AUG b '^'"^
GIFT
GIFT OF
-' r' ~'
UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
-i
,:i
UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
BY
WILLIAM WATTS FOLWELL
Professor Emeritus University of Minnesota
1 > '
MINNEAPOLIS
THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY
1909
COPYRIGHT
BY
WILLIAM W. FOLWELL
1909
To THE Memory of
Sibley
AND
Marshall
241049
Although indulgent friends suggested the
publication of these papers, they are not re-
sponsible for their appearance.
On reviewing them after the lapse of a
quarter century, it seemed to the author that
he might be justified in putting them out, be-
cause they illustrate a period in the history of
the university in which he has spent forty
years of his life ; and also because they may
revive interest in a problem still of great im-
portance, that of the organization of education.
W. W. F.
December, 1909.
I. Inaugural Address, 1869 i
11. The Minnesota Plan, 1875 ']'/
III." The Secularization of Education,
1881 143
IV. The Civic Education, 1884 185
I. INAUGURAL ADDRESS
According to existing custom, the Territory of
:\Iinnesota, created March 3, 1849, expected a grant
of public lands from Congress for the endowment
of a university. That expectation was fulfilled in
1851, and the territorial legislature of that year by
an act of incorporation created the University of
Minnesota, to be located at or near the falls of St.
Anthony. A series of blunders and consequent mis-
fortunes postponed its actual opening till after the
close of the war of the slaveholders' rebellion. A
preparatory school was organized in October, 1867.
Two years later, a small class having been prepared
for college work, the regents elected a president
and faculty. They began their work in September,
1869, but their formal inauguration was convenient-
ly postponed till the close of the first scholastic
term. On December 22, 1869. in the large room in
the third story of the west wing of the "old main"
building, the simple but impressive ceremonies took
place.
The part which any individtial plays in to-
day's ceremonies is a small thing. These pro-
ceedings derive their importance and dignity
from the occasion of them. To-day we celebrate
the foundation of the University. ;7.s' inaugura-
tion, long ago an assured fact with those whose
labors, sacrifices, and foresight have made it
2 UXR'ERSITY ADDRESSES
sure. It is hope, not memory, which inspires
our hearts and dictates our utterances.
We are gathered to-day in no historic audi-
ence-chamber ; we employ no ancient symbols
nor formulae ; no effigies upon canvas or in
marble look down from these walls to remind us
of the great and good of olden time, whose lives
and labors have reflected a glory never to fade
upon a venerable Alma ]\Iater: but looking for-
ward to the future, amid scenes as yet unused to
academic displays, we celebrate and emphasize,
with song and praise and benediction, — begin-
nings. Ours is the hopeful toil of the sower, not
the consummate fruition of the harvest. We thank
God for foundations now laid here which may
endure to the end of the world, to the blessing
and upbuilding of all the generations which shall
follow ours. We may therefore rejoice with ex-
ceeding great joy over the opportunities which
our children, and our children's children shall
here be given, of learning those sciences which
furnish and adorn manhood and womanhood, and
those arts which enrich and emancipate commu-
nities, and make small states great.
How to plan, how to build, how to adminis-
ter the University so as to meet the just demands
of our own and coming times, are the questions
which now occupy and oppress us. It would be
vain for me to attempt to divert your minds this
hour from the occasion of this assemblage and
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 3
these public acts. At this initial moment of our
enterprise, it is clear that we ought rightly to ap-
prehend its proper aim, scope, and sphere. Pro-
posing to build here aH University, we ought to
be agreed both as to' what we mean by that term,
and what we do not mean. Though we build
■ for the future, we plan from the past, towards
which let us glance before we attempt definitions.
It has often been charged with much petulance
against the older American colleges that they
were organized, and have always been operated,
in the interest of the Church and the clerical pro-
fession. This statement is no doubt true, but it
is far from being a just cause of reproach. Ec-
clesiastics organized and managed with heroic
sacrifices the old colleges, because they alone, as
a class, appreciated the value of liberal culture
and higher education. All honor to the noble
men who planted Harvard, and Yale, and Brown,
and Columbia, and Princeton, and Oberlin, to the
glory of God and the upbuilding of the Church.
Jjut it is to be remarked that these venerable
institutions, although founded as training schools
for the ministry, did not at the first propose,
never have undertaken, and do not now ofifer
to furnish, as colleges, theological education
proper. They were, and continue to be. insti-
tutions of general and liberal culture in science
and literature.
4 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
In the course of the forty years which have passed
some of these universities have greatly multiplied
and expanded their professional and technical cours-
es. All still remain in a sense denominational, but
would scorn active proselyting.
The college graduate of colonial times, pre-
paring for clerical functions, passed his appren-
ticeship in the study and under the tuition of
some scholarly parish minister. When a clergy-
man, apt to teach, assembled two, three, or more
candidates under his roof, formed them into a
class, and taught them after a certain scheme, a
beginning was made which developed into the
theological seminary. The economy of the new
plan, upon which two or three experts could in-
struct a number of candidates, over the old one
which required as many masters as pupils, was
too obvious to escape the notice of a class of
thrifty, practical men, accustomed to organize and
constitute.
Long after the establishment of the theological
seminary, law^yers and physicians continued to
acquire their professional edtications in the of-
fices of preceptors. I think the physicians were
the next in order to discover the feasibility and
economy of the professional school. So rapidly
were the needed methods and appliances invent-
ed and adopted, that not a single generation
elapsed between the establishment of the first
medical colleges, and the time when they ab-
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 5
sorbed all candidates for the medical doctorate.
The law schools came later, for of all pro-
fessional men the lawyer is the most conserva-
tive. "Ouieta non movere" is ever his watch-
word and motto. It is within the recollection
of men still young:, that the law school has got
on to solid footing, and become recognized as the
necessary and indispensable pathway to the legal
profession.
By this time the secret was fairly abroad. It
was in the air. and began to infect all classes.
The modest schoolmaster caught it. and began
"with 'bated breath and whispering humbleness"
to ask for the foundation of schools in which he
might acquire the principles and processes of his
craft, before beginning the practice of it upon
human bodies and immortal souls. Be it said
to the credit of our age and country that this
request has received a certain though feeble re-
sponse. The normal school now sends the pri-
mary teacher to his work with some knowledge
of what is to be done ; but the high school teach-
er, the academy or seminary teacher, and the col-
lege professor, still learn their business in the
class room. A very accomplished extempora-
neous preacher, being asked by what means he
acquired his skill, replied, "by ruining half a doz-
en good congregations." Tt is painful to think
how manv good schools are either ruined or
6 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
greatly damaged in preparing teachers for their
work.
The speaker over-estimated the number of com-
mon school teachers, and under-estimated that of
grade and high school teachers who had received
normal instruction. In 1908 the state superintend-
ent of public instruction reports the whole number
of common school teachers in Minnesota as 9022;
of whom. 2267 have attended normal schools, 936
being graduates. The number of grade and high
school teachers is 5906; of whom 2853 have attend-
ed normal schools, and 2491 are graduates.
More fortunate than the teacher, are the rail-
way and the mining engineer, the chemist, and
the metallurgist, who step at once from our poly-
technic schools into honorable and lucrative posi-
tions , their science and scientific training being
found to more than compensate for any tempo-
rary lack of practical dexterity.
But the demand for technical education is no
longer confined to those subjects and classes gen-
erally spoken of as "professional." The indus-
trial and commercial classes have already raised
a cry which can neither be hushed up nor ig-
nored. x\s a very remarkable indication of this
new demand I would point to that great array
of so-called "Business or Commercial Colleges,"
which within the past ten years have flashed up-
on the country with all the glory of gilt sign-
boards and polychromatic placards. While, as
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 7
I think, there is large room for criticism upon
the methods and management of these institu-
tions, and although our solid business men are
still chary of their countenance and support, it is
certain that the educator can no longer ignore
these schools ; but must recognize them, as signs
of the times, at least, clearly foreshadowing a
serious, organized demand on the part of the
commercial classes for technical education. So
extensive and rapid has been the development of
our foreign and inland commerce, and so com-
plicated have they become with questions of
currency, exchange, and the customs of the
trades, that the accounts of great houses are
thrown unavoidably into the hands of expert ac-
countants who frequently understand their condi-
tion in detail better than the proprietors. It is
not strange, then, that the young men ambitious
to occupy positions of such respectability and in-
fluence, have eagerly grasped at the first means
offered, however inadequate, of qualifying them-
selves in advance for their work. But my pres-
ent object is answered, if these novel institutions
are allowed to be indicative of a serious call for
technical education on the part of the commercial
classes.
Many public high schools have in the last j-ears
opened 'commercial courses'. Some universities
have expanded their departments of political econo-
my to embrace studies related to business. A
8 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
smaller number have organized 'schools" of account-
ing, commerce and the like. The proposition that
the public schools and universities should 'take over'
the work of private commercial schools and colleges
is not here considered.
Last of all, a large body moving slowly, but
with irresistible momentum, come the industrial
classes, the toiling millions who wring from the
earth and her products the subsistence of the
race, — demanding a schoolmaster. It is true
that the cry of these classes for more light
was heard long ago in America ; but without
eloquent tongues and facile pens to multiply and
re-echo it, it was lost in the air, — 7'ox et prae-
tcrea nihil. It might yet be sounding unheeded,
had there not come a time when we all saw, by
the light of war's devouring flames how the sal-
vation of our nation lay in the keeping of these
hard-handed working-men. It was in the su-
preme hour of the nation's peril, when its very
name had been mentioned by a foreign prime
minister as out of date, when the ranks of the
army, lately filled from the flower and bloom of
our farmers and artisans, had been cut down and
shortened by bloody campaigns ; when the call
for volunteers was beating in every village of the
land ; it was then that the American Congress
hastened to bestow upon the industrial classes of
the country that magnificent endowment con-
veyed by the Agricultural College Bill. By the
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 9
passage of that act, the demand I am speaking of
was recognized and recorded. Since that time no
one has held it in supposition, but as one to be
met and answered.
Never has a more troublesome problem been
thrust upon educators. We know very well how
to take young men and train them in schools to
be clergymen, physicians, lawyers, engineers, ac-
countants, chemists and miners, but we cannot
yet so deftly produce you farmers and black-
smiths and carpenters ; spinners, dyers and
weavers ; millers, moulders and machinists, and
so on.
It must be understood that this new demand
is an immense and far-spreading one. and one
which no single institution, unless it be vastly
richer than any yet founded in America, can hope
fully to meet. Take Agriculture for illustration.
Agriculture is a word of wide comprehension in-
cluding a great variety of matters which together
form a whole, but each of which demands a spe-
cial treatment. Among farmers we class growers
of grains and grasses, planters of textile products,
sugar and tobacco, stock growers, dairymen, mar-
ket gardeners, fruit growers and tree culturists,
seed growers and florists. No other profession
demands so wide a range of scientific knowledge
and practical manual skill as does agriculture.
The completely furnished agriculturist must
know the chemistry of earth, air, fire and water,
10 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
the structure and properties of plants, the natural
history of domestic animals, and the principles of
breeding and raising them, and the cure of their
diseases. He must know the use of many tools,
and be able to test them upon mechanical prin-
ciples. He will need to understand several
branches of manufacture. He ought to be law-
yer enough to keep out of litigation. He would
need to know in particular the law of contracts,
of highways and ditches, of tenures and of ad-
verse possession, and he should be no unskillful
accountant.
It is not strange then that the schoolmaster
has been staggered by the huge load so sudden-
ly thrust upon him.
The problem of agricultural education is one
of peculiar difficulty on account of this well
known and much lamented fact, that while farm-
ers' sons are rushing by thousands into business,
seeking all sorts of agencies, and clerkships,
neither farmers' sons nor anybody's sons in large
numbers, are seeking thorough scientific educa-
tion in agriculture. I am informed by high au-
thority that out of the 600 young men now at-
tending the Cornell University, not over 30 ex-
pect to become practical farmers. I fear this
state of things must long continue. So long as
there is open to young men the prospect of a
name and a home, of a high social position to be
won with clean hands and unsoiled garments by
INAUGURAL ADDRESS ii
headwork, and without capital, the learned pro-
fessions, so called, will continue to absorb the
best blood of the country. Fondness for me-
chanical pursuits and indoor work, will turn many
others to become artisans, who likewise need but
little capital to start upon. It must be confessed
that our thoroughly educated young Bachelor of
Agriculture, with all his zeal, would be sadly otY
here without the capital sufficient to buy. sub-
due and stock his farm. In fact the newly ar-
rived emigrant with his few and simple wants,
would have much the advantage of him.
We have not yet in America any such demand
for educated agriculturists as exists in Europe :
and may the day be far distant when there shall
be any such demand. In Europe, rich lords and
great proprietors, holding a large share of the
soil in immense estates, are very glad to employ
professional agriculturists as stewards and over-
seers. This ■ furnishes opportunity for the grad-
uates of agricultural colleges to practice their pro-
fession, without either land or capital of their
own. Frequently, also, sons of the great pro-
prietors devoting themselves to the management
of the estates they expect to inherit, attend uikdu
the agricultural schools ; in which case these gen-
trv are kept in better quarters and on daintier
fare than their fellow-students of low birth. The
governments of Europe employ a very large
12 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
number of experts as foresters, gardeners, and
game keepers.
These considerations, while they furnish no
reason for doubting the feasibiHty of agricultural
education, do, as I think, constitute a just excuse
for its slow development, and they very clearly
indicate that the American agricultural college
must have a home-grown shape adapted to the
demands of the times and to the relations of
American rural economy.
Although the development of the American
agricultural college has been slow, yet excellent
beginnings have at length been made. The ex-
periments made in Massachusetts, Illinois, and
particularly in Michigan, suggest several lines
upon which it may take place. The early at-
tempts at forming agricultural schools in the
State of New York and elsewhere have shown
also by what courses it cannot take place. These
latter experiments prove that we must furnish
better material for such schools than the sons
of the wealthy, living in cities, sent from home
to remove them from temptation and idleness.
Such things I am aware would not be said by
one who desired merely to glorify this subject.
They who honestly and heartily wish success to
the agricultural college will prefer to meet all
difficulties at the outset. Let none, however,
doubt the feasibility of the industrial education,
and its final and abundant success.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 13
A reason for so much elaboration on agricul-
tural education at the time is found in the follow-
ing state of facts. The original charter of the Uni-
versity of 185 1 provided for a college of agricul-
ture. Nevertheless, the legislature of 1858 chartered
a separate State agricultural college, and located it
at Glencoe, in McLeod County, on land donated by
private owners. By a later act all the swamp lands
in that county were bestowed on the corporation.
The legislature of 1865 also appropriated to it the
income to be derived from the grant of 120,000
acres of public lands accruing to the State from the
operation of the so-called, •'Morrill Bill" of 1862,
to promote the education of the industrial classes.
Why no beginnings were made at Glencoe, and why
those in control of the endowments were or be-
came willing to give up their enterprise is not well-
known. They made no opposition to the action of
the legislature of 1868 when it merged the agricul-
tural college lands with those granted to the Uni-
versity. The regents of the University were sin-
cerely and anxiously desirous to justify the merger,
and demonstrate their good faith in the domain of
industrial education. There were those who ques-
tioned it.
The speaker made no mistake in counselling pa-
tience. Nearly twenty years passed before the Uni-
versity of ]Minnesota found its place and work in the
field of agriculture. Year after year the annual
calendars announced elaborate courses in agricul-
ture leading to the bachelor's degree, but there were
no aspirants for that degree by way of that course.
There was no career for such graduates. In 1884
the president of the university in a public address
suggested that instruction in agriculture might be
profitably undertaken in secondary schools. Three
14 UXIVERSITY ADDRESSES
years later Professor Edward A. Porter, then at
the head of the department on agriculture, struck
out a plan of an 'industrial school of agriculture' tn
be kept on the experimental farm two miles distant
from the university campus. Professor D. L. Kiehle,
state superintendent of public instruction, a mem-
ber of the board of regents worked out the peda-
gogical details and submitted a definite study plan,
which was accepted. In October, 1888 the 'School
of Agriculture' was opened at St. Anthony Park.
Taking boys and girls from their rural homes, with
a common school preparation, for the winter months
of two years, this 'school' gives a course of sci-
ence and practice immediately applicable to the Min-
nesota farm. It has already accomplished a great
work. An unexpected and welcome result is that
an increasing number of the students are continuing
their studies through the 'College of Agriculture'
with its four-3'ear course. Two hundred and seventy-
one are enrolled in October. 1909.
It may be worthy of remark that the Minnesota
legislature, when reorganizing the projected Agri-
cultural College at Glencoe, declared the design of
the institution to be "a high seminary of learning.
in which graduates of the common schools can com-
mence, pursue and finish a course of thorough the-
oretical and practical studies * * * in agricul-
ture and kindred industrial pursuits."
My design in drawing this hasty sketch of the
rise and progress of professional education, is
to have it appear, how alongside and independ-
ent of our common schools, our academies and
colleges, there has been steadily growing up in
this country another sort of educational institu-
INAUGURAL ADDRESS I5
tions having a peculiar office, and answering oth-
er demands. Receiving young men with such
furnishings as the schools or the college may
have given them, these new schools undertake
merely to fit them for those arts or professions
to which they intend to devote their lives. They
presuppose the candidates to have been already
trained up through childhood and youth to man-
hood, and to understand sufficiently for their
ages the duties and obligations of citizenship,
morality and religion. They have no dealings
with boys, but instruct young men pursuing vol-
untarily and therefore zealously, favorite studies.
