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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 756 



living for a time in this city and observing 

 tlie powers of the federal government in action 

 is most beneficial to the country at large. 

 This college has received special contributions 

 towards its current expenses. During the 

 present year it received ten thousand dollars 

 pledged for next year. We have limited the 

 scope of the work to two years of undergradu- 

 ate and two of graduate study, making the en- 

 trance requirement two years of college work. 

 This brings all students, for the first two 

 years, into the Liberal Arts College, but al- 

 lows them free election of the courses in the 

 political sciences in the third and fourth years 

 of their undergraduate studies. The object 

 in making it a separate organization was to 

 secure contributions and endowment for the 

 work which could ngt be done successfully if 

 it was merged in a college of the liberal arts. 

 Experience in other institutions has shown 

 that a faculty of the political sciences is more 

 successful when conducting the work within 

 its own field. 



9. It will be observed that all of these small 

 branches that have put out from the main col- 

 lege are confined entirely to technical courses 

 and are intended to furnish the minimum 

 amount of such courses required to meet exist- 

 ing demands in the District of Columbia. 

 The center of it all is the College of Liberal 

 Arts, and in each of these special branches the 

 new students have increased the numbers in 

 the Liberal Arts College, while their tuition 

 fees have nearly paid the salaries of the tech- 

 nical teachers, except in the College of the 

 Political Sciences, and there the deficiency 

 has been made up by special contributions. 



10. In order to carry out these plans and do 

 the work on the lines proposed, it has been 

 necessary to fit up and maintain new labora- 

 tories and to increase the library facilities. 

 In 1902 we had five or six thousand volumes 

 of books in the whole institution; to-day we 

 have about forty thousand volumes. 



11. The foregoing constitutes all of the 

 policies of the present administration which 

 have been criticized or condemned by mem- 

 bers of the college faculty and I put them 

 forth without argument, in order that the 



people of Washington may determine whether 

 these plans have been educationally sound, 

 and whether or not a university serving the 

 community in all of its needs is worthy of 

 their confidence and support. Professors who 

 opposed these educational advances, finding 

 that there was call for efforts to maintain the 

 university, went to the trustees and proposed 

 to take the university and run it for the fees, 

 provided the president was removed and their 

 policies could prevail. 



Had this concerted effort been successful 

 with the trustees, not only would the " salary 

 of the president " have been saved, but this 

 new work would have been stricken down and 

 many of the new professors would have been 

 discharged. It is a matter of conjecture 

 whether, had this plan succeeded and fifteen 

 or twenty professors been discharged, there 

 would have been a proportionate increase in 

 the agitation of the public mind. 



13. In regard to the pensioning of teachers, 

 so far as I understand it, it has always been 

 construed where a pension system existed that 

 when a professor has become entitled to a 

 pension, either by length of service or by age 

 limit, he has the right to retire voluntarily at 

 any time, and the university has the equal 

 right to retire him when for any cause it 

 seems expedient to do so. In the recent ac- 

 tion it became necessary to reduce the ex- 

 penses about twenty-five thousand dollars, and 

 to distribute that retrenchment among each 

 of the departments of the university. Of 

 necessity the services of some of the teachers 

 had to be dispensed with, and in selecting the 

 ones to be retained, all things being equal, it 

 was natural to retain those who were thor- 

 oughly in harmony with the general plans and 

 development of the university. 



The action of the Carnegie Foundation in 

 assuming that the university had no option 

 but could retire only those eligible who volun- 

 tarily sought retirement seems to be contrary 

 to the usual construction of pension systems. 

 Waiving this point, however, their action in 

 our case was hasty and arbitrary. As the 

 secretary sought to give the widest possible 

 publicity to the injury done the university by 



