Analyzing Character Part 11

In actual practice we find both prudent and reckless misfits. Such people are unhappy, inefficient, and usually unsuccessful. It is strange that men do not understand, before undertaking a vocation, so elemental and fundamental a thing as the question of carelessness and carefulness. Yet, somehow or other, they do not. We find thousands of men worrying, anxious, distrait, because of the uncertainties of their businesses and the chances they have to take. We find other thousands of men blundering, careless, optimistic, always hopeful for better things in the future, and yet attempting to succeed in a business which requires care, infinite pains and precautions. Thoughtless, impulsive, frivolous people are always trying to do work requiring careful, plodding, painstaking, methodical ways; while thoughtful, philosophic, and deliberate people oftentimes find themselves distressed, bewildered, and inefficient in the hurly-burly of some swift-moving vocation.

SOME OTHER MISFITS

Mild, easy-going, timid, self-conscious men we frequently find in vocations which require aggressiveness, courage, fighting ability, self-confidence, and a considerable amount of hard-headed brutality. On the other hand, we sometimes find the fighting man in a profession which is considered to be quiet and peaceable.

Similarly, we have often seen lawyers, whose profession requires of them a good deal of combativeness, shrewdness, a certain degree of skepticism, and a large amount of hard-headed determination to win, no matter what the cost, handicapped by extreme sensitiveness, sympathy, generosity, non-resistance, credulity, humility, and self-consciousness. Physically, they were wonderfully capable of success as lawyers. Intellectually, they, perhaps, were even better fitted for the profession than many of their brothers in the legal fraternity. But, emotionally, they were absolutely unfit for the compet.i.tion, the contest, the necessity for combat and severity in the practice of law.

Contrawise, we have often seen hard-headed, shrewd, skeptical, grasping, unprincipled, aggressive, fighting men in professions where they did not belong; in professions requiring sympathy, credulity, kindness, tact, generosity, unselfishness, and other such qualities. We have not, in this chapter, outlined all of the different cla.s.ses of misfits. That would be impossible. We have, however, referred to the most common of them.

Probably nine-tenths of all the misfits which have come under our observation could be cla.s.sified under one or more of the heads we have outlined in the foregoing chapter.

CHAPTER IV

THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL

Some years ago there came into our offices in Boston a young man twenty-six years of age. He was about medium height, with keen, intelligent face, fine skin, fine hair, delicately modeled features, refined looking hands, and small, well-shaped feet.

He was inexpensively, but neatly, dressed, and, while somewhat diffident, was courteous, affable, and respectful in demeanor. After a little conversation with him, we asked him if he would be willing to appear before one of our cla.s.ses and permit the students to try to a.n.a.lyze him, decide what his apt.i.tudes were, and for what profession he was best fitted. An evening or two later he appeared and we placed him before the cla.s.s. After some little examination of his appearance, this is the judgment pa.s.sed upon him by those present:

"Fairly observant; capable of learning well through his powers of observation; good intellect, of the thoughtful, meditative type; a fair degree of constructive ability; in disposition, optimistic, cheerful; inclined to take chances; sympathetic, generous, sensitive, kindly, well disposed, and agreeable; rather lacking in self-confidence and, therefore, somewhat diffident, but courteous and friendly in contact with others; responsive and, therefore, easily influenced by his a.s.sociates, and affected by his environment. Lacking in sense of justice and property sense. A man of natural refinement and refined tastes; fond of beauty, elegance and luxury. Energetic and alert mentally, but rather disinclined to physical effort. Somewhat deficient in aggressiveness, but endowed with an excellent constructive imagination, and so great mental energy that he would be able to take the initiative in an intellectual way, especially in the formation of plans and in the devising of means and ways. Fond of change, variety; loves excitement; likes social life, and somewhat deficient in constancy, conservatism, prudence, and responsibility. Keen, alert, somewhat impatient and restless. Well fitted by nature for intellectual work of any kind; with training would have done well as teacher, writer, private secretary or high-cla.s.s clerical worker, but expression indicates that, through lack of training, he has failed in physical work and has fallen into evil ways."

After this a.n.a.lysis had been carefully made, we excused the young man and explained that thirteen of his twenty-six years had been spent in jail. He had been left an orphan early in life and secured so little education that he was almost entirely illiterate.

THE EASY DESCENT TO CRIME

As soon as he was old enough, he was set to work at the only thing he could do, namely, manual labor. He was small and slight for his age, and the services he was able to render were not worth much. He, therefore, received very small pay. Because of his physical disabilities, he was behind the other boys in his gang and suffered frequently from the tongue-las.h.i.+ngs of an unsympathetic foreman. His pay was not commensurate with his tastes. He constantly felt the desire for finer, better, cleaner things than he was able to earn. The work was hard for him; he suffered much from the punishment inflicted upon his tender hands, from muscular soreness and from weariness. As the days rolled on, he grew weaker, rather than stronger, and became weary earlier in the day. Finally, the time came when he felt that he could endure the taunts of his foreman no longer, and he was about to give up when the foreman, exasperated with his inefficiency, his clumsiness, and his weakness, discharged him.

