University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY COURSES—1870-1872

IN close connection with the technical departments were various laboratories. For these, place was at first made here and there in cellars and sheds; but at last we were able to erect for them buildings large and complete, and to the opening of the first of these came Mr. Cleveland, then Governor of New York, and later President of the United States. Having laid the corner-stone of the Memorial Chapel and made an excellent speech, which encouraged us all, he accompanied me to the new building devoted to chemistry and physics, which was then opened for the first time. On entering it, he expressed his surprise at its equipment, and showed that he had seen nothing of the kind before. I learned afterward that he had received a thorough preparation in classics and mathematics for college, but that, on account of the insufficient means of his father, he was obliged to give up his university course; and it was evident, from his utterances at this time, as well as when visiting other colleges and universities, that he lamented this.

Out of this laboratory thus opened was developed, later, a new technical department. Among my happiest hours were those spent in visiting the various buildings, collections, and lecture-rooms, after my morning's work, to see how all were going on; and, during various visits to the new laboratory I noticed that the majority of the students were, in one way or another, giving attention to matters connected with electricity. There had already

been built in the machine-shops, under the direction of Professor Anthony, a dynamo which was used in lighting our grounds, this being one of the first examples of electric lighting in the United States; and on one of my visits I said to him, "It looks much as if, with the rapid extension throughout the country of the telegraph, telephone, electric lighting, and electric railways, we shall be called on, before long, to train men for a new profession in connection with them.'' As he assented to this, I asked him to sketch out a plan for a "Department of Electrical Engineering,'' and in due time he appeared with it before the executive committee of the trustees. But it met much opposition from one of our oldest members, who was constitutionally averse to what he thought new-fangled education, partly from conservatism, partly from considerations of expense; and this opposition was so threatening that, in order to save the proposed department, I was obliged to pledge myself to become responsible for any extra expense caused by it during the first year. Upon this pledge it was established. Thus was created, as I believe, the first department of electrical engineering ever known in the United States, and, so far as I can learn, the first ever known in any country.

But while we thus strove to be loyal to those parts of our charter which established technical instruction, there were other parts in which I personally felt even a deeper interest. In my political reminiscences I have acknowledged the want of preparation in regard to practical matters of public concern which had hampered me as a member of the State Senate. Having revolved this subject in my mind for a considerable time, I made, while commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1878, a careful examination of the courses of study in political and economic science established in European universities, and on my return devoted to this subject my official report. Like such reports generally, it was delayed a long time in the Government Printing-office, was then damned with

faint praise, and nothing more came of it until the following year, when, being called to deliver the annual address at the Johns Hopkins University, I wrought its main points into a plea for education in relation to politics. This was widely circulated with some effect, and I now brought a modest proposal in the premises before our trustees. Its main feature was that Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, a graduate of Harvard, Secretary of the Board of Charities of the State of Massachusetts and of the Social Science Association of the United States, should be called to give a course of practical lectures before the senior class during at least one term,—his subjects to be such as pauperism, crime (incipient and chronic), inebriety, lunacy, and the best dealing of modern states with these; also that his instructions should be given, not only by lectures, but by actual visits with his classes to the great charitable and penal institutions of the State, of which there were many within easy distance of the university. For several years, and until the department took a different form, this plan was carried out with excellent results. Professor Sanborn and his students, beginning with the county almshouse and jail, visited the reformatories, the prisons, the penitentiaries, and the asylums of various sorts in the State; made careful examinations of them; drew up reports upon them, these reports forming the subject of discussions in which professor and students took earnest part; and a number of young men who have since taken influential places in the State legislature were thus instructed as to the best actual and possible dealings with all these subjects. I still think that more should be done in all our universities to train men by this method for the public service in this most important and interesting field, and also in matters pertaining generally to State, county, and city administration.

