Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1906-11-05
w. c. T.U. COLUMN.
Is AMERICAN STAMINA DECLTNINC2

or7o years ago-seventy years
ago-there was more done to make
our men and women hale and vioor.
Gus than there is to-day. over
eighty per cent of all our n en- then
were farming, hunting, or fishing.
rising early, out all day in the ppre
oracIng air, giving many muscles
very active work, eating wholesome
1000, retiring early, and so LAYING in
d good stock of vitality and health.
But now hardly forty per cent are
farmers, and nearly all the rest are at
caIllngs-mercantile, mechanical. or
professional-which do almost moth
ing TO make one sturdy and enduring.
VI the one hundred and fifty or more
branches of the mechanic arts scarcely
'hlrd give even one-half of the vol
untary muscles anything to do worth
calling exercise, while nearly all are
carried on in impure air.
And about all our play is mental
and emotional, adding hardly any
thing to bodily vigor Our evening
d1version-music, chat, books, papers.
society, public amusements, every
th1ng-is intellectual Instead of
Keeping the brain on the stretch eight
hours day, which eminent physicians
say should not be exceeded, we aver
age nearer twelve hours. of course
leaving the body SO slim a margin
that lack of power and endurance
inevitably results.
Nor does the well do farmer of
to-day begin TO work SO hard as his
father or grandfather did When the
latter ploughed, he bore hard on the
plough tail many hours day, trudg-
| ing for miles over the rough burrows
as best he could. But his son sits up
on horse-plough, usually in a
| siouchy position, with his chest often
sunken inland the horses take him
around. The father swung a keen
edged scythe into the thick waving
grass or grain all the long morning
grand work to give sound lungs, a
tough back, and good forearms, and
for the muscles across the abdomen.
The son sits on his mower or McCor-
mick reaper, and gets pulled along
The day of the laborsaving machine
has come, and labor it does save
And it saves the farmers muscles
too, till it is plain enough why he is
not bodily the man his grandfather
was.
Is it strange that majority Of
Americans are fat chested, or that
We do not sleep enough, do not
breathe deeply enough, do not know
how to eat properly, are inerect Of
carriage and poor walkers, and thai
we have hundred thousand physi.
clans constantly busy keeping us il
repair, and a Niagara of patent medi'
cine making believe help? The
examiners for admission to West
Point, for instance, not only find a
majority of the. applicants unfit
physically TO pass, but sometimes not
even a solitary one is so fit!
Our schools are developing chill
dren's minds; what are they doing for
their bodies? is there one boy in ten
in our schools deep-chested, erect.
well-knit, and strong all over? On
one girl in twenty? Are there five
BOYS in al average class Of sixty il
any of our public schools who can run
half a mile, in even three minutes
and half, without being badly blown
and looking as If they had been over
doing themselves?
Of the annual appropriation for
education give the children's bodies
not third, and the mind the other
two thirds, but give their bodies
simply one-tenth, and give expert
enced and able men free scope to pat
their ideas in active practice. There
is no need of having all follow any
one system. There are as many gooc
methods of bodily training as there
are kinds of food. If the studles
stand in the way, lop off some Of the
less important ones-enough till OF
the five hours devoted to the educa-
tion of our children each day then
bodies shall have at least half an hour
The work can be tdoEe at present
right in the schoolroom, the windows
being thrown open to let out the all
which has already been breathed
number of times and let in the trest
pure article. The quickened circula
ton, the deep breathing, 1.-The buoyant
gay feeling which lively exercise
always brings, will send the children
hack TO their books with brain
cleared and nerves strengthened.