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R ISA COLLEGE EDUCATION ADVANTAGEOUS '
TOA BUSINESS MAN?

 

BY

JOSEPH WHART ‘I.

 

ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION AT ITS

THIRD ANNUAL RECEPTION, FEBRUARY 20TH,',I8,90

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PHILADELPHIA :

1890.

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UNIVERSITYf
PENNSYLVANIA g 6;

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LIBRARIES

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THE MARIA HOS’M’ER PENNIMA/N
LIBRARY or EDUCATION.

PRESENTED TO
THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
BY JAMES HOSMER PENNIMAN
AS A MEMORIAL TO HIS MOTHER.

 

  
 
  
  
   
   
   
   
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  

.IS A COLLEGE EDUCATION ADVANTAGEOUS
TO A BUSINESS MAN?

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ADDRESS DELIVERED BYJOSEPH VVHARTON, AT THE RECEPTION GIVEN
Q R .
FEBRUARY 20th, 1890, BY THE VVHARTON SCHOOL ASSOCIATION.

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~‘ GENTLEMENz—If we were required to give a categorical,
unqualified answer by yes or no to the question “is a college
education advantageous to a business man,” taking the col— i
leges asthey hitherto have been, and regarding simply the
effect of an ordinary college education upon the business
career only of the average young man, I should say the
answer must be no. Surely a very small proportion of the
successful business men of this country have been college
graduates, and a very small proportion of the college gradu—
ates successful business men.
But the high importance of this question not only to many
ambitious young men and anxious parents, but to the nation .
also, may be held to justify an attempt to consider it more ‘ f5
1,. I broadly, with the aid of whatever light we can bring to bear I
' upon it—an attempt which challenges in a scrutinizing, but
not in an unfriendly, spirit the entire system now established
for educating many of those who will soon, it is hoped, take
active parts as business men in carrying on the wOrid’ s affairs
Let us begin by t1ying to comprehend clearly what we :
mean by the term “ business man. ' -_;/ . . "i
Rivalry, contention, strife of some sort, appear in all human i
intercourse in all ages. We observe that in bygone periods
of incessant fighting, almost every sound man was afighting
man, not, indeed, always actually doing battle, but generally
; ready to attack a neighbor, or to join in attack upon another

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tribe, and always liable to have to defend himself and his be-
longings by his personal prowess. He possessed besides his
habitation certain rude weapons, tools, clothing, ornaments,
in the making and use of which he was skilled; he stood in
certain simple relations with the men around him.

Similarly, ‘we observe that in these modern days of antag—
onism in industries and in trade, almost every sound man
is necessarily a business man, and must abide the issue of
such struggle or combat as this implies. For almost every
man in a modern community, particularly in this country,
must in some way earn his living, in competition with
others, by his personal diligence and skill; also, he may
possess many and various things, such as house and land,
tools of trade, merchandise, stocks, bonds, promissory notes,
ships, mines, manufactories. He may be employer or em—
ployed. He may be ward, ccstzzz’ qzze z‘rzzsz‘, guardian, trustee,
legatee, parent. He will probably be in debt. And should
he be scientist, teacher, inventor, author, artist, doctor, law-
yer, or clergyman, he must have constant business deal—
ings with his fellow-men—indecorous though it would be
for the doctor to engage in mercantile affairs to the neglect
of his patients, or for the clergyman to run a tan—yard or en—
gage in any other of the pursuits formerly forbidden to him
by English law. As for lawyers and judges, they absolutely
must be, and legislators should be, thoroughly conversant with
business methods, customs, and practice.

Thus we are no more to imagine every modern business
man to be the head of some great establishment, than we
should imagine every ancient warrior to have been a great
Chieftain. The ancient warrior might, by superior strength
or adroitness, attain power and fame; the modern business
man may attain wealth and eminence; yet though there can
be but one chance in a thousand that any particular man
shall be the richest or the most powerful of a thousand, the
other nine hundred and ninety—nine are none the less warriors

or business men.
It might thus seem that the term business man should in—
clude all sound men, excepting those parasites (not yet numer—

 

 

 

 

 

3

ous here) whom Horace calls “fie/gas COIZSHIIZEI’C) mm,” who, in
this country, 'mostly prolong an aimless existence by feeding on
money left in trust for them by toiling ancestors. We might
therefore say that the training necessary for them all is such
as will teach them the nature of the various things that business
life brings them in contact with, the laws and customs govern—
ing those things, the methods of dealing in them, the keeping
of accounts, and so on. As the ancient warrior needed to
know how to wield spear, sword, and buckler, so these mod—
ern warriors must know how to wield their weapons of attack
and defense.

But to extend the term thus widely would be to evade our
question.“ What we want to know touches a smaller class,
namely, those young men who can compass the sacrifice of
time and money requisite for a college education, but who in—
tend, and in fact are obliged, to go out from college into the
toil, strife, and danger of a bread—winning, money—getting
business life. Can these young men afford to spend from four
to six of their‘best years, and a very considerable sum of
money, in a college education? Is such an education the best
investment of their time and money P

At this point we must consider well the difference between
two words which are often regarded as almost synonymous;
the word “education ” and the word “ training.”

Etymologically, education is the drawing out or developing
of those faculties which the individual may happen to inherit,
While training means the turning of them in some specific
direction, and almost implies the practicing and perfecting of
some faculties to the neglect of others; thus, the vine which
is developed by sun, soil, and rain is trained by the gardener
to grow only in certain ways upon an arbor, and the colt de-
veloped in all parts by roaming in pasture is trained to carry
a rider or to draw a load. It is by misuse, though a com?
m-on misuse, of the word that the term “ education” has come
to include the training of the individual in such arts and
knowledge as will probably be most useful for his self—
preservation and happiness under the circumstances of his
time and place. '

 

 

4

All savages of the first order of rudeness are trained to
take their food by hunting or fishing, and also to attack and
defend in combat with other men. In the next stage, men
must be trained to raise cattle and sheep; and, in the next, to

procure food by tilling the soil; while later on, not only are ’

they trained in better methods of capturing wild animals and
rearing domestic animals, and of cultivating food crops, but
also in manufactures, in trades, and in commerce of various
sorts. This advance in training naturally involves advances
in clothing, habitations, tools, and weapons, as well as in
food-getting, the essential point running on through all, that
the young persons of successive epochs have been, and must
be, trained in the arts by which food, clothing, and shelter are
procured.

But man cannot live by bread alone, and running on by the
side of this training, akin to that of beasts, in the arts by which
life is sustained—~arts at first simple, but growing to an im-
mense expansion and complication—we find everywhere and
at all times a collateral growth of quite different things, an
education or development of other faculties—a quite different
training.

Most men, unlike beasts, or, at least, unlike the concep—
tions we hold concerning beasts, have promptings concerning
right and wrong, concerning order, consciousness of obliga-
tion to something imperceptible to the senses, desire for im-
provement and for perfection beyond what they have been or
have seen. Rules of social life, manners, laws, government,
are one outgrowth of these human attributes. Religious faiths
and Observances are another. fEsthetic culture is another.
The sciences, as distinguished from the arts, are another. The
study of mind, of mental and moral philosophy, the everlast—
ing struggle remm cogzzoscez’e alums are others.

The venerable Decalogue of Moses, which, whether we re—
gard it as the summing up of human wisdom and experience
to that time, or as the direct revelation of a superhuman wis-
dom, is the corner-stone of our civilization, exemplifies this
other education which man cannot dispense with, So, like-
wise, do the geometry of Euclid, the architecture and sculp-

“fl‘ “Kw e m

 

 

 

   

.l'iture of ancient Greece, the teachings of Socrates, Plato and
' Confucius of the Hebrew prephets, and, above all, of Jesus
Of modems we must not now speak.
This other education, mostly metaphysical, because rooted
in impalpable things, has by many devious ways attained its
apresent position of such acknowledged necessity that no
young man can be considered complete whose mind has not
received a due share of its non-utilitarian moulding.
Devious and varying the ways have surely been, for while
Herodotus tells us that the young Persians were taught to

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
   
   
   
   
   

 

 

ride on horses, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth,

the young Spaltans we1e taught to lie and to steal adroitly;
and we cannot attribute this obliquity of the Spartans to their
being pagans or ancients or ofa lower race than ours, for so
modern and illustrious a European as Queen Elizabeth of
England lied with an aplomé and dexterity equal to any Spar-
tan, nor is the art of lying even yet entirely a lost art.

