6 1 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



stead of holding each professor responsible to him. The bureaucratic 

 or department-store system of university control is the disease which 

 is now serious and may become fatal. This subjection of the individual 

 to the machinery of administration and to the rack wage, is but an 

 invasion of the university by methods in business and in politics from 

 which the whole country suffers. We may hope that it is only a tempo- 

 rary incident in the growth of material complexity beyond the powers 

 of moral and intellectual control, and that man may soon regain his 

 seat in the saddle. Certainly Harvard has led the way. It has adopted 

 a scale of salaries independent of superficial supply and demand, and 

 has placed them outside the influence of intrigue and favoritism. The 

 bureaucratic system is less dominant than elsewhere. And it has its 

 reward ; for I find in an objective study of the distribution of the 

 scientific men of the country that no less than one fifth of those most 

 eminent are here. 



It has been said more than once that the college is in danger of 

 being crushed between the upper millstone of the professional school 

 and the nether millstone of the secondary school; those who have used 

 this simile do not appear to realize that this is the way fine flour is 

 made. The trouble with our educational system is that the college has 

 not only exploited its frivolous amateurism and its futile scholasticism 

 at home, but it has imposed them on the high school and even on the 

 grades. When we have high schools fit for the people and professional 

 schools of the right sort, the college will be molded into proper shape. 



President Lowell closed his inaugural address with the words : 



It is said that if the temperature of the ocean were raised, the water would 

 expand until the floods covered the dry land; and if we can increase the intel- 

 lectual ambition of college students, the whole face of the country will be 

 changed. When the young men shall see visions the dreams of old men will 

 come true. 



If the temperature of the ocean were raised sufficiently, Cambridge 

 and its university would be submerged, while the great continent with 

 its state universities would stand untouched. But if the intellectual 

 ambition is sound and the visions are sane Harvard College can be 

 saved. 



I trust that I have not exceeded the privileges proper to a guest or 

 the freedom allowed by an after-dinner address. Those men and those 

 institutions which are too great for compliment are still subject to 

 honest criticism. It would be impertinent for me to praise Harvard 

 University and its leaders. Harvard stands apart from and above all 

 our other universities, secure in its past and in its future, one of the 

 great contributions made by America to the civilization of the world. 



