CLASSES OF MISFITS
To the casual observer, humanity seems
to be divided into countless different kinds of people.
In fact, it is often said that of all the millions
of people on the earth, no two are just alike.
Some writers on vocational guidance, indeed, express
discouragement. They see humanity in such infinite
variety that it is impossible ever to classify types.
Therefore, they mourn, the vocational expert cannot
judge of aptitudes except by trial in various kinds
of work until, finally, real native talents appear
in actual accomplishment. The anthropologist,
however, easily divides mankind by means of several
broad classifications, A few distinct variations,
easily recognizable by the anthropological expert,
put every one of the billion and one-half people on
the face of the earth in his particular class.
In the same way, to the casual observer,
it no doubt seems that the number and kind of misfits
is so great that any attempt to analyze them and classify
them must meet with failure. Those, however, who
have studied the problem and have met and talked with
thousands of those struggling against the handicap
of unloved and difficult work, find a few classes which
include nearly all of them. Just as there are
two fundamental reasons why men and women select wrong
vocations, and a few common variations upon these
two reasons, so there are just a few general ways in
which people select the wrong vocations. An examination
of some of these will be illuminating to the reader.
THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL
In the beginning of the life of the
race all men hunted, fished, fought, danced, sang,
and loafed. These were the only manly vocations.
There were no clerks, no doctors, and, perhaps, no
priests. In some races and under some conditions
to-day, all of the men are hunters and fishers, or
shepherds and stock-raisers, or all the men till the
field. Some years ago, in our country, practically
all the male population worked at the trade of agriculture,
there being only a few preachers, doctors, lawyers,
merchants, and clerks.
In the nations of Europe to-day people
are born to certain professions or born to a certain
narrow circle of vocations; some people are born to
manual labor, and, having once performed manual labor,
are thereby firmly fixed in the class of those who
earn their living by their hands; others are born
in a class above that, and will suffer almost any privation
rather than earn their living by manual labor.
In the United States this same feeling is becoming
more and more prevalent. Our physical work is
nearly all of it done by those who came to us from
across the sea, and native-born Americans seek vocations
in some other sphere.
The common school is everywhere, and
education is compulsory. The high school is also
to be found in all parts of the country. There
are also business colleges, technical schools, academies,
universities, colleges, professional schools, correspondence
schools, and other educational institutions of every
possible kind. These are patronized by the native-born
population as well as by many of those who come to
us from foreign lands. The result is that, of
the first great class which we shall treat, there
are comparatively few in relation to the whole population.
Even though this is true, there are all too many.
The first class of misfits is composed
of those who are too frail for physical labor and
who are not well enough educated to take their places
amongst clerical or professional workers. These
unfortunates do not like hard, manual work; they cannot
do it well; they are outclassed in it. They do
not hold any position long; they are frequently unemployed;
and they are often compelled to live by their wits.
As a general rule, those in this class are well equipped
intellectually by nature, and would have responded
splendidly to educative efforts if they had been given
an opportunity. People of this class lack physical
courage. They shrink from hardship and will do
almost anything to escape physical suffering.
It is this lack of courage, as well as their inability
to make a decent living out of their hands and muscles,
that leads them, in so many cases, to unlawful means.
As a general rule, people of this
type have considerable natural refinement, and refinement
is always expensive. They are the kind of people
of whom it is often said that they have “champagne
tastes and beer incomes.” It is difficult
for them to finance themselves, with any degree of
frugality or economy, upon the small and precarious
income they earn at manual labor. This is the
class of people who sometimes become counterfeiters,
sneak thieves, pickpockets, forgers, gamblers,
stool pigeons, second-story workers, and petty criminals
along other lines which do not require physical courage,
strength, and force. Of course, the great majority
of these misfits do not enter upon a life of crime.
They are, however, poor, often in need, sometimes
pauperized, and, as a general rule, their lives are
short and miserable. There are those, also, whose
cases are not so extreme. Unfitness for manual
labor results merely in bare living, a life of comparative
poverty, and general lack of success.
THE FAT MAN
Another class of those who are physically
unfit for hard, manual labor are those who are too
stout. The fat man is, by nature, fitted to sit
in a large, luxurious chair and direct the work of
others. He is too heavy on his feet for physical
work, as a general rule, and is also too much disinclined
to physical effort. It is a well-known fact that,
almost without exception, fat men are physically lazy.
The natural work, therefore, of the stout man is executive
work, banking, finance, merchandising, handling of
food products, and the arbitration of differences
between his fellow men. Fat men are natural bankers,
financiers, lawyers, judges, politicians, managers,
bakers, butchers, grocers, restaurant owners, preachers,
and orators. If, however, the man of this type
does not secure sufficient education and training to
enable him to undertake one of these professions,
but grows up with no other ways to satisfy his wants
than by the exercise of his muscles, he is greatly
handicapped in the race for success. It is not
usual, however, to find a man of this type amongst
the ranks of the poor. Most of them are fairly
well supplied with means, and usually have plenty to
eat, plenty to wear, and a good place to sleep.
In order to obtain the things he desires,
the man who has no aptitude for physical labor on
account of his great bulk sometimes turns his attention
to crime. This type of man may be a gambler, a
grafting politician, a confidence man, a promoter
of wild-cat stocks or bonds, the man who sits behind
the scenes and directs a band of criminals or, perhaps,
a whole community of them, or in some other way preys
upon the gullibility of the public.
Naturally, there are fat men, also,
who are honest and high-principled in their intentions
and who still have not fitted themselves for their
true vocation in life. Such men, like those who
are physically frail and honest, drag through a miserable
existence, never fully realizing their possibilities,
or expressing themselves; never finding an outlet for
their real talents; never making the success of life
which they might have made with sufficient training
and in their true vocations.
THE MAN OF BONE AND MUSCLE
Just as there were, doubtless, thousands
of men too frail or too corpulent for physical work
who were compelled to do it in the days when practically
all men were either farmers or carpenters and builders,
so to-day there are thousands of men far too active
for clerical work who are compelled to do it because
certain circles in society have a prejudice against
manual labor. There is a type of man whose bony
and muscular system predominates in his organization.
This type of man loves the out-of-doors; freedom is
to him a physical and moral necessity. He hates,
and even grows irritable under, restraint. He
demands physical activity; his muscles call for exercise;
his whole physical being is keen for life in the open,
with plenty of activity. Yet this type of man,
by thousands, is sentenced to spend his life behind
the counter or chained to a desk. He is as unhappy
there, and almost as badly placed, as if he were, indeed,
in prison. Look around the parks, the roads,
the athletic fields, the lakes and streams, the woods,
and all out-of-door places in this country and you
will find this man taking a brief rest from his prison
cell, engaged in strenuous forms of muscular activity tennis,
golf, baseball, football, lacrosse, cross-country
running, boating, swimming, yachting, motoring, horseback
riding, hunting, fishing, exploring, mountain climbing,
ranching in many ways seeking to find an
outlet for his stored-up physical energy.
WORK FOR THE ACTIVE MAN
There is plenty of room for the mental
capacity, the executive ability, and the splendid
organizing genius of this type of man in outdoor work.
Our great forests and fields are not producing twenty-five
per cent of the amount of wealth that they should
produce, under even such scientific methods as are
known at present. But these are only the beginning.
There is an opportunity for those with both mental
and physical aptitudes to undertake the solution of
the problem. The resources of the universe are
infinite. There is no parsimony in Nature.
There is plenty and to spare for all.
Recently there has been a great deal
said about the fact that all of the land on the surface
of the earth has now been occupied by mankind; that
hereafter, food products will become higher and higher
in price; that each of us will have to be satisfied
with a little less wealth than formerly; that rents
will be higher; that the price of land will steadily
increase that, already, there is not enough
of the bare necessities of life to go around.
This is cited as the cause of pauperism and given as
an excuse for war. May not this attitude be mistaken?
We have not yet scratched the surface of the possibilities.
