436 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



complicated by the establishment of commercial courses in high schools. 

 The high school has the advantage in that it can formulate a systematic 

 course of study covering the special training desired, and can couple 

 with it a fairly adequate general secondary education. By having a 

 larger scholar population and holding it for a series of years the high 

 school is able, furthermore, to carry out in its commercial course a more 

 ambitious program of study than the 'commercial college' with its 

 floating population, and so it can group and systematize its work to 

 the best advantage. It remains, however, to be seen what relation the 

 public high school and the private school will eventually sustain to one 

 another in this branch of education. 



Higher Commercial Education is the effort of universities to re- 

 spond to the call for a course of education which shall fit young men 

 for the more responsible positions in industry. It aims to provide the 

 theoretical and systematic part of the education of those who are to 

 determine and execute the commercial and financial policy of busi- 

 nesses. It has more particularly in view at present persons who will 

 occupy such positions as managers of departments, foreign agents and 

 buyers of large concerns, officials of banks, insurance and transportation 

 companies, merchants, journalists, government employees at home or 

 abroad, as members of the consular and diplomatic service, etc. 



There are three chief reasons why higher commercial education has 

 become an imperative demand of the times and why the great univer- 

 sities of this country as of other countries are responding to the call 

 made upon them by public opinion. These are briefly, that business 

 has become an intellectual pursuit, that in business a sufficient training 

 is not found for the adequate performance of its own tasks, and flnally, 

 that in the juncture thus created the universities are being actuated by 

 a new, broad and constructive policy to take hold of the problem. 



To consider these separately, the first reason is that the higher tasks 

 and the more responsible positions of industry now involve an intel- 

 lectual pursuit making profound demands upon the intelligence of 

 those who undertake them. As Mr. Arthur Balfour, the first lord 

 of the English treasury, has recently said, "In the marvelously com- 

 plicated phenomena of modern trade, commerce, production and manu- 

 facture there is ample scope for the most scientific minds and the most 

 critical intellects ; and if commerce is to be treated from the higher and 

 wider viewpoint it must be approached in the broader spirit of impartial 

 scientific investigation. ' ' 



The economic system in vogue before the industrial revolution 

 hardly gave an opportunity for much of a science of productive industry 

 or for systematic courses of study preparatory to the task of guiding 

 industrial forces. That revolution enlarged the individual business 

 unit through the use of machinery in connection with great sources of 

 power, and of labor through an elaborate differentiation of tasks, the 



