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HOW ENGLISH MERCHANTS BACK UP PUBLIC ENTERPRISES-THE MANCHESTER BOARD OF TRADE SINGING "GOD SAVE THE KING."

when his earning capacity is apt to be small. The ready obedience, the regard for personal appearance, the physical and moral integrity among average young Germans who have worn the Kaiser's uniform accounts in no small measure for their success wherever they are brought into competition with the young men of other nations. In banking houses of London, New York and Hongkong, as well as in distant trading posts, it has become surprisingly frequent to find the soldierly German in authority over Anglo-Saxons who have been trained in the schoolroom and on the tennis court, but not in the drill hall.

The genius of our American institutions is such that universal conscription would not be tolerated here, nor would one wish the national disposition to be changed. Nevertheless it is a matter for regret that popular interest in maintaining at a high standard our American substitute for compulsory military service is not keener than it now is.

the benefit of military training, to have secured a position in any department of such a public service corporation as the Boston Elevated Railway Company. Such is the nature of our work that the chances of this employee's rapid advancement will necessarily be much greater, other things being equal, than those of the man who has entered the service with uninilitary characteristics. The Elevated Company employs a good-sized army of people about eight thousand in all, some of them in offices at headquarters, some at terminal stations and car barns, many more on elevated and surface cars operating over nearly five hundred miles of track. order that each department of so large and complicated an organization shall run smoothly, a system modeled very largely upon military procedure has been built up. The forces against

In

which we have to contend are to be vanquished only by just such tactics as the skilful general uses in the field. For the success of his movement the Suppose a young man who has had managing head is absolutely dependent

A WORD FOR MILITARY TRAINING

upon having at his disposal a welldrilled, well-dispositioned force. He is obliged to give preference in making appointments and promotions that come under his immediate notice to men who have the military bearing and habits; who are courteous, trustworthy, accurate, accustomed to execute orders instantly, but intelligently, without unnecessary parley. The same thing is true throughout the organization.

The engineers and draughtsmen, graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Harvard, who are taken on a small salary while they are finding themselves, discover that their chance of getting ahead does not depend altogether upon their scholarship, which has to be taken for granted, but in an even greater degree upon their alertness and ability to do the kind of shipshape work of which almost any graduate of West Point or Annapolis is capable, but which too often the graduates of our colleges learn to do only after experiences distressing to themselves and their employers.

What is true of our company I be-
lieve to be true generally as regards
The
public service corporations.

harder they try to live up to a concep-
tion of giving the public the best pos-
sible service, the more invariably the
management discovers that good in-
tentions must be backed by a salutary
system of discipline. You may have
the prettiest scheme in the world for
running a railroad or a steamship
company in the interest of the travel-
ing public, but if your employees are
disloyal, indifferent, untrained to take
responsibility, and to do things on the
can only be
instant the service
wretched. Many American railroad
managers are just now pondering very
seriously on the prevalence of acci-
dents that seemingly ought to be pre-
ventable, and many of them, I fancy,
are coming to the conclusion that the
only permanent remedy is to make the
railroad disciplinary system approxi-
mate more closely that of a regular

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army, and to do all things possible to
inculcate military virtues among the
employees.

The millennium, it should further-
more always be remembered, has not
been reached, and with the United
States playing a part in world politics
no one can accurately forecast the fu-
There are but two ways by
ture.
which this country can be prepared
against any warlike emergency.

One of the ways is by largely in-
creasing the size of our regular army.
There are various objections to doing
this. It is of course enormously ex-
pensive to keep a large force of men
constantly under arms; the experience
of every European nation has demon-
strated that. It is also true that a
standing army contains within itself
something of a menace
tional peace.

war.

to internaProfessional military men, giving their whole time and thought to consideration of the apparatus of war, are liable to become one sided in their views of life. Everything about them twenty-four day suggests erything about hours of the Hence it is no wonder if some of them become abnormally anxious to see a test made of the effectiveness of their own life work. Most of the present regular army of the United States would regret a needless war as much as any of us, but the conditions make it possible for a hothead now and then to try to foment trouble.

