AN IDOL FALLEN

Six years ago, forty-five per cent of the graduates of Harvard College chose business as their vocation. Among the members of the class of 1937, if any reliance can be placed on the returns from the Phillips Brooks House questionnaire, the number will be nearer twelve per cent. The shift away from business so sharply revealed in these figures has been under way for some time but within the last year has apparently gone to unexpected lengths.

It is easy to pass off the phenomenon as a natural consequence of the depression and the scarcity of jobs in the business world. But there is more to it than that. It reflects a totally new attitude toward industry and the economic system. The romance and adventure are gone out of business. There are no more great fortunes to be made. No more Astors, Harrimans, Carnegies, Insulls, Fords. The great days of building a country are over. Business must settle down to the prosaic job of turning out goods.

For a century and a quarter, business has been the one great career for the ambitious American youth. Like the Church in the Middle Ages, like politics in the Revolutionary period of our own history, it offered the greatest opportunities for the achievement of power and fortune. All this is ended now with startling suddenness. Business will bulk less and less large in our national life. The ambitions college graduate will look elsewhere for his life work.