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COMMENT

The Conference and the League

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

Harvard, naturally, will not be able to adopt all the suggestions made to it. So some men are bound to be disappointed. But they shouldn't be discouraged. The trouble with most criticism of our colleges is that the man who offers it looks at the institution from an entirely individualistic standpoint. If he's a banker he wants it to turn out capable bankers; if a manufacturer he wants industrial experts; if an editor he wants 99 per cent completed reporters. And so on down the long list. All the while it is forgotten that the college is the most gigantic factory on earth. It is doing a job that would stagger any captain of industry that ever lived. With one set of machines it is turning out many and widely different products. Tell a manufacturer of concrete mixers that his present machinery is also expected to produce toy ballons, tooth paste, ladies' shoes, incandescent lights and derby hats and he would throw up his hands in horror. Yet that is exactly the composite demand that critics are making of our colleges. --Boston Transcript.

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