Closely connected with this instruction was that in political economy and history. As to the first of these, I had, some years before, seen reason to believe that my strong, and perhaps bigoted free-trade ideas were at least

not so universal in their application as I had supposed. Down to the time of our Civil War I had been very intolerant on this subject, practically holding a protectionist to be either a Pharisee or an idiot. I had convinced myself not only that the principles of free trade are axiomatic, but that they afford the only means of binding nations together in permanent peace; that Great Britain was our best friend; that, in desiring us to adopt her own system, she was moved by broad, philosophic, and philanthropic considerations. But as the war drew on and I saw the haughtiness and selfishness toward us shown by her ruling classes, there came in my mind a revulsion which led me to examine more closely the foundations of my economical belief. I began to attribute more importance to John Stuart Mill's famous "exception,'' to the effect that the building up of certain industries may be necessary to the very existence of a nation, and that perhaps the best way of building them up is to adopt an adequate system of protective duties. Down to this time I had been a disciple of Adam Smith and Bastiat; but now appeared the published lectures of Roscher of Leipsic, upon what he called "The Historical System'' of political economy. Its fundamental idea was that political economy is indeed a science, to be wrought out by scientific methods; but that the question how far its conclusions are adapted to the circumstances of any nation at any time is for statesmen to determine. This impressed me much. Moreover, I was forced to acknowledge that the Morrill protective tariff, adopted at the Civil War period, was a necessity for revenue; so that my old theory of a tariff for revenue easily developed into a belief in a tariff for revenue with incidental protection. This idea has been developed in my mind as time has gone on, until at present I am a believer in protection as the only road to ultimate free trade. My process of reasoning on the subject I have given in another chapter.

At the opening of the university there was but little instruction in political economy, that little being mainly

given by our professor of moral philosophy, Dr. Wilson, a man broad in his views and strong in reasoning power, who had been greatly impressed by the ideas of Friedrich List, the German protectionist. But lectures were also given by free-traders, and I adopted the plan of having both sides as well represented as possible. This was, at first, complained of; sundry good people said it was like calling a professor of atheism into a theological seminary; but my answer was that our university was not, like a theological seminary, established to arrive at certain conclusions fixed beforehand, or to propagate an established creed; that, political economy not being an exact science, our best course was to call eminent lecturers to present both sides of the main questions in dispute. The result was good. It stimulated much thought, and doubtless did something to promote that charity to opposing economical opinions which in my own case had been, through my early manhood, so conspicuously lacking.

The second of these departments—history—was the one for which I cared most. I believed then, and later experience has strengthened my conviction, that the best of all methods in presenting every subject bearing on political and social life is the historical. My own studies had been mainly in this field, and I did what I could to establish historical courses in the university. The lectures which I had given at the University of Michigan were now developed more fully and again presented; but to these I constantly added new lectures and, indeed, new courses, though at a great disadvantage, since my administrative duties stood constantly in the way of my pro-fessorial work. At the same time I went on collecting my historical library until it became, in its way, probably the largest and most complete of its kind in the possession of any individual in the United States. Gradually strong men were drawn into the department, and finally there came one on whom I could lay a large portion of the work.

The story is somewhat curious. During the year 1877-1878, in Germany and France, I had prepared a short

