To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
Pregnant Women
Should Observe Prohibition
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
My husband and I are both 35, successful in our
fields and lead a comfortable life. We are
expecting our first child in six months. We drink
wine with dinner. My gynecologist has told me to
forgo alcohol during pregnancy. I drink two
glasses of wine at dinner. Is this too much
alcohol? My husband doesn’t think so. --
R.R.
ANSWER: You and
your husband are successful people. You want your
child to be successful. Stay away from any
alcohol during your pregnancy, including the two
glasses of wine at dinner.
Fetal alcohol
syndrome is a preventable disaster inflicted on
an innocent third party -- a baby -- by the
thoughtlessness of its mother. Sometimes
it’s done out of ignorance, but you’ve
been warned; you have no excuse.
Alcohol passing
from the mother to her fetus can lower IQ,
sometimes to the point of profound mental
retardation.
It can stunt the
baby’s growth throughout life. It’s
responsible for several malformations. The eyes
are small and spaced widely apart. The upper lip
is extremely thin. The head is undersized. The
jaw isn’t fully developed. The heart can
have holes in it. Children born with the syndrome
often suffer from emotional disorders during
life.
There are more
examples of what alcohol does to a developing
fetus, but these are enough examples to make any
pregnant woman not take a drop during pregnancy.
Your husband might
have a point. The degree of damage depends on the
amount of alcohol drunk. However, no expert can
state what constitutes a safe amount. In light of
that, all say that no alcohol is the safe rule
for pregnant women to follow.
OLD GORGON
GRAHAM
More
Letters from
a Self-Made
Merchant
to His Son
by
George Horace Lorimer
First Published 1903
From John Graham,
head of the house of Graham & Company, pork
packers, in Chicago, familiarly known on
‘Change as Old Gorgon Graham, to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards.
No. 10
From John Graham, at Mount
Clematis, Michigan, to his son, Pierrepont, at
the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. The young man has
done famously during the first year of his
married life, and the old man has decided to give
him a more important position.
X
MOUNT
CLEMATIS, January 1, 1900.
Dear
Pierrepont: Since I got here, my rheumatism has
been so bad mornings that the attendant who helps
me dress has had to pull me over to the edge of
the bed by the seat of my pajamas. If they ever
give way, I reckon I’ll have to stay in bed
all day. As near as I can figure out from what
the doctor says, the worse you feel during the
first few days you’re taking the baths, the
better you really are. I suppose that when a
fellow dies on their hands they call it a cure.
I’m
by the worst of it for to-day, though, because
I’m downstairs. Just now the laugh is on an
old boy with benevolent side-whiskers, who’s
sliding down the balusters, and a fat old party,
who looks like a bishop, that’s bumping his
way down with his feet sticking out straight in
front of him. Shy away from these things that end
in an ism, my boy. From skepticism to rheumatism
they’ve an ache or a pain in every blamed
joint.
Still,
I don’t want to talk about my troubles, but
about your own. Barton leaves us on the first,
and so we shall need a new assistant general
manager for the business. It’s a
ten-thousand-dollar job, and a
nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-dollar
man can’t fill it. From the way in which
you’ve handled your department during the
past year, I’m inclined to think that you
can deliver that last dollar’s worth of
value. Anyway, I’m going to try you, and
you’ve got to make good, because if you
should fail it would be a reflection on my
judgment as a merchant and a blow to my pride as
a father. I could bear up under either, but the
combination would make me feel like firing you.
As
a matter of fact, I can’t make you general
manager; all I can do is to give you the title of
general manager. And a title is like a suit of
clothes--it must fit the man who tries to wear
it. I can clothe you in a little brief authority,
as your old college friend, Shakespeare, puts it,
but I can’t keep people from laughing at you
when they see you swelling around in your
high-water pants.
It’s
no use demanding respect in this world;
you’ve got to command it. There’s old
Jim Wharton, who, for acting as a fourth-class
consul of a fifth-class king, was decorated with
the order of the garter or the suspender or the
eagle of the sixth class--the kind these kings
give to the cook when he gets just the right
flavor of garlic in a fancy sauce. Jim never did
a blame thing in his life except to inherit a
million dollars from a better man, who happened
to come over on the Cunard Line instead of the
Mayflower, but he’d swell around in our best
society, with that ribbon on his shirt-front,
thinking that he looked like Prince Rupert by
Louis the Fourteenth and Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
instead of the fourth assistant to the floor
manager at the Plumbers’ ball. But you take
Tom Lipton, who was swelled up into Sir Thomas
because he discovered how to pack a genuine
Yorkshire ham in Chicago, and a handle looks as
natural on him as on a lard pail.
