THE MAN OF BONE AND MUSCLE
Consider the record of the man of action.
He built the pyramids and temples of Egypt, raised up the monuments and
artistic triumphs of Greece, fared forth across the plains of Arabia and
the deserts of Africa on horses and camels before the dawn of history. He
wore the coat of mail of the Roman legion; he penetrated through the
northernmost forest of Europe; he pioneered in barbarous England.
Thousands of years ago he built ships and sailed them, and, finally, drove
them across the sea. Thus he found two new continents. In America, he cut
down forests, built roads, established industry, fought battles for
freedom, invented and built steamships, telephones, telegraphs, cotton
gins, aeroplanes, railroads, submarines thousands of electric light and
power stations, and millions of shops and factories. He explored darkest
Africa; found both the North and the South Poles. This man drives his
steamships at thirty knots an hour, his locomotives at 70 miles an hour,
his automobiles at 100, and his aeroplanes at 120. He is setting higher
and yet higher records for running, leaping, swimming, rowing, throwing
weights, and driving horses. He has organized great athletic contests,
baseball leagues, tennis associations, golf clubs, and other organizations
for the promotion of physical activity. The man of bone and muscle has
climbed to the peaks of all the mountains of the world; has dug down into
the depths of the earth after her treasures of gold and silver and the
baser metals, precious stones, and other products of the mines. This man
tills the fields, manufactures all fabricated products, and carries goods
to the ends of the earth. This active type mans navies, fills the ranks of
armies, erects great buildings, and cut through the backbone of a
continent.
ACTIVITY AND SPEED
This man loves motion. He is not satisfied with slow, languid motion, but
demands speed, greater and ever greater speed. And so his horses, his
locomotives, the machines in his factory, his automobiles, his aeroplanes,
his motor-cycles, his farm implements, his ocean liners, his motor boats,
are being constantly studied, constantly improved, and constantly raised
to higher and higher performances in speed of production, speed of
transportation, speed of accomplishment.
This man not only demands speed, but he demands space. The man who can
travel at a hundred miles an hour needs many hundred miles in which to
travel. This is why nearly all of his activities are in the big
out-of-doors; this is why he is constantly exploring and pioneering in
order to extend his boundaries. He has a craving for more space in which
to breathe, more scope of action.
This ardent and irrepressible desire for physical freedom, for physical
liberty of action, also leads to the desire for political and economical
freedom. All of our great liberators, from Moses down to Lincoln, have
been men of this active, muscular, bony, type. Because they desire freedom
for themselves, they want freedom for everyone else. They often go to
extremes and strive to secure freedom for those who have no use for it,
who do not care for it after it is won for them, and who only abuse it
when they should enjoy its blessings.
THE MAN OF MUSCLE GROWS A BRAIN
In the early days of the race, the man of this type had little
intelligence. He was supposed to be, principally, bone and muscle with no
brain. He did the physical work which was assigned to him and other men
did the thinking, the planning, and the directing. But, as the race has
increased in intelligence, the man of bone and muscle has developed a
brain. Manual skill, educators tell us, is one of the best of all means
for gaining knowledge and increasing intelligence. So now the muscular man
can think, now he can plan, now, especially, does he manifest his
thinking, planning and constructive ability along lines for increasing
speed, getting more out of machinery, buildings, inventions, manufacture,
agriculture, horticulture, transportation. In all these lines the man of
action is also a man of thought. This is well; this is an improvement, and
our active, hustling, pioneer type of man is happier, more efficient, more
prosperous in his intelligent state than he was in his purely physical
state. But here, also, he gets into trouble. So long as his mental
activity is accompanied by considerable physical activity, his health is
good, he is satisfied, he enjoys his work and he is successful in it. But
the time comes when the work to be done by brain becomes so important that
many men of this type give up physical activity entirely and devote all of
their time to mental work.
THE ACTIVE MAN'S DILEMMA
Strange that we have not learned that any faculty possessed must be
exercised or the possessor surely falls into evil ways. Strange that we
have not seen that the man who explores the unknown world in mighty
pioneering work, who frees it from oppression, who carries on its
tremendous physical and industrial development, could never be satisfied
if imprisoned within the four walls of an office. Thus hampered and
confined, unless he finds expression for his speed mania, he grows
irritable, ill, nervous, depressed. He troops, by the thousand, into the
consulting rooms of the physician and surgeon. And always and always is
the same prescription given: "You must get away from your work; you must
get out into the open; you must get plenty of outdoor exercise."
