NOVEMBEB 2, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



661 



and good with little self-denial in the busi- 

 ness of all times except their own." 



Let me say that no man can be brought 

 into contact with the actual machinery of 

 our government, can mingle with the men 

 who make our laws, who interpret them and 

 who execute them, without gaining not only 

 a wholesome respect for the service of the 

 State, but also a reasonable hopefulness for 

 the future of our institutions. 



So far as my judgment goes, there are 

 few conventions of men brought together 

 for any purpose in which the average of in- 

 telligence and of honesty is higher than in 

 the American Congress. It goes without 

 saying that its members are influenced by 

 personal considerations, by social ties, by 

 all the things which move men — in other 

 words, they are human — but it is a gather- 

 ing of men who honestly desire to do the 

 right thing. 



It is the fashion to speak of the honesty 

 and the intelligence of the good old days 

 when the republic was young and when 

 statesmen were pure, and to deprecate the 

 decadence of the present day. Such talk 

 is the purest nonsense. The general intel- 

 ligence of the body of Congress is higher 

 to-day then it ever was, and its conscience 

 is quite as acute. Unfortunately, the work 

 of quiet and serious men receives little at- 

 tention from the public, although these men 

 count enormously in the actual work of 

 legislation. 



In the executive branches of the govern- 

 ment as well, one will find a quality of ser- 

 vice to command respect. There are in- 

 competents in greater numbers than one 

 could wish, but the quality of men entering 

 government service is improving steadily 

 since the civil service law has made it pos- 

 sible for men of education and energy to 

 find a career there. And, notwithstanding 

 the half-hearted service of the few, it is true 

 that the government receives quite as much 

 of devotion and of unselfish service as one 



can find in the ranks of those engaged in 

 private business. 



The government of the United States is 

 honestly conducted. Its condition furnishes 

 to those who know it best the basis of a 

 rational optimism as to the future of demo- 

 cratic institutions. In its service men of 

 education should find, in increasing num- 

 bers, careers of the highest usefulness and 

 of the highest dignity. 



Another quality of the education given to 

 the youth upon which the State has a right 

 to insist is its catholicity. The State makes 

 no distinctions in the matter of education. 

 It aims to make its highest training acces- 

 sible to the humblest as well as to the most 

 aristocratic. 



No system of education is a good one for 

 a free State in which the students and grad- 

 uates of its institutions of learning get out 

 of touch with the great body of their fellow- 

 citizens. Such a lack of contact between 

 the men of education and those who lack 

 education brings about a feeling of distrust 

 as between men of two distinct classes. 

 Under such circumstances the educated man 

 is likely to lose the perspective concerning 

 social facts and tendencies, and becomes 

 suspicious and narrow ; to feel that the 

 country is fast going to the bad, and that 

 the advice and the service of the educated 

 man are not properly appreciated. 



One of the practical results of this feeling' 

 has been that the college man has not al- 

 ways realized that he was to take his place 

 side by side with the man who had no col- 

 lege education ; that he must expect to begin 

 where the uneducated man begins, and that 

 his education was not a mark to distinguish 

 him from other men, but a training which 

 ought to enable him to do his part of the 

 world's work better than the man who 

 lacked this training, but that he was not 

 one whit better, nor was he to receive the 

 slightest consideration because of his better 

 opportunity. 



