USES OF CHARACTER ANALYSIS
The old-time farmer planted his potatoes "in the dark of the moon." He probably took good care not to plant them on Friday, never planted a field of thirteen rows, and would have been horrified at putting them into the ground on the same day when he has spilled salt or broken a mirror. By taking all of this superstitious care to insure a good crop, he probably counted himself lucky if he got 100 bushels to the acre. Eugene Grubb, out in Wyoming, by throwing superstition to the four winds and depending, instead, upon exact scientific knowledge, leaves luck out of the question and knows that he will net 1,000 bushels to the acre.
One thousand years ago or more, our educational methods stiffened and set in the rigid moulds of tradition. For nine hundred years civilization and progress stood still. Then here and there men began to break the moulds with hammers of scientific knowledge. Education, instead of blindly following traditional forms, began to shape itself more and more to exact knowledge of the child nature and its needs—very slowly, cautiously and tentatively at first, but, as knowledge grew, with more and more boldness and freedom. This is one of the reasons why the last one hundred years has seen greater progress toward our dominion over the earth than all of the thousand years before it.
For more than four thousand years—perhaps more than five thousand—men have been constructing buildings with bricks. Brick-laying was a trade, a skilled occupation, almost a profession, but its methods were based upon traditions handed down from father to son, from journeyman to apprentice, unbroken throughout that entire four-thousand-year period.
Then a bricklayer and his wife defied the heavens to fall, threw aside traditions and began to apply exact knowledge
to brick-laying. As a result, they learned how to lay bricks three times as rapidly as the best workman had ever been able to before—and with less fatigue.
SCIENCE TAKES THE PLACE OF GUESSWORK
Fifty years ago, the merchant and the manufacturer guessed at their costs and fixed their prices with shrewd estimates as to their probable profits. They also guessed as to which departments of their business paid the most profit, how much and what kind of material they should buy, where the best markets were to be found, what would be the best location for their stores and factories, and many other important factors of profitable enterprise. Some of these old worthies were good guessers. They built up fairly large business institutions and made some very comfortable fortunes.
The business men of to-day—who are, indeed, of to-day and not a relic of yesterday and the day before yesterday—have an exact and detailed knowledge of their costs, determine prices scientifically, know definitely where are the best markets and what are the best locations for their factories, forecast with a reasonable degree of accuracy their need for materials, determine in a laboratory just which materials will best supply their needs, and in many other ways walk upon solid highways of exact information rather than upon the quaking bog of guesswork. Partly because of this, they have built up a multitude of institutions, each of them far larger than the largest of the olden days and have made fortunes which make the big accumulations of other days seem like mere pocket money. In making these fortunes for themselves, they have enabled millions not only to enjoy far larger incomes than people of their class and situation ever received before, but to enjoy conveniences and luxuries beyond even the dreams of the rich men and kings of olden days.
RANDOM METHODS YIELD TO SCIENTIFIC