920 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 363. 



Crookes believes ; but it is near enough to 

 impress us with the vital importance of 

 using to the utmost every agency by which 

 skilled and scientific agriculture may be 

 substituted for the loose and wasteful sys- 

 tems of the past, and also to emphasize the 

 necessity of protecting the world's forests, 

 conserving its waters and employing every 

 other means by which the area of land 

 available for productive purposes can be in- 

 creased. Doubtless there is a limit to the 

 number of human beings that the earth is 

 capable of supporting in comfort, but sci- 

 ence, skill and foresight may place that 

 limit in a sufficiently distant future to re- 

 move all occasion for anxiety on the part of 

 the earth's present inhabitants or their im- 

 mediate posterity. 



' The Interdependence of the Sciences ' : 

 Dr. Max West, TJ. S. Industrial Commis- 

 sion, Washington. 



This paper will be published in Science. 



' The Present Status of Commerce in 

 the Educational Policy and in the Ad- 

 ministrative Organization of Modern Na- 

 tions ': John Franklin Crowell, Ph.D., 

 Bureau of Statistics, U. S. Treasury De- 

 partment. 



This paper presented the results of an 

 analysis of the courses of study of repre- 

 sentative institutions, both in this country 

 and abroad, in which higher commercial 

 instruction has been given. In some re- 

 spects our own schools are modeled after 

 the institutions of continental Europe, but 

 to a much greater extent they are the out- 

 growth of two tendencies in our national 

 life — the expansion of our universities and 

 the increasing influence of business men in 

 public policy. A comparison of several of 

 the more important higher schools of com- 

 merce in Europe and at home shows that 

 there are five double groups of subjects re- 

 garded as essential to a comprehensive com- 

 mercial curriculum of higher grade. These 

 are: (1) Geography and history, (2) lan- 



guages and methods, (3) science and tech- 

 nology, (4) economics and statistics, and 

 (5) law and sociology. The preponderat- 

 ing influence of one or another of these 

 groups is determined by the general charac- 

 ter of the college. In some institutions the 

 type of training offered is professedly tech- 

 nical, in others it is practically a commercial 

 substitute for a liberal education. The 

 liberal and the professional purposes are 

 probably least dissociated in the curriculum 

 of the Wharton School of Finance and 

 Economy at the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, the oldest of the higher schools of 

 commerce in this country. 



The practice has prevailed of organizing 

 a commercial curriculum of four years out 

 of subjects hitherto taught in other depart- 

 ments. However necessary this may have 

 been to meet a growing demand for special 

 instruction of a higher commercial charac- 

 ter, it has made the fundamental educa- 

 tional mistake of failing sufficiently to dif- 

 ferentiate the field of commercial phenomena 

 from that of industry on the one hand and 

 finance on the other. There is accordingly 

 much confusion, that must retard greatly 

 the rate at which the field of commercial 

 knowledge shall be reduced to scientific 

 consistency. It is to the solution of the 

 distinct problems of commerce that educa- 

 tion must devote itself if it means to or- 

 ganize commercial experience for the aid of 

 individual enterprise and of national pros- 

 perity. The scientific classification of com- 

 mercial phenomena is preliminary to the 

 solution of these inherent problems. 



A truly scientific course in the study of 

 commerce must fill four conditions : 



1. The classification of the facts and 

 methods of modern commerce. 



2. The formulation and solution of com- 

 mercial problems. 



3. The grounding of the student in eco- 

 nomic principles and in their ready applica- 

 tion to commercial situations. 



