within our borders practically every element that enters into our leading manufactured products. England, on the other hand, has been forced to buy and pay freight upon practically every pound of material going into her great factories, and the same thing, to a less extent, has been true of Germany and France. The advantage we have reaped in this matter can hardly be overestimated. The American farmer cultivates on an average forty-four acres, his produce having an annual value of $900, as against thirteen acres for the French farmer, with a value of $580, and eight acres for the German farmer, with a value of $510. Thus the supe

rior methods of the German farmer produce more from one acre than the American produces from three. With the early disappearance of our free lands, and the progressive reduction of the area tilled per man, we are gradually losing our capacity for production as at present compared with the continental farmer. In fact, we have already begun to realize the new competition of the vast domains of northern Russia, western Canada, and Australia. Each year must emphasize the consciousness that we are no longer the world's only source of the supply of agricultural products and other raw materials.

A second advantage contributing largely to our unrivaled advancement in manufacturing lies in the fact that, as a new country, we were not fettered by traditions or prejudices. Our shops and factories, our whole industrial system, is of recent development, insuring newest types in equipment and most modern and improved methods. Europe, on the other hand, is passing thru a transition period bound by established customs and loaded down with equipments too obsolete to permit of largest results, and yet too valuable to be discarded.

Much—I think I may say most—of our success in our world competition can be traced to the two causes just enumerated, namely, free raw materials and newest equipments.

It is time that we were disillusioned in these matters. Europe is waking up. England, Germany, and France are putting on modern ways and adopting machinery and equipments of the very newest types. They are discovering the secrets of our advancement to the first place in the world's trade. In the two elements (raw materials and new equipments) contributing most largely to our advancement our wings are already clipped, and we are to be increasingly fettered until in the not distant future we shall be wholly stripped of our advantages arising from these two sources. When deprived of our advantage in method, equipment, and raw material, we must stand on an equal footing with our competitors across the water, and we shall then be thrown back upon the efficiency of the individual artisan, and our supremacy must be held, if at all, by his superior intelligence and skill.

It is significant how England, Germany, and France have met our menace to their industrial development. Denied the advantages which

we have enjoyed in cheap materials and modern equipments, they have addressed themselves to the scientific study of their varied industries, and have established technical schools, bringing to bear upon their industrial systems the world's highest scientific knowledge and skill.

Germany offers the most forceful example of what can be accomplished in this way. Thru wise commercial legislation and the fostering of technical and commercial education in the empire, Germany has been forged into the very front rank of industrial nations. This has been accomplished chiefly in a little more than a decade. Unless we follow a similar course, it is questionable if we can hold our present position in the world's market.

We hear much about our present industrial system eliminating the need for intelligent operators and reducing the artisan to a position calling for no responsibility or intelligent action. We hear of the operator being "chained to his machine" and becoming "an unthinking automaton," of the great aggregations of wealth denying the individual worker the privilege of rising, etc. No greater fallacy was ever enunciated. In no age have we needed greater intelligence or moral responsibility. There was a time when it could be almost literally said that every man looked after his own affairs, superintended his own business, and in large measure executed his own orders and wishes; but with our increas. ingly complex industrial organization it is literally true today that the business of the country is transacted by paid helpers. The tremendous interests involved are henceforth to be cared for by clerks, operators, superintendents, and managers who have no direct interest in the enterprises for which they strive, except the consideration of salary. Our industrial conditions demand a higher average of desseminated intelligence than ever before, and conditions which confront us demand that we adopt, and at once, the special educational methods which are rescuing England, Germany, and France from threatened commercial extinction and holding them in the front as our powerful and successful rivals.

It cannot be disputed that, in view of our recent national expansion as a result of the Spanish war, our destiny is to be determined largely by our relation to the world's markets. Thirty years ago this would have been heresy; today it is accepted without argument. Our manufacturing and commerce are to play an ever-increasing part in our national prosperity. To neglect or retard either invites national disaster. Το state it in positive, rather than negative, terms, there is no more imperative duty confronting the American people than the instant establishment of conditions which shall not only conserve, but develop to the highest point of efficiency, the three great fundamentals of our future prosperity, namely, production, manufacture, and commerce.

We should have in every state in the Union complete consecutive courses of technical education as easy of access as the conventional

courses of public schools today. Most of our states are now offering complete facilities for the young men who wish to enter the learned professions. In view of new conditions, and our rapidly widening national horizon, are these more important in their bearing upon our future than the intelligent fostering of our productive forces? What are we doing for the young men whose tireless industry is working out our national destiny? Statistics show that in the year 1900 there were but 190,000 young men and women enrolled in the business and commercial colleges of the whole United States. Of the male population engaged in gainful occupations in this country, only a little more than 1 per cent. are in the learned professions. (United States census, 1890.) The other 99 per cent. find their way into and are absorbed in our industrial system. For this 99 per cent. we provide the common schools and our colleges. It is safe to say that at least 95 per cent. never get farther than the common schools. Aside from a very few technical courses, such as engineering in its various branches, we are doing practically nothing in specialized education for this great mass of workers who are to be the determining factor in our national prosperity.

