. Moreover, he is expected to contribute to the cause not only all his own time and talent, but also the services of his wife and children. This, of course, is pretty close to the minimum salary, but the great majority of ecclesiastical salaries range very low--nor have they responded to the increase in the cost of living.

After all, the question is not one of the over-crowding of a profession, but of fitness for success in it. No matter how many may be seeking careers in any profession, the great majority are mediocre or worse, and the man with unusual aptitude and ability to work and work hard easily outstrips his fellows and finds both fame and fortune. The trouble is that the lure of the professions takes thousands of men into them who are better fitted for business, for mechanics, for agriculture, and for other vocations.

SUCCESSFUL, BUT NOT SATISFIED

Because they have the capacity to work hard, because they are conscientious and because they have some ordinary intellect and common sense, many men make a fair success in medicine, in the law, in the ministry, as college professors, as engineers, or in some other profession. All through their lives, however, they have the feeling that they are not doing their best work, that they would be better off, better satisfied, and happier if engaged in some other vocation. How well every true man knows that it is not enough to have kept the wolf from the door, it is not enough even to have piled up a little ahead. Every man of red blood and backbone wants to do his best work, wants to do work that he loves, work into which he can throw himself with heart and soul and with all his mind and strength. Merely to muddle through with some half-detested work, not making an utter failure of it, is no satisfaction when the day's work is done. Not only the man himself, but all of us, lose when he who might have been a great manufacturer and organizer of industry fritters away his life and his talents as a "pretty good doctor" or a "fair sort of lawyer."

Judge Elbert H. Gary was far from being a failure as a lawyer. Yet his life might have been a failure in the law in comparison to what he has accomplished and is accomplishing as the great head and organizer of the largest steel business in the United States. Oliver Wendell Holmes was successful as a physician and yet what would the world have lost if he had devoted his entire time and attention to the practice of medicine! Glen Buck once studied for the ministry. Imagine big, liberty-loving, outspoken Glen Buck trying to speak the truth as God gave him to see the truth and at the same time keep his artistic, literary, financial, and dramatic talents confined within the limits of a pastor's activities. So it is that some men are too meek and too small for the professions--others too aggressive, too versatile, and too independent for the routine of professional life. Still others have decided talents which qualify them for unusual success in other vocations. If a man has unusual intellectual attainment, he either does or does not acquire extensive education. If he does not, the probabilities are that he will enter business; he will become a merchant, a manufacturer, a promoter, a banker, or a railroad man. In some one of the departments of industry, commerce, transportation, or finance, he makes a place for himself by hard work, beginning at the bottom. If, on the other hand, circumstances are such that he can secure an education, then he passes by business, manufacturing, transportation, finance; he must forsooth become a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher, an editor, or an engineer. The question of vocation is thus, all too often, decided by the incident of education and not according to natural aptitudes.

INDICATIONS OF SUCCESS IN MEDICINE

The young man who is ambitious to enter upon a profession ought to study himself carefully before beginning his preparation. He ought to know, not guess, whether he is qualified for the highest form of success in his chosen vocation. And there is no reason why he should not know. In the appendix to this work we have outlined the leading characteristics required for success in medicine. Some of these are absolutely essential--others contributory. Among the essentials are health, a scientific mind, pleasure in dealing with people in an intimate way, ability to inspire confidence, and courage. Many a young man has taken highest honors in medical school only to fail in practice because he could not handle people successfully, or because he lacked the courage to face the constant reiteration of complaints and suffering by his patients. Sick people are selfish, peevish, whimsical, and babyish. It takes tact, patience, understanding, and good nature to handle them successfully.

INDICATIONS FOR SUCCESS IN LAW

It takes a combination of fox and lion to make a successful lawyer. And yet we are besieged with sheep and rabbits who are eager to enter law school or who have passed through law school and are wondering why they do not succeed in their profession.

There are at least two general types of lawyers, the court or trial lawyer and the counselor. The first must be a true catechist, a convincing public speaker, keen, alert, resourceful, self-confident, courageous, with a considerable degree of poise and self-control. He may be either aggressive, belligerent, and combative, or mild, persuasive, and non-resistant, but shrewd, intelligent, resourceful. A timid, dreamy, credulous man has no business in the law. A lawyer may love peace, but he should be willing to fight for it.

Because legal ethics forbid a lawyer to advertise or solicit business openly, it is necessary for him to secure a standing and clientele by indirect methods. Best of these is making and keeping friends, by mingling with all classes and conditions of people, by political activity, and in other ways making one's self agreeable and useful in the community. Thus a lawyer draws to himself the attention of the most desirable class of people. In order to be successful in this, the lawyer must possess qualities of sociability and friendship. A man who is not naturally social or friendly is not well qualified for any profession. Unless he intends to work with a partner who has these qualifications, and who will be the business getter of the firm, he would better leave the law alone.

INDICATIONS OF JUDICIAL QUALITIES

The second class of lawyer, the counsellor, is more of the judicial type. He is quite likely to be stout or to have the indications of approaching stoutness. He should be calm, deliberate, cautious, prudent, capable of handling details, a man with a splendid memory and with the capacity for acquiring a great fund of knowledge about all kinds of things. He should be able to take an interest in almost any kind of business or profession and quickly master its fundamentals.

