" It may be that everybody
has not recognised this, and that the railroad magnates and the rest
of them are not yet fully convinced; but Mr Leacock declares that the
most successful schools of commerce will not now attempt to teach the
mechanism of business, because "the solid, orthodox studies of the
university programme, taken in suitable, selective groups, offer the
most practical training in regard to intellectual equipment, that the
world has yet devised."
To the same purport is the evidence given by Mr H.A. Roberts,
Secretary of the Cambridge Appointments Board (see _Minutes of
Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 22nd
November 1912-13th December 1912_, pp. 66-73). The whole of this
testimony deserves careful study. For some few years past the heads
of the great business firms, in this country and abroad, have been
applying in ever increasing numbers to Cambridge (and to Oxford also,
though in this case statistics do not appear to be available) for men
to take charge of departments and agencies; to become, in fact,
"captains of industry." In the year before the war (1913-14) about 135
men were transferred from Cambridge University to commercial posts
through the agency of the Board[1]. One might naturally suppose that
the majority of these were science men; on the contrary, owing no
doubt to the greater number of other posts open to them, they were
fewer than might have been expected.
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