Having been discharged, it was difficult for him to find another place to work. At this critical stage, being out of money, and having fallen in with idlers--and worse--he was influenced to use his keen intellect and ability in plans and schemes, to commit a small crime, which yielded him $10 or $15. Being a novice in crime, not naturally a criminal, he did not protect himself from discovery and punishment, and, as a result, was sent to a reformatory. After a short term in the reformatory, his behavior was so good that he was released. After his release, a kind-hearted person, who had observed him and liked his appearance, secured another position for him. This also was at manual labor. At first he entered upon his new work with a determination to succeed, to live down the stain upon his character caused by his previous speculation, and, therefore, to live an honorable and successful life.

STRUGGLING AGAINST ODDS

He worked hard and did his best, but the best he could do was not good enough. He possessed no manual skill, he had no strength, and little by little he again became physically tired out, mentally discouraged and sore, and, having once committed a crime, found it easy to seek his former a.s.sociates and drop again into the old ways. An opportunity presented itself to rob a companion's pocket of a few dollars, and he did so. Again he was sent to the reformatory, this time for a longer term. Then, until he came to our office, his career was a repet.i.tion of what has already been related. A few months or a year or two in a reformatory, a jail, or a penitentiary, a month or two trying to rehabilitate himself in some form of manual labor, and, then, inefficiency, incompetency, lack of skill, lack of strength, and discharge, to be followed by another attempt to add to his resources by some petty crime.

For several years following this first interview with Mr. L. we followed him, and did our best to a.s.sist him to enter upon some vocation for which he was better fitted. Again and again we and other friends of his helped him to secure work, but always it was the old story. His mind was so active, so intelligent, so eager for expression, that the drudgery, the monotony, the routine, the small pay, and the consequent lack of the many elegances and luxuries he so strongly desired were too much for him. His crimes were never serious, and never those requiring great courage. He never stole any very large sums. For this reason much of his time was spent in the work house or in jail, rather than in the penitentiary. In addition to petty thieving, he had acquired some little ability as a confidence man, and was capable of ensnaring small sums from credulous or sympathetic people on various pretexts. The last time we heard of him he had called upon a friend of ours, professed his complete and permanent reform, wept over his former failures, and promised faithfully--and with the greatest possible fervency and apparent sincerity--to do better in the future. He said that he had an opportunity to make a trip on a whaling vessel and he thought this opportunity would be the best thing in the world for him, as it would take him away from his old, evil a.s.sociates and give him an opportunity to save money and make good in a new life. He wished our friend to give him $4 to buy a ticket to New Bedford. Our friend gave him the money and also a postal card, on which he had written his own address. "Now, L.," he said, "I believe you, and I want you to show me that you are playing square with me. When you get your new position and are about to sail, I want you to write me about it on this postal card, and mail it to me so that I will know that you are carrying out your promises."

THE OLD, OLD STORY

L. promised faithfully, and said, "I want to write a letter to my mother, and tell her where I am going. I wish you would let me have an envelope and a stamp." Our friend obliged him with the necessaries, and L. left the office beaming with grat.i.tude and profuse in his promises to return the loan as soon as he came back from his trip on the whaling vessel. A few days later my friend received a postal card, dated at New Bedford, Ma.s.sachusetts. In one corner of the postal card was the notation, "Received at the post office at New Bedford in an envelope, with a letter, requesting that it be mailed here. (Signed) Postmaster."

Here was a man so well-intentioned by nature, of such a kindly, sympathetic, generous disposition, so intelligent, so naturally capable mentally that, with proper training and properly placed in a vocation in which he could have used his talents, he would doubtless have become an excellent a.s.set to society.

This case is typical of many others. They have natural apt.i.tudes which fit them to become useful, but their talents have never been trained, their apt.i.tudes have never been given an opportunity to develop. They have no inherent tendencies toward crime. In fact, there is no "criminal" type.

Most--but not all--criminals fall into their evil ways simply because they have never been taught how to direct their mental and physical energies in a way which will give them pleasure, as well as profit.

DESCRIPTION OF THIS TYPE

The physically frail individual of this type is frail because the brain and nervous system are so highly developed that they require a great deal of his vitality and endurance to nourish them and to sustain their activities. The result is that mental powers grow and thrive at the expense of physical.

