Mat 14, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



115 



18-21 show the trend of average compen- 

 sation of the average member of the staff 

 at four of the institutions under consid- 

 eration. The writer's pleas for the corre- 

 sponding data for Harvard College were 

 unfortunately unheeded. 



The vitally significant thing about these 

 charts is the downward trend of the curves 

 for the past twenty years— a period of 

 great increase in the cost of living. 

 Coupling the increased cost of living, the 

 improvement in the general standard of 



paid ministry— in which there has not 

 been an increase in the average rate of 

 compensation somewhat commensurate 

 with the increasing cost of living. Here 

 we see no increase in the average compen- 

 sation of the profession, but an actual fall- 

 ing off. It may be argued that this is but 

 a natural and legitimate consequence of 

 recruiting so heavily the lower branches, 

 of the staff in order to keep up the pro- 

 portion of teachers to students. This 

 argument falls to the ground, however, 



living (a pressure which society exerts 

 upon every man), and the decrease in 

 actual compensation, it is not too much to 

 say that in purchasing power the average 

 teacher of 1908 is but sixty to seventy 

 per cent, as well off as was his colleague of 

 twenty years ago. It is believed that the 

 profession of college teaching is the only 

 field of work in the United States— not 

 even excepting the correspondingly poorly 



when we consider the increased require- 

 ments of candidates for entrance into the 

 teaching profession over what they were 

 twenty years ago. "The fact is that the 

 university is at the present time able to 

 secure for instructors as well-trained men 

 as those who formerly received appoint- 

 ments as professors in the best American 

 universities"'— wrote President Schur- 

 man in one of his annual reports some 



