Somewhat similar to failures of this sort are those that arise from lack of initiative. Here I think our training is somewhat at fault. I can almost pick out at sight the library assistants whose training has been in schools where obedience has been the chief thing inculcated, the following of rules and formulas, the reverence for standards and authority. They are of the greatest value in certain positions, but they can not advance far. They are afraid to go beyond the beaten path--to take chances, not, as in the case just considered, because they distrust themselves or their judgment, but because they have been trained not to adventure. Now adventuring is the only way in which mankind has ever got anywhere. There are conditions in which chance-taking is criminal, as it usually is when much is staked for little. The engineer who risks the lives of a train-load of passengers in order that he may avoid losing a minute on schedule time, is a criminal chance-taker. He may have done it once before with success, and the belief that he is “lucky” may induce him to do it again. The trouble with the over-cautious worker is that because he feels that this kind of adventuring is wrong, it is also wrong for him to stake his personal comfort against a possible great advance in the quality of service that he is doing. Perhaps I have put it awkwardly. It is not so much personal comfort that is at stake, though that is an element, as the feeling that doing things well “in the way that we have always done them” is better than disorganizing them for the purpose of shuffling them into a better combination. I have on more than one occasion, in Library School lectures, urged this point of view, and I have advised more stimulation to venturesomeness, less pointing out of old paths and more opportunities to break new ones. No one ever reached a new place by following an old path. The path-breakers may be “lucky” or “unlucky”. I agree that the “unlucky”--the congenital blunderers--ought to be kept out of the adventuring class--but how shall we tell who they are except by trying? I have thought, possibly without justification--that I have detected a slight attitude of disapproval on the part of Library School authorities when such advice as this has been given. “Let the student first learn the standards, to do things by rule, to obey authority--then he can branch out into initiative.” But can he? My fear, somewhat justified by experience, is that he can not. The standards must be taught. The rules must be known and followed, but if along with this there is no stimulation to initiative and the continual instilment of a feeling that progress depends on the divine curiosity of the explorer--we shall be training only routine workers and for our advances we shall have to depend on those whom we stigmatize as untrained. They will be the “lucky ones”.