Our ancestors were by no means in advance of other peo—
ples in this education of the nobler faculties. On the con—
trary, they were, but a few centuries ago, distinctly behind
g the sages of Asia Minor, Arabia, India, China, Northern Af-
A, 5 rica, and Southern Europe, both in intellect and in morals.

«‘g . ‘The Angli, Norsemen, Saxons, Teutons, Celts, and other
i ’ tribes of fifteen centuries ago from whom we are sprung,

had much in common with ancient Spartans, and even with
‘ modern red Indians, in their habits of life and in their ideas
of education and training. The best—known means to gain
bodily vigor, to fight and to kill beasts and men, were, to the
minds of parents, highly important, if not, indeed, the only
‘ '. important things to teach their sons. It was by slow degrees .3;
that attacks upon inert nature, upon soils, trees, stones, and
“ ores took precedence of attacks upon wild animals, and upon
amen slightly less wild, in the practice of adult men and in
the training of youth.
p "Such education of mental powers as had not for its aim‘
the mere sustenance of the body was scarcely known in our
L mother country, England, before the Romans came; nor did
"me’s rather brief supremacy there suffice to establish

 

 

6

permanently the light of philosophy which the Romans had
derived from Greece. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, the
improvement of the mind or soul for its own sake, without
regard to rewards of greater physical comfort, pleasure, or
luxury, had, indeed, long been the object of man’s assiduous
efforts in countries older than Greece, particularly in Asia
Minor and in Egypt, but our ancestors in England Were as
innocent of philosophy as of aesthetics.
Though Ireland, as early as the seventh century, had been f
enlightened by the introduction of the Christian religion and
by the founding of schools which became famous, and
though the religious houses in various parts of England
perpetuated through the succeeding centuries, such knowledge
of the Latin language as sufficed for the study of theology
and of law, it was scarcely before the Revival of Letters, in the
fifteenth century, when fugitives from Constantinople, after
its capture in 1453 by the Turks,brought Greek culture again
to the knowledge of the learned, that the germ of mental
cultivation, as we now conceive it, was introduced into the
tardy minds of some few of our ancestors. ' -E
The spread of learning was no doubt considerably has— fl";
tened by the advantages of exemption from civil law, which
was claimed by and allowed to the clergy during several

centuries, on the ground that a claims was amenable to

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ecclesiastical law only. For as clr’ir'z‘czts is the root of the

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word clerk ” as well as of the word “clergy,” the man
skilled in reading and writing, though not in holy orders,
claimed “the benefit of clergy” when arraigned for offense

against the common law. But this practice must not be al—

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lowed to detract from the respect due to the real clergy of
England, for in England as in Rome, Greece, India, and their
forerunners, the perpetuation of philosophy as well as of re- .

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ligious ideas and ceremonials is greatly owing to the minis—
ters of religion, whether called priests, scribes, or bishops;
a service to humanity which goes far to offset the cruel perse-
cutions they usually instigated and inflicted, whenever power
was granted them, in the name of the various anthropomor—
phous and exclusive deities they from time to time invented.

     
 

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Naturally, the great weight of the imposing intellects, He—
brew, Greek, or Roman, to go no further back, tended in the
revival of learning to repress as well as to stimulate the minds
of the moderns. Efforts for greater scope and wider flight
than the ancients reached were regarded, according to the
standpoint of the critic, who was sometimes also a most
tyrannical judge, either as insolence, or fatuity, or heresy.
‘The production of a text from Genesis or from Aristotle
sufficed to condemn any adverse though correcter View, for
who should presume to know more than the wisest of men
who had lived P

As acquaintance with the lore, the science, and the arts of
some of mankind’s most brilliant eras became wider and more
profound, the greater reverence was felt for the primeval
Titans, who broke the bonds of earth and almost scaled the
heavens. To learn what they had achieved and had written
appeared to be the sufficient task and aim of the student;
naturally, therefore, the great schools or universities (college
meaning simply a collection of students segregated for their
mutual convenience out of the crowds of a university) had
for their object, beyond the teaching of theology, mainly the
teaching of what those old giants had learned—the re—occu—
pation, as it were, of so much of the domain of Chaos and
old Night as they had conquered.

How irregular were the studies and the lives of the students
in the earlier universities, how bigoted and dogmatic some of
the greatest, such as those of Paris and Salamanca became,
how the light of free thought broke out at Oxford and Cam—
bridge, to be combatted and suppressed at times but never
quite extinguished, we cannot now examine. Let it suffice to
point out that reverence for the old master spirits, joined to a
sense of the necessity of insisting upon some regularity, or—
der, and uniformity in the studies pursued, led to the fixing
of such obligatory courses, mainly in the works of those old
masters, as became the established curriculum of each col- .

lege; courses which must be mastered before the student
could obtain his certificate of scholarship, or degree.

It was not without good reason that these conditions were

8

, established and held almost exclusive possession of the col--

leges until the beginning of the present century, nor that the
study of“ the humanities," namely, the languages and litera—
ture of the ancient classical authors, rhetoric, logic, grammar,
mathematics, and the like, seemed an adequate liberal educa—
tion for all those students who were not to be trained in the—
ology—that chief object for which the original great schools
of Europe were founded. For all this was in the nature of a
protest against the mere training in useful arts which implied:
a slavish necessity of constant bodily toil to supply bodily
wants, and was in the nature of a determination to educate-
and to improve man’s nobler part, the mind.

Yet, it was early perceived that mere development of pow-
ers for no specific use could not suffice, since the practice of'
any profession, such as law or medicine, as well as of divinity
obviously required special training beyond such education as
study of“ the humanities” imparted. As one might have the
bodily development of a gladiator, and be unable to plow, to
build a house, to sail a ship, or to forge a weapon, so might,
one have studied the classics and be a senior wrangler, but
fail to be a good lawyer or doctor.

The expansion of college education for laymen beyond
“the humanities,” into departments or schools of law and.
medicine, was not a sudden step, nor was it simultaneous in.
all countries; it was, however, an inevitable step and one
most pregnant of advance in the whole scheme of higher
education. For though “ the three learned professions ”——»
law, medicine, and divinity—were for several generations,
particularly in this country, the only specialties in the field of
college education, acknowledgment of the fact that special.
training was necessary to fit a young man for the special
career in which he meant to labor and to earn his bread, nat—
urally led to the establishment in the great institutions of
learning of many other departments or schools for special
training in various arts and sciences.

Thus the modern university became something more than;
such a mere group of colleges as Oxford or Cambridge until
lately were, all teaching substantially the same things; it be-

 

  

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

9

came, indeed, something more than a centre of all kinds of
varied learning and science including the most abstruse, for
it became also a group of special schools for the teaching of
all arts tending to man’s conquest over the brute materials
and forces of nature; for the promotion of man’s physical
well-being; and thus, in part, for promoting the bread-win-
ning of the numerous students who acquired and afterwards
practised those arts. ‘

In consequence of this combination of education and train-
ing, the normal graduate of one of the many technical schools
which now form integral parts of most great institutions of
learning, passes out into the world not only grounded in
“the humanities,” but with a mind as well disciplined as his
who spends his later years in grappling with the intricacies of
dead languages and of unapplied mathematics; a mind fur-
nished also with practically useful matter, so that he has a
Certain advantage or footing among the candidates for places
. in the great working army of the modern world.