A
man is a good deal like a horse--he knows the
touch of a master, and no matter how lightly the
reins are held over him, he understands that he
must behave. But let a fellow who isn’t
quite sure of himself begin sawing on a
horse’s mouth, and the first thing you know
the critter bucks and throws him.
You’ve
only one pair of eyes with which to watch 10,000
men, so unless they’re open all the time
you’ll be apt to overlook something here and
there; but you’ll have 10,000 pairs of eyes
watching you all the time, and they won’t
overlook anything. You mustn’t be known as
an easy boss, or as a hard boss, but as a just
boss. Of course, some just men lean backward
toward severity, and some stoop down toward
mercy. Both kinds may make good bosses, but
I’ve usually found that when you hold the
whip hand it’s a great thing not to use the
whip.
It
looks like a pretty large contract to know what
10,000 men are doing, but, as a matter of fact,
there’s nothing impossible about it. In the
first place, you don’t need to bother very
much about the things that are going all right,
except to try to make them go a little better;
but you want to spend your time smelling out the
things that are going all wrong and laboring with
them till you’ve persuaded them to lead a
better life. For this reason, one of the most
important duties of your job is to keep track of
everything that’s out of the usual. If
anything unusually good happens, there’s an
unusually good man behind it, and he ought to be
earmarked for promotion; and if anything
unusually bad happens, there’s apt to be an
unusually bad man behind that, and he’s a
candidate for a job with another house.
A
good many of these things which it’s
important for you to know happen a little before
beginning and a little after quitting time; and
so the real reason why the name of the boss
doesn’t appear on the time-sheet is not
because he’s a bigger man than any one else
in the place, but because there shouldn’t be
any one around to take his time when he gets down
and when he leaves.
You
can tell a whole lot about your men from the way
in which they come in and the way in which they
go home; but because a fellow is in the office
early, it doesn’t always mean that he’s
panting to begin work; it may mean that he’s
been out all night. And when you see a fellow
poring over his books after the others have quit,
it doesn’t always follow that he’s so
wrapped up in his work that he can’t tear
himself away from it. It may mean that during
business hours he had his head full of
horse-racing instead of figures, and that
he’s staying to chase up the thirty cents
which he’s out in his balance. You want to
find out which.
The
extra-poor men and the extra-good men always
stick their heads up above the dead-level of
good-enough men; the first to holler for help,
and the second to get an extra reach. And when
your attention is attracted to one of these men,
follow him up and find out just what sort of soil
and fertilizer he needs to grow fastest. It
isn’t enough to pick likely stock;
you’ve got to plant it where the conditions
are right to develop its particular
possibilities. A fellow who’s got the making
of a five-thousand-dollar office man in him may
not sell enough lard to fry a half-portion of
small potatoes if you put him on the road. Praise
judiciously given may act on one man like an
application of our bone-meal to a fruit tree, and
bring out all the pippins that are in the wood;
while in the other it may simply result in his
going all to top.
You
mustn’t depend too much on the judgment of
department heads and foremen when picking men for
promotion. Take their selection if he is the best
man, but know for yourself that he is the best
man.
Sometimes
a foreman will play a favorite, and, as any
fellow who’s been to the races knows,
favorites ain’t always winners. And
sometimes, though not often, he’ll try to
hold back a good man through jealousy. When I see
symptoms of a foreman’s being jealous of a
man under him, that fellow doesn’t need any
further recommendation to me. A man’s never
jealous of inferiority.
It’s
a mighty valuable asset for a boss, when a
vacancy occurs in a department, to be able to go
to its head when he recommends Bill Smith for the
position, and show that he knows all about Bill
Smith from his number-twelve socks up to his
six-and-a-quarter hat, and to ask:
"What’s the matter with Tom Jones for
the job?" When you refuse to take something
just as good in this world, you’ll usually
find that the next time you call the druggist has
the original Snicker’s Sassafras Sneezer in
stock.
It’s
mighty seldom, though, that a really good man
will complain to you that he’s being held
down, or that his superior is jealous of him.
It’s been my experience that it’s only
a mighty small head that so small an idea as this
can fill. When a fellow has it, he’s a good
deal like one of those girls with the fatal gift
of beauty in her imagination, instead of her
face--always believing that the boys don’t
dance with her because the other girls tell them
spiteful things about her.
Besides
always having a man in mind for any vacancy that
may occur, you want to make sure that there are
two men in the office who understand the work of
each position in it. Every business should be
bigger than any one man. If it isn’t,
there’s a weak spot in it that will kill it
in the end. And every job needs an understudy.
