the law and a repugnance
for anything like office work, he had never even attempted to begin
practice. Having nothing to do, he was becoming more and more dissipated,
and when we saw him first had lost confidence in himself and was utterly
discouraged. "I am useless in the world," he told us. "There is nothing I
can do." At our suggestion, he was finally encouraged to purchase land and
begin the scientific study and practice of horticulture. The last time we
saw him he was erect, ruddy, hard-muscled, and capable looking. Best of
all, his old, petulant, dissatisfied expression was gone. In its place was
the light of worthy achievement, success, and happiness. He told us there
were no finer fruit trees anywhere than his. Such incidents as this are
not rare--indeed, they are commonplace. We could recount them from our
records in great number. But every observant reader can supply many from
his own experience.

Thousands of young men and women are encouraged, every year, to enroll in
schools where they will spend time and money preparing themselves for
professions already overcrowded and for which a large majority of them
have no natural aptitudes. A prominent physician tells us that of the
forty-eight who were graduated from medical school with him, he considers
only three safe to consult upon medical subjects. Indeed, so great is the
need and so increasingly serious is it becoming, as our industrial and
commercial life grows more complex and the demand for conservation and
efficiency more exacting, that progressive men and women in our
universities and schools and elsewhere have undertaken a study of the
vocational problem and are earnestly working toward a solution of it in
vocational bureaus, vocational schools, and other ways, all together
comprising the vocational movement.

Roger W. Babson, in his book, "The Future of the Working Classes: Economic
Facts for Employers and Wage Earners," says: "The crowning work of an
economic educational system will be vocational guidance. One of the
greatest handicaps to all classes to-day is that 90 per cent of the people
have entered their present employment blindly and by chance, irrespective
of their fitness or opportunities. Of course, the law of supply and demand
is continually correcting these errors, but this readjusting causes most
of the world's disappointments and losses. Some day the schools of the
nation will be organized into a great reporting bureau on employment
oppo