These out-of-door men are fitted by nature to take
the scientific truths discovered by those better fitted
to sit indoors, and make practical application of them
to the problems of increasing the wealth of the race.
If a boy in Alabama can grow 232 bushels of corn on
one acre of ground, then farmers all over the country
can grow at least 100 bushels of corn on an acre which
now yields an average of 25 to 30 bushels. By
scientific methods, Eugene Grubb has grown a thousand
bushels of potatoes upon an acre of Wyoming land.
A considerable addition will be made to the wealth
of the race when a thousand other Eugene Grubbs arise
and increase the productivity of thousands of other
acres of potatoes.
THE BORN LEADER OF MEN
In his excellent little book, “The
Art of Handling Men," Mr. James H. Collins says:
Broadly speaking, the personal equation
is that Something in a man that makes him effective
in managing other men.
It is the difference between the fellow
who lets a political club, a military company or a
factory force go all to pieces, and some other fellow
who can put the pieces together again, or rather, draw
them together instantly. For the man who reorganizes
without this Something is like the chap who cleans
his own clock he usually has a few pieces
of the organization left over because they wouldn’t
fit in anywhere. The personal equation is magnetic.
It comes along and acts, and every part falls into
place, and the organization is capable of performing
a lot of new functions.
Not one person in five hundred possesses
the faculty. Those who don’t, like to comfort
themselves with the assurance that it is a gift which
Providence forgot to hand out to them. Innumerable
stories grow up around the man who does possess it.
One glance from his eagle eye, people say, and he
reads you through. One word, and he enforces instant
obedience. Thus the personal equation is glorified
and mystified. But men who really have this valuable
Something seldom make much mystery about it. They
insist it is largely a matter of common sense, which
everyone ought to have at their disposal.
The personal equation has an interesting way of raising
moral issues.
One morning in August, 1863, a young
clergyman was called out of bed in a hotel at Lawrence,
Kansas. The man who called him was one of Quantrell’s
guerrillas, and he wanted him to hurry downstairs,
and be shot. All over the border town that morning
people were being murdered. A band of raiders
had ridden in early to perpetrate the Lawrence massacre.
The guerrilla who called the clergyman
was impatient. The latter, when fully awake,
was horrified by what he saw going on through his window.
As he came downstairs the guerrilla demanded his watch
and money, and then wanted to know if he was an abolitionist.
The clergyman was trembling. But he decided that
if he was to die then and there, it would not be with
a lie on his lips. So he said, yes, he was, and
followed up the admission with a remark that immediately
turned the whole affair into another channel.
He and the guerrilla sat down on the
porch, while people were being killed through the
town, and had a long talk. It lasted until the
raiders were ready to leave. When the clergyman’s
guerrilla mounted to join his confederates he was
strictly on the defensive. He handed back the
New Englander’s valuables and apologized for
disturbing him, and asked to be thought well of.
That clergyman lived many years after
the Lawrence massacre. What did he say to the
guerrilla? What was there in his personality that
led the latter to sit down and talk? What did
they talk about?
‘Are you a Yankee abolitionist?’ the guerrilla
had asked.
‘Yes I am,’
was the reply, ’and you know very well that you
ought to be ashamed of what you’re doing.’
This drew the matter directly to a
moral issue. It brought the guerrilla up roundly.
The clergyman was only a stripling beside this seasoned
border ruffian. But he threw a burden of moral
proof on to the raider, and in a moment the latter
was trying to demonstrate that he might be a better
fellow than circumstances would seem to indicate.
After waking this New Englander to
kill him on account of his politics, he spent twenty
minutes on the witness stand trying to prove an alibi.
He went into his personal history at length.
He explained matters from the time when he had been
a tough little kid who wouldn’t say his prayers,
and became quite sentimental in recalling how one
thing had led to another, and that to something worse,
and so on, until well, here he was, and
a mighty bad business to be in, pardner. His
last request, in riding away, was: ‘Now,
pardner, don’t think too hard of me, will you?’
The personal equation is eternally
throwing the burden of proof on the people it controls,
and forever raising moral issues. The man who
has it may operate by no definite plan, just as this
clergyman had none for saving his own life. But
he will be a confidence man of the most subtle character.
His capacity for expecting things of those under him
will be tremendous. Subordinates may never have
demanded much of themselves. But for him they
will accomplish wonders, just because he expects them
to.
Three men were placed at the foreman’s
desk of a growing factory. Each had technical
knowledge enough to run a plant three times the size.
But all failed. The first was an autocrat, who
tried to boss from a pedestal, and the men didn’t
like him. The next was a politician, whom the
men liked thoroughly which was his shortcoming,
for he tried to run the place as they thought it should
be run. As for the third, he tried to run it on
nerves, to do everything himself, to be everywhere
at once. He didn’t fail, really he
snapped like a fiddle-string. By that time working
tension was relaxed and production wabbling on the
down-peak. Nobody knew who was in charge, or
what would happen.
Then along came a fourth candidate,
with an abnormally developed bump of expectation.
He knew how to approve and encourage. Sometimes
he said pleasantly: ‘I knew you could do
that, Bill,’ Again, he put it ironically:
‘I didn’t think you had it in you.’
But his strong point was expectation. With apparent
recklessness he gave out work two sizes too large
for everybody. If a subordinate was a N man
he handed him a N job as a matter of course, and
usually the latter grew up to it. The politician
had tried this same scheme, but introduced it backward.
Taking a N man into a corner, he told him impressively
that he was a N and promoted him on the spot,
and warned him to say nothing about it to anybody
else. Then the man tried to swell to fit the office
instead of growing to fit the work. But this
fourth candidate made everybody see that doing N was more creditable than just being it. So everybody
became interested in the work, and nothing else.
There was another suggestive point.
Taking charge after three foremen had failed, the
factory was naturally full of nasty cliques, each with
its unhealthy private interest. The new man broke
up these cliques by introducing a new interest so
big that it swallowed all the little interests, like
Aaron’s rod. That interest was to turn out
work of such quality and in such quantities that the
factory could get contracts in competition with an
older rival, and provide steady employment.
That this faculty for putting people
under obligation is more the man than a method, however,
is shown in one of Daudet’s delightful little
sketches, the story of a head clerk in a French Government
bureau who, on getting a fine promotion, wrote home
to his father describing his new chief’s homely
appearance with light-hearted raillery. Next morning
on his desk lay his own letter, initialed by his chief.
It had been intercepted by the secret service.
The chief allowed him to suffer in apprehension one
day, and then told him that his indiscretion should
rest between themselves. ’Try to make me
forget it,’ he said, and the incident hung like
a dagger over the clerk’s head.
Some time after, the latter caught
one of his own subordinates stealing from the cash
box, and repeated his superior’s tactics, even
to the formula, ‘Try to make me forget it.’
With tears in his eyes the subordinate thanked him
for his clemency and a few days later, rifled
the safe and fled! The moral of which seems to
be that, if the clerk had been enough of a judge of
men to use his chief’s method effectively, he
would never have fallen into the asininity of writing
such a letter.
“Those who complain that it
is impossible to win the confidence of subordinates
might observe the extremely simple fashion in which
the man with this Something does the trick by
giving people his own confidence first.
“He has the knack, not only
of interesting others, but of keeping up his own interest;
in fact, he is often so absorbed in his existence,
his work, and the people around him that he is not
aware that there is such a malady as lack of interest.
“He has a heartiness and vitality
and geniality quite characteristic, or a misanthropy
that is hearty, vital, and optimistic geniality
inside out. The milk of human kindness sometimes
comes in a dry form.”
THE MAN OF SUPREME ABILITY
In his valuable treatise on “The
Twelve Principles of Efficiency," Mr. Harrington
Emerson says:
Industrial plants remind me of automobiles.
The plants themselves may be more or less good, but
on what kind of roads are they running? The philosophy
of efficiency is for an industrial plant for
any enterprise, activity, or undertaking what
a network of good roads is for automobiles. Undoubtedly,
even on poor roads, automobiles may make some progress,
but the worse the road, the more elementary must be
the means of locomotion.