A MISFIT IN THE LAW

Men of the high-strung, nervous, timid, self-conscious, sentimental class are sadly out of place in the law. While they may be abundantly well equipped for success from an intellectual standpoint, physically and emotionally they are utterly unfit for it. A young man once sought us for counsel who had spent many years in colleges and universities acquiring one of the finest legal educations possible in this country. Because of his intellectual equipment, the study of the law was fascinating to him, and both his parents and his professors in law school expected him to make a brilliant success in practice. What was his intense disappointment, as well as theirs, when he opened an office, to find that almost everything connected with the practice of law was distasteful to him, so that he found himself incapable of doing it successfully. For several years he had made a desperate attempt to succeed and to learn to like his profession, but every day only made him hate it more ardently. As a natural result he did poorer and poorer work at it.

It was no wonder to us that this young man did not like the practice of law. In the first place, he was fond of change and variety. His was not a nature which could address itself to one task and concentrate upon that hour after hour and day after day, such as carefully scrutinizing every detail of a case and perfecting his preparation of it for presentation in court. In the second place, his was an unusually sensitive, refined, responsive, and sentimental disposition. So fine were his emotional sensibilities that it was almost more than he could endure to hear--as he was compelled to day after day--the seamy, inharmonious, sordid, and criminal side of life. The recital and consideration of these things depressed him, made him morbid and sapped his vitality and courage. For the swift repartee, keen combat, and mutual incriminations of the court room he was utterly unfitted. Any criticism was taken personally. He found it impossible to let the jibes, criticisms, and heated words of his opponents trickle off from him as easily as water does from a duck's back, which is the proper legal mental attitude in regard to such things. He told us that sharp, harsh, or bitter words entered his soul like barbed iron and he was upset and unstrung for hours afterward. A man with such an emotional nature as his and such an intellect is especially qualified for literature, and we are glad to say that he is now making a very flattering success in this particular field.

INDICATIONS FOR SUCCESS IN THE MINISTRY

Aside from spiritual qualifications, success in the ministry depends chiefly upon two talents: First, ability to speak well in public; second, social adaptability. The second is perhaps the more important. We have heard many ministers who were only indifferent public speakers, but who made a great success of their callings because of their social aptitudes, their ability to meet and mingle with all kinds of people, their cheerfulness, their optimism, their helpfulness, their tact and diplomacy. A traveling evangelist may depend principally upon his power as a public speaker, but the pastor of a church must depend far more upon his ability to make and keep friends among the members of his congregation and in the community.

The minister, of all the professional men, is most in need of ambition, a desire to please others and to help others, spiritual quality, humanitarianism, benevolence, faith, hope, veneration for the Deity, and for the supernatural elements of religion. The day has gone by when the solemn, joyless preacher can command a large congregation. People to-day want a religion which is bright and cheerful, which offers a surcease from the cares and sorrows of ordinary life. They want to be cheered, encouraged, inspired, and uplifted, rather than depressed and made sad and melancholy. Therefore, the successful preacher will not permit his intense conviction of the seriousness, earnestness, and solemnity of his calling interfere with his exhibiting always a bright, cheerful, and attractive personality.

To be successful the pastor must take an interest in all the members of his congregation; he must sympathize with them, mourn with them when they mourn, rejoice with them when they rejoice, cheer them when they are discouraged, counsel them when they are perplexed. Indeed, he must enter into their lives fully and wholly, also tactfully and diplomatically.

Perhaps the most successful preachers of the day are medium or blond in color. While those of dark complexion, dark eyes and dark hair, are more inclined to be religious, more inclined to take life seriously, more inclined to look forward and upward to the spiritual and the supernatural, and are also more studious, more capable of deep research and profound meditation, they do not, as a rule, have the social qualities, the aggressiveness, the cheerfulness, and the adaptability of the lighter complexioned people.

INDICATIONS FOR SUCCESS IN ENGINEERING

When engineering first became a profession there were only two classes of engineers, the civil and the military. Engineers in those days were chiefly concerned with the making of surveys and the construction of roads and bridges. The steam engine had not yet been made a commercial possibility, therefore there was almost no machinery in existence, and such little as there was did not require a professional engineer for its designing or operation. Nothing was known of electricity. Very little was known of chemistry and almost nothing was known of industry as it has been organized to-day. Since that time there has been an almost incredible development along all of these lines. As the result we now have almost as many kinds of engineers as there are classes of industry. There is the civil engineer, the mining engineer, the construction, the irrigation, the drainage, the sewage disposal, the gas production, the hydraulic, the chemical, the electrical, the mechanical, the industrial, the efficiency, the production, the illuminating, the automobile, the aeroplane, the marine, the submarine, and who knows how many other kinds. Indeed, there are also social engineers, merchandising engineers, advertising engineers, and even religious engineers. Naturally, it requires a slightly different kind of man to succeed in each one of the different branches of engineering, and it would be too great a task for the reader to try to wade through all of the qualifications here. It would also, no doubt, only result in confusion and a lack of understanding of the real fundamentals.

Fundamentally the engineer should be medium in coloring. The extreme blond is too changeable and usually not fond enough of detail to succeed in a profession which requires so much concentration and accuracy. Practically all successful engineers have the practical, scientific type of forehead. By this we mean the forehead which is prominent at the brows and, while high, slopes backward from the brows. Usually those succeed best in engineering who are medium in texture. The fine-textured individual, however, if he is qualified for engineering, will take up some of the finer, higher grades of it and make fine and delicate material or machinery, or will engage in some form of engineering which requires only intellectual work. Practically all successful engineers are of the bony and muscular type or some modification of this type. This is the type which naturally takes interest in construction, in machinery, and in material accomplishment and achievement. Engineering practice usually requires painstaking accuracy and exactitude. Indeed, this is perhaps more than any other one qualification fundamental for success in engineering.