To be a doctor, a doctzts, or learned man, is thus no
longer to be a recluse separated from his fellow-men by such
delving in the past as to leave him no place in the present;
for, including the three learned professions, the chances are
now a hundred or more to one that the doctor is one who has
learned to be, and who is, in some better or higher sense than
the layman or unlearned, the co-laborer and the servant, per-
haps also the well—paid servant and the benefactor of his kind.
The doctor may now be doctus, or well instructed in anyone of
a score of special branches oflearning enabling him to engage
with special skill in some task of utility, some further con—
quest-over the yet inert forces or materials of nature, some
service in trade, or finance, or legislation, some organization
of industry, some problem in social life.

Obviously, the man thus trained in any special art should
not be a. narrow man, for he must be well grounded in the
principles underlying his specialty; his acquired art rests,
therefore, upon the science which is the essence or the code
derived from the tentative art in that line of all his predeces—
5501‘s, and he holds- the clue to further advances. This ideal

 

 

IO

product of the modern university, well cultured in the aes-
thetic sense, and well equipped for the bread—winning life
struggle, is the sufficient reward for the anxieties, joined,
perhaps, to sharp home economies, of the fond parents who
decided to give him the advantages ofa college education.

That he has an assured prosperity before him cannot be
pretended, for here, as everywhere, “many are called, but few
chosen,” yet the graduate of a good technical school has
probably a better outlook than if he had been trained to one
of the learned professions, for it has been reckoned that this
country has not patients enough for half the doctors, nor cli-
ents enough for half the lawyers, nor churches enough for
one—fifth of the preachers. Nor is this excess of educated
men peculiar to our country, for Dr. Lexis, of Gottingen,
points out that many of the twenty—nine thousand students
now at work in twenty Teutonic universities must fail to find
any self-supporting occupation.

If this is true concerning the young men trained for special
careers, what shall we say of those who have merely received
the ordinary college education leading to the degree of Bach-
elor of Arts.

We may lightly say that the frivolous boy who has barely
escaped disgrace at the hands of too lenient professors, and
the conceited lad who looks down from the height of a few
books upon the successful practical man, and the spendthrift
who wastes his substance and perhaps incumbers his future
by foolish extravagance, and the unhappy youth who sinks into
vice, have not been benefited by their college life, but it is hard
to have to say that many of the paths of business life are in
a measure barred to any mere college graduate, because the
hard-worked master, to whom the candidate must usually ap-
ply, prefers to take in younger persons, of less pretensions,
who are presumably more biddable and more easily moulded
to their routine of duty.

He has left behind the tender years and dependence of boy—
hood; he has reached the stature and the responsibility of 7
self-sustaining manhood; the struggle for existence cannot be
evaded, nor long delayed, and, with what help from parents

 

 

 

 

II

or friends he may command, the young combatant must enter
‘ the arena and fight for his life. Has he gained, together with
solid mental acquirements, patience, endurance, manly self-
denial and tenacity of purpose, self-respect without conceit,
cheerful willingness to work, and contentment with plain liv-
ing? Then he is likely to advance in some new career more
rapidly and surely than if he lacked the college training.

Has he become enervated by an artificial life that removed
him from contact with a hard—working world? Is he
secretly lazy and self—indulgent, lacking in thoroughness,
conceited in a vain overestimate of small acquirements, dis—
dainful of homely ways, steady toil, and small savings?
Then he must suffer many kicks and buffets from the world he
despises before he can hope to win its rewards.

Here, then, we stand face to- face with the problem which
has discouraged many an anxious parent when the brief glory
of commencement day had given place to the sober debate
concerning possible careers for the young man. Clearly
the responsibility of Alma Mater has ended. No college,
no faculty, and no trustees can pretend to look after the
graduates who have enjoyed for a definite extent and for a
limited period the benefits they afford. One might as reason—
ably expect the steamship which lands the traveler at Liver—
pool to carry him on to Berlin.

It will scarcely be disputed that college life offers great
temptations and opportunities for the formation of superficial
light-weight characters, having shallow accomplishments but
lacking in grip and hold upon real things. As our public-
school instruction is open to the charge that it tends to mis—
lead many boys and girls from useful lives as mechanics,
farmers, and housewives, toward lives of ostensible gentility
as clerks or “salesladies,” so our college system is liable to
breed distaste, if not disability, for that close grapple with
sordid earth—born cares which beset every man’s path, and
which must be conquered. \

' I have used the word “ accomplishments,” a pleasing word

seeming to imply finish and polish, to mean something light
and graceful, but what does the historian Froude mean

 

 

12

when he says that the Romans who composed Caesar’s le-
gions in Gaul were the most accomplished men of their time.
Not that they knew a little Greek, or rhetoric, or music;
not that they danced or played foot—ball (though there must
have been lovely rushers and tacklers among them), but that
they were experts in the arts upon which their campaign and
their lives were to depend. They could work in earth, wood,
stone, and iron; could build camps, boats, bridges, battering-
rams; could swiftly combine and shift in attack and defense ;'
they could, in a word, do most consummately well what their
task, as laid down from time to time by their great com—-
mander, called for. They had been well instructed in all the
specialties of their art; they were inured to hardship, toil,
and danger; they had courage, strength, and patience; and
they had ready obedience to their officers.

Can our colleges be expected to train the multitude of their"
students, for whom the existing special schools are not in—
tended or adapted, to any such general fitness for their life--'
work as business men, to train them in accomplishments
suitable to their campaigns, comparable to, though so widely
different from, those of Caesar's soldiers? At present they _
cannot be said to do this satisfactorily; they educate more or'
less thoroughly, but they do not so train.

It is not easy so to train, nor must students expect that,
with the best training any school can give them, they will reap-
immediate triumphs in their several careers, either business
or professional, for even after such training they necessarily
enter practical life much as recruits enter an army. Liszt
and Edison, with all their natural gifts, did not acquire their
marvelous aptitudes in a few short lessons. It was not at the
outset of their Gallic wars that Caesar’s legions overcame the-
Nervii or captured Alesia.

Let us not demand impossibilities, and let us gratefully con--
fess and remember the great debt due to the colleges and uni-
versities, to the men who, in times less opulent than the ,
present, endowed them with means that enable them to give-
instruction for fees far below its cost, and to the men who-
patiently suffer in their incessant combat with the stupidity

 

 

I3

and the coltishness of successive generations of adolescents.
These great schools have manfully endeavored to do more
than keep up to the respectable standard of a recent past;
they have labored to supply the needs of an advancing and
exacting world which has heard of microbes and quaternions,
and vibrations, and which must be served with the latest—
found powers of electricity, metallurgy, and chemistry. They
have been expected to instill more than most adults can grasp,
into comparatively feeble boys, like

* * 9" poor little Paul,
Who doesn’t like study at all,
But is learning to speak
Both Hebrew and Greek,
And expects to take Sanscrit next fall.

They have been obliged almost to transform themselves
while incessantly at work; to change front, as it were, while
in actual conflict. They have met as they best could the
.clamor for every sort of special study; for eclectic c0urses;
for milder—that is, looser~discipline; for admission of
women to all their Classes; for the abandonment, in part, at
least, of their cherished classics; and with all this they have
had to meet enormously increased expenses.

They have not flinched from any of these difficulties, but
have accomplished a prodigious development, both in the
:scope of their teaching and in the number of students they
can collectively accommodate. Their professors and in—
structors are as devoted as were their predecessors, whom-they
usually excel in attainment; their trustees or managers are
.as faithful as their faculties; What is equally indispensable,
namely, liberal pecuniary support, has not been withheld
from them. Lawrence, and Sheffield, and Towne, and Hop-
kins, and Peabody, and Packer, and Thaw, and Stanford have
'held up the hands of Agassiz, and Dana, and Leidy, and
Langley, and their worthy compeers.

Even the sneers and sophistries of pedants who in some
colleges are still allowed to teach, in defiance of fact, that their
country should not protect itself from foreign trade-plunder,
nor foster the industries which are its life, and that the very

 

I4

endowments from which their Own salaries are paid were
stolen by the donors under color of law,* have not yet dried
up the springs of benefaction, the thank-offerings, the free
gifts to posterity upon which our colleges have thriven.

