BUSINESS EDUCATION. 
THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS COLLEGES. 
ABSTRACT OF OPENING ADDRESS, BY 8. 8S. PACKARD, PRESIDENT OF 
DEPARTMENT CONGRESS OF BUSINESS EDUCATION. 
THE task is laid upon me, within the limits of a brief paper, to sketch 
‘he birth and progress of business colleges ; and the embarrassment which 
it brings to me must be apparent to all who are conversant with that his- 
tory. The temptation is very great to go back to the beginning, to 
mention names, dates, and incidents which are matters of history and 
‘nteresting to us all, and to follow consecutively the steps of this evolution 
and the expansion of the idea which, in the course of fifty years, has given 
to this country a distinct system of education, which has planted schools 
in all our large and small cities, which claims a patronage cmbracing men 
and women in business, in the professions, in charity, in statesmanship, 
in religion and in all the great enterprises of the country. 
The first teachers of bookkeeping, who are really the pioneers of our 
oresent business college system, were not moved simply to open a profes- 
sion for themselves, but to do a needed work. In the language of ome 
of them, it was at that time impossible to learn bookkeeping without get- 
ting into business, and impossible to get into business without having 
learned bookkeeping, and so the first business college began as between a 
man who wanted to know something in order to advance his own interests, 
and another man who was able to impart that knowledge and willing to do 
't for a consideration. It must be borne in mind that when the first book- 
keeping class was formed there was no railroad system in this country and 
strictly speaking no railroad; the telegraph lay nascent in the brain of 
ts inventor; duplex currents and incandescent lights were not even 
reamed of ; the sun had not entered into the picture business, and there 
were no better means of getting over the surface of the earth than were 
enjoyed by Lot when he wanted to visit his uncle Abraham. Since that 
first bookkeeping class, everything worth mentioning has happened, and 
all that was necessary to bring about the conditions which we now con- 
template was simply to follow along the line of progress and to meet the 
growing demands as they came. The one man in charge of the first busi- 
ness college student sustained as full relations to the demands of business 
in 1843, as the five thousand men, more or less, representing five hundred 
prosperous schools, with a constituency of not less than seventy-five