The Man Behind
The Federal Trade Commision Case

by Bob Hoffman

As you will note if you read my article in this issue, Heavy Exercise Is Best, I have lead rather a hectic existence for the last few weeks. Added to my usual line of duties which are more than enough, have been a series of Federal Trade Commission hearings in a number of cities. Complete details about this later.

At first it is a secret, to which the investigator may be subjected to a fine of five thousand dollars, so I am told, if he divulges the name of the complainant, when a Federal Trade Case is started. So I could not know who instigated this case which resulted in the article, "Federal Trade Versus Barbells." But this all came out at the hearing and Mr. Charles Atlas was very conspicuous as the man whose business was suffering through my practice of telling the truth about exercise. The truth hurt, he complained, and the Federal Trade citation addressed to myself as Editor of Strength & Health magazine, set out to prove that, in truth and in fact exercise without apparatus will build just as much strength and development as the use of weights.

I prefer to follow a generous policy in the business of living. To live and let live. To follow the Golden Rule. Treat others as I would like to be treated. If this doesn't work then I use the advice of the old testament. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. In short, treat others as they treat myself, my friends or associates. It happens that the work of telling the world of the unlimited advantages of modern bar bell training has gravitated to me. This magazine which gives me a voice, is devoted to what we consider best in exercise and the business of living. And when uninformed or misinformed persons knock weight lifting and the use of weights, they find me "in their hair," in time, to use a slang expression.

Dr. Tilney started Chas. Atlas in business. He wrote the course, for the first years they were partners. In spite of later unpleasant relations Dr. Tilney thinks and speaks very kindly of Chas. Atlas. He would tell me that Atlas is a nice fellow personally, and the many items to which I object were not his (Atlas's) fault, but rather his business associates. For this and other reasons the principal of which follows, I said nothing. This morning I received a letter which said in part, "I feel that I owe a debt to Chas. Atlas. For although I received no favorable results from his course, at least it interested me in physical training so that I later learned of York Bar Bell training and since have acquired the super health and strength I always wanted."

A large percentage of the men who later train with bar bells, make their start with the Atlas non apparatus system. It is so highly advertised, that he sells them first, they don't get the results they expected, and just like I and so many thousands of others, they turn to bar bell training and obtain their physical desires. So I felt that indirectly Mr. Atlas was doing good in the world, and I overlooked the harm he was doing.

For nearly all of the "muscle bound" stories, the thoughts of injuries and accidents with apparatus, emanate from the advertising of Chas. Atlas. One of his pieces of literature shows a man throwing bar bells and dumbells down over a dump with the statement. "They robbed me of my vigor." He states that he does not sell accidents and shows a man hitting himself in the eye with a dumbell and dropping one on his foot. He shows a cable exerciser breaking loose and hitting a man. He knocks weights very extensively and constantly warns people against the harm they will produce. I can prove through a hundred sources that he trained with weights, wrestled, tumbled, hand balanced, was a professional strong man, used cables, and spent many years as a professional performer to attain his physique. In the May 1935 issue of our magazine, Alan Carse, in the story, The Old Athlete Tells a Secret, explained the training methods of some of these men who built their bodies with methods similar to those we advocate and then offered a course of training without apparatus or with light equipment. This article went on to explain that these other physical directors do not sell weights because they can't make money out of it. We well bar bells as low as six cents a pound. They cost us four cents a pound packed for delivery. There are many forms of overhead such as publishing this magazine, wages, rent, light etc. which must be carried from the sale of weights. So it is easy to see why money can't be made selling weights and why other physical directors must offer another system.

If they go on selling their own idea, that is their privilege and I won't concern myself. But knocking of the use of weights I don't like. It has reached the point at this writing where I wish to challenge Chas. Atlas to prove a number of things which he has advertised for many years.

I say that he has travelled under false colors all of these years. Following are some of his claims.

I say that he was never a weakling. Questioning divulged the fact that he weight this amount at fourteen or fifteen years, which was a normal weight of a boy of that age. His own story of his life states, that "I was just a boy, healthy and happy, with no thought but of eating, sleeping and playing. I ought to say that I was never sickly but on the contrary was rather strong. - My father was a strong man, however, and I suppose I naturally learned to admire strength." My contention is that he has no more right to advertise that he was a ninety-seven pound weakling who became strong, than I would wish to advertise that I was a twelve pound weakling (that's what I weighed when I was born) who became a two hundred and fifty pound man.

