Lack of Effectiveness by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 9, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 15.

Lack of Effectiveness.

By Editor

The late Mr. R. T. Crane, of Chicago, known not only as a successful business man, but for his attacks on colleges and college education, just before his death issued a diatribe against railways. He said: "I do not know of any business that has been carried on with so little judgment as railroading, nor one in which a man has been able to make a success without having been brought up and thoroly trained in the business. Were any other business to be carried on in the same way that the railroad business has been, with a man at the head of it who knows nothing about the business, it would be bankrupt inside of a year." He declares that a proper organization would save very many of the accidents, and the Railway and Engineering Review admits that it is true in many cases. The Literary Digest says that Mr. Crane will be listened to in this, because he was a successful business man, more than he would in his protests against college education; but it seems to us that what Mr. Crane had to say on education should be listened to. He was looking upon the practical side of it. The educational men look largely upon the culture side of it. Mr. Crane was looking for success on the business side, for men so educated that they could do something, and in his experience he found the vast majority of the college-educated men inefficient, impractical.

What he said is worth heeding, and evidently the railway journal referred to thinks that some things he says are worth heeding by the railway managements.