office.

I had never seen him before. He said that, although born in this country, he was a Pole; that his father and grandfather were Poles. He represented a Polish newspaper, and sought, not an advertisement, but my company's permission to send, at our expense, his paper to each of our seventy-five Polish employees. At first his request appeared of no interest to me, and, being busy, I gave him the scant attention I believed he deserved. In only a few minutes, however, I realized my mistake. In elaborating his first remarks the young man talked so clearly and concisely, so easily and yet so earnestly, that his manner compelled respectful attention. I questioned him about his former life. He said that he was a graduate of Kenyon College. He spoke so sincerely and fully of the debt of gratitude he owed to his college that one could easily see how large a factor his college had been in molding him. We all have similar experiences, I have no doubt, but this one seemed particularly striking, and convinced me all the more that there is usually a confident self-possession and poise in the college man which lends itself to effectiveness in the business field, where so much depends upon correct approach of strangers.

College life is a life among ideals. On every hand the student is exhorted to be honest, tolerant, loyal. Be loyal to, and honest in, your work -so pleads the instructor. "Be tolerant and considerate in your attitude toward each other," the fraternity asks. "Be loyal to your Alma Mater," the college demands. It is a constant reiteration that reverberates in the ears of the impressionable youth until it inoculates. Is it all forgotten upon graduation? A great deal of it, perhaps, but usually not all. And it is right that it should not be, for practical ideals are what the business of this country needs. Ten years ago many of the big business houses were circulating a card that was supposed to make a great hit with its recipient. It read: Get it-honestly if you can, but get it!" That spirit is dying, but it dies hard. The college man is doing his share in trying to kill it. It is his broader conception of business that helps. We are not foolish in prophesying, therefore, that the ideals which were instilled in undergraduates when their minds were receptive for such teaching will be an increasing incentive towards more honest and more unselfish views in business relationships.

So far in this article the advantages of col

freedom from restraint that fosters these characteristics. I once knew a young man who was so fond of sleeping that in his senior year, when all studies were elective, he chose no study that required him to appear in a recitation room before 10:30 A.M. The prevalence of extravagance among many undergraduates cannot fail to hurt their chances in business. It is axiomatic that the function of the business man is primarily to make money.

It therefore follows that if

one does not have the right regard for the value of money nor the value of thrift in business relations, he will be handicapped just so much in his striving toward commercial success.

The college man is generally conceited. He has an exalted opinion of his ability. At first his views of business, colored with his own conceit, are distorted. He feels that he knows too much to learn a business "from the ground up." He would rather start halfway up. It is hard for him to realize that he can never arrive at the top except by way of the bottom. Fortunately for him, however, a few hard knocks usually teach him his lesson, and, once started, it takes more than the ordinary amount of discouragement to stop him.

So much for theories. What are the actual facts about college men's success? I have a few that are illuminating. I chose what seemed to me a typical class in two typical colleges. I took the class of 1906 in Yale University, an example of the large college, and the class of 1906 in Amherst College, an example of the small one. I chose the class of 1906, because it seemed to me that in seven years a man should have had time enough to get his footing in the outside world, but not too much time in which to secure an executive position that, with more than average ability, he should have secured earlier. The graduates were divided into three classes, as follows:

Class 1.-Those who own or are partners in a business, and those who occupy strictly managerial positions :

Yale, 71; Amherst, 27.

Class 2.-Those who hold no executive positions, but are in no sense clerks (in this

class are included salesmen, life insurance agents, real estate agents, and the like, many of whom are making larger salaries and, in reality, hold more responsible positions than some of those included in Class 1):

Yale, 35; Amherst, 18.

Class 3.-Those who hold, strictly clerical positions:

Yale, 5; Amherst, 3.

Summary.-Executive and so-called "independent" positions: Yale, 106, or 95% per cent; Amherst, 45, or 94 per cent. Clerical positions: Yale, 5, or 41⁄2 per cent; Amherst, 3. or 6 per cent.

Besides these figures there is evidence of another kind. I wrote to a few active corporation managers whose experience in their own companies and in outside activities entitles their opinions to be considered with respect. My letter asked for a brief answer to the following questions:

1. What, in your opinion, are the merits that an average college senior possesses which will be of service to him upon entering business?

