GEORGE SOULÉ
By Vahé Baladouni University of New Orleans

Educator and author, George Soulé was born in Barrington, Yates County, New York, on May 14, 1834. Of French and German extraction, he was barely four years old when he lost his father. Some years later, his mother remarried and in 1842 the family moved to Illinois where they settled on a farm. In 1853, young Soulé graduated from an academy at Sycamore, Illinois and then went to St. Louis, Missouri where he pursued studies at McDowell’s Medical College and St. Louis Law School. But, finally, he resolved to become a teacher of commercial sciences, and in 1856 was graduated from Jones’ Commercial College in St. Louis.

A Pioneer in Business Education in the South. That same year he went to New Orleans where, discovering the lack of good commercial schools, he founded the Soulé Commercial College and Literary Institute. The school, which he started in a single room, soon prospered and in 1861 it was chartered by the Legislature of Louisiana “with authority to confer degrees and grant diplomas.” The outbreak of the Civil War, however, disrupted the educational work he had undertaken. He entered the Confederate army as captain and during the course of the war he was successively promoted to the rank of major and that of lieutenant-colonel.

At the close of the war, he returned to New Orleans and took charge once again of his school. Although the primary objective of his institution was to meet the needs of those who wished to be trained in the management of business affairs, he did not fail to perceive the rising need for a broader range of educational pro-grams. In 1870 he added an “English Grammar School” followed, ten years later, by “Preparatory English and Academic Schools,” and in 1884 he inaugurated a “Shorthand School.” In the year 1874 he acquired a building to house and operate more efficiently the gradually growing programs. A little over a quarter of a century later, the founder and president of this reputable commercial college of the South moved his institution to new and better facilities. The new college building which was erected in 1903 stood on one of the city’s most attractive locations: the beautiful Lafayette Square.

When George Soulé founded his commercial college in 1856, the privately owned and managed business school had barely a thirty-year history behind it. This type of institution was variously called vocational, proprietary, and trade school. One of the many early proprietary schools was established by Benjamin Franklin Foster in Boston in 1827, while others such as Mr. R. Montgomery Bartlett established one of the first proprietary business schools in Philadelphia in 1834. In its earlier stages, the proprietary or independent business school—a peculiarly American institution—taught penmanship, arithmetic, and bookkeeping; later, it added shorthand and typewriting. For many decades the proprietary business school furnished most of the office workers in the country; but with the introduction of business education programs into the public high schools, the independent business school faced a serious challenge. To meet the competition, the better business schools not only upgraded their technical programs, but they also broadened the range of their programs to include general education courses and thus help round out the training of their students.

An Overview of Some of the Programs. Between 1890 and 1910 when the American educational world was split apart by the issue of vocationalism versus traditional curriculum, Soulé College offered programs in general education along with its technical courses such as typewriting, shorthand, and bookkeeping. Two such programs were the Intermediate and Higher English Schools. The former program was open to boys from eight to fourteen, while the latter admitted boys thirteen to eighteen years of age. In addition, there was the Academic School which prepared students both for Tulane University and for the Commercial School of Soulé College. This was a two-year course of study and included the following subjects: spelling and defining, penmanship, universal history, higher arithmetic, algebra, plane and solid geometry, higher grammar, rhetoric, literature, physiology, physical geography, civil government, and Latin.

The business curriculum of Soulé College was divided into five courses of study. The first was the “introductory business.” This was intended for students without prior knowledge of bookkeeping and any previous experience in business. Then came “business practice.” Here the objective was to help students learn how to start and conduct a business utilizing source documents as well as bookkeeping records. “Banking and office routine” constituted the third course. In this course students were made thoroughly ac-quainted with the details of practical banking by serving in the College Bank on various jobs. Next came the “advanced commercial” course. The objective here was to provide students with knowledge of “higher accounting,” as applied to various lines of business, such as foreign and domestic merchandising, banking, plantation, and joint stock companies. Finally, students served in the “actual business” department. Around the turn of the century this was a relatively new and distinguishing feature of the business curriculum. Here, unlike in the “business practice’’ course, students conducted business with real money and goods and kept a complete set of accounting books.

Author of Textbooks. Dissatisfied with the textbooks of his time George Soulé wrote and published several books in practical mathematics as well as bookkeeping and accounting. As an author of textbooks, Soulé became very successful. According to the testimony of his contemporaries, the use of his works for classroom instruction “produced good results.” He became the author of several well-known textbooks, among them: Soulé’s Analytic and Philosophic Commercial and Exchange Calculator (1872); Soulé’s Intermediate Philosophic Arithmetic (1874); Soulé’s New Science and

Practice of Accounts (1881 ); Soulé’s Introductory Philosophic Arith-metical Drill Problems (1882); Soulé’s Philosophic Practical Mathematics (1895). Most of his works were used through several editions.

In the area of practical mathematics, he felt the need for improved methods of instruction. A follower of the Swiss educational reformer, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), Soulé found the arithmetic books of the day to be “more or less defective in logical reasons . . . and in clear elucidations of the subjects.” Aside from these short-comings, the textbooks did not apparently provide adequate practical problems. They did not meet well the changing business de-mands of the times. His nearly forty years of classroom experience in the field of mathematical education had convinced him that the best results in the teaching of practical mathematics could be attained not by the method of rules, but rather through a reasoning process which clarified the principles underlying the subject matter. His thousand-page work entitled Soulé’s Philosophic Practical Mathematics (1895) was designed not only to provide mathematical knowledge by the method of “reasoning process,” but also to be of immediate help to people with practical problems in the fields of “trade, finance, mechanics, and business.”

Another area of interest to him was the “science of accounts.” Here, too, he undertook the writing of textbooks not only with a view to improving the quality of explanations and discussions, but also to enrich the body of accounting knowledge by including in his treatise new topics of interest not yet incorporated in other published works. His textbook entitled Soulé’s New Science and Practice of Accounts (6th edition, 1901) was designed both for classroom instruction and as a standard work of reference. He believed, however, that just as in the cases of mathematics, physics, and other branches of learning, the mastery of accounting necessitated the aid of a competent teacher. This edition of his work was divided into three parts. In the author’s words, the first part constituted “a critical, concise, and exhaustive” presentation of the “science of accounts.” The next part gave the “actual work of bookkeeping in the best regulated counting-houses” in various lines of business. The last part presented a complete set of books in business areas such as cotton factorage, banking, and steamboating. It also included partnership settlement and practical mathematics. The seventh edition of this book (1903) was recently reprinted and published by Arno Press.

As a Tribute. In addition to his career as educator and author in the areas of practical mathematics and accounting, he lectured frequently and widely on many disparate subjects. He was in advance of his time in that he opposed child labor, favored more hygienic conditions for workers and advocated studies in sex-hygiene and eugenics. He was a member of many learned societies and president of the Business Educators’ Association of America. In recognition of his “exalted character, his eminent attainments in arts and letters, his constant devotion to the advancement of Truth and Welfare of Society,” on June 5, 1918, the administrators of the Tulane University of Louisiana conferred upon George Soulé the degree of Doctor of Laws.

(Vol. 3, No. 3, p. 8, 1976)