forces of to-day, we must be ready to receive and work with, rather than upon, a new product of the common school.

Pending these great changes really going on, the National Educational Association has needed, upon its committee of ten and in discussion upon that report, the counsel and co-operation of the leading minds of the nation. To make room-i. e., time-for the study of natural phenomena, for experiments, measurements, observations, and general living conditions of this planet, it is not necessary to throw aside technical grammar. As well leave out enumeration or the multiplication table from arithmetic. If the common schools, from lowest to highest, would adopt the rapid methods of calculation so well understood and constantly applied in the work of the business college, and the rapid-development method of teaching language, which makes this branch a delight in the best commercial schools, there would be a gain of three-fifths of the entire time devoted to the lower grades, or three entire years out of the first five of school-life, nearly five years out of eight, including the grammar grades; and this without the sacrifice of a single principle of mathematics or of scientific, scholarly English. Add our methods of rapid writing, that needful records may be clear, quickly made, and beautiful, and we shall have a new and interesting mental product, which it will be a delight to develop into still higher and nobler uses.

Friends, the new education was not born with the business college, and will not die with it. The manual training school, the technological schools, the schools for physical and vocal culture, the schools for applied ethics, are all as directly practical as ours. All have borne fruit and dropped seed along the educational highways and by-ways. It is good for us that we are coming nearer to the great heart of the instructors of the world, bringing with us our experience, and gathering theirs for strength, illumination, and inspiration for the work of our lives.

GUARANTEEING POSITIONS, OR FRAUDULENT ADVER

TISING.

BY J. W. WARR, MOLINE, ILL.

To come before an intelligent and honest body of educators for the purpose of trying to demonstrate that the practice of certain educational pirates in enticing young people into their clutches by guaranteeing them situations is fraudulent, would seem about on a par with going before a religious assembly to prove that the devil was no gentleman, that stealing was sinful, that murder was a crime, and polygamy immoral. For certainly no proprietor of a business college, with any just claim to the name, will so insult the business intelligence of the community, and subject the whole business college fraternity to suspicion and disrepute, as to openly guarantee situations to young men and women he has never seen, never heard of, and of whose mental and moral fitness he can have no knowledge. Hence, to even impliedly assume that the heinousness of this offense needs proving is almost an insult to your intelligence and honor. The fact is patent, and must be admitted, that such guarantees are not made in good faith, and if they were, it would be manifestly impossible that they could be carried out. It is a scheme conceived in fraud, nursed by ignorance and duplicity, and perpetuated by rascality on the ever-existing credulity of mankind. Now, while the so-called schools making such guarantees are repudiated by legitimate institutions, and while many take occasion to denounce such practices, is everything done that should be by the honest educators of the country to stamp out this evil?

Are we not compelled to admit that the guarantee of situations grew out of the practice of some of our best, most worthy, most conscientious business educators in extolling, as the chief merit of a business education, the passport it affords to a business position? When it was claimed and proved by testimonials that the graduates of a business college readily found lucrative positions as a result of the qualifications afforded them, it only remained for the educational charlatan to go one step further by guaranteeing in advance what others asserted would be a result. It is not my purpose to attempt to prove that those who make so prominent the success of their graduates in getting business positions through the qualifications afforded by and the influence of the school, are making claims in any way savoring of fraud, but I do claim, that, in making an incidental feature of a business training appear the most prominent, they

are, to a certain extent, lending color to the fraudulent claims of those who follow the same lines of argument, but do not stop where honesty ends and fraud begins. Understand me. I regard it as eminently proper for a legitimate business college to make prominent and emphatic its claims in the direction of fitting young men and young women for lucrative positions in business. I can see no impropriety in publishing the testimonials, adorned with half-tone portraits, of those who have demonstrated the work and worth of the school by securing through its training and influence positions which gave them a start on the road to success in life. I take no exception to this form of advertising, which simply proves the worth of the school by its results. But how about those students who have not been successful in securing good business positions, and, either from necessity or choice, have gone into other fields of labor? Is it to be inferred that their business education was a failure? That because they did not keep books, operate the typewriter, or manage a business office their business training represented a waste of money, time, and energy? By no means. And yet such conceptions of the value of a business training exist to too great an extent among the masses, and they exist because business colleges have, as a rule, not made sufficiently prominent and emphatic the claim that a business education is a necessity whatever pursuit in life the individual may follow; that whether a young man or young woman decides to engage in commercial work, farming, preaching, law practice, teaching, writing, or common every-day labor, a knowledge of business principles and practice is one of the essential elements of success in that work. I have on more than one occasion heard remarks something in this tenor: "Oh, yes, a business college is a good school to attend for those who wish to fit themselves for business, but a great many attend who never get any good out of their education. For instance, young A spent a good deal of time and money taking a business course, and then, when he left the school, took a piece of land and has been doing farm work ever since."