Exercise, exercise, exercise, has become the slogan. Magazines are devoted
to it. Whole libraries of books are published showing the relationship
between exercise and health. Sanitariums multiply whose principal means of
cure are located in the gymnasium, in the garden, in the woods, at the
wood pile, and on the farm. Fortunes have been made in the manufacture of
the equipment for exercise: Indian clubs, dumb bells, and whole shiploads
of so-called sporting goods, the object of all of which is to enable the
active man to get some relief from the ache of his muscles or nerves due
to lack of exercise.
EXERCISE FOR EXERCISE'S SAKE DULL
But the man of muscle is, as we have said, frequently a man of brains. He
has common sense; he has a desire for accomplishment and achievement. To
such a man, the mere pulling of cords, or the swinging about of his arms
and legs, the bending of his back, just for the sake of exercise, seems a
trifle stupid.
Very few men of this type ever keep up exercise for exercise's sake for
any very long period of time. They read in some magazine about the
benefits of exercise. Perhaps, on account of some trouble, they go to
their physicians, and exercise is prescribed. So, with a great show of
resolution and not a little feeling of martyrdom, they buy a pair of
Indian clubs, or wall exercisers, or a weight machine, or, perhaps, merely
buy a book of "exercises without apparatus," and make up their minds to
take their exercises regularly every morning. At first they attack the
task with great enthusiasm--but it is still a task. Perhaps marked
improvement is shown. They feel much better. They push out their chests
and tell their friends how they get up, take a cold bath every morning,
and then take ten or fifteen or twenty minutes of rapid calisthenics. In a
righteous glow, they relate how it shakes them up and makes their blood
course through their veins; how they breathe deeply; how the process
clears out their heads; and how much better they feel They wind up: "You
ought to do it, too, old man; it would make you young again."
By and by, however, to stand gazing blankly at the wall of a bathroom, or
out of the window of a bed-chamber, and put your arms up five times and
then straight forward five times, then repeat five times, etc., etc.,
grows dull. You lose interest You hate the task--you revolt. Even if, by
power of will, you keep it up, you do so under protest. It is a physical
truth that that which is disagreeable is also physically harmful. In order
to be wholesomely nourishing, food must taste good. The same is true in
regard to exercise. There is no very great benefit in exercise which is
drudgery.
WHEN GAMES PALL
To take the "task" element out of exercise, many kinds of games have been
invented--some indoor, some outdoor, some for men of little activity, some
of great strenuousness and even danger. But it requires a particular type
of man or woman to take interest in a game, to play it well and
profitably, as a form of exercise. To enter into a game whole-heartedly,
one must have a keen zest for combat. The man who plays purely for the
sport, and not to win, doesn't win. And the man who doesn't win, loses
interest. Not all men, not even all active men, have this desire to win.
To them a game soon becomes dull--nearly as dull as any other form of
exercise. They do not see that they are any further ahead in anything
worth while simply because they have knocked a golf ball about more
skilfully--or luckily--than some other fellow, or pulled a little stronger
oar than their opponents. There are plenty of men to whom it is
humiliating to be beaten, who are not good losers, and because they are
not good losers they are not very often winners. Such men do not really
enjoy games at all, and, as a general rule, do not play them with
enthusiasm and persistence.
For those, then, who do not enjoy calisthenics of any kind, who take very
little interest in games and contests, there remain, for exercise,
gardening, farming, carpentry, forestry, hunting, fishing, mountain
climbing, and other such forms of physical activity. All of these,
however, require considerable leisure, and some financial investment. They
are out of the reach of many of those in lower clerkships and other such
employment. These men, by the thousands, work in offices which are,
perhaps, not as well ventilated as they should be, under artificial light.
They travel to and from their work in crowded street cars and subways, and
live in little dark, narrow flats and apartments, with one window opening
out on sunlight and fresh air, and all other windows opening on courts
and so-called light and air-shafts. Golf, tennis, baseball, rowing, etc.,
are good forms of exercise for these men--but few of them care for games.
Gardening, forestry, carpenter work, mountain climbing, hunting, or
fishing are out of the question in a city flat. So the majority jump up in
the morning, hurry on their clothes, snatch a bite of breakfast, run for a
car, get to work, burrow in the warrens of industry until lunch time, rush
out, snatch a sandwich and a cup of coffee at some lunch counter, and back
to work again until dinner time. Another dive into the bowels of the earth
in the subway, home to the little flat, dinner at seven o'clock or even
later, and then the short evening. This little time from eight o'clock
until ten at night is practically the only time the worker has for
himself, except for holidays and his annual two weeks' vacation. How shall
he get sufficient physical exercise during that time to satisfy all his
needs? If he is so constituted that he enjoys such things, he may go to a
gymnasium or to a bowling alley, but he is just as likely to go to a pool
room or to a dance hall. Of course, it is far better for him to play pool
or to dance than to sit quietly at home, as many do.
SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM
This whole question is a serious one. Even those who have the time, the
means, the opportunity, and the inclination find themselves confronted
with problems. Even with all of their opportunities, most of them do not
get enough outdoor physical activity. And so they fret, they fume, they
beat their wings against the bars, they are unhappy, dissatisfied, and
therefore, oftentimes inefficient and unsuccessful. Even when they are
successful, they have fallen far below what they might have accomplished
had they been engaged in some vocation which would have given them not
only physical activity out of doors, but _some intense vital interest_ in
the _result_ of that activity. In other words, their vocation should
supply them with the necessary physical exercise as part of the day's
work. They should see themselves advancing, making money, achieving
something worth while, creating something beautiful or useful, making a
career for themselves, instead of merely playing or exercising for the
sake of exercise. Then they would be happier. Then they would be better
satisfied with their lot. They would be more efficient and far more
successful.
Current literature abounds in true stories of those who have gone forward
to the land and have found help, happiness, and success in the cultivation
of the soil. This one has redeemed an abandoned farm in New England. That
one has taken a small ten-acre farm in southern California. Another has
carved out health, happiness, and a fair degree of fortune for himself on
the plains of Washington or Idaho, or among the hills of Oregon. Old
southern plantations have been rehabilitated at the same time with their
new owners or tenants.
ONE MAN'S "WAY OUT"
Near Gardiner, Maine, is a little forty-five acre poultry and fruit farm
which pays its happy owner $3,800 a year clear of all expense. Seven years
ago this farm was abandoned by its former owners, who could not make it
pay. Five years ago it was purchased by its present owner for a song--and
only a half-line of the song was sung at the time. He was a clerk who had
lived the little-flat-dark-office-and-subway life until tuberculosis had
removed him from his job and threatened his life. Farm work--on his own
farm--proved to be a game at which he could play with zest and success.
The stakes were a life and a living--and he has won. We--and you, too, no
doubt--could multiply narratives from observation and experience, to say
nothing of reading.
A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY
All these experiences and the reports of them are both a part of and a
stimulus to the "back to the land movement." This movement has its
mainspring in two plain economic facts, namely: first, clerical and other
indoor vocations have become overcrowded; second, while crops grow bigger
year by year, the number of mouths to feed multiplies even faster, and
unless more land is tilled and all land cultivated more intensively, we
shall eat less and less, as a race, and pay more and more for what we eat.
Here is opportunity for the men of bone and muscle--opportunity for
health, prosperity, usefulness to humanity, enjoyment and happiness. Other
opportunities lie in the conservation of our forests and the planting and
development of new timber lands; in the building up of new industries for
manufacturing our raw materials; in restoring the American flag to the
seas of the world; in extending our foreign trade; in opening and
operating inland waterways; in irrigating or draining our millions of
square miles of land now lying idle; in the development of Alaska, and the
harnessing of our great mines of "white coal"--water-power.
Our foreign trade requires men of this type to travel in all parts of the
world as commercial ambassadors, diligently collecting, compiling, and
sending back to the United States information necessary in manufacturing
goods for foreign consumption; also information regarding credits, prices,
shipping, packing--in short, complete and detailed knowledge about
commerce with foreign lands, how to secure it and how to hold it.
The world's greatest opportunities to-day, perhaps, lie within the grasp
of the men of this active type. Instead of pioneering in exploration, as
in former years, they are needed to pioneer in production. From the
earliest history of the race, these restless men have been faring westward
and ever westward, adding to the wealth and resources of humanity by
opening up new lands. But the crest of the westward moving tide has now
circumnavigated the globe, and the Far West meets the Far East on the
Pacific Ocean. Here and there are comparatively small, neglected tracts of
land still to be developed, but there are no longer great new empires, as
in former days. The great welling sources of human life have not ceased to
flow, even though the final boundaries of its spread have been reached.
Population will continue to grow and its demands upon the resources of the
earth to increase. The man who discovers a way to make a hundred bushels
of wheat grow on an acre of land where only twenty-five bushels grew
before is as great a benefactor of the race as the discoverer of a
continent. The invention of the electric light, the telephone, the
automobile, the trolley car, and the aeroplane have added as much to the
products and power of the race as the pioneering of thousands of square
miles of fertile hills and plains. The man who can find a cheap and easy
way to capture and hold nitrogen from the air will add more to the wealth
of the race than all the discoverers of all the gold mines.