These schools have in some instances been es-
tablished upon separate foundations, but more
frequentlv they have been associated more or less
closely with the older and richer colleges. The
economy of so associating them was long ago
obvious. It was apparent from the first that the
same chemist could instruct at once candidates
for medicine, mining, manufacture and agricul-
ture : the same professor of intellectual philoso-
phv. logic, and ethics, could lecture to members
of many schools at once; the same illustrative
apparatus, the same observatory, library, mu-
seum would serve for all. A common govern-
ment could regulate the general concerns an<l
sanction by its authority all public acts.
Such a federation of professional schools
one might sav would be the University. Most
l6 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
probably it would be merely the skeleton of the
University. Those dry bones must be clothed
upon and informed with an animating spirit to
present the living, moving body. There must be
some common bond to unite the many in one.
I think it is generally admitted and deplored
that the standard of professional Cjualifications is
disreputably low. Young men of perhaps a fair
common school or academic education are missed
from their homes during parts of two or three
years, each to return with a diploma of Doctor of
Medicine or Bachelor of Laws, and with such
hasty and superficial furnishing, offer their serv-
ices to the public. The schools of technology
detain their pupils longer, and certainly train
them more thoroughly than do the colleges of
medicine and law, but there is probably some
just ground for the frequent complaints we hear
of "kid glove engineering."
The standard of professional education has been
immensely advanced. Respectable law and medical
colleges now require three and four year courses for
graduation, and a preparation at least equivalent to
that required of academic freshmen.
We are not content that the graduates of our
professional schools possess merely certain tricks
of their trades. It may chance that our ailment,
lawsuit, or engineering problem is not just such
an one as the books describe, and the teachers
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 17
have shown how to heal, manage, or solve.
What we demand then, is, not rnles, but prin-
ciples ; not mere tricks of art and sleight of
hand, but science ; science which explains and
authenticates art ; which makes men masters
in their work, and not mere imitators and oper-
atives. There is a strong tendency in these
times to specialties, and it will do for men of
generous and catholic training, as ]\Iichelet says,
to ''sow the furrow of a strong specialty with the
seeds of all the sciences'" ; but his specialty makes
the ignorant theologian a bigot, the ignorant phys-
ician a quack, and the ignorant lawyer a petti-
fogger. We need to put a solider basis of
science not only under technical arts and learned
professions but under commerce, government,
and social relations. We are building our great
national fabric according to the rule of thumb.
Our best thinkers fail to devise for us a finan-
cial policy, by which the people may most safely
lift the war debt. We find ourselves mere em-
pirics and journeymen at handling the terrible
social problems which the war, the migration of
races, and the sudden growth of great cities are
thrusting upon us.
The "terrible problems," political, social and fi-
nancial, are still with us, but happily we have begun
to apply the scientific method to their origin, nature
and solution.
i8 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
I think then we have discovered what is that
informing spirit which is to give hfe to the Hmbs
and elements of the University ; which can fuse,
cement, and compact them into a harmonious
organization. It is Science.
Such a federation of schools as I have men-
tioned, embracing potentially all subjects of hu-
man and practical interest ; teaching always with
reference to principles ; occupying ever an atti-
tude of investigation ; knowing no favorite stud-
ies ; at all times thoroughly imbued with the
scientific spirit ; that is the University.
The distinction between college and university had
been almost lost in America. To the ordinary citi-
zen they were one thing. It was therefore thought
desirable to emphasize the place and function of the
universit3\ It may be questioned whether any one
university should aspire to teach all sciences. It may
be found feasible to form federations of universi-
ties, and organize division of labor among them.
Practical astronomy for instance might be assigned
to some ones completely equipped.
I speak of science in no narrow, physical, utili-
tarian sense. The metaphysical sciences will be
equally dear to the common Alma Mater. Fond
as we Americans are of building, proud as we
are of our victories over nature, by land and
sea, we still find our dearest action and interest
in human nature. "Homo sum" ; said Terence,
"humani nihil a me alienum puto." We, too, are
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 19
men, and indifferent to nothing" which pertains
to man. The nniversity will teach moral science,
the ground and sanction of individual conduct ;
and social science, which comprises the principles
governing men in communities. Teaching the
sciences of nature and of human nature she ma\-.
(\\h}- may she not?) teach also the science of
God, so far as our knowledge has become science.
Dogmatic theology she cannot meddle with, it
being something apart from and additional ti)
science ; but the history of religion, like the his-
tory of art or literature, may fall within her
sphere.
It ought to be possible for a university to teach
Deistic science, and '"glorify*' the true God by ex-
posing the false theologies of many nations, in a
manner unobjectionable to all citizens. In the Uni-
versity of Minnesota lectures have been delivered
on the Bible as literature, and instruction given in
Hebrew history with the Bible as text-book, without
offense.
We might, then, sum up our definition of the
university in those words, already classic, of our
generous countryman, as an "institution in which
any person can find instruction in any study,"
it being presumed that the distinguished author
of the legend intended by the words "any stud\""
to mean any science.
Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell Universitj", at
Ithaca, N. Y. The sentence quoted was a bold prop-
20 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
osition forty j^ears ago. It appears as the motto
of that Universit3\
It is clearly within the scope of the university
to teach all the sciences, but it never will be pos-
sible for her to teach all the arts. A lady in
Philadelphia has been to the pains of making up
a catalogue of 633 professions, trades, and crafts,
which, in her opinion, women can practice as well
as, or better than men. I suppose we may add
many more, which men alone or only women
can profitably pursue. Now no school can un-
dertake to teach a thousand trades ; and if se-
lections are to be made, the w-eakest, however
worthy in themselves, must go to the wall. There
is danger, I think, not of over-estimating the im-
portance of schools, but of misconceiving their
proper fttnction. Schools furnish us but a very
small part of the knowledge we possess, and the
value of what knowledge we get from them lies
in its being more or less systematic, that is scien-
tific. There never will be a time when schools
can instruct economically in any large number
of manual operations, whether of the field or the
shop. The farmer must learn to drive the plow
on the land he tills, the engine driver must mount
the foot-board, the sailor must learn the ropes on
deck and aloft, the printer must stand up to his
case, the book-binder to his bench, the blacksmith
must don the leather apron and build his fire on
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 21
the forge. All of them Avill resort to the schools
for knowledge of the mother tongue, of the hu-
man body and how to use and care for it, of num-
bers, of nature in her manifold forms, and of
the laws of human conduct and social life. I think
it greatly to be regretted that we have no good
system of apprenticeship in this country. For lack
of it we are obliged to import our first class me-
chanics and artisans. I do not believe any sys-
tem of schools can ever replace it. The Univer-
sity, then, will do best, if, attending to its proper
work, the cultivation and inculcation of science,
it do not neglect this for the less worthy and less
important task of teaching mere tricks of trade.
The result will be the elevation of the trades
into professions, the multiplication of inventions,
and the diffusion of the most useful knowledge.
While adhering to the opinion that it is not the
function of the university to teach trades, the expe-
rience of late years requires modification of the
statement that schools cannot effectively and econom-
ically do that. The examples of the Elmira Reforma-
tory, of the Pratt Institute, and many other institutions
have proven that some trades can be taught in schools
in a satisfactory way. European experience verifies
this abundantly.
It may be necessary for the university to
teach certain arts in order to inculcate and illus-
trate the sciences, but her processes will always
22 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
be costly, and from a commercial point of view,
extravagant.
I trust that, now, there remains no longer any
room for the very common mistake of the uni-
versity as being merely an overgrown college. It
is not numbers which give character to the one
or the other. We have seen that as their devel-
opment has been independent, so likewise are
their splieres and objects different. The work
of the college is to train up youth and prepare
them, not to practice a profession, but to enter
upon the study of it.
The university then receives them and in-
structs them in the principles, and to some ex-
tent in the practice of the callings thc}^ have
chosen. She presumes them to bring such ac-
quirements as fit them to receive her instruction.
She offers to teach, within reason, whatever use-
ful science the}- wish to learn, presuming always
that the near approach of manhood and its duties
will be sufficient stimulus to diligence, and that
the best moral discipline is to be got when the
least is said about it. If consistent with her the-
ory, the university will not be charged with the
maintenance of students, nor will she interfere in
their conduct, further than to forbid and punish
wdiatever acts are injurious to good order, or
scandalous to her name. She will always assume
that they who resort to her are capable of pro-
viding for their wants and of governing their
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 23
passions and appetites. If she depart from these
rules it will be from temporary necessity.
The college on the other hand is false to its
duty and theory if it do not attend to the physical
and moral needs of the immature youth whom it
undertakes to train up in the way they should go.
Removing them from the home and its influences,
it is bound to replace the family government and
relationship so far as lies in her power. For my
part 1 sincerely deplore the falling off, of late
years, in the good government of our collegiate
communities. The academic freedom so proper
to the mature university student is not the thing
for college boys in their teens. Too often is
the parental control of the government disarmed
or supplanted by the public sentiment of a com-
munity of inexperienced and irresponsible youth.
This comes of a mingling of the college and uni-
versity methods, a thing which works mischief,
and only mischief.
All university studies being in a manner op-
tional, it is evident that she has no immediate in-
terest in the so-called educational problem of the
day: "whether any studies should be pursued
for the sake of mental discipline, or whether
discipline should be got in following favorite
optional studies." The college is much more
nearly concerned with this question. It has some
interest for us here, who, pending the accumula-
tion of our funds and the full equipment of the
24 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
professional departments^ are engaged in what
is really academic and collegiate work. Let us,
therefore, for a moment, attend to it. The mat-
ter is much simplified by distinguishing the class
of students to whom it rightly relates. We have
seen that the university student has no interest
in it. Neither have the pupils of the lower
schools, engaged as they are in learning those
elements which all agree to be indispensable to
every age and condition of life. There remain,
then, only those youth who, having passed from
the common schools, are to be put upon a course
of higher education preparatory either to the uni-
versity or to immediate entrance into business.
Now it is clear that these inexperienced youth
are not competent to decide for themselves upon
a course of study. If all were optional, and some
were hard and others easy, we all know which
would be favorite studies. I suppose one reason
why the young people have parents and teachers
is, that such matters may be decided for them.
A longer experience has shown that young stu-
dents some times choose the hardest studies. Some
such students, however, select one or perhaps two
favorite subjects no matter how difficult, and fill
up their hours, or points, or credits with branches
in which they can obtain passing marks with the
least possible time and effort.
The question then stands, not what courses of
study shall the youth choose most wisely, but
IXAUGURAL ADDRESS 25
what ones ought parents and teachers to set out
and require them to follow. Very few boys and
girls under eighteen are fit to make choice of a
life pursuit; and premature choice is injurious
to character and fatal to w'holesome training. Of
all shirks and ne'er-do-weels in college you may
put down for the most thorough-paced those
young men who were started in jackets to study
for some particular calling. They are contin-
ually saying of one or another study, "of what
use will this be to me when I am a minister, a
lawyer or a doctor," neglecting in their short-
sightedness those things which wiser men know
to be for their best good. Nor can it be right
for a parent prematurely and arbitrarily to pre-
scribe the future profession of his child ; it will
rather be his duty to give him that general train-
ing and equipment which may be as useful in
one calling as another, leaving him to choose for
himself. The instances of remarkable gifts de-
termining in early childhood the calling of the
man are too rare to furnish any rule.
If then the teacher is to prescribe a curriculum,
we may inquire u[)on what principles he ought
to do it.
We do not educate children for their own sake
merely, but for the sake of the family also. So-
ciety, too, has an interest in the matter; and so
the question is no longer one of expert operatives,
clever artists, sharp men of business, eloquent
26 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
writers, but whether there shall be good neigh-
bors in the land, and intelligent citizens, honest
and capable judges, incorruptible jurymen, wise
legislators, prudent executives. Every parent
who proposes thoroughly to educate his boy ought
to consider himself in a manner the steward and
servant of society. "No man liveth to himself,
and no man dieth to himself" ; which the sage
of Concord phrases :
"All are needed by each one
Nothing is fair or good alone."
This being granted, I am prepared to admit
that the aim and object of higher education
should be in the best sense of the term "practical."
I would never compel a boy or girl to drudge
and agonize over any study as a mere gymnastic.
There should ever be held out a worthy reason,
a noble and practical motive for all the lessons
and exercises of the school. What shall that
motive be?
Aristippus (so runs the old Greek anecdote)
having been asked what things boys ought to
learn, said, "Those things which they will prac-
tice when they become men." No later thinker
has stated the point more clearly or fairly ; but
the old Greek has been sadly misunderstood, as
if instead of saying men he had said workmen.
The Greek philosopher and his questioner had no
thought of the slaves who were the common la-
IXx\UGURAL x\DDRESS 27
borers of Attica, nor of the despised aliens who
carried on trade. It was the Athenian citizen, war-
rior and statesman at once, they had in mind.
Then let boys learn those things which they
will practice when they become men, and girls
the things which they will practice when they
grow up to womanhood. And what things will
the American boy practice when he grows up to
be a man? He will be a farmer or artisan,
physician or lawyer, preacher, teacher, or en-
gineer? Yes, some one of these, and let him
be no mere striker, bungler nor empiric. But is
this all ? The American boy growing up to man-
hood is to be something more than a workman,
whether with hands or brains. He will be friend
and neighbor, a member of society, of a family,
of the church, and will practice the duties of these
relations. What is more, he will be a citizen of
his town or city, of his state, and of the great
Republic. As such he will be called upon to give
his vote upon questions of policy worthy the
genius of great lawgivers, and which in mo-
narchical countries, wottld be confined to cabinets
and council chambers ; as for instance such a one
(we cannot enter here upon it), as that of the
relations of religion to our common schools, of
vJiich a leading journal of the day says. "A tem-
pest is rising which will rock the republic to its
verv foundations."
28 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
The name of the leading journal is not remem-
bered. That tempest has not seriously disturbed the
foundations of the republic. There is less rather
than more of the species of 'religion' implied, in the
common schools of to-day. In that time the state
universities had not conquered the ground they
hold at the present. Most orthodox people be-
lieved them to be intruders on a field belonging to
the church colleges. Even in later years there were
frenzied preachers who denounced the University
of Minnesota, as inevitably and hopelessly 'godless'
and 'infidel.' One of them has broken out in a na-
tional church council in denuncation of the state
universities, since these pages went to the printer.
The American boy will not be merely a voter.
He should be fit to be voted for, and to take up,
at the bidding of his fellow citizens, the duties
and responsibilities of public service. It will not
do, then, in America, to scrimp and narrow high-
er 'education down to the beggarly limits of
mere individual demand ; nor will it do here in
Minnesota, where farmers, lumber dealers, and
hardware merchants are framing the statutes of
a great university.
The reference was to leading members of the
board of regents, in particular to Messrs. John S.
Pillsbury, John Nicols and Orlando C. Alerriman.
Let the Republic learn a lesson (she has taken
many a one) from an old world monarchy. In
Prussia and other German states, the govern-
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 29
ment, under advice of the highest educational
authority, prescribes not merely what studies
shall be taught in the high schools, but in what
order and amount they shall follow, and in the
very number of hours per week that they shall
be devoted to each, and finally tests the work by
rigorous examinations conducted by persons
other than the teachers. And the justification
set up by the authorities for such arbitrary and
despotic legislation is just this: in order that the
youth may not be trained up in any selfish, hap-
hazard, utilitarian way, as if intended to be mere
operatives, but that they shall be so instructed in
science, language, literature and even religion, as
to be fit not merely for private duties, but for
the public and social relations of life. If mon-
archs and aristocrats arbitrarily impose such a
scheme upon subjects, what ought not the sov-
ereign people of a free country to demand for
themselves ?
The sovereign people is more uncertain now than
then as to the proper work of their schools. There
is no course of studies, no 'curriculum' in any stage
of our schooling. We have opened the doors to
'fads' and ranged up parallel columns of differing
courses, and given the pupils their choices not only
of the courses but also of many alternative studies
in the lists. It is time to resist the pressure to mul-
tiply subjects in the schools and to confine the pub-
lic instruction to branches generally necessary to
citizens. There should ever be a wide field for pri-
vate activity in education.
30 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
We are ready then for the question : What
kind of studies shall we require the youth to
pursue in the schools ?
The object of education is as the word im-
plies, "to draw out the man." We come into the
world not merely destitute of knowledge, but of
consciousness also. The child's first lesson is
to learn itself and the use of its limbs and
organs. It next learns to know other persons,
and things ; and later it learns what is given us
to know of the unseen world.
An education, then, whether in or out of school,
has these ends, and these only : to make men to
know themselves body and soul, to know nature
and human nature, and "to feel after God if
haply they may find him. being not far from
every one of us."
This statement is quite inadequate because it ig-
nores the fact that man is a doer as well as a
knower. Education should prepare for action. The
pious quotation was not tagged on to commend
the speaker to the orthodox ; he was sincerely and ac-
tively religious.
We will put into our school curriculums, then,
physiology and psychology; science of the body
and science of the soul ; then numbers, geog-
raphy, and the grammar of the natural sciences.
