SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 809 



guillotine which exists in every American 

 institution of learning, and runs fast or 

 slow according to the progress of the times. 

 The thing that a little astonished the 

 undergTaduate at the time was that in 

 almost every case of summary decapitation 

 the victim was an educated gentleman. 

 And this was not because no other kind of 

 man could be found in the faculty. It 

 seemed as if some whimsical fatality hung 

 over the professorial career of any ingenu- 

 ous gentleman who was by nature a scholar 

 of tbe charming old-fashioned kind. 



Youth grieves not long over mysterious 

 injustice, and it never occurred to me till 

 many years afterwards that there was any 

 logical connection between one and another 

 of all these judicial murders which used 

 to claim a passing tear from the under- 

 graduates when I was in college. It is only 

 since giving some thought to recent educa- 

 tional conditions in America that I have 

 understood what was then happening, and 

 why it was that a scholar could hardly live 

 in an American university. 



In America, society has been reorganized 

 since 1870; old universities have been to- 

 tally changed and many new ones founded. 

 The money to do this has come from the 

 business world. The men chosen to do the 

 work have been chosen by the business 

 world. Of a truth, it must needs be that 

 offenses come; but woe be unto him 

 through whom the offense cometh. As the 

 boss has been the tool of business men in 

 politics, so the college president has been 

 his agent in education. The colleges dur- 

 ing this epoch have each had a "policy" 

 and a directorate. They have been manned 

 and commissioned for a certain kind of 

 service as you might man a fishing-smack 

 to catch herring. There has been so much 

 necessary business— the business of ex- 

 panding and planning, of adopting and 

 remodeling— that there has been no time 



for education. Some big deal has always 

 been pending in each college — some con- 

 solidation of departments, some annexation 

 of a new world — something so momentous 

 as to make private opinion a nuisance. In 

 this regard the colleges resembled every- 

 thing else in America. The colleges have 

 simply not been different from the rest of 

 American life. Let a man express an 

 opinion at a party caucus, or at a railroad 

 directors' meeting, or at a college faculty 

 meeting, and he will find that he is speak- 

 ing against a predetermined force. What 

 shall we do with such a fellow? Well, if 

 he is old and distinguished, you may suffer 

 him to have his say and then over-ride him. 

 But if he is young, energetic and likely to 

 give more trouble, you must eject him with 

 as little fuss as the circumstances will 

 permit. 



The educated man has been the grain of 

 sand in the college machine. He has a 

 horizon of what "ought to be," and he 

 could not help putting in a word and an 

 idea in the wrong place ; and so he was 

 thrown out of education in America ex- 

 actly as he was thrown out of politics in 

 America. I am here speaking about the 

 great general trend of influences since 

 1870, influences which have been checked 

 in recent years, checked in politics, checked 

 in education, but which it is necessary to 

 underetand if we would undei"stand pres- 

 ent conditions in education. The men 

 who, during this era, have been chosen to 

 become college presidents have, as a rule, 

 begun life with the ambition of scholars; 

 but their talents for affairs have been 

 developed at the expense of their taste for 

 learning, and thej^ have become hard men. 

 As towards their faculties they have been 

 autocrats, because the age has demanded 

 autocracy here; as toward the millionaire 

 they have been sycophants, because the age 

 has demanded sycophancy here. Mean- 



