Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/249

Rh enter the elementary schools, but a very small percentage continues to the completion of the college course. This comparatively small number of persisters does not fairly represent what our educational machinery could have done with the entire number who started at the bottom, but what that machinery can do with the kind nature had endowed with sufficient energy, determination and persistence to enable them to withstand the temptations to drop out one by one by the way and take a seemingly short cut to some ignus fatuus of success, but who continue to the end. There is here shown undoubtedly with considerable force the potency of the law of the survival of the fittest, if we take as our criterion of fitness mention in 'Who's Who.' This, however, does not invalidate the fact that the college course, either because of its educational or selective influence, increases largely, perhaps to the extent we have shown, the probability that the graduate will gain a favorable place in the public eye.

A classification of the names in the book which forms the basis of our study, in terms of the various professions and vocations, gives us the following numbers for the twenty-four which seem to form the most natural divisions. Actor: male 54, female 40. Artist, including illustrators: male 260, female 21. Author, including writer, historian, novelist and poet: male 528, female 272. Business, including the various mercantile pursuits: male 200. Clergyman, including bishop, rabbi, missionary, priest, salvation army and monk: male 655, female 7. College professor, including president, dean and chancellor: male 1,090, female 11. Congressman (both senate and house): 446. Editor, including journalist, critic, correspondent and reporter: male 509, female 13. Educator, including superintendent, teacher, philanthropist and reformer: male 188, female 30. Engineer, including architect and miner: male 284. Financier, including capitalist and banker: male 215. Inventor: male 26. Lawyer, including justice, judge and jurist: male 857, female 4. Lecturer: male 21, female 6. Librarian: male 362, female 9. Musician, including singer: male 111, female 21. Physician: male 540, female 7. Railroad official: male 102. Sailor: 103. Scientist, including naturalist: male 416, female 7. Soldier: 205. Statesman, including governor, diplomat, politician and mayor: 202. U. S. official: male, 98, female 1. Miscellaneous, running all the way from farmer to insurance president: male 53, female 2. The sum of these figures does not quite equal 8,602, the number which, as has already been stated, the book mentions, since a comparatively small number who failed to give the year of birth were not included in the study.

One question, among others, which the young person about to choose a profession is apt to consider is this: How long will it take to get a foothold? How many years of hard sledding before the