In every line of business the ceaseless quest goes on for better help-for men of trained hand and brain, for men of exact knowledge who can deliver the merchant and manufacturer from the slow and wasteful process of education thru which his helpers and operatives must pass. Every man in business knows that the problem most difficult of solution is the procurement of competent help, and that the growth of his business. is to be determined largely by his success in solving that problem.

Every state in the Union should provide for her sons and daughters the highest possible form of instruction adapted to the special industries of that state, and should open free to her citizens the opportunity for highest possible attainment in these special lines. This technical and commercial instruction might begin, say, in our high schools, the courses to be elective, and to lead directly to departments of commerce in our great universities, so that the young man who plans to enter the great mercantile institution, or to engage in railroading, commerce, or manufacturing of any kind, may fit himself with all the accurate scientific knowledge obtainable bearing upon the special department of usefulness which he purposes to enter. Divorced from sentimental reasons and placed upon purely economic grounds, no better investment can be made by any state. A single illustration will suffice to emphasize this point.

Some years ago the state of Minnesota established a practical school of agriculture in connection with her state university. The young men were instructed in such subjects as plant breeding, chemistry of soils, chemistry of food, care and breeding of stock, dairying, the study of grasses, blacksmithing, carpentering, etc.; and the young women in cooking, sewing, etc. In the one item of dairying the state has probably

been repaid for its expenditure. Ten years ago Minnesota was not a dairy state. Today she has 600 creameries, most of them the result of instruction and encouragement from the agricultural school. Minnesota dairy products have recently taken a larger percentage of prizes than similar products of any other state at fairs and expositions where in some cases nearly every state in the Union competed. At the Omaha Exposition she won more than 50 per cent. of all prizes against all competitors. Her butter leads as to quality in eastern markets, and even in London. In one instance a large New York dealer offered to take the entire output of one of Minnesota's largest creameries and to pay a cent and a half a pound more than the highest market price. The marked improvement of both quantity and quality of the state's agricultural products is repaying her many times over for the cost of maintaining this school.

What Minnesota is doing for her farmers every state should do for its leading industries. Every distinctive industry should be fostered at public expense, under conditions making these advantages attainable to the humblest and poorest citizen without money and without price.

In its last analysis the prosperity of the state must rest upon the intelligence of her citizens. If that intelligence be so fostered by the state as to contribute directly to her capacity for production, she has at once served the best good of her citizens and her own highest interests. The best type of service is that which results from genuine interest. The drudge who follows a daily round of toil having for him no fascination or absorbing interest is wearing out an existence but little removed from slavery. The seeds of unrest and anarchy are easily planted in such soil, but the hand that is driven to the commonest labor by an enthusiastic intelligence is seldom raised to destroy the fruits of that labor. The highest interests of both individual and state demand that our present educational systems be so expanded as to embrace most thoro and comprehensive industrial, commercial, and technical instruction. Our failure to recognize this imperative need must greatly impede our splendid progress toward the world's industrial supremacy, if indeed it does not lose for us the position we have already attained.

TICAL

A PRACTICAL COMMERCIAL COURSE FOR A MASSACHUSETTS HIGH SCHOOL

E. E. GAYLORD, DIRECTOR COMMERCIAL DEPARTMENT, HIGH SCHOOL,

BEVERLY, MASS.

Massachusetts is a thickly populated state. Manufacturing, jobbing, and transportation are the leading industries. Those young people who do not go from the high school to college go largely to the factory, the

FOURTH YEAR

FIRST YEAR

store, and the business office. Only insomuch as these conditions differ from the conditions in other states need there be any difference between the commercial course in a Massachusetts high school and the commercial course for a high school in any other state.

Remembering, then, the conditions to be met, the following outline is suggested for a commercial course for a Massachusetts high school :

THIRD. YEAR

SECOND YEAR

....IO

practice..... Penmanship and spelling....... 3

Greece and Rome 4

Plane geometry..4
German.

2

In preparing a commercial course for a high school, it must be remembered that the training to be derived from it is to give the pupil a special fitness for entrance into business life, but that, unlike the private business school, the public high school must do foundational work. Two extremes must be avoided. The technical commercial subjects must not be so much diluted that the pupil shall enter the business world with no appreciable advantage over his schoolmate who took the scientific or classical courses and then began to work in a business office. On the other hand, the course must not be narrowed to the limits of that given in the average private business school.

The graduate from the commercial department of a high school ought