course of lectures upon the historical development of criminal law; and while giving it to my senior class after my return, I noticed a student, two or three years below the average age of the class, carefully taking notes and apparently much interested. One day, going toward my house after the lecture, I found him going in the same direction, and, beginning conversation with him, learned that he was a member of the sophomore class; that he had corresponded with me, two or three years before, as to the best means of working his way through the university; had followed out a suggestion of mine, then made, in that he had learned the printer's trade; had supported himself through the preparatory school by means of it, and was then carrying himself through college by setting type for the university press. Making inquiries of professors and students, I found that the young man, both at school and at the university, was, as a rule, at the head of every class he had entered; and therefore it was that, when the examination papers came in at the close of the term, I first took up his papers to see how he had stood the test. They proved to be masterly. There were excellent scholars in the senior class, but not one had done so well as this young sophomore; in fact, I doubt whether I could have passed a better examination on my own lectures. There was in his answers a combination of accuracy with breadth which surprised me. Up to that time, passing judgment on the examination papers had been one of the most tedious of my burdens; for it involved wading through several hundred pages of crabbed manuscript, every term, and weighing carefully the statements therein embodied. A sudden light now flashed upon me. I sent for the young sophomore, cautioned him to secrecy, and then and there made him my examiner in history. He, a member of the sophomore class, took the papers of the seniors and resident graduates, and passed upon them carefully and admirably— better than I should have ever had the time and patience to do. Of course this was kept entirely secret; for had the seniors known that I had intrusted their papers to the tender mercies of a sophomore, they would probably have mobbed me. This mode of examination con-tinued until the young man's graduation, when he was openly appointed examiner in history, afterward becoming instructor in history, then assistant professor; and, finally, another university having called him to a full professorship, he was appointed full professor of history at Cornell, and has greatly distinguished himself both by his ability in research and his power in teaching. To him have been added others as professors, assistant professors, and instructors, so that the department is now on an excellent footing. In one respect its development has been unexpectedly satisfactory. At the opening of the university one of my strongest hopes had been to establish a professorship of American history. It seemed to me monstrous that there was not, in any American university, a course of lectures on the history of the United States; and that an American student, in order to secure such instruction in the history of his own country, must go to the lectures of Laboulaye at the Collège de France. Thither I had gone some years before, and had been greatly impressed by Laboulaye's admirable presentation of his subject, and awakened to the fact that American history is not only more instructive, but more interesting, than I had ever supposed it. My first venture was to call Professor George W. Greene of Brown University for a course of lectures on the history of our Revolutionary period, and Professor Dwight of Columbia College for a course upon the constitutional history of the United States. But finally my hope was more fully realized: I was enabled to call as resident professor my old friend Moses Coit Tyler, whose book on the "History of American Literature'' is a classic, and who, in his new field, exerted a powerful influence for good upon several generations of students. More than once since, as I have heard him, it has been borne in upon me that I was born too soon. Remembering the utter want of any such instruction in my own college days, I have especially envied those who have had the good fortune to be conducted by him, and men like him, through the history of our own country.[6]

In some of these departments to which I have referred there were occasionally difficulties requiring much tact in handling. During my professorial days at the University of Michigan I once heard an eminent divine deliver an admirable address on what he called "The Oscillatory Law of Human Progress''—that is, upon the tendency of human society, when reacting from one evil, to swing to another almost as serious in the opposite direction. In swinging away from the old cast-iron course of instruction, and from the text-book recitation of the mere dry bones of literature, there may be seen at this hour some tendency to excessive reaction. When I note in sundry university registers courses of instruction offered in some of the most evanescent and worthless developments of contemporary literature,—some of them, indeed, worse than worthless,—I think of a remark made to me by a college friend of mine who will be remembered by the Yale men of the fifties for his keen and pithy judgments of men and things. Being one day in New Haven looking for assistant professors and instructors, I met him; and, on my answering his question as to what had brought me, he said, "If at any time you want a professor of horse sense, call me.'' I have often thought of this proposal since, and have at times regretted that some of our institutions of learning had not availed themselves of his services. The fact is that, under the new system, "horse sense'' is especially called for to prevent a too extreme reaction from the evils which afflicted university instruction during my student days.

While it rejoices my heart to see the splendid courses in modern literature now offered at our larger universities, some of them arouse misgivings. Reflecting upon the shortness of human life and the vast mass of really great literature, I see with regret courses offered dealing

with the bubbles floating on the surface of sundry literatures— bubbles soon to break, some of them with ill odor.

I would as soon think of endowing restaurants to enable young men to appreciate caviar, or old Gorgonzola, or game of a peculiarly "high'' character, as of establishing courses dealing with Villon, Baudelaire, Swinburne, and the like; and when I hear of second-rate critics summoned across the ocean to present to universities which have heard Emerson, Longfellow, Henry Reed, Lowell, Whipple, and Curtis the coagulated nastiness of Verlaine, Mallarmé, and their compeers, I expect next to hear of courses introducing young men to the beauties of absinthe, Turkish cigarettes, and stimulants unspeakable. Doubtless these things are all due to the "oscillatory law of human progress,'' which professors of "horse sense'' like my friend Joe Sheldon will gradually do away with.

