EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY. 441 



has played some part in England and is used in Germany, It has the 

 merit of insuring to the home office accurate knowledge of the tastes, 

 customs, laws and languages of foreign markets, and of keeping the 

 home office and agencies in touch through the transfusion of blood. 



Travel has for many generations been used in western Europe as 

 a fitting •supplement to the education of a young man at the conclusion 

 of the period of schooling. It undeniably broadens the personality 

 and develops culture through the variety of knowledge it imparts and 

 the contact with people which it involves. It is, however, an expensive 

 way of accumulating knowledge, and the knowledge gained is likely 

 to be of a fragmentary and superficial character unless the traveler 

 have uncommon tenacity and singleness of purpose. Before travel be- 

 came the favorite recreation of the wealthy and the countries that have 

 much to teach came to be deluged with the never-ending stream of 

 sight-seers it was, perhaps, possible to gain in a short time valuable 

 information regarding the industrial life of a people. Now the avenues 

 of travel have been smoothed to a cosmopolitan sameness and these 

 avenues lead to the 'sights' which, for the most part, convey little in- 

 formation of practical value to the young man preparing for commer- 

 cial life. Meanwhile, since international rivalry in trade has become 

 acute, the processes of production which might be studied with profit 

 are being jealously guarded and kept secret from foreign visitors. So 

 greatly has the system of news gathering improved and so voluminous 

 and accurate have become the reports of consular officers that the 

 traveler abroad must often return home to learn from literature easily 

 accessible facts that are difficult to acquire through personal observa- 

 tion. Travel is quite appropriate for a people that have everything 

 to learn and desire to import en Hoc the system of older developed com- 

 mercial states, but for a country having marked characteristics of 

 superiority and possessing the lead in many things the problem of keep- 

 ing this preeminence is not solved by any scheme of borrowing ideas, 

 no matter how systematically and intelligently carried out. It is de- 

 serving of notice, however, that travel may be utilized by American 

 manufacturers to a greater degree than it has been to give them a 

 knowledge of the tastes of their foreign customers. 



Education abroad is in many ways analogous to travel. It has been 

 employed in recent years with success by Japan and is best adapted to 

 the requirements of a nation taking its first steps in a new culture. 

 For the United States this plan has many of the limitations of foreign 

 travel, and it carries with it the added danger that the young man who 

 remains abroad for a long season in the formative period of life will 

 find himself on return out of touch with the ideals and customs domi- 

 nating the industrial society in which he is to live, and that thereby 

 the effectiveness of his personality will be greatly decreased. 



These are some of the methods which have been devised to improve 



