August 12, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



199 



a majority of the women and a number of 

 the instructors lived in the dormitories. In 

 1884 came the disastrous fire which de- 

 stroyed the first Science Hall. There was 

 urgent necessity for lecture rooms and labo- 

 ratories to carry on the instructional work 

 of the institution. Without any definite 

 plan to change our system, indeed without 

 any thought of the profound change which 

 was being made in the character of the uni- 

 versity, the students were turned from the 

 dormitories, and halls of residence for men 

 at Wisconsin were abandoned. 



I have no doubt that every one of the 

 alumni here, who in the old days lived in 

 North or South Hall, feels that this change, 

 although possibly necessary at the time, was 

 most unfortunate. The professor in the 

 class-room and the laboratory can do much 

 for a student, and especially he can do 

 much if he believes that one of the highest 

 functions of a professor is that of a com- 

 rade. But, when the student goes out 

 into the world, there is no other part of his 

 education which is of such fundamental 

 importance as capacity to deal with men, 

 to see the other fellow's point of view, to 

 have sympathetic appreciation with all 

 that may be good in that point of view, 

 and yet to retain firmly his own ideas and 

 to adjust the two in fair proportion. Noth- 

 ing that the professor or the laboratory can 

 do for the student can take the place of 

 daily close companionship with hundreds 

 of his fellows. In the intimate communal 

 life of the dormitories he must adjust him- 

 self to others. He must be genial, fair, 

 likable, or else his lot is rightly a hard 

 one. This fundamental training in 

 adaptability to and appreciation of his fel- 

 lows can only come from attrition between 

 a large number of human units. These 

 are the reasons, understood without state- 

 ment by Englishmen, which make them 

 adhere to the Oxford and Cambridge sys- 

 tem. These are the reasons, profoundly 



comiDrehended by Cecil Rhodes, which led 

 him to leave his entire fortune to establish 

 the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford for the 

 Teutonic race, knowing as he did from ex- 

 perience the influence of the communal life 

 of Oxford in molding a world-conquering 

 man. Believing, as he did, that the 

 Teutonic people are to control the destinies 

 of the world, he was deeply anxious that 

 many of the best of the youth of Africa, 

 Australia, Canada, Germany and America 

 should gain the Oxford point of view. 



Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Pennsyl- 

 vania, originally modeled on the English 

 university, and suffering under no acci- 

 dental disturbance, have retained many of 

 the features of this system to the present 

 day. If the University of Wisconsin is to 

 do for the sons of the state what Oxford 

 and Cambridge are doing for the sons of 

 England, if it is to do even what the east- 

 ern institutions are accomplishing for their 

 students, not only in producing scholars 

 and investigators, but in making men, it 

 must once more have halls of residence, and 

 to these must be added a commons and a 

 union. At the commons the men meet one 

 another each day ; at the union they adjoux'n 

 for close, wholesome, social intercourse. 

 The union should be a commodious and 

 beautiful building, comfortably, even ar- 

 tistically, furnished. When the students 

 are done with their work in the evening, 

 the attractive union is at hand, where re- 

 freshments may be had, and a pleasant 

 hour may be spent at games, with the 

 magazines, in a novel, or in social chat. 

 The coarse attractions of the town have 

 little power in comparison. 



But, to build adequate halls of residence, 

 commons and a union will require large 

 sums of money. What more fitting thing 

 for wealthy men of the state, who have 

 gained their riches by taking advantage of 

 its natural resources, than to turn back to 

 the state some portion of their wealth for 



