medicine and another goes into business, not because these are the careers
for which they are specially fitted, but because one thinks that the
prefix "Doctor" would look well in front of his name and the other has a
maternal uncle in the dry-goods trade.

I am not so foolish as to think that selection of this kind could ever be
made with unerring accuracy, but I do assert that an effort should be made
to effect it in a greater degree through our regular educational
institutions and to leave it less to chance. Our present methods are like
those of wild nature, which scatters seeds broadcast in the hope that some
may settle on favoring soil, rather than those of the skilled cultivator,
who sees that seed and soil are fitted for each other.

In this and other particulars I look for great improvement in our
educational methods; but I do not think that, except in local and
unessential particulars, here and there, they are now retrograding.




SOME ECONOMIC FEATURES OF LIBRARIES[4]

[4] Read at the opening of the Chestnut Hill Branch, Philadelphia
Free Library, January 22, 1909.


Of the three great divisions of economics--production, distribution and
consumption--the library has to do chiefly with the second, and it is as a
distributor of literature that I desire to speak of it, although it has
its share both in the production and consumption of books--more briefly,