Railroads, high-roads, by-roads, bridle-paths,
footpaths, mountain climbs! The unlettered mountaineer
of all countries is the best man for the last, and
it takes the best kind of trained climbing expert to
emulate him; but as the road is improved shoes are
exchanged for horses, horses for bicycles, a change
from one kind of muscular effort to another; bicycles
for automobiles, automobiles for railroad trains, both
these latter using incarnate energy instead of muscular
or incarnate energy. The all-round skill of the
mountaineer becomes the subdivided, specialized skill
of many different men, who are supplemented with increasingly
complex equipment.
The philosophy of efficiency is to
be used to build roads along which any organization
can travel with the least friction and the greatest
advantage, and the more ramified and involved the business,
the more is the philosophy needed.
However, no highly complex automobile,
even with the best network of roads, can make any
great progress unless in the hands of a skilled directing
intelligence; no highly complex human enterprise, though
it uses all the principles of efficiency, can make
any great progress unless guided by a skilled intelligence.
On personality, on the wisdom of the
individual, whether locomotive engineer or von Moltke,
whether the manager of a plant employing ten men or
Judge Gary, chairman of the board of the gigantic Steel
Corporation, will depend the ultimate value of all
that creative physical or philosophical ability has
brought together.
Recently there was submitted to me
in the office of one of Chicago’s greatest businesses
the draft of its organization. No man can pass
on the merits of the details of a complicated organization
without long and intimate acquaintance with its workings.
Seeing the plan of the Chicago plant, pressed for
a suggestion, I said: ’Your chart is upside
down; the president belongs at the bottom, sustaining
and carrying, through his organization, all the operations
of the plant. Because he is in supreme authority
he has the responsibility of making available for everyone,
down to the tool, all the wisdom in the universe in
order that each may fulfil perfectly its special duty
and task.’
Whether on the grounds of Long Branch,
on the desert trail, in a section, department, division,
or plant of a great manufacturing concern or railroad;
whether on the deck of a battleship or on a battlefield,
what is wanted is a leader who can swing and manage
what has been entrusted to him.
It has become the fashion in history
to decry the strong-man theory, to turn for understanding
to evolution, to explain the strong man as the inevitable
accident of the moment. There is evolution; there
comes, at last, opportunity, but only rarely does
the strong man arise; hence we have England, not Norway
or Sweden or Holland; hence we have Prussia, not Saxony;
Germany, not Russia; Italy, not Portugal; France, not
Spain; Japan, not Siam or Korea.
In 1536 was born in Japan an undersized,
monkey-faced boy of good but poor parentage, who,
at the age of thirteen, resolved to make himself the
chief power in the distracted kingdom. For 200
years the militant barons had warred against each
other, each trying to grab, annex, and hold what he
could.
The boy, Hideyoshi, deliberately visited
the different courts, picked out the baron he thought
most endowed with suitable character, succeeded with
great difficulty in entering his service in the humblest
position, and then steadily and inevitably rose, firstly
because he could read human character and always knew
almost as soon as they did themselves what his and
his lord’s enemies were plotting, and secondly,
because he was always prepared in advance for any
undertaking and skilled in carrying out. Thus,
when scarcely more than a child, he reduced the cost
of firewood used in the palace to less than one-half;
a little later he rebuilt the castle walls in three
days, a task estimated as requiring sixty days; again,
single-handed, he secured provinces that armies had
failed to conquer.
By gifts of tact, of insight, of diligence,
of readiness, that each one of us thinks he possesses,
that any one of Nippon’s 30,000,000 inhabitants
might have possessed and exercised, Hideyoshi rose,
step by step, until he directed and guided the whole
country, his general, Iyeyasu, becoming the first
of the Tokugawa dynasty, which lasted from 1603 to
1867, with headquarters at Yeddo (Tokyo).
Temuchin, Jenghis Khan, born in a
tent in 1162, son of a petty Mongolian chieftain,
succeeded his father when only thirteen years old.
Many of the tribes immediately rebelled, but Temuchin
held his own in battle and in counsel against open
enemies and insidious traitors, until his empire extended
from the China Sea to the frontier of Poland an
empire larger than modern Russia, the largest the
world has ever seen.
The man of supreme ability is the
one who has supernal ideals, who recognizes and uses
those underlying principles without which human effort
is futile, its results ephemeral. The man of supreme
ability is the one who can create and control an organization
founded on and using principles to attain and maintain
ideals, who then is able to assemble for the use of
his organization the incidentals of land, of men and
money (Labor and Capital), of buildings and equipment,
of methods and devices. All these incidentals
make for volume, for quantity, for man’s work
instead of woman’s work, but they do not make
for the spirit, nor for the quality, nor for the excellence
of work.
THE ELEMENTS OF EXECUTIVE ABILITY
We have quoted thus at length from
Mr. Collins and Mr. Emerson to show the inbornness,
so to speak, of real executive ability. The art
of handling men depends upon certain inherent aptitudes
plus a certain amount of the right kind of training.
A very large class of executives lacks the aptitude;
a still larger class lacks the right kind of training.
It is possible, of course, to give training to those
who have the aptitude. It is impossible to give
training which will make efficient executives of those
who are deficient in the natural aptitudes. The
result of all this is that we have a very large class
of misfits; men who, for some reason or other, have
been promoted into executive positions and who do not
have the proper qualifications. These men suffer;
those under them suffer; those who employ them suffer.
Some men are too active themselves
ever to be good directors of the activities of other
men. They cannot sit back quietly and direct others.
They demand expression in action. They are, therefore,
always thrusting aside their subordinates and doing
the thing themselves, because they lack the ability
to teach others to do the work and to do it correctly.
When such men are compelled to wait for others to
accomplish things, they grow irritable, impatient,
and lose control of themselves and, therefore, of
the situation. They are not ideal executives and
do not, as a general rule, rise to very high executive
positions. They ought not to attempt to do executive
work.
There are others who are too easy-going
to command men. They permit their men to get
too close to them, and they feel too sympathetic toward
them. They are likely, also, to be partial, not
to demand or exact enough, and, therefore, their departments
are always behind, never quite coming up to quota.
TWO TYPES OF EXECUTIVES
There are two distinct types of executives.
There is the impatient, driving, quick, keen, positive,
irritable type. This man can get good results
from a certain type of worker, but he only irritates,
frightens, and drives to sullen resistance other types.
The other is the mild, kindly, persuasive, patient,
enduring, persistent, determined type of executive,
who wins his success by attracting to himself the intense
loyalty and devotion of his men. Both types are
successful, but they are successful with different
kinds of men. The employer who selects executives,
therefore, needs to bear this in mind, and to select
the right type of men to work under his various lieutenants.
On the other hand, men who take executive positions
should see that they secure for themselves the type
of workers from whom they can secure results.
This will not be easy, because, as a general rule,
an executive tends to surround himself with men of
his own type, which is usually a mistake. Men,
in selecting positions, should also bear this truth
in mind. They should know the kind of executive
under whom they can do their best work, and, if at
all possible, work under this kind of superior officer.
SLAVES TO MACHINERY
In an earlier chapter of this book
we referred to the type of boy or girl who is too
restless to study, to continue in school; who is eager
to begin his life work; who therefore leaves school
at an early age and takes up some work for which he
is then fitted, but which, in after life, he finds
to be uncongenial and unprofitable. As a general
rule, such individuals are ambitious oftentimes
exceedingly ambitious. They find, as they grow
older, however, that they have not sufficient education
and training to enable them to realize their ambitions.
Thousands upon thousands of these condemn themselves
to mere unskilled manual labor.