Yet a vague uneasiness exists, a persistent doubt which
our question formulates, whether all this complex machinery
of education is doing what is really best for those young
men who intend engaging in ordinary business life ; whether
it is not better for them to go into the training of practical
life at the age proper for entering college. It is a doubt
springing in great part from the flagrant fact that college
life and college instruction do not train or equip a man for
ordinary business, as the schools of law, divinity, medicine,
mining, and engineering train and equip their students. The
Bachelor of Arts may be dull in arithmetic, slovenly in his
handwriting, unable to manage a bargain or to concoct a
good business—letter, and grossly ignorant of book—keeping
and accounting, yet he is to compete with those who are
experts at all this, in channels where the candidates are
numerous and the masters are forced by the competition
they suffer to be exactingflf ,

*The Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, formerly president of Middlebury College,
Vermont, says: A mechanic who has risen by his industry, enterprise,
and capacity to great wealth and influence, said to me afew weeks since:
“ I send my son to college, and in the class-room he hears his father as a
protectionist set down as an idiot, a robber, a lobbyist, and a thief. Can
I respect an institution that allows such things P ”\x This severance of the
college from practical life to impracticable theory is working evil to itself,
to the State, to the Church, and to all professions. It has already dis-
placed the college from the esteem, the honor, the confidence it once
enjoyed.

Jrln the year 1861 a Parliamentary Commission, consisting of Lord
Clarendon and others, was appointed to examine the “ Great Schools "
of England, namely, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Winchester. Their
report of two thousand printed pages shows that arithmetic was un—
known and uncared for, the English tongue almost utterly disregarded,
physical science in its various branches deemed of no import; in the
examinations ninety—one out of one hundred and sixty-one boys mis-
spelled the English words they used in their translations from Greek.
Professor Key, of University College, London, had a private pupil who
had gone through the complete Eton course, and who, though intelli-

 

 

I5

Surely our college system, developed from schools which
were founded, as we have seen, primarily for teaching theol—
ogy and secondarily for education only, but gradually adapt-
ed for training in law, in medicine, and quite lately in certain
other specific branches, must again be expanded to conform
to yet other necessities of the present time; the colleges must
manage to establish a better connection between their ordi-
nary tuition and the urgent wants that are so soon to assail

 

most of their students, or our question will soon have to be de—
. 'finitively answered in the negative. They must also manage
to instill a sense of the coming struggle; of the immense swing

V ; ‘ upward or downward that awaits the competent or the incom—

petent soldier in this modern strife; of the obligation, that
3* none can escape without dishonor, to serve well his fellow—
4; ‘ men and to do his duty, wherever his lot may fall.

The students must come to feel that they are training for
this strife and for this service as Caesar’s soldiers trained for
‘_ their campaigns, instead of feeling that they are in a comfort—
‘ able refuge, where certain rather uninteresting tasks must be

overcome or dodged, but where nothing is of much conse-

quence. China may seem a strange country from which to

draw a motto for the young men ‘of our self-satisfied race, but
p I find nothing more to the purpose than this saying of Con-
l fucius, “ The student who cares for his ease is not worthy to
i be called a student.”

The colleges cannot pretend in the face of experience that
they are indispensable to a useful or a happy life, nor that
college education is essential to the production of the highest

7 V types of humanity. Not one of the great ancients enjoyed
anything of the kind, nor did Shakespeare, Washington,

gent in other respects, had never learned the multiplication table, nor

knew of its existence; when buying several pairs of silk stockings in a

shop he could only ascertain how much he had to pay by adding the

price of the second pair to that of the first pair, and so on. (See Sixty—

eighth Annual Report of Controllers of Philadelphia Public Schools,
, V page 66.) It is, perhaps, but natural that our colleges, descended from
«’- ‘ \ such purely classical schools as those “Great Schools” so lately as
' 186I were, have devoted so excessive a part of their attention to merely
classical study P

 

16

Franklin, or Lincoln. I will not weary you with a list of
names, but it may interest you to observe for yourselves how
many of the greatest men in every department of life have been
not college men, but what is called self-made men, though
most, perhaps, of the distinguished men of all ranks below
the first have been well educated.

The fierce earnestness of life, with its perpetual 2w vz'ctz's, its
merciless extinction of shams, doubtless seizes sooner on
those who have to win their way while young by application
to business, than on those whose pleasanter youth is passed in
schools. But it is not an unmixed good to be prematurely
hardened in such combat, nor should it be impossible for the
college—bred man, who after all has his own labors and tempta-
tions, to develop earnestness as well as integrity and intelli-
gence. Nor should it be impossible for colleges to impart to
those students intending to be business men, so much that
will serve as training and equipment for a business life as to
justify their choice of a college education.

As to languages, for instance, it has often and truly been
said (quite recently by James Russell Lowell) that study of
the living languages may be made to afford as useful mental
discipline as study of the dead languages. The accurate and
elegant French, which is as necessary in diplomacy as in so-
ciety; the virile and logical German, indispensable in science
as in trade ; the stately and sonorous Spanish, mother tongue
of nearly all the peoples between us and Cape Horn, with
whom our intercourse must grow to be ever closer, afford
wide fields of study, profitable for present discipline and profit-
able for future use.

Greek can hardly be undertaken by the students we are
considering, but some Latin they must have, not only because
so many other tongues are rooted in it, but because of the in-
sight its study gives into the construction and grammar of
our own irregular English, imperfect command of which is not
to be tolerated in any one of our race pretending to be rea-
sonably well educated.

Granting that the mere college education was not designed

for, and has not yet developed into, training of young men'

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17

for business, and that it obliges them to enter later into appren-

ticeship to practical life, its benefits are great to those who

succeed in adding that apprenticeship to their education. If
then, the colleges can join even a partial training for business
life to a curriculum not too greatly curtailed from those they
now offer, they should attain for many of their students a
higher utility than ever before. This they can apparently do
by perfecting such arrangements as have lately been adopted
in the University of Pennsylvania, for allowing students after
spending a certain time successfully in the Department of
Arts, to spend a certain subsequent time in the special work
and training of the School of Finance and Economy.

Harvard, when proposing to shorten her collegiate course
from four years to three years, doubtless means thus to facili—
tate the training of her graduates in special schools, or to re—
lease them earlier to find elsewhere the needful practical in—
struction.

Here we have the beginning of that new career which is,
as I conceive, to open out to the colleges. They are to see
clearly the necessity of fitting themselves to train as well as
to educate. They are to insist, by their own work and by
their example, that young men shall have a thorough, though
not necessarily a wide, education in the great domain of our
inherited mental and moral possessions," in what are. well
called“ the humanities;” they are also, while thus instruct—
ing in the achievements of the past, to turn their students’
minds to the work of the present, and are to give to them
such preliminary training in things indispensable for the busi-
ness life of to—day as will facilitate their doing the work of
men in the future that lies so close before them. This is no
idle dream, for the numerous schools and universities of Ger—

many have in fact already advanced far in such training of

young men for their various special careers. In them as in
the schools of no other country are young men trained in all
that relates to trade, commerce, finance, and industry.

At the risk of appearing somewhat irrelevant Ihere ask

, attention to the fact that, in thorough practical training, as

well as in magnitude, the German army system excels all

 

18

other training schools in the world. From the “General- ,

Stab” which must be well versed in mathematics, history,
geography, engineering, and languages, as well as in every sort
of military science and practice, down to the recruits, who,
when ignorant, are taught the rudiments of book—learning,
while they are forced to erect stature, activity of movement,
good form in riding and walking, correct regimen of diet,
personal cleanliness, decorous behavior, and prompt obedi—
ence, as well as to military drill, the whole vast army estab—

lishment is a training school of inestimable value, in which

every sound citizen is moulded to do well his part.

We hear much in this country of the insufferable burden
thrown by this huge army upon the German people, but we
hear little of its enormous benefits, while after all its annual
cost, including pensions, is about $14,000,000 less than that of
our small army and our bloated pension list.* For my part,
I am prepared to believe that the German people owe to their
army, after all allowance for such minor vices as the bump—
tiousness of some of its lower offiCers, quite apart from its
purely military utility, and simply for its annual production of.
legions of vigorous, well—trained men, as much as to their
noble universities, where near—sighted beer—drinkers mingle
with intellectual athletes of every variety.

