A SCIENCE OF COMMERCE 



AND SOME PROLEGOMENA 



By W. J. ASHLEY, M.A. 



Professor of Commerce in tlie University of Birmingham 



" Commercial education " is in the air ; and of late years the 

 idea has made its way in England from the stage of the 

 secondary school to the stage of the university. The en- 

 thusiasm of the advocates of "commercial education " in schools 

 has not been without its good results. The insistence upon 

 " commercial " geography, for instance, or " commercial " arith- 

 metic, has contributed in no small measure to the more sensible 

 teaching of arithmetic and geography, even when the adjective 

 is not prefixed ; but certainly the movement has had its draw- 

 backs — chief among them the tendency to promote an over-early 

 specialisation. Moreover, until recently it practically aimed at 

 nothing beyond the acquisition of clerkly accomplishments ; and 

 it has doubtless stimulated the already excessive pressure into 

 the black-coated occupations of the desk. It is not wonderful, 

 therefore, that the defects of the propaganda positively prejudiced 

 for some time the cause of commercial education of a higher type. 

 But the half-articulate feeling among business people that even 

 in university training, in spite of all the recent reforms, there 

 were still grave deficiencies so far as the needs of their own class 

 were concerned, was too deep and widespread to be frightened 

 out of existence, even by the mistakes of the early advocates 

 of commercial education. Business men had come to realise 

 that for their own sons, who were ultimately to take their 

 places, there was as yet no training devised even remotely 

 comparable with that provided for the future " professional 

 man." The theory that university studies were sufficient for 

 the purpose if they furnished " a general mental training," be- 

 cause the powers thus developed could afterwards be applied 

 in any particular direction that might be necessary — supported, 

 as perhaps it was, by a few examples in each generation — had 

 broken down in practice. For the sort of general culture thus 

 secured only too often ended by making business life distasteful 



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