SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 539 



THE LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 



By Professor GRANT SHOWERMAN 



UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 



rpiHERE are no doubt a great many easily attainable data which the 

 -*- general public or its individual members, in the effort to improve 

 civic or industrial affairs, may well employ some one to collect and set 

 in order for them. There may even be some justification for the exist- 

 ence of the professional investigator, though there is the greatest danger 

 that as a class and in the long run he will do more harm than good by 

 seeing too much or seeing awry. 



It is safe to say, however, that not even the professional investigator 

 will ever fathom the mystery of the college professor — and of course I 

 mean him of the less demonstrable sort, the professor of liberal arts. 

 Man is an ingenious animal, and the professionial investigator is a super- 

 man, but there are limits to human capacity. 



If the professional investigator ever compiles an intelligible report 

 on the college professor, it will be either because he himself is a college 

 professor, or because he takes the word of the college professor; and 

 even then it will satisfy neither professor nor public. 



It would be surprising indeed if a college professor — a real college 

 professor, I repeat, one of the useless kind; not one of the kind whose 

 services are so easily translated into mone}^ and who are really nothing 

 but business men — it would be a great surprise if a real college professor 

 ever undertook a "survey" of his fellows. He knows too much about 

 the nature of their calling. Next to the ministry, or even beyond it, 

 the profession of liberal arts is removed from the rough business of life, 

 and occupies itself with the affairs of the mind and soul. The reli- 

 gious life and the intellectual life have always set their own standards, 

 and always will. Both of them know and feel what they are aiming 

 at, and they alone really know. The world may indeed fix the manner 

 and amount of college receipt and expenditure, but the purposes and 

 methods and results of liberal education have never been susceptible of 

 "scientific management," and never will be. The world's inability to 

 set standards, or even to comprehend them, is proved by its very attempt 

 to investigate. Investigation is really an avowal of the intention to 

 force the liberal arts into the moulds of worldly business. "Were the 

 intention to succeed, the result would be, not liberal education, but 

 worldly business. 



It would be quite as surprising if the college professor attempted to 

 give "scientific" answers to the questions of the professional investi- 

 gator. The last thing that either the professor of liberal arts or his 

 disciples would attempt is a scientific or "practical" demonstration of 



