Farmers Family Journal from Topeka, Kansas • 6

July 1S05 THE FARMERS FAMILY JOURNAL Page TfTi 1L i Mem tlie MiSi-Scliool Graduate Go Forward to College Ctasmalaiive Argumerat for Higpier Education the Professor of Sociology iia ashburn College, To poll wage-earners! In one Boston college over one-third of all its students some from' wage-earning homes. President Woodrow Wilson, of Princeton College, has just said that he finds every year a larger demand on the part of employers in large industrial and commercial lines for more highly educated men men who are disciplined enough to do not merely a routine work but to become organizers, with a wide grasp of relations, interactions, and of facts and forces that Do M. FisSl eve State of Kansas Executive Dept. E. W.

Hoch, Governor. Topeka, June 20, 1905. Perhaps several thousand ypung people 'have graduated this spring from the High Schools of Kansas. To them 1 send this message: Go on and master a college course, no matter how great the sacrifice necessary to do it. In all realms of human endeavor culture is to be King, in the coming years.

And, next to character, the most valuable thing is, and is to be, a college education. E. W. HOCH. must be correlated to achieve success.

How efficient would be the feeble grasp of untrained ignorance amidst such a labyrinth of complicated forces and conditions? Not a Guess, But a Demonstration. Does' a higher education pay young men or women when they themselves are the "capital," and their wages the "interest?" What influence has. liberal learning, or a technical education on earning-power or increase of capital? Let the carefully worked-out statistics of the president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Mr. James M. Dodge, be our answer to these questions.

Recall this, however, that what he submits as evidence is not assumption but the summary of an immense number of actual cases. This brilliant demonstration, as reinforced to the eye by. the accompanying days have given the average youth enough more efficiency to earn in 40 years $22,000 more income. How much lacks this of making every school day worth $10? A father who keeps an immature' boy out of school to earn $1 a day when he ought to be in school robs that boy $9 each day in earning power for life. None will deny that it is a praiseworthy ambition, on the part of youth to become self-supporting, but if thirty-six months spent in a college will double, quadruple or still more multiply the returns from that investment of time it is not evasive parasitism but commendable foresight to accept family assistance a little longer.

The Wage-earner and College Education. Once, the luxury of a college education was supposed to.be limited to the sons of professional men, to the rich, and to the more energetic boys from off the farms. The world moves, and the wage-earners have begun to learn that the way up for their sons is not merely by an apprenticeship but thro the scantier plane of acquisition, all life's narrower drama must be played. It is now or never with ninety per cent of all who read these words. If the young people of this State who are.

likely to decide this question adversely could only anticipate twenty years of experience there would be no question as to how the matter would be settled. A thousand freshmen would be added this September to the best colleges, of Kansas. It is only because young people don't know what tools they need for the stern battle of life that there are but 2,000 true college students in Kansas and not 5,000. Young people of Kansas, are you interested enough in your future to take a moment to study this situation in the light of other people's experience and carefully prepared statistics? The following pages are sincere attempt to set clearly before you the evidence that you cannot afford (even on a dollars-and-cents basis) to stop your school life where you now are. We approach the problem from several sides: note the cumulative weight of evidence.

The eight short articles which appear below have seemed to the Farmers Family Journal to be such an admirable summary of the great argument for a fuller culture for youth that we are glad to reprint them from the pages of the current issue of the Campus and Field. With the exception of the two concluding items, the argument is perfectly general, and becomes a noble plea in behalf of every college or university as truly as for the school that originally put it forth, and as such is worthy of the most careful reading and reflection. The part especially referring to Washburn College is printed and marked as advertising matter. The that accompany these articles are also from the Washburn Campus and Field, but will be welcomed by all as splendid evidences of the educational advance of our great Middle West-EbrroR. grapnic diagram ougnt to seme me further career of a vast number who study this problem: -Let us start with the average boy of p- i i View of the College Avenue approach to the Campus taken from the corner of Euclid and College Avenues, looking southeast; MacVicar Chapel, Rice Hall, and a part of the College Library.

