542 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



as to preaching — one of them perhaps more so — and neither is possible 

 to the jaded man. Should benevolent legislation — or professorial 

 trades-unionism — get far enough to forbid the professor's working more 

 than eight hours a day, or after six o'clock, or with too great rapidity, 

 it is conceivable that in respect at least of buoyancy his work would be 

 improved. 



The college professor is working hours enough, and he is earning 

 his salary. I am not going to make a display of statistics here. They 

 could be made to prove a great many things — among them, that it is 

 no wonder college professors marry late, have few children, and seem 

 glad of the opportunity to earn a few dollars outside the college walls. 

 But statistics are always under suspicion of perjury, so it will be just 

 as well, and much simpler, merely to repeat that the professor is earning 

 his salary, and to let it go at that. For my first year's instruction, in 

 one of the many "greatest universities in the world," I received eight 

 hundred dollars and the satisfaction of hard work in fields I liked. One 

 hundred dollars went for books, and I was married. To qualify for this 

 position, I had spent four years as undergraduate and four years more 

 as graduate, two of them in Europe. Salaries may have advanced some- 

 what during the past fifteen years, but the prices of wives and babies, 

 and other necessities of a really human life, have shown them a clean 

 pair of heels. 



This is not a complaint — at least, not an ill-natured complaint. 

 There is no doubt that if college professors in general, especially those 

 in the smaller institutions, were better paid, the level of ability in the 

 profession would be raised. Books, travel and study abroad, are the 

 great means of growth in the intellectual life, and there are very few 

 who can afford them. But there is no great reason for thinking that 

 a rise in salaries on a large scale would have the commensurate effect 

 upon teaching. There may be some truth in the assertion sometimes 

 made that the brightest and most capable young men in college are 

 attracted to the more highly paid professions, with the implication that 

 the teaching profession suffers ; but there is not much cause for worry 

 on this account. Any professor of experience will say that among all 

 these "bright and capable" young men there is only once in a while 

 a real mind, and that the peculiar combination of mind and soul that 

 constitutes the ideal of the teacher is even more rare; and that the 

 young man who possesses the combination rarely fails to enter the teach- 

 ing profession — naturally, and not for the financial reason. 



It would be a sorry event for liberal education — and for technical 

 education too — if the principles of scientific management were really 

 applied : if the professor's preparation were formally prescribed, if hours 

 were fixed and tasks made absolutely definite, if promotions and salaries 

 were determined as in the business world, and all the worldly ways of 

 inspection, stimulation, and compulsion were introduced. There is 

 already too much of all this — too much talk of " units," of the " instruc- 



