THE RELATION OF HEALTH TO BUSINESS CAPACITY How Health is Related to Business.—Just as the dullness of a knife may make the best steel and the most skilled hand unable to do a godd piece of work, so poor health and lack of energy may spoil the efficiency and judgment of people who have the best inheritance and the best education.
Health depends on inheritance, climate, food, clothing, shelter, occupation, mode of life, the virulence of bacteria and other parasites, the conditions of medical practice and sanitation, and various other factors. Every person is apparently born with the capacity to live a certain length of time provided there are no accidents such as disease. Those with poor physiques may have the capacity to live only ten years; some have energy enough for fifty years, and a few for a hundred. Other things being equal, the person with health and energy is the most useful in business and in almost every other way. Not only can he accomplish more than the weak, sickly person, but his judgment is usually better.
Effect of the Seasons on Man's Health and us see how health varies from season to season and from place to place. The deathrate is the most easily available approximate measure of the general health of a community, while the rate at which people carry on their daily work is an excellent measure of their energy. Fig. 18 shows how these two conditions varied in Connecticut and Pennsyl vania during the four years from 1910 to 1913. The lower curves show the deathrate in Connecticut (C) and Pennsylvania (D), but the curve is inverted so that good conditions of health are indicated by high parts and poor health by depressions. The two upper curves show how the average hourly earnings of piece workers in three Connecticut factories (A) and in a huge Pittsburgh factory (B) varied during the same period.
In January, 1910, people's energy fell off very badly, as appears in curves A and B. Those who were at work in the factories had the chance to work as fast as at any other time, but though they were not sick, they did not feel like it. In other words their energy and hence their capacity to work and their value in business were low. At the same time many became ill so that during the next two months the deathrate was very high, as is indicated by the low level of curves C and D. During the spring of 1910 both health and energy increased rapidly and reached a high point in May and June. When the summer heat came on it was great enough to diminish the energy of the factory workers materially so that curves A and B show a sag. Ill health also
increased somewhat so that curves C and D become flat and sag a little, but not seriously. If children under two years were included the health of this and of all other summers would appear much worse than in Fig. 18, but little children are omitted because we are now dealing with the people who take part in the world's work or are at least actively preparing for it.
Follow the curves of Fig. 18 through the four years. Notice that without exception they are low each winter. In the summer of 1911 which was extremely hot and trying, especially in New England they all show a dip, while in the summers of 1912, and especially 1913, when the hot spells were short and well separated, the heat had almost no effect. In the late autumn the curves for health drop sooner than those for energy, which seems to mean that the approach of cold weather at first stimulates people who are in good health while those who are feeble feel the effect of the low temperature more promptly.
In winter, however, a drop in energy is regularly followed by a long period of poor health.
The fact that aside from minor fluctuations due to local accidents the four curves go up and down so closely together seems to mean that all four are subject to the same influences. The four factories were engaged in quite different kinds of work, and there were no strikes, labor troubles or shut downs in either. The cities of Connecticut are nearly 400 miles from Pittsburgh, and are subject to quite different influences in many respects. There were no epidemics of any impor tance to cause the curves of health to go up and down together and the agreement would be equally great if all contagious diseases had been omitted. The only factor which seems competent to explain the curves and which varies in approximately though not exactly the same way in both places is the seasons and the general character of the weather. Hence, aside from occasional epidemics, the weather appears to have been the chief cause of variations in both health and energy. Records of deaths and of factory work in more southerly states includ ing the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida suggest that there too the same is true but with distinct differences. The winter in the South is less harmful than in the North, while the long hot summers have a corre spondingly bad effect upon both health and energy.