CHAPTER XV.

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION IN EUROPE, PARTICULARLY IN AUSTRIA, FRANCE, AND GERMANY."

The American Bankers' Association has led the way in one of the most important educational departures of this century. It is nothing less than a systematic effort to arouse public attention to the importance of providing for a more extensive and more thorough professional education of our business classes.

As the first step in this work, the association appointed a committee to investigate what was being done in a systematic way in the United States toward providing for this great public need of a special education for mercantile and business life. With a full recognition of the admirable work which many of our so-called "commercial colleges" are doing, and with the completest acknowledgment that their founders and promoters were the first to see the need of special commercial education and were doing valuable work in supplying it so far as they could, the committee felt that there was a field of education which these institutions were not at all cultivating, and yet which needed special attention. In canvassing the educational institutions of the country, it soon appeared that the Wharton School of Finance and Economy of the University of Pennsylvania was the only institution of higher rank which was busying itself seriously with this educational problem. The committee, therefore, requested the author of this report to give the association an account of the work, aims, and methods of the Wharton School. In an address delivered before that body at Saratoga, in September, 1890, the general situation of business education was discussed and an exposition of the work of the Wharton School was given. So well pleased was the association with the plan there outlined and the report of the work already accom plished that it adopted resolutions recommending to the colleges and universities in the United States the establishment of similar departments as constituent parts of their organization.

This action attracted much attention and the scheme received the approval of leading college and university authorities, as well as business men.3

Pursuing the same line of work, the association resolved to investigate what was being done in the field of secondary education corresponding to the work of the Wharton School of Finance and Economy in higher education. As it was generally known that the various countries of western Europe had done much work along this line, the author of the present report was invited to visit the leading centers of European education and examine their institutions for commercial education and report upon this subject. In pursuance of this invitation, he visited England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Belgium, and the following report incorporates some of the results of his observation and study of this topic. The essence of the report has already been submitted to the association, at its last meeting, in an address delivered in San Francisco September 7, 1892.+

The object in preparing the various detailed reports which constitute this work was to put the available information relating to these schools, their history, origin, development, curricula, etc., into such a form that any member of this association, or of any similar body, any teacher in the United States, any superintendent of schools, any school board, or any other body or individual who might become interested in this subject and who might wish to take the initiative in organizing such schools among us would find the assistance he needs in taking the first steps toward such an end.

1 A report made in 1893 to the American Bankers' Association, through its committee on schools of finance and economy, by Edmund J. James, Ph. D., then professor in the Wharton School of Finance and Economy, University of Pennsylvania, now professor and director of University Extension Division, University of Chicago.

2 Education of Business Men. An address before the American Bankers' Association at Saratoga, September 3, 1890.

See Education of Business Men, I and II. American Bankers' Association, New York, 1892. 4 Education of Business Men, III. A plea for the establishment of commercial high schools. American Bankers' Association, New York, 1893. Pages 17.

The object of this report, then, has not been to present a complete account of the system of commercial education in Europe, nor complete statistical tables as to number of schools, pupils, teachers, etc., but rather to select a few typical institutions and describe them so fully that anyone who chose to do so, by making allowance for the difference in conditions, could reproduce their counterparts here.

The special accounts contain many references to the burning questions of educational policy which will prove of interest to the educational specialist.

It is my opinion that the educational system of the United States would be enormously improved by the introduction of such schools as are described in this report into our scheme of public instruction, and if the American Bankers' Association shall have contributed, even to a small extent, to this great result it will have deserved the thanks of every American citizen.

I have set forth in the two addresses delivered before the association, in considerable detail, the reasons for believing that a system of institutions of secondary and higher rank should be organized with a special view of offering facilities for a professional education along business and commercial lines. The schools of secondary rank would be commercial high schools, running parallel with our present literary high schools on the one hand and manual-training high schools on the other. The schools of higher rank should be of college and university grade, and should be organized in connection with our existing colleges and universities.

The commercial high schools could be established by private parties, either individuals or corporations, much as our academies and seminaries are organized and managed now. Some of the most successful of these schools have been thus established in Europe, notably in Paris, Vienna, and Turin. Or they might be established by boards of trade, chambers of commerce, trades leagues, or other similar bodies. This also has been a familiar form of organization and support in Europe. Indeed, it may be said that some of the most successful of the European schools have been managed on this plan: The School of Higher Commercial Studies at Paris, the Academy at Prague, and the Institute at Leipsic.