Returning now to the main topic, I repeat and insist,
when thus arguing for a more intimate adaptation of college
training to the business world, that I do not favor abandon-r
ing “the humanities,” or limiting education to narrow‘utilw
ities. Though in the vast machine of a modern community
each man must fit to his place and perform his special func-
tion like a wheel or a screw, the man must be much more

 

*For the year 1889-90 the strength of the German army is fixed at
491,955 men, including officers, &c., and its cost for that year, includ-
ing 32,643,018 marks for pensions, is stated as 402,814,825 marks, which,
reckoning the mark at twenty—four cents, equals $96,675, 558 of our money»

For the year ending June 30th, 1889, the strength of the United States .

army was 28,417 men, including officers, &c., but not including 1092
Officers, &c., retired. Its cost for that year Was $4,314,679.33, and the
amount paid for army pensions was for that year $86,605,064.02 ; total

$110,919,743-3s.

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than a wheel or a screw; he must be a man alive in his spir—
itual part, with the windows of his soul open to the heavens,
trained in ways that lead to serenity and beauty ; he must be
“toms, fares dtque 7012172517215.” .

The college, holding fast to the best of its traditions, will
care for this completeness of growth, this symmetrical devel—
opment, as no “ Commercial Institute,” and no shop, trade, or
office training can do; therefore, it is the improvement and
not the destruction or supersedure of college education that
must be achieved.

How valuable is this moulding of the young mind into
good form, and into variety of attainment, may be partly
guessed by those who observe the respectful regret that is
sometimes shown by intelligent and successful men in the
presence of college—bred men who are perhaps inferior in
strength to themselves. Even Darwin, with all his surpass-
ing success as a specialist, lamented the imperfect devel—
opment which debarred him from enjoyment of art and
music.

Any hobby is said to be useful to the man who is hard
worked in a monotonous routine, as a preservative of mental
health, but, if a mere hobby is good, how much better is an
affectionate familiarity with the classical models in literature,
sculpture, architecture, music!

The colleges are Sure to offer abundance and variety of
mental pabulum beyond the most robust digestion. My plea
is that while thus offering so bountiful a feast of delicacies
they should also give to their students that more homely and
nourishing fare, that “meat for men ” which they can assim—A
ilate to carry them through their homely labors.

A friend of mine, who knew no French, went to a restau—
rant where the waiter offered him, with great volubility, nu-
merous French dishes: bouillon, poisson, pate de foie gras,
supreme de volaille, &c. My friend waited until the flood of
words was ended, when he said, “Yes; I’ll take that and some

potatoes.” Let students have, therefore, what they will of fine
college fare, but let them have also potatoes.

The notion which. has been affected by some classes in

20

1

Europe, but which is perhaps now obsolescent, that there is
something inherently and necessarily vulgar about attention
to business affairs, has had its echoes here; but that notion is
itself vulgar, and is, besides, a disastrous blunder.

There can be no real independence of man or nation that is
not firmly based upon pecuniary independence (a different
thing, by the way, from affluence); and pecuniary independ—
ence can be his only who knows how to manage his affairs.

We all have known persons of apparently sufficient means
and of good abilities who were constantly embarrassed, and
who came at last to grief simply from ignorance of business
ways and lack of business system; we have known others of

comparatively scanty means who, by careful management,

thrift, and punctuality, were always comfortable, and attained
competence. It is not the thrift and comfort that are vulgar,

but the disorder, the postponing of creditors, the miserable ‘

march to ruin that are vulgar, as well as distressing.

On the great scale of national welfare the same lesson lies
open for him to read whose mind turns toward it: Neither
man nor nation must spend in excess of income. In the one

case, as in the other, income may be increased by diligence

and skill; expense may be diminished by wise economy,
without parsimony, if one studies the matter. In either case,
borrowing may be of prodigious use when properly done for
proper purposes; but this is an art which can never be suc-
cessfully practised by the improvident man or nation.

Some historical examples may give you a keener percep—
tion of the utility of good business methods. For instance,
the magnificent Solomon, with all his glory, ruined his king—

dom, and directly caused the break—up of the Hebrew mon—

archy, which followed his death, by his prodigality and the
intolerable taxation thereby occasioned. It was the unsound
business management of this king, wise in many less impor—
tant matters, that caused the secession of ten of the twelve
tribes; the consequent dwindling of the strong kingdom of
Israel to the small Jewish kingdom, comprising only Judah

and the faithful little Benjamin, which, after long struggles,

went down in utter ruin. Whether taught by this fault of

 

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Solomon or not, it is but fair to remark that few of the mod—
ern Jews follow him in this particular.

Possibly if Solomon had been as fortunate as was Louis
XIV. in having a Colbert to manage his finances, his country
might have endured his lavishness during his reign of peace,

‘at least as well as did France that of Louis during his period

of costly wars.

The decline of the once mighty power of Turkey IS palpa—
bly due to bad business methods, prodigal expenditure and
neglected or corrupted sources of revenue, as was that of

Poland under Augustus the Strong, and, lately, that of Egypt
under Ismail.

On the other hand, the thrift of Philip of Macedon prepared
the way for the splendid career of his son Alexander, as did
that of the second king of Prussia for his son Frederick the

,Great, who was himself a most notable instance 'of a painstaking

business monarch, demanding most rigid performance of every
duty and most accurate accounting in every department.
Those traits, not always joined, as with Frederick and his
father, to stinginess, have indeed become hereditary, not only
in the house of Hohenzollern, but in the German nation. The

» military and civil service, the railroads, the banks, the indus—

try and commerce of Germany, are all marked by punctuality,
sharp correctness of every detail, and consequent success in
individual and national undertakings.

Napoleon, also, great in business management as in war,
and having to do with a people distinguished for intelligent
diligence and economy, brought such order and consequent

plenty into French industry and trade as enabled France to
support for a long time the terrific waSte of his campaigns.

It \was not, however, by free trade with foreign countries that
he did this, for trade was seldom less free than under his
reign; he fostered the industries of his own country, notably
the production of beet sugar; and he said of the free-trade
philosophers, that if a nation were of adamant they would

‘grind it to powder

In our own country Washington and Franklin were con-

.Spicuous for th1ift, punctuality, good business management,

 

22

and correct accounting, accompanied naturally by dignity and
comfort, while Jefferson, lacking in those qualities, fell into a
misery of debt.

Our more recent history demonstrates that “ peace hath her
victories no less renowned than war,” for not only“were the
better business methods of the North indispensable to her
overthrow of the less thrifty South, but the splendid indus-
trial and financial advance of the whole reunited nation is a
main cause of the increased respect shown to her all over the
world, for not only has her internal development been stu-
pendous, but she is a nation with a favorable balance of trade.*

You may have been told, or you may yet be told, if you
should fall in the way of hearing such political economy
as a few American colleges still cherish, that the balance of
trade is no indication of national prosperity or the reverse;
that a nation need not do as an individual must, bring about
.a favorable balance of trade by caring that the exports exceed
the imports, or, in other words, that the commodities sold (in-
cluding for the individual his labor) exceed those bought, in
order that the net result or balance of trade may be an ex-
cess of credits over debts, and thence an inflow instead of an
outflow of money.

But it is no less true for the nation than for the individual,
that income must exceed expenditure, or an evil day of reck-
oning will come.

The favorite and triumphing reply of the free traders to
this clear proposition is, that England has for many years im-
ported vastly more goods than she has exported, and yet
grows constantly richer. But England, having formerly for
many years exported hugely in excess of her imports, became
thereby the great capitalist and money lender of the world,
so that she can now afford to take a part of the interest due
to her from other countries in such commodities as her

 

* Bismarck spoke thus in an oration, on May 2d, 1889 : “ Because it is
my deliberate judgment that the prosperity of America is mainly due to
its system of protective laws, I urge that Germany has now reached
that point where it is necessary to imitate the tariff system of the
United States.”

