The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-10-12
WE DO TOO MUCH.
Even Wall Street Acknowledges We
Are Too Strenuous.
Wall Street Journal.

Wall Street Journal.
This is the age of the men who do things.
They are our leaders and heroes. We adore
achievement; We worship success. The
strenuous life has become our ideal, and
the President of the United States. whom
we all admire, is the exemplar of that life.
There is a lack of great thinkers. The
glory of our time is the men who do. We
have no poets like those who inspired and
charmed and soothed our forefathers. We
import our best music and our best art. If
we produce some great painters and mu-
scians they go to Europe, where the at
mosphere" is more congenial. The air of
this country is too bracing for fine arts,
and the best thinking is done in France
and Germany, where life is less rapid than
in the United States
The types of our nation and time are the
skyscraper, with its frames Of steel, the
electric motor and the stock tape. We have
great philosophers of calm, serene
lives, like Emerson, who never did anything
except to write a few thousand words which
have left their impress upon the life of the
world. We do not love money more than
our forefathers did, but we love the making
of money far more. We work fewer hours,
but with more intenSeness and nervous
energy. We measure our labor, not by
degrees and diplomas. but by horsepower
units and kilowatt hours.
The men who do things are not content
with small achievements. They work on
scale of continents. They are the captains
In the conquest of the markets. They build
immense railroads and canals. They con-
soidate industries. They create big banks.
late competition so as to reduce its weight.
They are ever seeking new ways OF making
consumption keep pace with the productive
energies of the country. They are the men
who keep labor employed.
There is reason, therefore, in the admira-
ton which we give TO these men. Adj
miration is the coin which the world pays
to its leaders. 1t is a great thing to be
able to do things, not as most of us are
content to do, by laying one brick upon
another but by waving a magic wand, or,
a
structures almost in a night, thousands of
hands doing ones bidding. 1t is a great
well. to be able, like Stevenson, to say.
zone thing L do" In this age we have
specialized endeavor. Each man does one
thing, and If he is of the right kind seeks
to do that thing supremely well. The re-
suit is an astonishing rapidity and high
quality of production. But it will be OBJ
served that the keynote w which is always
on doing that we give ourselves very little
time for thinking. Even in our recreation
we are forever doing and never resting:
With our nerves at the highest point of
tension, we do not allow ourselves time
for repose and thought.
This is the great defect of this age. We
not only do, but we overdo. We work, but
We eat and we overeat. We speculate and
we overSpeculate.
The most pressing need is more time for
thought. After ALL it is not action that
keeps things moving, but thought, and that
nation is not the greatest and the most
powerful which does not produce men who
think as well as men who do.
This fact has a vital bearing upon the
business situation. Much of our present
depression in Wall street is the result of
OVERRIDING and understanding. We are too
eager to get rich quick and too eager to
crowd into half a decade what should have
been the legitimate achievements OF twen-
ty years. that we are now paying the
penalty of overpromotion. And fact is
that as a nation we have become a trihe
too strenuous.