THE ADMINISTRATIVE PERIL IN EDUCATION 509 



factors of the situation viewed academically, not commercially. The 

 folly of trying to serve two masters is as patent here as elsewhere. 

 Those who are worried lest men of unequal merit receive like salaries 

 reveal the commercial bent of their minds; the academic concern is 

 rather that men of like merit may receive unequal salaries. But sal- 

 aries can not be regulated on the principle that it is pleasant to re- 

 ceive them. Eewards of merit and Christmas stockings doubtless have 

 their place, but in the light of the lamp of learning, they seem a bit 

 tawdry; nor does it seem helpful to punish service that does not fulfill 

 promise by imposing complications in settling butchers' and grocers' 

 bills. If professors are going to scramble for incomes, they lose all 

 claim to the partial release from the economic pressure which their pre- 

 rogative claims. The whole wretched business is mismanaged and 

 causes more needless misery than it is proper to disclose. The security 

 of the professorship is involved; the integrity of great academic tradi- 

 tions is involved; the soundness and poise of the intellectual life is in- 

 volved. Indeed so much is involved that the enumeration might sug- 

 gest to the uncharitable that the academic nervous system finds its 

 solar plexus in the purse. The commanding consideration is that such 

 is not the case ; and the public should be prevented from so regarding it. 

 Salvation lies in holding fast to the plain truth that this, like all other 

 questions, must be considered and settled as an academic one. Any 

 system will be good — though some will be better than others — that is, 

 framed on that principle and on no other; that holds to it steadily, 

 come what may; that solves salary questions by preventing nine tenths 

 of them from arising; that does not invidiously discriminate between 

 men on a money basis ; that gives a man an independent seat in an aca- 

 demic counsel and relegates the pay day to its proper place in the cal- 

 endar. "A single university which acts in this way" [i. e., makes 

 tenure and preferment dependent on the president's ukase] " will in 

 the end obtain a faculty consisting of a few adventurers, a few syco- 

 phants and a crowd of mediocrities " ; if all universities do so, able 

 men will not embark "on such ill-starred ships" (J. McK. Cattell). 

 But the world is slow to banish the money-changers from the temple of 

 learning; and, sad to confess, the custodians of the shrine have invited 

 the disturbance of their offices by considerations of the market. 4 They 

 4 It is clear that I am not reviewing the salary question, but am touching 

 only on one phase of the principles affecting its solution. The question was 

 discussed five years ago by an association, composed of the presidents and deans 

 of a score of the foremost universities, which is sufficiently naive or presuming to 

 call itself "The Association of American Universities." Only one protagonist 

 stood out against his associates for an uncompromisingly academic adjustment. 

 Let me record my optimism in my belief that he would not stand alone to-day. 

 I am not in the least unaware of the many difficulties that beset the practical 

 adjustment of salaries to condition; nor do I forget that at some stage a 

 modus vivendi between academic and economic demands must be arranged. 

 This does not in the least excuse the reply of a president to a plea for the 



