CRITERIA of the Professional Man WALTER S. L A N D I S , Vice President, American Cyanamid Company Ι^Ιοβτ of those present will agree that *^" one should bave a rather complete specification of the product before at tempting to prescribe the method of pro duction. In the particular problem con fronting us there is no simple definition that covers professional status. Glancing through the files of one of the better city newspapers» one finds classified as pro fessional such miscellaneous vocations as baseball, boxing, dancing, football, golf, pick-pocketing, writing. The newspaper keeps within the definition in the diction ary. But the dictionary also indicates that there is a differentiation between these vocations and those of the intellec tual professions as exemplified by law, theology, medicine, etc. In the first category of vocations the term "professional" is used to distinguish from amateur. The professional is one who by skill and proficiency obtains a livelihood in his particular calling. Skill is the primary requisite· It is perfection reached essentially through practice. The professional baseball player is rarely a student of physics, of dynamics, of theory of force and acceleration and bodies in motion. Bis is a perfection reached through practice and repetition and with out necessarily any broad fundamental knowledge of the underlying sciences. It is unfortunate in a way that the term "professional" is applied to this group of vocations since it must be specifically qualified as the antonym of amateur. There is necessarily no superiority of per formance on thé pari of the professional as contrasted with a good amateur^cân fact, the amateur may quite weUtân^pe superior performer. In this caaS^gBrefore, the use of the term " p r o f ^ a s merely applying to economic status leads to confusion in the lay mind, since there is the other type of professional man wholly unrelated to the above. The intellectual professions, to use the differentiation of the dictionary, such as law, medicine, theology, science, and technology, do belong to a wholly unrelated group, yet rarely is the qualifying
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