As a general rule, those in this class are well equipped intellectually by nature, and would have responded splendidly to educative efforts if they had been given an opportunity.  People of this class lack physical courage.  They shrink from hardship and will do almost anything to escape physical suffering.  It is this lack of courage, as well as their inability to make a decent living out of their hands and muscles, that leads them, in so many cases, to unlawful means.

As a general rule, people of this type have considerable natural refinement, and refinement is always expensive.  They are the kind of people of whom it is often said that they have “champagne tastes and beer incomes.”  It is difficult for them to finance themselves, with any degree of frugality or economy, upon the small and precarious income they earn at manual labor.  This is the class of people who sometimes become counterfeiters, sneak thieves, pickpockets, forgers, gamblers, stool pigeons, second-story workers, and petty criminals along other lines which do not require physical courage, strength, and force.  Of course, the great majority of these misfits do not enter upon a life of crime.  They are, however, poor, often in need, sometimes pauperized, and, as a general rule, their lives are short and miserable.  There are those, also, whose cases are not so extreme.  Unfitness for manual labor results merely in bare living, a life of comparative poverty, and general lack of success.

THE FAT MAN

Another class of those who are physically unfit for hard, manual labor are those who are too stout.  The fat man is, by nature, fitted to sit in a large, luxurious chair and direct the work of others.  He is too heavy on his feet for physical work, as a general rule, and is also too much disinclined to physical effort.  It is a well-known fact that, almost without exception, fat men are physically lazy.  The natural work, therefore, of the stout man is executive work, banking, finance, merchandising, handling of food products, and the arbitration of differences between his fellow men.  Fat men are natural bankers, financiers, lawyers, judges, politicians, managers, bakers, butchers, grocers, restaurant owners, preachers, and orators.  If, however, the man of this type does not secure sufficient education and training to enable him to undertake one of these professions, but grows up with no other ways to satisfy his wants than by the exercise of his muscles, he is greatly handicapped in the race for success.  It is not usual, however, to find a man of this type amongst the ranks of the poor.  Most of them are fairly well supplied with means, and usually have plenty to eat, plenty to wear, and a good place to sleep.

In order to obtain the things he desires, the man who has no aptitude for physical labor on account of his great bulk sometimes turns his attention to crime.  This type of man may be a gambler, a grafting politician, a confidence man, a promoter of wild-cat stocks or bonds, the man who sits behind the scenes and directs a band of criminals or, perhaps, a whole community of them, or in some other way preys upon the gullibility of the public.