On the Firing Line in Education

by Adoniram Judson Ladd

All this is true because there is no other audience that can be gathered together whose future work can begin to compare, in far-reaching consequences, in possibilities for usefulness, with that of such an audience. There is no other company of people of equal number within whose keeping there is more of potential weal or woe for coming generations. And these things are true because university students of to-day are the world's leaders of to-morrow.

This is not so trite a saying as the one that declares that the boys and girls of one generation are to be the men and women of the next, but it is just as true and just as significant. Indeed, I suppose it can not be called a trite saying in the true sense of the term. It has not been uttered so many times, is not now being used so commonly, as to indicate its universal acceptance. It is not so obviously true as to preclude challenge and argument. It is my purpose very briefly to examine the statement and from the conclusion reached connect the same with the thought of a beautiful proverb that has come down to us thru a long lapse of years—Noblesse Oblige—our privileges compel us.

So far as I know there is no way of seeing the future save thru a study of the facts of the past and the indications of the present. The university students of a generation ago—where are they to-day? Positions of leadership to-day—filled by whom?

Exhaustive and thoroly satisfactory statistics are not at hand, but such as we have speak eloquently in favor of the statement in question. Practically our only reliable statistics touching the matter are gathered from our biographical cyclopedias. A few years ago a very interesting study was made of the data found in the current issue of Who's Who in America. This book, you know, is made up of short biographies of such persons living at the time in the United States as have become real factors in the progress and achievement of the age, in other words, of men recognized as leaders in thought and action in the educational, political, military, and business realms.

Of the whole number mentioned in the issue studied educational data were given of 11,019. Of that number 1,111 had enjoyed only elementary school advantages; 1,966 had added to these only the advantages of secondary education, but 7,942 had come from the colleges and universities. In other words, more than 72% of these leaders are shown to have received their final preparations for leadership within college walls.

Figures as interesting have been gathered thru a use of Appleton's Cyclopedia of Biography. A few years ago careful study was made of an edition just then out and it was found that of the college graduates of America one out of every forty had gained sufficient distinction to merit recognition in that cyclopedia, whereas only one out of 10,000 non-graduates, the public at large, had received such distinction. In other words, the college graduate had 250 chances to the other man's one for achieving leadership.

Moreover, the higher institutions of learning have furnished every one of the Chief Justices of our Supreme Court, 75% of our Presidents, 70% of the membership of our two highest courts, and more than 50% of all our Congressmen. The last state-men is very significant when one recalls our method of selecting Congressmen—our political machinery and its devious modes of working. I have no authentic data of other fields, but all that one needs to do to satisfy himself practically as to other details is to call to his service his own knowledge of the general situation. In the communities with which you are acquainted, among the people whom you know either personally or by reputation, what are the facts? Who are the leaders? Where college people are found, are they leaders or followers?

There are exceptions, of course. There come to you at once the names of men, a few of them, who, thru the exercise of their own inherent strength, unaided by college or university, have risen to deserved greatness. I have only to mention the names of our immortal Lincoln, or England's present David Lloyd George, in the field of statesmanship, or of Lord Strathcona or Sir William Van Horne, or James J. Hill, railroad kings and empire builders, in the business world, or of Luther Burbank, in the realm of science, to make the fact of exceptions perfectly clear. But they are exceptions—that's the point—and exceptions merely prove the rule.

And even as to the few it is scarcely necessary to say that their positions, tho of leadership, are, generally speaking, subordinate ones, they themselves even while leading in certain limited fields, are following the leadership of others in broader fields which include their own—and the ones followed are they of the broader training. This is especially true of men who have achieved success in the business world or in the political field. Their success, their leadership, is often more seeming than real,—depending as it does upon their advisers—broadly educated men. Take Lord Strathcona, for example, or Mr. Hill, as typical illustrations; with all their far-sightedness and their recognized ability, what could they have done, even in their own field of activity, had it not been for the trained physicist, the skilled chemist, and the engineer—products of the university—who gave them their rails, built their bridges, designed their engines, and in many ways made it possible for them to realize their dreams? They would have been powerless. Tho leaders, they followed, and their kind always will follow, the university student. They may hire this student and pay him his wage, but they are still indebted to him for leading them onward and upward.

From a hasty survey, therefore, which, however, I am satisfied would yield the same fruitage no matter to what extent pushed, our statement seems to be justified.