ealth with us multiplies a man's power so tremendously that everything
gravitates toward it. A man's genius, art, what he stands for, is
measured largely by how many dollars it will bring. "How much can I
get for my picture?" "How much royalty for my book?" "How much can I
get out of my specialty, my profession, my business?" "How can I make
the most money?" or "How can I get rich?" is the great interrogation of
the century. How will the graduate, the trained young man or woman
answer it?

The dollar stands out so strongly in all the undertakings of life that
the ideal is often lowered or lost, the artistic suffers, the soul's
wings are weighted down with gold. The commercial spirit tends to drag
everything down to its dead, sordid level. It is the subtle menace
which threatens to poison the graduate's ambition. _Whichever way you
turn, the dollar-mark will swing info your vision_. The money-god,
which nearly everybody worships in some form or other, will tempt you
on every hand.

Never before was such pressure brought to bear on the trained youth to
sell his brains, to coin his ability into dollars, to prostitute his
education, as to-day. The commercial prizes held up to him are so
dazzling, so astounding, that it takes a strong, vigorous character to
resist their temptation, even when the call in one to do something
which bears little relation to money-making speaks very loudly.

The song of the money-siren to-day is so persistent, so entrancing, so
overwhelming that it often drowns the still small voice which bids one
follow the call that runs in his blood, that is indicated in the very
structure in his brain.

Tens of thousands of young people just out of school and college stand
tiptoe on the threshold of active life, with high ideals and glorious
visions, full of hope and big with promise, but many of them will very
quickly catch the money contagion; the fatal germ will spread through
their whole natures, inoculating their ambition with its vicious virus,
and, after a few years, their fair college vision will fade, their
yearnings for something higher will gradually die and be replaced by
material, sordid, selfish ideals.

The most unfortunate day in a youth's career is that one on which his
ideals begin to grow dim and his high standards begin to drop; that day
on which is born in him the selfish, money-making germ, which so often
warps and wrenches the whole nature out of its legitimate orbit.