And yet, if young Mr. A had been consulted he would undoubtedly have denied that his business education was of no value to him. If he proved to be the right kind of a farmer he would have claimed that successful farming means farming conducted on correct business principles, and that debit and credit applied to a farm are quite as necessary as fertilizers, for while fertilizers make crops, the application of business principles and business methods coins them into money. This narrow conception of the value of a business training has kept many young people away from business colleges. When they saw by the advertising literature of the schools. that the measure of success of a school seemed to be established

by the number of business situations it secured for its graduates, the educational value of its curriculum seemed to be eliminated. It was not so much education but apprenticeship for clerical duties that was assumed to be desired, and for which facilities were so amply provided. It was this imperfect idea of the scope and character of business colleges that caused them to be stigmatized by many as mere "clerk factories," and to be viewed with suspicion and distrust by many prominent educators who estimated schools from an educational standpoint, and could not understand how an institution that claimed to be a substitute for a business office, furnishing mere practice in mechanical duties, could properly assume the dignified name of college. The educational idea must, to a certain extent, be eliminated when it is persistently overshadowed by claims that treat theories and principles with contempt, insisting that the old primitive way that existed before schools, that of learning to do by doing, is the only royal road leading to success. It is not the purpose of this paper to depreciate or belittle the claims of business colleges regarding the practical character of their work. Were they not practical they would lose their distinctive value. But there is such a thing as claiming too much in this direction, and when the claim is made, and loudly and sharply emphasized, that students engage in actual business transactions, handling actual merchandise and receiving and depositing actual cash, making actual gains and sustaining actual losses, it is no wonder that the contempt of the real, actual business world should be excited, and that confidence in the integrity of such schools should be lost. I am quite aware that business colleges making the claim of actual business do not expect it to be so literally construed as to mean that the merchandise the students handle is real merchandise, the cash the real currency of the country, and the school itself a vast merchandise emporium. "Actual office practice" expresses fully and correctly that which the term "actual business" exaggerates or misrepresents, and if business colleges generally would look more to exact truth than to advertising effect in the preparation of their catalogues and circulars, the claim of "actual business" would give place to other terms that would quite as effectually describe their work, besides possessing the merit of absolute truthfulness. Business educator, first cast the "actual business" out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the "guaranteed position" out of thy brother's eye.

The word fraudulent may be, and undoubtedly is, too strong a term to apply to the advertising of "actual business" as the overtowering feature of a school, and yet we must remember that the charlatan who guarantees situations tries to make his claim seem

plausible by representing that his students are in demand because "actual business" and "no text-book foolishness" is taught. To adopt a part of his methods and try to escape the obloquy that will follow, is very much like the complacency of a foreigner who was roundly abused by another, and then turned away laughing immoderately. "What in the world are you laughing at?" asked a bystander. "Oh, I got such a good yoke on dot 'feller,'" was the reply. "You see he called me a wortless, good for notting Swede fraud." "Well," was the comment, "I don't see any joke about that." "Why, don't you see," said the victim, with another outburst of laughter, "he called me a Swede fraud, when I was a Norwegian all the time."

Now, if this little incident has any moral it is that misrepresentation will be called fraud no matter what name it goes by. In business college advertising there is no need of making claims that may be even perverted into misrepresentation. The exact truth regarding the value of a business education is so grand, broad, and strong that nothing more is necessary to convince the people of its universal utility. Every day broadens the field of action and enlarges the scope of its usefulness. Modern science and invention are revolutionizing the world. All forms of human industry are taking the shape of vast business enterprises which enlist the services of educated brains which machines can never displace. While skilled labor has been begging places at one dollar a day, ten-thousand-do!lar places have been hunting for men-men with minds trained to do the practical things that the age demands. And with these opportunities increasing day by day, the responsibility of the business college becomes correspondingly greater, and if it keeps pace with the great march of improvement it must have the strength that comes only from a full appreciation of duty, and the courage and moral purpose to faithfully discharge it.

SHORTHAND AND TYPEWRITING.

BY W. A. WOODWORTH, DENVER, COLO.

Prior to the Christian era shorthand originated, and from that time it marched steadily forward until it was overcome and lost in that deluge of barbarism which swept over the human race after the decline of the Roman empire. In 1588 it was revived in England by Dr. Timothy Bright, from which time until now it has never ceased to delight the scholarship and to quicken the inventive genius