HOW TO GET STRONG
as large as the other boys and young men, actually averaged all of three and a half inches shorter! And as to weight, that, "at the age of twenty, well-to-do English youths have a mean weight of eighteen pounds greater than that of the handicraftsmen of the same age living in large towns"—a pretty striking comment on the fact that using only a few muscles will make neither large nor strong men; and finally that "the sons of professional men, living in the country, exceed town-boys of the same class by about an inch, as regards height, at all ages between ten and twenty; and as regards weight, by an amount varying from one to seven pounds.
In The United States of America, Vol. II., p. 466, Dr. Sargent, Physical Director of Harvard University, says:
"The difference in the physical status of the best Scotch agricultural population and the manufacturing population of the cities of Sheffield and Bristol in England is an average of five inches in height; and thirty-one pounds in weight in favor of the farmers."
Clearer proof of the effect of one's daily labor in these fields upon his size could hardly be asked; and as to farmers, they use some muscles much; enough to make sure of a good appetite and vigor; they are often hearty; but it leaves them unequally developed. They lack the symmetry, ease, and erectness which they might all along have had, had they but used the means for even a few minutes a day. And this work of one part of the body at the expense of the other makes many workmen prone to disease.[1] Were there uniform development; and that daily vigorous exercise which would
- ↑ The head of one of the largest shoe-stores in America says that many shoemakers die of consumption.
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