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- 

 shops. 



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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