This Summer Vacation a Crisis. Do you the fifteen hundred high-school graduates of Kansas in 1905, to whom these words are especially addressed do you realize that the next swiftly-passing three months are among the most critical days of your lives? For in these thoughtful or careless days you will decide the momentous questign whether your recent graduation is to shut the school-door forever to you or whether it is to open the larger door of some worthy college into which you. may step without a break in time, and from which you will step into a largeness of life service which, but for those added college years, you can never have. If your inexperience hides from you the sobering fact that you are likely to look back in later years to the decision of these swift-winged weeks with more gratitude or bitterer regret than to any -other period of time, that fact is not hidden from your older and most solicitous friends. It almost might be said that they are holding their breaths in suspense awaiting your decision, which is fate.

They (if not you) are asking concerning you: "Will he see his chance and take it? or will he allow himself to be cheated out of his right to get his full intellectual growth by the lure of immediate returns?" Indeed, this is the live question: 'Will the youth of Kansas, open-eyed to the consequences, elect to take a low place in the world when God has called them to a high one?" If the gravity of this decision seems overdrawn to you it does not seem so to those of us who are daily compelled to listen to the late, but unavailing lament of hundreds, in all walks of life, who once stood just where you now stand, and also (alas!) chose wrong! This is their bitter regret: "Only thirty-six little months, out of a lifetime would have given me a college course: I thought I couldn't afford the time and effort: it was the costliest blunder I ever made: if I could only go back and decide lt'over!" But just there i3 where fate shuts up on us: it is "now or never." And with you, high-school graduates, it is practically Just now or never, for all college men know that the high-school graduate who interrupts his educational work to "stop out a few years" to dip into business, "to get a little experience," as an'actyal fact rarely ever resumes the disciplinary process. The taste for earning has supplanted the 16, and assume that he is worth to himself in earning power $3,000: this is his potential capital himself viewed only as an economic proposition. At this point we will also assume that he is as yet neither skilled in any craft, nor shop-trained, nor has he had the benefit of any trade-school, or even been in any school of technology, or a college. Hence, four possibilities lie before, him. 1.

To remain an unskilled laborer. 2. To get a shop-training. 3. To go to a trade school.

4. To acquire a liberal education. Start four boys, then, on the four lines and let ua see what influence training of an unequal sort actually has as measured by money-returns. (See diagram.) I. The unskilled laborer.

On the av-erage, he i3 earning $4 a week at the end of his 16th year, $5 a week a year later, and this advance continues with regularity to his 22d year, when he i3 worth as "capital," In himself, $10,000 and he has a wage-earning capacity of $11.20 a week. But here he reaches the economic horizon of unskilled labor, which will not significantly change however many years he adds. II. Tho shop-trained wor'ier. Kven XM -Tr j--'- a liberal education.

Here is some fresh evidence on this point that it will pay the citizens of Kansas to thoughtfully weigh. Hon. Chas. F. Pidgin, Chief of the Labor Bureau of Massachusetts, has just tabulited in the March Labor Bulletin of that State the replies of 10,819 students now in Massachusetts colleges as to the occupation of their fathers.

From these it is manifest that the business men of today have found out the fact that a Philistine grind in the counting-room is not the only nor the best training to fit their sons for a subsequent business So it comes about that over 41 per cent of the under-graduates of all Massachusetts colleges come from the homes of business men. Even the wage-earners of Massachusetts have greatly outrun the farmers, and are fast catching up with the professional classes. Here are the suggestive figures. Of 10,819 students, 41.66 per cent (or are the children of business men; 19.36 per cent (or 2,095) are children of ministers, physicians or other professional men; 6.84 per cent (or 740) are from the farm; but a full 16.67 per cent (or 1,802) are from Ijottjci where the fathers arc Ignorance Is Too Costly, You Can't Afford It. How few people realize the actual cash value of a school day in added earning-power! Thousands of parents would hesitate to rob their children (as they are daily robbing them), if they had ever thought out this vital matter as clearly as has the State Superintendent of Public Instruction of Pennsylvania, Dr.

N. C. Shaeffer, who contributes this convincing argument for completer education. We find the value of a boy's time at school by subtracting the earnings of a life of uneducated labor from the income of a man of education. If an uneducated man earn $1.50 a day for 300 days in every year for 40 years he does well.

That equals $18,000. A thousand dollars a year would be a low estimate of the average earning-power of college-bred- men. That means $40,000 for 40 years of such labor, or $22,000 advantage in earning-power from the time spent in school. The. average school life of Massachusetts children is seven years.

Add a full college course to that average, i. estimate the school-life at 11 years, with 200 days ia each school-year, i. 2,200 school days. Cut theo 2,200 retool 1 on fc'T-nr for.