THIS SACRED PLOT

The conclusions reached by the conference of New England colleges and New England industries, described elsewhere in this paper, do not indicate any great change in the commercial growth of the country. Instead of being alarmed at the fact that "almost half of the New England graduates" seek employment elsewhere, they should actually marvel at the fact that this small section of the United States manages to keep within its borders such an unduly large proportion of the young men educated in its colleges.

It is idle to speculate, as the men of the conference did, as to the causes of what they like to call as "unwarranted exodus" on the part of college graduates in search of jobs. This movement is not caused by "wanderlust," "higher pay elsewhere," "the traditional conservatism of New England," or other irrelevant facts. The crux of the situation is that no matter how large a place New England naturally occupies in our sentiments and affections, it is only a very small part of the industrial and intellectual life of the country.

If New England leaders make efforts to keep more than the present proportion of college graduates in this region they will be doing a distinct disservice to the country at large. The places for Harvard men, for instance, are in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Milwaukee, and wherever else they originally come from, to say nothing of New York and Washington where there is more need for their talents than in Boston and Providence. The fact that more than half of the graduates of New England colleges seek employment here shows an inertia and lack of originality which the gifted New England educational system should certainly have overcome.