rage
higher education as preparation for the life of the business
world. It is the solidest kind of evidence that the old love of
knowledge for its own sake and the old faith in the beneficial
effects of college training upon the youth of a country having
such a government and social organization as this Republic has
developed remain as strong as ever.'"

To which the Post replies:

"That is somewhat hasty and a probably erroneous conclusion.
The "higher education" which Mr. Schwab discourages, the
old-time classical course, has not grown in popular favor. The
reverse is true. The demand for a more practical education in
this utilitarian age has compelled the colleges and
universities to make radical changes in their curriculum. The
number of students who elect to take the old-time course is
smaller in proportion to the population and wealth of this
country than it ever was. Science, both pure and applied, takes
a far more prominent place in collegiate studies than it
formerly occupied. Many of the leading institutions of learning
have introduced a commercial department. Everywhere the
practical, the business idea is becoming dominant.

"While no intelligent man questions the value of classical
studies or disputes the proposition that a knowledge of the
classics is indispensable to a thorough understanding of our
own language, the area of practical study has become so vast,
by reason of new discoveries in science and the arts, that a
choice between the two is compulsory to young persons who have
their own fortunes to make. The old-time course of mathematics
and classics furnishes splendid mental discipline, with much
knowledge that may or may not put its possessor on the road to
success in business. But the time required for that course, if
followed by a three or four years' term of practical study,
sets a young man so far along in life that he has a hopeless
race with younger men who dispensed with the classical and went
in zealously for the practical.

"The change from the old to the new lines of education is even
more marked in the common schools than in the colleges and
universities. The practical begins in the free kindergarten and
runs with more or less directness through all the grades.
Millions are expended upon industr