578  Chairman  s  Address  on  Education.      j AD^Jembe£i9S°* 
years,  is  due  entirely  to  other  causes,  and  is  gradually  being  over- 
come by  the  increased  salaries  which  a  decreased  supply  of  clerks 
has  called  forth  in  accordance  with  economic  law.  Prerequisite 
legislation  has  had  and  will  have  no  effect  upon  the  situation  save  a 
salutary  one.  For  let  me  ask  what  class  of  boys,  if  any,  will  increased 
entrance  requirements  keep  out  of  the  calling  ?  Only  the  stupid 
and  the  ill-prepared  ones.  But  are  these  the  ones  who  have  been 
leaving  the  drug  business  during  the  last  year  or  two  ?  You  couldn't 
drive  such  boys  away  with  a  club,  for  they  have  no  chances  else- 
where ;  but  even  if  they  had  gone  and  did  go  we  should  cry  "  good 
riddance"  after  them.  No,  the  young  men  whom  we  have  been 
losing  are  the  bright  and  the  fairly  well-prepared  ones  who  have 
been  disappointed  with  the  conditions  in  pharmacy,  and  discouraged 
with  the  cheap  and  uneducated  competition  which  they  have  had  to 
lace.  These  are  the  young  men  we  want,  and  we  can  get  them  in 
no  better  or  surer  way  than  by  improving  the  educational  and  pro- 
fessional character  of  the  calling,  and  therefore  both  its  dignity  and 
its  opportunities  for  financial  success. 
Among  other  cogent  reasons,  there  are  two  in  particular  why  we 
should  insist  upon  the  definite  specification  of  suitable  preliminary 
standards  in  all  our  graduation  preiequisite  laws.  The  first  has 
already  been  mentioned  in  this  address.  I  refer  to  the  opportunity 
which  the  prerequisite  movement  presents  of  enabling  the  efficient 
and  high-minded  colleges  to  raise  their  entrance  standards  in  a 
manner  which  the  conditions  of  the  past  have  practically  rendered 
impossible.  The  one  serious  defect  in  our  educational  armor  has 
been  low  standards  of  general  education — not  only  low  standards, 
but  in  the  majority  of  instances  almost  no  standards  at  all.  Phar- 
maceutical education  has  made  great  strides  during  the  last  twenty- 
five  years ;  college  courses  have  been  greatly  extended,  amplified 
and  improved ;  but  this  progress,  gratifying  and  necessary  as  it  is, 
has  been  considerably  nullified  and  defeated  by  this  cancer  which 
has  so  largely  robbed  the  educational  system  of  its  strength. 
You  can't  take  a  half  baked  boy  off  the  streets,  with  very  little  or 
no  mental  training,  and  teach  him  chemistry  and  botany  and  phar- 
macy and  the  rest.  And  yet  this  is  the  almost  hopeless  task  which 
our  colleges  have  been  endeavoring  to  perform.  The  results  ?  A 
Western  Board  of  Pharmacy  has  found  so  many  college  graduates 
unable  to  do  the  simplest  mathematical  calculations  which  would  be 
