Medicine: Executives’ Exercise

Most executives of the Dennison Manufacturing Co.* at Framingham, Mass., were wearing suspenders last week. They do so because after long years of cajoling they accept the health instructions of Dr. Halstead G. Murray, company physician.

Nine years ago President Henry Sturgis Dennison decided that the time had come to set up some sort of health supervision for his 130 major and minor executives. He is a paternalistic employer. He put in the Taylor System of scientific management in his Framingham factories; he started a profit-sharing system, through which the employes now own a good third of the company’s stock.

But the executives, sturdy New Englanders, disliked exhibiting their naked bodies to the doctors. President Dennison cajoled and wheedled, won eventually thoroughgoing consent.

Probably every U. S. factory would have shown the ills that Dennison did. Few of the executives had organic diseases. Most were “healthy.” But there were all too many cases of functional disturbances caused by mental strain, worry, improper living, neglect of personal hygiene. Some men had decayed teeth, others poor eyesight, improper glasses; some were under weight, others over weight. Men bright enough to have become Dennison executives were not smart enough to eat properly, sleep enough, avoid constipation, take exercise. President Dennison’s example and the medical examiner’s urgency made the executives start to remedy their physical defects and errors of living.

All this Company Doctor Halstead G. Murray was proud to report to the American Medical Association at Minneapolis last June. But he was obliged to admit that even after nine years, half of the Dennison executives take no exercise in winter.

What he said at Minneapolis appeared in the medical association’s Journal last week and the Dennison chiefs could read between his lines how hard he had worked for their health; and how considerate of their egos he had been.

For Dr. V. S. Cheney of Chicago, doctor of a discreetly unknown company, had acted far more drastically than Dr. Murray; at Minneapolis he had spoken far more emphatically. Said he: “More than 99% of our executives are troubled with constipation. … I have also found in our group that lack of exercise is the most prolific cause of disease or ill health in our executives. If he would take a picture of the executives who are over 40, and show them how they look in silhouet in the nude, I think it would impress them. . . . I preach to them three things—posture, exercise and the wearing of suspenders. There are more big stomachs caused by the wearing of a belt than any other one thing I know of, because if one doesn’t stick one’s stomach out, something embarrassing is going to happen. . . .”

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