I challenge him to prove that statement. On questioning he admits that he teaches health, improved circulation, etc. I offer to train free of charge a group of undeveloped young men with the York Bar Bell System for a given time if Atlas will pit his system and his knowledge of training against mine, with a similar group and his own system as sold to thousands in the past years.

I challenge him to prove that statement and I can prove that he was well enough developed in 1916 to pose for exercises in Physical Culture magazine, that he started in his mail order business in December, 1922, that he did not advertise Dynamic Tension until 1929. That this system of resistance exercises was offered in a book by Dr. Lewis fifty years before Atlas advertised it, that Blakie wrote a book about it in 1878, my father practised the Swoboda system, with similar exercises before I was born, thirty-seven years ago and that I started with such a system. That there is nothing new about the Atlas system, that it has been given up by other physical directors as it did not bring the results claimed for it. I can prove that he developed his body like all other strong men did. With heavy resistance, weights, wrestling, balancing and strong man feats.

Above everything else I challenge his right to that claim and I offer to pit the strength of my muscles against his. I don't claim to be the world's Most Handsome Man, nor the World's Most Perfectly Built Man, nor the World's Strongest Physical Director. I have been a very busy, business man who is not as strong as some of our amateur lifters of today, but who has received very good results from irregular training and proper living with the methods I endeavor to teach to others.

I wish to repeat the claims that Atlas has advertised for years in his catalogue (some of which could not be done by any human man) and the I wish to challenge him to a contest on those feats. The terms of the contest to be that I will either exceed his claims or at least surpass his attempts on all or the majority of the feats. I outweigh Chas. Atlas, I am five years younger. Lest such a contest seem unfair, kindly consider the following facts. Atlas has been a professional, living by his muscles and his figure for twenty-four years. During this period his sole aim has been to develop and maintain his physique. He has had time to do so, for it has been his business. He has had much time for vacations, for basking in the sun, for fasting, for displaying his physique to others, for training hours and hours each week.

When he became a professional I was nearly fourteen years of gas. Then came years of athletics, two and a half years of service, wounds, gas, then sixteen years of very intensive business effort, driving of fifty thousand miles a year. Irregular living, little sleep, a severe accident. But the following, when the opportunity offered, of the rules I write about in this magazine and since 1923 at least some weight training. That year I sent for the Atlas Catalogue, as well as Titus, Breibart, McMahon, Leiderman, and man others. I chose wisely and have been a bar bell man since. It has meant everything to me and after these years of intensive effort I weigh seventy pounds more, in very good condition. I have more pep, a great deal more strength, and feel and look so much younger than I did many years ago. It has been a good system and I wish to prove it. Therefore this series of challenges.

Atlas is the only Fakir left. The others are out of business. Through his claim to a title that he never won, through a very nice physique which God kindly gave him and which is not possible for every man to attain, and through his false claims to strength he has stayed in business.

Following are the Strength claims of Atlas on which I challenge him.

The catalogue which Mr. Atlas sends out reports that he can bend a five foot steel bar one inch in diameter. That the weight of two men hanging on the end of the bar does not bend it, but that he snaps it with his teeth. Take out your par bells fellows. They are usually five feet long. Made of Steel they are just one and one sixteenth inches in diameter. Do you think any human being can snap such a bar one one slightly smaller with his teeth. Yet lots of fellows believe it. I want to see it done. I never tried to bend a rod of steel in this manner but my teeth are sound (One can't have everything, some have good teeth like I have and little hair and others have lots of hair and have false teeth) so I might do better than the hair ones with this feat.

Chas. Atlas testifies that he does not read Strength & Health magazine. He sees it only when one of his pupils tells him about it or sends him a copy. So will you gentlemen who are now pupils of Chas. Atlas or have been pupils, kindly send him a marked copy of this article so that he will know that I challenge him to prove his various statements and the strength of his muscles against mine.

I am ready any time for this contest, although I think it fair that a definite time be set so that Mr. Atlas can go into secret training to perform these feats. And I would like to be a little mouse to see how he trains to lift 250 pounds overhead without straining and to put 266 pounds six or seven times in the wrestler's bridge position without straining, and to lift two hundred pounds over head without straining, without the use of weights as he claims. Dr. Brady received our challenge with a silence so profound that it could be cut with a knife, and I sincerely hope that this challenge will not go unaccepted.