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–