BUSINESS MAN AND HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE 73 



THE BUSINESS MAN" AND THE HIGH-SCHOOL GKADUATE 



By JAMES P. MUNROE 



BOSTON, MASS. 



"AT"OT so very long ago the merchant, the manufacturer, the teacher, 

 -LN the young man, and the public in general were under the spell 

 of the boys' magazine, wherein the first prize — the prize of partnership 

 in the business and marriage with the " old man's " daughter — is 

 awarded to the boy who keeps his hands clean, brushes his shoes, picks 

 up stray pins on the office floor and carefully saves the twine from his 

 employer's parcels. To do these things is indispensable; but besides 

 this, the aspirant for partnership (and the daughter) must also — 

 according to the story-books — write a perfect hand, never make a mis- 

 take in addition, never forget a message, never have a deceased grand- 

 mother on the afternoon of the ball-game, never think of aught except 

 mastering every detail of the business, never be anything, in short, but 

 the kind of prig that real, red-blooded boys are not. 



The so-called Manchester school of political economy was built 

 around a supposed economic man wholly unlike any human being ever 

 born. Consequently there were promulgated for nearly a century a 

 host of solemn fallacies which have given, and are still giving, endless 

 trouble to civilized society. In much the same way the supposed 

 demands of business upon boys have crystallized around these story- 

 book heroes and have led the business man, the boy and the boy's teacher 

 into all sorts of difficulties, misunderstandings and wild-goose-chases 

 after educational impossibilities. 



It may be that the story-book boy and the story-book employer — 

 and even the daughter — did exist at some period anterior to the middle 

 of the nineteenth century; but since that time all three have been as 

 extinct as the dodo. Yet much of the thinking and much of the talk 

 about the demands of business are based, even now, upon these ancient 

 and mendacious yarns. 



To reach any sound conclusions, to-day, however, one must rid him- 

 self of the obsession of these romantic fallacies and must face the 

 actual facts. The clean-hands, blacked-shoes fallacy has ruined thou- 

 sands of boys who, if they had pitched in and got their hands dirty, 

 would have turned out first-rate mechanics and mill-men, instead of 

 sixth-rate clerks. The pin-picking and twine-saving fairy-tales have 

 started many a boy on the downward path of petty, two-cent economies 

 instead of on the upward way of large-minded, far-seeing business 

 policies. While as for the other things demanded by the story-books — 

 they are about as obsolete as sand boxes and quill pens. 



Who seriously cares about long-hand writing, when actual busi- 