Such people have large heads in proportion to their bodies. Their heads also are inclined to be very much larger above the ears and in the neighborhood of the forehead and temples than at the jaw and at the nape of the neck. This gives their heads a rather top-heavy effect--like a pear with the small end down--and their faces a triangular shape. Their jaws are usually fine and slender, and their chins not particularly broad and strong.

Such people have very fine hair and fine skin. Their nerves are sensitive and close to the surface. Their entire build of body is delicate and slender. Their hands and feet also are usually delicately and slenderly fas.h.i.+oned; their shoulders are narrow and oftentimes sloping. It is folly to talk of building up rugged, muscular and bony systems by means of strenuous exercise in people thus endowed. Much, of course, can be done to strengthen and harden the muscles, but they are frail physically, by nature, and can never be anything else.

VOCATIONS FOR THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL

People with this type of organization are not inclined to be skillful with their fingers. They do not care for physical work of any kind; they do not take an interest in it and, therefore, cannot do it well. Properly trained, men and women of this type take their place in the professions.

They are teachers, preachers, lawyers, educators, reformers, inventors, authors, and artists. Among those of mediocre abilities we find clerks, secretaries, accountants, salesmen, window trimmers, decorators, advertisers, and others working along similar mental lines. When such people are not trained and educated, they are misfits always, because they do not have opportunities to use to their fullest extent the natural intellectual talents with which they have been endowed.

THE MENTALLY MECHANICAL

There is a type of boy who is oftentimes thrown into the wrong vocation in life, owing to a lack of appreciation of his true abilities on the part of parents or teachers. This boy has a large head and small body, and is intensely interested in machinery. He probably learns to handle tools, after a fas.h.i.+on, at a very early age; spends his spare time in machine shops; is intensely interested in locomotives and steams.h.i.+ps, and otherwise manifests a pa.s.sion for machinery and mechanics. Oftentimes, on account of this, he is very early apprenticed to a mechanic or is given a job in some place where he will have an opportunity to build, operate or repair machinery.

Some years ago we visited in a family in which there was a boy of this type. At that time his chief interest was in locomotives. He had a toy locomotive and took the greatest delight in operating it. Whenever he went near a railroad station he improved every opportunity to examine carefully the parts of a locomotive and, if possible, to induce the engineer to take him up into the cab and show him the levers, valves and other parts to be seen there. As soon as he was old enough, he begged his father to be permitted to go to work in a railroad shop. Fortunately, however, his father was too intelligent and too sensible to be misled by mere surface indications. The boy was encouraged to finish his education. Being a bright, capable youngster, he learned readily and rapidly. By means of proper educational methods, giving him plenty of opportunity for the exercise of his mechanical activities, he was induced to remain in school until he secured an excellent college education. As he grew older his interest in machinery did not wane. He found, however, that it was becoming almost wholly intellectual. He lost all desire to handle, build, operate or repair machinery. When, in later life, he became the owner of an automobile, he was more than willing to leave all of the details of its care to his chauffeur and mechanician.

As he cultivated his mental powers, he became more and more interested in the use of his constructive apt.i.tudes in the formation of ideas. He liked to put ideas together; to work out the mechanics of expression in writing.

Instead of building machinery, he loved to build plots. Instead of operating machinery, his abilities turned in the direction of working out the technique of literary expression. Instead of repairing machinery he loved rather to revise and rewrite his stories and plays. In other words, the constructive talent, which he had shown as a child in material mechanics, turned in the direction of mental and intellectual construction as he grew older.

COMMERCIAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS

There are many boys who exhibit in their early years a great love of machinery, and it is usually considered a kindness to them to prepare them for either mechanics or engineering. In mechanical lines, they are misfits, because they are frail and insufficient physically. In engineering lines they are more at home, because the engineer works princ.i.p.ally with his brains. But very often they would still be more at home in the realms of literature or oratory.

In a similar way boys often manifest great interest in machinery in their youth, and afterward, if given the right opportunities, show their constructive ability in the organization of business enterprises and the successful devising of plans and schemes for pus.h.i.+ng these enterprises to success.

Sometimes those of this type of organization devote themselves rather to invention and improvement than to the direct physical handling of machinery. The following brief story of the struggles of Elias Howe[7]

should be an inspiration to every individual who fights physical frailty; also, a lesson to him as to the way in which he should express his mechanical ability:

[Footnote 7: From "Great Fortunes," by James D. McCabe. Published by George Maclean.]

