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GRAFT AND FAILUREPHOBIA.

The Commercial Spirit—Commercialism in Medicine—Stock Company Medical Colleges—Graft in Medicines, Drugs and Nostrums—Encyclopedia Graft—“Get-Rich-Quick” Propositions—Paradoxes in Character of Shysters—Money Madness—Professional Failurephobia—The Fortunate Few and the Unfortunate Many—A Cause of Quackery—The Grafter’s Herald—The World’s Standard—Solitary Confinement—The Prisoner’s Dream—Working up a Cough—Situation Appalling Among St. Louis Physicians—A Moral Pointed.

This chapter is not written because I possess a hammer that must be used. My liver is sound, and I have a pretty good job. Neither palpation nor “osculation” (as one of our bright Osteopathic students once said in giving means used in physical diagnosis) reveals any “lesion” in my domestic affairs.

However, it doesn’t take the jaundiced eye of a pessimist to see the graft that abounds to-day. The grafter is abroad in the land like a wolf seeking whom he may devour, and the sheep-skin (sometimes a diploma) that once disguised his wolfish character has become so tattered by much use that it now deceives only the most foolish sheep. Once a sheep-skin of patriotism disguised the politician, and people fancied that a public office was a public trust. The revelations of the last few years have taught us that too often a public office is but a public steal.

The commercial spirit dominates the age. Nothing is too sacred for its defiling hands to touch. The church does not escape. Preachers accuse each other of following their Lord for the loaves and fishes. Lawyers accuse each other of taking fees from both sides. Leading physicians unhesitatingly say that commercialism is the bane of the medical profession. They say hundreds are rushing into medicine because they have heard of the large earnings of a few fortunate city physicians, and think they are going into something that will bring them plenty of “easy money.” Stock company medical colleges have been organized by men whose main object was to get a share of the money these hosts of would-be doctors had to spend. Even the new systems of therapeutics such as Osteopathy, that have boomed themselves into a kind of popularity, have their schools that, to believe what some of them say of each other, are dominated by the rankest commercialism, being, in fact, nothing but Osteopathic diploma mills.

Not alone has graft pervaded the schools whose business it is supposed to be to make capable physicians. The graft that has been uncovered lately in connection with the preparation and sale of medicines, drugs and nostrums is almost incredible when we think of the danger to health and human life involved. The same brand of ghouls who tamper with and juggle medicines for gain, do not hesitate to adulterate and poison food. With their inferior, filthy and “preserved” milk they slaughter the innocents to make a paltry profit. The story Sinclair wrote of the nauseating horrors of slaughter-houses was enough to drive us all to the ranks of vegetarians forever.

Only recently I chanced to learn that even in the business of publishing there is a little world of graft peculiar to itself. I was told by a responsible book man that the encyclopedia containing a learned (?) exposition of the science of Osteopathy is the product of grafters, who took old material and worked in a little new matter, such as the exposition of Osteopathy, to make their work appear up to date to the casual observer. Then, to make the graft worse, for a consideration, it was alleged, a popular publisher let his name be used, and thus thousands were caught who bought the work relying on the reputation of the publisher, who, it appears, had nothing whatever to do with the encyclopedia.

Physicians, school teachers and preachers, all supposedly poor financiers, know about the swarms of grafters who hound them with “get-rich-quick” propositions into which they want them to put their scant surplus of salary or income as they get it. A physician told me he would have been $2,000 better off if a year or two before he had been a subscriber to a certain medical journal that poses as a sort of “watch dog” of the physician’s treasury.

Pessimistic as this review may seem, there is yet room for optimism, and, paradoxical as it may sound, men are not always as bad as their business. I know of a lawyer who in his profession has the reputation of being the worst shyster that ever argued a case. No scheme is too dishonest for his use if it will win his case. Yet this man outside of his profession, in his home, and in his society, is as fine a gentleman as you would wish to meet—a model husband and father, a kind and obliging neighbor, a generous supporter of all that is for the upbuilding and bettering of society. Strong case, do you say? I believe our country is full of such cases. And I believe the medical profession has thousands of just such men, men whose instincts are for nobility of character and whose moral ideals are high, but whose business standards are groveling.

They live a sort of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” life, and why? Are they not to blame? And are they not to be classed as scoundrels? Yes—and no. These men are diseased. Their contact with the world has inoculated them with the world’s contagion. What is this disease? The diagnosis has been considered simple. So simple that the world has called it commercialism, or money madness, and treated the disease according to this diagnosis without studying it further. May it not be true that, for many cases at least, the diagnosis is wrong? Do men choose the strenuous, money-grabbing life because they really love it, or love the money? I believe thousands of men in professional life to-day, who are known as dollar-chasers, really long for a more simple life, but the disease they have has robbed them of the power to choose “that better part.” And that disease is not money madness, but failurephobia.