America needs to find efficient and profitable methods for manufacturing
her own raw materials. Up to the present time, our exports have been coal,
petroleum, steel rails, wheat, corn, oats, lumber, and other products
which carry out of the country the riches of our soil. We have been
exporting raw materials to foreign lands, where they have been refined and
fabricated by brain and hand and returned to us at some five hundred to a
thousand times the price we received for them. With the increase of
population, we need to capitalize more and more the intelligence and skill
of our people, and less and less the virgin resources of our lands. Ore
beds, coal measures, copper, lead, gold and silver mines, forests, oil
wells, and the fertility of our soils can all become exhausted. But the
skill of our hands and the power of our intellects grow and increase and
yield larger and larger returns the more they are called upon to produce.
The man of bone and muscle--the restless, active, pioneering, constructing
man--would do well to consider these things before determining upon his
vocation, and especially before entering upon any kind of non-productive
work. The world has need of his particular talents and he should find his
greatest happiness and greatest success in the exercise of them in
response to that need.
We have seen so many men of this active type so badly placed that
individual examples seem almost too commonplace for citation. Yet, a few
may be instructive and encouraging.
William Carleton's remarkable story, entitled "Rediscovering America,"
is, in fact, the story of a man who was a middle-aged failure in a
clerical position, and who afterward made a remarkable success of his life
by taking up contracting and building. James Cook, a misfit as a grocer,
afterward became famous as a naval officer and explorer. Henry M. Stanley,
office boy to a cotton broker and merchant, afterward won immortal fame as
a newspaper correspondent and explorer. What would have become of Theodore
Roosevelt had he followed the usual line of occupation of a man in his
position and entered a law office instead of becoming a rancher? We might
add other experiences of similar importance from the biographies of other
great men.
DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVE TYPE
The active type of man is, of course, easily recognized. He has broad,
square shoulders, and is well muscled. He is either of the wiry, elastic,
exceedingly energetic type, with muscles like steel springs and sinews
like steel wire--very agile, very skillful, very quick, and somewhat jerky
in his movements--or he is tall, raw-boned, strong, enduring, graceful,
easy in his movements rather than quick, and yet with considerable manual
skill. Or he may be of the short, stocky type, with broad shoulders, short
neck, short arms, short legs, with big, round muscles and an immense
capacity for endurance. The railroads of the early days, in this country,
were built by Irishmen. They were either the large, raw-boned type or the
quick, agile, wiry type. The railroads, subways, and other construction
work of to-day are built mostly by Italians, Hungarians, Greeks, and
others from the south of Europe. These men are of short, stocky, sturdy,
and enduring build. As a general rule, they are far better fitted for this
class of work than the tall or medium-sized, large-boned or wiry type. As
an evidence of this, take notice of the fact that the Irishmen who built
the railroads in the sixties own and manage them to-day.
These active men usually have square faces. That is to say, there is a
good development of the outer corners of the lower jaw, which gives to the
face a square appearance. Oftentimes their cheek bones are both high and
wide. As a general rule, they have large aquiline or Roman noses. When
they are of the enduring type and capable of long-sustained muscular
activity, they have prominent chins. Their hands are square. Their feet
are large. If they have mechanical and constructive ability, as most of
them have, their foreheads are comparatively high and wide just above the
temple. Professional baseball players, professional dancers, middle-weight
and light-weight prize-fighters, most aviators, automobile racers, and
athletes belong to the wiry, springy, medium-sized type of this particular
class of men. U.S. Grant, Robert E. Peary, Henry M. Stanley, Ty Cobb and
Ralph DePalma belong to this type. Abraham Lincoln, W.E. Gladstone, Joseph
G. Cannon, William G. McAdoo, Woodrow Wilson, and other men of this build
belong to the raw-boned type. Napoleon Bonaparte, with his tremendous
activities on only four hours' sleep a day, is a good example of the
short, stocky type. While men of these types may make brilliant successes
in purely mental vocations, as the result of the development of their
intellects, and may keep themselves in a fair degree of health and
strength by games, exercise, mountain climbing, farming, or some such
avocation, they are, nevertheless, never quite so well satisfied as when
they have something to do which not only gives them opportunity for the
use of their intellects, but also involves a certain degree of physical
activity as a part of their regular work.