January 21, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



83 



is on the whole particularly good. I know 

 many of the men in this line of govern- 

 mental oversight, and how capable they are. 

 I know that we must have regularized pro- 

 cedure and good organization. It is said 

 that for the greater number of persons 

 close supervision is necessary, to which we 

 all agree; and yet it is surprising how 

 quickly these persons respond to leader- 

 ship. 



I know, on the other hand, that it is pos- 

 sible for governments, or methods suggested 

 by governmental necessities, to invade edu- 

 cational work where they are not needed. 

 I fear that the days of much freedom and 

 spontaneity in the work are more behind 

 us than ahead of us. "We naturally extend 

 a method or a way of procedure throughout 

 a system, as if uniformity were in itself an 

 asset. The very expansiveness of the enter- 

 prises, the extent of funds involved, the 

 vast size of the country, the numbers of 

 students, the alertness of the people for 

 solutions, all demand a complex method of 

 administration and tend to immerse a man 

 in the system. I do not see how it can be 

 avoided. All the more is the necessity, 

 therefore, for opportunities to those per- 

 sons who wish to do a personal work and 

 to express themselves — just themselves — in 

 the doing it. All the more do we need the 

 example of institutions which have policies 

 whoUy their own, to safeguard any future 

 danger of too much regulation in the gov- 

 ernmental side. One set would prove a 

 powerful stimulus to the other as well as to 

 exercise a natural control. I hope there 

 will never be any need of outside suggestion 

 to restrain persons in the public institu- 

 tions who aspire to be governors, congress- 

 men, and the like, who may be tempted to 

 use their opportunities to that end, and 

 who are thereby out of place in college and 

 science work. 



As the public work becomes more crys- 



tallized and more official, as is of course 

 inevitable, the colleges of agriculture will 

 begin to lose their boldest men. We know 

 that many men in government like to es- 

 cape to institutions, as to universities : will 

 they desire also, in time, to escape the in- 

 stitutions ? 



You must not think that I am here sum- 

 moning the bogy-man of "polities," as a 

 discouragement to institutions supported 

 by the state. Quite the contrary: I have 

 seen something of institutions; I fear the 

 entrance of "politics" as much into the 

 governance of other institutions as of state 

 institutions, and perhaps even more so, 

 seeing that it is not answerable to public 

 correction. We are moving rather rapidly 

 in these days away from star-chamber deals 

 and partizan control and upheavals. But 

 there remains the more dangerous because 

 the more insidious formalizing of the daily 

 work, regulating of hours, deadly conform- 

 ing of editorial offices, employing of too 

 many clerks and intermediaries, the grad- 

 ual tying of the hands without any inten- 

 tion whatever that it shall be so, the piling 

 up of paper duties. That is to say, the old- 

 time fear of politics has now been super- 

 seded by the actual danger of impersonal 

 interference in details and of machine rou- 

 tine. I am not so much afraid of "poli- 

 tics" as I am of the dead-levels. 



The old separatism in agriculture is 

 breaking up. The human forces are re- 

 shaping. New crystallizations are taking 

 place before our eyes, rapidly. Many plans 

 of cooperation and co-action, small and 

 large, are much recommended. Now is the 

 time to be careful that our rural life shall 

 not be machine-made and over-organized. 



THE FIELD FOR PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS 



The land-grant colleges of agriculture 

 are not to expect to hold exclusively the en- 

 tire field of agriculture-education of the 