The fear of failing, or of being called a failure, dominates the professional world as no other power could. It claims thousands of poor fellows who were brought up to the active, worth-while life of the farm or of a trade, and chains them to a miserable, sham, death-in-life sort of existence, that they come to loathe, but dare not leave because of their disease, failurephobia.

Success is the world’s standard. Succeed in your business or profession, by honest means if you can, but succeed! At least, keep up the appearance of succeeding, and you may keep your place in society. It may be known that your business is poor, and that you go to your office and sit in solitude day in and day out, and that you starve and skimp at home, but so long as you keep up the show, you are a “professional man!” What mighty courage it takes to acknowledge what everybody else knows, and quit! A writer in a medical journal told of a young physician in Boston who put an ad. in a daily paper asking for a job in which a strong man could use the strength a manly man ought to be proud of, to earn an honest living. If men only had the courage, I wonder how many such ads. would appear in the columns of our papers!

An old schoolmate, who is a lawyer in a Western city, told me that of the more than two hundred lawyers of that city, twenty had practically all the law business, and of that twenty a half dozen got the big cases in which there was most money. It is largely so in every city and town. And what applies to the lawyer applies to the physician, though perhaps not to so great an extent. And while the fortunate few get most of the practice, and make most of the money, what are the unfortunate many doing? Holding on, starving, skimping, keeping up appearances, and, while young, hoping against hope for better days. But when hope long deferred has made the soul sick, and hope itself dies, what then? Keep up appearances, you are a professional man. You can’t be a quitter. It would be humorous, were it not so pathetic, to see the old doctor who has dragged along for years, barely eking out a living, put on the silk hat of his more ambitious days and wear it with dignity along with his shiny threadbare trousers and short coat, making a desperate spurt to keep up with the dashing young fellow just out of school.

Failurephobia! Among professional men what a terrible disease it is! I have known it to drive a young man, who might have been happy and useful as a farmer or mechanic, into a suicide’s grave. Such cases are not uncommon. Who are the M.D.s whose pictures and glaring ads. appear in those 15-cent papers published in Augusta, Me., and in many daily and even religious papers? Are they men who took to graft and disgraced their profession because they loved that kind of life, and the stigma it brings? Not in many cases. Most of them perhaps come from the ranks of ambitious fellows who lost out in the strife for legitimate practice, but who would not acknowledge failure, so launched into quackery, and became notorious if they could not become noted.

Strange as it may seem, the fact that a professional man is a notorious grafter abroad does not necessarily deprive him of social standing at home. I have in mind a man whose smug face appears in connection with a page of loud and lurid literature in almost every 15-cent Grafters Herald from Maine to California; yet this man at home was pointed to with pride as an eminently successful man. He wore his silk hat to church, and the church of which he was a valued member was proud of the distinction he gave it. A Western city has an industry to which it “points with pride,” and the pictures of the huge plant appear conspicuously placed in illustrated boom editions of the city’s enterprising papers. This octopus reaches out its slimy tentacles to every corner of the United States, feeling for poor wretches smitten by disease, real or fancied. When once it gets hold of them it spews its inky fluids around them until they “cough up” their hard-earned dollars that go to perpetuate this “pride of the West.”

The most popular themes of the preacher, lecturer and magazine writer to-day are Honesty, Anti-graft, Tainted Money, True Success, etc. You have heard and read them all, and have been thrilled with the stirring words “An honest man is the noblest work of God.” The preacher and the people think they are sincere, and go home congratulating themselves that they are capable of entertaining such sentiment. When we observe their social lives we are led to wonder how much of that noble sentiment is only cant after all.

The World’s Standard.

The world will say that goodness is the only thing worth while,

But the man who’s been successful is the man who gets the smile.

If the “good” man is a failure, a fellow who is down,

He’s a fellow “up against it,” and gets nothing but a frown.

The fellow who is frosted is the fellow who is down,

No matter how he came there, how honest he has been,

They find him just the same when being there’s a sin.

A man is scarce insulted if you tell him he is bad,

To tell him he is tricky will never make him mad;

If you say that he’s a schemer the world will say he’s smart,

But say that he’s a failure if you want to break his heart.

If you want to be “respected” and “pointed to with pride,”

“Air” yourselves in “autos” when you go to take a ride;

No matter how you get them, with the world that “cuts no ice,”

Your neighbors know you have them and know they’re new and nice.

The preacher in the pulpit will tell you, with a sigh,

That rich men go with Dives when they come at last to die;

And men who’ve been like Lazarus, failures here on earth,

Will find their home in Heaven where the angels know their worth.

But the preacher goes with Dives when the dinner hour comes;

He prefers a groaning table to grabbing after crumbs.

Yes; he’ll take Dives’ “tainted money” just to lighten up his load.

