The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1936 LONGEVITY IN RELATION TO CAREER.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20514, 4 September 1936, Page 8

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1936 LONGEVITY IN RELATION TO CAREER.

Periodically an entertaining English writer will indulge in the rather pleasant little diversion o£ calling upon the parents of the generation now inarching out of the schools in the Homeland, to think and think seriously before they put their sons to certain careers. “Longevity,” one says, “depends on the job.” This challenge to preconceived ideas, is all the more arresting because of the increasing strain modern business makes upon the spiritual, mental, and physical resources of the average man. Year by year, the men who serve their country in the high and perilous places, break down in health —the strain of public life is terrific. Even those hardy sons of toil, who have served their apprenticeship in the hardest school of life, are now finding the task of carrying the immense burdens of office in the Government of New Zealand, anything but a sinecure. Already one or two of the hardest workers among the administrators of the affairs of the State, have suffered periods of indisposition. It has been written that the/years of man are three score and ten —but English writers are saying that it is not fully understood that the/years a man attains are largely regulated by the calling he chooses to follow. There are healthy callings, there/are unhealthy callings, every trade has its risks; every profession its peculiar temptations. It is therefore of s/tme interest to note the observations that are being mails in England on the important question of longevity, in relation to career. What then are the most healthy avocations? Official English statistics reveal the intijguihg conclusion that farm bailiffs (otherwise managers) are among the healthiest of all men, for their death, rate is practically half the normal. This proud position is due, it is said, to a combination of two factots, the status of foremen (foremen in all callings are long lived), and the fact of living in the open. It is perhaps pertinent to point out that farm bailiffs in the Old Land do not perforin the unpleasant tasks men bearing similar names have entrusted to them in New Zealand. The statistical observers confess, however, that they cannot account for the fact that shop assistants are healthier than their employers, unless it is because they have less worry. This fact is, however, typical of a general tendency in most trades for the death rate to be higher among those who are working on their own account, than among men and women working for an employer. The highest mortality is found among tin and copper mines working underground. If, however, the healthiest people are farm bailiffs, Church of England clergymen, bank officials and agricultural labourers share their longevity. Farmers are not so lucky as their employees, while right on the average line, neither healthier nor sicklier than the general run are journalists, artists, wool scourers, bookmakers, hand Compositors, plasterers, slaters, tilers, shopkeepers, railway porters and clerks in private offices. The statistics disclose one or two Surprises. Barristers, for instance, less healthy than miners, have an abnormally high death rate in middle life. Doctors are neither above nor below the average as regards health. Coal miners, railway shunters and boatmen are the worst sufferers from accidents. Business men generally, are as a whole less healthy than professional men. Civil servants suffer less than professional or business from the grim enemy of middle age, indigestion (their lunch intervals are long and regular), and theit suicide rate is a surprisingly low one. It remains to be said, of course, that the human element, to say nothing of the rules of life followed by the individual, are factors which also play a big part in determining the life’s span of most individuals.