WHY MEN SHOULD EXERCISE DAILY
But the same lesson comes from a far wider range than mere professional biography. It is taught by all men in all lines who are engaged in important work. The race is so sharp; the competition so hot that none but tough, enduring men should enter; for they cannot stand the mighty strain.
The great merchant of to-day often makes in one year what would formerly have been rated a large fortune. The banker, the manufacturer, the railroad-man, the contractor, plans and carries through colossal undertakings so quietly that most persons do not know of their existence. Where there were scarce a hundred men in this country a generation ago worth a million dollars apiece; now there are probably fifteen thousand whose combined wealth will average more than that per man.
Scores of railroads are gradually absorbed into a few mighty systems. And more property is owned by a few hundred corporations than by all the people in the country outside of them. The responsibility and care of great sums of money; the enormous loss that may result from even one error of judgment; the shifting values of most property from causes beyond their owners' control;—all bring inevitable worry; and tend to burn the man out early; as they did William H. Vanderbilt, Robert Garrett, and Jay Gould, before they had lived out nearly all their days. It is apoplexy, or paresis; paralysis, or angina pectoris; or heart-failure; or diabetes; or Bright's disease; or some other ailment you never used to hear of; but hear of now almost every
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