344 
able to permit the professors and other 
officers to elect for limited terms repre- 
sentatives—not necessarily from among 
themselves—on the board of trustees in the 
manner now becoming usual for alumni 
representation. It is undesirable for the 
individual professor to tease the trustees 
with his needs or grievances; but there 
should surely be some way by which trus- 
tees and professors can consider together 
the problems confronting the university. 
A joint committee of trustees and pro- 
fessors such as has just now been consti- 
tuted to administer the Crocker Cancer 
Research Fund of Columbia University is 
an excellent plan. 
If trustees are trustees and not directors, it 
does not greatly matter in practise how many 
of them there are or how they are chosen, 
so long as they are men of integrity and 
honor, representative of the common sense 
of the community. Even if the trusteeship 
is an acknowledgment of gifts made or 
hoped for, no great harm is done. But a 
self-perpetuating board with absolute 
powers, even though for a generation the 
powers may not be abused or even used, is 
intolerable in a democratic community. 
The president and directors of industrial 
corporations are elected by the sharehold- 
ers and are increasingly supervised by the 
state. In the state universities the regents 
are elected by the people or appointed by 
their representatives, and the people may 
be regarded as the ultimate corporation. 
In the case of the private universities, it 
would apparently be wise to have a large 
corporation consisting of the professors 
and other officers of the university, the 
alumni who maintain their interest in the 
institution and members of the community 
who ally themselves with it. This corpo- 
ration—or perhaps better the three groups 
of which it is composed—should elect the 
trustees. Thus there might be a board of 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXYV. No. 909 
nine trustees, one being elected annually 
for a three-year period by each of the three 
divisions of the corporation. 
Several of my correspondents hold that 
the members of the community permitted 
to join the corporation of a university 
should be carefully selected. I should 
myself like to see the widest possible par- 
ticipation. If 10,000 or 50,000 people 
would join such a corporation, so much the 
better. They would pay dues, perhaps five 
or ten dollars a year, and would enjoy cer- 
tain privileges such as attendance at lec- 
tures and concerts, the use of libraries, 
museums, rooms for meetings and the like. 
If many people are concerned with their 
university, it is well for them and for it. 
Some of them will become seriously inter- 
ested, ready to aid with their counsel, their 
influence and their money. In New York 
City several institutions—the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, the American Museum of 
Natural History, the Zoological Park, the 
Botanical Garden—are partly supported 
by the city, partly by boards of trustees 
and partly by members. The buildings 
are owned and the curators are paid by the 
city; the collections are owned and the re- 
search work is paid for by the trustees; the 
members have certain privileges in return 
for dues. In spite of obvious difficulties, 
the plan has worked well. 
A large corporation holding the univer- 
sity in trust for all the people is clearly a 
step in the direction of public ownership. 
It is the ultimate fate of every corporation 
to be controlled by the state, and our pri- 
vate universities will surely become part of 
the system of public education. This 
should develop gradually rather than 
through such measures as have been re- 
quired to obtain control of church prop- 
erty in other nations. When the people 
own their universities they will probably 
see the wisdom of delegating to those con- 
