STATUS OF AMERICAN COLLEGE PROFESSORS. 749 



To the greater number of those who have become teachers of sci- 

 ence in our colleges, the chief attraction has been the promise of leisure 

 for study. But in the greater number of our institutions, that leisure 

 has practically disappeared and young men recognize the fact. On 

 the other hand, the applications of pure science have been multiplied; 

 the chemist, physicist, geologist and biologist have become, each of 

 them, the mainstay of industries not only requiring many millions of 

 capital, but also contributing in equal proportion to the welfare of 

 mankind. In each of these industries competition is so earnest that 

 incessant investigation along lines of pure science is essential. There 

 is here promised a greater reward of fame than the college instructor 

 can hope for, while in addition there is a prospect of pecuniary reward 

 for the wise and industrious man, compared with which the maximum 

 college salary is a pittance. It is quite in accord with human nature 

 that young men after completing graduate study, costly both in time 

 and money, should think applied science, which promises both fame 

 and money, preferable to college teaching, which promises in our day 

 not very much of either. 



It has been said that a change has passed over the minds of Amer- 

 ican college professors, that, whereas formerly they regarded investi- 

 gation as the all-important and teaching as the unimportant part of 

 their duties, they now regard themselves as chosen especially to teach. 

 This is a somewhat belated discovery, for the American college pro- 

 fessor has always been preeminently a teacher, to whom investigation 

 has always been, as it were, a side-issue. But for a generation, owing 

 to rapid expansion of curricula without corresponding increase in num- 

 ber of teachers, there has been an increasing neglect of investigation. 

 For the most part, small colleges to-day are as well off for men and 

 equipment as not a few of our larger institutions were fifty years ago, 

 but their contributions to the sum of human knowledge, at least on 

 the scientific side, are in no sense comparable with those made by 

 college men of the earlier period. This reacts on the college, for men 

 who are not investigators by nature and to some extent, at least, in 

 practise can never be genuine teachers. They may be good dis- 

 ciplinarians, masters in the art of hearing recitations, adepts in com- 

 pelling students to learn lessons, but as retailers of merely second-hand 

 information they never can be makers of men. 



Beyond all doubt there will always be an ample supply of candidates, 

 whatever the salary may be, but ambitious young men will not take up 

 a profession which threatens to dwarf them intellectually and socially; 

 rather will they turn aside to business or to other professions in which 

 great prizes await diligence and common sense. The sentimental 

 grounds on which many chose college work no longer exist, since oppor- 

 tunities for service to others abound everywhere even for the busiest 



