THE IMPRACTICAL MAN

“My life is a failure,” wrote Sydney Williams to us, “and I do not know why.”

In middle life my grandfather Williams moved his family across the Potomac River from Virginia in order to study to enter the ministry. He is said to have freed some slaves at that time, so he must have been a ‘planter,’ He became a Congregational minister. My grandfather Jacobs was a carpenter; but, as I knew him, and for some years before my birth, he was a helpless invalid from paralysis on one side.

My father graduated from college and then became a minister. He preached for many years, then he took up work with a religious publishing house, finally having charge of the work at St. Paul. He was there, I believe, when he was elected president of a small school for girls. He assumed his new duties in June and I was born the following November. (I am the youngest of eleven children, of whom there are now three boys and five girls still living, three boys having died while still babies before my birth.)

Until I was nearly twelve years old we lived at the girls’ school, which father succeeded in greatly enlarging. Mother taught me to read a little and write a little. She and others read to me a great deal. I had no playmates except my nephews and nieces, to whom I was continually being pointed out as a ‘model.’ Out of the sight of the grown-ups, I was not always such a model as they could have wished; yet I did feel a certain amount of responsibility that was oppressive and repressive. When nearly eleven, I was sent to the public school, where I was soon promoted with two others. The next year father and mother moved into a larger town, so that I had a few months of real home life before my father’s death in April, 1893.

Then my mother, her mother, and I went to Wisconsin to live with a married sister of mine whose husband was the Presbyterian minister there. I entered the fourth grade of the public school that fall; but, by the end of the school year, I had completed the fifth grade.

My mother died in May, 1896. I continued to live with my sister. Finished the seventh grade that June, but entered preparatory school that fall. In November, 1897, my brother-in-law moved to Iowa, and I made the mistake of deciding to go with him. While living in Wisconsin, I had become acquainted with a fine lot of boys. One of them organized a small military company; I was elected quarter-master and, later, lieutenant. I now know that that was because we were considered ‘rich,’ Also in Wisconsin I overcame some of my extreme bashfulness in regard to girls, derived from babyhood experiences. In fact, one reason I decided to leave Wisconsin was the fear that the friendship with one girl might become too serious; I was beginning to shun responsibility.

ATTAINMENTS IN SCHOLARSHIP

In Iowa I entered the high school and completed the tenth grade the next June (1898). My elder brother was my official guardian and he wanted me to make a change. As a result, in September, 1898, I had my first experience of being away alone by entering a famous academy. There I earned the reputation of being a ‘grind,’ and graduated second in my class in June, 1901. While there I went out for football, and made the third team and even played once on the second. My poor eyesight hindered me somewhat, but still more the fact that I was not eager to fall down on the ball on the hard ground when it did not seem to me necessary. I was quite ready to get hurt, if there was any reason for it. That, too, was a mistake on my part.

That September I entered Harvard University. My father had left some insurance, and mother left some of it to me for a college education. She expected, as did my sisters and brothers, that I would become a minister. By the end of my Freshman year I had decided that I could not do so, but from that time I was unable to decide what I did want to do or could do. Consequently I did not get the good out of a college education that I might have. Moreover, though I stood fairly well in most of my classes, I did not always understand the subjects as well as the professors thought I did. As soon as it became possible to elect subjects, I dropped Latin, Greek, and German, and specialized in history, economics, etc. I graduated ‘Cum Laude,’ But that was really a failure, considering what I might have done.

But I did well enough to receive recommendation for a $500 fellowship that enabled me to return for another year. I did work which caused me to be recommended for an A.M. degree. But I felt that I had so little in comparison with others, that I was actually ashamed to receive it. Socially, however, that extra year was a very delightful one for me.

During two summers as an undergraduate, I worked at Nantasket Beach selling tickets in the bathing pavilion for $50 a month, besides room and board. I made good, much to the surprise of the superintendent.

HUNTING A JOB

So then I was finally through college in June, 1906. It is almost incredible how very childlike I still was, so far as my attitude toward the world was concerned. I had high ideals, and I wanted to get into business, but where or how I did not know. Moreover, my money was gone. A student gave me a note with which I intended to get his previous summer’s job as a starter on an electric car line owned by a railway company. The position was abolished, however, so I became a conductor on a suburban line. Unfortunately, my motorman was a high-strung, nervous Irishman, who made me so nervous that I often could not give the signals properly, and who made life generally unpleasant for me. He professed a liking for me and did prevent one or two serious accidents. At the same time, he said I was the first ‘square’ conductor he had ever worked with, and, no doubt, he missed his ‘extra,’ After three weeks of him, and of the general public’s idea that I must, of course, be knocking down fares, I resigned. However, the superintendent offered me a job as ‘inspector’ of registers on the main line, a job that he was just creating. When the rush was over after Labor Day, I was again out of a job. I might have secured a clerkship with the railway company, but I was foolish enough not to try.

