Analyzing Character Part 14

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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ce 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, princ.i.p.ally, bone and muscle with no brain. He did the physical work which was a.s.signed 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 princ.i.p.al 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, s.n.a.t.c.h a bite of breakfast, run for a car, get to work, burrow in the warrens of industry until lunch time, rush out, s.n.a.t.c.h 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 const.i.tuted 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 amba.s.sadors, 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 circ.u.mnavigated 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, ent.i.tled "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, st.u.r.dy, and enduring build. As a general rule, they are far better fitted for this cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 mult.i.tudes of men and women the lure of levers, cranks, wheels and pinions is as seductive, as insidious, as heavenly in its promises, and as h.e.l.lish in its performances, as the opium habit. The craving for opium, however, is an acquired taste, while the pa.s.sion 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