Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/444

440 a word it would be to echo what has already been said by the chairman—educate, I believe our raw material of men is the best in the world. But I do believe that our commercial men require educating, training scientifically from the bottom to the top. I believe that is a feeling which has become very common in this country, I see a great many articles now in the papers as to the decline of our trade, and several of our leading newspapers are, as you know, devoting articles to this subject, which I read with profit, but as to which I do not pretend to pronounce a definite judgment. But I do think all these articles, whether they be pessimistic or optimistic—and I am bound to say they are generally pessimistic—are united on this point of education."

Before we consider the adaptation of a university course to business training let us notice the various systems which have been or are now employed in educating or choosing young men who are designed for industrial leadership. The oldest system now in use is that of patronage, which still survives in France. This system belongs to a long established and somewhat static industrial community, in which advancement is slow and restricted to those who are specially favored. The solicitation of the favor of a distinguished relative or friend or local dignitary to assist in introducing a young man to a desirable position is in a sense only a rigid and systematized form of the rather loose system of recommendation everywhere in use, and, in a degree, it is as natural as the giving of favor to friends and relatives which is everywhere a factor in the preferment of many. To erect this into a system, however, is repugnant to the spirit of American youth and their employers. Allied to this is the English custom known as the 'counting-room system,' which consists in the placing of the son of a member of a firm in the business at an early age and graduating him rapidly from department to department in such a manner that when he finally obtains a junior partnership he has some knowledge of the operations of the business. The result of this plan is to keep businesses in families for generations and to create a spirit of family pride in the integrity and prosperity of a business which is heartily commendable. The Swiss a? an industrial people are noted for the degree to which businesses are in this way kept within families. Some defects of the system are the tendency to coerce young men into occupations for which they have no taste or ability, the tendency to family exclusiveness and the neglect of young men who have only their merits to recommend them for promotion. This system is in reality a special form of apprenticeship arranged for the few.

Closely allied to the above is the recruiting of the managers of the colonial houses or foreign selling agencies of a concern from promising young men in subordinate positions in the home office and, in turn, recruiting the superior officers of the home concern from successful branch managers. This system of using the foreign offices as feeders