352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



just past the now hardly less essential requisites furnished him by sys- 

 tematic instruction in the sciences underlying his art and the applied 

 sciences and the scientific methods fundamental to his profession. Now 

 and then a man may get on and even possibly attain a high or leading 

 rank; but it will be at enormous sacrifice of strength, energy and 

 physical vigor ; and when he reaches his goal, it will prove that he has 

 gathered ' apples of Sodom ' for a ' Barmecide Feast ' and he will 

 mourn, as have so many before him, the lack of that which makes a life 

 of independence and of liberty in expenditure worth having. He will 

 probably, as have so many before him, if his long life of self-seeking 

 has not poisoned his character and killed all his sympathies, seek the 

 next best thing and try to help other later youth of ambition and energy 

 secure what he so greatly needs. 



While it is largely true, as has been asserted by more than one such 

 man, like the fox in the fable seeking to justify his amputated tail, 

 that the prizes of our time and our country are now being often grasped 

 by the uncultivated and unlearned man, the fact is mainly due to the 

 circumstances that these men of to-day are mainly uneducated through 

 the misfortune that they were bom too soon and before higher educa- 

 tion had come to be general and suitable to the conditions of modern 

 life. In another generation this situation will be modified in the 

 direction of giving these opportunities to educated men in vastly larger 

 proportion. Meantime, every successful man, lacking education, 

 learning and culture, recognizes to-day, either that he has also lacked 

 wisdom if deliberately declining to secure an education when young, 

 or that he has been extremely unfortunate if deprived of that privilege 

 by force of circumstances. Not a man of them but envies his poorest 

 acquaintance who possesses the essentials of content in a life outside 

 the narrowing and engrossing pursuits of a business life. He lacks 

 preparation for precisely what all his energies have been directed to- 

 ward — making suitable provisions for a profitable and happy life on a 

 higher plane. 



Visiting the famous Homestead steel works, some years ago, the 

 gentleman who was taking me through the mills pointed out a strong, 

 good-looking and evidently masterful man standing on the top of a set 

 of heavy roll-housings in the armor-plate mills and remarked, ' That 

 man is paid more than your college president ' and, indicating another 

 who was directing work not far away and who evidently belonged to the 

 same class, the most intelligent of mechanics, he said: 'That man is get- 

 ting pay exceeding that of any one of your professors.' Both men were 

 soiled and grimy, dressed in overalls and, as occasion arose, ready to 

 take a hand in the work, and to the unaccustomed eye of the casual 

 visitor they would seem to be day-workman ; but one familiar with such 

 scenes would instantly detect the bearing and manner of the born gen- 



