WORDS OF WEIGHT

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 May 1931, Page 4

WORDS OF WEIGHT

FAT BANK MANAGERS. Taken as a class bank managers (says a leader writer in ‘The Times’) " weigh more than authors or philosophers. The stomach and the brain are closely connected, and those who cudgel their brains are apt to become bad trenchermen. There is, on the other hand, something about managing a bank which makes for adiposity. To sit in a comfortable chair, to take no more exercise beyond putting the fingers together and moving the head slowly from side to side in the ritual of considered refusal —this is a routine which gives men both the inclination and the means to put on weight. Nor can it be denied that the mere* a mai> weighs the more confidence he is likely to inspire. Authors, psychologists, and philosophers, who weigh less than almost any other class, certainly inspire little enough confidence. On the bthei- hand, there is no heavier class than the Presidents of American fraternities, who are men in the Taft tradition, with broad backs for slapping and great shoulders for heaving laughter. In general it has been found that the heavy professions are the prosperous ones. The weights have been calculated in America —for it is rare that these investigations arc conducted with scientific thoroughness outside America —and professions and posts with the same name sometimes differ in scope on the two sides of the Atlantic. But in most of these cases the English variant is more compatible with weight than the American. American presidents of colleges and American' bishops do more moving about and fund raising than their English counterparts; yet they turn the scale at thirteen stone and weigh little less than Governors, railroad presidents, and sales managers themselves. Of course if it is only a small college that they preside over they must expect to weigh less, and are in fact over a stone behind their more important fellows. As for those who instead of being bishops, are only preachers in small towns, they weigh little more than ten stone. No one will deny that in most cases the important post brings the added girth and that Nature responds to the demands of dignity. But there .remains the complementary truth that it is a help towards becoming a bishop, a vice-chancellor, or a magnate to look the part before appointment. Massive men suggest responsible positions and, once the world has connected them with great places, the battle is half won.

There is a moral in this for the Ministry of Health when it begins its campaign of telling people what to eat. Let the advice be in no petty terms of vitamins and the lean fitness that doctors praise. Fitness has always to be qualified as fitness for something, and those who want to fit themselves for remunerative and superior positions will not thank a Ministry that prevents them from attaining the requisite weights. It is very easy in modern towns to be too fit. A certain drowsiness of the evening, a disinclination to carry a lethargic bulk round to the cinema, is a grand economiser of money. Sleep is still the cheapest amusement. It is people who are so fit' at the end of the day that they must go out and spend money amusing themselves 1 , and so fit at the week-end that instead of sleeping it through they want to make expeditions and play games, who find their incomes inadequate all the tin) e. Money cares make them fretful, and ffetfulness keeps them thin and restless, in a vicious circle from which the Ministry of Health should wish to free them. There is a proper weight in relation to and prominent statisticians should find it out. Thinness has been over-praised, and has on its side the many trade interests that want people for ever running about. It is all for the good that fatness can now be proved statistically to be intimately related to the valuable jobs, for there is no happier and cheaper way of passing the time than growing stout in the confident expectation that it will lead to something and that the fat posts in life will eventually allotted to those who will become them best.