As time went on, buildings of various sorts rose around the university grounds, and, almost without exception, as gifts from men attracted by the plan of the institution. At the annual commencement in 1869 was laid the cornerstone of an edifice devoted especially to lecture-rooms and museums of natural science. It was a noble gift by Mr. John McGraw; and amid the cares and discouragements of that period it gave us new heart, and strengthened the institution especially on the scientific side. In order to do honor to this occasion, it was decided to invite leading men from all parts of the State, and, above all, to request the governor, Mr. Fenton, to lay the corner-stone. But it was soon evident that his excellency's old fear of offending the sectarian schools still controlled him. He made excuse, and we then called on the Freemasons to take charge of the ceremony. They came in full regalia, bringing their own orators; and, on the appointed day, a great body of spectators was grouped about the foundations of the new building on the beautiful knoll in front of the upper quadrangle. It was an ideal afternoon in June, and the panorama before and around

us was superb. Immediately below us, in front, lay the beautiful valley in which nestles the little city of Ithaca; beyond, on the left, was the vast amphitheater, nearly surrounded by hills and distant mountains; and on the right, Cayuga Lake, stretching northward for forty miles. Few points in our country afford a nobler view of lake, mountain, hill, and valley. The speakers naturally expatiated in all the moods and tenses on the munificence of Mr. Cornell and Mr. McGraw; and when all was ended the great new bell, which had just been added to the university chime in the name of one most dear to me,—the largest bell then swinging in western New York, inscribed with the verse written for it by Lowell,—boomed grandly forth. As we came away I walked with Goldwin Smith, and noticed that he was convulsed with suppressed laughter. On my asking him the cause, he answered: "There is nothing more to be said; no one need ever praise the work of Mr. Cornell again.'' On my asking the professor what he meant, he asked me if I had not heard the last speech. I answered in the negative—that my mind was occupied with other things. He then quoted it substantially as follows: "Fellow-citizens, when Mr. Cornell found himself rich beyond the dreams of avarice, did he give himself up to a life of inglorious ease? No, fellow-citizens; he founded the beautiful public library in yonder valley. But did he then retire to a life of luxury? No, fellow-citizens; he came up to this height (and here came a great wave of the hand over the vast amphitheater below and around us) and he established this universe!''

In reference to this occasion I may put on record Lowell's quatrain above referred to, which is cast upon the great clock-bell of the university. It runs as follows:

There was also cast upon it the following, from the Psalter version of Psalm xcii:

To tell of thy loving-kindness early in the morning: and of thy truth in the night season.

While various departments were thus developed, there was going on a steady evolution in the general conception of the university. In the Congressional act of 1862 was a vague provision for military instruction in the institutions which might be created under it. The cause of this was evident. The bill was passed during one of the most critical periods in the history of the Civil War, and in my inaugural address I had alluded to this as most honorable to Senator Morrill and to the Congress which had adopted his proposals. It was at perhaps the darkest moment in the history of the United States that this provision was made, in this Morrill Act, for a great system of classical, scientific, and technical instruction in every State and Territory of the Union; and I compared this enactment, at so trying a period, to the conduct of the Romans in buying and selling the lands on which the Carthaginians were encamped after their victory at Cannæ. The provision for military instruction had been inserted in this act of 1862 because Senator Morrill and others saw clearly the advantage which had accrued to the States then in rebellion from their military schools; but the act had left military instruction optional with the institutions securing the national endowment, and, so far as I could learn, none of those already created had taken the clause very seriously. I proposed that we should accept it fully and fairly, not according to the letter of the act, but to the spirit of those who had passed it; indeed, that we should go further than any other institution had dreamed of going, so that every undergraduate not excused on the ground of conscientious scruples, or for some other adequate cause, should be required to take a thorough course of military drill; and to this end I supported a plan,

