778 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1013 



But a system by which seekers after truth 

 in corporate service themselves share in the 

 management tends to keep it within 

 bounds. The positive system of corporate 

 control thus obviates a danger to freedom 

 inherent in the permissive system. It 

 comes to the aid of free thought and free 

 speech, entails a liberation of the spiritual 

 forces within a nation. 



The inclusion in charitable boards of 

 men experienced in the actual accomplish- 

 ment of their purposes is not new in this 

 country either as a fact or an ideal. Their 

 representation, never wholly lacking, is 

 growing, and its extension is advocated 

 with authority. 



Frequently, if not commonly, a single 

 chief executive officer, the head of the staff, 

 is included in the board of trustees. The 

 old ideal of the all-round man lingers in 

 this provision, here swollen to impossible 

 proportions. The admitted difficulty of 

 finding satisfactory executive heads for in- 

 stitutions of the humanities is the sign of 

 an unreasonable demand upon human ca- 

 pacity. No single executive, however ac- 

 tive and talented, can embody in himself 

 various types of modern professional 

 knowledge and skill. The due representa- 

 tion of men of ends in any considerable 

 corporation will always be a number 

 greater than unity. A fair fraction of the 

 board must be selected from their ranks. 

 The demand upon the executive is thereby 

 decreased to the manageable proportions 

 of a business leadership, either with or 

 without, a special professional function. 



Specialists have found a place already 

 in a number of our scientific and artistic 

 corporations. The charter of a noted sci- 

 entific school, affiliated with a university, 

 stipulates that of the corporation of nine, 

 one third shall always be professors or ex- 

 professors of the school. In another insti- 

 tute a larger proportion are persons in im- 



mediate control of the scientific work. No 

 commanding need of appeal to the com- 

 munity for financial support existing in 

 these cases, the men of ends have taken 

 their natural place in the management 

 along with men of means. Among mu- 

 seums of art more than one has chosen 

 trustees from its own working staff and 

 those of neighboring institutions. 



In our chief universities, it has become 

 the practise to allow the alumni a large 

 representation in the board of trustees. 

 Of the two bodies of persons concerned in 

 the actual achievement of the teaching pur- 

 pose — the teachers and the taught — this 

 practise accords to one — the taught — its 

 share in ultimate management. The step 

 suggests, and may be believed to announce, 

 a second, by which the other body — the 

 teachers — will gain a similar representa- 

 tion. The class of alumni trustees has for 

 its logical complement a class of faculty 

 trustees; a class more indispensable to vital 

 university success than their predecessors, 

 in that they represent not the sub.iects but 

 the source of university discipline. 



The step has found prominent advocates. 

 In the Atlantic Monthly for September, 

 1905, President Pritchett asks "Shall the 

 university become a business corporation ? ' ' 

 He suggests that the business of graduating 

 men has little to do with the art of edu- 

 cating them, and concludes 



In the settlement of the larger questions of ad- 

 ministration . . . may not some council composed 

 of trustees and faculty jointly share the responsi- 

 bility to advantage? . . . To-day we need, in my 

 judgment, to concern ourselves in the university 

 with the spiritual side of administration. 



In articles entitled "University Con- 

 trol" published in Science in 1906 and 

 1912, Professor Cattell proposes that pro- 

 fessors should take their place with alumni 

 and interested members of the community 

 in the corporation of a university, and re- 



