l net 1,000 bushels to the acre.

One thousand years ago or more, our educational methods stiffened and set
in the rigid moulds of tradition. For nine hundred years civilization and
progress stood still. Then here and there men began to break the moulds
with hammers of scientific knowledge. Education, instead of blindly
following traditional forms, began to shape itself more and more to exact
knowledge of the child nature and its needs--very slowly, cautiously and
tentatively at first, but, as knowledge grew, with more and more boldness
and freedom. This is one of the reasons why the last one hundred years has
seen greater progress toward our dominion over the earth than all of the
thousand years before it.

For more than four thousand years--perhaps more than five thousand--men
have been constructing buildings with bricks. Brick-laying was a trade, a
skilled occupation, almost a profession, but its methods were based upon
traditions handed down from father to son, from journeyman to apprentice,
unbroken throughout that entire four-thousand-year period.

Then a bricklayer and his wife defied the heavens to fall, threw aside
traditions and began to apply exact knowledge to brick-laying. As a
result, they learned how to lay bricks three times as rapidly as the best
workman had ever been able to before--and with less fatigue.

SCIENCE TAKES THE PLACE OF GUESSWORK

Fifty years ago, the merchant and the manufacturer guessed at their costs
and fixed their prices with shrewd estimates as to their probable profits.
They also guessed as to which departments of their business paid the most
profit, how much and what kind of material they should buy, where the best
markets were to be found, what would be the best location for their stores
and factories, and many other important factors of profitable enterprise.
Some of these old worthies were good guessers. They built up fairly large
business institutions and made some very comfortable fortunes.

The business men of to-day--who are, indeed, of to-day and not a relic of
yesterday and the day before yesterday--have an exact and detailed
knowledge of their costs, determine prices scientifically, know definitely
where are the best markets and what are the best locations for their
factories, forecast with a reasonable degree of accuracy their need for
materials, determine in a laboratory just which materials will best supply
their needs, and in many other ways walk upon solid highwa