FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF CORNELL- 1870-1872 395 



tution which gives it. Two or three large institutions 

 which have thought themselves in possession of endow- 

 ments sufficient to warrant giving gratuitous instruction 

 have tried it, but as a rule have not been able to go on 

 with it, and have at last come to the principle of charging 

 moderate fees. Secondly, it simply makes a present of a 

 small sum to a large number of young men, most of whom 

 neither need nor appreciate it, and who would be better 

 for regarding their university instruction as something 

 worth paying for. 



But my main objection to the system of indiscriminate 

 gratuitous instruction is that it does the country a posi- 

 tive injury in drawing away from the farms, workshops, 

 and stores large numbers of young persons who would 

 better have been allowed to remain there ; that it tends to 

 crowd what have been called "the learned professions" 

 with men not really fitted for them ; that it draws masses 

 of men whose good right arms would be of great value in 

 the rural districts, and makes them parasites in the cities. 

 The farmers and the artisans complain of the lack of 

 young men and women for their work; the professional 

 men complain that the cities are overstocked with young 

 men calling themselves lawyers, doctors, engineers, and 

 the like, but really unworthy to exercise either profession, 

 who live on the body politic as parasites more or less 

 hurtful. This has certainly become an evil in other coun- 

 tries : every enlightened traveler knows that the ranks of 

 the anarchists in Russia are swollen by what are called 

 "fruits sees" that is, by young men and young women 

 tempted away from manual labor and avocations for which 

 they are fit into " prof essions ' ' for which they are unfit. 

 The more first-rate young men and young women our uni- 

 versities and technical schools educate the better; but the 

 more young men and women of mediocre minds and weak 

 purpose whom they push into the ranks of poor lawyers, 

 poor doctors, poor engineers, and the like, the more in- 

 jury they do to the country. 



As I now approach the end of life and look back over 



