662 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 486. 



The new arrangement with the law school 

 was a ten years' contract (also begun in 1896) 

 which recognized the right of the trustees of 

 the Cincinnati College to control all funds of 

 the law school and reserved to the faculty the 

 right to nominate all members of the teach- 

 ing staff and the complete control of its af- 

 fairs. Thus the law school remained the de- 

 partment of law of the university only in 

 name, a distinction for which the university 

 agreed to pay and yet pays annually out of 

 public tax money the sum of a thousand dol- 

 lars as ' rental ' for premises owned and occu- 

 pied by the law school itself. The original 

 articles of affiliation with the dental school 

 were not disturbed and the latter institution, 

 a purely private and proprietary enterprise, 

 secures valuable advertising through university 

 publications. 



This brief statement sufficiently indicates 

 the influences that were operative, especially 

 during the decade from 1890 to 1900. 



The board of directors, made up of business 

 and professional men, acted as safe conserva- 

 tors of the funds of the institution, new build- 

 ings were erected in Burnet Woods, the old 

 buildings were given over to the medical 

 school and the material interests of the insti- 

 tution were carefully supervised. At this 

 point the efficiency of the administrative board 

 ended. With no practical university man as 

 a member it failed, for a long time at least, 

 to grasp the real necessities of the academic 

 department. 



Each professor conducted his work accord- 

 ing to his own ideas of what should be the 

 quality and quantity of devotion to the inter- 

 ests of the institution, with the inevitable 

 reductio ad ahsurdum. Each successor, with 

 the allurements of the vacant presidency before 

 him, sought to make a record that would se- 

 cure his promotion thereto, while certain of his 

 colleagues, awaiting their turns, were far from 

 giving him a helping hand. ' Members of the 

 board of directors,' so that body stated in a 

 formal declaration, ' received with annoying 

 frequency denunciatory statements from the 

 professors about every member of the faculty.' 



'As a matter of fact,' declared the govern- 

 ing body, ' if all the suggestions of removal 



urged by members of the faculty against mem- 

 bers of the faculty had been acted upon, not 

 a single member of the present teaching body 

 would have been left in position.' With in- 

 cessant conflict in the faculty and with the 

 students not amenable to discipline, things 

 had manifestly reached a crisis. The directors 

 began to think — and one of the first thoughts 

 that came to them was that in all the years 

 that had passed they had been altogether too 

 perfunctory in the choice of professors. Selec- 

 tions had rarely been properly safeguarded, 

 and too many of them had been made through 

 either the ' push ' or the ' pull ' of the appli- 

 cant. A regime, absolutely untenable, had be- 

 come established, the termination of which by 

 radical changes in the personnel of the faculty 

 became the imperative duty of the directory. 

 This step having been informally but none 

 the less definitely resolved upon, the selection 

 of a new faculty became imminent. The 

 disastrous experience of the directors with 

 the incumbent faculty caused them to recoil 

 from the responsibility. There was a unani- 

 mous determination to call a president, a man 

 of executive ability, familiar with the educa- 

 tional world, who, in the selection of new pro- 

 fessors, might save the institution from other 

 pits such as those into which it had fallen. 

 Committees were sent to Princeton, Harvard, 

 Yale, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, 

 Ann Arbor, Chicago and elsewhere. A com- 

 mittee, of which Hon. Wm. H. Taft, then dean 

 of the law school, now secretary of war, was 

 chairman, after investigating a number of 

 candidates reported favorably on Dr. Howard 

 Ayers, then professor of biology in the Uni- 

 versity of Missouri. Dr. Ayers, after visiting 

 the institution and having been informed of 

 the i-nternal conditions, after having been told 

 that the directors had resolved upon extensive 

 changes in the faculty and after having been 

 impressed that his special and important task 

 would be to select a new faculty and that 

 only the successful reorganization of the fa- 

 culty and the affairs of the academic depart- 

 ment would warrant his continuance, was 

 duly elected. Eecognizing an unusual oppor- 

 tunity to render a great service to the cause 

 of sound education, he accepted the office un- 



