Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/365

Rh in the industrial army, for farthest exploration of unknown fields of science, and for loftiest rise in the philosophical world and, even with similar elementary experience and training, for greatest success in the lower, but none the less great, world of money-makers. The twentieth century man will be the college-man, in type, and it will be college-men, as a rule, who may be expected to go farthest and rise highest and to do the great deeds of the coming centuries, whether in finance, in the industries, in political life or in the highest realms of science and the loftiest worlds of morals and philanthropy.

Shame be to him if, with all his advantages, he permits another to wrest from him that leadership by greater desert, by more perfect fitness. Glory be to him if he do his duty and splendidly, as he may, accomplish his grand task!

The college-man is evidently ere long to take charge of our public offices and of the industries and professional departments, and college-men are to find their way into prominent positions as never before; but, fortunately, college-men come from all sorts and conditions of people, and it can never be said that this means the organization of a class to dominate other classes, much less the masses. The sons of poor men, as a rule, always have been, and probably always will be, able to secure these positions oftener than the sons of rich men; for they have the discipline in early life that the latter usually lack. The process of promotion of the college-man is to be one, as well, of constant redistribution of power among all classes, very much as common experience shows the wealth of the country to be as constantly in process of redistribution. The democracy of intellect and the democracy of influence will be insured by this process in the most desirable of all possible ways. The way is now opening to the college-man as never before, and especially the departments of applied science and the industries offer him opportunities beside which those of the college-man in the other professions are insignificant.

In another generation the proportion of men, educated and uneducated, who attain success will be vastly changed, and, happily, the number of men who have reached competence or wealth in their vocations and who must still sigh that they cannot give of their millions to gain the education which they lack will be, probably, comparatively small—for the ambitious poor boy will much more commonly than now find his way to his triumph by way of the college or the professional school. The number of wealthy men who will esteem it a privilege to help on the work of education and to take part in other great works will undoubtedly also steadily increase until, as we may perhaps hope, the redistribution of surplus wealth may become the pleasure and the recognized duty of all.

The college-man, leaving college, goes out into life, once more a