shops. 
PROFESSORS AND PRACTICAL MEN 33 
in a very different position to-day, and our universities would 
hold a very different place in the esteem of. our countrymen. 
It is this historical retrospect, and the experience of the frantic 
and wasteful struggles in my own lifetime on the part of the 
worker to come to terms with the thinker, that have made 
me realize the dangers that attend academic seclusion, and 
have left me well content that my lot as a university teacher 
is cast within earshot of the throb and hum of busy work- 
Of all that we have lost in the course of the events I have 
described, nothing is more difficult to retrieve than confidence 
in the practical usefulness of university science. We are 
suspected at every turn of trying to elude the practical man, 
and to betake ourselves to studies, and impart information, 
whose glory lies in their detachment from all things mundane 
and remunerative. We have engendered the suspicion that 
we are intellectually exclusive, and that we do not understand 
or sympathize with the practical point of view. A better 
understanding between us is, I think, a matter of the greatest 
national importance; and it has seemed to me that if a better 
understanding is to be obtained, it is incumbent on the 
universities to go out as far as ever they can to meet the 
legitimate claims of the industrial community, and to bring 
their studies deliberately into the closest possible relationship 
with the industrial arts. 
I think I may claim that in this university we have shown 
no lack of courage in doing so. In spite of a good deal of 
academic apprehension and distrust (not always kindly — 
expressed) from outside critics, we have established depart- 
ments of work for the explicit purpose of furthering the 
special pursuits of industry, much in the same way and in 
the same spirit as schools of law, medicine, and theology 
were established in bygone days. Another thing on which 
I would lay the greatest stress, is that we have secured in 
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