EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS IN THE SOUTH. 543 



EDUCATIO^iTAL ENDOWMENTS AT THE SOUTH. 



Bv ELIZABETH M. HOWE. 



WITHIN the past five years alone the benefactions to institu- 

 tions of higher learning in the United States have amounted to 

 a little more than sixty-one millions. That is to say, during that time 

 money from private sources has been devoted to liberal education at the 

 rate of a little more than a million dollars a month. In many cases, it 

 must be admitted, the claim of the institutions thus favored to the rank 

 of college or university is not very substantial, but the gifts themselves 

 represent the loyalty of the donors to a certain ideal of education, how- 

 ever imperfectly that ideal may have expressed itself. 



At first it would seem that this flood of gold, the high tide of a 

 stream that began to flow about thirty years ago, could have left no 

 need of the higher education unprovided for; but as usual a closer 

 survey of the field shows not only many a nook not yet irrigated, but 

 whole fields still arid and uncared for. Educational endowments have 

 this in common with other investments, that they follow usually the 

 line of greatest immediate efficiency; they are also controlled in a high 

 degree by sentiment, and the two have so reinforced each other here in 

 America as to turn great streams of wealth in certain directions, while 

 but scanty dribbles have flowed in others. The habit of giving began 

 to establish itself soon after the civil war, and the greatest beneficiaries 

 during these intervening years have been the young men of the New 

 England and north central states. The next most favored class have 

 been the young men and women of the middle states and the west; 

 least of all has the white population of the south profited by this gen- 

 erosity. And by the white population we do not mean the 'poor whites,' 

 nor the mountaineers, nor the 'crackers,' nor any other class tradition- 

 ally aloof from educational infiuences, but the white race in toto. ' The 

 south, ' also, should be defined. For our purpose here it means the ten 

 cis-Mississippi slave states and Louisiana, since the slave states further 

 west have been subjected to influences which have left the first group 

 untouched. 



Looking through the list of institutions of the higher learning issued 

 by the Bureau of Education at Washington — a list which is comprehen- 

 sive rather than critical — we find the advantage in every respect but 

 one with the north. That advantage, to speak politely, is in the num- 

 ber of universities and colleges of liberal arts themselves. Massachu* 