Or they might be established by the community as integral parts of the publicschool system. A start has been made along this line at Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and San Francisco, in this country; but these schools have not been developed as they ought to be. It is undoubtedly true that in the long run we shall have to rely upon this third form to accomplish the most general and widespread results; but there is also just as little doubt that more rapid progress might be made if some private individual or corporation would take up the matter and give us a commercial high school which could serve as a model for our city boards, for the history of education in this country shows conclusively that the spirit of routine and formalism which nearly invariably prevails in any public-school system is unfavorable to rapid and thoroughgoing improvement, inasmuch as it is unfavorable to experimentation, and experimentation is necessary to progress.

The systematic and steady development of commercial instruction lies in the interest of our business world, in the interest of the community in general, and in the interest of our public system of education. There is at present little opportunity for a youth desiring to enter business life to get any systematic assistance in preparing himself for his future career, if he desires or expects to engage in anything but clerical work. The old system of training young men in the great business houses has almost completely disappeared, even in those places in our country where it may have existed; while it can hardly be said ever to have existed at all in most places in this country. Even in the old countries-England, France, and Germany it has broken down, like the apprenticeship system in the trades, and at present the only possible substitute for it seems to be the properly organized commercial school.

It may be said that the best preparation is a good general education of the literary high school and college. This has always been the answer to every proposition to organize professional or technical education. It is essentially the mediaval idea of education, and it dies only very slowly and very hard in the face of modern progress. The best practical answer to it is the fact that practical men as a class will have nothing to do with it. Opportunities for such education have been open to the business classes for three centuries, and they have availed themselves of them only to a very limited extent either in Europe or America; while whenever a special education of high rank has been open to them they have shown their appreciation of it by patronizing the institutions which offered it.

The fact seems to be that in every line of educational life the number of people who will take a very extensive course of study of a purely liberal character is very small indeed, while the number of those who will take an extensive special or professional education is large and continually growing. Indeed, if you were to cut out of our ent so-called liberal courses those persons to whom the study of Latin, Greek, history, mathematics, science, etc., is not only a liberal but also a technical pursuit

in the sense of preparing them directly for their future work, viz, teachers, preachers, lawyers, physicians, the number left in these courses would be astonishingly

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION IN EUROPE.

small.

We can conquer the uneducated and half educated people of this country for secondary and higher education only by offering them courses of study which, while they are of a strictly educational character in the best sense of the word, shall also have some bearing on their future every day life, shall have some direct relation to the work they are called upon to do in the world.

The first aim of an educational system should undoubtedly be to offer general or liberal courses of all grades, and of the very best possible character, and get as many people to pursue these courses as possible, no matter what their future careers. It should, then, go further and offer to those youth who have gone as far as they will in these liberal courses an opportunity to pursue their education still further along lines relating to their future calling-an education which, if it is based on science and be properly organized, can not but be liberalizing, no matter if it be technical in the ordinary sense of the term. Nobody can doubt that the training of a properly organized and managed law school is not merely technical or professional in nature, but also highly liberalizing, particularly as compared with the training of an ordinary In the same way the law office. Nor will anyone deny that the work of a good manual training or trade high school may be made educational in a very high sense. curriculum of a commercial high school may be eminently liberalizing in all its tendencies, at the same time that it trains a youth so that he may be more useful in a business house.

Such a high school may be of great advantage to the youth whose father is able to set him up in business, or by his business connections may be able to start him far up the hill that leads to business success, for it will be able to impart to him much information which he would otherwise obtain in a scrappy way and often not at all until the opportunity to use it had passed him by; and at any rate it would prepare him to acquire quickly the details of his business and help him to coordinate his knowledge so as to make it of the greatest use to him. It would, moreover, quicken his interest in all that relates to business, and help make his business life a source of pleasure as well as profit to him.

If such a training would help the youth of fortune and good business connections, it would be of immensely greater aid to the youth who must start at the bottom and has only himself and his own efforts to rely upon. It would enable him to acquire in a much shorter time the details of any business he chooses to take up; it would open his eyes to business chances; give him a comprehensive view of the business world, and help put him in a position to profit by whatever juncture turned up.

It is said that 95 per cent of those who enter business fail at some time in their career, and certainly any business man will confirm the statement that there are far moro failures than successes in the business world. These failures come, of course, from many circumstances; but there is little doubt that many of them spring from causes which the proper sort of preliminary training may remove; and if sound business education would serve to turn only 10 per cent of these failures into successes, it would pay for itself many times over

Of course no commercial high school and no school of finance and economy can make a successful merchant or banker. Nor does a law school make a successful lawyer or a medical school a successful physician; but all three may so train a man that he will enter upon his respective career at an advantage over the man who does not have this training, provided other things are equal. A good commercial training will prepare a boy to learn his business more easily and rapidly than he could have done without it.