THE PROFESSIONAL TYPE

This, then, is the composite photograph of the successful professional man: He is more mental than physical; more scientific, philosophic, humanitarian, and idealistic than commercial; more social and friendly than exclusive and reserved; more ambitious for professional high standing or achievement than for wealth or power. Unless the aspirant to professional honors has some or all of these qualifications in a considerable degree, he would better turn his attention to some other vocation where there is not so much competition. Those who have some, but not all, of these qualities would do well in other vocations, such as literature, finance, commerce, or manufacture. Many physicians become authors, inventors, or financiers; many lawyers become financiers or manufacturers; many engineers become good advertising men, manufacturers, or merchants. All such would have done better to begin in the vocation to which they afterward turned.

A good rule for the young man or the young woman to follow is to make up his or her mind to enter some other vocation rather than a profession unless he or she is markedly well qualified to outdistance the crowd of mediocre competitors and make an unusual success.

[Illustration: _Photo by Paul Thompson_. FIG. 41. Front face view of ex-Senator Root. The width of head, large, but well-formed and well-balanced features, firm mouth, chin and jaw, and expression of alertness and confident strength all indicate the unusually well qualified executive.]

[Illustration: _Copyright, by Rockland, New York_. FIG. 42. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. A man of marked personality, shrewdness, ambition, courage, determination, self-reliance, persistence, and energy. Added to these were humanitarianism, reverence, optimism, kindliness, humor, eloquence, and organizing ability. Note high, dome-like head; prominent brows; fulness of the eyes and surrounding tissues; large, bony nose; long upper lip; firm mouth; square jaw and prominent chin; large, well-formed ears; short fingers, and shrewd, kindly expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 43. Rufus Isaacs, Baron Reading, Lord Chief Justice of England. Keen, penetrating, alert, analytical, resolute, self-reliant, courageous, persistent, non-sentimental, practical financial. Note comparatively low, wide forehead, long upper lip, thin lips, square-set jaw and chin, long, large nose, with somewhat depressed tip, large ears, and flatness of the top of the head.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by Harris & Ewing, Washington, D. C_. FIG. 44. Hon. Elihu Root, former United States Senator from New York. Practical, energetic, ambitious, intellectual, with courage, critical faculties, ambition, shrewdness, idealism, and a keen knowledge of human nature in excellent balance. Note high, long head; high forehead, prominent at brows, large, well-formed nose; prominent chin, general splendid balance of head and face proportions, and calm, poised, but keen and forceful expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 45. Harland B. Howe, Lawyer. Practical, matter-of-fact, shrewd, non-sentimental, energetic, ambitious, determined, and courageous. Note wide, high forehead; prominent at brows rather square above; high head, large nose, short, thin upper lip, and square, prominent jaw and chin.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by Harris & Ewing, Washington, D. C_. FIG. 46. The late Justice Horace H. Lurton, of the United States Supreme Court. Excellent example of judicial type. Practical, matter-of-fact, comparatively unemotional, calm and poised. Note prominence at brows, comparative flatness just above temples, strong jaw and chin, calm, unwavering expression.]

[Illustration: _Photo by Pach_. FIG. 47. Prof. William H. Burr, of Columbia University. Member of Isthmian Canal Commission. A fine example of professional type. Great intellect, energy, ambition, shrewdness, determination, and constancy, with refinement, idealism, sympathy, and friendliness. Note high, full forehead; large, long, but finely chiseled, nose; high head, narrow and straight at sides; fine texture; friendly expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 48. Hon. John Wesley Gaines, Ex-Congressman from Tennessee. A fine example of the dramatic orator and politician. Refined, sensitive, responsive, courageous, ambitious, energetic, friendly. Note high, long head, prominent nose, short upper lip, prominent chin, finely chiseled features, and spirited expression.]

## CHAPTER XI

WOMEN'S WORK

This chapter is not written for the purpose of adding one whisper to the impassioned controversies at present raging over women's work. So far as it is within our power, we shall refrain from taking sides with either that army which contends that woman is in every way the equal of man and should be permitted to engage in all of man's activities on an equal footing with him, or with that other army which declares that woman's place is the home and that every woman should be a wife, mother, and housekeeper.

Doubtless there are many wholesome and needed reforms being agitated with reference to women's work. Doubtless, also, there are many pernicious changes being advocated by both the sincere but mistaken and the vicious and designing. It is not the purpose of this chapter to discuss these reforms or to favor or to oppose any of them. We shall, in this chapter, discuss the problem of vocation for women under present conditions.

BROAD SCOPE OF WOMEN'S WORK

The present day finds women at work in practically every field of human endeavor. There is no profession, business, trade, or calling which does not count women amongst its successful representatives. Nor does the fact that a woman has married, has a home and children, debar her from achievement in any vocation outside the home which she may choose. Madam Ernestine Schuman-Heinck, with her eight children; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with her ten children; Katherine Booth-Clibborn, with her ten children; Ethel Barrymore, with her family; Mrs. Netscher, proprietor of the Boston Store in Chicago, with her family; Mary Roberts Rhinehart, with her children; Madam Louise Homer, with her little flock, and thousands of others are examples of women who have been successful not only as home-makers but also in art, literature, professional or commercial vocations.

Since this is true, it follows that, theoretically at least, woman may choose her profession in precisely the same way that man chooses his. Practically, however, this is not true in most cases. Undoubtedly, a very large majority of women have happily married, are sufficiently provided for, and are happier, healthier, more useful, and better satisfied with life in the home than anywhere else. Notwithstanding the fact that our girls, almost without exception, enter upon the important vocation of wifehood, motherhood and home-making with almost no proper training, their aptitudes for the work are so great and their natural intuitions in regard to it so true, that unquestionably, large numbers of them in the United States are happy and satisfied and have no part and no interest in all the hue and cry in regard to women's rights or women's work.