 

 

 

 

 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
 

   
 

23

debtors can offer. V She resembles a thrifty farmer who, hav—
ing become rich by diligence and skill, joined to the posses-
sion of exceptionally productive land and the early use of
machinery, has lent money to his neighbors, and can well
afford to accept their horses, cattle, and grain in part satisfac—
tion of the interest they owe him, even though this appears]
to make his farm take in more than it gives out.
BN0 English statesman deceives himself, or attempts to de—
, rceive his people, by such stuff as is sometimes dealt out by
American professors to their students upon this point. Noth—
ing is in England more closely studied by statesmen of all
parties than the condition of traden—particularly of foreign
‘ trade—for a great decline in exportations is there well under~
:stood to be a danger signal.

The masculine craft of English trade and finance is not to
be easily comprehended, much less is it to be easily over—
come by England’s rivals; he who fancies that it can all be
learned in a few easy lessons, and that it is in fact all con—
densed in a few free—trade axioms obligingly imparted to those
rivals, is rather an amiable dupe of his English teachers than
a safe guide of his American students.*

The astute M. Thiers was therefore, perhaps, but mocking
when he wrote thus to the English Secretary of the Treas-
ury: “Mon c/zer Ellz'ce: ]6 2/6th comzaz‘z‘re jusqu’azz fond [a
Jysz‘émse finmzcz'ére Alzg/az'se. Qmmd pour/22410215 me 2170727267
quz'lzze mz'izules .9 ”

Be persuaded that there are few mundane things more
.worthy of attentive study than the laws, customs, and meth-
ods of trade, commerce, and finance; few which offer to the
individual more usefulness and happiness; few which offer to
the nation greater gain in solidity and independence.

 

*The Rev. Dr. Hamlin, above quoted, who had witnessed the evil
_/ efiects of British free trade in divers foreign countries, thus warned the
graduating class of Middlebury College 1n his baccalaureate sermon .—

1‘ “To the graduating class I would say: Be loyal to your country.
. Give no countenance to the crafty and selfish designs of Great Britain
2 upon our industries and commerce. Never be deceived by her hypo-
mtical and disgusting professions of regard to our welfare and greater

prosperity.

  

 

i.\'-' ’

 

24

As for the moral aspect of the case, nothing can better de—.
pict it than Dr. Samuel Johnson’s remark, that “mankind
are seldom so innocently employed as when engaged in mak-
ing money.”

Be assured that for practical every—day usefulness no ac~
complishments and few virtues equal in value for man or for
nation what Carlyle calls “ the book—keeping virtues,” and that.
there is little comfort in this cold modern world for fine fellows.
like Colonel Yell of Yellville, “ whose books would not bal-
ance, but whose heartbeat warmly for his native land.”

To conclude: I have aimed to show that the yOung man:
who means to be complete needs both mental culture or ed-
ucation and practical training, such culture as good college
instruction imparts, and such practical training as is given by
special schools; but that, although he can usually best gain
the culture in a college, he can scarcely afford, if intending
to be a business man, to spend the customary years in the old-
fashioned routine of college studies. I have endeavored to-
point out that our college system grew out of needs differing;
from those of the young men now intending to become busi-~
ness men, that this system has striven by gradual develop—-
ment during the centuries to fit itself to the demands of suc—
cessive periods, and that this development has been most
marked in the recent decades. I have owned the immense
service the colleges have rendered in preserving and sending
forward the great models of sound thinking as well as the
great attainments of our race, but I have tried at the same
time to show that the system is now gravely lackingin capacity
to impart to those young men who aim, not at the learned
professions but at ordinary business careers, some prelim—
inary training for such careers. Thus I have been led on to _
express the conviction that the time is now ripe for another
step in the evolution of.our college system, and to intimate
that sound knowledge of business laws and ways is not vul-
garizing, but rather is ennobling, and is most necessary to all
young men. ‘ '

Should it be objected that this is substantially repeating a
part of the reasons given for endeavoring to found in Phila-

 

  
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   

delphia a School of Finance and Economy, I reply that the

argument must needs be repeated until it shall have done its

work here and elsewhere.

Time has not diSproved, but has distinctly confirmed, the

i' suggestions of need for such schools. Our School, the pioneer

in its peculiar line, has already, in its brief career, become

firmly established, and is attracting many of the most vigor-
Sous young men. It falls far short of what it should be and

1 must be; teachers have to be trained as well as students,
, curriculums have to be painfully established, text—boOks even
haVe yet .to beuwritten, public opinion turns but slowly away
from the trodden paths. But as the inadequacy of the mere
.old college courses as preparation for a business life becomes
‘more apparent, While \the greater practical usefulness of the
* new instruction grows clearer, our School must not only draw
‘to itself a constantly increasing proportion of the students in .
this University of Pennsylvania, and constantly improve its‘ '

‘ own work, but it must be the example and forerunner of other

f and probably better Schools in other places.

” i It seems reasonable to hope that the work of this School,

_ and 'that of somewhat similar Schools to be attached to other

“ =Universities or Colleges, may enable those who study in them

‘ to feel~ that their time has been, well spent, and to answer our

question by declaring that a college education is advantageous
to a business man.

THE appended letter of joseph Wharton to the Trus—
tees of the University of Pennsylvania, including the
project laid down by him for the school,rexhibits the
aim which he had in mind and the nature of the in-
struction which he intended the school to impart. Up
to the present time it has not been found practicable
to include all the subjects mentioned in the project.

7 0 Me Tmtsiees 0f t/ze (fizivemz'z‘y of Pe7z¢zsylvamd .°

The general conviction that college education did little to—
ward fitting for the actual duties of life any but those who
purposed to become lawyers, doctors, or clergymen, brought
about the creation of many excellent technical and scientific
schools, whose work is enriching the country with a host of
cultivated minds prepared to overcome all sorts of difficulties
in the world of matter.

Those schools, while not replacing the outgrown and absol- V
escent system of apprenticeship, accomplish a work quite be-
yond anything that system was capable of. Instead of teach— '
ing and perpetuating the narrow, various, and empirical
routines of certain shops, they base their instruction upon the
broad principles deduced from all human knowledge, and
ground in science, as well as in art, pupils who are thereby
fitted both to practice what they have learned and to become
themselves teachers and discoverers.

In the matter of commercial education there was formerly
a system of instruction practiced in the counting-houses of
the old-time merchants resembling the system of apprentice—
ship to trades. Comparatively few examples of this sort of.
instruction remain, nor is their deficiency made good by the
so-called commercial colleges, for however valuable may be
the knowledge which they impart, it does not suffice to fit a
, young man for the struggle of commercial life, for wise man- '
agement of a private estate, or for efficient public service.

(26)

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
 
 
  

27 O

   
 

It is obvious that training in a commercial house not of
the first rank for magnitude and intelligence must, like trade
apprenticeship, often result in narrowness and empiricism
which are not compensated by the hard and practical certainty
within limited bounds derived from the routine of trade or
business. Since systematic instruction cannot be expected
from the overworked heads of any great establishment, the
novice mostly depends on what he can gather from the sal-
aried employés of the house, and, instead of being instructed
in the various branches, is probably kept working at some
particular function for which he has shown aptitude, or where
his service is most needed. Besides, ordinary prudence re-
quires that many things indispensable to mastery of the busi—
ness should be kept secret from these novices.

There is, furthermore, in this country, an increasing num-
ber of young men possessing, by inheritance, wealth, keen-
ness of intellect, and latent power of command or organiza—
tion, to whom the channels of commercial education, such as
it is, are, by the very felicity of their circumstances, partly
closed, for when they leave college at the age of twenty to
twenty-five years they are already too old to be desirable be—
ginners in a counting-house, or to descend readily to its
drudgery.