But such a commercial training must be really educational in character. What this means, in the domain of secondary education, can be seen if one will take the six-months course of the average so-called commercial college in the United States, and compare it with the three-years course of the schools discussed in the second part of this volume--say of that in Vienna, or Prague, or Leipsic, or Antwerp, or of the two in Paris. It is work of this latter character which is at once practical and liberal; which educates for life while it trains for a livelihood, and which should be introduced into our scheme of public education.

It will be noted that all the schools here discussed are really of high-school grade, covering the years from 14 or 15 to 17 or 18. The only exception is to be found in such courses as the one-year course for graduates of gymnasia or lycées, like the one in Vienna and the schol at Venice, which may fairly lay claim to be considered of college or university vide for higher com con rison with the w fin economy. ason for th

These courses represent really the only attempt to procourses at all and which, therefore, could come into ich would properly fall within the scope of schools of

found, in my opinion, in the general low social

estimate set on the business clas es in Europe which are relegated to a distinctly lower position in the social scale than the nobility, the army, and the professional classes. Shopkeepers and artisans are classed together, and for neither class is really higher education necessary at all. Of course this state of things can not continue indefinitely, and there are many signs of its approaching change, and before long we may confidently expect to see courses in commerce in the higher schools of Europe which will compare favorably with those suitable to schools of finance and economy as discussed in this work.

Attempts have been made to develop courses in business in connection with the other courses in the German polytechnic schools; but, as will be seen in the second part of this report, they have all been so inadequately organized that they have failed of their purpose and are of value to us only as solemn examples to be avoided. One interesting thing to note is the recent remarkable increase in attendance at French commercial schools. Up to 1890 the certificate of these schools was not accepted by the war department as entitling the holders to the privileges of the oneyear-service law, and so boys who attended them were compelled to pass at least a year or two more in other schools for the mere purpose of passing the military examination, or else they were obliged to serve the full period in the army. This constituted a serious handicap for this class of instruction and accounts largely for the slow growth in attendance for many years. As soon as the certificate of these schools was put on a par with that of other educational institutions of similar grade, the attendance went up by leaps and bounds, showing that it was this artificial barrier which kept them back.

The circumstance mentioned above serves to show the necessity of considering all the facts relating to a school system before drawing concrete conclusions or comparisons. It will be seen, for example, that the higher commercial schools in Germany give more time to certain subjects than the corresponding schools in France or Austria. This does not come, as one might suppose, from a difference in the ideas of the German directors of commercial schools, but simply from the fact that the war department refused to receive the certificates of these schools as entitling to the privileges of the one-year voluntary service until its prescriptions as to certain fundamental subjects were complied with. The whole matter illustrates the farreaching influence of the military system in Europe over every department of life, when even the schools which fit for what is preeminently a peaceful vocation must adapt their curricula to the demands of the war office.

The work of the Free School of Political Science, in Paris, is not noticed in this report, because its aim is quite different from that of the other institutions discussed. It is a most admirable school and is well worth the study of educationists. Its work corresponds at certain points with a portion of the work done in the Wharton School of Finance and Economy; but as a purely private institution it stands out of relation to the general system of public education in France, having in an official way no connection either with the secondary system on one hand, nor with what corresponds to our college and university system on the other.

There are some interesting commercial schools in Russia, Holland, and some of the other countries in Europe. Russia has what may perhaps be called the oldest commercial school in the world. But as I was unable to visit the other European countries, I thought best not to attempt a description of the schools relying, as I should have been obliged to do, entirely on the accounts of others.

It will be seen that but little space is given to England or English schools. The reason is plain to one who knows the facts. There is no institution in Great Britain which fairly deserves the name of commercial high school in the sense used in this report. England is beginning to wake up to the necessity of this sort of education. Boards of trade, teachers' conventions, educational societies have all begun to agitate for its introduction. The growing displacement of English youth in the great business houses of London by French, German, and even Italian youth began to attract public attention more than ten years ago. Finally, some six years ago the London Chamber of Commerce took up the subject in earnest, and later the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and then many other institutions and societies.

Instead of taking hold of the subject at the right end and organizing a great institution in London, which might serve as a model for such schools elsewhere, the English began their work in this field, as in many similar instances, by establishing examinations, and granting commercial certificates to all such pupils as could pass them. As there were no schools where the candidates could prepare for these examinations, they had to wait until existing classical or scientific schools could see their way to the profitable introduction of the commercial side. When a school here and there finally decided to open a commercial department, it was found that in all England there were no properly qualified teachers for this work. The outcome of the examination has been, therefore, most unsatisfactory, and there is talk of abolishing those in connection with Oxford. The London experiment has been the most successful, and it seems likely to continue. But the chief advantage from this movement thus far