which was afterward carried out by law, that officers from the United States army should be detailed by the Secretary of War to each of the principal institutions as military professors. My reasons for this were based on my recollections of what took place at the University of Michigan during the Civil War. I had then seen large numbers of my best students go forth insufficiently trained, and in some cases led to destruction by incompetent officers. At a later period, I had heard the West Point officer whom I had secured from Detroit to train those Michigan students express his wonder at the rapidity with which they learned what was necessary to make them soldiers and even officers. Being young men of disciplined minds, they learned the drill far more quickly and intelligently than the average recruits could do. There was still another reason for taking the military clause in the Morrill Act seriously. I felt then, and feel now, that our Republic is not to escape serious internal troubles; that in these her reliance must be largely upon her citizen soldiery; that it will be a source of calamity, possibly of catastrophe, if the power of the sword in civil commotions shall fall into the hands of ignorant and brutal leaders, while the educated men of the country, not being versed in military matters, shall slink away from the scene of duty, cower in corners, and leave the conduct of military affairs to men intellectually and morally their inferiors. These views I embodied in a report to the trustees; and the result was the formation of a university battalion, which has been one of the best things at Cornell. A series of well-qualified officers, sent by the War Department, have developed the system admirably. Its good results to the university have been acknowledged by all who have watched its progress. Farmers' boys,—slouchy, careless, not accustomed to obey any word of command; city boys, sometimes pampered, often wayward, have thus been in a short time transformed: they stand erect; they look the world squarely in the face; the intensity of their American individualism is happily modified; they can take the word of command and they can give it. I doubt whether any feature of instruction at Cornell University has produced more excellent results upon character than the training thus given. And this is not all. The effect on the State has been valuable. It has already been felt in the organization and maintenance of the State militia; and during the war with Spain, Cornellians, trained in the university battalion, rendered noble service.

Among the matters which our board of trustees and faculty had to decide upon at an early day was the conferring of degrees. It had become, and indeed has remained in many of our colleges down to the present day, an abuse, and a comical abuse. Almost more than any other thing, it tends to lower respect for many American colleges and universities among thinking men. The older and stronger universities are free from it; but many of the newer ones, especially various little sectarian colleges, some of them calling themselves "universities,'' have abused and are abusing beyond measure their privilege of conferring degrees. Every one knows individuals in the community whose degrees, so far from adorning them, really render them ridiculous; and every one knows colleges and "universities'' made ridiculous by the conferring of such pretended honors.

At the outset I proposed to our trustees that Cornell University should confer no honorary degrees of any sort, and a law was passed to that effect. This was observed faithfully during my entire presidency; then the policy was temporarily changed, and two honorary doctorates were conferred; but this was immediately followed by a renewal of the old law, and Cornell has conferred no honorary degrees since.

But it is a question whether the time has not arrived for some relaxation of this policy. The argument I used in proposing the law that no honorary degree should be conferred was that we had not yet built up an institution whose degrees could be justly considered as of any value. That argument is no longer valid, and possibly some departure

from it would now be wise. Still, the policy of conferring no honorary degrees is infinitely better than the policy of lavishing them.

As to regular and ordinary degrees, I had, in my plan of organization, recommended that there should be but one degree for all courses, whether in arts, science, or literature. I argued that, as all our courses required an equal amount of intellectual exertion, one simple degree should be granted alike to all who had passed the required examination at the close of their chosen course. This view the faculty did not accept. They adopted the policy of establishing several degrees: as, for example, for the course in arts, the degree of A.B.; for the course in science, the degree of B.S.; for the course in literature, the degree of B.L.; and so on. The reason given for this was that it was important in each case to know what the training of the individual graduate had been; and that the true way to obviate invidious distinctions is so to perfect the newer courses that all the degrees shall finally be considered as of equal value and honor. This argument converted me: it seemed to me just, and my experience in calling men to professorships led me more and more to see that I had been wrong and that the faculty was right; for it was a matter of the greatest importance to me, in deciding on the qualifications of candidates for professorships, to know, not only their special fitness, but what their general education had been.

