Teaching Monopolizes the Increase.
Then comes the surprising fact that a single profession has monopolized the entire increase. The profession of teaching, which has twelve per cent in the ten classes first named, has increased to no less than twenty-three per cent in the ten classes down to the year before last.
The striking fact respecting college graduates is that eleven per cent fewer of them go into law, medicine, and divinity, and this entire eleven per cent have gone into teaching.
What is the explanation? I answer, first, the teaching profession has increased in dignity and reputation, and in no part of the world more than in the region where New York University finds its students.
A second reason is that philanthropic spirits find in teaching to-day, compared with other professions, larger scope than ever before. Law is less altruistic as a profession and more commercial than a generation ago. Theology is waiting for new statements of what to teach and how to teach. Therefore, men who are inclined to teach turn to the common school, the high school, and the college to find scope for influencing others for good.
As further explanation of the vast increase in the number of the teachers required for the higher positions, I can give exact figures for only the year 1905, compared with the year 1900. In 1900 there were enrolled in the high schools of New York City 11,706 students; last year there were enrolled 20,770 students; in other words, they have almost doubled in the space of five years.
Can sordid covetousness long be charged against a people whose youth increasingly seek entrance into "the poorest-paid profession"?