to be able to compete favorably with the graduate of a good commercial school for a business position. It is on this theory that the accompanying outline was prepared.

The subjects are divided into two general groups, required and elective. The former includes the usual commercial branches, excepting shorthand and typewriting. The elective group includes subjects so arranged as to make it possible for a pupil to carry, parallel with his strictly commercial studies, a course in history, language, mathematics, or science, together with some subjects of a general character.

The outline is based on a week of twenty-five possible recitation periods. The minimum requirement is fifteen periods of prepared work and five periods of unprepared work. No home work is to be allowed in bookkeeping. Elections are to follow a definite plan thruout the course. Two periods of unprepared work should be accepted as equivalent to one period of prepared work.

Because spelling and penmanship are not taught satisfactorily in the grammar schools, considerable attention is given to these subjects in the foregoing outline. Both of these subjects ought to be completed in the grammar schools, but they are not, and must therefore be taught thoroly in the high school.

English is required in every year, because of the fundamental character of its relation to the other subjects of a properly arranged commercial course. The first two years of this subject are not to differ from the regular English teaching in the high school, but the last two years should be differentiated from the English of the college preparatory classes, more attention being given to composition and the mechanical features. of writing. Much dictation involving business terms not necessarily correspondence - should be given to the class, with careful correction of the transcripts, the essential purpose being to teach the pupil to prepare a perfect transcript and to set forth his own thought effectively.

The arrangement of bookkeeping, shorthand, typewriting, and office work is intended to hold pupils thru the four years of high-school work. Intensive work in bookkeeping is highly desirable. The work in bookkeeping and business practice is therefore concentrated into one year. Two consecutive periods daily are allowed in order to save the loss of time and energy in getting out, arranging, and putting away the necessary books and papers, and in getting hold of the work in hand.

Pupils should be taught how to journalize, post, take a trial balance, classify accounts, make a simple form of balance sheet, and close a set of books before they are required to perform any work in business practice, so called. With such a foundation, some one of the several systems of business practice requiring dealings with imaginary persons should be used, but only long enough to familiarize the pupil with common business forms.

This training can be followed in the last term by no more

inspiring work than intercommunication business practice, in which the pupils of several schools should deal with one another, actually carrying on their transactions thru the United States mail. The pupil at the close of the second year in the high school should be able to keep any ordinary set of books.

Shorthand and typewriting are made elective because they are subjects not indispensable to a good business education, and furthermore because. they are worth practically nothing unless mastered; and some pupils cannot master them.

In the third year a sound foundation in the principles of shorthand should be laid, with but little dictation. In the fourth year, accompanying a continual review of principles, the pupil should get dictation until he can write readable shorthand at from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five words a minute.

Typewriting should be taught by the all-finger method, or "touch system." No pupil should be allowed to do general work for anybody during the first half-year. The class should receive a great deal of dictation at the machine. They should be given plenty of work requiring the use of the hektograph, the mimeograph, and the neostyle, and every pupil should become proficient in making carbon duplicates, in taking perfect impressions in the letter-book, in the use of the tabulator, and the various methods of indexing and filing, including card work.

It is a mistake to put shorthand in the earlier part of the course on the theory that the pupil can make shorthand a useful substitute for longhand in taking notes in class. It should be studied, as a rule, only by those who expect to use it in a business way after the close of school. Both shorthand and typewriting should be so placed in the course, and should be given time enough, that the pupil who takes those subjects may derive from them practical as well as disciplinary value, and be, when school closes, at his very best in writing and transcribing shorthand.

One of the important objects to be kept in mind in arranging a commercial course in the high school should be to persuade young people to remain thruout a four-year course. In many instances, putting shorthand and typewriting early in the course will result in their leaving school as soon as they have done the required work, to try to get positions as stenographers; or they will quit early in the course to go to a private business school where they will probably not have to take the indispensable English that they dislike, and where such cultural subjects as geography, history, language, and literature are rarely heard of.

Business correspondence should be taught as a subject distinct from English.

Commercial law should be taught from some simple text-book adapted to the immature minds of high-school pupils, and attention should be directed largely to contracts and negotiable paper.

Civil government should be presented from the practical, rather than from the historical, point of view. It is better that a boy know only the organization and operation of town government than that he know only its origin and the conditions under which it has been developed.

It seems that at least the primary principles of the science of political economy should be taught to pupils in the high school.

Commercial geography is one of the most valuable of the informational subjects, and should occupy an important place in every commercial course.

The history of commerce, because of its close relation to commercial geography, may well follow it. It is here placed in the last year in the outline, in order that, at a time when the pupil will be best able to appreciate them, lectures may be given on various phases of present-day commerce by able men engaged in the work.

In the outline herewith, commercial arithmetic is placed earlier in the course than is altogether desirable, because the later years are occupied by subjects that cannot to advantage be shifted to the earlier part of the. course. Pupils should reach the high schools thoroly taught in the four fundamental operations, in common and decimal fractions, and in compound numbers. They will, of course, have some familiarity with the more common applications of percentage. In the high school, daily drill should be given in some of the following: Rapid adding, multiplying, billing, and the computation of interest and discounts. Pupils should be taught to write from dictation figures for addition, rapidly, plainly, and in straight columns. Partial payments should be worked by United States and Merchants' rules, and, if time permits, some attention may well be devoted to involution, evolution, and mensuration, in addition to the commoner applications of percentage.

A complete equipment of office books should be provided, as far as possible, so arranged as to avoid duplication of forms, and to illustrate special books, special columns, and special systems. The loose-leaf ledger in one office, the card ledger in another, the horizontal sales and purchase ledgers in another, is an indication of the general plan. Card indexes and ticklers, or "following-up" systems, should have a place. "The vertical system" of caring for correspondence, as well as the common plan of using the letter-book and transfer case, should be represented.

Correspondence emanating from the offices should be dictated to shorthand pupils by pupils acting for the time being as managers, should be transcribed on properly printed letter-heads, copied on a letter-press (or a carbon duplicate filed), and finally sent out in envelopes properly directed, stamped, and sealed, but sealed only after the teacher has inspected and stamped his approval on every business paper contained in the envelope. Pupils should be taught mail classification, and, by using

the postal scales, to affix the correct amount of imitation postage. The teacher each day should collect all mail that is to go to the same place, and put it in a large envelope, mailing it to the teacher in charge. A centrally located school bank may be chosen to play the combined part of clearing. house and correspondent bank for the other schools in the association. In short, the offices should be so completely equipped, so systematically laid out, and so enthusiastically and carefully carried on that in attractiveness, in educational worth, and in practical value office practice should be regarded by pupils, teachers, and taxpayers as the crowning feature of a capital course. The initial expense is considerable, varying with the quality. That which I have in mind may run from $700 to $1,500; but this is chiefly an initial expense. The necessary annual outlay is a very small amount, ranging from possibly $25 to $75, according to the size of the school. Probably no other course in the high school assures a better educational dividend than does the properly arranged four-year commercial course, and certainly no other provides the immediate financial income that graduates from the commercial department command.

It is not intended, and it does not appear feasible, that instruction in electives should, for commercial pupils, differ from instruction for the other pupils. The commercial course, not only in a Massachusetts high school, but also in any other high school, should be both disciplinary and cultural, and it should provide such thoro instruction in the technical commercial subjects that graduates from the commercial department of the high school may have not only a general preparation for a business life, but also a definite, technical training that will entitle them, other qualifications being satisfactory, to immediate remunerative employment in a business office.

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMANUENSIS

SELBY A. MORAN, PRINCIPAL OF STENOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE AND TEACHER IN HIGH SCHOOL, ANN ARBOR, MICH.

The kinds of work done by the stenographic amanuensis today are so varied and the quality of the work accepted by employers differs so greatly that it becomes an exceedingly difficult task to treat the subject. assigned to me.

In order to lend what little influence I can to raise the standard of professional stenographic work to a higher plane, I have briefly outlined what I believe to be the requirements necessary to the attainment of the greatest success in this line of work.

It seems to me that the most important element, in fact the one thing that really includes all that should be taken into consideration in the education of an amanuensis, is a habit of thoroness. This is something which today, unfortunately, is woefully lacking in the average young

man and woman.

It is, however, one of the chief essentials to the highest success of the stenographic amanuensis. Thoroness is, of course, important in every field of effort. In no other one is it of so great value as in the one occupied by the reporter. Thru him, as a medium of correspondence, is daily transacted an immense volume of business, amounting in the aggregate to a sum too great for the mind to even dimly comprehend. Today, in the mad race for professional, scientific, and commercial supremacy, the scientist, lawyer, merchant, or manufacturer cannot take the time to minutely scrutinize the important communications he indites, any more than he can spare the time to write out his own business correspondence. Therefore he wants, and must have, as an assistant an amanuensis whose training for this special work has been so thoro that every tendency to error may, as nearly as possible, be eliminated. This is the kind of stenographer who is today being demanded more and more in the great world of affairs.

An engineer, under the influence of liquor, disobeys orders and wrecks his train. As a result the railroad company which employed him must pay many thousands of dollars as damages. Railroad corporations have learned, after having sustained immense losses resulting from such unfortunate and expensive occurances, that it does not pay to employ men who drink. It is therefore not surprising that the large majority of railroad corporations make it a rule never to employ a man who touches liquor.

Only a short time ago, in Chicago, a manufacturing firm was asked to give a quotation on a large amount of high-priced material. Careful estimates were made by the superintendent and the result dictated to a stenographer. The letter giving the quotation closed with the statement that a 5 per cent. discount from the price quoted would be allowed for cash. The careless, stenographer, confusing the discounts allowed on different classes of material, made the clause concerning discounts read 25 instead of 5 per cent. The party receiving the quotation based a bid for an important contract upon the price and discount quoted on the material. As a result he was the lowest bidder. He secured the contract, gave his bond for its satisfactory completion, and wired his order for the material. The Chicago firm then discovered the error, but it was too late to rectify it, and the company was obliged to live up to the quotation made by an incompetent amanuensis. As a result the manufacturer sustained a loss equivalent to the stenographer's salary for ten years.

Errors of more frequent occurrence are those which, as a result of carelessly written letters, give rise to misunderstandings and disputes, and oftentimes to expensive litigation. In view of such things, is it strange that men at the head of large affairs are coming to realize more and more that they must have amanuenses upon whom they can rely implicitly?