to the graduating class of the School
of Pharmacy, St. Louis, May 19, 1915.

The graduation of a class of technically trained persons is an event of
special moment. When we send forth graduates from our schools and colleges
devoted to general education, while the thought of failure may be
disquieting or embarrassing, we know that no special danger can result,
except to the man who has failed. The college graduate who has neglected
his opportunities has thrown away a chance, but he is no menace to his
fellows. Affairs take on a different complexion in the technical or
professional school. The poorly trained engineer, physician or lawyer, is
an injury to the community. Failure to train an engineer may involve the
future failure of a structure, with the loss of many lives. Failure to
train a doctor means that we turn loose on the public one who will kill
oftener than he will cure. Failure to train a lawyer means wills that can
be broken, contracts that will not hold, needless litigation.

Congressman Kent, of California, has coined a satisfactory word for this
sort of thing--he calls it "mal-employment." Unemployment is a bad thing.
We have seen plenty of it here during the past winter. But Kent says, and
he is right, that malemployment is a worse thing. All these poor engineers
and doctors and lawyers are busily engaged, and every thing on the surface
seems to be going on well. But as a matter of fact, the world would be
better off if each one of them should stop working and never do another
stroke. It would pay the community to support them in idleness.

I have always considered pharmacy to be one of the occupations in which
malemployment is particularly objectionable. If you read Homer badly it
affects no one but yourself. If you think Vera Cruz is in Italy and that
the Amazon River runs into the Arctic Ocean, your neighbor is as well off
as before; but if you are under the impression that strychnine is aspirin,
you have failed in a way that is more than personal.

I am dwelling on these unpleasant possibilities partly for the reason that
the Egyptians displayed a skeleton at their banquets--because warnings are
a tonic to the soul--but also because, if we are to credit much that we
see in general literature, including especially the daily paper and the
popular magazine, _all_ druggists are malemployed. And if it would really
be better for the community that you should not enter upon the profession
for whic