It is not to be wondered at that these
boys and girls leave school, because in school they
are compelled to sit quietly and to try to learn things
in which they are not interested out of dry, unprofitable
books. Such pupils need to spend a great part
of their time out-of-doors. They can be thus
taught far more easily, will take a greater interest
in their studies, and can gain both knowledge and
skill which will be more valuable to them in the world
of work. They also need to be taught indoors manual
training, domestic science, printing, laundry work,
scientific horticulture, scientific agriculture, dairying,
and many other such branches. The recently projected
vocational schools, continuation schools, half-time
schools, and other such contrivances for giving the
boy or the girl an opportunity to learn a useful trade
while he is mastering the three R’s, are a very
important and valuable step in the right direction;
With an opportunity thus to find expression for his
mechanical ability and his great activity, the boy
will be encouraged to remain longer in school.
Those who have left school at an early
age on account of restlessness should take very seriously
to heart the fates of tens of thousands of men and
women before them who have done the same thing and
who have made a failure of their lives, because they
did not have sufficient education and training with
which to realize their aspirations.
THE IMPRACTICAL
It has been frequently remarked that
this is a commercial age. Our great captains
of industry, our multi-millionaires, have, most of
them, made their fortunes in commerce. This is
an age, perhaps especially in the United
States which rather makes a hero of the
business man. For this reason there are many
who are ambitious for commercial success. Every
year thousands upon thousands of young men and women
leave school in order to enter business. By a
very natural psychological paradox, there seems to
be a fascination about commerce and finance for many
young people who have little aptitude for these vocations.
Many people, feeling their deficiencies, yearn to
convince themselves and others that they are not deficient.
It is only another phase of the fatality with which
a Venus longs to be a Diana and a Minerva a Psyche.
Thousands enter business who have no commercial or
financial ability. They cannot know the requirements;
they cannot understand the fundamental principles of
business. Commercially they are babes in the woods.
Therefore they go down to bankruptcy and insolvency,
to their great detriment and to the injury of many
thousands of others.
These young people are too impractical
for business. They may have a theoretical understanding
of it, and an intellectual desire to succeed.
But, as a result of their impractical type of mind,
they neglect details, they overlook important precautions,
they are, oftentimes, too credulous, too easily influenced.
They usually make poor financiers; they do not make
collections well; they are incautious in extending
credit and in maintaining their own credit; often
they are inefficient and wasteful in management; they
do not take proper account of all the costs in fixing
prices; they enter into foolish contracts; make promises
which they are unable to keep, and oftentimes, as
a result of too great optimism, undertake far more
than is commercially feasible.
HUNGRY FOR FAME
The same strange quirk in human nature
which takes the impractical into the marts, takes
many ambitious but inherently unfit into art and literature.
The stage-struck girl who has not one scintilla of
dramatic ability is so common as to be a joke to
all but herself and her friends. Every editor
is wearied with his never-ending task of extinguishing
lights which glow brightly with ambition but have
no gleam of the divine fire. Teachers of art
and music, both in this country and abroad, are threatened
with insanity because of the hordes of young men and
women who come to them with money in their hands,
demanding to be made into famous artists and musicians,
not having been born with genius. Some of these
unfortunates spend years of time and thousands of dollars
in money attempting to fit themselves for careers,
only to end in utter failure. Some, even after
they have made a comparative failure of their education,
eke out a tortured existence, hoping against hope for
the golden crown of fame and fortune.
In sober truth the fatal lack in most
of these disappointed seekers is not that they have
no talent, but that they are too lazy mentally to make
a real success of the natural aptitudes they have.
They lack “the infinite capacity for taking
pains.” They are deluded by the idea that
success depends upon inspiration that there
is no perspiration. Yet every great writer, every
great musician, every great actor, every great author,
knows that there is no fame, there is no possibility
of success, except through the most prolonged and
painstaking drudgery.
“LIFE IS BRIEF ART IS LONG”
Perhaps no actor of modern times had
greater dramatic talents inborn than Richard Mansfield,
yet here is the story of how Richard Mansfield
worked, toiled, starved and suffered in achieving success
in his art:
His friends crowded St. George’s
Hall for his first appearance. It was observed,
as he uttered the few lines of the Beadle, that he
was excessively nervous. When, later in the evening,
he sat down at the piano and struck a preliminary
chord, he fainted dead away.
Mr. Reed relieved him of his position
at once. In discharging him, he said: ‘You
are the most nervous man I have ever seen,’ It
was not all nervousness, however. Mansfield had
not eaten for three days. He had fainted from
hunger.
“Mansfield was now on evil days,
indeed. He moved into obscure quarters and fought
the hard fight. It was years before he would speak
of these experiences. In fact, he rarely ruminated
on the past in the confidences of either conversation
or correspondence. Memory troubled him little
and by the universal quotation it withheld its pleasures.
He dwelt in the present, with his eyes and hopes on
the future. It was always the future with him.
No pleasure or attainment brought complete satisfaction.
He looked to the past only in relation to the future;
for experience, for example, for what to avoid.
“Once, when at the meridian
of his fame, he was asked to lecture before the faculty
and students of the University of Chicago. For
his subject he chose, ‘On Going on the Stage.’
That he might exploit to those before him the reality
of the actor’s struggle, he lifted for the first
time a corner of that veil of mystery which hung between
his public and his past, and told of these early London
days:
“For years I went home to my
little room, if, fortunately, I had one,’ he
said, ’and perhaps a tallow dip was stuck in
the neck of a bottle, and I was fortunate if I had
something to cook for myself over a fire, if I had
a fire. That was my life. When night came
I wandered about the streets of London, and if I had
a penny I invested it in a baked potato from the baked-potato
man on the corner. I would put these hot potatoes
in my pockets, and after I had warmed my hands, I
would swallow the potato. That is the truth.’
“At length, his wardrobe became
so reduced that attendance at any but the most informal
entertainments became out of the question, and finally
he had to give up these. Soon he was inking the
seams of his coat, and wandered about shunning friends,
for fear they would learn to what a condition he was
reduced.
“‘Often,’ he admitted,
’I stayed in bed and slept because when I was
awake I was hungry. Footsore, I would gaze into
the windows of restaurants, bakeries, and fruit shops,
thinking the food displayed in them the most tempting
and beautiful sight in the world. There were times
when I literally dined on sights and smells,’
“He did every species of dramatic
and musical hack work in drawing rooms, in clubs,
and in special performances in theatres. Sometimes
he got into an obscure provincial company, but he
said that his very cleverness was a kind of curse,
since the harder he worked and the better the audiences
liked him, the quicker he was discharged. The
established favorites of these little companies always
struck when a newcomer made a hit.
“Richard Barker was the stage
manager and Mansfield could never please him.
After trying again and again, he once cried: ’Please,
Barker, do let me alone. I shall be all right.
I have acted the part.’ ‘Not you,’
declared Barker. ’Act? You act, man?
You will never act as long as you live!’
“The recollection of the rebuffs,
poverty, starvation, inability to find sympathy, because,
possibly, of the pride which repelled it, the ill-fortune
which snatched the extended opportunity just as he
was about to grasp it, the jealousy of established
favorites of the encroaching popularity of newcomers,
the hardships of provincial travel and life in a part
of the country and at a time when the play-actor was
still regarded as a kind of vagabond and was paid
as such, the severity of the discipline he encountered
from the despots over him all painted pictures
on his memory and fed a fire under the furnace of
his nature which tempered the steel in his composition
to inflexibility. The stern rod of discipline
was held over him every moment and often fell with
unforgetable severity. He was trained by autocrats
in a school of experience more autocratic than anything
known to the younger actors of this generation.
“When the part of Chevrial was
given to him, Mansfield was fascinated with his opportunity,
but he kept his counsel. He applied every resource
of his ability to the composition of his performance
of the decrepit old rake. He sought specialists
on the infirmities of roues; he studied specimens
in clubs, on the avenue, and in hospitals; and in
the privacy of his own room he practiced make-ups
for the part every spare moment. The rehearsals
themselves were sufficiently uneventful. He gave
evidence of a careful, workmanlike performance, but
promise of nothing more.
“While he was working out the
part Mansfield scarcely ate or slept. He had
a habit of dining with a group of young Bohemians at
a table d’hote in Sixth Avenue. The means
of none of them made regularity at these forty-cent
banquets possible, so his absence was meaningless.
