Another and even more serious danger is our passion for shortcuts. Business prospers by rapid turnover. Practical men demand quick results. We are an impatient people, always in a hurry. We have not time for the tedious labor processes necessary to produce well-made articles of handicraft. Consequently we have learned to be satisfied with hastily and cheaply made commodities which somewhat resemble the real articles and will do just as well--for the time being. Why should we not buy cheap furniture, when we expect to move every first day of October? Why not wear garments made of shoddy, when everyone knows the fashions will change even before shoddy can be worn threadbare? Why erect buildings that will stand for centuries in cities where everything is torn-down and rebuilt in a decade, and even churches move about following the shifting elements of the population which constitute their membership? Just why we are all moving about in such a hurry no one knows. Some people think that this restless haste is progress. Whether it is or not, it is certainly modern. But something of the shoddiness enters into the minds and hearts of men, when shortcuts are sought in matters of mental growth which are essentially processes of slow maturing. Education requires time. The only time wasted is that spent trying to save time. There should be no haste or crowding or cramming. Mastery of any subject requires years of familiarity with it. The formal training one receives in an institution is but the introduction. Most people never get beyond a mere bowing acquaintance with knowledge. A prominent American manufacturer, so we are told, once made the statement that if he wished to know anything he would employ an expert to tell him about it in five minutes. Among workers in adult education there is a demand for easy text books, primers which will give to people in a few pages and in words of one syllable the essentials of philosophy, psychology, literature and natural science. Simple and clear statement is always desirable. No author really knows his subject matter until he can “talk United States” in presenting it. But that is another story. People who can read nothing more profound than the tabloid papers are a menace to education. They only retard the progress of any class they enter. Yet there is a wide demand for tabloid information. We like outlines of history, psychology, philosophy; primers of relativity; ABC’s of atoms. Such books have value only for the student who after reading them consults the original sources. But what people want is education without effort, ready-made education. I recently saw an advertisement in which there was offered for sale “a whole library in one volume.” Another advertisement offers “The Essentials of a Liberal Education; Twenty Centuries of thought on your Library Shelf,”--one shelf is all that is required! And in addition the publishers will provide you with “easy reading courses.”