WOMEN NATURAL-BORN WIVES AND MOTHERS

The natural tendency of the majority of women for maternity and home-making must be taken into consideration. Some boys play with weapons, others with machinery, still others are interested in dogs and horses. Some boys are natural traders, others love to hunt and fish, while you will find an occasional lad curled up in a big chair in the library absorbed in a book. But practically all girls play with dolls, which is a sufficient evidence of the almost universality of the maternal instinct in women. The pity is that our educational traditions, almost without exception, are those handed down to us from schools and universities which educated boys and men only. We are therefore educating our girls to be merchants, lawyers, doctors, accountants, artists, musicians; in fact, almost anything but mothers. Twenty years ago, this was universally true. To-day, fortunately, the light has begun to break, and in many schools, both public and private, we are beginning to teach our girls domestic science, the care and feeding of infants, pre-natal culture, home management, economic purchasing, and other such important subjects.

VOCATIONS FOR MOTHERS

Occasionally we find a girl who has no talent for housework or home management. She is not particularly interested in it. She finds it monotonous and distasteful. For these reasons she probably does not do it well. On the other hand, she may have keen, reliable commercial instincts and be well qualified for a business career, or she may be educational, artistic, literary or professional in type. Such a woman has, of course, no business trying to keep house. She may have a strong love nature and ardent maternal desires. If so, there is no reason why she should not marry and become the mother of children. If she does, however, she should turn the management of the home over to someone else and seek self-expression and compensation in the vocation for which she is best fitted. This, of course, is no easy matter. Many men either have violent or stubborn prejudices against any such arrangement. Whether or not she can take her true place in the world depends upon the courage, determination, tactfulness, and personal force of each individual woman.

WOMEN AS TEACHERS

There is one occupation for women which is thoroughly established, entirely respectable, socially uplifting, and fully approved by even the most conservative and fastidious. This is teaching. The result is that the profession of teaching, for women, is overcrowded and becoming more overcrowded. The work done is, on the whole, mediocre or worse, and, as a result of these two conditions, the pay is pitifully small considering the importance of the results.

Because women can become teachers without losing one notch of their social standing in even the most hide-bound communities, thousands of women become teachers who ought to be housewives. Thousands of others struggle in the schoolroom, doing work they hate and despise, for a miserable pittance, when they might be happy and successful in a store or an office. We have met women teachers who ought to have been physicians; others who ought to have been lawyers; others, many of them, who ought to have been in business; and still others, thousands of them, who ought to have been in their own homes. And, naturally enough, we have also met women in the professions and in business and in their homes who ought to have been teachers--but not nearly so many.

The true teacher has three fundamental qualifications. First, a love of knowledge; second, a desire to impart knowledge, and third, a love of young people. Added to these should be patience, firmness, tactfulness, knowledge of human nature, facility in expression, reasoning power, enthusiasm, and a personality which inspires confidence. Can any county superintendent discover these qualities by means of the examination upon which first, second and third-grade certificates are based? Have the members of any average school board the discrimination necessary to determine the presence or absence of these qualities in any candidate who brings her certificate?

WOMEN IN BUSINESS

The business world suffers from the presence in the ranks of its workers of thousands of hopelessly inefficient girls who have no aptitudes for business, or even for the minor detailed processes of commercial activity. They take no real interest in their work. They have no particular ambition for advancement. Their one motive for condescending to grace the office with their presence at all is to earn pin-money or, perhaps, to support themselves in some fashion until they marry. It is true that some of these girls might be taught to be reliable and efficient in their work if they could be persuaded to take an interest in it, to look upon it as something more potent and more important than a mere stop-gap. Many of them, no doubt, could be trained to earn salaries which would pay them to continue in business even after marriage.

WOMEN IN DOMESTIC SERVICE

Others of these girls are utterly unfitted for office work. Some of them would succeed very well as teachers, some as artists, and others as musicians. Like so many of their brothers, however, they have followed the line of least resistance--regardless of their aptitudes. Most of these girls belong in the home. They are quite justified in looking forward to matrimony as their true career. How much better if they would only earn the necessary pin-money in domestic service! From a monetary point of view, thirty dollars a month, with board, room, laundry, and many other necessities furnished, is a princely compensation compared with the five or eight dollars a week received by most girls in an office. From an economic point of view, the coming into our homes of thousands of intelligent, fairly well educated, trained, and ambitious young women would be a blessing and benefit. Socially, of course, the first young women who adopted such a radical change in custom would be pariahs. They would also, doubtless, suffer many hardships in the way of irregular hours, small, dark, stuffy rooms, unreasonable mistresses, no adequate place to entertain their friends, and other such injustices. But, with a higher and more intelligent class of household servants, doubtless these abuses would disappear.

We opened this chapter with the disavowal of any intention to advocate reform. We make this one exception. We most earnestly hope that such a reform may be consummated. At the same time, we have an uneasy suspicion that we are sighing for the moon.

THE TRAGEDY OF BAD COOKING

The whole problem of household management is just now a very serious one. When the maid is ignorant, untrained, and, as is so often the case, slack, wasteful, and inefficient, the situation is, in all conscience, bad enough. But when the mistress is only a little less ignorant than her servant, is equally slack, and perhaps even more inefficient, the high cost of living gets a terrific boost in that household, while comfort, wholesomeness, and adequacy of living are correspondingly depressed. One of the saddest elements in our consultation work is the stream of both men and women who lack courage, aggressiveness, initiative, mental focus, and personal efficiency generally because they are deficient in physical stamina. Their whole life is, as it were, sub-normal. With inherent qualifications for success, they are, nevertheless, threatened with failure because, to use the language of the ring, "they lack the punch." The trouble with nine out of ten of these unfortunates is that they are under-nourished. Not because they do not get enough food, but because their diet is not properly balanced, is served to them in incompatible combinations, is badly prepared, poorly cooked, unpalatable, and doubtless, in many cases, served in anything but an appetizing manner.

