7 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



admirably the intellectual treasures of our people and the material 

 resources of our country ; but, cramped by want of books, want of 

 apparatus, want of everything needed in advanced institutions, 

 cramped above all by the spirit of the sectarian college system, 

 very many of them have been paralyzed. Then, too, the really 

 strong men holding professorships are too often hampered by in- 

 competent men, whose main function was to hear boys' parrot' 

 text-books by rote in the recitation-room, and to denounce ' science 

 falsely so called ' in the chapel, varying these avocations by going 

 about the country denouncing every attempt at a better system as 

 ' godless/ and passing around the contribution-boxes in behalf of 

 the bad system they represented." 



The American college of the middle of this century, like its 

 English original, existed for the work of the Church. If the col- 

 lege dies the Church dies, was the basis of its appeal for money and 

 influence. Its duty was to form a class of educated men in whose 

 hands should lie the preservation of the creed. In the mouths of 

 ignorant men the truths of the Church would be clouded. Each 

 wise church would see that its wisdom be not marred by human 

 folly. 



The needs of one church indicated the needs of others. So it 

 came about that each of the many organizations called churches in 

 America established its colleges here and there about the country, 

 all based on the same general plan. 



And as the little towns on the rivers and prairies grew with 

 the progress of the country into large cities, so it was thought, by 

 some mysterious virtue of inward expansion, these little schools in 

 time would grow to be great universities. And in this optimistic 

 spirit the future was forestalled, and the schools were called uni- 

 versities from the beginning. As time went on, it appeared that a 

 university could not be made without money, and the source of 

 money must be outside the schools. And so has ensued a long 

 struggle between the American college and the wolf at the door — 

 a tedious, belittling conflict, which has done much to lower the 

 name and dignity of higher education. To this educational plant- 

 ing without watering, repeated again and again, East and West, 

 North and South, must be ascribed the unnaturally severe struggle 

 for existence through which our colleges have been forced to pass, 

 the poor work, low salaries, and humiliating economies of the 

 American college professor, the natural end of whom, according to 

 Dr. Holmes, " is starvation/' 



The intense rivalry among these schools, like rivalry among 

 half-starving tradesmen, has done much to belittle the cause in 

 which all are engaged. At the same time, their combined rivalry 

 has too often prevented the growth within their neighborhood of 

 any better school. 



