Apeil 11, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



549 



upon which he receives his active salary." 

 President Pritchett is, indeed, not quite able 

 to forget his early insistence upon the prin- 

 ciple that the foundation's pensions " come as 

 a right, not as a charity." He therefore re- 

 peats this, and straightway unsays it. 



While the trustees have sought, and rightly 

 sought, to have teachers in the accepted institu- 

 tions feel that the pension is a thing earned and 

 not a charity, nevertheless it ought to be said 

 that the acceptance of it does not stand upon quite 

 the same basis as the acceptance of a salary, nor 

 have teachers appreciated quite fully that their 

 own attitude towards this gift and its use would 

 have its eflfeet upon educational giving and the 

 estimation that the world puts upon the motives 

 and ideals of teachers. The foundation would not 

 in any respect diminish the feeling that the 

 teacher, in an accepted institution, may accept the 

 pension as a right, not as a favor. None the less 

 it remains true that this is a free gift, and that 

 the well-to-do man who accepts it thereby makes 

 it impossible to extend the help of a pension to 

 one who really needs it.' 



A Carnegie pension, therefore, is hereafter 

 to be regarded as a "right" which is at the 

 same time " a free gift " ; it is a thing earned 

 which yet one ought not to accept if one al- 

 ready has a competency — a paradoxical entity 

 indeed. President Pritchett does not thus far 

 indicate that the trustees, before awarding 

 pensions, mean to use the methods of the 

 charity organization society in order to es- 

 tablish the fact of the applicant's poverty; 

 though the past history of the foundation 

 justifies no confidence that the rules will not 

 in time be changed so as to provide for some- 

 thing of this sort. Nor, if poverty is really 

 presupposed, ought the manner of establish- 

 ment of the fact to be left undetermined. 

 But for the present the question is left " for 

 the individual himself to settle." The indi- 

 vidual, however, receives a plain hint that he 

 is expected to settle it only in one way. Thus 

 the basis upon which pensions may, in Presi- 

 dent Pritchett's view, hereafter legitimately 

 be applied for is not service rendered, but 

 destitution. He would have them go exclu- 

 sively to aged professors who are also disabled 



'Hid., p. 83. 



and who " really need " such a " free gift " 

 for their support, and to widows similarly in 

 need. 



1. All this means, of course, that the pur- 

 pose which the early statements of the foun- 

 dation gave as its chief reason for being has 

 now been discarded altogether. This follows 

 both from the particular nature of the changes 

 already made or foreshadowed, and also from 

 the fact, now abundantly evident, that, in 

 general, constant change in its purposes and 

 its rules is the most distinguishing feature of 

 the foundation's conduct. The reward to be 

 expected by the reasonably successful and 

 thrifty member of the teaching profession will 

 be in no degree increased, if the system is put 

 upon the basis which President Pritchett now 

 recommends. The " social dignity " of the 

 profession will be in no way enhanced by the 

 maintenance of a fund for the relief of desti- 

 tute and disabled professors and their relicts, 

 least of all, if it is to continue to be a feature 

 of the foundation's policy to publish periodic 

 animadversions upon persons who have ac- 

 cepted pensions to which the plain language 

 of the rules seemed to entitle them, and if the 

 annual reports are regularly to contain melan- 

 choly reflections on " the darker side of pen- 

 sion administration " and the surprising 

 " selfishness " of many teachers. " Increasing 

 numbers of strong men " are little likely to be 

 attracted into the profession in their twenties 

 by the expectation of receiving a " free gift " 

 at nearly seventy, on condition that they are 

 then incapacitated and without means of sup- 

 port — especially when they know that the cor- 

 poration promising this gift reserves and fre- 

 quently exercises the right to disappoint the 

 expectations which it has aroused. 



While the new report thus manifests a re- 

 versal of the principles originally adopted on 

 these four essential points, it records one 

 change which is more in keeping with those 

 principles than has been the practise hereto- 

 fore prevailing. Hereafter no new grants are 

 to be made to persons not in " accepted insti- 

 tutions." 



Though the relation of cause and effect is 

 not altogether plainly avowed, the probable 