One evening, however, he dropped into his accustomed
chair, but tasted nothing.
“‘What’s the matter, Mansfield?’
asked one of the others.
“To-morrow night I shall be famous,’ he
said. ‘Come and see the play,’
“His friends were accustomed
to lofty talk from him. His prophecy was answered
with a light laugh and it had passed out of their memories
as they drifted into the night. This was one
of those intuitions to which he often confessed, and
it told him that the years of apprenticeship were
behind him and the artist in him was on the eve of
acknowledgment.
“On the night of January 11,
1883, the theatre was radiant with an expectant audience half
convinced in advance by the record of the Union Square’s
past, but by the same token exacting to a merciless
degree to see their old friends in the
first performance in America of ’A Parisian
Romance.’
“Mansfield made his entrance
as the Baron Chevrial within a few moments after the
rise of the curtain. It was effected in an unconcerned
silence on the part of the audience.
“There were, on the other hand,
the deserved receptions of old favorites by old friends,
as Miss Jewett, Miss Vernon, Miss Carey, Mr. DeBelleville,
Mr. Parselle and Mr. Whiting came upon the scene.
“When Chevrial, finding himself
alone with Tirandel and Laubaniere, exposed his amusingly
cynical views of life and society, some attention
was paid to a remarkable portrait of a polished, but
coarse, gay, though aging, voluptuary. The scene
was short and he was soon off, though not without
a little impudent touch, in passing the maid in the
doorway, that did not slip unnoticed. The dramatic
disclosures which followed brought the act to a close
with applause that augured well. Henri, Marcelle,
and Mme. De Targy were called forward enthusiastically.
“The second act revealed the
Baron’s chambers. With the exception of
two minutes, he was on the stage until the curtain
fell. The Baron’s effort, so precisely
detailed, to reach and raise the dumb-bells from the
floor; the inveterate libertine’s interview
with shrewd Rosa, the danseuse, who took the
tips he expected would impoverish her and thus put
her in his power, for the purpose of playing them
the other way: the biting deliberation of his
interview with his good Baroness and Henri, who comes
to ruin himself to save his family’s honor all
held the audience with a new sensation. As he
pushed his palsied arms into his coat and pulled himself
fairly off his feeble feet in his effort to button
it, turned up to his door humming like a preying bumble-bee,
faced slowly about again, his piercing little pink
eyes darting with anticipation, and off the trembling
old lips droned the telling speech: ’I wonder
how his pretty little wife will bear poverty.
H’m! We shall see’ the
curtain fell to applause which was for the newcomer
alone. He had interested the audience and was
talked about between the acts.
“Mr. Palmer rushed back to his
dressing-room and found him studiously adding new
touches to his make-up for the next act. ‘Young
man,’ exclaimed the manager, ‘do you know
you’re making a hit?’ ’That’s
what I’m paid for,’ replied Mansfield,
without lowering the rabbit’s foot.
“The third act was largely Marcelle’s.
The Baron was on for an episodic interval, but succeeded,
in that he did not destroy the impression already
created.
“The fourth act revealed a magnificent
banquet hall with a huge table laden with crystal,
silver, snowy linens, flowers, and lights. At
the top of a short stairway at the back was a gallery
and an arched window through which one looked up the
green aisle of the Champs-Elysee to the Arc de
Triomphe, dimly visible in the moonlight.
The Baron entered for one last glance over the preparations
for his petit souper for Rosa and her sister
of the ballet at the Opera.
“The effectiveness of his entrance
was helped by his appearance behind a colonnade, and
there he stood, only half revealed, swaying unsteadily
while his palsied hand adjusted his monocle to survey
the scene. There was a flutter of applause from
the audience but, appreciatively, it quickly hushed
itself. He dragged himself forward. The cosmetic
could not hide the growing pallor of the parchment
drawn over the old reprobate’s skull. He
crept around the table and, with a marvellous piece
of ‘business’ by which he held his wobbly
legs while he slowly swung a chair under him, collapsed.
The picture was terrible, but fascinating. People
who would, could not turn their heads. His valet
was quick with water and held the glass in place on
the salver while he directed it to the groping arm.
The crystal clinked on Chevrial’s teeth as he
sucked the water.
“Presently he found his legs
again and tottered up to the staircase. The picture
of the black, shrivelled little man dragging his lifeless
legs up to the gallery step by step was never forgotten
by anyone who saw it. At the top he turned and
said in ominous tones: ’I do not wish to
be disturbed in the morning. I shall need a long
sleep’; and dragged himself out of sight.
He had been on the stage five minutes and had said
scarcely fifty words. The picture and the effect
were unmistakable. The audience capitulated.
There was a roar of applause which lasted several minutes.
“The whispered discussion of
this scene was such that scarcely any attention was
paid to the stage until the Baron returned. Almost
immediately afterward the ballet girls pirouetted into
the hall in a flutter of gauze, and the places at
the tables were filled. No one listened to the
lines; all eyes in the house were focussed on the
withered, shrunken, flaccid little old Baron, who sat
at Rosa’s right, ignored by everyone about him
as they gorged on his food and drank his wines.
“Soon he drew himself up on
his feet and, raising his glass, said: ’Here’s
to the god from whom our pleasures come. Here’s
to Plutus and a million!”
“The gay throng about the table
echoed the toast: To Plutus and a million!’
and Chevrial continued:
“’While I am up I will
give a second toast: ’Here’s to Rosa!
The most splendid incarnation that I know!’
“Placing the glass to her lips
for a first sip, the lecherous old pagan’s own
lips sought the spot, sipped, and he sank back into
his chair.
“What else went on till he rose
again no one knew or minded. No eye in the house
could wander from the haggard, evil, smiling, but sinister,
old face. Presently he was up once more and,
with his raised goblet brimming with champagne, he
offered a third toast:
“’Here’s to material
Nature, the prolific mother of all we know, see, or
hear. Here’s to the matter that sparkles
in our glasses, and runs through our veins as a river
of youth; here’s to the matter that our eyes
caress as they dwell on the bloom of those young cheeks.
Here’s to the matter that here’s
to here’s the matter the
matter that here’s ’
“The attack had seized him.
Terrible and unforgetable was the picture of the dissolution.
The lips twitched, the eyes rolled white, the raised
hand trembled, the wine sputtered like the broken
syllables which the shattered memory would not send
and the swollen tongue suddenly could not utter.
For one moment of writhing agony he held the trembling
glass aloft; then his arm dropped with a swiftness
that shattered the crystal. Instinctively he
groped up to the stairs for light and air. He
reeled as if every step would be his last. Rosa
helped him up to the window, but recoiled from him
with a shriek. Again his hand flew up, but there
was neither glass, wine, nor words. He rolled
helplessly and fell to the floor, dead. The curtain
fell.
“It was probably the most realistically
detailed figure of refined moral and physical depravity,
searched to its inevitable end, the stage has ever
seen. For a moment after the curtain fell there
was a hush of awe and surprise. Then the audience
found itself and called Mansfield to the footlights
a dozen times. But neither then nor thereafter
would he appear until he had removed the wig and make-up
of the dead Baron. There was no occasion to change
his clothes; he wore the conventional evening suit.
The effect of shrivelled undersizedness was purely
a muscular effect of the actor. The contrast
between the figure that fell at the head of the stairs
and the athletic young gentleman who acknowledged the
applause was no anti-climax.
“Mansfield had come into his
own. The superb art of his performance had dwarfed
all about it; the play was killed, but he was from
that moment a figure to be reckoned with in the history
of the theatre.”
It is said that when Paderewsky played
before Queen Victoria, she said to him: “Mr.
Paderewsky, you are a genius.” “Ah,
your Majesty,” he replied, “perhaps.
But before I was a genius, I was a drudge.”
And this is true. It is said that Paderewsky
spent hours every day, even after achieving his fame,
practising the scale, improving his technique, and
keeping himself in prime condition.
Study the life and achievement of
any great man of genius. His genius has consisted
principally in his wonderful capacity to labor for
perfection in the most minute detail. And yet
most ambitious misfits are unwilling to work hard.
