course. Personally I am opposed to this demand and am convinced that no four-year course can satisfy these demands and that the best interests of the student and his employer are served by a thorough drill in the fundamentals rather than by a specialized training. Consequently, in my opinion, special instruction by the industry for college technical graduates is desirable and offers the most economical method of arriving at the end in view. It is manifestly impossible to instruct in business methods to suit the various organizations or in the same industry, since methods differ so widely. The visible effect on the curricula of engineering schools may not be great, but it will tend to reduce specialization and will emphasize the importance of including in each course the elements of industrial organization, factory planning, welfare, labor and similar problems of more importance under our new industrial conditions than specialized information. b. While under the present unusual demands undergraduates are obtaining suitable and valuable experience, the fact remains that heretofore there has been no organized coöperation between the engineering schools and the corporations usually employing graduates. Undergraduates are required by the institution I represent to obtain practical engineering employment in the summer but frequently this has been in some line more or less remote from that preferred. The college graduate objects, and with some reason, to the long apprentice courses required of them before realizing on their college course, when they can accept positions with other organizations and become immediately productive and with an opportunity to show individual ability with corresponding rec ompense. Fortunately there is a marked tendency to shorten the fouryear special apprentice courses to three or less and also to enlist the undergraduate at the end of the first, second or third year. This movement is to be encouraged because it assists the corporations in early selection of desirable men and because it shortens the period of formal education. If the high-school graduate or the grammar school graduate can find the line for which he is particularly fitted in a certain industry at twenty years of age or at eighteen, both parties profit so far. Furthermore, the college man is more absorptive of certain forms of instruction at eighteen than at twenty-two and also he may reasonably expect, as a social proposition, the privilege of early training which the non-technical graduate now has who takes an apprentice course. An important fact is emphasized by the success of "coöperative courses." It will pay both the technical school and the technical industry to study each other in an organized way. This has not been done. Why do college instructors and students frequently look upon the small organization as offering the better opportunities? It is because the organization plan of the large industry is not scientific or is not explained to the college man so that he may understand the line of promotion open to him if he gives his best efforts. It is important that summer work for undergraduates be organized the same as apprentice courses for graduates both to economize time, to give the employer a line on the apprentice and the apprentice an early knowledge of the requirements of the industry. Under Section VI, paragraph 4, the question of organized study for minor executives is raised. I believe that the ideals and policies of the company should be presented to these men as organized courses. The relation of the employe, particularly the newly enlisted one, to the company depends more upon the attitude of foremen than of the president. upon that They should not only know company ideals and policies but how to meet common industrial problems. We find a summer course for such officials very helpful and believe that a short course in industrial management can offer such men practical opportunities to exchange experiences and ideas and to obtain modern methods of management. Under Section VII, paragraph 10, this question is asked: "Should college men be trained in separate groups," etc. Both. If college trained men have learned anything it should be how to study. It would therefore seem reasonable to give them intensive, high speed instruction in technical matters pertaining to their work. But they should also be in groups of men who have come up with the company for the study of administrative and ex ecutive problems in order that each may give whatever of service he may have from his training and in order that proper selection may be made for promotions. CHAIRMAN DIETZ: I think the biggest thing brought out is the spirit of co-operation in handling the college men in business. There is not a company satisfied with its plan, and this organization is undoubtedly a clearing house for experimenters in dealing with the human element in industry. The meeting is now adjourned. BANQUET HOTEL STATLER, BUFFALO, N. Y., WEDNESDAY EVENING, WILLIAM R. HEATH, Toastmaster. THE TOASTMASTER: Ladies and Gentlemen, men and women come to these conventions to attend mostly to business, and are earnest people. They have earnest jobs, and I do not know that I have ever noticed any body of men who have stuck closer to business when away from home than the delegates to the conventions of The National Association of Corporation Schools. This has been the first opportunity I have had to express my gratification at your selecting Buffalo, and honoring our plant, particularly, in holding your convention here. I trust sincerely that you will, barring the weather, find Buffalo as pleasant a city as we find it who live here all the time. We hope you will go away from here believing that this has been the best convention city, as well as the best convention, that you have ever attended. (Applause.) We are all working for the same thing. Of course, you can sum this up in a word or two, turnover, I suppose, illustrates this as well as anything else. We have heard quite a little about turnover-turnover in what we produce, turnover in our payrolls, and yet turnover is not it. It is something, but it is not it. Then there are three classes of people in this problem: A class of people whose duty it is to determine and direct the policy of business; the class who more particularly direct the industry of the business, and then there is that last class that do the work. I have wondered if in this matter of turnover we would not get some inspiration and some benefit if we invited representatives of those who do the work, or those who think they do the work, to meet with us and tell us why there is a large turnover or why there is not. We like to think that we are experts. We study the problem. There are some serious questions for the men who know to answer. One of them is-How do you come to know, or how do you know you know? If you do know, why don't you settle the question? When you were a youth, were you vocationally guided? Were you vocationally directed? Have you not repudiated your early teaching? If not, how did you come to know? And how do you know that the other fellow does not know? I was talking with an efficiency engineer the other day. He spoke of putting a system in somewhere, and I said "You could not put a system in there, they have just got a system." He said "I will give them two years to give that system up, I always give them a year or two before they are ready to accept my system." He did not tell me how long it was before the other fellow put in his system after he got there. But I have been impressed with this problem of knowing. I would like to tell you some of our difficulties, but I do not dare to do so. There are too many of our fellows here. I can talk about my own plans solely from our business point of view a little. I told some of our men about the problem I had with the Italian who cuts my lawn. I accosted him one day because the lawn was drying up and said “Joe, I would like a little more water on the lawn," and he looked at me with a smile on his face and said "More money, more water." "But," I said, "Joe, more water, more money." He repeated-"More money, more water." That is the only problem I have met in industry on my lawn. That is not a financial problem. That is a problem of confidence. He did not believe that more money would come after he had put more water on the lawn. I did not believe that more water would come after I put more money on the job. It was one of confidence, not one of finance, and it is not output, it is not efficiency; that is not the problem. Efficiency is a problem, but efficiency is more a condition of mind than it is anything else. How can we get that condition of mind to what it ought to be? I live in the country on a farm. I have some chickens down there and I had a man to take care of the chickens and also a man to take care of the farm, and not being able to afford more than one boss, and not knowing how to manage more than one, I made the man who ran the farm the boss of the farm, and consequently he became the boss of the chicken man and the chicken. man said that was not right, that you could not run a chicken |