KantoSooner
3/12/2010, 10:28 AM
In cleaning out an old family garage, I came across a booklet entitled "Success Through Character Analysis" by Harry Balkin; published in 1922. It appears to be a salesman training course based on the principles of phrenology and racism. Fun reading. It included this section on 'Immigrants From Missouri" (P. 64 for those of you who want to follow along in your own copies), herein repeated for your pleasure:
Immigrants From Missouri
Such persons are more perceptive than reflective, more practical than theoretical. They make fine naturalists but poor originators or theoreticians. They possess a fund of ready knowledge and are usually to be found in those spheres of activity calling for immediate information, occupying jobs necessitating quick, practical thinking. Dreams, visions, speculative ideas, suppositions, creeds and theories are not for them.
Can it be seen, felt or moved? Is it a fact? Show it. Prove it.
That is their attitude toward the world.
Invariably men of this type make replies in the form of questions to all statements regarding what may be or what may not be possible. They are curious; they want demonstrations as answers.
We must not confound their retreating foreheads with the feeble intelligence displayed by the idiot who possesses a retreating brow. Many a man of accomplishment has a retreating forehead; Voltaire, for instance. But in those cases, we always find the distance from the centre of the ear to the perceptive areas and the reasoning faculties to be very long.
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I read this with awe. Not only did the writer nail Missourians to a 'T', but the entire concecpt of 'immigrants' from Missouri is one that will warm my days for weeks to come.
Harry Balkin, racist quack, hat's off to you!
Immigrants From Missouri
Such persons are more perceptive than reflective, more practical than theoretical. They make fine naturalists but poor originators or theoreticians. They possess a fund of ready knowledge and are usually to be found in those spheres of activity calling for immediate information, occupying jobs necessitating quick, practical thinking. Dreams, visions, speculative ideas, suppositions, creeds and theories are not for them.
Can it be seen, felt or moved? Is it a fact? Show it. Prove it.
That is their attitude toward the world.
Invariably men of this type make replies in the form of questions to all statements regarding what may be or what may not be possible. They are curious; they want demonstrations as answers.
We must not confound their retreating foreheads with the feeble intelligence displayed by the idiot who possesses a retreating brow. Many a man of accomplishment has a retreating forehead; Voltaire, for instance. But in those cases, we always find the distance from the centre of the ear to the perceptive areas and the reasoning faculties to be very long.
**********************
I read this with awe. Not only did the writer nail Missourians to a 'T', but the entire concecpt of 'immigrants' from Missouri is one that will warm my days for weeks to come.
Harry Balkin, racist quack, hat's off to you!