Before that we could take certain
matters for granted. If a man got out of work, he turned his hand to
something else; if a man failed in business, he started in again from some
other direction; as a last resort, in both cases, he went West, pre-empted
a quarter-section of public land, and grew up with the country. Now the
country is grown up; the public land is gone; business is full on all
sides, and the hand that turned itself to something else has lost its
cunning. The struggle for life has changed from a free-fight to an
encounter of disciplined forces, and the free-fighters that are left get
ground to pieces between organized labor and organized capital. Decidedly,
we are in a transition state, and if the higher education tried to adapt
itself to business needs, there are chances that it might sacrifice itself
without helping business. After all, how much education does business
need? Were our great fortunes made by educated men, or men of university
training? I don't know but these young fellows are right about that."
"Yes, that may all be," I put in. "But it seems to me that you give Mr.
Homos, somehow, a wrong impression of our economic life by your
generalizations.
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