Produced by David Widger
By Charles Dudley Warner
This is a very interesting age. Within the memory of men not yet come tomiddle life the time of the trotting horse has been reduced from twominutes forty seconds to two minutes eight and a quarter seconds. Duringthe past fifteen years a universal and wholesome pastime of boys has beendeveloped into a great national industry, thoroughly organized and almostaltogether relegated to professional hands, no longer the exercise of themillion but a spectacle for the million, and a game which rivals theStock Exchange as a means of winning money on the difference of opinionas to the skill of contending operators.
The newspapers of the country—pretty accurate and sad indicators of thepopular taste—devote more daily columns in a week's time to chroniclingthe news about base-ball than to any other topic that interests theAmerican mind, and the most skillful player, the pitcher, often collegebred, whose entire prowess is devoted to not doing what he seems to bedoing, and who has become the hero of the American girl as the Olympianwrestler was of the Greek maiden and as the matador is of the Spanishsenorita, receives a larger salary for a few hours' exertion each weekthan any college president is paid for a year's intellectual toil. Suchhas been the progress in the interest in education during this periodthat the larger bulk of the news, and that most looked for, printed aboutthe colleges and universities, is that relating to the training, theprospects and achievements of the boat crews and the teams of base-balland foot-ball, and the victory of any crew or team is a better means ofattracting students to its college, a better advertisement, than successin any scholastic contest. A few years ago a tournament was organized inthe North between several colleges for competition in oratory andscholarship; it had a couple of contests and then died of inanition andwant of public interest.
During the period I am speaking of there has been an enormous advance intechnical education, resulting in the establishment of splendid specialschools, essential to the development of our national resources; a growthof the popular idea that education should be practical,—that is, such aneducation as can be immediately applied to earning a living and acquiringwealth speedily,—and an increasing extension of the elective system incolleges,—based almost solely on the notion, having in view, of course,the practical education, that the inclinations of a young man of eighteenare a better guide as to what is best for his mental development andequipment for life than all the experience of his predecessors.
In this period, which you will note is more distinguished by the desirefor the accumulation of money than far the general production of wealth,the standard of a fortune has shifted from a fair competence to that ofmillions of money, so that he is no longer rich who has a hundredthousand dollars, but he only who possesses property valued at manymillions, and the men most widely known the country through, most talkedabout, whose doings and sayings are most chronicled in the journals,whose example is most attractive and stimulating to the minds of youth,are not the scholars, the scientists, the men of, letters, not even theorators and statesmen, but those who, by any means, have amassed enormousfortunes. We judge the future of a generation by its ideals.
Regarding education from the point of view of its equipment of a man tomake money, and enjoy the luxury which money can command, it must be moreand more practical, that is, it must be adapted not even to the higheraim of increasing the general we