But, curiously enough, within the last few years the Cornell faculty, under the lead of its present admirable president, has reverted to my old argument, accepted it, and established a single degree for all courses. I bow respectfully to their judgment, but my conversion by the same faculty from my own original ideas was so complete that I cannot now agree to the wisdom of the change. It is a curious case of cross-conversion, I having been and remaining converted to the ideas of the faculty, and they having been converted to my original idea. As to the whole matter, I have the faith of an optimist that eventually,

with the experience derived from both systems, a good result will be reached.

Another question which at that time occupied me much was that of scholarships and fellowships awarded by competitive examinations versus general gratuitous instruction. During the formation of my plans for the univer-sity, a number of excellent men urged upon me that all our instruction should be thrown open to all mankind free of charge; that there should be no payment of instruction fees of any kind; that the policy which prevails in the public schools of the State should be carried out in the new institution at the summit of the system. This demand was plausible, but the more I thought upon it the more illogical, fallacious, and injurious it seemed; and, in spite of some hard knocks in consequence, I have continued to dissent from it, and feel that events have justified me.

Since this view of mine largely influenced the plan of the university, this is perhaps as good a place as any to sketch its development. In the first place, I soon saw that the analogy between free education in the public schools and in the university is delusive, the conditions of the two being entirely dissimilar. In a republic like ours primary education of the voters is a practical necessity. No republic of real weight in the world, except Switzerland and the United States, has proved permanent; and the only difference between the many republics which have failed and these two, which, we hope, have succeeded, is that in the former the great body of the citizens were illiterate, while in the latter the great body of voters have had some general education. Without this education, sufficient for an understanding of the main questions involved, no real republic or democracy can endure. With general primary education up to a point necessary for the intelligent exercise of the suffrage, one may have hopes for the continuance and development of a democratic republic. On this account primary education should be made free: it is part of our political system; it is the essential condition of its existence.

The purpose of university education is totally different. The interest of the Republic is, indeed, that it should maintain the very highest and best provision for advanced instruction, general, scientific, and technical; and it is also in the highest interest of the Republic that its fittest young men and women should secure such instruction. No republic, no nation in fact, possesses any other treasure comparable to its young citizens of active mind and earnest purpose. This is felt at the present time by all the great nations of the world, and consequently provision is made in almost all of them for the highest education of such men and women. Next to the general primary education of all voters, the most important duty of our Re-public is to develop the best minds it possesses for the best service in all its fields of high intellectual activity. To do this it must supply the best university education, and must smooth the way for those to acquire it who are best fitted for it, no matter how oppressive their poverty.

Now, my first objection to gratuitous university instruction to all students alike is that it stands in the way of this most important consummation; that it not only does not accomplish the end which is desirable, but that it does accomplish another which is exceedingly undesirable. For the real problem to be solved is this: How shall the higher education in different fields be brought within reach of the young men and women best fitted to acquire it, to profit by it, and to use it to best advantage? Any one acquainted with American schools and universities knows that the vast majority of these young people best fitted to profit by higher education come from the families of small means. What does gratuitous instruction in the university offer them? Merely a remission of instruction fees, which, after all, are but a small part of the necessary expenses of a university course. With many of these young persons—probably with most—a mere remission of instruction fees is utterly insufficient to enable them to secure advanced education. I have alluded to the case of President Cleveland, who, having been well fitted

for the university, could not enter. His father being a country clergyman with a large family and small means, the future Chief Executive of the United States was obliged to turn aside to a teacher's place and a clerkship which afforded him a bare support. At the Hamilton College commencement a few years since, Mr. Cleveland, pointing to one of the professors, was reported as saying in substance: "My old school friend by my side is, of all men, the one I have most envied: he was able to buy a good edition of Vergil; I was not.''

It would not have been at all difficult for him to secure a remission of instruction fees at various American colleges and universities; but the great difficulty was that he could not secure the means necessary for his board, for his clothing, for his traveling expenses, for his books, for all the other things that go to make up the real cost of life at a university. I can think of but one way, and that is, as a rule, to charge instruction fees upon the great body of the students, but both to remit instruction fees and to give scholarships and fellowships to those who, in competitive examinations and otherwise, show themselves especially worthy of such privileges. This is in conformity to the system of nature; it is the survival of the fittest. This was the main reason which led me to insert in the charter of Cornell University the provision by which at present six hundred students from the State of New York are selected by competitive examinations out of the mass of scholars in the public schools, and to provide that each of these best scholars shall have free instruction for four years.