These studies teach us of ourselves and the vis-
ible creation. Those which unfold the nature
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 31
of man, and his relations, have been happily
called the Jiuniaiiitics, and are chiefly history, lit-
erature, and the key and entrance to them both,
language. From history we learn what men have
done ; from literature what they have thought.
We do not cling to the past in order to reproduce
it, but because we cannot spare its lessons. We
cannot spare its examples of heroism, martyr-
dom, patriotism, valor, love. Unhappy will that
nation be which cuts itself off from the past.
As well might a seaman throw overboard his
compass and charts, and resolve to steer his ship
by chalk marks on her taffrail.
At the time great expectations were voiced of im-
provements in our pedagogy through a knowledge
of the "child's mind." They have not been met.
As yet the "old psychology" has contril)uled little to
pedagogy, and. the "new psychology" is still on trial.
I have said that language is the key to his-
tory and literature. Without this key let no one
hope to enter their most sacred and fruitful pre-
cincts. But language has claims of its own.
being itself a science, and what is more, has
been ranked bv so great an authoritv as Max
Mueller, of Oxford, a natural science. Regarded
as a product of the human spirit, shaped and con-
ditioned by the organs of the human body, lan-
guage is altogether the most remarkable phenom-
enon of human existence. The human bodv. su
32 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
"fearfully and wonderfully made," is mere lum-
ber compared with that marvelous mechanism,
which conveys from man to man, from nation to
nation, and from age to age the inmost workings
of the invisible, intangible soul. j\Ien will never
cease to be curious about this wonderful instru-
ment, which chiefly marks his rank as the "roof
and crown" of creation, which makes society pos-
sible, and which unites and distinguishes nations.
To handle this instrument deftly, to make it serve
its purpose of telling the truth and nothing but
the truth, demands more knowledge, skill and
practice than any art ; more than to wield the
pencil of the painter, the engraver's burin, the
sculptor's chisel. Languages, then, must ever
hold a high place in all educational schemes.
And to know and be master of language, a man
must study other languages than his own. Goethe
most profoundly said : "He that has not learned
a foreign language knows nothing of his own."
A double reason, then, leads educators to employ
the Greek, the Latin, the German, and the
French. Each has its literature and history ; each
its peculiar influence upon the English of the
learner.
I must be allowed to praise here, the ad-
mirable judgment and liberality of those who
laid the foundations of this institution, in mak-
ing generous provisions for teaching languages.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS - 33
the ancient, the modern, and last but not least,
our own peerless, cosmopolitan English.
It is worth while to note in passing, that the
conflict which for the last few years has been
waging here in America between partisans of
classical and scientific courses, between the old
education and the new. is no new thing. It be-
gan in Germany more than fifty years ago. Dur-
ing the lapse of the first half of this century,
repeated attempts were made under the most fa-
vorable circumstances and with the most august
patronage to establish and conduct schools for
the higher education of business men, artisans,
and farmers, dispensing with the ancient lan-
guages. The results are, that most of the exper-
riments were total failures ; some, carried on in
connection with classical schools, have maintained
an existence. For those which survived on inde-
pendent foundations, in Prussia, the government,
by its minister of education, in 1859, issued a
set of final regulations which put down Latin to
be recited from three to eight hours a week for
all the school weeks in a course of nine years.
Modern languages, English, French and German
replace Greek in these so-called "Real" or Scien-
tific schools.
I do not remember to have seen any agricul-
tural or scientific course proposed in this coun-
try which does not embrace the study of at least
one foreign language. Still all I would insist
34 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
upon is that by some means those youth whom
we undertake to educate thoroughly, be trained
in the use of language. If this practical end can
be reached by way of the modern, easier and
surer than by the ancient languages, we may
heartily rejoice. Success, then, to the "New Edu-
cation," if it can win it.
The foregoing talk about language study is mostly
"bosh." The speaker had won his spurs as a teacher
of languages before the war of the slaveholders' re-
bellion, and was still under the spell of the old su-
perstition. He has long since ceased to believe that
a knowledge of some foreign language is essential
to a mastery of English, spite of the great name of
Goethe. Masters of English can get much out of
the study of foreign languages. The little knowledge
of a foreign tongue, ancient or modern, to be got in
the little time, and b}^ the possible methods of
schools is of slight account. The fact that a teach-
er of languages can set definite tasks and ascertain
whether his pupils have performed them has given
the "classics" an educational value not to be too light-
ly appreciated. We have yet to learn how to make a
discipline of English.
But it will very likely be said, "the curriculum
proposed for the youth is nothing new, for it
is essentially that of the old colleges." Yes, very
nearly that ; almost identical with the college
courses of thirty years ago, before they had be-
come overloaded with all sorts of ill-assorted,
incoherent additions. Tt is a curse of our smaller
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 35
colleges, that with small means and few instruct-
ors they undertake more work than they can
possibly perform zvcll.
With the establishment of the university on its
proper ground, a reform will inevitably be de-
manded in its organization. A few of the older
and richer institutions will assume the university
character, as some have already done. But the
greater number, without doubt, will be forced to
return to their original and natural position as
secondary schools. They will curtail their
courses instead of further extending them.
They will resume the duty of providing that fam-
ily government and parental discipline which
they retain in theory, but which long ago fell
into disuse. Such schools may, and as many
tliink, ought, to be distinctively religious; and
if private, will be all the better for enjoying the
sponsorship of reputable Christian bodies.
We should, therefore, have a three-fold scheme
of education, ist. The common schools. 2nd.
The colleges or secondary schools. 3rd, The
university.
The common schools of America have already
been largely gratuitous. They will by and by
be everywhere free in that sense. A grand
thought it is that no child shall ever be born in
the State of Minnesota, but shall be free to take
without money and without price the elements of
good learning. These schools will always remain.
X
36 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
in some sort, public, and under civil control. 1
hope presently to show that the University must
also be the creature and care of the state. And
the reasons I shall give for that conclusion will
almost necessarily compel the further admission
that the state must in some manner support and
control the secondar}- schools ; and this I think
it can do without trespassing upon any private
right, offending religious sentiment, or violating
any American principle. I know not how this
proposition may be received by our educational
men or by the people, but I think I ought to make
it. If ever any such system of secondary schools
shall be organized. I feel certain that it must
provide among others such a course of study as
I have mapped out for the college or higher acad-
emy, preparatory to the university. I would have
that course prescribed in sufficient detail by law.
I do not think the public secondary school
would, or ought wholly to supersede the private
denominational colleges. There will always be
a large number of sons and daughters of tran-
sient persons, orphans and others, who will need
or prefer the discipline of a family school, and
I would never shut private competition out of any
field of work, which it can profitably occupy. The
economy of such secondary high schools or col-
leges will be at once apparent, if we but mention,
that the courses of study being few and limited.
a moderate number of instructors could attend
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 37
to many students, that no elaborate apparatus,
museum, or library would be essential to their
successful operation. The gain would be im-
mensely increased so soon as Ave should be able
to relegate to these schools those studies which
now form the body of work for the first two
years in our ordinary American colleges. It is
a clear case that such a transposition must by
and by be made. For certain reasons not neces-
sary, nor advisable, to name here, the reading of
classical authors, and the study of the pure math-
ematics have become much less valuable than
formerly. In fact, the causes I allude to have
driven the best methods of instruction out of the
colleges.
The principal of the suppressed reasons for the al-
leged deterioration of classical study and instruction
was the clandestine use of "cribs" and "ponies" by
college students, which had not long before become
much too general, owing to the publication of the
Bohn translations.
How immense the gain, then, if a youth
could remain at the high school or academy,
residing in his home, until he had reached a
point, say, somewhere near the end of the Soph-
omore year, there to go over all those studies
which as a ])oy he ought to study, "under tutors
and governors." Then let the boy, grown up
to be a man, emigrate to the university, there to
38 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
enter upon the work of a man, to be master of
his time and studies, to enjoy perfect "academic
freedom," keeping" only to the rule, of so using
his own as not to harm another. No man
can be a scholar till he has learned to be his own
teacher. This may be that time of trial through
which every young man must pass in order to
prove him, whether he will be a true man or no.
This proposal to dethrone the traditional system
of higher education seemed to orthodox friends who
really understood it as the rant of a wild educational
mutineer. That "The American College" could pos-
sibly be improved upon was inconceivable. Away
back in the '50's when the speaker was a school-
boy he enjoyed the friendship of Professor Charles
A. Joy of Columbia College, who had taken up his
life work after a long period of study in German
universities. From him came the knowledge of the
gymnasium, the splendid secondary school, fitting
German boys for the work of men in the university.
During nearly twenty years of teaching, military
service and business the idea incubated. With
great trepidation the speaker ventured, on this (for
him), most important occasion to announce the
principle of a system of public education, with its
natural trinity of epochs, primary, secondary, supe-
rior. That it was not openly and vigorously de-
nounced, was due to the fact that it was not under-
stood, or. if understood, was not taken seriously.
The college may be denominational, but the
university must be secular. The Church certainly
has no sttfficient motive, and as things are, can-
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 39
not command the means to erect and control it.
The interest of the Church in science is an indi-
rect and secondary one, and is in results rather
than in methods. What she is chieliy concerned
in is, that "children he virtuously brought up
tc lead a godly and Christian life." Her efforts,
then, ought to be exerted upon children and
youth, so far as she will interfere in education
at all. When she shall have carried the gospel
and the elements of civilization to all accessible
heathen, it will be time enough for her to invest
the tithes and offerings in observatories, dissect-
ing rooms, moot courts, and experimental farms.
Though the Church has no proper motive nor
any means she can consistently use to endow
the university, it does not follow that the uni-
versity must or can be unchristian, for her very
office and occupation are the discovery and in-
culcation of truth. To ignore Christianity, she
must ignore history, and banish literature. She
may, and even ought to teach all the sciences
which underlie the clerical profession ; but she
can no more undertake to teach denominational
dogmas, than to recognize the thousand "isms,
'pathies. and 'ologies which claim a connection
with other professions.
W'e have seen that religion has no call to
found a university. No argument is needed to
show that individual men cannot be depended up-
on to perform that service. We can applaud our
40 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Vassars, and Cornells, our Packers and Pea-
bodys, and honor ourselves in calling down ben-
edictions upon them, but we cannot compel their
beneficence; Minnesota cannot postpone her uni-
versity until some public-spirited millionaire
comes down with the needful millions.
The public spirited millionaire has come with his
millions. He has founded new universities, supe-
rior in plant, equipment and strength of teaching
force to existing institutions one or two centuries
old. To many of the latter he has, by princely gifts
of buildings, books, and endowment funds, given new
life, and expanded efficiency. By generous distribu-
tion of retiring allowances, he has released scores of
colleges of the support of superannuated teachers,
and made them happj' with a secured maintenance
in their old age. So far as dollars are concerned,
it may be that university education might be main-
tained altogether by the enlightened generosity of
Cornells, Stanfords, Rockefellers, and Carnegies. It
may be that no state will ever be so generous
toward her university as these great benefactors
towards those founded by themselves. Shall the
state then dismantle and disband her university?
Up to this time Minnesota has had no call to con-
sider any such proposition.
The essential thing is that the state must see to
it that there shall be a university, to complete and
balance the system of public education. Should it
be the pleasure of some man of great wealth and
great heart to found and endow a university of am-
ple scope, to be virtually the State University, it is
not easy to see why he might not be accommodated,
and the taxpayers relieved. The state Would, of
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 41
course, preserve her power of visitation. In a very
large state there may be room (as in California)
for a university of magnificent proportions, private-
ly endowed, alongside of the state's university. In
small states the desirable thing is that private gifts
of ordinary magnitude, go to swell the resources of
the state universitj-. Universities are much too cost-
ly to be multiplied merely to serve as monuments
to millionaires.
There remains, then, but one resource. The
State, the Commonwealth, the sovereign people
ill their organized poHtical capacity must found
the university,
I do not care to insist that the state is bound
to endow the university for the same reason we
use to justify her interference in primary edu-
cation, viz. : that luiiversity education is abso-
kitely essential to the existence and preservation
of free institutions. I am content merely to
urge that university education is essential to the
well-being, rather than to the being of the state ;
this granted, our case is made.
What then can the university do for the state ?
First of all she can form the liead and crown
of our system of schools, sending her life-giving
influence to its remotest fibres. The university
should be the great normal school for teachers
of high schools, academies and colleges. The
university by refusing its degrees and honors
to illiterate and unworthy candidates, can not
only raise the standard of scholarship in all the
42 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
schools, but can elevate the professions from
the low condition into which they have con-
fessedly fallen. And there is another consider-
ation, which ought to be mentioned here.
The university in organizing colleges of medicine
and law, owes it to the people not merely to in-
struct the few to heal diseases, and manage suits
at law, but to teach the many how to keep well
and out of litigation.
The original charter of 1851 of the Universit}- of
Minnesota, provided for a normal department; that
of 1868, did not so provide in terms, but the re-
gents were left free to include one in the "more col-
leges" authorized. Pedagogical instruction was be-
gun by Professor Kiehle in the late nineties, but the
college of education was not formally organized
till 1907; thus, tardily justifying the prescience of
the first projectors.
As to the standard of scholarship, this university
has maintained a fairly respectable grade.
For some years after the beginning of college
work in the University of Minnesota an emphasis
probably too great was laid b}' the management on
scholastic performances, but later, with a worldly
wisdom which must be commended, the authorities
have preferred to pursue a policy calculated to win
public support, rather than the approval of schol-
ars. Nothing so much pleases the public, and legis-
latures as bigness. The university which attracts
and keeps great numbers of students, can have ap-
propriations after its desire. The public would hard-
ly support an institution whose examinations should
exclude applicants with imperfect preparation, and
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 43
eliminate from its classes students who fail to
obtain high percentages in the examinations. Yet
that would be an ideal university which admitted
and kept at work only the elite youth of the state,
in reduced numbers. Under the elective system,
which has had a great development in this univer-
sity, the old plan of ranking candidates for the
bachelor's degree according to the marks obtained
in their recitations and exercises, became imprac-
ticable and ridiculous and has been given up. So al-
so, has the classification of bachelors into those of
Arts, Science, and Literature: all are now bachelors
of Arts. The bachelor's degree in these days certi-
fies that the bearer has passed four years in some
college, has maintained a tolerable scholarship, and
has kept the peace. It would be common sense to
abolish it altogether, but tradition is powerful and
"hocce diploma" will long continue to be handed
out on the commencement stage. Such being the
case it would be well to follow English precedent,
and let the bachelor's degree stand for a "pass de-
gree," and supplement it by an honor system involv-
ing rigorous examinations conducted by examiners
other than the teachers. Teachers should always be
holding examinations in some form, but no honors
should be conferred for them.
It must be added that this University has stood
firmlj- by its early promise never to confer degrees
except for merit ascertained by examinations.
The colleges of la\v and medicine (which for the
present purpose may include those of pharmacy and
dentistry"), have from their organization in 1888,
steadily advanced the thoroughness of their instruc-
tion, and the rigor of their examinations. Both
have extended their courses to cover four full years,
and established conditions of admission, as exacting.
44 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
probably, as the present state of our education war-
rants. In the good time coming thej^ will exact the
complete secondary school preparation contemplated
in this address. Indeed public notice has been giv-
en of such intention.
The time is not distant when a Department of
Public Health will be established in all imiver-
sities, which will teach all that can be known as
to the causes of epidemics, the sanitary conditions
and control of cities, hospitals, asylums, prisons,
school buildings, dwellings and all constructions
and enclosures.
Dr. Charles N. Hewitt was for nearly a quarter
of a century the executive secretary of the state
board of health. In that office he conferred great
benefits on the state and won an international rep-
utation. He was elected non-resident professor of
public health in the university, and for many years,
gave instruction to the academic students on the
hygiene of the individual, the family and the city,
of great interest and value. After the organization
of the college of medicine and his removal from of-
fice for political reasons, the board of regents un-
advisedly, and in a manner disrespectful to one who
had served many years without compensation, left
his name off the roll of instructors and discontin-
ued his department. This was a move to the rear.
The University of Minnesota may some time be
boasting that she was the first in America to open
a "department of Public Health."
The university will accumulate and maintain
a great library, to which citizens can resort for
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 45
complete information on any useful subject.
A^ext to the instruction, the library is the great
interest of the university. Mr. Carlyle, speaking
to the youth of Edinburgh University said to
them in his quaint way, "The main use of uni-
versities in the present age is that, after you have
done with all your classes, the next thing is a
collection of books, a great library of good books,
which you proceed to study and to read." To
such a library as will some day exist here, can
resort not only the scholar, and the learned au-
thor, but the historian, the statistician, the legis-
lator, the editor, the manufacturer and the in-
ventor, to consult those works which are beyond
reach of private means.
In regard to the library it is not too much to say
that the policy the regents and the state has been
niggardly. For nearly forty years the oversight
was left to a busy professor who was allowed a
petty compensation for the extra labor. In 1895,
scorning all professional counsel the regents erect-
ed a library building violating every principle of
library construction, at a cost of $^00,000. It would
have been far more judicious to expend $50,000 or
say, $75,000 on a plain brick building and put the
rest of the money into books. All the books now
owned by the institution do not exceed 120,000. This
number ought to be quadrupled in the next decade.
The University of Chicago bought 300.000 books
and housed them in a building which cost $12,500.
