December 8, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



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and women with which to work your will, 

 the time has come to ask this question : 

 Are these agencies, established and main- 

 tained by public funds, doing work of a 

 kind and in a manner, under the conditions 

 which have developed, that is calculated to 

 most fully promote public welfare? No 

 one will deny the assertion, I am sure, that 

 the colleges were brought into existence, 

 not for the purpose of providing a fraction 

 of one per cent, of our young men and 

 women with a college education as an indi- 

 vidual favor, but to be constructive and 

 conserving factors in building and main- 

 taining a strong nation. "The community 

 has come to be convinced that education is 

 the most competent means for the preserva- 

 tion and enrichment of itself." With this 

 end in view, is their work wisely planned 

 and directed? 



A consideration of this comprehensive 

 question requires that we bring to mind the 

 directions along which the colleges and sta- 

 tions exert their influence in the exercise 

 of their proper functions. These directions 

 are mainly three : 



1. The public relations of educational 

 agencies. 



2. The enlargement of the body of 

 knowledge. 



3. The development of the vocational 

 and social efficiency of the individual. 



It is my purpose to direct your attention 

 chiefly to questions involved in the college 

 training of young men and women and the 

 development of knowledge, but I ask your 

 indulgence while I briefly refer to the first 

 phase of influence which I have mentioned : 



As to the influence of the land-grant 

 legislation and its results upon the public 

 or governmental relations of educational 

 agencies, there can be no doubt that one of 

 the consequences of this legi.slation is a 

 strong movement toward the injection of 



federal aid, and the federal control neces- 

 sarily, accompanying the expenditure of 

 federal money, into secondary education 

 that so far has been exclusively supported 

 and controlled by the states. The concrete 

 expression of this movement is the introduc- 

 tion into congress of bills providing for the 

 annual expenditure of vast sums of federal 

 money in aid of normal schools and high 

 schools in the various states. The policy 

 proposed, if made effective, would have far- 

 reaching results and for this reason it 

 should be considered by this body in the 

 spirit of wise statesmanship with reference 

 to ultimate re.sults rather than on the basis 

 of any immediate financial advantage that 

 might accrue to .states or institutions. 



It is well for us to keep in mind this law 

 so well formulated by an educator of long 

 experience, "that the efficiency of public 

 education becomes the greater as the re- 

 sponsibility for carrying it forward is more 

 directly and immediately felt." This ad- 

 mirable expression of a sound principle 

 may be supplemented by the statement that 

 an efficient system of public education can 

 not be imposed upon a community by aid 

 from without, but must be gradually devel- 

 oped from within. 



Moreover, the broadcast precipitous dis- 

 tribution of public funds into localities 

 where there does not exist the understand- 

 ing and preparation necessary to their wise 

 expenditure is sure to result in lamentable 

 waste. This would be a less regrettable 

 result, however, than the influence of out- 

 side aid upon the spirit of initiative and 

 self-dependence of the people, in the ab- 

 sence of which no progress is made in any 

 enterprise whatever. The school-district 

 system once widely in vogue in the eastern 

 states, where each political unit was prac- 

 tically a pure democracy, while expensive, 

 po.ssessed certain advantages of simplicity 



