The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-05-17

The Value and Cost of an EducatiOn.
 The following article Is published under the auspices of the Committee on Education of the Alabama Fedora ton of Women's Clubs. It was written by President E. M. Shackelford of the State Normal School at Troy:
 service. t eGSitH and t1e myriad Drnlnded Shake. @ speare has pointed out the direction of that service in the following lines:
 'Let all the ends thou ain'st at be thy Thy Gods. and truths; then if thou fall'st. O Cromwell.
 Thou fall'st blessed martyr" Society, government and church are today in need of more efficient service and the demond for that kind of ser 1t Is far greater than present facilities can supply. Not only so, but there Is no good reason why every young per should fail to prepare himself to render efficient service in whatever field he may choose to labor.
 As to the value of education in pre- pairing one for success in whatever he undertakes, let me refer you to the following statistics:
 According to an estimate made from the United States l0,7ss.oo7 persons over 21 years old. These are divided educationally about as followD:
 Ssss SIsss Wts0pt WtS nniy ssSS SSmon s.soo, training, s2.ssS.5si " '''
 Class 3. With common and high school traininEs !EEs siSS,ss7; sd,,s s,.s.. .u,, cation added, 1,07l,201.
 Who's Who in America" gives a list of 5000 persons now living in the for some work of importance to the people of the country at large or of some considerable portion of 1t; and Sow Srt hSs os ts Sssn SSS sSS sH citizens belong to each of these classes.
 The 4.6s2.4SS of Class l furnish 31.
 The 32,s62,591 of Class 2 furnish sos. The i.oSi,soi of Glass 1 furnish 5,7sS.
 It thus appears:
 First-That an uneducated child has tinction as factor in the progress of
 Second-That a common school edu- cation will increase his changes nearly
 ThirdNThat a high school training will increase the chances of the com mon school boy. twenty-three times. chance of the uneducated.
 Fourth-That college education in- creases the chance of the high school the chance of the common school boy, and more than 800 times the chance of the untrained.
 Is 1t a surprising fact that of 1859 proved to be full graduates of colleges?
 To be sure, it costs money. time. and labor. to get ready to do anything prop. erly, and we should remember that whatever is worth doing at all Is worth doing well. While the money value of an education Is one of the last that fact that 1t is the one ph ase of the sub ject that is most generally considered by this commercial generation, and. hence. I shall devote good part of the view. The following facts are both pointed and suggestive: The average salary of an educated man is $1,oOo per man is $450. In forty years. the ordi- nary working life of man, one earns S40.00o. while the other earns $1s,000. lis the value of an education estimated in dollars. It usually requires twelve years of 1S0 days each--a total of ?, 16C dsys-to 1s complete college ,,So9 course, SC, the number of days required to get 1t. i. e., $23,000. divided by 2,160 days, gives little more than $i0 as the estimate of the average daily cost of the twelve years. schooling would be s1. leaving net profit of little more Do you know any other investment that will yield 300 per cent profit,
 But the ever-recurring. question of how one is to get this education pre- sents itself right here. Let me say that in this busy age there are abund- ant opportunities for every one who is able and willing to work. We may not all secure an education in the manner and at the time we would like best but the main thing is to get 1t. If not one way then another I may say in this connection. that many of the best students in our school at Troy study a while, secure a certificate and teach a while. then enter school again and thus work their own way through. Such opportunities are open to you, and the only question Is whether you have the ambition, energy, and tenacity of purpose to profit by them. Remembe CT that everything is possible to the man who knows how. If you expect to meet