Their products always show lack of finish due to slipshod
methods, unwillingness to spend time, to take pains
to bring what they do up to a standard of beautiful
perfection, so far as perfection is humanly possible.
Those who are mentally lazy do not belong in an artistic
vocation. There are probably many things that
they can do and do well in some less spectacular lines,
some calling that does not require such mental effort.
MISFITS IN THE PROFESSIONS
In the traditional educational system
the common school is not particularly adapted to prepare
its pupils for life, but rather to prepare them for
either a high school or a preparatory school.
Passing on to the high school, the same condition
prevails. The whole question in every high school
and every preparatory school is whether the training
will accredit one to certain colleges and universities.
So the traditional high school graduate is not prepared
for life; he is prepared for college or the university.
He goes on to the university. There he finds that
he is being prepared chiefly for four or five learned
professions the law, the ministry, medicine,
engineering, and teaching. In the beginning, the
university was supposed to train a man, not for work,
but for leisure. The very word scholar means
a man of leisure. People were trained, therefore,
not for usefulness, but for show; not to earn their
living in the world, but rather, their living having
been provided for them by a thoughtful government
or a kind-hearted parent, to present evidences of the
fact. One of the chief of such evidences was
the ability to go to a college or university and to
take the time to learn a great deal of useless knowledge
about dead languages, philosophies, and dry-as-dust
sciences. While this is not true to so great
an extent to-day, there is still much of the old tradition
clinging about colleges and universities, and we are
training men and women, not for commercial or industrial
or agricultural lines, but rather, for the learned
professions.
THE “WHITE COLLAR MAN”
In England and other European countries
no man is held to be a gentleman who has ever earned
his living by the work of his hands. No one is
accredited with standing as an amateur athlete who
has ever “lost caste” in this way.
While this caste feeling is not so strong in America
as it is abroad, it still has a considerable influence
upon parents and their children in the selection of
a vocation. While one does not lose caste by
doing manual labor, temporarily or as a makeshift,
he suffers socially, in certain circles, who chooses
deliberately a vocation which requires him to wear
soiled clothing, to carry a plebeian dinner-pail, and
to work hard with his hands. Because of this,
many bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers,
plasterers, plumbers, and other workers, ambitious
socially for their sons, instead of teaching them trades
in which they might excel and in which there might
be an unrestricted future for them, train them for
clerical and office work. Having felt the social
handicap themselves, these men and their wives determine
that their children shall belong to the class which
wears good clothes, has soft, white hands, and eats
luncheon at a cafeteria or from a paper
parcel which can be respectably hidden in an inside
coat pocket. And so there are armies of “white
collar men” who would be healthier, wealthier,
more useful, and happier if they wore overalls and
jumpers.
The “typical” bank clerk
is a good illustration. Pallid from long hours
indoors, stooped from his concentration upon interminable
columns of figures, dissatisfied, discontented, moving
along painfully in a narrow groove, out of which there
seems to be no way, underpaid, he is one of the tragedies
of our commercial and financial age. While the
section-hand may become a section boss, a roadmaster,
a division superintendent, a general superintendent,
a general manager, and, finally, the president of a
railroad; while the stock boy becomes, eventually,
a salesman, then a sales manager, and, finally, the
head of the corporation; while apprentices to carpenters,
bricklayers, and plumbers may become journeymen, and
then contractors, and, finally, owners of big buildings;
while the farmhand may become a farm owner, then a
landlord, and, finally, perhaps, the president of
a bank; while a workman in a factory handling a wheelbarrow
may afterward become the president of the greatest
corporation in the world, the clerk, toiling over
his papers and his books, is almost inevitably sentenced
to a lifetime of similar toil, with small opportunities
for advancement before him.
There are men fitted by inheritance
and training for clerical work and what lies beyond
and above it. They are so constituted that they
have the ability to take advantage of opportunities,
to forge to the front from such a beginning, and to
rise to commanding positions. But this is not
true of the men who have aptitudes which would make
them successful in active work with their hands, and
afterward with hand and brain. These men of inherent
activity and skill of hand, men whose bones and muscles
were made for work, whose whole nature calls for the
out-of-doors, are doomed to stagnate, grow discontented,
and finally lose hope, if compelled by pride or bad
judgment to undertake the “white collar man’s”
job.
SOCIAL VALUE OF THE “WHITE COLLAR MAN”
Regarding the social deficiency of
this class of worker Martha Brensley Bruere and Robert
W. Bruere, in their excellent book, “Increasing
Home Efficiency,” have the following to say:
“The output of their domestic
factory so far is two sons able to earn living salaries,
who are useful to the community undoubtedly, but as
easy to replace if damaged as any other standard products
that come a dozen to the box. They themselves
didn’t like the upper reaches of the artisan
class where they had spent their lives, so they boosted
their sons till they could make a living by the sweat
of their brains instead of the sweat of their brows.
Society can use the Shaw boys, but is it profitable
to produce them at the price? The money that
made these boys into a clerk and a stenographer cost
twenty years of their parents’ brain and muscle.
Mrs. Shaw has bred the habit of saving into her own
bones till now, when she might shift the flatiron,
the cook stove and the sewing machine from her shoulders,
she can’t let go the $10 a month her ‘help’
eats and wastes long enough to straighten up her spine.
These two boys and a daughter still in the making
have cost their father and mother twenty years, which
Mr. Shaw sums up by saying:
“’So, you see, the final
result of making up your mind to do a thing, including
the great trouble of bringing up a family, is just
getting down to the ground and grinding.’
“Isn’t it just possible
that society has lost as much in the parents as it
has gained in the children? Couldn’t we
have got the same product some cheaper way? Or
a better product by more efficient home management?”
WOMEN’S WORK
Perhaps the saddest of all the misfits
are to be found amongst women, or it may be that their
cases seem to us to be saddest because there are so
many of them. Under the old-time regime there
was but one vocation open to women that
of wife and mother. Regardless of aptitudes, physical
strength or weakness, personal likes or dislikes,
all women were expected to marry and bear children,
and to qualify successfully for a vocation which combined
the duties of nursemaid, waitress, laundress, seamstress,
baker, cook, governess, purchasing agent, dietitian,
accountant, and confectioner. In the early days
of this country, in addition to these duties, women
were also called upon to be butchers, sausage-makers,
tailors, spinners, weavers, shoemakers, candle-makers,
cheese-makers, soap-makers, dyers, gardeners, florists,
shepherds, bee-keepers, poultry-keepers, brewers,
picklers, bottlers, butter-makers, mil-liners, dressmakers,
hatters, and first-aid physicians, surgeons and nurses.
In more modern times, women have entered nearly all
vocations. But even yet there is much prejudice
against the woman who “descends” out of
her traditional “sphere.” The woman
who is not a wife, mother, and house-keeper or
a domestic parasite, housekeeping by proxy loses
caste among the patricians. Many men and, on
their behalf, their mothers and sisters, shudder at
the sordid thought of marrying a girl who has been
so base as to “work for her living.”
And so stenographers, clerks, accountants, saleswomen,
factory workers, telephone operators, and all other
women in the business world are about 99 per cent temporary
workers. Even in executive positions and in the
professions, most women look upon wages and salaries
as favoring breezes, necessary until they drop anchor
in the haven of matrimony. And even those who
most sincerely proclaim themselves wedded to their
careers, in many instances, exercise their ancient
privilege, change their minds, and give up all else
for husband and home.
Every normal woman was intended by
nature to marry. It is right that she should
marry. She does not truly and fully live unless
she does marry. She misses deep and true joy
who is not happily married and usually feels
cheated. But the same may be said of every normal
man. The difference is that, according to tradition,
marriage is woman’s career, while man may choose
a life work according to his aptitudes. Because
of prejudice, however, it is rarely that the happily
married woman makes a business or professional career.
