440 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a word it would be to echo what has already been said by the chairman 

 — educate, I believe our raw material of men is the best in the world. 

 But I do believe that our commercial men require educating, training 

 scientifically from the bottom to the top. I believe that is a feeling 

 which has become very common in this country, I see a great many 

 articles now in the papers as to the decline of our trade, and several of 

 our leading newspapers are, as you know, devoting articles to this sub- 

 ject, which I read with profit, but as to which I do not pretend to pro- 

 nounce a definite judgment. But I do think all these articles, whether 

 they be pessimistic or optimistic — and I am bound to say they are gen- 

 erally pessimistic — are united on this point of education." 



Before we consider the adaptation of a university course to business 

 training let us notice the various systems which have been or are now 

 employed in educating or choosing young men who are designed for 

 industrial leadership. The oldest system now in use is that of patron- 

 age, which still survives in France. This system belongs to a long 

 established and somewhat static industrial community, in which ad- 

 vancement is slow and restricted to those who are specially favored. 

 The solicitation of the favor of a distinguished relative or friend or 

 local dignitary to assist in introducing a young man to a desirable 

 position is in a sense only a rigid and systematized form of the rather 

 loose system of recommendation everywhere in use, and, in a degree, it 

 is as natural as the giving of favor to friends and relatives which is 

 everywhere a factor in the preferment of many. To erect this into a 

 system, however, is repugnant to the spirit of American youth and their 

 employers. Allied to this is the English custom known as the 'count- 

 ing-room system, ' which consists in the placing of the son of a member 

 of a firm in the business at an early age and graduating him rapidly 

 from department to department in such a manner that when he finally 

 obtains a junior partnership he has some knowledge of the operations 

 of the business. The result of this plan is to keep businesses in families 

 for generations and to create a spirit of family pride in the integrity 

 and prosperity of a business which is heartily commendable. The Swiss 

 a? an industrial people are noted for the degree to which businesses are 

 in this way kept within families. Some defects of the system are the 

 tendency to coerce young men into occupations for which they have no 

 taste or ability, the tendency to family exclusiveness and the neglect 

 of young men who have only their merits to recommend them for pro- 

 motion. This system is in reality a special form of apprenticeship 

 arranged for the few. 



Closely allied to the above is the recruiting of the managers of the 

 colonial houses or foreign selling agencies of a concern from promising 

 young men in subordinate positions in the home office and, in turn, 

 recruiting the superior officers of the home concern from successful 

 branch managers. This system of using the foreign ofiices as feeders 



