CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 



skepticism As October i, the day for opening our doors to 

 students, approached, the skeptical general public 

 showed little enthusiasm over the establishment of 

 a new university in California. Indeed, some 

 cynics declared that it was "a real estate specu- 

 lation," quite regardless of the fact that Mr. Stan- 

 ford did not then own even the land on which his 

 Palo Alto residence stood, all his holdings in Santa 

 Clara County having been inalienably deeded to 

 the institution. Voicing another point of view, 

 the New York Mail and Express said that there 

 was "as much need of a new university in Cali- 

 fornia as for an asylum for decayed sea-captains in 

 Switzerland," and prophesied that for years to come 

 the professors would ''lecture in marble halls to 

 empty benches." 



Nearer home, our colleagues in the State Univer- 

 sity, though personally most friendly, saw only a 

 gloomy outlook ahead for both institutions, as was 

 soon made clear. In September the Stanford profes- 

 sors already on hand were given a dinner by the 

 California faculty, on which occasion a conspicuous 

 member of the latter, Dr. Bernard Moses of the 

 chair of Political Science, made the speech of wel- 

 come. Incidentally he explained that the Uni- 

 versity of California had only 400 students in all, 

 and only 150 young people were each year prepared 

 for college in the state; the opening of another 

 institution, therefore, if it insisted on the standards 



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