[92 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
studies required by all men of business. Therefore, since commerce is so 
grandly beneficial to mankind, and since a high-grade technical curriculum 
of practical knowledge is required to successfully conduct so great an 
industry in all its multitudinous ramifications, and since the well-appointed 
business college does impart the knowledge required, it follows that a 
business college training is of practical advantage to its possessor, to com- 
merce, and to the progress of mankind. By the light of this conclusion, 
[ submit that the practical curriculum of the business college is not only 
of practical advantage, but is demanded by the commercial and business 
interest of the world, and by the great social questions of the age, which 
are agitating capital and labor in all the fields of human action. If busi- 
ness men of all classes had a more bountiful supply of this practical 
knowledge, failures and defalcations, violated promises and repudiated 
sontracts, would be far less frequent. 
But, Mr. Chairman, the benefits of a business or commercial school 
education are by no means limited to the merchant. The banker, the 
manufacturer, the artisan, the tradesman, the farmer, the lawyer, the 
:heologian, the professional man, and in brief all classes of society are 
more thoroughly armed and equipped for service in their respective spheres 
of labor, by the practical education taught in the commercial or business 
schools. All of these classes of men must of necessity have some knowl- 
adge of accounts, and of the customs and laws of business. 
A large part of a lawyer's professional business brings him face to face 
with accounts, with business transactions, with the adjustments of part- 
nerships and of financial settlements. As evidence that the clergy have 
need for financial knowledge, we have but to consider the financial busi- 
ness of the church. The churches of the United States own over two 
hundred million dollars of real estate. They receive and disburse annu- 
ally for expenses, for foreign missions, and for educational purposes, nearly 
twenty-five millions of dollars. The church is also largely engaged in the 
publication of books, magazines and papers. To possess this property, 
and to transact the business of the church, is it not clear that the clergy 
have need for business and accounting knowledge ? 
To deny the advantage of the medical school education for the physi- 
cian, or the law school education for the lawyer, or the theological 
school education for the clergyman, or the engineering school education 
for the engineer, or the military school training for the soldier, or the 
school of mines for the metallurgist, or the manual training school for 
the mechanic, or the art. school for the painter and sculptor, would be a 
denial of well-known facts, an unpardonable libel on the civilization of 
the nineteenth century, and an evidence of a mind incapable of discern- 
ment or comprehension. 
And thus as the above-named schools stand to the science, the profes- 
sion, or the trade for which they prepare disciples and votaries, so stands