Next, the university will collect and arrange
a museum of history, natural history, and art.
46 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
It is difficult in a new country to appreciate the
value and importance of such collections. We
are too easily misled into thinking of the museum
as a mere "curiosity shop." The museum is the
perfection and climax of object-teaching. One
glance at a fossil skeleton, the sight of a piece
of coral, a trilobite. or a fern from the coal-beds
gives to the young geologist an insight not to
be won from volumes of reading. If you wish
your young machinist to comprehend the steam
engine, show him one in operation. Waste no
useless talk to inexperienced youth upon the
beauties of fine art. but hang up "the Transfig-
uration," bring forth an Etruscan vase, unveil
the marble form of that Gladiator of the Capitol,
"butchered to make a Roman holiday."
The museum as conceived but very inadequately
announced by the speaker, is almost as far from re-
alization in the University of Minnesota, as in 1869.
The geological collections made in the course of the
geological survey is about all there is to show. The
cost of collecting, housing, maintaining and admin-
istering museums of general character is so enor-
mous that only the richest of institutions can as-
pire to them. The universitj' of a large and popu-
lous state should be the appropriate agency for
the one great museum the state needs to afford. It
is too much to hope that even the richest of univer-
sities will soon undertake to maintain a continuous
world's fair, but it should be reckoned among its
ideals.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 47
Another function of the university is to pros-
ecute those scientific researches and make those
costly experiments in the arts for which private
investigators lack the means ; such experiments
for instance, as those of Lawes and Gilbert upon
the nutrition of plants. We purchase a telegraph,
the photograph, a new m©tor, the spectroscope,
the lucifer match, or chloroform cheaply at the
price of fifty years of seemingly fruitless labora-
tory work. Chloroform alone pays for all the
money ever expended in chemical researches. To
take a case nearer home ; if the expenditure of say
$20,000 could result in discovering but one spe-
cies of the apple, sure to thrive in Minnesota, no
one would call that money ill spent. Closely con-
nected with this function is another: that of
stimulating invention and patronizing inventors.
Let it never be forgotten when giving to James
Watt, the immortal benefactor of his race, that
applause he so richly deserves, to celebrate also
that University of Glasgow which sheltered him,
and those her learned and generous professors
who appreciated his gifts, assisted him through
his struggles, and without jealousy rejoiced in his
triumphs. The university should be the natural
resort and resource of the inventor for counsel
and for information. Were the university ready
to do her full work here, there would, I believe,
be less money squandered in patent right hum-
48 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
bugs, and fewer brains addled with "perpetual
motion."
It is hardly necessary in these days to emphasize
the practical value of the scientific researches car-
ried on by university men. A single example may be
noted in the case of Professor Alichelson of the
University of Chicago, winner of the Nobel prize
in 1907, for his invention of the "Interferometer."
This instrument gives the world an absolute stand-
ard of measure in wave lengths of light.
The apple illustration has not been literally illus-
trated in Minnesota, but it has been the honorable
part of her university to encourage and reward the
late Peter M. Gideon, discoverer of the Wealthy ap-
ple, now grown all over the Northwest.
As a part of her practical scientific work, the
university will build and operate the observa-
tory, in which will be made perpetual observations
on the weather, the magnetic forces, and on heav-
enly bodies. And I cannot think of any more
practical use to which her means can be put. Take
as an illustration of the possible results of mete-
orological researches, the great discovery of the
laws of circular storms, the knowledge of which
enables the modern navigator to steer clear of
them with almost unerring precision. The ob-
servatory is needed not alone for its practical uses,
but for its stimulating influence upon all the de-
partments of science, especially upon mathema-
tics and the physical sciences.
The mere keeping of correct time is no trifling
matter. The movements of railwav trains, the
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 49
sittings of courts and legislative bodies, the ses-
sions of the schools, the very titles to our home-
steads, the daily routine of our mills and facto-
ries, the wages of our laborers require the main-
tenance of an absolute standard of time. The
great clock of the heavens alone can furnish that,
and the astronomer only can read its radiant dial-
plate. I would therefore require the university
astronomer, by means of telegraphic wires to
drop a signal ball, daily at noon, atop of every
court house and public building in the state.
The speaker's exhortation received a tardy ful-
hlhnent. It was not till 1892 that a small observatory
was erected and supplied with instruments sufficient
for instruction. The trustees of Carleton College,
more enterprising and appreciative than the regents
of the university, in 1878 established an observatory,
which soon became known throughout the learned
world. It has ever since furnished true time to the
Minnesota railroads and public offices. The classes
of the state university were for many years called
by Xorthfield time.
I see now that I can only enumerate without
detail several other particular demands of the
public on the university. The state needs not
merely intelligent voters ; she more and more re-
quires with the advance of time, and multiplica-
tion of interests, experts in legislation, in the ad-
ministration of public affairs, and for her mili-
tary defense. It will. I think, presently become
50 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
apparent that this need is so imperative that the
state generally will be forced to provide means
whereby, and places in which instruction may be
had in such sciences as political economy, inter-
national law, the science of government, parlia-
mentary usage, the keeping of public accounts
and the science and art of war. We cannot much
longer run the risk of private institutions, wheth-
er secular or religious, prosecuting thoroughly
and practically these subjects. Already we have a
great accumulation of political questions; ques-
tions of suffrage, of tariffs, of railroads, of
schools, of finance, any one of which is too big
and too complicated to be handled by any who
does not make it his special study. It is true the
imiversit}' can teach nothing finally nor dogmat-
ically upon such questions, but she can train up
generations of men to be their own teachers, and
to verse themselves in those matters. It is al-
ready clearly impossible for us to preserve civil
institutions so simple as to be within the easy
comprehension of all citizens ; and since we must
trust to experts, let us have the best.
The writer took up the instruction in economics
and politics in 1875, as soon as any class was ready
for it and for more than twenty years gave all that
was offered in an institution called "university."'
Whether they did not care about this great field of
learning, especially deserving their promotion, or
because they were more interested in other sciences,
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 51
or because the teacher lacked ability to stimulate
them to action, the regents dallied and temporized,
and gave the most important department in their
care a tardy development. They are still twenty
years behind the age, but under the stimulus of an
able and ambitious head of department, who knows
how to marshal public bodies and the press they
give signs of movement.
As to the importance of keeping alive the
military spirit of the people, and the practice of
arms. I need only point for assurance to the con-
dition in which many of our states found them-
selves at the outbreak of the late civil war. The
state university with a trifling expense of time
and money, can secure to the whole body of its
male students a fair knowledge of the use of
arms, and can thoroughly instruct some portion
of them in the elements of military science. The
result would be that, should there unfortunately
occur the need, many hundred young men would
be ready and competent to organize and command
companies and battalions. To render such in-
struction in any high degree profitable, however,
the university must in some manner derive au-
thority from the state to enforce, so far as may
be necessary, military discipline.
Under a succession of worth}' and ingenious army
officers the military instruction required by the
"Morrill Bill" of 1862 of all institutions sharing in
the benefits of the act, has been carried on with
52 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
commendable fidelity and success. It has been and
will continue to be, difficult to fit in military drill
requiring the attendance of all male students at
the same hour into a university program. This
difficulty will be remedied when the Government
comes to detail a sufficient number of sergeants to
assist the army officer furnished as commandant of
cadets. Mere "drill" ought to be taught to boys
in the preparatory schools, leaving the university to
add instruction in military science proper. The pros-
perity and admirable efficiency of such military
schools of secondary rank as Shattuck School at
Faribault, is good warrant for this suggestion. Ex-
perience has not shown the need of special military
authority.
It may be expecting too much of the near fu-
ture, but it is still gratifying to hope, that it may
give to the American states and nation, some
such system as that already long in use in Eng-
land, and as proposed in Congress by ]\Ir. Jenckes.
of Rhode Island, a "civil service system" which
will require candidates for public preferment to
prove their fitness for the offices aspired to by
passing examinations before impartial boards.
If ever that day shall come when the state shall
make such demands upon those whom she calls
into her service, they in turn, will require with a
certain justice that she furnish the instruction.
If she do this at all, she must do it generously
and freely, for there must never be in a republi-
can country any position of honor or trust to
which the humblest citizen may not aspire.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS S3
As already shown the University of Minnesota
has still to provide for large and liberal instruction
in economics, taxation, administration and finance,
and other studies proper to equip men for the pub-
lic service. The progress in Civil Service reform in
state and municipal affairs still lags behind that in
national.
A member of the University faculty is matur-
ing and will propose a plan by which the Uni-
versity will be charged with a survey of the
State, to embrace not merely its topography, and
geology, but its hydrography, its botany, its en-
tomology. A part of the plan will be to furnish
scientific employment for a number of years to
young men pursuing scientific studies at the Uni-
versity.
The faculty member referred to was Professor
Arthur Beardsley, then instructor in civil engineer-
ing. The project was much discussed between him,
Professor Edward Hadley Twining, and the speak-
er. Both gentlemen were soon called to other in-
stitutions. It remained for the president of the
University in the winter of 1872 to draft a bill for
the organization of a geological and natural history
survey of the state, which was easily passed through
the legislature without change; the more easily be-
cause Regents Pillsbury and Nicols were both mem-
bers of the senate. It was the hope and expecta-
tion of the framer of the bill that the surveys would
be so closely connected with that of the appropriate
scientific departments of instruction as to employ
and interest a large number of students and give
54 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
them opportunity for practice in observation and re-
search. It was the pleasure of the board of regents
to adopt a different policj'. Professor Newton H.
Winchell was engaged in the same year as state
geologist and conducted the geological investiga-
tions till 1900 when they were suspended, although much
remained to be done. The natural history opera-
tions were delayed in starting and are still in prog-
ress. The geological survey has saved the state
from much waste of energy and money in digging
for coal above the Carboniferous. And it has given
the University some reputation.
Such are some of the services the University
can render to the State, and are so many rea-
sons why she is boimd to interfere in its behalf.
An institution which undertakes such offices
J\JUST BE RICH. And here we have an addi-
tional claim upon the public. The very vastness
of the concern exceeds private means and corpor-
ate authority. Harvard University, by far the
wealthiest academic corporation in America, is
to-day asking her alumni to increase her endow-
ment by a sum sufficient to yield an additional
income of $250,000.
Cornell University, rich in prospect, is poor to-
day with an income of about $75,000. Michigan
University spends $80,000 a year. The Univer-
sity of Berlin expends yearly over $200,000 in
gold upon a scale of prices far below American
rates.
The revenue of Yale College is not a small
one, and yet this is what a Yale professor says
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 55
in the columns of the "New Englander" for April
1869: "The professors are not more than half
])ai(l, '■'' '-'■' '■'- the salaries are not more than
half sufficient to support a family respectably in
New Haven. '■' * * The Library fund is
miserably inadequate '■' * '■' The corps of
instructors ought to be doubled. '■' '■' '•' Yale
College is woefully poor. * * * She has not
a dollar to buy books." * * *
Such is the financial condition of one of our
oldest, best-managed, and most popular American
colleges. And what is the cry that comes up
from every college large and small in the land,
but "money ! money ! ! money ! ! !" The religious
press rings with appeals for gifts and endow-
ments, alumni of colleges pour in large offerings
of love and gratitude, noble men and women
dying, bequeath rich legacies to favorite institu-
tions, but still the cry is "money, money, money !"
There is, as I have said, but one resource. The
state must endow the university, and if the state
will have the university in its full proportions, let
her first count the cost, and take the million for
her unit.
"To take the million for the unit" was an auda-
cious proposition in that day, but it has been abund-
antly justified. The payroll of the University of
Minnesota in IQ08-9 was $570,000 and expenses of
operation swelled the budget to $750,000. The an-
56 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
nual expenditure hereafter will be reckoned by the
million.
If the state endow the university she
must needs control so great a concern ; and such
control, if wisely conditioned, is just now one
of the great needs of the university. To proper-
ly govern a great academic community, composed
of persons rather loosely connected with the local
society, requires an authority greater than any
corporate body can of itself confer. The stu-
dents of the State university, beneficiaries, should
be regarded as engaged in the public service,
enjoying the public bounty upon condition of,
and only during good behaviour. We build re-
form schools and penitentiaries for vicious and
incorrigible youth. The State university will
have no motive for retaining young persons of
evil example either upon financial or social con-
siderations.
The university needs public authority to sanc-
tion and dignify her degrees, and other certifi-
cates of merit. It is not necessary to enter upon
a discussion of the causes which of late years
have brought college degrees into low estimation,
one may almost say, into actual contempt. The
fact is notorious and undeniable. The State uni-
versity, not depending for her support upon the
tuition money of her students, nor dreading the
censure of unsuccessful candidates and their
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 57
friends, may stand firmly by her rule of granting
NO DIPLOMA WHICH DOES NOT MEAN WHAT IT
SAYS. Let her stand by this rule, and the time
will come when every graduate will write with
pride the name of his Alma Mater after the
initials of his degree. The diploma will be a
passport to employment and social position, and
not, as now, to be hid away with the manuscripts
of old college themes.
As to the means through which the state will
exert her influence and authority, that question
has already been for us wisely decided. Her au-
thority has been vested by law in a board of re-
sponsible commissioners. There is safety in such
assignment. The governing body of a great aca-
demic institution must possess a degree of per-
manence not so necessary for a legislature, and
nuist be separated so far as possible from the in-
fluence and interference of partisan politics.
In the hands of the Board of Regents is or
ought to be, reposed by law. all the power neces-
sary to the execution of their great trust. Rut
since it is clearl\- impossible that such a board
can remain in permanent session, attending con-
stantly to the afifairs of the Institution, their au-
thority must be largely delegated to such persons
as are employed by them to be permanently on
dut\- ; that is, to the president and faculty of the
University, who being largely and immediately
responsible to the public for its success or fail-
58 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
lire must have a control commensurate with their
responsibihty. There will, therefore, grow up in
time a bod}^ of statutes defining the duties and
powers of all concerned. Some powers, however,
a Board of Regents cannot possibly delegate. The
vitally important matter of the finances must al-
ways remain in their hands, because the people
will hold them and not others, responsible for the
efficient and honorable management of the Uni-
versity funds.
The relation of the university to the state still
needs to be better understood and better adjusted.
Up to near the middle of the nineteenth century
all schools in America were denominational or mu-
nicipal, which in some cases meant the same thing.
Horace Mann's great work in the forties was to
teach his countrymen that the schooling of the chil-
dren is an imperative duty and function of the state,
and the cost of it a just lien on all the property of
the state. Long after that the university of the
state was regarded as one of the incorporated col-
leges in the state to hold its own with them if it
could. It is still so regarded by many. But for
the early established policy of congressional land
grants for their endowment it is doubtful whether
the states would have cared to incorporate univer-
sities. Minnesota received through a proceeding of
doubtful merit a double portion, 96,160 acres, and
the expectation was that the proceeds would give
the state a magnificent institution.
To this day the state university is not under-
stood as clearly as it ought to be, as the roof and
crown of a complete system of public education, and
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 59
as an arm of the state to that end. Instead of being
the only degree-conferring agency of the state her
graduates have no advantage over those of the poor-
est apology for a college. The university diploma
is not a warrant for the practice of medicine in
Minnesota. The legislature has not yet so discred-
ited the college of law. This is the state of fact
in spite of Jeflferson's prophecy and the Indiana
eonstitution of 1816. But there is progress, and we
may look for the day when the state university will
be regarded as the crowning feature of an educa-
tional system, and the appropriate agency of the
state for all scientific, economic, and statistical in-
quiries needed by her.
Experience has as 3'et suggested no better way of
governing American universities than by putting
them into commission to a board of trustees or re-
gents as they are commonly called in the west. And.
no better way of making regents has been found
tlian that of appointment by the governors with
senatorial confirmation. If the governing board of
the University of Minnesota has been exceptionally
well composed, it is due to the excellent custom of
reappointment. General Sibley, a democrat, served
during the administrations of eight republican gov-
ernors. Governor Pillsbury was on the board from
1863 till his death in 1902. It cannot be said that
party politics had absolutely no part in the ap-
pointment of regents, but it maj- be said that no
harm has as yet come from that source to the institution.
It is not difficult for a governor to find in the ranks of
his own party men in every way (|ualifie(l to act as re-
gents. There can be no excuse for tlie selection of
unworth}' and incapable persons.
Xor, up to the present time, has experience devel-
oped any better way of conducting tlio discipline
6o UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
of student bodies than that of reposing it in the
hands of a president and faculty, That simple plan
worked well enough when colleges were small and
there were no independent professional schools on
the same campus. Where student deviltries are com-
mitted by members of separate colleges no one fac-
ulty can properly deal with the offenders. The re-
sort lately made to a senate or council made up of
delegates from the faculties of the federated colleges
gives promise of success. Fortunately the average
student requires no discipline except that which re-
sults from the exaction of hard and steady work.
In the cases of rare outbreaks disturbing the peace
of the university town, there is no reason why the
law of the land supported by adequate force, should
not operate. But the force must be adequate and
intelligently employed. When a crowd of colle-
gians so far outnumber the police as to be able to
overcome them, take away their arms, and tie them
up to trees, the law of the land becomes a farce.
For offenses committed, as they occasionally will
be, within the precincts of the university, the facultj'
or council tribunal composed of a large number of
men busied with their teaching and research, with
no taste for the business, is a clumsy instrument.
