early. Then, too, the child of educated and well-to-do parents has more opportunity offered him to enter lucrative positions. Other influences also doubtless modify the result; but after due allowance for all these factors is made there remains still a large margin of superior efficiency on the part of the educated that one must credit to education or do violence to common sense in interpretation of the undisputed facts. The college-bred man in business .and in politics.-Dr. Charles Thwing made a similar study of the 15,142 eminent men mentioned in Appleton's Encyclopedia of American Biography to find the facts especially with regard to the relation between college training and success in political life and in amassing wealth.1 Of the 100 wealthiest men in the United States he found that in proportion to the total number in America possessing a college education there were 277 times as many college-bred men who had amassed great wealth as there were of noncollege-bred men. In proportion to their numbers in the population, the college men have become Members of the National House of Representatives 352 times as often as the noncollege-bred men; Members of the Senate 530 times as often; President 1,392 times as often; Justices of the Supreme Court 2,027 times as often. Of the more than 10,000 prominent and successful men in all lines mentioned who were still living, 58 per cent were college graduates and 75 per cent had had some college training. On the whole, the college-bred man had attained enough eminence to be mentioned in such a cyclopedia 870 times as often in proportion to his number as the noncollege-bred man. 2 In 1898 Prof. J. C. Jones, of the University of Missouri, made a special study of the college graduate's success in the field of national politics. This study is doubly pertinent to this subject, for not only do Congressmen, Cabinet officers, Supreme Court judges, and Presidents receive larger salaries than do average citizens, but, since they make, interpret, and enforce the laws which govern customs, banking, transportation, corporations, policing, and international relations, they exert a powerful and wide-spread influence upon national industry and wealth. Prof. Jones made his study also through an examination of Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, but considered only those who had remained in college long enough to graduate instead of including, as President Thwing had done, all who attended college. Prof. Jones found that over five thousand of the fifteen thousand men mentioned in Appleton's were college graduates. He also investigated the schooling of the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Congresses and found that 36 per cent of the Representatives and over 36 per cent of the Senators were college graduates. 1 Amer. Ed. Rev., November, 1908. 2" Does College Education pay?" by J. C. Jones, Forum: 26, No. 354-363; Nov., 1898. Among those who have been elected to the position of Speaker of the House, 47 per cent have been graduates. Furthermore, the proportion is increasing. From 1789 to 1841 the percentage of Speakers who were graduates was 35, whereas from 1841 to 1898 it was 55. Of the Presidents, 55 per cent had likewise been graduates, this percentage also having increased during the preceding 75 years from 50 to 57. Fifty-four per cent of the Vice Presidents, 62 per cent of the Secretaries of State, 50 per cent of the Secretaries of the Treasury, 67 per cent of the Attorneys General, 69 per cent of the Justices of the Supreme Court (87 per cent during the preceding 50 years) were college graduates. As only about 1 per cent of the population ever graduate from college, it is plain that the graduates attain these remunerative and important positions from 36 to 87 times as often as the nongraduates, and that this ratio is still increasing. The education of the men who framed the Constitution.-As no other one political event has had more to do with national peace and stability, and hence with industrial possibilities, than the framing and adoption of the Constitution, especial significance is attached to the results of Prof. Jones's study of the part which the 1 per cent of college graduates in the country played in this important matter. He found that the author of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, was a college graduate; its ablest defender, John Adams, was a college graduate; 23 of the 54 who composed the convention were college graduates, and 27 were college-bred men; 2 of the 3 who brought about the convention-Madison and Hamilton-were college graduates, while the third-Monroe-was a college man; the authors of three of the four plans presented-Madison, Hamilton, and Patterson-were college graduates; the plan finally adopted was that of a college graduate; and after its final adoption the three men who led in explaining it, defending it, and securing its adoption by the States were all college graduates-Madison, Jay, and Hamilton. In fact, the 1 per cent of college graduates in America can almost be said to have called the convention, written the Constitution, and secured its adoption and ratification. Education and the development of a Western State.-Following quite a different method, Mr. H. E. Kratz made an investigation of the part being played by college-bred men in the recent development of one of the Western States. Mr. Kratz asked men in 15 leading South Dakota cities to name the five leading men in their cities in seven different lines, viz, law, medicine, teaching, the ministry, banking, journalism, merchandising, and manufacturing. Of the 533 men whose names were sent in as leaders in these cities in the several lines, 293, or 50 per cent, proved to have had as much as two years of college training.1 1" Does College Education Pay?" by H. E. Kratz, in Educ. Rev.; 27, 298-99; Mar., 1899. The figures are from 'Does College Education Pay?" by J. C. Jones in the Forum, 26, pages 354-363. The Presidents include all to 1914. The congressional figures are for the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Congresses. Later Congresses would probably show a larger proportion of college men, as they are more prominent now than in former years in public life. The other figures are to date of the article. FINANCIAL RETURN OF EDUCATION TO THE INDIVIDUAL. Individual salary and value to society.-The financial returns which different grades of education make to the individual have been studied recently by two different methods. In some of the studies the investigators went into the factories and other enterprises and found out the amount of schooling that the successful employees in the several grades of work had had. In others they followed out into life the graduates of certain schools and colleges to see what kinds of positions they proved competent to fill and what salaries they received from year to year. The salary paid to an individual because of certain educational qualifications possessed by him represents not only the financial value of that education to him, but also in a general way represents the financial value which the community places upon the service made possible by that education. Some of the results are as follows: Dodge's study. One of the earliest of these studies was made by Mr. James M. Dodge, one of the prominent manufacturers of America and former president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Mr. Dodge calculated the financial value of different grades of education by comparing the earning capacities of common laborers, shop-apprentice trained men, trade-school graduates, and technical-school graduates who were employed in the several large factories under his observation. He capitalized at 5 per cent the average annual earnings of 50 weeks of work of a member of each of these classes, and took this sum as the potential value of each when making his comparisons. He concludes: A chart thus obtained shows that the laborer starts with $3 a week when he is 16, and rises to $10.20 by the time he is 21, but he rises no higher. His potential value at that wage is $10,200. The apprentice or shop-trained worker starts with the same wages as the laborer at 16, but rises more rapidly, and is earning by the time he is 24 years old $15.80. His potential value at that time is $15,800, but he makes no further rise. The trade-school graduate, starting at the same point, rises still more rapidly, and is earning when he is 25 years of age $22 per week, his potential value at this point being $22,000. From this point his wages rise less rapidly, reaching possibly $25 per week at the age of 32, and representing a potential value of $25,000. The graduate of the technical school starts at the same point of a weekly salary of $3, and is earning $4 when he enters college at 18. Upon graduating from college at the age of 22 he can draw a salary of $13 per week. He has then already passed the laborer, but is still a little below the shop-trained apprentice. He passes the latter, however, during his first year of employment, but is still below the tradeschool graduate, whom he does not overtake until his twenty-fifth year. From this point on he rapidly leaves behind the other three workers, and at the age of 32 is drawing $43 a week, his potential value being $43,000. Thus, four years' training at a technical school makes a man, by the time he is 32, four 1" The Money Value of Technical Training," J. M. Dodge, in the Transactions of Amer. Soc. of Mechan. Engineers, vol. 25. |