Social

sciences must be related to life

taught and discussed in a law school and in a school of political science. The medical lectures preserve a sobriety in discussing sundry biological problems not always present in advanced courses of biology. Both lecturers, in both instances, are scientific men, both are faithful to the truths of science, but as a distinguished economist, who in his early years had been accused of being an advanced socialist, said, after he had won a comfortable fortune by judicious investments in business, banking, and realty, to a friend of earlier and far-distant years: 'My principles remain exactly the same, but, I admit, my point of view has changed." There is not one biology of the medical school, another of the biological laboratory. Neither does the body of law differ in a law school or in a school of political science. The principles remain exactly the same. Of necessity, however, the point of view has changed and treatment has changed with it. So has responsibility.

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The subject offers some difficulties. The analogy is not at all points exact. Medicine and law have a definite body of doctrine. Schools of biology and political science have not, but granting all this, it still remains true that exactly as the law student and the medical student must have what is defined, established, and unmistakable in the world of law and of life, so the student looking to journalism needs and must have what is defined, established, and unmistakable in economics and political science. Here, again, no one will pretend that the usual college course in either of these branches is taught with the same determination to keep within the same metes and bounds of recorded, tested, and ascertained facts as is true of courses in physics, chemistry, and biology. The boundary marked is less distinct. The periodic law by which the atomic values of elements are established is more definite than the periodic law under which wealth is distributed through society, though in the end some Mendelléeff will record the periodic law of social elements in their composition and action. Research is needed and must be free. Theory and speculation are as necessary to secure an experiment and observation. The

principle is clear, however, that the student who is to make professional use of a topic needs to have a definite and established instruction, not required in one to whom topic is incidental. The medical student or law student who has a new view of economic results or a new theory of the cause and purpose of our judicial and constitutional system as organized to protect the few against the many will work this off in the school of life, and is unaffected in his professional work. The journalist within his first year's work must apply his college economics and political science, and a wrong starting point may have serious consequences to his own career in the end, perhaps to society. Fortunately the work of the journalist so brings him in contact with things as they are, that the body of newspaper writers, taken as a whole, represents the stability of society. The convictions and principles created by their daily work tend this way. The labor union has few illusions to the reporter, and it was the editorial writers of the land who carried the gold standard in 1896, when many a publisher was hazy and scary. The causes of crime grow pretty clear to a police reporter, and a few assignments in which a newspaper man sees a riot convinces him of the value of public order, rigidly enforced. None the less, the reporter should start right on these sciences, basic in his calling; in the end, as the medical school has steadied the college teaching of chemistry and biology, so the school of journalism, the school of business, and the school of railroad practice et al will steady economics and political science. But the duty of the college and university remains clear, to be as watchful that the sciences of social action and reaction shall be taught with the same adherence to the established and the same responsibility to their professional use as the sciences of physical, chemical, and biological action and reaction. The college studies needed as preparation for journalism call for a special proficiency and content as much as for a professional viewpoint. The journalist makes precisely the same use of.his fundamental studies as does the medical student of his. If a future lawyer neglects his chemistry

Especially

adapted content in

social sci

ences to

meet pro

fessional

needs

General science

course of inestimable worth to the journalist

In history attention must be focalized on modern movements

and biology, it is of little moment. He can get up what he needs of a case. A medical student who neglects these studies will find that the best schools bar him. In time the school of journalism will refuse the college passing mark for admission. The newspaper man almost from the start has to use his economics, his political science, and his history. Elementary economics is in great measure given to theory, though a change has begun. For the journalist, this course needs to be brought in close contact with the actual economic working of society. The theory may be useful to the man who expects in the end to teach economics. It is of next to no value to the writer on public affairs. Of what possible use is it to him to learn the various theoretic explanations of Boehm-Bawerk's cost and value? The newspaper man needs to see these things and be taught them as Bagehot wrote on them and Walker and Sumner taught them.

In Columbia, this change is already recognized as necessary. So in political science, the actual working of the body politic needs to be taught, and this is too often neglected for explanatory theories and a special interpretation. A single elementary course in chemistry, physics, or biology presupposes two or three more courses which fill out the special opening sketch. Newspaper works requires a general account of science, derided by the scientist who is himself satisfied in his own education with a similar sketch in history. These general science courses are being smuggled in as "history of science," or "scientific nomenclature." Much can be done in a year with such a threehour course, if the teaching be in exceptional hands; but adequate treatment requires two years of three hours, one on organic and one on inorganic science. The latter should give a view of anthropology and the former dwell on the application of science in modern industry.

College history courses end thirty to fifty years ago. The journalist needs to know closely the last thirty years, at home and abroad. Weeks given to colonial charters in American history are as much waste as to set a law student

to a special study of the Year Books of Edward I and II. College students have to put up with a good deal of this kind of waste. If twelve hours can be assigned to history, three should be on the classical period, three introductory to the modern world, three to European history since 1870, and three hours for American history; at least two of these three hours should go to American history since Garfield. The writing course should be used to supplement this by articles on both these fields so that a student will learn the sources of history for the last thirty years, its treaties, its elections, its movements, its statutes, its reference works. He will need all this knowledge as soon as he has to write as a correspondent, a feature writer, or an editor, on the important topics of the day. Statistics need to supplement economics and advanced courses, two, if possible, should give knowledge and method in the approach to new problems in currency, banking, trusts, and unions. At least one general course in philosophy is needed, and Freud is as important for him here as Aristotle. The contact of the newspaper man with book reviewing, book advertising, and the selection of fiction and news in supplements and magazines calls for the survey course in English literature and a knowledge of the current movement in letters for thirty years back. In science, in politics, in history, in economics, in philosophy, and in letters, it is indispensable that the young newspaper man should be introduced by lecture, and still more by reading, to the speaking figures of his own day on affairs, political life, letters, the theatre, and art.

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The jour

nalist must

ever be a

student of human af

These things are indispensable. The man who knows them can learn to write and edit, but the man who can only write and edit and does not know them will speedily run dry in the newspaper, weekly and monthly. News is today fairs standardized. Each President, each decade, each great war, the Associated Press and City Press Associations cover more completely the current news. Presentation, comment, handling special articles, grow each year more important and more in demand. The price of supplement and maga

zine articles has trebled in the last twenty years. The newspaper grows more and more to be a platform, particularly the Sunday newspaper and popular magazine. If a man is to be a figure in the day's conflict and on its wider issues, he needs the special training just outlined, and when this outline is begun, he will find the toil of the years in these fields has but begun. About the safe harbors of journalism where men come and go, dealing with the affairs of and finding the ready market of the day, are the reefs strewn with the wrecks of ready and often 'brilliant" writers whose few brief years left them empty and adrift, telling all they meet that no man can long earn a fair income and hold his own through the years in journalism.

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A school can ameliorate all this by one course which requires much reading of the Bible and Shakespeare, by furnishing in the school library abundant access to the best current prose and verse of the day which will directly appeal to the young reader, since each decade has its new gods in letters, and by selecting teachers for the professional courses who have shown that they can write at least well enough to be paid by newspapers and magazines for their work. The teacher in writing whose work is not salable is not as likely to teach students how to write so that their work can sell as one who has earned his living by selling his stuff.

TALCOTT WILLIAMS

School of Journalism, Columbia University