A few weeks later found me established in the district office of a correspondence school not very far from New York City as a representative. At first I gave good promise of success, but I lost my enthusiasm and belief in the school and became ashamed to be numbered as one of its workers because of the character of most of the local field force at that time and before my time. The reputation of the school in that place was not very good. Also I was not successful in collecting the monthly payments from those who had hard luck stories or had been lied to by the man who had enrolled them. By the end of two months I was ready to quit, but my immediate superior begged me to stay, in order to keep him from having to break in a new man just then. At the end of about four months I did resign to save being kicked out. Mind you, I was to blame, all right; for I had given up a real continuous effort beyond the merest routine and the attempt to collect the monthly payments. While I was there I did write a few contracts, among them a cash one amounting to $80. But, toward the end, my lack of success was due to my utter disgust with myself for being so blamed poor and for shirking.

AN ATTEMPT IN ORANGE CULTURE

Going back to a brother in New York, I tried to land a job, but, of course, in such a state of mind, I could not. Then I went to my older brother in Cincinnati, where he was, and is, the pastor of a large church. Unfortunately, he did not take me by the back of the neck and kick me into some kind of work, any kind. At last, in March, 1908, he helped me to come out West. I landed in Los Angeles, and indirectly through a friend of his I secured a job on an orange ranch in the San Gabriel Valley, which I held until the end of the season. Once more I was happy and contented. It was certainly a pleasure to work.

That fall, or rather winter (1908), I secured a place near San Diego, where I had shelter and food during the winters and small wages during the active seasons in return for doing the chores and other work.

I had become possessed with a desire for an orange grove, and refused to consider how much it would take to develop one. I was finally able to secure a small tract of unimproved land. But I found that the task of clearing it would be too great for me because of the great trees, so for this and other reasons I snatched at a chance to file on a homestead in the Imperial Valley. This was in May, 1910. Later that summer I was able to sell my piece of land near San Diego at a profit, so that in September I went over to get settled on my homestead. I employed a fellow to help me make a wagon trail for a mile or more and to build my cabin for me. I moved in the first of November. Early in 1912 I decided it would be impossible to irrigate enough land there to make a living at that time. Also the difficulties of living alone so far out in the desert were greater than I had anticipated. With the help of a friend, I was able to make final proof in July and pay the government for the 160 acres, instead of having to continue to live on it. I did stay, however, until the general election in 1912.

AT WORK IN A SURVEYING CREW

Then I went to Los Angeles to get something to do. The town was full of people seeking work, as usual, most of whom could present better records than I could. To be sure, my friends and even my old correspondence school boss gave me splendid recommendations, but I felt my lack of business training and feared that 999 out of any 1,000 employers would not take a chance with me on such a record as I had. Consequently I did not try very hard. For a while I was with a real estate firm trying to secure applications for a mortgage. The commission was $25, but, naturally, that did not go far toward expenses. It was not long before I was in a bad mental condition again through worrying, self-condemnation, and uncertainty. It would not have been difficult to prove that I was ‘insane.’

Finally an acquaintance of mine, a prominent lawyer, took up my case. He has a good personal and business friend who is the general manager of a large oil company with headquarters here in Bakersfield. When first appealed to, this gentleman refused point blank, because he had a bad opinion of college graduates in general (I really don’t blame him or other business men); but the lawyer used his influence to the utmost with the result that I came up here in March, 1913, and was sent up into the oil fields. I was put under the civil engineer, and for two months I was sort of ‘inspector’ and ‘force account’ man in connection with the building of a supply railroad, but I gradually worked into the regular surveying crew, first as substitute rear chainman, and then as the regular one. Before long I was head chainman. I could have remained a chainman with the same crew to this time, but I left a little over a year ago, as there once more seemed a chance to earn a place in the country.

ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT ORANGE CULTURE

A young fellow, now located near Bakersfield, whom I had known in San Diego, told me great tales that I was too anxious to believe, and finally made some fine promises to help me get a piece of what he said was his land and to bring it to a productive state. But when I reached his place, in February, he was not ready, willing or able to carry out his promises. He kept me hanging on, however, and as I had used up my savings in a month’s attendance at the short course of the State agricultural college and in bringing my goods from Bakersfield, I was compelled to get work from him as one of his orchard gang. I helped to set out several hundred trees and berry plants, and later knew what it meant to hoe for ten hours a day. I left him the latter part of July in order to work out a scheme I had thought of.

“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.