Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/446

442 upon the wasteful state of individualistic struggle in which the leader is chosen through the survival of the fittest simply as the exceptional man is able to fight his way up from the ranks and grasp leadership as the perquisite of the ownership of property. None of these methods alone is adequate for the needs of modern industry; most of them are out of harmony with the traditions of American civilization. In the search for a solution of the problem experience points us to no other institution so promising as the school. It is the most mobile and elastic of all our great institutions and is easily adapted to new purposes, while it is at the same time incomparably the most economical of our institutions in proportion to the work accomplished by it. We have never as a people been disappointed in the accomplishment of any educational task we have set the school to perform, and the school has not been obliged to withdraw from any task that has once been assigned to it.

Such being the conditions of the problem, the third reason why higher commercial education is making rapid headway at the present time lies in the response which institutions of higher education have made in this country to the demands upon them in this connection. This in itself is one of the most encouraging manifestations of a new and broader conception of the university as an institution whose functions are to gather in to itself and conserve all knowledge, to represent the interests of all classes of the community which supports it, and to be as broadly useful as is possible, consistent with true learning in the training of men for the various activities of life. This sentiment which characterizes the thought of university circles to-day, in contrast to a narrower and more exclusive ideal once dominant, was well expressed by President Nicholas Murray Butler, in his inaugural address at Columbia University. He said, "In these modern days the university is not apart from the activities of the world, but in them and of them. To fulfill its high calling the university must give, and give freely, to its students; to the world of learning and of scholarship; to the development of trade, commerce and industry; to the community in which it has its home, and to the state and nation whose foster child it is."

Not only will the community be benefited, but the universities will be benefited by every new avenue of usefulness opened for the school. Already our universities through their libraries and collections are made the custodians of the community's knowledge. To these centers should be gathered as much as possible of the data upon which may be ultimately built an adequate science of wealth production. Much of this knowledge now perishes unrecorded with the men whose life energy has been expended in assembling it. This is a great loss to the race. The world of business is, in a sense, a laboratory where are discovered the principles of industry and commerce. These discoveries