The plan of having in a great university a special
judge, with power to take testimony under oath,
to punish for contempt, and to impose reasonable
penalties prescribed by law is worthy of considera-
tion. It is an ancient practice in continental univer-
sities. No body of persons should be allowed to
believe itself above the law of the land.
Another dtity which the regents cannot de-
volve is the exceedingly delicate one of selecting-
the instructors. The instruction, be it remem-
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 6i
bered, is the first, great, pre-eminent concern of
the university, and that by which it must stand or
fall. There are reasons why the selection of a uni-
versity professor is a more delicate and difficult
task than any other the Board will be called up-
on to perform. The university professor is no
drill-master of boys, no mere grammarian, no
mere scientific showman. He is first of all a
teacher. He is also a scholar and an investigator.
He is an enthusiast in his own calling, absolutely
wedded to it, and "forsaking all others, will keep
himself only unto it." He is no adventurer, turn-
ing his hand now to this trick now to that as he
finds the one or the other to pay the better. In fact
he must be a man who, like Professor Agassiz,
"cannot atTord to make money." Such men
when, by good fortune they are found, deserve
a peculiarly tender and liberal regard, such as
that which Cicero claimed for his Greek poet.
They are men who prepare themselves for a kind
of work for which the demand is limited and pre-
carious. The college professor, thrown upon the
world, is at a great disadvantage compared with
men whose days and nights have not been given to
books and the pen. There will be no duty, then,
so delicate and embarrassing as the selection of
the Faculty. This duty, however, will grow light-
er hereafter, when the ranks of the instructors
can be recruited from the alumni.
62 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
The selection of the teachers of the university
is the supreme duty of the governing board, and one
which it cannot devolve. They will avail themselves
of the aid of experienced heads of departments, and
in particular of the head of the university. To this
duty he should subordinate all others. After an
unhappy experiment of annual elections the regents
of this university fell back on the traditional policy
of electing for good behavior. So long as this is
the general practice no one institution can reject
it. Able men will not enter the service of an in-
stitution which offers no permanence of employ-
ment, and such as it may engage will be looking
for chances to emigrate. Permanence of employ-
ment, however, renders the original engagement of
professors the more diflicult and critical a task.
Aspirants cannot object to a reasonable apprentice-
ship, and while that is in progress it should be the
business of somebody to observe with diligence his
character, attainments and teaching ability. The
weakest point in university administration is the ab-
sence of "supervision." Such are the traditions of
college work that a professor would resent as un-
warranted espionage any visitations of the presi-
dent to his class room, and an instructor would tol-
erate with ill grace any attempt at inspection of his
work by the head of the department. The conse-
quence is that services are judged of through all
sorts of indirections, including the reports of stu-
dents. There ought to be some way found by which
an aspirant to a college professorship could have
■ his efficiency determined by competent and impar-
tial judges.
After such an apprenticeship an election should
mean an engagement for life or good behavior. The
rapidly expanding custom of granting "retiring al-
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 63
lowances" to superannuated professors furnishes an-
other reason for extreme care in the choice of uni-
versity teachers, whether the pensions come from
the public funds or from the generous benefactions
of Mr. Carnegie. There should be no doubt as to
the worthiness of the recipients. A state has no
business to own and support a university not
manned by the best men she can attract into her
service, and should pay any compensation necessary
to attract and keep. Fortunately, honor, permanence
of emploj'ment, and generous treatment, are of more
account to "best men" than dollars, but dollars
should be freely disbursed when other universities
bid high for experts.
1 have spoken of the University as she will be ;
as an ideal to be realized long after all who are
gathered here to-day shall have ceased from the
studies of earth and passed to the great examina-
tion day above. Btiilding for the future we will
lay broad and solid foundations for the structures
our posterity shall rear. But as we build for the
present also, and build in part, we first will found
and arrange those departments of the most im-
mediate and practical use. It will be the part of
wisdom to teach first those sciences and arts by
which wc may subdue the prairie and the forest,
bridge our great rivers, utilize the powers and
forces of nature, diversify industry, and multiply
the kindly fruits of the earth, before we lavish
our means upon galleries of painting or musical
conservatories. The plow, the loom, and the
64 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
anvil, must precede the pencil, the chisel, and the
baton.
I have said the University is catholic, knowing
no favorite pursuits, but welcoming-, fostering all.
But it may happen that the University may be
made an almoner and trustee of funds, appro-
priated to the cultivation of some special science,
or for the benefit of a particular craft or profes-
sion. Assuming the office of trustee she can do
nothing less than execute sacredly her trust. The
assignment by the legislature of Minnesota of the
funds which are to accrue from the sale of lands
granted by the general government to endow in-
stitutions in the interest of the industrial classes
to this University, I suppose to constitute such a
trust. Nothing I can say here could increase the
confidence which ought to be felt by the people
and their legislators in this governing body, made
up of men not strangers to you, nor to your State,
not without successful experience in military, civ-
il and business life and not without applause for
a sagacious and honorable administration of the
afifairs of this University, now first presenting
itself to the public.
There are two things, however, which I may
do. The one, to counsel to patience. Rome was
not built in a day; nor can the agricultural and
mechanical college, a novel kind of academic
work, be brought to perfection in this new State,
in any short period. The other thing is to re-
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 65
mind all concerned that this magnificent land
grant was made not merely for the technical in-
struction of tlie industrial classes, but for their
liberal culture; "IN ORDER," says the act. "to
promote the liberal and practical education of the
industrial classes." In the light of this fact, every
blow that has been struck here, every stone that
has been laid should be reckoned as in bona fide
fulfillment of the trust. And therefore, this hon-
orable Board of Regents might in all sincerity say
to the farmers and artisans of Minnesota: "The
doors of your University stand open ; her instruct-
ors are ready in their places ; send hither your
youth, and they shall be taught those things they
need to learn, without money and without price."
I desire here to allude to a matter connected
with this subject which. I think, will deserve and
presently will receive your attention. The act of
1862 granting lands for agricultural colleges ap-
portioned them according to the number of sena-
tors and representatives from each state at that
time. Now the census of 1870 will very much
change the ratio of representation among the
states. Some of the new states. Minnesota among
them, will, I suppose, have doubled their popu-
lation since the census of i860. The question then
arises, was not that apportionment an unequal
one. and unjust to the new states?
New York State with an area of 46,000 square
miles, takes 990.000 acres. ^Minnesota with her
66 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
83,000 square miles of territory, receives 120,000;
that is, Minnesota having nearly double the acre-
age of Xew York, gets less than one-eighth as
much land. It is a fair question, whether there
ought not to be made an equalization of this land
grant upon some fair basis?
An effort to remedy this open and apparent in-
equality made in the winter of 1872 aborted mainly
through the indifference of a Minnesota senator,
then a member of the committee on public lands.
The story of the "Morrill bill" of 1862, its origin,
its supporters and the influences which were con-
centrated to secure its passage, cannot be related
here. But attention may be directed to the peculiar
phraseology of section four.
"And be it further enacted, that all moneys derived
from the sale of the lands ***** 5]-,jjij j^g invested in
stocks of the United States or of some state, or some
other safe stocks, yielding not less than five per centum
upon the par value of said stocks, and that the moneys
so invested shall constitute a perpetual fund, the capital
of which shall remain forever undiminished, * * * * and
the interest of which shall be inviolably appropriated by
each state * * * to the endowment, support and
maintenance of at least one college, where the lead-
ing object shall be, without excluding other scien-
tific and classical studies (i. e., virtually including all
the old college studies), and including military tac-
tics, (a tub to the military whale of great dimen-
sions at the time), to teach such branches of learn-
ing as are related to agriculture and the mechanic
arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the states
may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the
liberal and practical education, (i. e. the complete
INAUGURAL ADDRESS . 67
education), of the industrial classes (.that's nearly
all of us), in the several pursuits and professions of
life, (that is in all honest and lawful vocations)."
If the law is literally followed every institution
created under it should be or aspire to be a univer-
sity. It is an open secret that promoters of the
measure had in view the endowment of certain uni-
versities.
That was a wise and proper action of the legisla-
ture of 1868 which united the state agricultural col-
lege located at Glencoe with the University, and
merged the endowments. United they have secured
the development of one strong and noble institution.
Separated, the state would have had on its hands
two weak corporations fighting each other from year
to year for appropriations to keep them alive. To
ascertain what influences induced the friends of the
agricultural college in ]\IcLeod County to surrender
their franchise, is an interesting problem in Minne-
sota educational history.
But it is high time I beg pardon of the ladies
who have favored us with their presence here, for
not having alkided to the "woman question" as
related to the university. It is one which I knew
a great deal more about ten years ago or thought
I did. than I dare say now. The co-education
question, however, is one which must be met and
solved. Presuming that the people of Miimc-
sota mean that there shall be an University here,
not in name only, but in fact. I see that some of
the difficulties attending the management of
mixed schools do not here present themselves.
Such difficulties accumulate not in the assemblv
68 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
hall and recitation room, but in the boarding
house; and their number and magnitude seem to
depend very much upon circumstances of place,
and the age and condition of the pupils.
The Superintendent of Public schools in San
Francisco reports decided advantages resulting
from the late complete separation of the sexes
in the schools of that city. On the other hand
we have in the country at least one institution
that for twenty years or more has been steadily
doing the thing which so many wise and cunning
educators have argued could not be done. I
mean Oberlin College, within whose walls are
gathered to-day nearly 1200 youths of both sexes
and various ages. President Fairchild declared
lately in a public address before a convention of
teachers, that the first case of a scandalous na-
ture had yet to occur in that institution.
Such conflicting examples clearly indicate that
no solution of the troublesome problem has yet
been reached which all can acquiesce in, and which
reaches all latitudes and longitudes. We shall be
wise, if watching closely the signs of the times,
and the demands made upon us by the people,
we wait patiently, working the while faithfully,
for a system to grow from our soil, native to our
own skies.
There is, however, this consideration worthy
perhaps of notice here. The University is not
founded nor operated in the interest of any class
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 69
of men, nor of any one art. It exists for the ben-
efit of society, not merely for that of individuals,
whether male or female. It knows not male nor
female, "Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free." The
doors of its auditoria, its laboratories, its library,
stand open to all worthy comers ; that is to all
persons of good fame, who prove themselves com-
petent to hear and receive its lessons. Neither sex,
then, nor craft or condition may with justice de-
mand of her special privileges.
So said the speaker at a time when his only ex-
perience of the mixed education had been in the
academy field.
After forty years of instructing mi.xed classes of
men and women, he is as little disposed to dogma-
tize. He has nothing but warm praise for the htm-
dreds of earnest, industrious, level-headed young
women who have taken his courses. It has been a
delight to instruct them. One thing is beyond ques-
tion: university privileges cannot be denied to wom-
en. They have proven their capacitj^ to do all man-
ner of college work well. They have, therefore,
the same right to it as have men. The state must
maintain one university for both men and women,
or separate ones for the sexes. The experiment of
one fur both will continue. .At the present time
there is a decided drift towards the establishment of
dormitories, rest and study rooms, and restaurants
for the exclusive use of women.
Experience has proven that men and women stu-
dents can associate freely without danger. The
number of matrimonial alliances im"tiated in col-
leges is surprisingly small.
70 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Were we now to sum up and conclude by say-
ing, let all these things be, and be done, and the
university is secure, we should be saying very
much less than is necessary. Costly and magnifi-
cent buildings, princely library, a vast museum,
an unrivalled equipment of apparatus, labora-
tories, observatories, workshops, nurseries,
orchards, fish-ponds, farms, and gardens,
build, gather and stock them all upon a scale
of imperial lavishness, and you might not have
a successful University. You might concentrate
here the profoundest learning, the rarest elo-
quence, the acutest dialectics of the civilized
world, and yet be as far from it. There are
needed eyes to see, and ears to hear, hands to
work and brains to think. Any account of the
University which leaves its undergraduate stu-
dents out, is a very beggarly account. Indeed,
undertaking to teach all those things which its
students desire to learn, it will inevitably take on
its character, to some extent, from them. If they
come here with mere empirical, catch-penny no-
tions, desiring only to carry away, as soon as pos-
sible, diplomas which will license them to prey
upon the bodies, souls, and property of their fel-
low men. the University will very soon become
a mere curiosity shop and scientific limbo ; good
learning will desert her; true teachers and schol-
ars will give way to the dominion of quacks and
charlatans. Rut let the young people who shall
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 71
come up here, bring true hearts and wining
hands, resolved to "scorn dcHghts and Hvc labo-
rious days" ; a generous desire to get, along with
useful knowledge, what is better than knowledge,
wisdom ; a fervent wish to be good and do right
in their da}' and generation : let them rightly val-
ue that wise and liberal foresight wliich has made
learning as free as air to them ; then the Univer-
sity can live and flourish, and rise steadily and
surely upw^ard toward the lofty seat upon which
she must finally rest.
Young friends, students of this L'niversity, you
hold in a manner, its fate in your hands. Your
faithfulness, your zeal and diligence, your hon-
est toil for what is real wealth, will give us a
good name, and fame which will call hundreds
of others to take their places by your sides, and
will encourage, yes, even compel, those in author-
ity to add to our means of instruction and your
opportunities for learning.
On the other hand, idleness, insubordination,
even mere forgetfulness without malice, might
sink us to a position of contempt, and compel us
to disband and retire from these halls in dis-
grace. And what is more, you are trustees and
representatives of the youth of Minnesota for
all time to come, and yours will be the blame, if
through any fault of yours they shall be de-
prived of those their rights now in your trust.
Do not wonder, then, that vour instructors often
72 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
exhort you to diligence, and command your
obedience, knowing as they do, that by your do-
ings or misdoings their work and influence are to
be reckoned. Then do not think yourselves of
small account, since they do not. Wear proud-
ly, young gentlemen, the University gray, and re-
member that wherever you wear it you represent
the University corps. See to it, each one, that you
bring no shame upon it.
The exhortation was not needed. The speaker
had not lived in the west, and come to know the
burning- desire of the young men and women for
good learning, their willingness and power to work,
and their aspiration towards noble characters.
But the youth who shall in future by scores
and hundreds resort hither, whence shall they de-
rive such noble manners, such lofty zeal.''
Whence, but from the hearts and homes of the
land? There can be no University worthy the
name, without the interest, and co-operation of
the people of this state. It will be vain that they
vote the millions of money that will be needed
to fully organize and furnish an American Uni-
versity, if they withold their constant watchful-
ness and unfailing devotion.
And here, if anywhere outside our own walls,
there will be lack. We are all so busy with farms
and our merchandize, we so dote upon our great
mills, factories, and warehouses, we are so en-
INAUGURAL ADDRESS n
grossed with cent per cent, and the fluctuations
of the exchange ; we fall down and worship so
many ''gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of
iron, of wood and of stone,"' that we forget the
higher life of men and of society, swamping the
nobler duties and opportunities of the spiritual
existence in a swelling sea of earthly troubles
and triumphs. The State of Minnesota has, or
will have, a magnificent endow'ment for her com-
mon schools ; but let her not trust to the balances
in her treasury to give her such schools as she
needs and may have, and which if the people will
have them they must create them, breathing the
very breath of life into them. They may not rely
upon some beneficent monarch, by the grace of
God their born ruler, to bestow upon them ready-
made, the means and machinery of education.
They must themselves personally and collectively
interfere and co-operate. But they will trust
vainly to their princely school fund, if they go
to sleep, leaving demagogues, "tinkers, rowdies
and snobs" to manipulate it, and they may curse
the day it came to them. Eternal vigilance is the
price not of liberty alone, but of all the blessing's
which flourish beneath and around it. The peo-
ple, then, must build, endow, and forever sustain
by their una1)ating care the University ; and it
would seem that a ])eoi)le forever free from any
heavy burden of taxation for the support of ele-
mentary schools, were in a peculiar manner and
74 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
degree bound to foster and develop those insti-
tutions for higlier education, so necessary to stim-
ulate and supplement them. The existence of
this great endowment can never form any just
excuse to cease from their interest in, and their
contributions to good learning, but furnishes the
best argument why, leaving the foundation so
broadly and generously laid, they should go on
to perfect the structures based upon it. I think
it safe to say that no political community in the
world ever held such vantage ground as that
occupied by the State of Minnesota to-day. Up-
on a clean sheet she can write a few words, which
will give her within the lifetime of these youth
here, a system of schools such as the world has
never seen. I can tell you what these words are :
"divide your resources for primary education,
combine them for higher education."
The words of Dr. Andrew D. White, then presi-
dent of Cornell University.
Carry the common school to every village and
cross road, to reach and illuminate every house-
hold in the land. Build some high schools, and
academies (colleges, as I have called them.) but
not too many. Found but one university, for
it is not the uni-versity unless it be one.
You have your choice as yet between the one,
great, rich, free, populous, cosmopolitan univer-
sity which shall be your chief pride and joy, and
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 75
the dozen or more petty, starveling-, ill-appointed
affairs, in which as a people you will have no
common interest. And you can take your choice
between educating your artisans and profession-
al men here, on your own soil, and sending them
to Yale, to Har\-ard, to Ann Arbor or Madi-
son ; for depend upon it, whatever you may think
about it. the young men and women are going
where the brains are. and the means of instruc-
tion, fullest and freest.