Husbands, except those who do so through necessity
or those who are unafraid of convention, do not permit
their wives to work outside of the home. Because
of false pride, many men say: “I am the
bread-winner. If I cannot support my wife as she
should be supported, then I do not wish to marry.”
And so thousands of women sigh away their lives at
work they hate while a hungry, sad world suffers for
what they would love to do.
The waste of these misfits is threefold:
First, the women lose the opportunity for service,
profit, and enjoyment which should be theirs.
Second, the world loses the excellent services which
they might render. Third, oftentimes these women
are very poor housekeepers. They simply have
not the aptitudes. Their husbands and their families
suffer.
WOMEN WITHOUT HOMES
Another very large class of misfits,
and, perhaps, even more to be pitied than any other,
is composed of the women who are compelled to earn
a living in the business world, in the professional
world, or elsewhere, whose true place is in the home.
Many of these are unmarried, either because the right
man has not presented himself, or because there are
not enough really desirable men in the community to
go around. Others are widows. Still others
are women who have been deserted by their mates.
Some of them are compelled to support their parents,
brothers, and sisters, or even their husbands.
If traditional methods and courses
of education miss the needs of many of our young men,
what shall we say of conventional education for girls?
Well, to tell the truth, we do not know what to say.
Educational experts, reformers, philosophers, investigators,
and editors have spoken and written volumes on the
subject. Women upon whom the different kinds of
educational formulae have been tried have also written
about it. Some of them have told tragic stories.
There has been, and is, much controversy. Some
say one thing some another but
what shall common sense say? After all, education
is rather a simple problem in its essentials.
It means development development of inborn
talents. And education ought especially to develop
the natural aptitude of most of our girls for efficiency
in home-making and child-rearing. Most young
women enter upon the vocation of wifehood and motherhood
practically without any training for these duties.
It is as unscientific to expect all
women to be successful wives and mothers as it would
be to expect all men to be successful farmers.
It is as tragic to expect an untrained girl to be
a successful wife and mother as it would be to expect
an untrained boy to be a successful physician and
surgeon.
EXECUTIVES AND DETAIL WORKERS
A very broad division of misfits is
into those who are fitted to do detail work, trying
to do executive work, and those who are natural-born
executives compelled to do detail work. This is
a very common cause of unfitness.
Some men love detail and can do it
well. They naturally see the little things.
Their minds are readily occupied with accuracy in what
seem to others to be trifles, but which, taken together,
make perfection. They are careful; they are dependable;
they can be relied upon. Such people, however,
do not have a ready grasp for large affairs. They
cannot see things in their broader aspect. They
are not qualified by nature to outline plans in general
for other people to work out in detail. They are
the men upon whom the world must depend for the careful
working out of the little things so essential if the
larger plans are to go through successfully.
On the other hand, there are some
people who have no patience with details. They
do not like them. They cannot attend to them.
If depended upon for exactitude and accuracy, they
are broken reeds. They forget detail.
There are many executives holding
important positions and making a sad failure of them
because they are, by natural aptitudes, excellent detail
men but poor planners and executives. The following
story illustrates, perhaps, as well as anything we
could present, the qualities of these overworked,
busy, busy executives who have no right to be executives,
but ought to be carrying out the plans of someone
else:
HOW SOCRATIC HELPED BRAINERD BUILD BUSINESS
People sometimes bring their business
troubles to a friend whom we shall call Socratic.
And Socratic helps them out for a consideration.
His time is valuable and he bought his wisdom at a
high price.
Some months ago a pompous fellow dropped
in. We recognized him as Brainerd, one of the
leading business men of a small city. His story
was this: He had built up a big enterprise during
the pioneer boom days of easy money and negligible
competition. Now, when margins were closer, the
pace hotter, and a half dozen keen fellows were scrambling
for their shares of a trade he had formerly controlled
jointly with one other conservative house, he found
sales falling off and his profits dwindling to a minus
quantity.
Socratic heard him through; then said:
“I’ll look your business over, tell you
the troubles, and show you how to remedy them for one
hundred dollars.”
“Oh, I couldn’t afford
to pay that much, the way business is now,”
Brainerd objected.
“How much, then, do you figure
it would be worth to you to have your sales and profits
climb back to high-water mark?”
“Oh, that would be worth thousands
of dollars, of course. But can you guarantee
me any such results?”
KEEPING THE APPOINTMENT
“Well, if you carefully study
over what I tell you, and faithfully follow my advice,
and the results are not satisfactory, you need pay
me nothing. Is that agreeable?”
“Sure! If you can show
me how to bring my profits back to normal, I’ll
gladly pay you two hundred.”
“It’s a go!” said
Socratic. “Have the contract drawn up ready
to sign when I call to begin my examination.
When shall that be?”
“Well, let’s see.
I’m so all-fired busy it’s hard to find
time for anything. Say early next week sometime.”
“All right. What day?”
“Oh, Tuesday or Wednesday.”
“Tuesday will be satisfactory. What hour?”
“Well, some time in the forenoon, I guess.”
“Ten o’clock be all right?”
“Yes, ten o’clock will do.”
“Very well, I’ll be there at ten sharp.”
Tuesday morning, at ten sharp, Socratic
stood by Brainerd’s desk. Brainerd was
working away like a busy little high-pressure hoisting-engine.
He looked up with a bright smile.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?
Sorry, but I can’t do anything for you to-day.
I’m awfully up against it for time. Can’t
you drop in a little later in the week?”
“What day?” Socratic asked.
“Oh, Thursday or Friday,” a little impatiently.
“Thursday is all right. What hour?
Ten o’clock do?”
“Yes, yes, that will do,”
sighed the busy, busy business man, his nose deep
in his work.
Socratic turned on his heel and walked out.
THE HEAD CLERK’S SALARY
Thursday morning he was again beside
Brainerd’s desk. It was easy to see that
this little buzz-fly was a mile up in the air.
Hi$ coat was off, his cuffs turned back, his collar
unbuttoned, his hair mussed, and he had a streak of
soot across his nose. He hardly looked up.
Just kept chugging away like a motor-cycle going up-grade
at fifty miles an hour.
Oh, but he was the busy man!
“Sorry to disappoint you again,
Socratic,” he jerked out, “but I haven’t
got time to breathe. You’ll have to come
in again.”
“Making stacks of money with
all this strenuous activity, I suppose?” asked
Socratic.
“Oh, no! It keeps me on
the jump like a toad under a harrow to pay expenses.”
“Call that a profitable way
to spend time and nervous energy so prodigally?”
“It may not be I suppose it isn’t,
but I can’t help it.”
“Your head clerk draws pretty good pay, doesn’t
he?” asked Socratic.
“Why, yes,” answered Brainerd, staring.
“Probably has a bigger income to handle, personally,
than you have?”
“Oh, I guess so” You’ll
have to excuse me, Socratic. I’m too busy
to talk to-day.”
“Queer, but your head clerk
and cashier seem to have plenty of time for conversation.
They have been scrapping for fifteen minutes about
chances of the Pirates and the Cubs. You feel
happy to pay people big salaries for talking baseball?”
“No; of course not; but how
can I help it? A man can’t hire reliable
help for love or money in this town, and I haven’t
got time to watch all of ’em.”
“How would it do to have the
bookkeeper check up those sales-slips you are tearing
your hair over, instead of manicuring her pretty paddies
and tucking in her scolding locks?”
“Well, she was doing something
else when I began. Excuse me a minute.”
SOME FOOL EXCUSES
And Brainerd dashed away to the front
of the store to wait on a nicely dressed lady who
had just come in. When he returned he said:
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Socratic, I’ve
been thinking over the matter of our contract, and
I don’t believe I’m prepared to go into
that thing at present. Times are so hard and
I am so rushed for time, and you would probably recommend
a lot of things I couldn’t afford, and likely
couldn’t work in with my present system.
I guess I’ll have to let it go for the present.
It would be a good thing, no doubt, but I guess I’ll
have to do the best I can without it. Some time
later, perhaps, I’ll take it up with you.
Why, I don’t even get time to read the papers,
and I certainly wouldn’t have time to go into
that examination with you.”