INTELLECTUAL TRIUMPH OF A FRAIL MAN

"Elias Howe was born in the town of Spencer, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1819. He was one of eight children, and it was no small undertaking on the part of his father to provide a maintenance for such a household. Mr. Howe, Sr., was a farmer and miller, and, as was the custom at that time in the country towns of New England, carried on in his family some of those minor branches of industry suited to the capacity of children, with which New England abounds. When Elias was six years old, he was set, with his brothers and sisters, to sticking wire teeth through the leather straps used for making cotton cards. When he became old enough, he a.s.sisted his father in his saw-mill and grist-mill, and during the winter months picked up a meager education at the district school. He has said that it was the rude and imperfect mills of his father that first turned his attention to machinery. He was not fitted for hard work, however, as he was frail in const.i.tution and incapable of bearing much fatigue. Moreover, he inherited a species of lameness which proved a great obstacle to any undertaking on his part, and gave him no little trouble all through life. At the age of eleven he went to live out on the farm of a neighbor, but the labor proving too severe for him he returned home and resumed his place in his father's mills, where he remained until he was sixteen years old.

"At the age of twenty-one he married. This was a rash step for him, as his health was very delicate, and his earnings were but nine dollars per week.

Three children were born to him in quick succession, and he found it no easy task to provide food, shelter and clothing for his little family. The light heartedness for which he had formerly been noted entirely deserted him, and he became sad and melancholy. His health did not improve, and it was with difficulty that he could perform his daily task. His strength was so slight that he would frequently return from his day's work too exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed, and in his agony he wished 'to lie in bed forever and ever,' Still he worked faithfully and conscientiously, for his wife and children were very dear to him; but he did so with a hopelessness which only those who have tasted the depths of poverty can understand.

"About this time he heard it said that the great necessity of the age was a machine for doing sewing. The immense amount of fatigue incurred and the delay in hand sewing were obvious, and it was conceded by all who thought of the matter at all that the man who could invent a machine which would remove these difficulties would make a fortune. Howe's poverty inclined him to listen to these remarks with great interest. No man needed money more than he, and he was confident that his mechanical skill was of an order which made him as competent as any one else to achieve the task proposed. He set to work to accomplish it, and, as he knew well the dangers which surround an inventor, kept his own counsel. At his daily labor, in all his waking hours, and even in his dreams, he brooded over this invention. He spent many a wakeful night in these meditations, and his health was far from being benefitted by this severe mental application. Success is not easily won in any great undertaking, and Elias Howe found that he had entered upon a task which required the greatest patience, perseverance, energy and hopefulness. He watched his wife as she sewed, and his first effort was to devise a machine which should do what she was doing. He made a needle pointed at both ends, with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the cloth, and carry the thread through at each thrust, but his elaboration of this conception would not work satisfactorily. It was not until 1844, fully a year after he began the attempt to invent the machine, that he came to the conclusion that the movement of a machine need not of necessity be an imitation of the performance by hand. It was plain to him that there must be another st.i.tch by the aid of a shuttle and a curved needle with the eye near the point. This was the triumph of his skill. He had now invented a perfect sewing machine, and had discovered the essential principles of every subsequent modification of his conception. Satisfied that he had at length solved the problem, he constructed a rough model of his machine of wood and wire, in October, 1844, and operated it to his perfect satisfaction.

"It has been stated by Professor Renwick and other scientists that Elias Howe 'carried the invention of the sewing machine further on toward its complete and final utility than any other inventor has ever brought a first-rate invention at the first trial.' ...

"Having patented his machine, Howe endeavored to bring it into use. He was full of hope, and had no doubt that it would be adopted at once by those who were so much interested in the saving of labor. He first offered it to the tailors of Boston; but they, while admitting its usefulness, told him it would never be adopted by their trade, as it would ruin them.

Considering the number of machines now used by the tailoring interests throughout the world, this a.s.sertion seems ridiculous. Other efforts were equally unsuccessful. Every one admitted and praised the ingenuity of the machine, but no one would invest a dollar in it. Fisher (Howe's partner) became disgusted and withdrew from his partners.h.i.+p, and Howe and his family moved back to his father's house. Thoroughly disheartened, he abandoned his machine. He then obtained a place as engineer on a railroad, and drove a locomotive until his health entirely broke down....

"In 1850 Howe removed to New York, and began in a small way to manufacture machines to order. He was in partners.h.i.+p with a Mr. Bliss, but for several years the business was so unimportant that upon the death of his partner, in 1855, he was enabled to buy out that gentleman's interest, and thus became the sole proprietor of his patent. Soon after this his business began to increase, and continued until his own proper profits, and the royalty which the courts compelled other manufacturers to pay him for the use of his invention, grew from $300 to $200,000 per annum. In 1867, when the extension of his patent expired, it is stated that he had earned a total of two millions of dollars by it."

STARVED BY HIS HANDS, ENRICHED BY HIS HEAD

Robert Burns was a failure as plowman and farmer. Rousseau was a failure at every kind of physical work. Henry George nearly starved himself and his family to death trying to make a living as a journeyman printer. The following extract from the autobiography of Jacob Riis[8]--another excellent example of this type of organization--shows how useless it was for him to attempt to make his living at physical labor: