The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-05-13

college graduates. They established departments which were practically l schools for instruction for them. The graduates were selected carefully and placfd in various agencies where they would be under the eye of experts for two or three months, instruction as to the art of soliciting being dinned into them morning. noon and night besides Sundays, sometimes.
 During this period each was paid $15 a week; at it's close those who showed aptitde and energy were gen. orally placed on the footing of regular soliciting agents. though occasionally one would be put to work in some other department. Those who did not so fairly well were released at the end of a few months.
 There Is small country college whose students are mostly young men from various farms and villages. upon which an employing agent from one of the big insurance companies swooped down two or three years ago, convinced that he had made a find" of an insti- tuition likely to yield quite bundle of agency timber which the other com panies would be pretty sure to over look. He went early to the remote but really deiectable little city in which the college is located and stayed long, devoting his best energies to the cultI vation of the prospective graduates.
 But, despite all his plans. he didn't succeed in getting single one of tho young men to enter his companys enn- ploy. Why? Well, the boys were pret- ty we'll taken with the proposition at first, but in talking 1t over with one another they finally decided that the pay offered for green men. SIS week, was so high that there must be some- thing about that company which was ~s. G. a1I InI to say no to the agent and stuck to their decisions to a man.
 It shouldn't be understood that any of tho firms or corporations which seek graduates as employees send low grade agents after them. Far from 1t. The mission of selecting young men who may rise to high executive places is altogether too important to be in- trusted to any one of less than unusual intelligence and standing with his corr poration, and often an officer of the company will be sent to round up the graduates.
 One insurance company sent out it's general superintendent of agencies. A big manufacturing concern desirous of getting some young men with brains and training into It's clerical depart ment sent it's president. trunk line railroad company had the head of each general department skirmishing for himself after as many graduates as he thinks he may be able to place, and so on.
 It is only fair to state that while the annual quest for graduates by the larger employees has been going on for six or eight years, it Is still large ly experimental. The situation Is that the demand for young men above the average in training, energy, initiative and adaptability is greater than the supply which was formerly drawn mostly from the graduates not of the colleges, but from the lower grade em- ployes. The big employers hope that the experiment will prove a grand suc- cess, but they are net yet sure it will. What they will do if it doesn't they don't know. Just now they are study ing the students as with a magnifying glass.
 Some of them have had rather bad luck and are already on the point of giving 1t up They say that the std dent, during the years of his college Itraining. lives a life so utterly different from the everyday life of the world that he lacks practicability. sense of responsibility and the ability to buckle down to a steady routine of work for the long hours that are otfen required. The students time is divided daily be- tween several subjects which give va riety. He goes from lecture room to lecture room; he doesn't have to grind hard at one thing hour after hour, day after day and week after week as he does in business, and he doesn't have grades as he does when working