of her baby's birth. Untold suffering might be saved many a woman in business if she could be told in what respects she was transgressing Nature's law. To encourage periodic physical examination is not to encourage morbid thinking of disease. One reason for our tardiness in recognizing the need for thorough physical examination is the doctor's tradition of treating symptoms. After men and women are intelligent enough to demand an BOSTON'S PICTURESQUE DAY CAMP FOR TUBERCULOSIS PATIENTS inventory of their physical resources, a balance sheet of their physical assets and liabilities, - physicians will study the whole man and not the fraction of a man in which they happen to be specializing or about which the patient worries. By removing the mystery of bodily ailments and by familiarizing ourselves with the essentials to healthy living, we find protection against charlatans, quacks, faddists, and experimenters. By taking a periodic inventory of our physical resources we discharge a sacred obligation of citizenship. CHAPTER XXII HABITS OF HEALTH PROMOTE INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY Education's highest aim is to train us to do the right thing at the right moment without having to think. The technic of musician, stenographer, artist, electrician, surgeon, orator, is gained only from patient training of the body's reflex muscles to do brain work.' The lower nerve centers are storehouses for the brain energy, just as central power houses are used for storing electric energy to be spent upon demand. From habit, not from mental effort, we turn to the right, say "I beg pardon" when we step on another's foot, give our seats to ladies or to elderly persons, use acceptable table manners. No person seems "to the manner born" who has to think out each act necessary to company manners." How numerous are the mental and physical processes essential to good manners no one ever recognizes but the very bashful or the uncouth person trying to cultivate habits of unconsciousness in polite society. The habit of living ethically enables us to go through life without being tempted to steal or lie or do physical violence. No person's morals can be relied upon who is tempted constantly to do immoral acts; ethical training seeks to incapacitate us for committing unethical deeds and to habituate us to ethical acts alone. Eight different elements of industrial efficiency are concerned with the individual's health habits, the industrial worker, his industrial product, his employer, his employer's 1 Serviceable guides to personal habits of health are Aristocracy of Health by Mary Foote Henderson, and Efficient Life by Dr. Luther H. Gulick. J profit, his trade or profession, its product, his nation, national product. Obviously few men have so little to do that they have time to think out in detail how this act or that indulgence will affect each of these eight factors of industrial efficiency. Once convinced, however, that all of these elements are either helped or injured by the individual's method of living, each one of us has a strong reason for imposing habits of health upon all industries, upon employees and operatives, upon all who are a part of industrial efficiency. When these eight relations are seen, parents and teachers have particularly strong reasons for inculcating habits of health in their children. That industrial inefficiency results from chronic habits of unhealthy living is generally recognized. The alcoholic furnishes the most vivid illustration. The penalties suffered by him and his family are grave enough, but because he has not full possession of his faculties he is unpunctual, wastes material, disobeys instructions, endangers others' lives, decreases the product of his trade and of his employer, lessens the profits of both, depresses wages, increases insurance and business risks. Because no one can foresee when the "drop too much" will be taken, industry finds it important to know that the habit of drinking alcoholics moderately has not been acquired by train dispatcher, engineer, switchman, chauffeur. Because the habit of drinking moderately is apt, among lower incomes, to go hand in hand with other habits injurious to business and fatal to integrity, positions of trust in industry seek men and women who have the habit of declining drink. In the aggregate, milder forms of unhealthy living interfere with industrial efficiency even more than alcoholism. Many capable men and women, even those who have had thorough technical training, fail to win promotion because their persons are not clean, their breath offensive, their clothes suggestive of disorderly, uncleanly habits. Persons of extraordinary capacity not infrequently achieve only mediocre results because they fail to cultivate habits of cleanliness and health. An employer can easily protect his business from loss due to alcoholism among his own employees; but loss through employees' constipation, headache, bad ventilation at home, irregular meals, improper diet, too many night parties, nicotinism, personal uncleanliness, THESE PATIENTS ON THE OLD SOUTHFIELD ARE TAXING THEIR UNIONS AND THEIR TRADES AS WELL AS THEIR FAMILIES AND THE TUBERCULOSIS COMMITTEE is loss much harder to anticipate and avoid. Because evil results are less vivid, it is also hard to convince a clerk that intemperance in eating, sleeping, and playing will interfere with his earning capacity and his enjoyment capacity quite as surely as intemperance in the use of alcohol and nicotine. Where employees are paid by the piece, instead of by the hour, day, or week, the employer partially protects himself against uneven, sluggish, slipshod workmen; but, other things being equal, he awards promotion to those who are most regular and who are most often at their best, for he finds that the man who does not "slump" earns best profits and deserves highest pay. There are exceptions, it is true, where both industrial promotion and industrial efficiency are won by people who violate laws of health, but at what cost to their efficiency? Your efficiency should be measured not by some - HABITS OF HEALTH AMONG DAIRYMEN MEAN SAFE other person's advancement, but by what you yourself ought to accomplish; while the effect of abusing your physical strength is shown not only in the shortening of your industrial life and in the diminishing returns from your labor, but by the decrease of national and trade efficiency. "Sweating" injures those who buy and those in the same trade who are not "sweated" just as truly as it injures the "sweated." |