No country can afford to have this inherited wealth and
capacity wasted for want of that fundamental knowledge
which would enable the possessors to employ them with ad—
vantage to themselves and to the community, yet how nu-
merous are the instances of speedy ruin to great estates, and
7 indolent waste of great powers for good, simply for want of
such knowledge and of the tastes and self-reliance which it
brings. Nor can any country long afford to have its laws
made and its government administered by men who lack such
training as would suffice to rid their minds of fallacies, and
qualify them for the solution of the social problems incident
to our civilization. Evidently a great boon would be be-
stowed upon the nation if its young men of inherited intel-
lect, means, and refinement could be more generally led so to
manage their property as, while husbanding it, to benefit the.

28

community, or could be drawn into careers of unselfish legis- V

lation and administration.

As the possession of any power is usually accompanied by
taste for its exercise, it is reasonable to expect that adequate
education in the principles underlying successful business
management and civil government would greatly aid in pro-
ducing a class of men likely to become most useful members
of society, whether in private or in public life. An oppor-
tunity for good seems here to exist similar to that so largely

and profitably availed of by the technical and scientific
schools.

These considerations, joined to the belief that one of the
existing great universities, rather than an institution of lower
rank, or a new independent establishment, should lead in the
attempt to supply this important deficiency in our present
system of education, have led me to suggest the project here-
with submitted, for the establishment of a School of Finance
and Economy as a Department of the University which you
now control, and which seems well suited to undertake a task
so accordant with its general aims. In order that the Uni—
versity may not by undertaking it, assume a pecuniary bur—
den, I hereby propose to endow the school with the securities
below named, amounting to $100,000, and yielding more than
$6000 annual interest; these securities not to be converted
during my lifetime without my assent, and no part of the
endowment to be at any time invested in any obligation of
the University, viz. :—

$50,000 stock in the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad
Company.

$50,000 mortgage bonds of the Schuylkill Navigation Com-
pany, due in 1907.

I am prepared to convey these securities at the opening of
the first term of the school, or at any earlier time when the
University shall satisfy me that the school will surely be or-
ganized as below stated, and opened at the beginning of the
next term, interest being adjusted to such time of opening.

The only conditions which I impose are that the Univer—
sity shall establish and maintain the school according to the

 

 

may? -

  
  
 
 
  
  

29
tenor of the “ Project” hereto appended, and that if the Uni—
' versity shall at any time hereafter, by its own desire, or by
default established in a suitable court of equity, cease so
. to maintain the school, or if the school shall fail to attract
students and therefore prove in the judgment of such court
to be of inconsiderable utility, the endowment shall forthwith
revert to me or to my heirs I reserving the right during my
life to amend in any way, with the assent of the then Trustees
of the University, the terms of the said “ Project.”
To commemorate a family name which has been honorably
borne in this community since the foundation of the city, I

desire that the school shall be called “ The Wharton School
of Finance and Economy.”

     
 

THE PROJECT.

I. Object—To provide for young men special means of
training and of correct instruction in the knowledge and in
the arts of modern Finance and Economy, both public and
private, in order that, being well informed and free from delu-
siens upon these important subjects, they may either serve
the community skillfully as well as faithfully in offices of
- trust, or, remaining in private life, may prudently manage
their own affairs and aid in maintaining sound financial moral-
ity; in short, to establish means for imparting a liberal educa-
tion in all matters concerning Finance and Economy.

2. Qualz'ficatzbizsfor Admissions—Assuming that the special
instruction of this school will occupy three years, which may
be ca ‘led the sub-junior, junior, and senior years, the general
qualifications for admission to the sub—junior class should be
equal to those for the corresponding class in the Towne Sci-
entific School, but different in detail to the extent required by
the difference 1n studies to be thenceforward pursued.

As preparatory to admission to that class, candidates may,
at the discretion of the Trustees of the University, be received
’ into either of the lower classes of the Department of Arts, or
of the Towne Scientific School, upon the same general condi-
tions as shall, from time to time, be established for admission

 

30

to those classes. To guard against the too frequent unsound-
ness of preliminary instruction, which is a vice of our time,
and which affords no proper foundation for a collegiate course,
honest fulfillment must be exacted of those reasonable detailed
conditions for admission which shall, from time to time. be

determined upon and set forth in the official catalogue.

3. Organizations—The school to be conducted by—

(a.) One Principal or Dean, to exercise general control over
the whole school and to give tone to the instruction. He
should, besides taking such part as may be found expedient
in the routine instruction of the various classes, give stated
and formal lectures, constituting a part of the instruction of
the graduating class, and should in each year produce for
publication a treatise upon some topic of current public inter—
est connected with the lines of study pursued in the school,
which treatises should be of such nature as to bring reputa—
tion to the school and to possess permanent value as a series.
No such treatise to be published until approved by a commit—
tee of the Board of Trustees appointed for that purpose, a
certificate of their examination and approval to be printed at
the beginning of the treatise.

([7,) One Professor or Instructor of Accounting or Book-
keeping, to teach the simplest and most practical forms of
book-keeping for housekeepers, for private individuals, for
commercial and banking firms, for manufacturing establish-
ments, and for banks; also, the modes of keeping accounts
by executors, trustees, and assignees, by the officials of towns
and cities, as well as by the several departments of a State or
National Government; also, the routine of business between
a bank and a customer.

(a) One Professor or Instructor upon Money and Currency,
to teach the meaning, history, and functions of money and
currency, showing particularly the necessity of permanent
uniformity or integrity in the coin unit upon which the money
system of a nation is based; how an essential attribute of
money is that it should be hard to get; the nature of, and
reason for, interest, or hire of money, and rents; the advan-

 

 

 

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tages of an adequate precious-metal fund for settling interna-
tional balances as well as for regulating and checking by
redemption the paper money and credits of a modern com—
mercial nation; how such metallic hoards are amassed and
defended; the extent to which paper money may be advan~
tageously employed; the distinctions between bank—notes and
Government-notes; the uses and abuses of credit, both pri-
vate and public; the uses and abuses of bills of exchange,
letters of credit, and promissory notes; the history of bank-
ing, and particularly of Government banks; the advantages
and dangers of banks of issue, banks of deposit, and savings
banks; how the functions of different sorts of banks may be
combined in one, and how any of them may be banks of dis-
count; the functions of clearing-houses, the phenomena and
causes of panics and money crises ; the nature of pawn estab-
lishments and of lotteries; the nature of stocks and bonds,
with the ordinary modes of dealing therein.

(527.) One Professor or Instructor upon Taxation, to teach
the history and practice of modern taxation as distinguished
from the plunder, tribute, or personal service which it for the
most part replaces; the proper objects and rates of taxation
for municipal, State, or National purposes; the public ends
for which money may properly be raised by taxation; the
nature of direct and indirect taxation, of excise, ‘of customs
or import duties, of export duties, of stamps, of income tax;
the modern methods by which taxes are usually levied; the
influences exercised upon the morality and prosperity of a

,community or nation by the various modes and extents of

taxation; the effects upon taxation of wars and of standing
armies; the extent to which corporations should be encour-
aged by the State, and to what extent they should be taxed
as compared with individuals engaged in similar pursuits.

(6.) One Professor or Instructor upon Industry, Commerce,
and Transportation, to teach how industries advanced in ex—
cellence, or decline, and shift from place to place ; how by in-
telligent industry nations or communities thrive; how by su-
perior skill and diligence some nations grow rich and power-
ful, and how by idleness or ill-directed industry others become

"3 ', T‘”;'\“§-"""

 

 

32

rude and poor; how a great nation should be, as far as pos-
sible, self-sufficient, maintaining a proper balance between
agriculture, mining, and manufactures, and supplying its own
wants; how mutual advantage results from the reciprocal
exchange of commodities natural to one land for the diverse
commodities natural to another, but how by craft in com-
merce one nation may take the substance of a rival and
maintain for itself virtual monopoly of the most profitable and
civilizing industries ; how by suitable tarifflegislation a nation
may thwart such designs, may keep its productive industry
active, cheapen the cost of commodities, and oblige foreigners
to sell to it at low prices, while contributing largely toward de-
fraying the expenses of its government; also, the nature and
origin of money wages; the necessity, for modern industry,
of organizing under single leaders and employers great
amounts of capital and great numbers of laborers, and of
maintaining discipline among the latter; the proper division
of the fruits of organized labor between capitalist, leader, and
workman; the nature and prevention of “ strikes;” the im-
portance of educating men to combine their energies for the
accomplishment of any desirable object, and the principles
upon which such combinations should be effected.

