The Washington times., 1913-08-05
You're at Your .
Best After 40

I'M HERE has been q lot Of talk-far
too much and far too incorrect.
u according to medical authori-
ties-to the effect that this is a
young mans era" 1t is not. And DR..
c. H Brown and others have compiled
lists to prove It
Osler was once reported as saying
that o man was a back number after
sixty. Many concerns win not hire a
man who Is over forty. In other words.
Il has bene Of late the fashion to con-
slider a man q ''has-been' when he be-
gan to near the half century mark. His
years Of training. his acquired WISDOM
and his ripe experience were supposed
to render him worthless.
As sensibly say that the longer and
more perfectly a pugilist trains his
muscles the less At he is to Aght and
the poorer his chances against a green,
unscientific schoolboy. Here are a few
"a very few-of the million instances
which 60 to show that a man is at his
best between the ages of forty and
sixty-five. .
J. P. Morgan did his greatest work
after ffty-nve. Commodore Vanderbilt
rolled UP an extra hundred million dol
lars and increased by eightfold the
mileage of his railroads after he was
seventy.
Gladstone at eighty-three became
once more prime minister of England,
and John Quincy Adams and Thomas
Jefferson were at their political prime
of Intellect between seventy and eighty.
George F. Baer and John Wanamaker
IT,.
ests. Col. @. w. Goethals, Of Panama
railroad fame, has done his best work
since fifty.
General Grant at thirty-nine was con-
sidered a failure In life. He had made
a success of nothing and could hardly
of forty and fifty he rose to world
greatness. A similar tale OF rise to
fame after the age of forty may be told
of Robert E. Lee. George Washington
was forty-three when he began his fight
to free our country.
dent Of the United States was forty-two
when he was inaugurated, and with five
exceptions all the rest were between
fifty and sixty-five.
Thomas A. Edison at sixty-ive is at
the zenith of his fame. II, at forty, he
had been shelved as a back number Ito
make way for some younger and al
legedly smarter and more up-to-date
mani the world would have been in
finitely poorer. Other tremendously busy
men Of the same age are Arthur ].
Balfour, Alexander Graham Bell of tele-
phone fame. Justice Lamar, and Sena-
tor Tillman.
Among the active youngsters of sixty
two whose places have not yet been
seized by youths OF the young mems
era" are Champ Clark, Senator Lodge,
oscar S. Straus, Pierre Lott, the Duke
of Connaught, and President Schurman
Of Cornell.
The worlds greatest writer's, musi-
clans, and actors have practically all
done their best work after forty.
In this era of young men, too, there
are thousands of young men working
with scarce a chance of winning similar
success-for such hustling oid-timers
as Andrew Carnegie, aged seventy
seven: John D. Rockefeller aged
seyenty-three, and William Rockefeller
ook in the big jobs almost everv-
vhere-the Jobs that can be filled nv
none but the biggest men-and Won will
And the boss Is nearer sixty than forty
He Is there because he belongs there
because no young man is able TO tackle
that mighty job.
Next time you hear an elderly man
sneered at as a "has-been" or a "bacL
number" or an old fogy." just stop for
a moment to consider whether the man
~ho applies the term Is not perhans
Iooking iongingly and hopelessly toward
The same "has-been's" job.