ntant who has never been to a business college or
attempted the art of fancy penmanship as exhibited in spread eagles and
impossible swans.

As a rule popular prejudices are not wholly unfounded in reason; and we
should not feel disposed to make an exception in this case. When the
demand arose for a more practical schooling than the old fashioned
schools afforded, no end of writing masters, utterly ignorant of actual
business life and methods, hastened to set up ill managed writing
schools which they dubbed "business colleges," and by dint of
advertising succeeded in calling in a multitude of aspirants for
clerkships. In view of the speedy discomfiture of the deluded graduates
of such schools when brought face to face with actual business affairs,
and the disgust of their employers who had engaged them on the strength
of their alleged business training, one is not so much surprised that
prejudice against business colleges still prevails in many quarters, as
that the relatively few genuine institutions should have been able to
gain any creditable footing at all.

The single fact that they have overcome the opprobrium cast upon their
name by quacks, so far as to maintain themselves in useful prosperity,
winning a permanent and honorable place among the progressive
educational institutions of the day, is proof enough that they have a
mission to fulfill and are fulfilling it. This, however, is not simply,
as many suppose, in training young men and young women to be skilled
accountants--a calling of no mean scope and importance in itself--but
more particularly in furnishing young people, destined for all sorts of
callings, with that practical knowledge of business affairs which every
man or woman of means has constant need of in every-day life. Thus the
true business college performs a twofold function. As a technical school
it trains its students for a specific occupation, that of the
accountant; at the same time it supplements the education not only of
the intending merchant, but equally of the mechanic, the man of leisure,
the manufacturer, the farmer, the professional man--in short, of any one
who expects to mix with or play any considerable part in the affairs of
men. The mechanic who aspires to be the master of a successful shop of
his own, or foreman or manager in the factory of another, will have
constant need of the business habits and the knowledge of business
methods and operations which a properly conducted busi