392 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the giver who has shown desire to meddle with ' professorial freedom.' 

 But there is a subordination which the writer knows leads young men 

 to despise the professor's calling, leads them, in Mr. Monroe's words, 

 to look with scorn upon a calling in which the individual is annihilated. 

 The president, too often a graduate from one of the narrowest courses 

 in college, too often belonging for much of his later life to a dogmatic 

 profession, has power to make and does make appointments on his own 

 motion to chairs in literature, philosophy as well as in pure and applied 

 science; he controls promotions and salaries; the professors are subor- 

 dinate to him individually as the faculties are collectively. Young 

 men, knowing the conditions, refuse to enter the calling; others, 

 ignorant of them, spend years in preparation and enter the calling only 

 to find, when too late to escape, that their ideal was as a will o' the wisp. 



The assertion is made that, were it not for this control, professors 

 would become perfunctory in their work. Some kind of control is 

 needed even for the best of men that matters be not at loose ends, but it 

 should be intelligent to be efficient. A successful business man, an 

 eminent lawyer, a great clergyman, would not prove efficient as superin- 

 tendent of a shop for grinding microscope lenses or for manufacturing 

 chronometers. And if occasionally he expressed opinions belittling the 

 skill required for the work or showed preference for quantity rather 

 than for quality of work, his control would be of doubtful value. This 

 is a condition in too many colleges, with the result that the president 

 is on one side, the faculty on the other, with nothing but distrust in 

 common. 



It is strange that so few college professors become perfunctory in 

 their work. They receive little personal recognition. If they exert 

 themselves to build up the library, museum or apparatus, if they induce 

 an acquaintance to give an endowment, all these are so many packages 

 thrown into the president's basket of achievements. Their services are 

 not acknowledged even in a material way. Their salaries are petty ; the 

 salary of a rowing coach in a great university is larger than that of an 

 assistant professor who has done efficient work for many years; in case 

 of urgent deficit, the first relief suggested is in reduction of the pro- 

 fessors' salaries. In other professions, experience and efficiency lead to 

 promotion; in this other matters prevail, and too often a young man, 

 untried, is appointed at higher salary than that received by older men 

 of well-ascertained efficiency. It is surprising that so few men come 

 to share the apparent opinion of president, trustees and many students 

 that their work is of only incidental importance. Yet there is no 

 reason why college professors should be more transcendental than other 

 men. 



These statements may seem strange to many persons of wealth. 

 The needs of the ' poor self-denying professor ' are exploited so fre- 



