EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS IN THE SOUTH. 549 



a million will hardly do for a college. The host solution of the prob- 

 lem of the secondary schools in the south is the concentration of the 

 strength of a coninumity upon its public schools, since to keep them 

 at a creditable level is to help to the solution of more questions than 

 can be reached in any other way. The endowed private school, on the 

 other hand, has the great advantage of being out of politics and having 

 a freer hand in working out its development than is possible to a public 

 school in a community of lax or unformed educational standards. In 

 either case, the point is to secure to the school freedom to select its 

 teachers without political or denominational dictation, and to make it 

 strong enough to impose its standards upon a reluctant community. 



Finally, the interdependence of school and college is such that 

 neither can do its best work alone. The college rests upon the school as 

 the house on its foundations, and without the college standards by which 

 to test its work the school loses a powerful stimulus. With the utmost 

 generosity on the part of our philanthropists which can be looked for, 

 even in these lavish days, the southern colleges must remain for many 

 years inferior to those of the north in equipment and as a whole in 

 teaching force. Yet they represent for the great mass of the young men 

 and women in their respective communities the best that is open to 

 them, and, too often, all that can be desired. Probably as valuable a 

 gift as could be made to the south just now, and one requiring a com- 

 paratively small fund, would be the establishment of a group of scholar- 

 ships especially for young southern men and women, available in dif- 

 ferent institutions in the north. Let us imagine the competitive 

 examinations for such scholarships held at Ealeigh for the young men 

 and women of the Old North State, at Columbia, South Carolina, for 

 the students of that state, at Augusta, Jacksonville, Mobile. Not only 

 would every ambitious boy and girl in the state be aroused, but the spur 

 of opportunity would be felt in every school with a spark of life in its 

 m.anagement, and there would be the impact upon the very centers of 

 growth of new habits of thought. 



'The south has no reason to be ashamed of its traditions,' said a 

 dignified and able southern woman who had done good service for edu- 

 cation, when such a plan was broached in her hearing. But by the 

 time that one of her sons had graduated at Harvard and another at 

 Cornell, and her daughter was hard at work at Vassar and her niece 

 at Pratt, she would see that no question of traditions, in the sense in 

 which she felt them threatened, was involved. On the contrary, what 

 is best in the distinctive characteristics of the south can not be pre- 

 served by men and women of belated minds, and one of the services 

 which we ask of that part of the country is that those finer elements 

 shall be preserved and made a part of our national life. The present 

 demand for industrial education in the south, too, which is making 



