CHAPTER XXVI
Some of the Less Known Efficiency
WHY is it that this seems to be a nation of professionals while ours seems to be a nation of amateurs? I suppose it is, of course, because of the more general spread here of thorough instruction."
"Yes, with us unskilled mediocrity is the popular level because it is within the reach of everyone in a democracy. With the German, high skilled, highly instructed efficiency is the ideal. The failure of America to rise into the expert level is due to our unenforced higher education. We compel our people to have a common school education in order to preserve the Republic. Its voters must know how to read and write and 'figger' or they won't be able to vote intelligently.
"Now if we did in addition what Germany does, we would insist, as far as practicable, on advanced education or instruction in every family. Then we, too, would have a wealth of trained talent. Comparing the riches and population of the two countries there is a much greater proportion of university men and other competently instructed men in Germany. Only relatively few Americans can show diplomas for genuine and severe mental training. Take your own Bucher family as an illustration. All its men will have sheepskins that are worth while to show. With us, out of such a family none would have a sheepskin, or at most one. One of the boys might have gone to a university. And as for the difference in the women—little comparison. Your Frau, as you have told me, has several framed diplomas to her credit.
"You can see what a tremendous advantage all this gives the German people over us. You have hit it very well—we are nearly always amateurs. They are nearly always able to be professionals."
"Is it the same with the laboring classes—the mechanics and all that?"
"The same is true, in its way. A poor American boy thinks he will like to be a machinist. He gets a job as a new hand on a salary. He works at it a couple of years. Then somebody offers him ten dollars a week more to drive a truck, which is a simple, elementary task. He drops his machinist career for this. He gets more money and it requires no tedious training. So he remains an indifferent mechanic. It's the money he's looking for, not the satisfaction of proficiency in a skilled trade.