In business getting on means getting on with men.
The experience of Mr Hichens is so valuable that I cannot do better
than quote further. "A big industrial organisation such as my firm,
has, or should have three main sub-divisions--the manufacturing
branch, the commercial branch, and the research or laboratory
branch.... I will not deal with the rank and file, but with the better
educated apprentices, who expect to rise to positions of
responsibility. On the workshop side, we prefer that the lads should
come to us between sixteen and seventeen, and, if possible (after
serving an apprenticeship in the shops and drawing office), that they
should then go to a university and take an engineering course.
"On the commercial side also we prefer to get the boys between sixteen
and seventeen. We have recently, however, reserved a limited number of
vacancies for university men. The research department also is, in the
main, recruited from university men. But there is this difference,
that, whereas the research men should have received a scientific
training at the university we require no specialised education in the
case of university men joining the commercial side. Specialised
education at school is of no practical value. There is ample time
after a boy has started business to acquire all the technical
knowledge that his brain is capable of assimilating. What we want when
we take a boy is to assure ourselves that he has ability and moral
strength of character, and I submit that the true function of
education is to teach him how to learn and how to live--not how to
make a living.
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