The increase of attendance from fourteen provi-
sional freshmen in the fall of i86g to 1,152 in 1909
is good proof that the university has won its way to
the hearts of the people.
The Universit}'. then, is not merely from the
people, but for the people. True it will put
bread into no man's mouth directly, nor money
in his palm. Neither the rains nor the sunshine
do that, but they warm and nourish the spring-
ing grass, and ripen the harvest. So higher edu-
cation, generous culture, scholarship, literature,
inform, inspire, and elevate comnumities. Alin-
nesota will become a great and rich common-
wealth. Her rare, bracing, salubrious, but not
too genial climate is bringing here a population
of men who expect to work for their living. Shut
u]) in-doors during the long, though not dreary
winters, in workshops and around firesides, out
people must by and by become thoughtful, seri-
ous, studious, inventive. And though the own-
76 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
ers of your soil, and the forests, the proprietors
of your railroads and factories will gather im-
perial fortunes, there will be yet richer men ; rich
poor men, who landless and moneyless, will win
for you new victories over nature, delight and in-
struct you with the products of genius, and whose
names will be the proud heritage of future gen-
erations long after Dives and his palaces mingle
in undistinguished dust. I mean no sentimental
depreciation of material prosperity. Wealth is
the inevitable portion of diligence and virtue. On-
ly let men who grow rich in worldly gear, not
forget to grow "rich toward God." We found
the American University, with a double purpose ;
the increase of material wealth and comfort, and
the culture and satisfaction of the spirit. Let
that double object, as summed up by the Psalm-
ist of old be the one glorious end of our efforts
and our prayers :
"That our sons may grow up as the young
plants, and that our daughters may be as the
polished corners of the^ temple;
That our garners may be full of all manner of
store ; that our sheep may bring forth thousands,
and ten thousand in our streets ;
That our oxen may be strong to labour; that
there may be no decay, no leading into captivity
and no complaining in our streets ;
Happy are the people who are in such a case.
yea blessed are the people who have the Lord for
their God."
II. THE MINNESOTA PLAN
The National Educational Association held its an-
nual convention for 1875 in Minneapolis, Minneso-
ta. The President for the year was William T.
Harris, known to all American teachers. The fol-
lowing, one of the principal addresses, was deliv-
ered before the full convention, in the Academj- of
Music, on the evening of August 4. by the author
of this book.
In the course of a few months the nation cele-
brates the centennial anniversary of her birthday.
Small account will be made by those who par-
ticipate, of the mere' fact that the nation has
survived the vicissitudes of a hundred years.
While we shall point with honest pride to the de-
velopments and achievements of the century, still
the thought uppermost in all minds will be that
we are really celebrating the triumph of a prin-
ciple — the principle of free government — "a gov-
ernment of the people, by the people, for the peo-
ple." This is the fact, of which we wish to
remind ourselves, and which we advertise to the
world by our great exposition and its accompani-
ments.
That a whole people may undertake to organ-
ize and operate a government is no longer an
open question.
78 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Now the object of a government is commonly
thought of as negative — "to protect persons and
property" — to repel the aggressions of iiostiie
communities — to prevent assault, plunder and
anarchy among the citizens ; — and with these, —
in the opinion of many publicists the public ac-
tivity ought to cease. When organized society
has chained the human tiger, clipped the wings
of the human vulture, and drawn the fangs of
the human serpent, her function ceases. This
doctrine — the "laissc^: alter" doctrine — has had
numerous advocates in this country, at times ap-
pearing in powerful organized masses. By these
the wuse old maxim, "That government is best
which governs the least," has been sadly wrenched
from its true meaning and application. Confess-
edly true of government as a negative, restrain-
ing, repressive agent, it has no necessary appli-
cation to government as a positive, beneficent
agent. Because it is admitted that there should
be the least possible hanging, imprisonment, fines
and taxes, it cannot be claimed that the people
sliall not in some public and organized wa)^ have
certain necessary and beneficent things done.
This confusion is due, in my opinion, to the fact
that although we have been living under a free
government for many generations, most of us
liave not entirely outgrown that idea of govern-
ment which has come down from ancient and
mediaeval times. \\'e have not succeeded in entire-
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 79
ly disconnecting the conception of a government
from that of a dynast}- divinely commissioned to
take care of people.
The American people acknowledge no scep-
tred monarch divinely appointed to rule, but in
a certain large sense are themselves the govern-
ment, acting through chosen men as agents.
The government, in the stricter sense, may be
called the people's agency. We have and use a
variety of such agencies, according as the busi-
ness is national, provincial or municipal.
W e do not use them merely in a negative way
to repress disorders and punish malefactors.
We employ one of them to carry our letters, a
very positive function. We expend large sums
of money upon public works. We support the
patent office at great cost to the tax-payers. We
send out expeditions to discover and explore new
lands. We pay some hundreds of thousands to
observe the transit of X^enus. We employ a small
army of men to watch the weather. I doubt if
;u!y sane man would say of any of these agencies,
tl'iat the less they did the better they were, or
referring to such functions would quote the max-
im, "That government is best which governs tiie
least."
As a matter of fact we see government exer-
cising positive and beneficent functions, i. e., we
.see the people in their public, organized, legal
8o UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
capacity, sci'fi)ig themselves. I think we must
admit their right so to do.
It is not necessary for the present purpose to
enter into an exhaustive discussion of the hmita-
tions and conditions of this positive form of pub-
He activity. There will be no difference of opin-
ion as to the chief criteria by which we are to
separate public and private functions.
If there be a certain business or interest of uni-
versal concern, — one which pertains to the whole
people — one which private hands and means can-
not manage and compass — one which in some
sense and degree is essential to the public well-
being, — such a business, all will admit, must be
public.
Education the Chief Function.
Now, education is, in our times, such a busi-
ness. Peoples no longer exist for dynasties.
War is no longer the chief occupation of men
and nations. Civilization exists, and the chief
business of civilized men is — culture. To make
the most of the human powers, spiritual and
physical, and to develop them harmoniously, —
to extend the boundaries of knowledge, — to har-
ness and tame the wild forces of nature, and to
employ them beneficently, — it is for these things
that men and states exist. All other employments
are mere foraging and housekeeping. Educa-
tion, then, in its noble and comprehensive sense —
is what we are living for. It is the chief con-
THE MIXXESOTA PLAN 8i
cern of each and of all. As mere police is the
great negative function of the public activity, ed-
ucation must be the foremost positive function ;
and as the destiny of men is higher than that of
states, so is it more noble for the people to or-
ganize culture, than merely to organize tax-gath-
erers and constables. AA'e call the whole world
to witness the spectacle of a people governing
themselves. When shall we challenge the na-
tions to the grander spectacle of a whole peo-
ple educating themselves?
Not that we are unfamiliar with the idea of
educating the whole people. We have the ex-
ample of several foreign states attempting the
schooling of the whole body of children and
youth. But it must be remembered that, though
done for the people, it has not been done by the
people. Prussia imposes her school system upon
her people, just as she imposes upon them her
militarv system. We must rise above this idea
in America. We have no superior classes di-
vinely commissioned to guide and instruct their
fellow citizens. We must rise to the nobler con-
ception of the whole people educating themselves,
not as a work of necessity nor of charity, but
as the natural, legitimate and rational business
of civilized men.
The argument for the general welfare function
of government is less needed at the present day,
when the great political parties are vying with one
82 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
another in promising good things to be done by
the government for the people.
In my opinion the advocates of public educa-
tion have habitually taken low and insecure
ground. The stock argument in behalf of public
schools has constantly been, "The State must ed-
ucate, because intelligence is essential to the ex-
istence of the State." This is an argument of
despair and abnegation. The public activity is
only called in to supplement, to help out, to res-
cue. Its justification is really "extra-constitu-
tional."
The argument is vicious for at least two rea-
sons. (I.) It is a iioii seqiiifiir. Granted that
intelligence on the part of the citizen is essential
to the existence of the State, it does not follow
that schooling is. Intelligence does not flow
from school houses only, — any more than men
live by bread alone. It is not at all difficult to
conceive of a community in which children
should be so w^ell instructed in the family, that
the schoolmaster would have no occupation.
There are many who claim, with much plausi-
bility, that it is less necessary either to the public
being or well-being that children be taught the
arts of reading, writing or reckoning than that
they be instructed in a creed and a catechism.
(2.) The argument is defective; in that the
opposers may insist, as they often do, that the
public interest has been sectired when a certain
THE MIXXESOTA PLAN S3
minimum of rudimentary arts has been taught.
Upon such a foundation, all public schooling-
above the common school is without justification.
How often do we hear this plea put in, when
public aid is asked to i)romote the higher educa-
tion. This middle term '"intelligence," in our
popular educational syllogism is "undistributed,"
and so plays fast and loose with us. Some in-
telligence or some kind of intelligence is wliat
it stands for. The line between that which is
essential and unessential is now here, now there.
Xo two observers can agree upon it. Of such a
plea, a lawyer would say "it is void for uncer-
tainty."
This argument of State necessity for public
education must at length be abandoned. It was
never anything but an apology. It has perhaps
served a good purpose, as the temporary defen-
sive outwork of a beleagured cause, as yet too
weak and timid to take the open field. It is
time to advance from this insecure retreat to a
bolder and stronger position. Such a one I
think we assume when we take the ground al-
ready reconnoitered : — ( i.) That education must
be pubHc, because culture is the chief and para-
mount business and interest of civilized men :
(2.) That the education of the whole people is so
great and so costly, that only the public resources
can compass it; and (3.") That the agencies to
be employed are so vast and multifarious that
84 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
they can only be organized by the supreme au-
thority.
This is no plea of justifiable homicide on the
part of the state for slaughtering the monster,
Ignorance. The whole matter is removed from
the forum of police to that of statesmanship.
According to this principle, no arbitrary limit
can be set to the public interference in education.
None can say to the people, "you may have your
common schools, but nothing beyond them." As
the field is one and the cause one, there can be
but one system, and that must be unbroken, con-
tinuous, all-containing. Education is the con-
cern of all. No party, sect, clique, order or pro-
fession of men, may lawfully claim exclusive
direction of it. The watchword and motto is,
"education of the people, by the people, for the
people." If this principle be sound, the high
school and the university take their place 'in the
system of public culture, of right and not by
sufferance. The education of the unfortunate
classes, the deaf and dumb, the blind and the idiot
can no longer be regarded as a matter of charity,
but as the legitimate duty of the people. The
sooner we disuse and repudiate the self-righteous
designation of "Charitable Institutions." the bet-
ter. That education is merely a part of our busi-
ness ; it is not a charity.
It is necessary to emphasize the most obvious
inference from the preceding discussion : that the
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 85
whole educational work must be authorized by
the supreme authority, — that is, by the people
acting through the ordinary channels, or through
new ones to be created for the purpose. In some
states already the people have provided them-
selves with a special machinery for the work of
public instruction ; that is to say, they have or-
ganized a "government" or administration for
that purpose. As a general rule, however, this
administration is confined to the common school
instruction, although there are states in which
the higher education has been recognized, and
partially provided for by the establishment of
state universities. But no state has as yet com-
pletely organized education by providing for all
grades of instruction. Some beginnings have,
however, been made which will lead inevitably
and irresistibly to this consummation. Within a
few days, the constitutional convention of a
neighboring state (Nebraska), has been discuss-
ing a project for organizing the whole education
of its people by forming a State Board of Edu-
cation, with local auxiliaries, and placing in its
control not merely the common schools, Init the
high schools and the university.
The address was severely criticized by President
Magoun of Iowa College, in the Chicago .\dvance.
His contention was tliat the state has no concern
with education above that of the common school.
86 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Education Must Be Organized.
The organization of education, I believe to be
the paramount educational problem in America.
Whatever merits our schools and school systems
may have, in regard to organization we are far
behind many less favored nations. France, Ger-
many, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy even, have
organized their education. England has not
done it, for reasons the same in substance as
th-ose which have kept our own states from at-
tempting it. Unable to wholly disabuse our
minds of the conception of government as pater-
nal and hereditary, both Englishmen and Amer-
icans resent the interference of the public in what
they have been accustomed to consider strictly
private affairs. This feeling has been strength-
ened, though not justified, by the claims of nu-
merous religious bodies ; some to exclusive con-
trol of the whole educational work, some to a
part of it.
For this lack in organization no one is
to be blamed. We are rather to be grateful that
so much has already been done. When the Eng-
lish colonists founded in New England the com-
mon school, they began a work which it is ours
to carry on to perfection. "They builded better
than they knew." To have anticipated, however
dimly, the idea of universal public education, was
perhaps their most glorious service. The com-
mon school system, in its substance, no longer
THE MIXXESOTA PLAN 87
needs defenders anywhere. It is when we turn
to the higher education that we find confusion
and disorganization. This field has been stead-
fastly claimed by religious bodies as their ap-
propriate sphere of educational activity. The
determining motive for maintaining the denom-
inational college has always been the training
of ministers to propagate the particular faith
and doctrine of the denomination. As denomina-
tions have multiplied and extended, their col-
leges have multiplied, not only beyond the needs
of the bodies which have established them, but
far beyond the needs of the country. Excessive
in number, scantily equipped, and indifferently
manned, these institutions are, in the language
of President Porter, "wasting the most precious
resources of the country." While saying this let
us not fail to recall with grateful admiration the
heroic, and unselfish, but still misdirected efforts
of the men who have built up these colleges, and
who are now literally laying down their lives to
maintain them.
I have not one unkind word for them nor for
their work, but it is for the interest of all, that
things be seen as they are, and that the signs of
the times be read aright by all. The only charge
' which it is necessary here to urge against the
multiplication of small colleges is this, that they
stand in the way of the development of the sec-
ondary education. It is safe, I think, to say
88 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
that there are in some states more colleges than
there are efficient preparatory, or fitting schools.
For this the small colleges are responsible The
secondary education is consequently in a rudi-
mentary condition in America. It is time that it
be developed to its full proportions and assigned
to its appropriate position. We have recognized
and provided for the "operatives' education,"
and the "gentleman's education." We need a
third education for that immense body of the
people who can get beyond the common school,
but cannot get to the college.
The term "secondary education" was then rarely
heard or used. Rightly employed it relates back
to the primary education. The "secondary school"
seconds, that is, follows the primary school. Col-
lege preparation has become an incidental duty.
It is not merely to fit a few young men for
college that the secondary schools are needed,
although happily this work falls in with the other
and greater business of educating, in a practical
way, the men and women who direct the work
of the world. It is no longer a small number of
}'Oung men preparing for the learned professions
who demand this secondary training, but a vast
body of people, till lately unknown to educators.
The common school education no longer suffices
for the farmer, the artisan, the engineer, the
miner, the navigator, the merchant, though it
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 89
may answer, in the opinion of gentlemen who
operate the law and medical colleges, for per-
sons entering those ''learned professions." The
secondary schools must, therefore, have their
legitimate place and work, and not merely exist
as preparatory schools to colleges. 1 have blamed
the supporters of the small colleges for retarding
the development of the secondary education.
This has been done by them in various ways :
first, by squandering funds entirely inadequate
to the endowment of colleges, but often sufficient
to the equipment of good academies ; secondly,
by admitting to their classes, students who have
not properly performed the work of the school.
It is very difficult to retain an ambitious and im-
patient youth in school, when he knows, and his
teachers know, that some college will admit him.
But thirdly and chiefly, by holding on to about
two years of work rightfully belonging to the
secondary school, which is thus cramped out of
its just proportions, and crowded out of its prop-
er sphere.
There has been a general and gratit'ying advance
in the standards of law and medical colleges, but the
number which exact for admission the secondary
education contemplated in the address is still small.
Still I am bound here to confess that I do not
know of any denominational college, however
obscure, which admits, as Freshmen, boys from
90 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
the common school and graduates them as
Bachelors in four years. This distinction has
been reserved for some public institutions called
colleges and universities. This is "confusion
worse confounded." If a new and crowning ar-
gument were needed for the organization of our
education I think we have it here.
If we pass on to university education proper
we find less confusion because we find that field
mostly unoccupied. Poverty forbids, and for-
ever will forbid, the great mass of the colleges
from developing into "Genuine Universities."
Let us be grateful for poverty when we contem-
plate the prospect of twenty-six projected uni-
versities in a single State. ^Minnesota had at
least five universities chartered before there was
a single preparatory school in existence. The
stronger and richer colleges already well ad-
vanced on to university grovmd are retarded and
embarrassed by the immense load of mere sec-
ondary work they are obliged to carry. Full
two years of their work is mere school drill,
which could be done quite as well and much
cheaper elsewhere. The result is a confusion of
methods and discipline, great financial embar-
rassment, and indefinite postponement of the
genuine university in America.
An examination of early Minnesota legislative
journals discloses the fact that twenty-five bills
were introduced for chartering colleges and univer-
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 91
sities, and enacted into laws before Minnesota be-
came a state in 1858. A favorite form of title was,
e. g., "The Fremont University of Minnesota."
