TEE COLLEGE-MAN. 355 



use in the industrial departments of life, out of which come, directly 

 or indirectly, all great fortunes. 



This is already coming into view as the characteristic change of 

 the time in the making of the personality of the notable man of the 

 time. To-day the educated men are taking their place in the world 

 and their chances of success are, and have long been, vastly greater, 

 in most directions, than those of the uneducated. The proportion of 

 educated men taking their places in history is already fifty times as 

 great as of the uneducated ; the next generation will see practically all 

 great prizes in their hands. It is a splendid evidence of the progress 

 of the world that he who chooses may enter the ranks of the educated, 

 and he who will may make himself a man of culture. 



As for opportunity to gain the prizes of common life, 'what more 

 can the college-man ask than he now receives ? ' One man in a hundred 

 to-day obtains a college diploma ; these men supply one third the Mem- 

 bers of Congress, one half and more of our presidents and vice-presi- 

 dents, two thirds of our Supreme Court justices, seven eights of the 

 chief justices. In all ranks, in all great places, the names of immortals 

 are in the proportion of fifty to one, favoring the college-man. If, as 

 asserted by some writers of late, as I however think mistakenly, the 

 proportion of college men to population is falling off, then so much 

 the greater will be the opportunities of the wise. If, as presumably is 

 the fact, college-men are more and more pursuing professional studies, 

 that means the elevation of the professions to a higher level and still 

 larger opportunities for the college-man fitted to lead. To-day, the 

 college-man has thirty times as large an opportunity to succeed in 

 public life as the non-graduate, fifty times as large an opportunity to 

 reach the cabinet, the vice-presidency or the president's chair, sixty 

 or seventy times as large a probability of success in striving for the 

 Supreme Court, eighty or ninety times as favorable chances of becoming 

 Chief Justice. 



In the great industries there are probably a still larger proportion 

 of positions which, without the scientific learning and systematic train- 

 ing in applied sciences given by the engineering schools, the most ambi- 

 tious of men and the most talented could not attain or attaining, could 

 not hold. The coming century will see these opportunities more and 

 more the prize of intellect suitably trained, of mind properly 

 strengthened, of talent precisely outfitted for the task of their acquire- 

 ment. The college-man will come more and more generally to take and 

 to hold one hundred per cent, of the positions assigned the generals 

 in the great army of industry. This is the more probable since, as is 

 asserted by a foreign and unprejudiced observer, * The engineering 

 profession is to-day, upon the whole, the best educated in America.' 



In all the later centuries until the nineteenth, the college-man 



