664 



SCIENCE. 



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



tution, accepted the condition as a praise- 

 worthy achievement. 



The following- excerpts from the other city 

 papers indicate that no countenance was given 

 by the press to the attacks of the one morning 

 sheet. 



A weekly paper had the following to say, 

 under date of January 13, 1900, about the 

 reorganization of the university: 



Every thorough Cincinnatian ought to feel 

 satisfied that our big university has at last got 

 a head in Dr. Howard Ayers. If an institution 

 ever needed a complete house cleaning the Uni- 

 versity of Cincinnati did. 



For years it has been a burlesque purely through 

 being without a disciplinarian at the head. Dr. 

 Ayers has taken the proper steps to place it upon 

 its feet rightly, and the trustees have shown com- 

 mon sense in supporting him. * * * A con- 

 tinuation of the old methods in vogue at the 

 university can result in but one way — the death 

 of the institution. 



January 20, 1900, a local medical journal 

 made the following editorial statement with 

 reference to the relation of the medical and 

 law departments to the university: 



They are and are not a part of the university, 

 and from their first conjunction have occupied 

 anomalous positions, which in the very nature 

 of things can not be harmonious or lasting in 

 their nature. They are a paradox. In neither 

 the medical nor law faculties does the president 

 or board of directors have any voice in their man- 

 agement. They stand at this time as disem- 

 bodied spirits, and, being disjoined, there can be 

 little or no harmonized unification of interests, 

 which in the general cause of education in Cin- 

 cinnati is exceedingly unfortunate. 



April 14, 1900, a daily evening paper made 

 the following comments on the appointment 

 of Dr. Ayers to the presidency of the Uni- 

 versity of Cincinnati: 



The public knows little of the troubles that 

 beset the modern college president's path and the 

 peculiar conditions under which most of them 

 have to work. These conditions were suddenly 

 made clear in Cincinnati by the appointment, 

 after years of executive chaos, of a president to 

 the university. 



In the current Atlantic Monthly appears an 

 article on the perplexities of a college president 

 which might have been written with the late Uni- 



versity of Cincinnati discussion as a text, so 

 thoroughly does it meet the points that were 

 raised: 



The new president, continues the writer, finds 

 that he is simply left to make the best of the 

 present situation; to do what he may and can 

 with such men as are already in place; to make 

 his peace with malcontents, to be patient under 

 opposition, to do the worlc of three men because 

 tlie other two at least are not ready to cooperate 

 with him, to explain misunderstandings, quietly 

 to contradict misstatements when he is so fortu- 

 nate as to have the opportunity to do this, to 

 supplement the inefficiency of others, and to fur- 

 nish enthusiasm enough not only to carry him- 

 self over all obstacles and through all difficulties, 

 but to warm blood in the veins of others whose 

 temperature never rose above 32 degrees Fahren- 

 heit. To compel him to undertake this work in 

 this way is not only cruel to him personally, but 

 it is as unnecessary as it is unwise. 



The writer in the Atlantic points to the fact 

 that the educational executive is invariably 

 handicapped by the precedent which, though it 

 grows weaker, is still all-powerful, the feeling 

 that the college professor is to be set upon a pin- 

 nacle above criticism and beyond the reach of com- 

 plaint. " It takes an act of the trustees to put 

 a man in such a position but it takes the act of 

 God to put him out." 



Buildings that, for the most part, had been 

 added during President Ayers's three years 

 of service were publicly dedicated at com- 

 mencement time in 1903 by ceremonies the 

 most successful in the history of the institu- 

 tion, Hon. James Wilson, secretary of agri- 

 culture, and Hon. Francis B. Loomis, first 

 assistant secretary of state, being among 

 the orators. 



In the meantime, however, another and 

 altogether different set of influences were at 

 work. In the early part of 1902 the Supreme 

 Court of Ohio, in the ease of State vs. Jones, 

 rendered a decision which practically de- 

 stroyed all the then existing legislation rela- 

 ting to the government of mrniicipalities in 

 the state by declaring it to be special legisla- 

 tion and, therefore, unconstitutional. The 

 situation was so critical that Governor ISTash 

 called an extra session of the legislature, 

 which, on the twenty-second day of October, 

 1902, passed the law known as the ' Municipal 

 Code of Ohio.' 



