That which tends to make a good business man, in the popular mind, is the establishment of great industries and enterprises, coupled with accumulation of money by the individual.

A careful review of the history of business men who have made a success along these lines shows that the majority of them sacrificed their health and their lives to their business. In the last and final analysis, therefore, these were not good business men.

The best musician is he who can bring more sounds into harmony. The best artist is he who can best harmonize colors and reproduce nature. Likewise, the best business man is he who can best harmonize or balance the affairs under his control.

Health being entirely under and within his control, if he disregards it - gives it no thought - violates the laws that govern it, and finally wrecks it, he is not a good business man, as all business depends upon the power of the individual, and the powers of the individual depend upon his health.

The man who, from a cheap tin store, founded "The Fair" in Chicago, and allowed the business to dethrone his reason, and to send him to his death before he was sixty, could hardly be considered a good business man. Measured on the same scale, Marshall Field, the merchant prince, was not a good business man. President Roberts, who arose from the ranks of a car-wheel molder, to the presidency of the Pennsylvania railroad, and died at the age of fifty, was not a good business man. J. P. Morgan, who accumulated many millions of dollars, and who died when he should have been in his prime, was not a good business man.

Examples Of Poor Business Men

The accumulation of money and the founding of great industries is only one requisite of the business man, and by no means the most important one. What profit-eth a man to make a great fortune; to put in motion a million spindles; to chain continents together with cables; to flash his silent voice over oceans and continents on currents of common air; to make the ocean's billowed bosom a commercial highway; to transform the oxcart into a palace, and set it on wheels and hitch it to the lightning; to build sky-scraping structures of stone and steel; to transfix human figures and faces on sensitized glass; to direct the methods of burrowing in the earth for coal and gold until his name is known around the world, and his fortune is a power in the land? - what boots it, I say, to know all these things and to glide blindly into the shambles of unrest and disease, or to furnish a fashionable funeral at forty?

Wealth At The Expense Of Health

The religious fanatic who robes himself in sackcloth and eschews the razor; the food crank who cries out, "back to nature," and takes to grass; the one-idea social reformer who preaches on the curb, and the business man who allows his business to become his absolute master and governor, are in reality all in the same class. The unfortunate thing is that the business man sits him down and weaves about himself the meshes of a prison. Every year puts in a new bar, every month a new bolt, and every day and hour a new stroke that rivets around him what he calls business, until he feels and really thinks he cannot escape.

The abnormal, or one-idea man.

A Good Business Man

A good business man is the man who can direct the wheels of industry, who can draw a trial balance between his income and bis expenses, and who can measure his own ability on the yardstick of endurance.

He is a good business man who gives as much study to the laws of his own physical organization as he does to the organization of his business, and in the final analysis I doubt if he would not consider himself a better business man, "Penniless," and in good health at ninety, than sojourning in a sanatorium with a million at his call, but out of the fight at fifty.

Qualities Of A Good Business Man

It is truly unfortunate that the general laws of health and hygiene are not more universally taught and understood. We learn that best with which we are thrown in most frequent contact. The business man would absorb enough information on these subjects to extend his period of longevity and usefulness many years, if they were taught in our public schools, or were matters of general knowledge.

Knowledge of health-laws a public necessity.

The Routine Life Of The Average Business Man

He rises between six and seven a. m., takes no exercise or fresh air; eats a breakfast composed largely of acid fruit, cereal starch, meat, and coffee. He then goes at once to his business, sits at a desk until noon, takes luncheon at a neighboring cafe. This repast is composed of meat, cereal, or potato starch, beer, or coffee. He hurries back to his business, sits at his desk five or six hours longer, hurries home, takes a dinner composed of more meat, more starch, more tea or coffee - no exercise, no diversion, no association with the great authors; no music, no poetry, no change.

Bad Habits Of The Business Man

A friend may come in, or he may go out to visit; then comes the soothing and soporifer-ous cigar which may have been his companion since breakfast. The market, the business, the chances for making or losing dollars are the topics of discussion. He is in the power of his master, "business," and must do him continual obeisance. Within the domain of the tyrant he lives, moves, and has his being. If he has a headache, sour stomach, indigestion, a tinge of rheumatism, dizziness, insomnia, nervousness, or any one of the thousand symptoms or warnings that Nature gives him for the violation of her laws, instead of thinking a little and trying to ascertain the cause, he sends, with "chesty pride," for His physician, and his physician writes out something in a dead language - the only suitable language. The local druggist sends over the "stuff," and it is swallowed with that childish confidence that fitly becomes the modern business man who knows a great deal about business, but nothing about himself.

The Ancient Remedy For Nature's Warnings

The days and the months go on, the symptoms or signals become more numerous, more expressive, more impressive, more painful. His physician is called more often; the dead language paper goes to the druggist more frequently, and with faith he still swallows the drugs; they relieve him for a little while, usually by paralyzing the little nerve fibers that are carrying to the brain the messages of warning.

HIS physician finally acknowledges defeat, and prescribes a trip, or a sanatorium. It is either this procedure or the fate that befell Messrs. Roberts, Morgan, Colonel Ingersoll, and the uncounted thousands who had no reputation beyond the domain of their own locality, and of whom we never hear.

The ancient system declared a failure.

Some Suggestions For A Good Business Man

Don't allow your business to become your master.

Don't discuss business at home, or in social life.

Twelve health rules for the business man.

Immediately on rising, take a cool shower bath, followed by vigorous exercise before an open window.

Eat a very light breakfast an hour after rising, eliminating tea, coffee, white bread and meat.

Walk to your business, if possible; breathe deeply.

Eliminate woolen underwear; dress as lightly as possible.

Take an hour for luncheon. Omit tea, coffee, tobacco, beer, and sweets.

Keep your office well ventilated.

Secure competent help and trust them.

Love some one or some thing - a dog will do.

Leave your office early enough to walk home, or at least a part of the way.

Masticate your food infinitely fine, and by all means do not overeat. This is the crowning sin of the civilized table.

Take from ten to fifteen minutes' exercise before retiring; sleep in a cold, thoroughly ventilated room. Spend as much time as possible in the sunshine and open air. Drive an automobile, play golf, join a gymnasium, dance, sing, kick and play with the boys, for it is infinitely better to dig in the ditch for your dinner and be able to digest and enjoy it, than to lie invalid in your self-made prison, and perhaps die. (Probably if the truth were written on your tombstone, it would read:

There was a fool who made a fortune, but he died; The world called him great, but it lied.)