Analyzing Character by Arthur Newcomb (best ereader for epub .txt) 📕

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.

[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,