COLLEGE MEN AND INDUSTRY

The position of college graduates in the community has changed greatly from the days when colleges were primarily established to prepare students for the ministry. Each one of the professions in turn has become a field for college-trained men, and in every field so opened the college man has gained pre-eminence or monopoly. But among business men--men engaged in manufacture, transportation, commerce, mining and agriculture--college training down to the present has been the exception rather than the rule. In spite of the increasing volume of graduates who have made business their vocation, leadership in business has not yet definitely passed to the educated man.

For the present and future, however, there is a greater and more urgent need in industry for men with a sound general education. It cannot be denied that the further advance of the world of art and science is being hampered by the growing deficiency in the supply of our more elementary needs. The shortage of food, fuel, and transportation which came to a head this winter has been developing for years. Upon an 1880 system of agriculture and a 1900 system of transportation we have been trying to found a 1918 civilization. Even the growth of our manufacturing system has not kept pace with our demand for basic products. For a number of years the increasing demands of an increasing population have been met by a draft on our reserve supplies and resort to temporary and makeshift means of raising production. But at last we are brought face to face with the choice of accepting a permanent scaling down of the standard of living as the present system of production becomes more and more out-of-date, or of affecting a radical shaking up of the system to cause it to produce a sufficiency for all our wants.

We do not believe that America and the world in general will accept the first alternative. But if we are to grasp the second alternative it must be at the cost of as much intelligent energy as is now applied to the higher but less vital activities of our civilization. While the college man cannot compete with the technically-trained man in the technical processes of production, he probably has a higher place in their ultimate direction. The man with the broad understanding of industry and human polity, not the specialist in one productive process, will devise the sweeping industrial reforms we need.