Increasing Stature and Improved Physique of American Men.—Dr. Born’s measurements of Yale athletes and students suggest the inference that American men are becoming physically greater than any other known race. Comparing averages in 1903 and 1908, it appears that Yale men are one inch and a half taller than their predecessors of five years ago; they are twenty-seven pounds heavier, broader chested, and have an increased lung capacity of seventy-two cubic inches.
The measurements of Harvard students, published last fall by Dr. Sargent, corroborate Dr. Born’s deductions, that American college men have larger and more vigorous bodies than their fathers.
Dr. Sargent’s association of vigorous brains with strong bodies is borne out by Professor W. T. Porter’s examination of 30,000 school-children in St. Louis in 1893, and by subsequent observations made by other men.
It is the opinion of Dr. Crampton, director of physical training in the New York city schools, that this improved physique in American men, observed in the universities, is not in a small measure due to the fact that within the last five years athletics have been introduced into the public schools, so that there are now hundreds of teams of baseball, football, basket-ball, and track athletics, where there was only one before, so that already the colleges are reporting that the young men entering them are bigger than they were ten years ago.
Professor Phillips of Amherst thinks that the young women are certainly one inch taller and five pounds heavier than they were ten years ago. This improved physique of Americans he attributes, like Dr. Crampton, to the fact that the American boy has now come in for his heritage of athletic sports, and he makes a strong plea for “adult play”—that every man and woman should have as good an opportunity as boys and girls to get out on an open space and play baseball, football, hockey, run, jump, and have a good time.
To show the importance which Great Britain places on physical training for boys and girls the following report of the Royal Commission of that country for 1903 is given under the caption “A National System of Physical Training.”
Report of Royal Commission of Great Britain on Physical Training.—“(1) Physical training should be regarded as of equal importance with mental training.
“(2) During school life physical training is quite as important for girls as for boys.
“(3) Systematic physical training is necessary both for country and town children.
“The daily walk to school is exercise, but not exercise which develops the body as a whole, or counteracts the liability to stoop, to be round-shouldered, or to be slovenly in gait. Moreover, all children during school life must spend many hours with but little change of position, the effects of which can only be corrected by systematic physical exercise.