Sooner or later the star is bound to fall sick,
or get the sulks or the swelled head, and then,
if there’s no one in the wings who knows her
lines, the gallery will rotten-egg the show and
howl for its money back. Besides, it has a mighty
chastening and stimulating effect on the star to
know that if she balks there’s a sweet young
thing in reserve who’s able and eager to go
the distance.
Of
course, I don’t mean by this that you want
to play one man against another or try to
minimize to a good man his importance to the
house. On the contrary, you want to dwell on the
importance of all positions, from that of
office-boy up, and make every man feel that he is
a vital part of the machinery of the business,
without letting him forget that there’s a
spare part lying around handy, and that if he
breaks or goes wrong it can be fitted right in
and the machine kept running. It’s good
human nature to want to feel that
something’s going to bust when you quit, but
it’s bad management if things are fixed so
that anything can.
In
hiring new men, you want to depend almost
altogether on your own eyes and your own
judgment. Remember that when a man’s asking
for a job he’s not showing you himself, but
the man whom he wants you to hire. For that
reason, I never take on an applicant after a
first interview. I ask him to call again. The
second time he may not be made up so well, and he
may have forgotten some of his lines. In any
event, hell feel that he knows you a little
better, and so act a little easier and talk a
little freer.
Very
often a man whom you didn’t like on his
first appearance will please you better on his
second, because a lot of people always appear at
their worst when they’re trying to appear at
their best. And again, when you catch a fellow
off guard who seemed all right the first time,
you may find that he deaconed himself for your
benefit, and that all the big strawberries were
on top. Don’t attach too much importance to
the things which an applicant has a chance to do
with deliberation, or pay too much attention to
his nicely prepared and memorized speech about
himself. Watch the little things which he does
unconsciously, and put unexpected questions which
demand quick answers.
If
he’s been working for Dick Saunders,
it’s of small importance what Dick says of
him in his letter of recommendation. If you want
Dick’s real opinion, get it in some other
way than in an open note, of which the
subject’s the bearer. As a matter of fact,
Dick’s opinion shouldn’t carry too much
weight, except on a question of honesty, because
if Dick let him go, he naturally doesn’t
think a great deal of him; and if the man
resigned voluntarily, Dick is apt to feel a
little sore about it. But your applicant’s
opinion of Dick Saunders is of very great
importance to you. A good man never talks about a
real grievance against an old employer to a new
one; a poor man always pours out an imaginary
grievance to any one who will listen. You
needn’t cheer in this world when you
don’t like the show, but silence is louder
than a hiss.
Hire
city men and country men; men who wear
grandpa’s Sunday suit; thread-bare men and
men dressed in those special four-ninety-eight
bargains; but don’t hire dirty men. Time and
soap will cure dirty boys, but a full-grown man
who shrinks from the use of water externally is
as hard to cure as one who avoids its use
internally.
It’s
a mighty curious thing that you can tell a man
his morals are bad and he needs to get religion,
and hell still remain your friend; but that if
you tell him his linen’s dirty and he needs
to take a bath, you’ve made a mortal enemy.
Give
the preference to the lean men and the
middleweights. The world is full of smart and
rich fat men, but most of them got their
smartness and their riches before they got their
fat.
Always
appoint an hour at which you’ll see a man,
and if he’s late a minute don’t bother
with him. A fellow who can be late when his own
interests are at stake is pretty sure to be when
yours are. Have a scribbling pad and some good
letter paper on a desk, and ask the applicant to
write his name and address. A careful and
economical man will use the pad, but a careless
and wasteful fellow will reach for the best thing
in sight, regardless of the use to which
it’s to be put.
Look
in a man’s eyes for honesty; around his
mouth for weakness; at his chin for strength; at
his hands for temperament; at his nails for
cleanliness. His tongue will tell you his
experience, and under the questioning of a shrewd
employer prove or disprove its statements as it
runs along. Always remember, in the case of an
applicant from another city, that when a man says
he doesn’t like the town in which he’s
been working it’s usually because he
didn’t do very well there.
You
want to be just as careful about hiring boys as
men. A lot of employers go on the theory that the
only important thing about a boy is his legs, and
if they’re both fitted on and limber they
hire him. As a matter of fact, a boy is like a
stick of dynamite, small and compact, but as full
of possibilities of trouble as a car-load of
gunpowder. One bad boy in a Sunday-school picnic
can turn it into a rough-house outfit for looting
orchards, and one little cuss in your office can
demoralize your kids faster than you can fire
them.
Continued next week...
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