Napoleon is quoted as having said that an army fights with its stomach. The man who goes out to do battle for commercial or professional success from an ill-managed and inefficient kitchen and dining-room is as badly off as the army with an inadequate commissary department. Yet, while the commissary department of the modern army receives the most scientific and careful supervision, many a man must leave his kitchen in the hands of a wife who received her training in music, literature, modern languages, and classics, or in a business college, and of a servant who received what little training she has as a farm laborer in Europe.

There is no denying the truth that if housewives themselves were scientifically trained, we should have a far higher average of training and efficiency amongst domestic servants. One of the consequences of our deplorable self-consciousness in the matter of sex is that we have been too prudish frankly to train our girls to become successful wives and mothers. The result is that, when it becomes necessary for them to earn money before their marriage, instead of gaining experience in housekeeping, cooking and purchasing, they have taken up the stage, teaching, factory work, office work, and retail selling. As we have seen, a great many of them are misfits in these callings. Good food is wasted, good stomachs are impaired, and good brains and nerves deteriorate because, as a general rule, only those who are too ignorant or too inefficient for office work or factory work can be induced to take service in our kitchens.

## CHAPTER XII

SPECIAL FORMS OF UNFITNESS

Place a quinine tablet and a strychnine tablet of the same size on the table before you. Can you, by looking at them, smelling of them, or feeling of them, tell them apart? Would you know the difference instantly, by their appearance, between bichloride of mercury tablets and soda tablets? Down in the basement of a manufacturing chemist's huge building, there is a girl placing tablets in boxes and bottles. They come to her in huge bins. One tablet looks very much like another. Upon her faithful, conscientious and unerring attention to every minute detail of her rather routine and monotonous work may depend the fate of empires.

In an office on the main floor of this same building sits a man directing the policy of the entire industry. Upon him rests the responsibility for the success of the enterprise a year, five years, twenty years ahead. He gives an order: "Purchase land. Build a factory for the making of carbolic acid. Equip it with the necessary machinery and apparatus. Purchase in advance the needed raw materials. Be ready to put the product on the market by the first of September." The execution of that order involves minute attention to thousands of details. Yet, if the man who gave it were to consider many of them and render decision upon them, the business would rapidly become a ship in a storm with no one at the helm.

The work of the girl in the basement, sorting tablets, may turn out to be far more important in the world's history than the work of the man in the front office, managing the business. It is just as important, therefore, that she should be fitted for her vocation as that he should be fitted for his.

GENERALS AND DETAIL WORKERS

Fortunately for carrying on the business of the world, there are many people who love detail, take delight in handling it, find intense satisfaction in seeing that the few little parts of the great machinery of life under their care are always in the right place at the right time and under the right conditions. Since there is such an incalculable mass of these important trifles to be looked after, it is well that the majority of people are better detail workers than formulators of policies and leaders of great movements. Tragedy results when the man with the detail worker's heart and brain attempts to wear the diadem of authority. He breaks his back trying to carry burdens no human shoulders are broad enough to bear. He is so bowed down by them that he sees only his mincing footsteps and has no conception of the general direction in which he is going. Nine times out of ten he travels wearily around in a little circle, which grows smaller and smaller as his over-taxed strength grows less and less.

When you put a man of larger mental grasp in charge of a wearying round of monotonous details, you have mingled the elements out of which a cataclysm sometimes comes. These are the men who, with the very best intentions in the world, fail to appear with the horseshoe nail at the correct moment. To be there, at that time, with the horseshoe nail is their duty. Nothing greater than that is expected of them. Yet, because their minds grasp the great movements of armies in battles and campaigns, they overlook the horseshoe nail and, as the old poem says:

"For the want of the nail, the shoe was lost; For the want of the shoe, the horse was lost; For the want of the horse, the rider was lost; For the want of the rider, the battle was lost; For the want of the battle, the kingdom was lost-- And all for the want of a horseshoe nail!"

Perhaps the man who bore the title of rider ought to have been charged with the duty of being there with that horseshoe nail, and the man who was only a blacksmith's helper should have ridden the horse and saved the battle and the kingdom.

INDICATIONS OF DETAIL AND NON-DETAIL APTITUDES

It ought not to be difficult for any man or woman to know whether or not he or she is qualified for detail work. The man who enjoys detail and takes pleasure in order, system, accuracy, and exactitude, down to the last dot and hairline, ought to know that he is qualified for detail work and has no business trying to carry on or manage affairs in which there is a considerable element of risk as well as many variables. Strangely enough, however, many of them do not know this, and over and over again we find the detail man wearing himself into nervous prostration in the wrong vocation.

On the other hand, the man who hates routine, grows restive under monotony, is impatient with painstaking accuracy and minute details, ought to know better than to make himself--or to allow himself to be made--responsible for them. And yet, nearly every day someone is coming to us with a complaint about the monotony of his job--how he hates its routine and how often he gets himself into trouble because he neglects or overlooks some little thing.

