544 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



setts reports nine and so does Alabama; Ehode Island has one and 

 Connecticut three, but North Carolina has fifteen, Georgia and Vir- 

 ginia each eleven and Tennessee twenty-four. Yet out of a total of 

 157 millions of productive funds held by American colleges, the south 

 has but fifteen; of eight and a half million books in college libraries, 

 the south holds but one and a quarter millions ; the value of her scien- 

 tific apparatus is a little over a million against a total valuation of 

 seventeen millions, and of grounds and buildings eight and a half 

 millions in a total of 146 millions. The total annual income available 

 for the higher education in Virginia, Korth and South Carolina, 

 Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky is 

 nineteen thousand dollars less than the yearly income of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, The efficiency of this income is still further reduced by being 

 divided among a multitude of institutions. Ten feeble colleges are a 

 poor substitute for one strong one. Out of forty institutions in the 

 United States with jDroductive funds amounting to a million and over, 

 but five are in the south ; of twenty-one with productive funds of between 

 half a million and a million, but one. As to colleges for women, in 

 1890 sixty-eight per cent, of all such institutions — classing as colleges 

 institutions empowered to give degrees — were in the south, while 

 seventy-eight per cent, of the endowment of that group of institutions 

 was held by twelve colleges in the North Atlantic states. The increase 

 of endowment for women's colleges since that date has been prepon- 

 derantly in institutions at the north. 



So far as can be gleaned from public records, there are three 

 southern state universities which in thirty years have received no 'bene- 

 faction' whatsoever. It is true that in 1878 one of them reported hope- 

 fully that it had received some samples of cotton in different stages of 

 growth, and some silk cocoons, but the visions of prosperity thus 

 evoked were not fulfilled. Another term of barren years set in, and 

 though as an emblematic gift — the substance of things hoped for — the 

 cocoons were most happy, as an educational endowment they left much 

 to be desired. Occasionally the southern college not otherwise favored 

 has reported a gift of books, but there has been an ominously large 

 proportion of ' public documents ' in these lists, and libraries of country 

 clergymen — hardly treasuries of modern thought, it is to be feared. 

 These facts show another difference, in addition to the quantitative 

 one, between the educational opportunities which have been open to 

 the young men and women of the north and south. 



The usual way of meeting an array of facts such as these is to refer 

 to Mark Hopkins on his log as the true measure of the quality of a 

 college, but unfortunately in no way does a scanty endowment tell so 

 against an institution as in securing able teachers. The greatest 

 scholarship, the exceptional ability in teaching, the strong and winning 



