SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. 551 



longer remained for their enforcement. It came to be seen tliat 

 a university community where every man is absorbed in his 

 work may be made practically self-governing. Such a body 

 of students has channels for the excretion of the idle and the 

 vicious. 



As may be surmised, the effect upon the instructor of such a 

 series of reforms as those here glanced at was profound. The 

 college scout was converted into the university professor. In case 

 he proved recalcitrant to this high calling, he was permitted to 

 "seek some other field of usefulness." In case he turned out 

 worthy, his life acquired the value and dignity of high purpose, 

 even when the practical work of organizing an educational ex- 

 periment gave him little time for scientific or literary production. 

 Upon the indebtedness of such men at several seats of learning to 

 President Jordan, this is not the time to dilate. Suffice it to say 

 that at Stanford University, where of course his influence is at its 

 height, he has drawn a large number of diverse and energetic 

 personalities into abiding harmony touching matters that pertain 

 to educational salvation. Jordan's favorite quotation is the say- 

 ing of Ulrich von Hutten, "Die Luft der Freiheit weht " ("Free- 

 dom is in the air"). This free air is to us the breath of life. 



THE common opinion, cays Mr. Horatio Hale, in one of his anthropological 

 paper?, that women among savage tribes in general are treated with harshness, 

 and are regarded as slaves, or at least as inferiors and drudges, is based on error, 

 originating in too large and indiscriminate induction from narrow premises. A 

 wider experience shows that this depressed condition of women really exists, but 

 only in certain regions and under special circumstances. It is entirely a question 

 of physical comfort, and mainly of abundance or lack of food. Where, owing to 

 an inclement climate, as in arctic or subarctic America, or to a barren soil, as in 

 Australia, food is scanty, and the people are frequently on the verge of famine, 

 harsh conditions of social life prevail. When men in their full strength suffer 

 from lack of the necessaries of existence, and are themselves slaves to the rigors 

 of the elements, their better feelings are numbed or perverted, like those of ship- 

 wrecked people famishing on a raft. Under such circumstances the weaker mem- 

 bers of the community women, children, the old, the sick are naturally the 

 chief sufferers. The stories of the subjection of women, and of inhumanity to the 

 feeble and aged, all come from these inhospitable regions. Where plenty pre- 

 vails, as in tropical or subtropical America, and in most of the Polynesian islands, 

 the natural sentiments resume their sway, and women enjoy a social position not 

 inferior, and sometimes actually superior, to that which they possess in some civ- 

 ilized countries. The wife of a Samoan landowner or a Navajo shepherd has no 

 occasion, so far as her position in her family or among her people is concerned, 

 to envy the wife of a German peasant. The change which took place in the social 

 condition of the Tinneh women, when their emigration had carried them from 

 the bleak skies and frozen swamps of Athabaska to the sunny uplands and fruit- 

 ful valleys of Arizona, is thus explained. 



