Apbil 13, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



567 



he steps to the next grade with constantly 

 increasing salary. A normal line of ad- 

 vancement is thus provided. More rapid 

 promotion is always open to promptly es- 

 tablished worth and efficiency, and should 

 indeed be the rule, not the exception. Such 

 measure of elasticity the system designedly 

 retains. There is always opportunity for 

 ■any one to present such considerations as 

 may be proper, and to reenforce them by 

 such arguments as may be suitable, to urge 

 promotion at such time and in such degree 

 as the circumstances warrant. Speaking 

 generally: for all whose fitness for the 

 academic life has been established, the 

 question of salary is as nearly as possible 

 disposed of and advancement is secure. 

 Such a system represents about as prac- 

 ticable a compromise between ideal and 

 available measures as present circumstances 

 permit. It has at all events the supreme 

 .advantage of minimizing, and in a fortu- 

 nate environment, of avoiding wholly the 

 endless disaffections and positive injuries 

 that are inevitable when such matters de- 

 pend wholly upon the decision of one or 

 two men, whose natural inclination under 

 present circumstances is only too likely to 

 regard the salary item in the budget as the 

 one that admittedly should be first, but is 

 likely to come last. The administrative 

 feeling creeps in or is openly defended, 

 that so long as places can be filled, salaries 

 are not the first consideration. It is this 

 phase of the president's activity that es- 

 tranges him from colleagueship with his 

 faculty. 



How far down in the academic scale this 

 system is applicable can not be determined 

 offhand. Yet in the spirit of an institu- 

 tion in which such a system is liberally ad- 

 ministered, it should be easy to place the 

 ■greatest emphasis upon offering to the men 

 of promise in the oncoming generation the 

 utmost encouragement to rise rapidly in 

 ■their profession; and to do this as is done 



in all learned professions, by the judgment 

 of their peers with reference to true aca- 

 demic standards. The point is important 

 as indicating how one set of administrative 

 measures largely avoids difficult and unde- 

 sirable situations, that another deliberately 

 invites. It is important that a living 

 within the academic fold should not be re- 

 garded as a reward to be given to the ex- 

 ceptionally deserving, when circumstances 

 indicate that the only method of retaining 

 their services is to yield what for years 

 has been unwisely and unjustly withheld; 

 but is to be regarded as a natural privilege 

 for all worthy of the academic life. There 

 is not the slightest discrepancy in the in- 

 evitable fact that A and B, men of quite 

 unequal merit and value to their institu- 

 tions, should be enjoying the same incomes. 

 There is nothing in the slightest degree 

 disconcerting in so inevitable a consequence 

 of hvunan variability; and in a less com- 

 mercially minded community, no one would 

 think of remarking upon so obvious a situ- 

 ation. A man's academic worth should 

 not and can not in the least be measured 

 by his salary; and any attempt to do so is 

 a deep injury to the profession. If some 

 one has made a mistake in judgment in 

 asking the wrong man to fill a chair, when 

 better men were available, and if the mis- 

 take can not be remedied without repudia- 

 ting obligations already incurred, it is far 

 better to seek any solution of the situation 

 than the one that sets the emphasis upon 

 the very point that has no place in the 

 academic life. Endowed professorships 

 ensuring adequate livings are for this rea- 

 son a far more ideal system than American 

 circumstances make practicable. 



I have thus dwelt upon the more serious 

 of the unfortunate consequences of the 

 dominant systemless practises in American 

 institutions and of the possibilities of their 

 correction. It is even more than a mis- 

 fortune; it is indeed an indignity that a 