It ought to be easy enough to tell the difference between these two classes of workers. If you are a brunette, with fairly prominent brows and somewhat sloping forehead, a chin prominent at the lower point and receding upward toward the mouth; if your head is high and square behind; if your fingers are long and square-tipped; if your flesh is elastic or hard in consistency, then you can trust yourself to take responsibility for things in which seeming trifles may be of the highest importance. If, on the other hand, you are blonde or red-haired; if your head is round and dome-shaped just above the temples and round behind; if your nose is prominent and your chin narrow and receding at the lower point; if your flesh is elastic, with a tendency toward softness; if your fingers are short and either square or tapering, then you had better prepare yourself for some vocation where you can deal with large affairs, where you can plan and organize and direct, and let other people work out the details.

COURAGE AND RECKLESSNESS

The story is told of two soldiers going into battle. Both pushed forward swiftly and eagerly. They were rapidly nearing the danger zone. Already men were falling around them. As they went on, one suddenly looked at the other. "Why," he cried, "your face is white, your eyes are glazed, your limbs are trembling. I believe you are afraid!"

"Great God, man! of course I am afraid," replied the other. "And if you were one-half as afraid as I am, you would turn and run."

Here we have the discrimination between real courage and mere foolhardiness or recklessness. There are some vocations which require courage. There are others which require an element of recklessness. It requires courage to drive the locomotive of a railroad train at a speed of eighty miles an hour, but it also requires caution, prudence, watchfulness, and even apprehension.

In a western factory men were wanted for an important job, one in which a moment's carelessness in the handling of levers might cost a dozen fellow workmen their lives. "Find me," said the superintendent, "the most careful men you can get. I do not want anyone dumping damage suits on the company." The employment department found the very careful men, but none of them were satisfactory; they were all so careful that they made no speed, and soon had to be relieved for this reason, and because the constant nervous strain was too much for them. Here was a kind of work requiring a certain cool, calm, deliberate recklessness. Men were found with steady nerves, keen eyesight, quick reaction time, and smooth co-ordination of muscular action, together with a moderate degree of cautiousness. These men liked the work for the very tingle of the danger in it. They swung their ponderous machines to their tasks with a sureness of touch and a swiftness of operation which not only delighted the superintendent, but inspired confidence in their fellow workers.

INDICATIONS OF COURAGE AND CAUTION

If you are brunette, with small, sway-back or snub nose, narrow, rounded chin, and a tendency to disturbances of the circulation; if your head is narrow at the sides and high and square behind, look for a vocation where caution is a prime requisite, but do not get yourself into situations where you will have to fight or where there is so much risk that your natural apprehensiveness will cause you to worry and lie awake nights.

Contrary wise, if your chin is broad and prominent, your head is wide above the ears, low and round behind, and rather short; especially if you are a blonde, with a large nose, high in the bridge, and a big rounded dome just above the temples, select for yourself a vocation where success depends upon a cheerful willingness to take a chance. You may blunder into a tight situation now and then, and you will occasionally make a bad guess and lose thereby, but you will not be inclined to worry and you will greatly enjoy the give and take of the fight by means of which you will extricate yourself from undesirable situations.

QUICKNESS OR SLOWNESS OF THOUGHT AND ACTION

If you are of the thoughtful, philosophical type, instead of the keen, alert, practical type, don't attempt to win success in any vocation requiring quick thought and quick decision. You like to reason things out; you want to know why before you go ahead. Your success lies in lines which require slow, thoughtful, careful reasoning, mature deliberation, and an ability to plod diligently through masses of facts and arguments.

If, on the other hand, you are of the observant, practical, matter-of-fact, scientific type, your vocation should be one calling for quick thought, quick decision, ability to get the facts and to deal with them, keen observation, and one not requiring too great a nicety of mental calculation.

If you have a small, round, retreating chin, beware of any vocation which requires great deliberation in action, because you are very quick to act. Your hands, once their task is learned, move very swiftly. You are inclined to be impulsive. If your forehead is of the type which indicates quick thinking and you have a large nose, high in the bridge, then you are of the keenest, most alert, most energetic and dynamic type. No sooner do you see a proposition than you decide. No sooner do you decide than you act, and when you have acted, you want to see the results of that action immediately. You are, therefore, unfitted for any vocation which requires prolonged meditation, great deliberation in action, and a patient, plodding willingness to wait for results.

If your chin is long, broad, and prominent at the point, your action will always wait upon your thought. If your thought is quick, as indicated by the sloping forehead, your action may follow very quickly, but never impulsively. If, on the other hand, your forehead is one which indicates reflection and slowness of thought, then you will be very deliberate, postponing action in every case until you have carefully and painstakingly thought the entire matter out. It is useless for anyone to try to rush you to either decision or action, for you may have it in you to be quite hopelessly stubborn.

THE SOCIAL QUALITIES

Some time ago a splendidly educated young man came to us for advice. "What I want to know more than anything else," he said, "is why Hugo Schultz always sells more goods than I do. I spent two years in high school, four years in a special preparatory school and four years in college. I have had eight years of fairly successful business experience. For two years I have been a traveling salesman. When I first started out my sales amounted to only about $5 a day, on an average. Within a year I had pushed them up to $1,000 a day, on an average, and now sometimes I sell $3,000 or $4,000 worth a day. With the exception of Hugo Schultz, I sell more goods than any other man representing our company. If I sell $52,000 worth in a month, Schultz sells $65,000 worth-yet Schultz has never been beyond the fourth grade in school. He is ten years younger than I am, has had practically no business experience, and has only been on the road one year."

Upon examination, we found that this young man was selling goods with a splendidly trained intellect. He analyzed all the factors in his problem carefully, even down to the peculiarities of every one of his customers. He presented his goods with faultlessly worked out arguments and appeals to the common sense and good judgment of his customers. He was, therefore, more than usually successful. In answer to our inquiry, however, he said: "No, I hate selling goods. The only reason I keep it up is because there is good money in it--more money than I could make with the same amount of effort in any other department of business. I do not like to approach strangers. I have to lash myself into it every morning of my working life, and it is very hard for me to be friendly with customers about whom I care nothing personally."

