SCIENCE 



[J^. S. Vol. XXX. No. 759 



tion and Needs of the University of Cali- 

 fornia,'" and of preparing the " Report of the 

 Committee on Salaries at Cornell."' These 

 papers his critic may have seen, but what can 

 he know of the writer's mass of correspond- 

 ence and unpublished data, or of the duration 

 and extent of his investigations ? 



3. " They have realized that in the case of 

 this institution, well known to them, allow- 

 ance had to be made for the published sta- 

 tistics, but they have not shown equal 

 generosity to those institutions concerning 

 which they knew little or nothing, and have 

 accepted all statistics at face value." This 

 broad charge very obviously refers to the 

 writer's footnotes on page 784; but by what 

 stretch of the imagination can these be in- 

 terpreted as showing " generosity " to the in- 

 stitution he serves — figures which reduce the 

 salary expenditure per student from $219 to 

 $176.51, and the salary average from $2,500 

 to $1,500? These were obvious notes from 

 other published data and the references were 

 given. 



4. " All persons connected with universi- 

 ties know very well for example, how little 

 trust is to be placed in the average compara- 

 tive tables regarding the total number of 

 students at the various institutions of learn- 

 ing. Nearly every large university, by means 

 of due selection and suppression, has made out 

 a good case at one time or another in the at- 

 tempt to show that it is the largest university 

 in this country. These methods savor very 

 much of some of the advertising indulged in 

 by insurance companies, but universities and 

 those writing about them ought to have a 

 somewhat more scientific standard." So? 

 Our critic "has a good eye. He can see a 

 church by daylight." Specifically this can 

 only refer to Table 4, page 784, a table com- 

 piled from data furnished, it is to be pre- 

 sumed, by the institutions themselves to the 

 Carnegie Foundation and in the construction 

 of which the writer's part was purely me- 

 chanical — dividing figures in one column by 



' Trans. Commonwealth Glub of Cal., October, 

 1907. 

 ^Cornell Alumni Neus, May 6. 190S. 



figures in another. He didn't even use his 

 head for the purpose — he did it with a slide- 

 rule. If the results of these divisions are not 

 exactly what had been foreseen by those who 

 furnished the data, the blame must not fall 

 on the writer. If there is fraud by all means 

 let it be weeded out. The plain truth is what 

 we are after. If " such looseness of state- 

 ment does great injustice to many an institu- 

 tion," whose looseness of statement is it? 

 If " no one having an intelligent knowledge of 

 higher education in America can suppose that 

 the average salary per year at Johns Hopkins 

 is $1,226, or at Northwestern $835, or at 

 Minnesota $867, or at Toronto $881," then 

 that person, if of average intelligence, must 

 infer that the figures furnished by these in- 

 stitutions to the Carnegie Foundation lacked 

 that element of accuracy and coherence which 

 one might have a right to expect in data 

 emanating from such sources. 



Your correspondent intimates that he could 

 show the Harvard statistics to be entirely 

 misleading. In this case the sources of my 

 data are so readily accessible to all that I will 

 give them : 



Chart 3. Data 1880-1904, President Eliot's 

 Annual Eeport, 1904^5, p. 15. Additional 

 points for 1876, 1905 and 1906 from cata- 

 logues. 



Chart 8. Same report, pp. 18-19. 



Chart 13. Same report, p. 15. 



Charts 22 and 27. Data for 1904, same re- 

 port, p. 345. (The average salary is there 

 given as $1,570.) Data for 1907, Carnegie 

 Foundation Bulletin No. 2, pp. 10-11. The 

 only other Harvard statistics in the article 

 are those of Table 4, p. 784, also from the 

 Carnegie Bulletin, No. 2, pp. 10-11. 



Where are these items at fault? 



But this letter grows too long. Mr. Lich- 

 tenstein says the average salary computed for 

 Northwestern is wrong because it includes 

 men who get nothing at all for their services. 

 Under the circumstances the argument is 

 naive. It reminds one of Sheridan's consol- 

 ing remark to his very stout but rueful ad- 

 versary in a duel : " To even things up we 

 will draw two chalk-lines down you and 