2. What, in your opinion, are the most important things that the average college senior has to " unlearn" upon entering business?

3. From your experience which men, as a rule, secure the executive positions—the college men or the non-college men?

4. Would you care to state why it is that the college man ultimately outdistances the non-college man, or vice versa ?

5. Do you believe that the tendency of the college man in business is to lift business to a higher moral and more efficient plane, or vice versa ?

6. Has your company any fixed policy in regard to the employment of college men?

An executive officer and member of the Board of Directors of the General Chemical Company replied in these words:

1. He should have a good foundation on which to build an education.

2. That his education is completed.
3. College men.

4. The college man should have a trained mind and a greater fund of useful knowledge. 5. I do.

6. Preference is given to college men. There have been numerous honorable exceptions."

A president and general manager of a successful corporation with a capital of $15,000,000 answered to this effect:

1. In answer to this question, would say I do not know what an average college senior is. I do know that some college seniors are of no use whatever to anybody, and that many of them are very useful. I think it depends upon what use has been made of their college career. If they have done an average amount of work and stand on an average with the other members of their class, I should say that their college education should have increased their brain power, so that when trained they can grasp matters in a larger way than a man who has not had that education.

2. The average college senior is very careless and slovenly in his habits, and, as a rule, lacks application.

3. Most of my experience has been with men who have not been college men, but this is because college men have only been coming to the front in an executive way within the last ten years. I should say now that the chances of the college men securing executive positions are better than those who are not college men.

4. I think one reason college men ultimately outdistance non-college men is because they are a picked class, and should naturally do so, in any event. The best of the college men ought to, and I think do, inherit the best brains in the country, and, if they have given an average amount of attention to their college duties and have been sincere in their desire to make the most of them, they ought to have a great advantage over any other man of their age.

5. I think college men naturally lift business to a more efficient plane from their inheritance, and, on the average, to a higher moral plane. I do not know that the latter is due to their college training.

6. We have no fixed policy in regard to the employment of college men, but give them the preference.

An executive of the Western Electric Company did not care to reply by letter, but permitted me to interview him.

"We have forty thousand employees," he said, "and it is hard to write arbitrarily with reference to them. There are a lot of fools that graduate from college, but, in my opinion, it is not the college that is responsible. The Western Electric Company sends representatives to many colleges for the express purpose of soliciting college men to enter its employ. That is what we, as a company, think of able college men. I am not a

college man myself, but I have a son in college, who intends to enter business when he graduates. That is what I myself think of a college education for business men."

All this evidence, which is as unbiased as any of its nature that can be secured, seems to be strongly in favor of the college-trained man. It points out, as we have already surmised, that college does instill certain traits in the average individual that are a detriment to him upon starting in business. But it shows that these characteristics are not usually fatal to commercial success. The consensus of opinion, then, and the weight of the evidence, show that, as a rule, the college man goes the non-college man one better. Not only can he make money as well and as fairly as his untutored competitor, he can combine money-making and

imagination. In other words, he has been taught to see, and does see, that business is not alone a game of outwitting the other. fellow and profiting himself thereby. It is a means by which he, the man under him, and the community can be benefited, morally as well as materially. His example, his business attitude, his business actions, count for something besides their effect upon his pocket. It is the larger business outlook that he has the effect of his acts as well as the acts themselves that he studies. So the four years of college are not spent capital of life, after all. To the typical college man they represent precious investment that later in life returns dividends of fifty, a hundred, five hundred per cent per annum. What business this side of Utopia could do more?

I

T is always a little difficult not to grow either exasperated or melancholy when good, able men are seen devoting their time to fighting shadows. It is even worse when the fight against the shadow is conducted in a way that would be partially harmful even if the shadow were not a shadow. But it is infinitely worse when the fight against the shadow diverts the attention of a man from fighting against real and very dangerous foes.

