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Professor of Philosophy and Education in Columbia University, New York

13

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION

BY

EDMUND J. JAMES

Professor of Public Administration in the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

THIS MONOGRAPH IS CONTRIBUTED TO THE UNITED States EdUCATIONAL EXHIBIT BY THE STATE OF NEW YORK

COMMERCIAL EDUCATION

No satisfactory exposition of the existing condition of commercial education in the United States can be written at present. Such an exposition would be based upon a full knowledge of the historical development of such instruction as well as upon full and accurate statistics of its present condition. Neither of these presuppositions have been thus far realized. No one has yet devoted the time and attention necessary for a proper monographic treatment of the different aspects of this development. The department of such instruction which has made the most pronounced progress is that of the so-called commercial college, i. e., the elementary technical school intended to prepare pupils for clerical work. It is not known, as will be seen later, exactly when such work was begun in the United States or by whom or where, and the facts about the subsequent development are difficult to ascertain; indeed, one may say it would be impossible for any one person to collect the facts necessary to enable one to treat the subject historically in a thoroughly satisfactory way. On the other hand, the statistics of the present condition of this department of instruction are unsatisfactory.

The bureau of education at Washington has labored faithfully for many years to collect as thorough and accurate information on this subject as possible, but limited as it is in the funds placed at its disposal for collecting and revising and checking up statistics, it is impossible for it to collect information in regard to all the schools which are actually at work from year to year. The statistical reports of the various departments of education in the different states are, if anything, still more unsatisfactory; in fact, they are almost worthless for the purpose in hand, since none of them, with

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