684 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 409. 



ment or current support of the institution. 

 He must also see that this money once ob- 

 tained is wisely spent. He must be able 

 to prepare a budget in which security is 

 offered for the wise expenditure of every 

 dollar and that the total outlay be kept 

 within the total income. In many eases he 

 must, furthermore, supervise and be gen- 

 erally responsible for the actual adminis- 

 tration of the business affairs of the luiiver- 

 sity. 



In the public mind, at any rate, he is 

 entrusted with responsibility for all the 

 details of discipline, from providing safe- 

 guards against the silly pranks of freshmen 

 or the wild excesses of upper classmen en- 

 gaged in celebrating athletic victories, to 

 determining the attitude of the institution 

 toward fraternities and sororities. 



In fact, the position in its functions and 

 responsibilities has become an almost ab- 

 surd one. No man, however able, however 

 experienced, can possibly perform all its 

 duties. I have had the rare good fortune 

 to work in the very closest relations with 

 two of the ablest university presidents 

 whom this country has ever produced— 

 remarkable not only as educational leaders 

 of the first rank but as men of extraordi- 

 nary powers for general effectiveness in 

 anything they imdertake— Dr. William 

 Pepper, late provost of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, the ablest native-born citizen 

 of Philadelphia, a man of extraordinary 

 insight and far-reaching mental powers, 

 and President William R. Harper, whom 

 you all know as facile princeps in this field. 

 I have known several other able university 

 presidents and I am sure that I am not 

 reflecting iipon their ability or their good 

 will when I say that I have never known a 

 imiversity president who fulfilled even ap- 

 proximately the functions which his posi- 

 tion theoretically placed upon him ; for the 



simple reason among others that it tran- 

 scends human ability. 



I need not say that I have no hopes of 

 succeeding where these men and such as 

 they have failed. I mean by failing that 

 they failed to do the things which the logic 

 of their positions forced upon them ; which 

 under the circumstances nobody else could 

 do ; which they had no time or strength to 

 do and which, therefore, went undone. 



I believe the time is rapidly approach- 

 ing, if it is not already here, when this 

 office must be put into commission; when 

 its functions shall be separated and when 

 the duties now entrusted in theory to one 

 man will be divided among several. 



The office, as said before, is an outgrowth 

 of our peculiar educational conditions and 

 will probably disappear in its present form 

 when we pass from the pioneer to the 

 settled state of society. 



IMore than one foreign critic has re- 

 marked upon the strange forces which in a 

 republic have evolved such an anomalous 

 officer— strangest of all in the republic of 

 letters and science — an officer with vague 

 but real powers of discipline over faculty 

 and students— chosen not by faculty or 

 students but by an oiitside and irresponsi- 

 ble body — the anomalous organ before re- 

 ferred to— the board of trustees. Some- 

 body has defined the government of Russia 

 to be a despotism tempered by assassina- 

 tion. Somebody else has remarked that 

 this is almost an exact description of the 

 government of an American college or uni- 

 versity. The president of the institution 

 backed up by the board of trustees can 

 drive out not only any particular professor 

 but an entire faculty or several faculties — 

 such an occurrence is not unknown in our 

 ediicational history. The president keeps 

 on in his course of change — reformation or 

 deformation as the case may be — until the 

 rising tide of opposition finally overwhelms 



