36 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 654 



have no elementary school system. They 

 very generally have excellent ones. At- 

 tempting less than we do in the primary 

 schools, they sometimes do it better than we 

 do; and, better still, they have less diffi- 

 culty than we do in making every child 

 attend upon the instruction provided for 

 him. Nor is the difficulty that they have 

 no university system. Very generally they 

 have an excellent one, from which we have 

 much to learn. The difficulty is that there 

 is no connecting link between the two, and 

 that it is not intended that there shall be 

 one. There is not only no continuous road 

 from one to the other, but there are insur- 

 mountable barriers between them. The 

 universities serve an exclusive class, and 

 no matter how educationally entitled a 

 child of the masses may be, it is difficult, 

 almost to the point of prohibition, for him 

 to secure the advantages of the advanced 

 schools. 



That is the thing which the fundamental 

 political philosophy and the deliberate 

 democratic purpose of this country are ob- 

 viating. It is not that any of us are 

 against all the exclusiveness that anybody 

 wants in his private or family life. "VVe 

 all want some of that ourselves; it is a 

 matter of temperament, of congeniality, of 

 experience and of taste, and in personal 

 affairs these are to have their way ; but the 

 public policy of the country will give every 

 one his public chance, his equal oppor- 

 tunity—at least so far as the common 

 wealth and the common political power 

 are used to create individual opportunity 

 at all. 



Happily, the high-school movement in 

 America has proved to be a great disor- 

 ganizer of classes, as well as a great help 

 to the diffusion of higher learning. It has 

 made men and women of all classes know 

 each other better and regard each other 

 more. It has gained and retained the 



interest of many of quick mentality, 

 marked business success, and newly-ac- 

 quired wealth in popular education. It 

 has been the secret spring of many a great 

 gift to a university, and of much munifi- 

 cence for the common good. 



And, whatever else it has done, it has 

 created an overwhelming influence for the 

 development of universities and for deter- 

 mining the essential features of new univer- 

 sities in America. There was reason for the 

 earliest and most decisive manifestation of 

 this movement in the newer states. There 

 were no old-line academies and colleges 

 there to stand in the way of it. The set- 

 tlers were of the finest New York and New 

 England stock: they knew about the very 

 best in education. The parents were ready 

 to lay down their all, even their lives, for 

 their children; and they had a clear field. 

 Of course, with such a people the school 

 house became the most conspicuous build- 

 ing in the pioneer village, and of course a 

 little 'college' sprang up in every consid- 

 erable town. Of course, again, with such 

 a people the public high school had its 

 quickest and perhaps its most luxuriant 

 development. The sooner the high school 

 became a fact the sooner higher education 

 became a passion. When the federal land 

 grants were made to higher education in 

 all the states, right at the darkest hour in 

 the Civil War, the eastern states hardly 

 laiew about them at all, and have never 

 made more than perfunctory and indif- 

 ferent use of them, while the western states 

 have seized them with avidity, put them 

 to their utmost possibilities, added to them 

 from ten to an hundred-fold, and cry for 

 more with an eagerness and an audacity 

 that would have made young Oliver Twist 

 a veritable hero. 



And these federal land grants in them- 

 selves have had much to do in fixing the 

 predominant type of university in America. 



