--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Sauls, K. B. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 24 number: 12 published: 1921-10 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'K. B. Sauls, "College Training for Business," *Improvement Era* 24, no. 12 (October 1921): 1065–1067.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera24012unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera24012unse start_page: 1065 end_page: 1067 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1921-10) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera24012unse publication_year: 1921 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1921, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # College Training for Business College Training for Business By K. B. Sauls, B. S., Secretary to the President, Brigham Young Uniiersity "The President of the Illinois Manufacturing Association, Mr. Hastings, tells of a stockholder who, from Tiis own office window, seeing a department manager of the Standard Oil Com- pany, a man who was drawing a five-figured salary, standing with his hands in his pockets gazing out upon the street, day after day, finally felt it his duty to notify the acting head of the company about it. "The official merely smiled: 'Mr. Jones,' he finally replied, addressing the stockholder, 'I sincerely thank you for the in- terest you have shown in the maintenance of our efficiency. I appreciate the fact that, from your window, Mr. Smith appears every bit as idle as you say. " 'But from your window it is impossible for you to see what is going on inside of Mr. Smith's head. My experience with Mr. Smith has been such that I know it would be highly profit- able to this company to hire a dozen other similar Smiths if we could get them and pay them similarly large salaries to stand with their hands in their pockets, looking out of their windows and thinking thoughts as valuable as those which Mr. Smith thinks and crystallizes.' '' The most difficult men for large business interests to locate today are the $10,000 and up executives. One of our own Utah companies recently spent much time and money trying to lo- cate just such a man. There are plenty of clerks, stenographers, and bookkeepers, but men with executive ability, capable of properly guiding the interests and destinies of the gigantic in- dustrial enterprises of the twentieth century, are at premium. Business has tried all kinds of methods and schemes, including astrology, phrenology, palmistry, character analysis, physical and mental tests, to locate men capable of taking hold of the work which the present executives must sooner or later leave, but a college education supplemented by a period of more in- tensive training in the particular business one expects to follow has proved to be the most satisfactory method of producing executives. Scientific management in business is very recent and the importance of a college training for this field is just being real- ized. Each year now, sees the addition of hundreds of volumes 1066 IMPROVEMENT ERA. to our business literature. These books are the result of ex- tensive scientific investigations in the business field, and people recognize that college offers the cheapest, quickest, and most satisfactory method of acquiring the important facts from this vast fund of information. Our first book on business was not written until 1867, while as late as 1900 — only twenty-one years ago — there were but 47 books on the subject. Since that time they have increased very rapidly, until today there are probably 20,000 volumes on the various phases of the subject. The growth of business schools of collegiate rank has likewise been very rapid. In 1908 six of the leading universities, which were maintaining schools of business, reported a total registration of only about 800 stu- dents. In the following ten years this number grew to over 8,000 in the same six schools, showing the rapidity with which the world is recognizing the importance of college training for busi- ness. Of course, it is true that a young college graduate is not prepared immediately to occupy the desk of manager or some other executive position in a large business house, but at the same time business men recognize that he has passed through a long process of "intellectual weeding" and has a thorough grounding in the fundamental principles which, with a little in- tensive training in the particular business which he expects to fol- low, will make of him a very capable man for an executive po- sition. This is the ploicy now followed by many companies in providing for their future executives. The Westinghouse Electric Manufacturing Company, of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for a number of years has maintained a company school for the training of their future executives. Practically every man admitted to this training school has been a college graduate; over 2,500 graduates of technical schools having been admitted during the past sixteen years. Representa- tives of the company each year visit the leading technical in- stitutions with which relations have been established, where promising candidates in the senior class are interviewed upon the recommendation of the faculty, fellow classmates, and es- pecially of the men in the company's training school who knew these applicants as under-classmen during their own college careers. These young men begin at about twenty cents an hour and their period of graduate training covers about one year, during which time they pass through every department doing the actual work of the departments. Here they get the workman's point of view, and — an experience which proves especially valuable to them as managers — have an opportunity to "make good" with COLLEGE TRAINING FOR BUSINESS 1067 many different foremen and managers. This experience in the shop is supplemented by the class training offered by the edu- cational department. Each student reports for a three-hour recitation period each week at which time subjects such as gen- eral machine-shop practice, special processes of manufacturing, cost and pay systems, labor conditions, and methods of handling orders and materials with which he has just been dealing at first hand in the shop, are discussed systematically. It is esti- mated that over one-half of the company's leading officials to- day are college men who came up through this training school. The young man who expects to achieve any noteworthy success in business today is taking a much longer and harder road when he chooses one which is not via a college education. Provo, Utah