I trust it is apparent that a thorough, orderly
and scientific organization of education is at
length needed. This want is much more appar-
ent in our new states than in the older ones, in
which the various grades of schools have ar-
ranged themselves into a convenient association,
though not into an organism. In the new states,
the public system of education has pushed its way,
albeit timidly and tentatively, beyond the lim-
its of the primary field. Many of them have
established (so far as legislation can establish)
state universities ; but no state, so far as I am
informed, has yet provided by general laws for
any system proper, of secondary schools. The
result is a wide and deep chasm between the
university and the only lower schools properly
within the system, — the primary schools. I say
properly within the system, for the high schools
carried on in the cities and large villages are
municipal establishments, supported mainly by
local taxation, independent of state control, and
organized rather according to local circumstances
and a fashion of the times, than according to any
general educational policy. The "independent
school district" system must at length be re-
placed by a better and broader one — a system
which shall unite the high schools, the primar}^
92 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
schools, the university, the normal schools and the
institutions still falsely called charitable, into a
single, harmonious organism.
This gulf between the state universities and
the primary schools has been bridged over tem-
porarily by the preparatory departments of the
universities. It has not until lately been possi-
ble to persuade the local boards of education
who control the city high schools, that it was
for the interest of all to prepare students for the
university. The change for the better in this
respect is encouraging. It is a move in the right
direction.
It was not till 1878 that the ^Minnesota high
schools were brought into quasi-organic connection
with the University, by a law entitled, "An act for
the encouragement of higher education." The es-
sential provision was the creation of a so-called
"High School Board," to administer a fund for the
purposes of the act. This board was authorized to
pay a share of the fund to every high school prop-
erly equipped and officered, giving instruction in col-
lege preparatory studies, to students of both sexes
from any part of the state, free of charge for tui-
tion. The efifect was to open the city and village
high schools to the country boys and girls. At the
present time 206 high schools are performing this
service, pouring a steady tide of their "graduates"
into the universit}'.
It was perhaps superfluous to argue at length
in favor of the extension of ptiblic interference in
THE MIXXESOTA PLAN 93
education beyond the primary schools. The fact
is that in many states the pubHc system, if sys-
tem it may be called, has already occupied
(usurped, if you please for the present consider-
ation) the whole field. The high schools in our
Western cities embracing in their courses many
studies of the college, it is only under peculiar
circumstances that private academies can exist
alongside of them.
Leaving out of account for the present all pri-
vate and corporate institutions of learning, we
see that the people have already resolved to pro-
vide themselves with a complete hierarchy of
schools. This being the case, no one will deny
that for this, there must be organization, com-
pete, exhaustive, rational.
Regarded merely as an industry, education
probably stands next to agriculture in the amount
of capital invested and labor employed; and yet
these are not a tithe of what they ought now to
be. Mere financial economy will at length compel
a careful and wise organization of our public
educational agencies. States will not forever
continue to pay universities for doing the work
of the secondary schools. They will rather wisely
and generously contribute to building up a great
galaxy of high schools and academies, all public
in some sense, to do that work.
94 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Already the opinion has been voiced that tlie Uni-
versity of Minnesota will be so overrun with stu-
dents that it will be necessary to call on the high
schools to extend their preparatory courses and hold
their students for a longer period.
The state having taken command of the whole
educational forces, there is no refuge from the
conclusion that she must organize them upon
sound principles. She alone has the authority,
the power and the motive.
We come then to the question, Upon what
principles shall the public education be organized ?
It will be impossible to treat of this exhaustively
in this paper, but it is necessary to state and
briefly discuss one or two of them.
I. The state, i. e., the people organized as the
source of authority, the depositary of power, and
the custodian of the revenues, must organize and
hold the chief control and direction of all edu-
cational forces and agencies.
It may be assumed that the National Universitj^
when established, as it ought to be, will not be a
place for formal instruction, much less of discipline
of large numbers of undergraduate students. It
should not be simply another university, but a place
where persons of genius and proved capacity may
be enabled to carry on researches, investigations
and experiments likely to add to human knowledge
and man's power over nature. Each state will still
nce.d its own complete sj-stem of education.
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 95
2. The organization should be such as to em-
ploy and embrace all forces and agencies. It
must not discourage nor release parents and
guardians from the instruction of their children
and wards. I should wish indeed that no schooling
could be had, which did not require the co-opera-
tion and constant activity of parents. It should
make room for the work of the Church to the
full extent of her interests and resources. The
Church is, of her very nature, an educating in-
stitution. She joins with parents in training
children to "lead godly and Christian lives." She
sustains the state by teaching the citizens obedi-
ence to law, and incessantly inculcates that prin-
ciple of brotherhood which is the very core of
republicanism. In the vast and magnificent un-
dertaking of educating the whole people the fam-
ily and the Church cannot be ignored. There is
room and work for all. As the modern idea of
the army is the people armed, so the idea of the
school system should be that of the whole people
organized for culture.
3. The organization should be such as to al-
low and to invite the widest competition of per-
sons and agencies. We misconceive the matter,
in my opinion, when we think of a school systeni
as a huge, complicated, cast-iron machine, to be
imposed upon communities, and which they must
accept or go untaught. We do not want a system
to be operated by a vast horde of officials, ig-
96 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
norant of the whole business, making and unmak-
ing teachers, tinkering courses of study according
to no principles or bad ones. • There can be no
profession of teaching until the teacher can in
some way stand upon the same foundation with
men of other professions, — that of efificiency,
diligence, experience.
The speaker once wrote and published an argu-
ment for a common school system which would per-
mit an3' person of assured competency, to open and con-
duct a school of his own. and receive pubHc aid. after
inspection of his phint, methods and results. The objec-
tion immediately raised was, that such a system would
enable certain religious bodies to engross the schooling
of certain communities.
The best schooling the speaker ever had was in
the so-called "select school" of Alexander McQuigg,
an independent, self-emplojang pedagogue. His was
a veritable "normal school" for several counties
long before the State of New York opened hers at
Albany.
4. It follows from the foregoing that the peo-
ple should delegate to boards, superintendents
and other officers the least power and authority
consistent with efficiency, and reserve to them-
selves individually the largest liberty and oppor-
tunities consistent with the general good. The
schools must not go into the hands of officials
and out of the hands of the people.
5. Any orderly organization of schools will
recognize and conform to the natural epochs of
education corresponding to childhood, youth and
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 97
early manhood. Each of these periods has its
pecuHar wants, objects, methods and discipHne.
The child is to be trained, the youth instructed,
the man informed. In all those countries in
which education has been organized these three
stages have been carefully distinguished, and they
are habitually designated by the writers on edu-
cation by the terms, primary, secondary and su-
perior.
I have endeavored to show the injurious con-
sequences which have followed the confounding
of the secondary and superior educations in this
country. The remedy for these must begin with
a wise and liberal but exhaustive organization
of education. This alone can, in my opinion, dis-
entangle existing complications, harmonize op-
posing interests, and unite all agencies.
THE MIXXESOTA PLAN : LOCAL CONDITIONS.
It may not be uninteresting to those present
to attend to a short sketch of an institution ol
learning, which has been planned and for some
time conducted with reference to the principles
just treated of. I refer to the University of
:Minnesota, located in this city, in which I have
been for some time employed. The nominal ex-
istence of this institution dates back to 1851, but
the first actual scholastic work was begun in
October, 1867. Two years later a faculty was
made up and college work entered upon. In
98 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
July, 1 87 1, the present plan of organization re-
placed a provisional one previously in operation.
It will be proper and orderly to state first, the
conditions of the problem which at that time pre-
sented itself. The first and fundamental one
was, that the people of Minnesota from the ear-
liest moment in her history were committed to
a system of public education not confined to the
primary field, but embracing potentially the whole
secular culture. The Congress which organized
the Territorial government at the same time that
it secured to the people a common school fund
of magnificent proportions, bestowed a liberal
endowment for a university. Unfortunately no
such provision was made for public secondary
schools, or for normal schools. I trust our lib-
eral and enterprising people will yet and soon set
apart some adequate endowment for these in-
stitutions.
The policy of granting state aid to high schools
has been established in Minnesota, as above relat-
ed.
The resolution of the people to build up a
single comprehensive system of public instruc-
tion was again manifested upon the framing and
adoption of the Constitution in 1857-8. That
instrument confirmed the previous legislation re-
lating to the University, and declared the same
to be "The University of the State of Min-
nesota."
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 99
From the language of the Constitution, and all
the laws relating to this subject, it is apparent
that the intention was, that this institution, de-
signed to form the culminating member of the ed-
ucational structure, should be one, — without a
peer within the system.
A further proof of this intention must be seen
in the circumstance that the legislature of 1868
virtually added to the University endowment the
State's share of the national land grant of 1862,
for the benefit of colleges of agriculture and the
mechanic arts, and merged the Agricultural Col-
lege previously established elsewhere, with a sim-
ilar department embraced in the original charter
of the Territorial University. By virtue of this
act the University became the people's chosen
place and agency for conducting the professional
education, not merely in the so-called "learned
professions," but in the "industrial professions,"
as they may now well be called. The charter,
while specifying certain great leading depart-
ments, places no limits to the organization of
new and additional ones.
There were then these data — a general system
of public ins.truction. comprehensive in spirit, de-
fective in organization and development — at its
head the University, or rather the project of a
University, as yet without competitors, having a
liberal endowment in prospect, free to develop
in any direction, but especially bounden to prose-
loo UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
cute certain lines of work in fulfillment of its
trust. I refer to that education contemplated by
the Act of Congress of 1862, already mentioned.
One other consideration must not be omitted.
A flourishing preparatory department had been
in existence since 1867. Beyond this the work
had extended but a single year. Whether it
was good policy or bad policy to begin with,
this secondary work it was not worth while then,
nor is it now, to argue. There it was, in progress.
One thing is clear, that if the institution was to
do anything in those years, she must do such
work. There was no other. There were not. in
1 87 1, six schools, public or private, in the whole
state, fitting students to enter college. Such was
the "situation" when the problem of the perma-
ment organization of the institution demanded
solution.
There were few things to oppose, and there
were very many circumstances which seemed to
invite an attempt to organize according to prin-
ciples rather than according to the prevailing
fashion.
MINNESOTA PLAN IN DETAIL.
Accordingly, the first step was taken by form-
ing a department of secondary instruction of
wider range than customary. This was accom-
]ilished by throwing the usual work of freshmen
and sophomores out of the proper University
courses, and merging it into the old preparatory
THE MINNESOTA PLAN loi
department to form the department of Elemen-
tary Instruction authorized by the charter. While
the account just given of merging the work of
the first two college years into the secondary de-
partment serves well for a rough description, it
needs explanation. The object aimed at was not
to divide the secondary and superior education up-
on any arbitrary line, but as nearly as possible
upon their natural and theoretical boundary, ref-
erence being constantly had to the actual and the
practical. This division therefore implies, and
to some extent necessitates an assortment of stud-
ies, throwing back into the secondar.y, or training
department, some elementary subjects, which, of
late years, had been wedged into the upper classes
of many colleges, because they must go some-
where. Such are the elements of the natural and
physical sciences : geology^ botany, zoology, phys-
ics and chemistry, by which the upper classmen
of colleges have for many years been amused.
At the same time, this assortment has thrown
forward a few subjects, more suitable to students
of riper age and development.
It is remarkable, however, how nearly the theo-
retical boundary between the secondary and su-
perior education in America falls upon that line
which divides the ui)per and lower classes of
our best colleges. This twofold division of work
and also of methods, is one which every college
officer and every college faculty feels, and one
102 UI^IVERSITY ADDRESSES
which is emphatically recognized by the under-
graduates.
The close of the sophomore year, sometimes
celebrated by a biennial examination, is a well-
marked era in x^merican college life. Grammar-
drill, paradigms, construing, blackboard drudg-
ery are over; a new field of humanizing, literary
and reflective subjects opens. At this point the
optional studies, if they can be afforded, come in
to vary the old and dull routine. Thus even the
most conservative colleges recognize the consum-
mation of a former epoch, and the opening of a
new one.
If we turn to the colleges or universities of
later growth, which in response to modern de-
mands have added new courses of study unknown
to Busby and Dr. Johnson, we observe this
same dividing line extended and emphasized. If
the institution is polytechnic only, we find its
several courses of study identical in form and
substance, or nearly so, for the first two years,
and then branching away, each to its special
work. If there are both literary and scientific
courses, we have two sets, each having its ele-
ments substantially coincident up to the end of the
second year, and further, the two sets dovetailing
into one another all along. The examples are
too numerous and conspicuous to need mention.
The conclusion is, that the American universi-
ties, colleges and polytechnic schools, find them-
THE MIXXESOTA PLAN 103
selves doing two kinds of work which they are
obHged to divide by a strong line. It is the char-
acteristic of the earlier ipoiety that it is indivisible
(except as intimated) and essential to all stu-
dents. The studies are for drill and discipline,
and form part of the indispensable foundation on
which to build the higher culture. They belong,
of their nature, to the secondary period, and to
that place our ^linnesota plan relegates them.
\\ hile American experience formed the guide
and principle of the arrangement under discus-
sion, that of foreign countries, in which education
has been authoritatively organized could not be
left out of account. The new secondary depart-
ment will be found to correspond in location, in
object, and in scope, with the gymnasia and real
schools of Germany and the lyceums of France
and Switzerland. Upon this point I am happy
in having the conclusive testimony of President
AlcCosh. as given in a paper having no refer-
ence to this institution. Speaking from personal
observation, under circumstances the most favor-
able for getting at the facts, Dr. i\IcCosh says :
"The course of instruction in the gymnasia and
real schools '•' * " embraces not only the
branches taught in our high schools, but those
taught in the freshmen and sophomore classes
of our university courses." ]\Iy own observa-
tion not long before, brought me to the same con-
clusion in substance. Thus, while undertaking to
104 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
open a new path, we are still keeping on the
safe ground of home and foreign precedent and
experience.
I desire to say, however, that should any ques-
tion be raised as to whether we have, as a fact,
drawn our division line through the exactly prop-
er point, we should make no strenuous defense.
Our first aim was to segregate the epochs of the
secondary and superior education ; the second,
to do it upon some practicable line. We may
have struck a trifle too high or too low, but are
probably not far from the permanent boundary.
The next step in the solution of the organi-
zation problem, was the formation of such of the
''Colleges" called for in the statute as could be
put into actual operation. Law and medicine
were, of necessity, indefinitely postponed. There
remained the literary department and those of
agriculture and the mechanic arts. Each of these,
starting from the common foundation of the sec-
ondary department, extends over a period of two
years, leading to baccalaureate degrees.
These degrees are therefore reached at the
same point as in the most reputable American col-
leges — not sooner, for the standard is low enough
at best — not later, because the baccalaureate is a
first degree, and has a traditional place and value.
It is intended to continue conferring this degree
at about the customary point and to develop the
various courses by adding post-graduate work,
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 105
rather than by interpolating- new studies into the
undergraduate courses, already overcrowded.
The extension of these colleges then onto post-
graduate ground is a part of the general plan, to
be developed as time and means may allow. In
regard to degrees, the earliest announcement of
this scheme contained the statement, "No degrees
except after successful examination." It is,
therefore, my belief that this institution was the
first of the northern colleges which proclaimed
formally the abolition of honorary degrees.
The third step in our enterprise was, after
having separated our superior and secondary
work, to provide for getting rid of the latter, in
order to use our resources for the development of
the proper University work. The legislature of
1872, in amending the charter authorized the
Board of Regents to dispense with the department
of elementary instruction, so fast as to them might
seem proper. Accordingly one year (the old
first preparatory year,) has already been drop-
ped ; another, the old second preparatory class,
will disappear at the close of the academic year
about to open. There will then remain upon our
hands the sophomore, freshman and sub-freshman
classes. It is part of our plan to drop successive-
ly all these as fast as may be prudent and feasible.
MINNESOT.X PLAX : AS.SUMED ADVANT.VGES.
Passing now to a brief consideration of the ad-
vantages of our organization, two questions
io6 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
present themselves : ( i ) How does the secondary
department work as a temporary element of the
university? and (2) what will be gained when
the university shall at length be rid of it?
After an experience of four years I am able
to say that the plan works well. The assortment
of studies, already referred to, was effected with
less difficulty than might have been expected. A
corresponding adjustment of methods and dis-
cipline has proved itself useful and advantageous.
As appropriate to the period of training, a stricter
regimen is enforced in the secondary department,
wdiile university students are allowed a large
degree of that "academic freedom," suitable to
their enlarged experience, and appropriate to
their age and rank. The collegiate students are
required to attend the Chapel exercises; univer-
sity students are under no compulsion, unless ap-
pointed to perform some public exercise. In the
secondary department a very strict account of
absentees is kept, and punctual attendance, and
preparation, are rigorously enforced. The uni-
versity student accounts to his professors for ab-
sences, the only rule for their joint direction being
tliat a certain number (5) of unnecessary ab-
sences debars a student from examination. The
young men of the secondary department only are
required to perform the military exercises, which,
by virtue of the act of 1862, we are obligated
to practice. In the superior departments, or col-
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 107
leges, the instruction is extensively, though not
exclusively given by lectures, while in the second-
ary department daily recitations interspersed with
frequent oral and written examinations, are the
rule. To experienced students, who have been
tiained to investigate subjects, and to verify ref-
erences, the lecture system is exceedingly useful
and economical ; for young people still needing to
parse and to cipher, it is altogether out of place.
Our experience leads us to expect that this
division of the two periods of the higher educa-
tion will solve, for ourselves at least, the most
serious problem connected with American college
discipline, one which grows out of the fact that
those institutions are doing two kinds of work.
