“I don’t know just what is the matter with me,” he said.  “I have loved to play with mechanical things.  I was always building machinery and, when I had an opportunity, hanging around machine shops and watching the men work.  On account of these things my father was very sure that I had mechanical ability, and when I was fifteen years old took me out of school and apprenticed me in a machine shop.  This shop was partly devoted to the manufacture of heavy machinery and partly to repairs of all kinds of machinery and tools.  I have now been at work in this shop for five years.  I am a journeyman mechanic and making good wages, and yet, somehow or other, I feel that I am in the wrong place.  I wish you could tell me what is the matter with me.”

After examining the young man and the data submitted, we made the following report: 

ANALYSIS OF AN EMBRYO FINANCIER

“While you have undoubted mechanical ability, this is a minor part of your intellectual equipment.  You are also qualified for commercial pursuits.  You have a good sense of values.  You understand the value of a dollar even now and you have natural aptitudes which, with proper training and experience, will make you an excellent financier.  You also have executive ability.  You like people and you like to deal with them.  You like to handle them, and because you enjoy handling people and negotiating with them, you are successful in doing so.  While you are fairly active physically, you are very much more active mentally.  Your work, therefore, should be mental work, with a fair amount of light physical activity mingled with it, instead of purely physical work.  You ought to hold an executive position and ought to have charge of thee finances of some concern which is engaged in the building and selling of machinery.  You have worked, up to the present time, with heavy, coarse, crude machinery.  But you are of fine texture, refined type, and naturally have a desire to work with that which is fine, delicate and beautiful—­something into which you can put some of your natural refinement and artistic ability.  You are still young.  You have learned a trade at which you can earn fairly good wages.  You ought, therefore, to prepare yourself in some way for business.  Work during the summer, and then during the winter resume your studies, preparing yourself for an executive position in connection with manufacturing and selling fine machinery.  Study accounting, banking, finance, salesmanship, advertising, mechanical engineering and designing.  At the earliest possible moment give up your work in a machine shop where heavy machinery is manufactured and begin to get some actual experience in the manufacture of something finer and more artistic; for example, the automobile.”