The other, and as it seems to me, better plan for safeguarding the country is through increasing the efficiency of the militia. This is not open to the objection of inordinate expense; it entails no heavy burden upon tax payers; it involves no withdrawal of large numbers of individuals from productive pursuits. Men who give merely a portion of their spare time to military drill do not become obsessed with a notion that nothing in the world is so important as to test a new rifle or a new brand of torpedoes on a living foe. They see the problem of the national defense correctly.

Incidentally the more powerful and well drilled the militia, the better the discipline that can be maintained by the police in city and country. That society is subject to occasional outbreaks from among the criminal classes has been very apparent in New England in the last few months. The presence here of these classes is due in part to our defective immigration laws, in part to degeneracy in sections of our native population; the problem of dealing with them is largely a military problem. Nothing is better calculated to overawe the dis

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F

CONFESSIONS OF A
OF A QUONDAM
FRESHMAN

NEW memories of mine, I think, will last longer than that of the mental misery, the utter hopelessness, with which I stared at the first lesson assigned to me in my college course. It is all so long ago that I can speak quite frankly about it now. My preparation, as I soon discovered, was much better than that of the average of my class; but, by that happy art of discouragement inseparable from the practice of pedagogy, I had been led to suppose quite otherwise. This was, at the time, the more easy for me to believe, as the others, without exception, were much older and larger than myself. I was, in fact, very young. The books which I had been ordered to buy had cost more-much more-than the amount allowed for that purpose in the list of "necessary expenses" printed in the college catalogue. I see that they still persist in that joke, such lists appearing in most school announcements. The freshman is popularly supposed to be calmly and irresponsibly indifferent to money matters. am sure that I was greatly

I

troubled, even frightened, by that additional cost. I feared that I had made some mistake, and that I was inviting financial disaster. It was the first time that I had ever handled money for myself.

Seated in my room with my too costly books, I made a schedule for myself of the time that I should be. able to give to each study, and opened my Greek Xenophon's Memorabilia, very simply, Greek, and such as I should easily have handled. But the assignment was prodigiously heavy, and included many unaccustomed requirements. The letters began to swim before my eyes. I made little progress. The allotted time passed, and much of the time set apart for the preparation of the next study. At last I was compelled to lay the book aside with the consciousness that I was unprepared, a consciousness that Cooperated very effectively with the shortness of the remaining time to hinder me in the preparation of the next lesson. Had I but known in advance that it was the practise of that particular teacher of Greek to

frighten his freshman classes by unmerciful assignments at the beginning of the term, I would have suffered less. But that knowledge did not come until much later, when a number of the boys had dropped out, never to take Greek again, and when our assignments began to steadily dwindle until we were doing no more than an ordinary amount there was no excuse whatever for that first spurt. It was done in a bullying spirit, and harmed every member of the class, giving to some a permanent distaste for the classics. To me it brought a loss of physical stamina, two weeks of bitter discouragement, and a deep sense of injustice.

I had the same teacher in my junior year, and at that time he was careful and considerate, ample in explanations, and courteous in manner. It was only to freshmen that he was a boor and a bully.

We were a heterogeneous lot, we freshmen, no doubt very annoying, and yet I apprehend that the freshman is quite essential to the life of the college. Also, whatever may be the admission requirements requirements (and that is something that needs to be talked about), he will always be, not the typical freshman of the popular imagination, given to neckties and socks, and desperately indulging in a glass or two of beer at a very late hour of the night, but the young boy, suddenly transported into an unfamiliar (and none too healthy) intellectual atmosphere, to which he is almost pathetically eager to adapt himself. The freshman will always be a problem, until it is recognized that he should be given the very best teaching that the University can supply. It is relatively unimportant what type of men lead the class-room work of the Junior or Senior years. These fellows have either learned how to get by without study, or have acquired habits of study that call for less from the teacher than these freshmen groups of thirty or

forty mental children. The waste of material in neglecting the freshman is one of the worst features of American college life.

