Business: Anti-Golf

Samuel Matthews Vauclain, 69-year-old President of Baldwin Locomotive Works, is hale. He may be seen at his Broad Street offices in Philadelphia any day he is not absent answering the questions of investigation committees or attending sessions of one of his many scientific societies.*

Last week he was cautiously asked by a pressman, working up a story on the value of health to business executives, what he thought of the idea. Said Mr. Vauclain: “In my business I make it a point never to inquire into the personal affairs of the men with whom I come in contact—the way they live is. their affair. My job is to look after myself so I can stick on the job and give them plenty of work to keep them busy.” He keeps fit by keeping a physician hired permanently to guard his health. Although a strong individualist, he agreed that all executives should keep themselves physically fit to conduct properly the affairs of their business. But the keeping fit by golf playing, he sneered at. Doubtless he realized that many a golf game is but the excuse for a “klabberfest,” a male gossiping party, or for the shirking of responsibilities. Said he: “I feel that our directors and stockholders want me here on the job, working and watching their interests. They don’t want me running around after a golf ball. No golfer or invalid can manage a business that has a claim to the name. If it is any kind of a business at all, it needs somebody who is alive to steer it.”

*American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Railway Engineering Assn., Institute of Civil Engineers of Great Britain, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, American Philosophical Society, etc;