Enough to let him travel in the little camel road.

That may sound like the wail of a pessimistic knocker, but every observing man knows it’s mostly truth. The successful man is the man who gets the world’s smile, and he gets the smile with little regard to the methods employed to achieve his “success.”

This deplorable social condition is largely responsible for the multitudinous forms of graft that exist to-day. To “cut any ice” in “society” you must be somebody or keep up the appearance of being somebody. Even if the world knows you are going mainly on pretensions, it will “wink the other eye” and give you the place your pretensions claim. Most of the folk who make up “society” are slow to engage in stone slinging, for they are wise enough to consider the material of which their own domiciles are constructed.

To make an application of all this, let us not be too hard on the quack and the shyster. He is largely a product of our social system. Society has placed temptations before him to get money, and he must keep up the appearances of success at any cost of honesty and independent manhood. The poor professional man who is a victim of that fearful disease, failurephobia, in his weakness has become a slave to public opinion. He is made to “tread the mill” daily in the monotonous round to and from his office where he is serving a life sentence of solitary confinement, while his wife sews or makes lace or gives music lessons to support the family.

I say solitary confinement advisedly, for now a professional man is even denied the solid comfort of the old-time village doctor or lawyer who could sit with his cronies and fellow-loafers in the shade of the tavern elm, or around the grocer’s stove, and maintain his professional standing (or rather sitting). In the large towns and cities that will not do to-day. If the professional man is not busy, he must seem busy. A physician changed his office to get a south front, as he felt he must have sunshine, and he dared not do like Dr. Jones, get it loafing on the streets. Not that a doctor would not enjoy spending some of his long, lonely hours talking with his friends in the glorious sunshine, but it would not do. People would say: “Doctor Blank must not get much to do now. I see him loafing on the street like old Doc Jones. I guess Doctor Newcomer has made a ‘has been’ of him, too.”

I know a young lawyer who sat in his office for two long years without a single case. Yet every day he passed through the street with the brisk walk of one in a hurry to get back to pressing business. He was so busy (?) that he had to read the paper as he walked to save time to—wait!

Did you ever sit in the office with one of these prisoners and watch him looking out of his window upon prosperous farmers as they untied fine teams and drove away in comfortable carriages? Did you know how to translate that look in his eye, and the sad abstraction of manner into which he momentarily sank, in spite of his creed, which taught him to always seem prosperous and contented? The translation was not hard. His mind was following that farmer out of town and along the green lanes, bordered by meadows and clover bloom, and on down the road through the cool twilight of the quiet summer evening, to where the ribbon of dark green forest, whose cool cadence had called to him so often, changed to groves of whispering trees that bordered the winding stream that spoke of the swimming holes and fishing pools of his boyhood. And on up the road again, across the fertile prairie lands, until he turns in at the gate of an orchard-embowered home. And do you think the picture is less attractive to this exile because it has not the stately front and the glistening paint of the smart house in town? Not at all. The smart house with glistening paint is the one he must aspire to in town, but his ideal home is that snug farmhouse to which his fancy has followed the prosperous farmer.

That picture is not altogether a product of poetic fancy. We get glimpses of such pictures in confidential talks with lawyers and doctors in almost every town. These poor fellows may fret and sigh for change, “and spend their lives for naught,” but the hunger never leaves them. Not long ago a professional man who has spent twenty-five years of his life imprisoned in an office, most of the time just waiting, spoke to me of his longing to “get out.” His longing had become almost a madness. He forgot the creed, to always appear prosperous, and spoke in bitterness of his life of sham. He said he was like the general of the old rhyme who “marched up the hill and—marched down again.” He went up to his office and—went home again, day in and day out, year in and year out, and for what? But failurephobia held him there, and he is there yet.

What schemes such unfortunates sometimes concoct to escape their fate! I was told of a physician who was “working up a cough,” to have an excuse to go west “for his health.” How often we hear or read of some bright doctor or lawyer who had a “growing” practice and a “bright future” before him, having to change his occupation on account of his health failing!

This is not an overdrawn picture. I believe old and observing professional men will bear me out in it. Statistics of the conditions in the professions are unobtainable, but I feel sure would only corroborate my statement. In a recent medical journal was an article by a St. Louis physician, which said the situation among medical men of that city was “appalling.” Of the 1,100 doctors there, dozens of them were living on ten-cent lunches at the saloons, and with shiny clothes and unkempt persons were holding on in despair, waiting for something better, or sinking out of sight of the profession in hopeless defeat.

This is a discouraging outlook, but it is time some such pictures were held up before the multitude of young people of both sexes who are entering medical and other schools, aspiring to professional life. And it is time for society to recognize some of the responsibility for graft that rests on it, for setting standards that cause commercialism to dominate the age.