"What about Peter Schultz?" we asked. "Is he a good mixer?"

"It is his whole stock in trade. Now that you have called my attention to it, I can see clearly enough that he takes delight in meeting strangers. Why, even when he is off duty, he finds his recreation running around into crowds, meeting new people, getting acquainted with them, making friends with them. I see it all now. He sells goods on the basis of friendship. He appeals to people's feelings rather than their intellects, and most people are ruled by their feelings. I know that."

At our suggestion, this intellectual young man gave up his business career altogether and turned his attention to journalism, where he has been even more successful than he was as a salesman. Needless to say, Hugo Schultz is still breaking records on the road.

It is difficult for anyone who is not by nature friendly and social to succeed in a vocation in which the principal work is meeting, dealing with, handling, and persuading his fellow men. There is an old saying "that kissing goes by favor," and doubtless it is true that other valuable things go the same way. People naturally like to do business with their friends, with those who are personally agreeable to them. It takes a long time for the unsocial or the unfriendly man to make himself personally agreeable to strangers, or, in fact, to very many people, whether strangers or not.

If it is hard for the unsocial and unfriendly man to work among people, it is distressing, dull and stupid for the man who is a good mixer and loves his friends to work in solitude or where his entire attention is engrossed in things and ideas instead of people.

INDICATIONS OF SOCIAL QUALITIES

Notwithstanding these very clear distinctions and the seeming ease with which one ought to classify himself in this respect, we are constantly besieged by those who have very deficient social natures and who are ambitious to succeed as salesmen, preachers, lawyers, politicians, and physicians.

There is plenty of work in the world which does not require one to be

## particularly friendly, although, it must be admitted, friendliness is a

splendid asset in any calling. Scholarship, literary work, art, music, engineering, mechanical work, agriculture in all its branches, contracting, building, architecture, and many other vocations offer opportunities for success to those who are only moderately equipped socially.

If the unsocial and unfriendly are deceived in regard to themselves, no less so are the social and the friendly. Again and again we find them in occupations which take them out of the haunts of living men, where they are so unhappy and dissatisfied that they sometimes become desperate. Why a man who likes people and likes to be with them, and is successful in dealing with them, should take himself off on a lonely ranch, twelve miles from the nearest neighbor and twenty miles from a railroad, passes the comprehension of all but those who, through experience, have learned the picturesque contrariness of human nature.

It is easy to distinguish, at a glance, between the social fellow and the natural-born hermit. Go to any political convention, or any convention of successful salesmen, or to a ministers' meeting attended by successful city preachers, or to any other gathering attended by men who have succeeded in callings where the ability to mix successfully with their fellow men is of paramount importance. Get a seat on the side lines, if possible, and then study the backs of their heads.

THE HEADS OF POLITICIANS

We attended two great political conventions in 1912. There were more than one thousand delegates at each convention. So certain were we of the type of men successful enough politically to be chosen as delegates to a national convention of their party, that we offered a prize of ten dollars to the friends who accompanied us for every delegate they would point out to us who did not have a round, full back-head, making his head appear long directly backwards from the ears. Although our friends were skeptical and planned in some detail as to what they would do with the money they expected to win from us, we attended both conventions without a penny of outlay for prizes. If you know any unfriendly, unsocial men, look at the backs of their heads and see how short they are.

There are vocations for all who have the courage, the ambition, the willingness to work, the persistence to keep ever-lastingly at it. Finding one's true vocation in life means, not finding an easy way to success, but finding an opportunity to work and work hard at something interesting, something you can do well, and something in which your highest and best talents will find an opportunity for their fullest expression.

Just as finding an unusual talent for music means years and years of the most careful study and preparation, followed by incessant practice; just as finding of a talent for the law means years of work in schools, colleges and universities; so the finding of a talent for business, mechanics, science, construction, or any other vocation involves years of study, self-development, preparation, and practice, if you are to achieve a worth-while success.

A HARD-LUCK STORY

The following incident illustrates plainly enough the mental attitude of the average fellow--the reason why he has failed, and the remedy:

A man came into our office complaining of his luck.

He was on the gray and wrinkled side of the half-century mark, somewhat bent, and slow of step.

This was the tune of his dirge:

"My life is a failure. I have never had a chance. My father was poor and couldn't give me the advantages that other young men had. So I've had my nose on the grindstone all my life long.

"See what I am to-day. While other men have made money and, at my age, are well fixed, I am dependent on my little old Saturday night envelope to keep me from starving. That wouldn't be so bad, but my employers are beginning to hint that I'm not so lively as I was once and that a younger man would fill the job better. It's only a question of time when I'll be a leading member of the Down and Out Club. Then it'll be the Bay for mine."

Our friend, whom we call Mr. Socratic, butted into the conversation right here.

"Pretty tough luck!" he said. "Know any men of your age that are doing better?"

"Sure, lots of 'em."

"What's the reason?"

"Well, they have had better luck."

"How do you mean? Investments turned out better?"

"No; I never had anything to invest."

"How, then?"

"Well, they had advantages."

"What, for instance?"

"Education."

"Why didn't you get an education?"

"Couldn't afford it."

"Had some income, didn't you?"