“I’ve completed my examination,”
remarked Socratic.
“Why, how’s that?” gasped Brainerd.
“When did you do it?”
“The day you were in my office.
What I have seen and heard on my two visits here only
confirms the diagnosis of your case I made then.
But the real purpose of the two calls was to endeavor
to make you see your troubles as I see them.”
“I don’t know what you
mean, sir,” said Brainerd, piqued by the unmistakable
trend of Socratic’s remarks.
“I rather think you do, but
I’ll take no chances. Your business is
desperately ill, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess it is,” reluctantly.
“Then it needs a heroic remedy, doesn’t
it?”
“Possibly.”
“And that remedy must be applied to the source
of the trouble. Not so?”
“Yes.”
And that source is none other than
Mr. James H. Brainerd. No, don’t blow up
with a loud report. Listen to me. You are
really too good a business man to go to the wall for
the want of a little teachableness. You have
foresight, initiative, energy, and perseverance.
These are success-qualities of a high order.
But you have fallen into some very costly bad habits.
Let me give you the names of six old-fashioned
virtues that you are going to start right in to cultivate.
When you have developed them, your profits will take
care of themselves.
THE REMEDY
The first is Order. You waste
seventy-five per cent of your time and nervous energy
because you let your work push you instead of planning
your work and then pushing your plan.
The second is Punctuality. You
lose time, money, friends, temper, and will-power
because you are vague and careless about making appointments
and slipshod about keeping them.
The third is Courtesy. This has
its source in consideration for others and is closely
allied to tact. When you ask me to come and help
you, and then tell me you are sorry you can do nothing
for me, or sorry to disappoint me, that’s patronizing.
When you ignore a caller and go to reading papers
on your desk, that’s rudeness. And you can’t
afford them in your business.
The fourth is Economy. Your time
is worth more to this business than that of all the
help put together. And when you spend it doing
what a ten-dollar-a-week girl could do just as well,
it is sinful extravagance. It wastes not only
your time, but hers. Worst of all, it undermines
your self-respect and her respect for you.
The fifth is Honesty. When you
rush away to wait on some customer yourself because
that customer has connived with you for some special
cut rates, you may not intend it, but you are dishonest.
Business must be done at a profit and all those who
share in the privileges of buying from this store
should share proportionately in paying you your profit.
If anyone doesn’t pay his share, the others
have to make up for it Give everybody a square, equal
deal. That will build confidence and increase
trade. And then you can leave your salespeople
to wait on all customers, giving you more time for
real management generalship.
The sixth is Courage. It’s
easy enough to see obstacles, to make excuses, to
procrastinate. When a hard task has to be done,
you will find it no help to begin to catalog the difficulties.
Just fear not, and do it.
Now, you are going to cultivate these
virtues, Brainerd, because you see that I am right
and because, after all, you are a man of good judgment
and reason.
“Never mind the contract.
When you think my advice has proved its value, send
me what you think it is worth.”
And he walked out, leaving Brainerd
purple in the face with a number of varied emotions,
chief among which were outraged dignity and warm gratitude.
While you and we know many Brainerds,
there are men capable of handling large affairs who,
through lack of training, lack of opportunity, or a
choice of a wrong vocation, are sentenced to sit, year
after year, working away in an inefficient, fumbling
manner, with a mass of details which they hate and
which they are not fitted to take care of properly.
Such people are often conscientious; they have a great
desire to do their work thoroughly and well, and the
fact that they so frequently neglect little details,
forget things that they ought to do, overlook necessary
precautions, and otherwise fail to perform their duties,
is a matter not only of supreme regret and humiliation
to them, but of great distress to those who depend
upon them.
CAREFULNESS AND RECKLESSNESS
Carefulness and prudence are natural
aptitudes. The careless man is not wilfully careless.
He is careless because he has not the aptitudes which
make a man careful. The imprudent man is not wilfully
imprudent, but because he does not have the inherent
qualifications for prudence, the taking of precautions,
the wise and careful scrutinizing of all the elements
entering into success. For some work men are required
who have the natural aptitudes of carefulness and
prudence. The great tragedy is that this kind
of work is often entrusted to men who are so constituted
that it is very easy for them to take chances.
The person who is naturally optimistic and hopeful
and always looks on the bright side cheerfully expects
whatever he does to “come out all right,”
as he expresses it. He therefore neglects to
take sufficient precautions; he does not exercise
care as he should; he takes unnecessary and unwise
risks. The result is that oftentimes his optimism
turns out to be very poorly justified. When things
do go wrong on account of their carelessness, such
people may feel distressed about it for a time, but
they soon recover. They hope for “better
luck next time.” They expect, by their ingenuity
and resourcefulness, to more than make up for the
troubles which have come as the result of their carelessness.
On the other hand, those who are naturally careful
and dependable do not have much hope of things coming
out right without eternal vigilance and foresight.
They are inherently somewhat apprehensive. They
take precautions, are on their guard, and leave no
stone unturned whose turning may insure success.
But there are certain classes of work
which require a willingness to take chances.
Such enterprises are speculative. In order to
be happy in them, one must have a certain amount of
optimism and hopefulness. He must accept temporary
failure without discouragement. The heart to look
on the bright side of every cloud must be born in
one. He must believe always that the future will
bring more desirable results. The careless person
delights in this kind of work. The element of
chance in it appeals to his sporting blood. The
danger gives him needed excitement and thrill.
The anxious, apprehensive person has no place in such
enterprises. Their uncertainties are a drain
upon his nervous system. He worries. He makes
himself ill with his anxieties and apprehensions.
He is unhappy. When disaster does happen, he
takes it seriously, feels discouraged, thinks his efforts
have been of no avail, can see nothing in the future
but black ruin, and otherwise destroys not only his
joy in his work, but his efficiency and usefulness
in it.
In actual practice we find both prudent
and reckless misfits. Such people are unhappy,
inefficient, and usually unsuccessful. It is strange
that men do not understand, before undertaking a vocation,
so elemental and fundamental a thing as the question
of carelessness and carefulness. Yet, somehow
or other, they do not. We find thousands of men
worrying, anxious, distrait, because of the uncertainties
of their businesses and the chances they have to take.
We find other thousands of men blundering, careless,
optimistic, always hopeful for better things in the
future, and yet attempting to succeed in a business
which requires care, infinite pains and precautions.
Thoughtless, impulsive, frivolous people are always
trying to do work requiring careful, plodding, painstaking,
methodical ways; while thoughtful, philosophic, and
deliberate people oftentimes find themselves distressed,
bewildered, and inefficient in the hurly-burly of
some swift-moving vocation.
SOME OTHER MISFITS
Mild, easy-going, timid, self-conscious
men we frequently find in vocations which require
aggressiveness, courage, fighting ability, self-confidence,
and a considerable amount of hard-headed brutality.
On the other hand, we sometimes find the fighting
man in a profession which is considered to be quiet
and peaceable.
Similarly, we have often seen lawyers,
whose profession requires of them a good deal of combativeness,
shrewdness, a certain degree of skepticism, and a
large amount of hard-headed determination to win, no
matter what the cost, handicapped by extreme sensitiveness,
sympathy, generosity, non-resistance, credulity, humility,
and self-consciousness. Physically, they were
wonderfully capable of success as lawyers. Intellectually,
they, perhaps, were even better fitted for the profession
than many of their brothers in the legal fraternity.
But, emotionally, they were absolutely unfit for the
competition, the contest, the necessity for combat
and severity in the practice of law.
Contrawise, we have often seen hard-headed,
shrewd, skeptical, grasping, unprincipled, aggressive,
fighting men in professions where they did not belong;
in professions requiring sympathy, credulity, kindness,
tact, generosity, unselfishness, and other such qualities.
We have not, in this chapter, outlined all of the
different classes of misfits. That would be impossible.
We have, however, referred to the most common of them.
Probably nine-tenths of all the misfits which have
come under our observation could be classified under
one or more of the heads we have outlined in the foregoing
chapter.