In a recent magazine there is an article called Eugenics and Militarism," by a professor in a great university. I do not mention his name because I have no doubt he is an excellent and scholarly man, and my quarrel is not with him or with the magazine, but with the whole general tendency among philanthropists and scientists here in America. to-day to blind themselves to the real dangers to our race in connection with eugenics. Eugenics is defined by Francis Galton as including those agencies which humanity through social control may use for the improvement or the impairment of the racial qualities of future generations." In other words, it means good breeding of men and women so as to produce better men and women in the future; and, as every stock

grower knows, the surest way to get good stock is to breed from the best stock, while, on the other hand, no possible care will save a race if the poorest stock is the building stock. It has recently been shown not only that the birth rate in Great Britain is falling, but that a quarter of the British married population, or one-sixth of the whole adult population, is producing one-half of the next generation, and that this quarter is that part of the population least able to give its offspring the care and general environment necessary to the best human nurture. This is another way of saying that the birth rate is not merely decreasing, but is decreasing selectively, and that the selection is of exactly the wrong kind, the tendency being to eliminate the thrifty, far-seeing, and able type of man and

woman.

The magazine article in question is written. to show that militarism is a chief factor in the selection of the fit for elimination. The author says, quite properly: "The most economical and most positive factor in human progress is good breeding. Race deterioration comes chiefly from its opposite, bad breeding." He then adds that militarism encourages bad breeding because the best men go to the war and are killed, while the

weak and timid remain at home and become the fathers of the next generation. Unquestionably there have been countries and periods of which this was true. Napoleonic France offers such an example, and republican Rome offered it in the two centuries before the Empire. But it is in no shape or way as uni versally true as the author makes out, and in America it has practically no application what-.

ever.

A serious and unbiased study of the matter would undoubtedly show that in England, which for a century has not suffered from militarism at all, there has been a serious deterioration in the physical standard compared with Germany, which is the most military power of Europe. Apparently in England the substitution in a time of profound peace of a factory town population for an agricultural population has had an effect far more calamitous than that of any series of wars of which we have record in modern times. New England offers a case at least as marked, although of somewhat different type. The experience of Germany in recuperating after the literally incredible destruction of the Thirty Years' War is sufficient proof as to how few generations are needed in order to repair the ravages of excessive militarism. It remains to be seen whether there can be any such rapid recovery from the effects of an uncontrolled industrialism, or from the complicated tissue of evil causation which is responsible for New England's dwindling native population.

The professor in question, although at trained Professor of Eugenics," forgets that a great war may do for the whole nation a service that incalculably outweighs all possible evil effects. The type example of this is our own Civil War. That war cost half a million lives. It is certainly a sad and evil thing that timid and weak people, the peace-at-any-price and anti-militarist people who stayed at home, should have left descendants to admire well-meaning, feeble articles against militarism, while their valiant comrades went to the front and perished. Yet the price paid, great though it was, was not too great to pay for the union of the Nation and the freedom of the slave. Worthy writers on eugenics must not forget that heroes serve as examples. It will not do to decry the leaders of exploration because gallant Scott perished at the South Pole and gallant Livingstone in Africa. It is of course a dreadful thing that men like Scott

and Livingstone should be selected for elimination; but they leave imperishable memories behind them to hearten all men forward as they struggle for the benefit of mankind. The three hundred at Thermopylæ, or the companions of Crockett and Bowie at the Alamo, by simply refusing to fight and going home would have preserved themselves from the action of the selective principle to which the eugenics professor in question objects. Yet all mankind would have been the losers if Thermopylæ had never been taken and the Alamo never stormed.

This Professor of Eugenics should not halt on the threshold. Firemen lead hazardous lives; the creation of a fire department means the "selective elimination" of a number of brave, able-bodied men. Does the professor think that there should be no fire departments? I suppose not. But it would be far more rational and less unpatriotic to advocate abolishing all the fire departments in the United States than to advocate abolishing the United States navy. But we can

