New-York tribune., 1910-06-20
ROOSEVELT AS A MODEL
Manv Referencesto Ex-President
int. G. N. Y. BaCcalaureate.
"M4kE MAN FIT THE JOB"
President Finley Holds Forth to
Glass Of 10 on Vocational
Ambition.

The class of 10 of the College of the
City of New York heard its parting WORD
from President John H Finley yesterday
afternoon. It was a plea for vocational
ambition and to illustrate his point the
president referred more than once to Theo-
dore Roosevelt.
Make the man fit the job was the
theme Of his baccalaureate address, and
President Finley seid directly along this
line:
Keen the thought on the men and not
on the product You are going forth where
you viii be tempted like the disciple of
Copernicus 70 give I'D your theory. but do
not let go Of it I could almost wish that
you might not easily find your vocation,
that the stuff in you might be more
fercely tested And II the vocational ad-
iustment is not Immediately made. il Is
not TO be assumed, as generally is done
that the fault is with the training that
gives one the Copernican view Of life
But if you are true Copernicans you
will not be afraid of any honest voca-
ton. I heard ex-President Roosevelt say
long ago that if any man of his regiment
had asked to be favored because he was
college man he would have had him dis
charged forthwith. The privileges that
your degrees give you are to take the
hardest jobs and the inlmunities to be free
Of the selfish ones It is for the man or
your training and your theory Of life to
glorifv every vocation that your hands
touch, even the sun glorifes every
planet or satellite or even nebulous ring
Of a duty that it shines upon
Refers TO RooseveIt's Reading.
-gnf, Ia
10 the ex-President was when he said TO
the seniors
IF you have heard of the contents of a
library carried by a certain traveller into
the heart Of africa, and have read even the
titles of the books ne has read crossing the
oceans Of the world, you Will not take the
advice Of the practical man; you will push
past him. knowing that even in the busiest
life there is room for your aesthetics, yotr
love Of music, your Greek and your French,
and your history and science
The president declared that he wrote the
address amid the hum and hustle OF the
city, with its great heart beating in his
ears, and thus he perhaps breathed uncon-
sciously the real spirit OF the City College.
working daily with the ceaseless roar on all
sides.
Il have written these few words to you,
yourg men, under stress and strain-in the
train, both under and over the earth at my
desk amid many Interruptions he said 1T
is no quiet. reflective, academic treatise
The noises of the streets have disturbed
some Of its sentences, and the life of the
city has run between its lines. Our great
citizen, returning from the forests and the
ancient seats Of civilization and learning,
has walked robustly across one of its pages,
as you are aware. and has made me look
after him with increasing wonderment at
the achievement of a vocationless man, for
we remember with difficulty what his par
tieular vocation was
The guiding hand of City College de-
clared himself against that theory OF edu-
cation that IN a democracy puts the job be-
! fore the man. 1t is true, he said, that our
first ancestor Of Scripture, emerging from
savagery, as it is now interpreted, found
lis life circling regularly about the tasks
OF q vocation, and. that seven generations
afterward his descendants were divided
into absolute callings, and that now we ask
not Of mans character. but What is
he?" What does he do?"
The vocation identifies the man and
fixes his place in the social organization
even in a democracy said DR.. Finley
and if he is not so identified it is generally
because he is a poet, an idler a vagrant
an almoner,>a lunatic.'
And then the speaker made his plea for
a life, not within the old PtoIerlaic spheres
that only carry light in their diurnal revo-
lutions for this and that mans particular
job, but under the Copernican system, where
| a boundless universe has been opened to
man by having his little earth put where it
really belongs
Keep Thought on the Man"
What a different world and different
work II becomes" continued President Fin
ley, when the man or woman or the boy
or girl becomes the centre of Il, instead of
the iron that has to be wrought or the
clay that has 10 be moulded Or the cattle
that have 10 be herded. In the plans for
industrial training which are now arousing
so much favorable interest this must be
kept the cardinal principle Keen the
thought on the man and not on the
product
President Finley said he had lust read
William James's Moral Equivalent of
| War" and he referred 10 It in mis- address.
saying:
/ wrote William James 10 saw that I
hoped 70 raise IN this college a regiment for
his great army. 1 should like 10 begin Will,
this class, and send it forth the first COM
pany, hundred men-not conscripts, as he
suggests, but volunteers owned bv an ideal
"A hundred men who feel that it is worth
blood tax 10 belong TO what he calls g col
lect'ity, superior in any ideal ASPECT
And as he would have those of the 1uyu-
rlous classes conscripted to know the sour
and hard foundations of the higher life n
be sent TO the coal and iron mines TO
trelght trains. TO fishing fleets. 10 dish
Washlng, clothes washing and window
Washing, TO road building and tunnel build
ing' 10 foundries and stoke holes. To the
tfanes OF skyscrapers, SO would I have Won
cohscrlpted by your ideals to give vour
selves IS a soldier gives himself in selffor-
getfulness, with the soldiers faith in the
campaign against conditions which have
compelled so many 70 narrow. grav. com
fortess and all but hopeless lives If war
We're declared in a good cause TO-DAY and
you were needed you would throw asisa
your academic gowns and enlist at once In
mat same spirit should YOU put off vour
gowns this week
Rkfnh tn rnser.-x,