Manliness and its association with success went through significant changes in this period. In the early nineteenth century, work provided the means for manhood, brute strength, individual will, and self-fulfillment. By the end of the century, modern office work threatened those means. In the 1880s, neurologist George M. Beard published his theories on a “new” disease called neurasthenia, which he described as a reduction in nerve energy produced by modern life. A work hazard, neurasthenia necessitated that office men, and women, restore vital electricity to the vital organs like the heart and lungs in order to live a healthy lifestyle. Camp’s Daily Dozen was a cure for both the mental disease of salaried office positions and physical disease of a sedentary lifestyle.
Walter Camp at the Presidential cabinet exercise session in 1917. (Courtesy Library of Congress)
His work as a football star and coach led to positions in the New Haven Clock Company, the Senior Service Corps, and President Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet. Camp led members of Wilson’s cabinet in a series of exercise sessions, which prompted the media to call the group “the Walter Scamps.” It was through these positions that he developed what would later become the Daily Dozen. During World War I, he estimated 65,000 Navy men used his exercises. For Camp, poor health took on greater importance for men going to war. As he argued, “Since the Civil War we have grown rich and fat, flaccid and spineless.” Camp recruited football stars like “Cupid” Black from Yale to help train soldiers. A number of men gave their testimonials to using the Daily Dozen and how easy the exercises were to perform, even hinting before the sale of the regimen that it was useful for office workers. They felt manlier and more athletic than their colleagues thanks to the regimen. In 1918, members of the Augusta Physical Reserve in Augusta, Maine, gathered in the street to perform the Daily Dozen, saying they would surpass the fitness of the Walter Scamps. The Daily Dozen was supplementary to an early morning hike in the hopes the cabinet would perform better at their desk jobs. Camp prescribed the Daily Dozen as both an additional exercise and a replacement. In the event a man was unable to venture into the wilderness or attend a military-style exercise, they could do a Daily Dozen at their desk. And, the Daily Dozen would improve both physical health and mental acuity. When Camp sold the Daily Dozen as a set of vinyl records, his business partner Health Builders made the biological benefits more specific.