[Illustration: FIG. 49. Hon. Joseph Walker, of Massachusetts. Has good degree of balance between practical and ideal tendencies. Is shrewd, ambitious, determined, persistent, courageous, intellectual, oratorical, dramatic, forceful, social, and optimistic. Excellent planner and schemer. Note high, wide forehead, prominent at brows; keen, shrewd and determined expression; high, wide head; height of head just above temples; square jaw and chin; firm mouth; short upper lip, and well-built, prominent nose.]

[Illustration: FIG. 50. Hon. Lon V. Stephens, former Governor of Missouri, keenly observant, intensely practical, rather serious, ambitious energetic, courageous, friendly, far-sighted. A public speaker of some dramatic ability. Note great prominence of forehead at brows, depressed corners of eyes and mouth and tip of nose, high, long head, medium-short upper lip, and prominent chin.]

[Illustration: _Photo by Paul Thompson_. FIG. 51. Hon Oscar Underwood, United States Senator from Alabama. Practical, energetic, ambitious, courageous, determined, enduring. Note resemblance in profile and head shape to Figs. 48, 50, and 52, also politicians. A public speaker with considerable dramatic talent.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by Harris & Ewing, Washington, D.C._. FIG. 52. Hon. Victor Murdock, Ex-Congressman, of Kansas. Practical, alert, keen, ambitious, combative, courageous. Has considerable dramatic talent, as shown by large nose, short upper lip and long, prominent chin. Compare with Figs. 48, 50, and 51.]

[Illustration: FIG. 53. The late Robert C. Ogden, Merchant and Philanthropist. A man of keen, practical, commercial judgment, high ambition, great energy, strong determination, and strong sense of justice, together with idealism, benevolence, optimism, and kindliness. Note large development of brows; width of forehead across center; high head, domed above temples; large, well-formed nose; long, straight upper lip; straight, firm mouth, and poised, calm, kindly expression.]

[Illustration: FIG. 54. Prof. P.G. Holden, Agricultural Expert and Teacher. A fine admixture of the physically frail and bony and muscular type, hence his intellectual interest and ability in agriculture. Has ambition, energy, and great social and friendly qualities. Note height and length of head, development of brows, and size and contour of nose.]

[Illustration: FIG. 55. W. Nelson Edelsten, Insurance Special Agent. Keen, observant, alert, ambitious, energetic, courageous, refined, sensitive, emotional, enthusiastic, appreciative of approval, friendly. Note prominence of brows, high head, large, well-formed nose, chin, and ears, fine texture, high dome over temples, short upper lip, and alert, high-strung, friendly expression.]

[Illustration: _Copyright by Harris & Ewing._ FIG. 56. Dr. Beverly T. Galloway, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture of the United States. Same as FIG. 8. Note high crown large prominent nose; very full backhead.]

"Yes, but only enough to live on."

"Had time to study, didn't you?"

"No--always had to work."

"What about your evenings? Have to work nights?"

"No."

"Had a pretty good time, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes."

"Out with the fellows and the girls about every night?"

"Yes."

"Wore good clothes, smoked good cigars, hired livery rigs, took in good shows, lived pretty well, shook dice a little, risked a few dollars on the ponies now and then?"

"Oh, yes; I was no tight-wad."

"You had to be a good fellow, eh?"

"Sure, I am only going through this world once, so I have had a good time as I've gone along."

"You couldn't have put in two or three nights a week studying and still have had a good time?"

"Oh, I might have, I s'pose, but I didn't have the money to buy books."

"How much do you figure you spent, on an average, on those nights you were out with the boys?"

"Oh, I don't know; sometimes a dime for a cigar, sometimes three or four dollars for theater tickets, supper, and the trimmings."

"Well, would it average two bits?"

"Yes, I guess so; all of that. Maybe more."

"If you had saved that for two nights a week, it would have counted up about two and a quarter a month. Buy a pretty good book for that, couldn't you?"

"S'pose so."

"And if you had been buying books and studying them, going to night-school, or taking a correspondence course all these years, you would have had an education by now, wouldn't you?"

"Well, I don't know. Some men are born to succeed. They have more brains than others."

"Who, for instance?"

"Well, there's Edison."

"Yes; and while you were having a good time with the boys, wearing good clothes, and enjoying the comforts of life, Edison was working and studying, wearing shabby clothes and patched shoes, so that he might buy books. What right have you to say that Edison has a better head, naturally, than you until you have done what Edison did to develop his?"

"Well, if you put it that way--none, I guess."

"Then you might have been an Edison if you had sacrificed, worked, and studied as Edison did?"

"Perhaps."

"Then where does the 'hard luck' come in? While you were having a good time, Edison was having a hard time. Isn't that so?"

"Yes, and now Edison is on Easy Street and I am headed for the Bay. I see your point, Mr. Socratic. I guess it isn't luck, after all. It's my fault. But knowing that won't make it any easier for me when I get canned."

"What's the use crossing the bridge before you get to it? I read the other day of a man who studied law, was admitted to the bar, and made money on it, all after he was seventy years old."

"Think there's any chance for me? Can I learn anything at my age?"

"You learned something just now, didn't you?" asked Socratic.

"Yes, I guess I did."

"Well, if you can learn one thing, you can learn a hundred, can't you?"

"Guess so."

"Will you?"

"I sure will."

If you are a worker and not a shirker--if you are a lifter and not a leaner--if you have done your best to succeed in your present vocation, and are still dissatisfied, and feel that you could do better in some other line of work, we hope that this book has been of some assistance to you in determining your new line.

If, however, you have never attempted your best--if you have never worked your hardest--if you have grown weary, and laid down your burden in the face of difficulties and obstacles--if you have neglected your education, your training, your preparation for success, then, before you make a change, before you seek vocational counsel, do your best to make good where you are. It may be the one vocation in which you can succeed.