But am I generalising from one unlucky draw of a poor Greek teacher? Not at all. My other teachers, in that freshman year were quite as bad, or worse, each in his own way. This not my revenge-heavens no! As a matter of fact, I believe, that all but one are dead. It was all that long ago.

Our college was very religious. The theological student was favored in every possible way. He was helped financially by such teaching appointments as were available. I had one of these glorious intellectual leaders of our unhappy race as my instructor in mathematics. But him I tricked thoroughly and well. The worm turned, and very successfully. The "unit" went under the foolish designation of "University algebra." The study carried us somewhat beyond the entrance requirements in that branch of the science. There was nothing very occult, however, about our work. But what the text lacked in difficulty and complication was quite made up by the vanity of the instructor. He was a kind-hearted dub-an easy-mark, in fact. The theologs almost always were. he felt his oats as a teacher of “University" algebra, with the emphasis all on the "University." The subject was not difficult for me. We moved with unconscionable slowness. He must have drawn from many a heart the groan of the great Biblical sufferer, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel with words without reason." After some three weeks of this self-glorification of the young theological student, a really brilliant idea, in the way of collegiate cunning, came into my youthful brain. The head of the mathematical department in our college was a fine and scholarly old gentleman, and a clear and subtle mathematician. Oh, that we freshman might have been

But

under his care! He was not a very orderly man, in a business way, and kept but indifferent records, acting as a rule on the spur of the moment in all matters of his department. I conceived the idea of applying to him for permission to take a private examination forthwith and "pass off" the "unit"-pardon the academic slang. A payment of $5.00 gave us the privilege of a private examination. Far be it from me to insinuate that the faculty were not averse to this little side graft. I only know that they did not severely, discourage the habit. I have no idea what sagacious elder put it into my head. Well, I crammed a few days on "University" algebra, and applied to the good old man for a private examination, which he gave me forthwith, and I passed the subject brilliantly. But did I tell my freshman instructor? Never a bit of it. I stayed right on in that class, waiting for a psychological moment to spring it on him when it would get under his skin to the most effect. But he was so easy and good natured that it was difficult. to get him into a proper frame of mind for a real discomfiture. The best that I could do was to go to him, every kind of incorrigible absence having had no effect,-to go to him one day when he was obviously himself quite confused in a problem which he re-assigned so that he might have a chance to look it up before he should have to explain it. I displayed my long cherished certificate from the head of the department, and in reply to his amazed inquiry as to where and when I had done the work, informed him that 1 had studied ahead while we were going so slowly, and thought it best to pass it off at once. I never heard from the matter again, and supposed that my examination was duly allowed, and credited in the registrar's office.

In Latin, my, intellectual guidance was committed to a superannuated professor-one of the founders of

the school to whom gratitude was due, but for whom the state of the treasury did not permit the extravagance of a pension. He keenly felt the insult of being degraded to a teacher of freshmen. He meant to be faithful to his task, but his dreams were nearer to the front than the actual class-room work. We read Livy without comment, and five minutes with a pony was complete preparation for the poorest Latinist among us. No one flunked that "unit." As for myself, I had been SO well grounded in elementary Latin, that I rarely even opened the book before coming to the classroom. Once in a while the old fellow would wake up a little and tell us something from the by no means despicable storehouse of his scholarship. But these were rare intervals. This same old gentleman was also my disciplinarian. To him I "reported" once a week, and from him obtained permission once a week to do very much as I pleased. I was, in a short time, quite a wise little guy of fourteen years of age.

A bully, an ignorant and vain theological student, a valetudinarian -these were my principal freshman teachers. There was one other-my English teacher. That was a side. issue in those days. It was before the great awakening. For English we were herded into a large class room twice a week and lectured at by an elocutionist whose principal duty at the college was to polish off the theological students in the great art of gesture! For us it was jes

ture.

All this, you say could not happen today, and could not have happened then at an Eastern school? I would really like to tell you of some of the things that I know about freshman teaching at a certain school separated by not so very dissociable a body of water from Boston. I could tell some hair raisers! As to the impossibility of its having happened in an Eastern college at that

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