A STUDY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY SUCCESS. 249 



cent, had, however, completed the college course, and this in my opinion 

 is enough to invalidate the arguments of C. P. Huntington and others 

 against such training for business men. We have no means of knowing 

 just how many of our business men throughout the country have taken 

 the college course, but computed roughly, one man in about 300 of all 

 grades and stations in life has been so educated. Since this includes 

 mill operatives and other classes in which such training is practically 

 unknown, we must assume that the ratio would be much larger for the 

 business man. Yet it seems to me that even a most generous estimate 

 could not bring it up to one in eight — that of our business men of emi- 

 nence^ — and we should be forced to conclude that the college course has 

 even for him, remote as the connection seems to be, been a contributor 

 to his success. This argument would also apply to the financier, who 

 comes next with his 18 per cent, of college graduates. Our statesmen, 

 the next class, and the congressmen, who differ but little, are hardly 

 to be congratulated on their showing. Thus one may say that with 

 our whole male citizenship eligible to those positions of honor — the 

 boast of our republic — whose ratio of college training is one to 300, 

 while that for the eminent man of these two classes is about one to five 

 as shown by our figure, the probability of gaining such honorable 

 mention is increased about sixty-fold for these our law-makers and 

 diplomats by the college course, an increase which is not to be despised 

 by those who aim at these high places at popular disposal. This too for 

 college conditions in which departments of finance and special facilities 

 for diplomatic training have not played so important a part as they 

 are likely to in the future. Although artists and musicians seem to be 

 uneducated classes we must not neglect the fact shown by the figure 

 that large numbers (43 per cent, and 33 per cent, respectively) were 

 educated abroad, where undoubtedly they were spending their time to 

 better advantage than could have been done in any college at home. 

 Next after the sailor and the soldier, whose heavy black lines upon the 

 figure bear testimony to the efficiency of our national academies for the 

 training of officers on land and sea, comes, in our descending scale of 

 learnedness, the lawyer. His educational showing, when compared with 

 that of the sister professions of medicine and theology, is not a favor- 

 able one. With 40 per cent, of the shining lights of our legal fraternity 

 innocent either of professional training or of academic instruction 

 beyond the high school, we wonder what the education of the lesser 

 lights may be and whether really much education is essential to success. 

 The records of the bar examination in the various states are so kept, 

 or rather so not kept, as to make it impossible to ascertain the previous 

 training of those admitted, so I am unable to show these facts for the 

 rank and file of the profession. The reports of the TJ. S. Commissioner 

 of Education, however, show that for the last twenty years 27 per cent. 



