398 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



inducement. When these "Latin schools" grew into little colleges, 

 parents and students alike knew that requirements of duty were ful- 

 filled by payment of a small fee; the instructors were mostly clergymen 

 who eked out their incomes by serving neighboring churches. It is 

 said that of the first 110 colleges in this country, 100 were founded with 

 training for the ministry as the prime object. The importance of edu- 

 cation received full recognition, but teaching as such was not regarded 

 as a serious matter; it was merely an incidental part of a minister's 

 work. The belief prevailed that if a young man was willing to accept 

 an education some one ought to give it to him. 



Until 75 years ago, college teaching in the greater part of this coun- 

 try was controlled by clergymen, members of an ill-paid profession. 

 Even now a large proportion of our college and university presidents 

 are ministers, and there are many in prominent places who maintain 

 that higher education should be under clerical supervision. The tradi- 

 tion continues that teaching like preaching is, or should be, altruistic 

 work and the salaries are graded accordingly. Some time ago the presi- 

 dent of a great university blamed this lack of appreciation on the ma- 

 terialistic tendencies of our time, casting all on that convenient beast 

 of burden, commercialism. But this is without reason. Failure to 

 appreciate the work of college professors is merely a survival of the 

 hard materialism of early days, when pioneers struggled against a 

 harsh climate and gained their farms by felling the forest. Genuine 

 appreciation of intellectual work comes only in an age like this ; it comes 

 with advancing civilization, when men have been freed from bitter con- 

 test with nature, with the physical comfort found only in commercial 

 communities, such as Athens, Babylon or Thebes, in the olden times, or 

 the great commercial centers of modern times. Our business men rec- 

 ognize the power of pure intellect; they pay its possessors almost fab- 

 ulous salaries; they endow colleges and universities in the hope that 

 intellectual training will enable the coming generation to begin where 

 they have left off and to accomplish greater things. The blame for 

 wretched salaries and constantly increasing overwork can not be laid at 

 their door. The scale was fixed originally by clergymen, the one class 

 against which the vague charge of commercialism can not be laid. If 

 the happy day should ever come when lay members of college boards 

 awake to the sense of their responsibilities and gain personal knowledge 

 of the kind and amount of work done by college professors, the com- 

 plaint respecting small salaries will be at an end. 



Conditions have undergone great change since the days of the 

 "Latin schools." When population was sparse, when little money was 

 in circulation, though the people lived in comfort, the modest college, 

 with few teachers, small fees and narrow curriculum, was necessary if 

 the professions were to be recruited. But those conditions have passed 