(f) One Professor or Instructor upon Elementary and
Mercantile Law, to teach the Constitution of the United
States and of Pennsylvania; the principal features of United
States law concerning industry, commerce, navigation, and
land and mining titles; the principal features of the laws of
Pennsylvania and of other States concerning mercantile af-
fairs, partnerships, and corporations; of so-called interna-
tional laws; of the law of common carriers; the nature and
operation of fire, marine, and life insurance; the principal
features of State law concerning inheritance, conveyance of
land titles, mortgages, and liens; in brief, the history and
present status of commercial legislation, and the directions in
which improvements may be hoped and striven for, particu-
larly as to harmonizing, or unifying, under United States
laws, the diverse legislation of the several States of this na-
tion; the manner of conducting stockholders’ and directors'

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
   

33

 

meetings as well as public meetings, the rules governing par-
liamentary assemblies, the routine and forms of legislative
bodies. \

Elocution should be taught and practiced to the extent of
habituating the students to clear, forcible, and unembarrassed
utterance before an audience of whatever they may have to
say, not in such manner as to promote mere rhetoric or pret-
tiness. Athletic exercise within moderate limits should be
encouraged, as tending to vigor and self—reliance. Latin,
German, and French, and sound general knowledge of mathe-
matics, geography, history, and other branches of an ordinary
good education must be acquired by the students, but these
points are not here dwelt upon, because it is desired to direct
attention to the peculiar features of the school.

This sketch of the instruction to be given in the school is
not be regarded as precisely defining, much less as limiting,
that which shall be there undertaken and carried on, but
rather as indicating its general scope and tendency, the true
intent and meaning being that instruction shall be carefully
provided for and regularly given in this school at least as full
and thorough as is above set forth, and substantially as there
stated. ‘

All the teaching must be clear, sharp, and didactic; not
uncertain nor languid. The students must be taught and
drilled, not lectured to without care whether or not atten—
tion is paid. Any lazy or incompetent student must be dis-
missed.

Though the special curriculum should probably at first be

arranged to occupy three years, as has been suggested above,
7 this term might hereafter be extended, or post—graduate in-
struction introduced, if experience should so dictate.

The dean and professors or instructors are to constitute
the faculty of the school, and are to administer its discipline,
as is done by the dean and faculty of the other departments
of the University, subject to such general rules as shall from
time to time be established for the University by the Board
of Trustees.

 

34

4. General tendency of z'mz‘rz/cz‘z'07z.——This should be such as
to inculcate and impress upon the students :—

(a.) The immorality and practical inexpediency of seeking
to acquire wealth by winning it from another, rather than by
earning it through some sort of service to one’s fellow-men.

M.) The necessity of system and accuracy in accounts, of
thoroughness in whatever is undertaken, and of strict fidelity
in trusts.

<6.) Caution in contracting private debt, directly or by in-
dorsement, and in incurring obligation of any kind; punctu-
ality in payment of debt and in performance of engagements.
Abhorrence of repudiation of debt by communities, and com-
mensurate abhorrence of lavish or inconsiderate incurring of
public debt.

((1) The deep comfort and healthfulness of pecuniary inde-
pendence, whether the scale of affairs be small or great.
The consequent necessity of careful scrutiny of income and
outgo, whether private or public, and of such management as
will cause the first to exceed, even if but slightly, the second.
In national affairs, this applies not only to the public treasury,
but also to the mass of the nation, as shown by the balance
of trade.

(6.) The necessity of rigorously punishing by legal penal-
ties and by social exclusion those persons who commit
frauds, betray trusts, or steal public funds, directly or indi-
rectly. The fatal consequences to a community of any weak
toleration of such offenses must be most distinctly pointed
out and enforced. ,

(f) The fundamental fact that the United States is a nation
composed of populations wedded together for life, with full
power to enforce internal obedience, and not a loose bundle
of incoherent communities living together temporarily with-
out other bond than the humor of the moment.

(g) The necessity for each nation to care for its own, and
to maintain by all suitable means its industrial and financial
independence; no apologetic or merely defensive style of
instruction must be tolerated upon this point, but the right
and duty of national self-protection must be firmly asserted
and demonstrated.

 

i

35

5. T/zeses and P7677’ZZIZI77ZS.—Each student intending to grad—
uate should prepare an original thesis upon some topic ger—
mane to the instruction of the school, such as The great cur—
rents of the world’s exchanges, past and present; The existing
revenue system of Great Britain, France, Mexico, Japan, or

‘ some other modern nation; The revenue system, at some

definite period, of Athens, Rome, Venice, or other ancient or
medimval nation; The relative advantages of mono-metallic
and of bi-metallic money; The Latin monetary union; The
land-credit banks of Germany; Life-insurance, tontines, an—
nuities, and endowments; Reciprocity and commercial treaties;
The nature of French Sociétés generales, anonymes, and en
commandite; The banking system, past and present, of some
specified nation; The advantages and disadvantages of attempts
by employers to provide for the wants of their workmen be-
yond payment of stipulated wages.

In style the theses should be lucid, terse, and sincere,
showing mastery of the subject, with appropriate and logical
arrangement of parts, leading up to definite statement of con-
clusions reached. The chirography must be neat and legible.

For the best thesis, and also for the best general proficiency
in the studies taught in the school, should be given annually
a gold medal weighing about one ounce, to be called respect—
ively “ Founder’s Thesis Medal,” and “ Founder’s Proficiency
Medal,” the same to be awarded by the dean and professors
or instructors in council.

6. Relations 20 the Universitys—This school is intended to
form an integral part of the University of Pennsylvania, its
clean and professors or instructors to be appointed by the
Trustees of that University, its functions to be exercised under
the general oversight of the Provost and Trustees, and its
specific course of instruction to be determined by them; its
diplomas to be countersigned by him; its funds, however, to
be kept absolutely distinct from those of the University, and
to be kept separately invested by the Trustees of the Univer—
sity in the name of this school, to be applied only to its own
uses and not encroached upon in any manner for any debt,
engagement, need, or purpose of the University.

36'

  

Since this school will require no house accommodation!
except for class-rooms, the use of which it is expected the
University will freely grant, none of its funds must be ex—
pended in building or for rent-paying.

7. Fina/Mia! Prospeclzzs.—An endowment capable of yielding
$6000 per annum would seem to be necessary and adequate.
Forty students, if at $150 per annum each, would contribute
a similar sum.

From this revenue of $12,000 per annum the dean might ,
be paid $3000, and each of the five professors or instructors
$1500 per annum, thus consuming $10,500 and leaving $1500
per annum from which to accumulate gradually a Safety Fund
equal to at least one year’s expenses, also to buy books and to
pay for premiums and for publication of treatises. The in-
terest of this Safety Fund might properly be applied to pay
to the treasury of the school for the tuition of those admit-
ted to free scholarship; the number of which would thus be
limited by the amount of such interest, but, besides the other
requisites for admission, sound physical health and high prob—
ability of life must be indispensable conditions for the enjoy—
ment of a free scholarship.

Before so many as forty students are in attendance the
number of instructors may be reduced by running the sub-
jects together. When more than forty attend, the instruction
may be expanded, the salaries advanced, or the Safety Fund
increased, as the Trustees may think most expedient. During
' the first years, before all the classes are under tuition, the
instruction will naturally be condensed, fewer professors or
instructors, perhaps, be required, and the Safety Fund thus
have opportunity for accumulation. It is not expected that
the University shall consume its own means for the support
of this school, further than to provide class-rooms.

The school must exemplify its teachings by always keep-
ing its expenses surely within its income, except that in
emergencies it may consume any part of the principal of the
Safety Fund, the same to be afterwards replaced as soon as
practicable.

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