Decembeb 22, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



845 



dent of the University of Illinois, questions 

 the theory that the recent rapid growth in the 

 material endowment of colleges is the work 

 of the presidency, and also suggests that, even 

 if it were, institutions are not always such 

 centers of education, scholarship and research 

 as their liberal endowments would lead one to 

 suppose. It is only the great teacher and 

 investigator, after all, who can impart any- 

 thing but mere material greatness to an in- 

 stitution of learning. — The Nation. 



A COLLEGE was Originally a society of schol- 

 ars organized for the pursuit and acquirement 

 of knowledge. It sent forth its alumni to be 

 ministers, jurists, physicians, teachers — lead- 

 ers in their communities. It was for this pur- 

 pose that colleges were founded in our coun- 

 try. They stood for the highest ideals of 

 manhood. They and their graduates created 

 and represented those ideals for which the 

 college was responsible. 



The president was then the head of the 

 college. To the community he stood for what 

 the college was and was doing for it. The 

 people saw in him the disciplined mind and 

 the all-around manhood which they honored 

 and to which they taught their sons to aspire. 

 To the faculty he was the leader in their plans, 

 and the inspirer of their aims. Students went 

 to the college already reverencing him as the 

 embodiment of a high ideal, went to him 

 when there as counsellor and friend, passed 

 under his instruction in the upper classes and 

 carried the impress of his character through 

 their lives. Such men as Mark Hopkins, of 

 Williams, and Theodore Woolsey, of Yale, and 

 James Fairchild, of Oberlin, reproduced their 

 noblest qualities directly and indirectly in 

 thousands of leaders of men, and no men in 

 any office in this country have surpassed them 

 in its service. 



The average college president of to-day rep- 

 resents no such ideal. He is not sought for 

 it, has no opportunity to realize it. There are 

 men of the type here described, but they are 

 exceptions. The college president is chosen 

 because of his ability as a money getter. His 

 business is to beg from rich men and from 

 women who have fortunes left to them. His 

 success is measured by the number and cost 



of the buildings erected with the money he 

 has raised and by the amount of endowment 

 he has secured. There are college presidents 

 whose faces are more familiar to business men 

 in Boston and ISTew York than to their own 

 students, who have earned no more right to a 

 place in the ranks of scholars than the cap- 

 tains of their college football teams, and who 

 are less honored and heroic than they are in 

 the public's esteem. 



None feels the degradation of the high office 

 of the college president as keenly as he does. 

 In many cases he has accepted his office with- 

 a worthier purpose than that which he has 

 been forced to adopt. He has yielded most 

 reluctantly to the compulsion to join the al- 

 ready overfull procession of those who were 

 nominally chosen as intellectual and moral 

 leaders of men, who crowd on one another in 

 the anterooms of business offices and in ring- 

 ing the doorbells of the rich. — The Congre- 

 gationalist. 



A NEW SCHOOL FOR CLAY WORKERS. 



The University of Illinois has issued a 

 bulletin describing the courses in ceramics 

 which it now offers for the jSrst time. The 

 rapid destruction of our forests and the con- 

 sequent increase in value of all kinds of 

 lumber are causing people to look with new 

 interest toward clay products as the most 

 promising building and decorative materials 

 of the near futui'e, and this interest has 

 caused a demand for cheaper and better ma- 

 terials of this class. 



Clay workers are beginning to realize that 

 in order to meet this demand they must put 

 men who are well educated along lines of 

 applied science and mechanics in control of 

 their plants and are inquiring where such men 

 can be found. As there are but three schools 

 in this country which offer instruction espe- 

 cially planned to meet the needs of clay work- 

 ers, the demand far exceeds the supply and 

 manufacturers are willing to pay well for the 

 services of competent men, hence the Univer- 

 sity of Illinois feels justified in adding such 

 instruction to the technical courses which it 

 has offered heretofore. 



Two courses are offered, both of which 