But this was only a part of the system. From the first I have urged the fact above mentioned, namely, that while remission of instruction fees is a step in the right direction, it is not sufficient; and I have always desired to see some university recognize the true and sound principle of free instruction in universities by consecrating all moneys received from instruction fees to the creation of competitive scholarships and fellowships, each of which

shall amount to a sum sufficient to meet, with economy, the living expenses of a student. This plan I was enabled, in considerable measure, to carry out by establishing the competitive scholarships in each Assembly district; and later, as will be seen in another chapter, I was enabled, by a curious transformation of a calamity into a blessing, to carry it still further by establishing endowed scholarships and fellowships. These latter scholarships, each, as a general rule, of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, were awarded to those who passed the best examinations and maintained the best standing in their classes; while the fellowships, each of the value of from four to five hundred dollars a year, were awarded to the seniors of our own or other universities who had been found most worthy of them. In the face of considerable opposition I set this system in motion at Cornell; and its success leads me to hope that it will be further developed, not only there, but elsewhere. Besides this, I favored arrangements for remitting instruction fees and giving aid to such students as really showed promising talent, and who were at the time needy. To this end a loan fund was created which has been carefully managed and has aided many excellent men through the university courses.[7] Free instruction, carried out in accordance with the principle and plan above sketched, will, I feel sure, prove of great value to our country. Its effect is to give to the best and brightest young men, no matter how poor, just the chance they need; and not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of wise policy. This is a system which I believe would be fraught with blessings to our country, securing advanced education to those who can profit by it, and strengthening their country by means of it.

On the other hand, the system of gratuitous remission of instruction fees to all students alike, whether rich or poor, I believe to be injurious to the country, for the following reasons: First, it generally cripples the institution

which gives it. Two or three large institutions which have thought themselves in possession of endowments sufficient to warrant giving gratuitous instruction have tried it, but as a rule have not been able to go on with it, and have at last come to the principle of charging moderate fees. Secondly, it simply makes a present of a small sum to a large number of young men, most of whom neither need nor appreciate it, and who would be better for regarding their university instruction as something worth paying for.

But my main objection to the system of indiscriminate gratuitous instruction is that it does the country a positive injury in drawing away from the farms, workshops, and stores large numbers of young persons who would better have been allowed to remain there; that it tends to crowd what have been called "the learned professions'' with men not really fitted for them; that it draws masses of men whose good right arms would be of great value in the rural districts, and makes them parasites in the cities. The farmers and the artisans complain of the lack of young men and women for their work; the professional men complain that the cities are overstocked with young men calling themselves lawyers, doctors, engineers, and the like, but really unworthy to exercise either profession, who live on the body politic as parasites more or less hurtful. This has certainly become an evil in other countries: every enlightened traveler knows that the ranks of the anarchists in Russia are swollen by what are called "fruits secs''—that is, by young men and young women tempted away from manual labor and avocations for which they are fit into "professions'' for which they are unfit. The more first-rate young men and young women our universities and technical schools educate the better; but the more young men and women of mediocre minds and weak purpose whom they push into the ranks of poor lawyers, poor doctors, poor engineers, and the like, the more injury they do to the country.

As I now approach the end of life and look back over

the development of Cornell University, this at least seems to me one piece of good fortune—namely, that I have aided to establish there the principle of using our means, so far as possible, not for indiscriminate gratuitous higher education of men unfit to receive it; not, as President Jordan has expressed it, in "trying to put a five-thousand-dollar education into a fifty-cent boy''; but in establishing a system which draws out from the community, even from its poorest and lowliest households, the best, brightest, strongest young men and women, and develops their best powers, thus adding to the greatest treasure which their country can possess.