Chapter III: Classes of Misfits (1)

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,"[4] Mr. James H. Collins says:

Broadly speaking, the personal equation is that Something in a man that makes him effective in managing other men.

It is the difference between the fellow who lets a political club, a military company or a factory force go all to pieces, and some other fellow who can put the pieces together again, or rather, draw them together instantly. For the man who reorganizes without this Something is like the chap who cleans his own clock--he usually has a few pieces of the organization left over because they wouldn't fit in anywhere. The personal equation is magnetic. It comes along and acts, and every part falls into place, and the organization is capable of performing a lot of new functions.

Not one person in five hundred possesses the faculty. Those who don't, like to comfort themselves with the assurance that it is a gift which Providence forgot to hand out to them. Innumerable stories grow up around the man who does possess it. One glance from his eagle eye, people say, and he reads you through. One word, and he enforces instant obedience. Thus the personal equation is glorified and mystified. But men who really have this valuable Something seldom make much mystery about it. They insist it is largely a matter of common sense, which everyone ought to have at their disposal.

[Footnote 4: Henry Altemus Company, Philadelphia.]

The personal equation has an interesting way of raising moral issues.

One morning in August, 1863, a young clergyman was called out of bed in a hotel at Lawrence, Kansas. The man who called him was one of Quantrell's guerrillas, and he wanted him to hurry downstairs, and be shot. All over the border town that morning people were being murdered. A band of raiders had ridden in early to perpetrate the Lawrence massacre.

The guerrilla who called the clergyman was impatient. The latter, when fully awake, was horrified by what he saw going on through his window. As he came downstairs the guerrilla demanded his watch and money, and then wanted to know if he was an abolitionist. The clergyman was trembling. But he decided that if he was to die then and there, it would not be with a lie on his lips. So he said, yes, he was, and followed up the admission with a remark that immediately turned the whole affair into another channel.

He and the guerrilla sat down on the porch, while people were being killed through the town, and had a long talk. It lasted until the raiders were ready to leave. When the clergyman's guerrilla mounted to join his confederates he was strictly on the defensive. He handed back the New Englander's valuables and apologized for disturbing him, and asked to be thought well of.

That clergyman lived many years after the Lawrence massacre. What did he say to the guerrilla? What was there in his personality that led the latter to sit down and talk? What did they talk about?

'Are you a Yankee abolitionist?' the guerrilla had asked.

'Yes--I am,' was the reply, 'and you know very well that you ought to be ashamed of what you're doing.'

This drew the matter directly to a moral issue. It brought the guerrilla up roundly. The clergyman was only a stripling beside this seasoned border ruffian. But he threw a burden of moral proof on to the raider, and in a moment the latter was trying to demonstrate that he might be a better fellow than circumstances would seem to indicate.

After waking this New Englander to kill him on account of his politics, he spent twenty minutes on the witness stand trying to prove an alibi. He went into his personal history at length. He explained matters from the time when he had been a tough little kid who wouldn't say his prayers, and became quite sentimental in recalling how one thing had led to another, and that to something worse, and so on, until--well, here he was, and a mighty bad business to be in, pardner. His last request, in riding away, was: 'Now, pardner, don't think too hard of me, will you?'

The personal equation is eternally throwing the burden of proof on the people it controls, and forever raising moral issues. The man who has it may operate by no definite plan, just as this clergyman had none for saving his own life. But he will be a confidence man of the most subtle character. His capacity for expecting things of those under him will be tremendous. Subordinates may never have demanded much of themselves. But for him they will accomplish wonders, just because he expects them to.

Three men were placed at the foreman's desk of a growing factory. Each had technical knowledge enough to run a plant three times the size. But all failed. The first was an autocrat, who tried to boss from a pedestal, and the men didn't like him. The next was a politician, whom the men liked thoroughly--which was his shortcoming, for he tried to run the place as they thought it should be run. As for the third, he tried to run it on nerves, to do everything himself, to be everywhere at once. He didn't fail, really--he snapped like a fiddle-string. By that time working tension was relaxed and production wabbling on the down-peak. Nobody knew who was in charge, or what would happen.

Then along came a fourth candidate, with an abnormally developed bump of expectation. He knew how to approve and encourage. Sometimes he said pleasantly: 'I knew you could do that, Bill,' Again, he put it ironically: 'I didn't think you had it in you.' But his strong point was expectation. With apparent recklessness he gave out work two sizes too large for everybody. If a subordinate was a No. 7 man he handed him a No. 9 job as a matter of course, and usually the latter grew up to it. The politician had tried this same scheme, but introduced it backward. Taking a No. 7 man into a corner, he told him impressively that he was a No. 9 and promoted him on the spot, and warned him to say nothing about it to anybody else. Then the man tried to swell to fit the office instead of growing to fit the work. But this fourth candidate made everybody see that doing No. 9 was more creditable than just being it. So everybody became interested in the work, 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,"[5] 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.

[Footnote 5: The Engineering Magazine Company, New York.]

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[6] 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.

[Footnote 6: From "Richard Mansfield," by Paul Wilstach. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.]

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 roués; 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'hôte 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.