go much further. On an average, every year

in the United States there are a thousandfold as many casualties in industry as in the army and navy. Ordinarily the deaths in industry every year outnumber the deaths in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War-those men who die as railway men, structural steel workers, bridge-builders, deep-sea fishermen, and the like. They are men far above the average in physical, mental, and moral power. Does the Professor of Eugenics therefore advocate that all such industries cease? It would be no more absurd than to say that all wars must cease, no matter how just. The only rational attitude to take is that there shall never be needless risk of life, and therefore never war unless war is demanded by the highest morality. But if war is so demanded, then the timid prig who shrinks from it, whether or not he covers his shrinking under the name of "eugenics," stands beside the man who will not risk his life to save women and children from a burning building, or the man who declines to work for his wife and children because there is danger in the work. Eugenics is an excellent thing; but not when carried to such a point as to teach men that love of life is to outweigh all else in the mind of man. The man worth calling such should always be willing to risk his life for an adequate object.

But all this only affects nations which do suffer from militarism. My concern is with

the United States, where militarism is an absolutely negligible factor from the standpoint of eugenics. Over a century and a quarter have gone by since it has been of the slightest effect whatever save in the case of the Civil War. To write about militarism as a danger to Americans from the standpoints of eugenics is precisely and exactly as if we should write about the eating of horse meat in honor of Odin as a danger to our spiritual life. Such eating of horse meat was at one time a serious problem to the missionaries who converted our ancestors from heathenism. Among these same ancestors militarism was also a problem. But in the America of to-day one is really no more a problem than the other. At any rate, as far as eugenics is concerned within the United States, militarism enters into the problem only to the degree that chemists would call a trace. It is a negligible quantity.

Now, if the writer in question were merely fighting a windmill there would be no earthly reason for interfering with his enjoyment. My point of objection is that it is a calamity for people of education and knowledge who understand what "good breeding" means to tilt at windmills and avoid, whether from ignorance or from fear, the really dangerous enemies. This is especially true with us because the average reformer is frightened at the mere mention of the most serious problems that confront us. To advocate reforms in land tenure, or the holding of property, or the use of railways, or the suffrage, is easy for any man; but to front the vital problem of the perpetuation of the best race elements seems to demand more courage and farsightedness than the reformer usually possesses. Take the recent book of Mr. Quick, called "The Good Ship Earth." It contains some wise—and a few unwise-suggestions as to the "ship" itself; but when it deals with the crew, it dares not speak plainly, and, by implication at least, praises sins far more evil in their ultimate effects than any connected with capitalism, extolling the French, New Englanders, and Australians because they are materially prosperous and intellectual-and are dying out. To preach, explicitly or implicitly, such doctrines is to do more harm than the rest of the book can possibly do good. But Mr. Quick reads us aright when he says that "there are people who I wish would have fewer children, and others who I wish would rear more children."

This is exactly my position.

I wish very

much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized, and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them. But as yet there is no way possible to devise which could prevent all undesirable people from breeding. The emphasis should be laid on getting desirable people to breed. This is no question of having enormous families for which the man and woman are unable to provide. I do not believe in or advocate such families. I am not encouraging shiftless people, unfit to marry, who have huge families. I am speaking of the ordinary, every-day Americans, the decent men and women who do make good fathers and mothers, and who ought to have good-sized families.

The fundamental point to remember is that if there are not in the average family four children, the race goes back, and that the element which has three children is stationary, and that the group where the average family has two children or less represents a dying element in the race. I am of course speaking of averages, and not of exceptional cases. We have heard much of the New England conscience-the Puritan conscience. It is lamentable to see this Puritan conscience, this New England conscience, so atrophied, so diseased and warped, as not to recognize that the fundamental, the unpardonable crime against the race is the crime of race suicide. The New England of the future will belong, and ought to belong, to the descendants of the immigrants of yesterday and to-day, because the descendants of the Puritans "have lacked the courage to live," have lacked the conscience which ought to make men and women fulfill the primary law of their being.

It is not a good thing to see a poor and shiftless couple have a very large number of children, but it is a great deal better thing than seeing a prosperous, capable family with but one or two. After all, while there is life there is hope, whereas nothing can be done with the dead. If a race, or an element in a race, dies out, then that is the end of it. But if a race or an element of a race continues to exist, even though under unfavorable conditions and with results that are not what they ought to be, there is always the chance that something can be made out of it in the future. The evil or shiftless man who leaves children