The original theory of college discipline was that
the students were actually living together under
the fatherly care and surveillance of the faculty,
the president in particular standing in loco pa-
rentis. The youth were supposed to be in train-
ing, "under tutors and governors." Of late years
the young men have been going abroad to study
in France, Germany and England. Your fresh-
man, perhaps, has wintered in Rome and Athens,
and knows the Aventine and the Acropolis better
than his professor knows West Rock or Bunker
Hill. These gentlemen have imported that fash-
ion of "academic freedom" so dear to the Ger-
man Rurschen, and the Oxford or Cambridge
athlete. Xow this "academic freedom," good
io8 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
enough, it may be, in and for the ancient univer-
sities of Europe, which are aUogether universities,
has invaded, and in some cases ahnost captured,
the American college, which is only half a univer-
sity. It is our hope in Minnesota, under a new
regime, to tolerate this freedom so far as is rea-
sonable, and where it properly belongs, without
allowing it to enter where it can only be distract-
ing and mischievous.
The operation of this system within the lim-
its of the university is, however, a matter of small
moment compared with its intended effect upon
the general system of public education in Min-
nesota.
This plan implies and calls for the upbuilding
in the state, of a class of high schools of more
generous scope than have been generally contem-
plated. One thing which has retarded the de-
velopment of these schools in the new states is,
the fact that they have had no definite place in the
system of instruction. They have, therefore, been
built up to their present proportions outside of the
system. What the high school needs is place
and room. It must have its appropriate work
and the whole of it. Much opposition would be
silenced if those who oppose the support of high
schools out of the public funds, could see the
nature and scope of its instruction clearly under-
stood and acknowledged by educational men.
With the common school stretching up and the
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 109
college stretching down, it is difficult for the un-
professional to see distinctly that any certain dis-
tance lies between them. It will be impossible,
permanently, to enlist as conductors of the high
schools, teachers of scholarship and enterprise so
long as they are restricted to a narrow and unin-
viting field. There can be little enthusiasm in
doing half-and-half work. It is poor encour-
agement to a teacher who has carried a pupil
to quadratics, to give him over at that point to the
college tutor. It is merely aggravating to stop
at the close of a fifth book of geometry, because
the college claims the remaining ones as its prov-
ince. He can see no reason why the boy who has
read two books of Homer, must read no more till
he has been booked a freshman. And there is no
reason, beyond a mere fashion. The work of the
first two years of the college is the work of the
secondary school, and there it can be done most
efficiently and economically. Turn this work over
to the high school, and that institution has at once
its function, and the whole of it. Its teachers
will stand on independent ground, and will glad-
ly devote themselves for life to a high, noble and
inspiring calling. The history of the American
academies is interesting as showing how impossi-
ble it has been to keep them down to the work
of fitting boys for entering a freshman class.
They have almost invariably extended their work
in some lines far beyond that point. The well-
no UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
known researches of President Barnard into the
condition of the New York academies, show,
that out of a total of 4,500 pupils. 2,287 were
pursuing college studies, and 900 of that number
tlie studies of upper class-men. The high school,
however, cannot be that pliant, flexible instrument
which the academy has most happily been. It
must have its well-defined field and work. Now,
as to the question of feasibility, the answer is,
that this extension of the high school has, in many
places, already taken place. The high schools
of Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Phil-
adelphia, and of many other cities, have already
advanced their courses quite up to the upper limit
of the secondary stage. A great many high
schools are advancing on the same line. Even in
our own young state, we have several high
schools which are giving a considerable part of
that additional instruction which they are asked
by the Minnesota plan to assume, — and what is
more, some of our ]\Iinnesota high schools are
proposing to carry some studies belonging not to
the earlier, but to the later, years of the ordinary
college course.
It cannot be necessary to make an argument to
show that the high school cannot economically
give instruction in such higher college, or more
properly, university studies. All will concede
that there is no time, no suitable means and equip-
ment, no adequate preparation of the scholars
THE MINNESOTA PLAN iii
for such instruction. An organization upon gen-
eral, scientific principles is needed not only to give
the secondary schools their true place and full
scope, but to constrain them from desultory and
seductive incursions into fields not their own.
It is, therefore, already feasible in many places
to give the high school its full and appropriate
range. It will soon become so in many more
places, and we may, without extravagant ex-
pectation, look forward to a time when our
slate shall boast of its thirty or forty great high
schools, ofiicered bv teachers of eminent scholar-
ship devoted to a work worthy any man's "dear-
est action" and ambition. These schools can do
the secondary work economically. No extensive
and costly equipment of laboratories, museums
or libraries is necessary. The essential means of
illustration they can possess. They have, or may
have, the buildings and the teachers. Our high
school principals are now generally college grad-
uates, fully com])etent to oversee and to impart
the additional instruction which our scheme im-
plies. I know they would be more than willing
to enter upon this advanced work, which is, in
its nature, merely an extension of that already in
their hands, and which they are forced by tl^e
present fashion to surrender just when the up-hill
tug of the course is over.
The economy of the plan, however, becomes
more apparent if we regard the interest of the
112 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
youth needing and desiring the higher education,
and that of the parents and friends who are to
pay the expenses. This plan will bring the edu-
cation essential to that vast body of people who
are employers and directors to their very doors.
Such high schools as we contemplate might indeed
be called the "people's colleges," and they would
be for America what Dr. Hoyt declares the Ger-
man secondary schools — the Gymnasia and the
Real schools to be — "the pride and glory of the
German people." A few feeble colleges, an iso-
lated university, cannot educate the people. They
can only inform and equip a few leaders. If we
mean to educate the people beyond those rudi-
ments essential to the bare existence of men in
civilized states; if we mean to give to a great
number of them that directive power which the
primary instruction cannot give, we must build
up the secondary schools. The economy of
bringing these institutions within reach of youth
residing at their homes is too obvious for com-
ment ; but there is still a higher economy, of more
account than any pecuniary savings.
The American college is no place for boys, and
yet in a vast number of instances, mere striplings
have to be sent to college at a time when it is
the next thing to ruin to send them from the home
circle and the parental care. It is now a common
thing for a college executive to be asked by a
father, "What shall I do with my son? He is
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 113
ready to enter college, but he is a mere child
in age and experience. He ought not to be sent
from home." The genuine "normal" secondary
school will solve this question. The boy will re-
main safe beneath the sheltering influence of
home, and go on under his old teacher with those
studies which he has so successfully and so ar-
dently pursued. Having tarried at Jericho till
his beard has grown, he may then go up to Jeru-
salem — to his educational Zion — the university.
By the mere force of old habit, we speak of
bo\s as the materiel of our professional activity.
This fashion is out of date. The higher education
is no longer of the masculine gender; it is
epicene. Our friends at the East may still worry
and contend over the admission of women to this
education. In the West that question has long
smce been settled. When asked, as I sometimes
am, '"When were women first admitted to your
University of Minnesota?" my reply is, "Never.
They were never excluded." They came at the
beginning and took their places as a matter of
course. I wish to remark of this question of the
higher education of women, that all there has
been, for many years, of it anywhere is, "Shall
women be admitted to men's colleges?" No one
has denied the higher education to women, at
least no one who has any right to be heard. Now,
the chief difficulty which presents itself is mainly
one of mere boarding and maintenance. There
114 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
is no trouble about the instruction of boys and
girls in the same classes. Place these collegiate
high schools in a hundred cities and villages,
and the difficulty mentioned mostly disappears.
The girls can live at home, going and coming
from its safe harbor to the class room. Thus the
"mixed education" which is now distressing —
and with reason — so many minds, will become a
very simple problem. The grown woman may
with safety and profit resort to the university ,
if she desires the culture of the university;
and thus is removed the temptation felt in many
quarters to attenuate or dilute the university
courses in order to render them more acceptable
and accessible to the "weaker vessels." The uni-
versity must not be reduced to the status and con-
dition of the female seminary.
A further motive for adopting a novel uni-
versity organization was the desire to contribute
to the elevation of the professional schools and
schooling in Minnesota and elsewhere. I do not
need to expose the acknowledged infamy of most
of these schools, which make a business of work-
ing up school boys into lawyers and physicians —
so read their diplomas — in fewer weeks than it
used to take to cipher through Daboll's arith-
metic. It is a fact that law and medical colleges
in neighboring States have taken young men from
our preparatory classes and sent them back to us
with broad and fair graduation parchments much
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 115
sooner than \vc could have made freshmen of
them. The better men in these learned profes-
sions are not blind to this abomination, and they
see clearly the source and fountain of it, in those
professional schools which are supported by the
fees collected from students. I see no remedy
which can be used by those schools, as a class.
All honor to the few who have already made a be-
ginning of moderation. J-Iarvard, Michigan and
Chicago no longer admit without inspection ev-
ery candidate who may drift to their doors. There
will, however, be no thorough and permanent
cure until some public, endowed institution, not
depending on students' fees for its existence and
continuance, shall set up and steadfastly hold to
a high standard of requisites for admission ; or-
ganize and carry out orderly, graded courses of
study ; and graduate no man who shall not have
completed the prescribed work with fidelity and
thoroughness. This reform we propose, in Min-
nesota, to inaugurate and carry through, so far
as our own state is concerned. It is part of our
university scheme that no person shall be ad-
mitted to a professional school as a candidate for
a degree who shall not have successfully prose-
cuted and completed a secondary course of stud-
ies. We fix this as a Jiiiiiiiniiin of qualification,
believing this preparation to be sufficient for the
majority of professional men — men who are con-
tent to be practitioners merely, and do not aspire
ii6 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
— as few men do — to become original investi-
gators, authors, savants. The few who do so
aspire must needs devote additional years to a
course of philosophical, literary and higher sci-
entific studies. For all such we ofifer the appro-
priate opportunities in our "College of Science,
Literature, and the Arts."
> We do not, however, stop with the colleges
devoted to training men for the learned profes-
sions. We propose to raise the agricultural and
polytechnic schools to the same high plane. In
regard to the courses in engineering, civil and
mechanical, we propose no innovation, but merely
to follow out the established custom of Ameri-
can polytechnic schools. As already shown,
these institutions give the first two years of the
course to general, disciplinary — secondary stud-
ies ; the last two, to professional work proper.
In our institution, the engineering student passes
from the Secondary Department and enters the
College of Mechanic Arts at the beginning of the
junior year. He pursues the customary studies
for two years, and is graduated at the end of
that time a Bachelor only.
It is in reference to the agricultural college
that we may be said to be taking a new depart-
ure. It has generally been thought politic, if
not necessary, by those who have been charged
with the organization of the agricultural colleges
in America, to begin the work at the low water
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 117
mark of the common school. As a matter of
course, no professional work worthy of the name
can be taken up at that point. The necessary
consequence is, that the college must put the
matriculants upon a course of general studies in
mathematics, sciences and languages. Thus it
comes that we have freshmen in colleges em-
ployed upon higher arithmetic, penmanship,
punctuation, and other indispensable rudiments.
So soon as possible the fare is varied by dash-
ing in a modicum of agriculture or horticulture.
Time passes on, and at the close of a four-
years' course, the young men are returned to the
farms as Bachelors of agriculture. I would not
condemn this work altogether, though I think it
extravagant and distracting to mingle studies so
unlike and incompatible. It is useless and ex-
travagant — it is absurd — to undertake the appli-
cation of science to agriculture before the science
— the appUahle science — has been acquired. The
agricultural colleges referred to, cannot, there-
fore, become, as they ought to become, profes-
sional schools, so long as they are engaged in
doing training work in the general studies of the
high school. According to the principle implied
in this discussion, the institution of which I am
speaking bases the regular undergraduate course
in agriculture upon the secondary instruction of
the Elementary Department. All candidates foi
graduation must have undergone this instruc-
ii8 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
tioii here or elsewhere. After two years of pro-
fessional studies and exercises, we think them en-
titled to a degree in every way equivalent to the
first academical degree of bachelor.
Thus we conform, as we believe, to that act of
Congress which conferred the endowment for
the new industrial education. This statute calls
for the establishment of colleges, — i. e., institu-
tions of superior rank. The endowment cannot
be justly expended in mere primary and sec-
ondary instruction.
We also respond to the real demand of the
farmers. The Agricultural College was never
wanted as a mere farmers' school, in which their
sons and daughters could be taught to extract the
cube root and decline adjectives of three termi-
nations. The real demand of the farmer is that
there be men trained up to interrogate science,
as to its application to that great industry which
is at the bottom of all the industries and activities
of the world.
When the Agricultural College is made a pro-
fessional school, this work may begin. The Agri-
cultural College as a secondary school, however
efficient, can contribute but scantily to this end.
It seemed best to let the reader follow the de-
scription of the ^Minnesota plan to its end. It was
adopted hastily and prematurely by a body of in-
experienced regents reposing undue confidence in a
youthful executive whose enthusiasm affected them.
THE iMINNESOTA PLAN 119
He was himself as much surprised as any one could
be at their sudden action. The most he had hoped
for was the opening of a discussion. He had not
moderation nor wisdom enough to counsel delay and
consultation with colleagues. The faculty were di-
vided; the professors on the "classical side" were
opposed to innovation, those on the "scientific side"
were warmly favorable to the plan.
In 1872 in response to demands the regents gave the
matter a full consideration. The members of the faculty
contributed their respective views in writing; the
author of the plan defended it from a brief to be
found on a subsequent page. The result was a res-
olution to adhere to the plan; and it was adhered
to for more than a decade. Thanks to a faculty
loyal if not cordial in its support, no difficulties of
administration presented themselves which were not
easily overcome. Still it must be said, there exist-
ed a "feeling" shared by some teachers, some stu-
dents, and some school men that the University of
Minnesota, had by the adoption of a novel scheme
of organization separated herself from the goodly
fellowship of American colleges. That the old
American aggregation (there was no system.) of
schools and colleges could be improved upon, was
not easily entertained by those who had not stud-
ied the principles of educational organization, in
particular of public education. The believers in the
plan were therefore kept on the defensive.
Dr. Cyrus Northrop succeeded to the presidency
of the university in September 1884. In June 1885.
the regents upon his recommendation, by a simple
resolution regulating the jurisdiction of faculties,
gave the Minnesota plan a quiet and comfortable
coup de grace. He had other objects more at heart
than reforms in university organization, and felt
120 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
that it would be better to let the institution devel-
op along traditional lines. The author of the plan
was quite content that it should not be left in the
hands of those not in sympathy with its idea and
purpose. The principle survives and in good time
will have its fruition. The University of Chicago
has explicitly recognized it, and Columbia has im-
plicitl}^ adopted it.
It was laid down in the introductory part of
this paper, as a principle to be gone tipon in or-
ganizing the public instruction, that the system
nutst be such as to employ and encourage all
agencies likely to engage seriously in the work.
By what means, if by any, to open the whole
field of educational effort to the same free com-
petition between individuals as now exists in the
learned and other professions, is an alluring prob-
lem, but because it is not of immediate practical
importance it must be laid aside for the graver
and unavoidable question, "Where is the place
and what the work of the Christian Church in
education?" Let us meet this question resolute-
h . Let us face first of all this fact, that in the
newer states of America education of all grades
is already public. The people have taken the
whole work in hand. It is impossible to disguise
this fact. It is equally impossible to escape
from this next conclusion — that if the Church
means to do any work in education which will
last and grow, she must come within the system
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 121
of public instruction. The institutions of her
foundation and maintenance must take their
place as elements in whatever system may hap-
I)en to exist. What part of the field then may
the Christian forces occupy in the grand move-
ment ? Not the primary theater of the war. Ex-
perience has already decided that; and further,
this is the place for parental co-operation. Not
the field of superior, academical and professional
education, for that too the people have occupied
with a corps of observation — if no more. There
remains but one province, the secondary educa-
tion. May the Church venture upon that? It is
certain that in her present estate the Church can-
not sustain the university. It is useless to talk
of the university unless there is a prospect of mil-
lions of dollars flowing into her cofTers. Were
the Church one in visible representation, this
might be expected, but divided and contending,
her various sections vainly attempt the mighty
task of collecting a university endowment. This
I may say while recalling, not without bitter-
ness, the fact that we have yet as a people to
educate ourselves up to the point reached by
seme Christian benefactors of higher education.
The people have resolved to have the university,
but the}- have not as yet fully appreciated the
magnitude of their enterprise nor equalled in
nuuiificence a few noble citizens.
122 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
If, however, a Church \\ ere equal to the main-
tenance of the university, I cannot see that she
has any sufiicient motive for it. The history of
American universities shows that just as they
have grown into consequence they have out-
grown the spirit of denomination. The Chris-
tian college of to-day is forced to hoist at its
maintop the motto "Christian, but not sectarian."
If not sectarian, why then shall the sect support
it? "Christian, but not sectarian," is the watch-
word of the people's university. The work of
the university is secular, and cannot be Church
work. It can only aid the Church — as Church —
in an indirect way, by extending the boundaries
of knowledge, diffusing culture, and arming the
hand of charity with new balms and potions.
Why then should the tithes and oft'erings go to
the cultivation of science and letters, to the train-
ing of lawyers and physicians, farmers and engi-
neers? When a thousand villages are without
churches and pastors, shall the Church found ob-
servatories to study spots on the sun, and mil-
lions of men perish without the gospel?
There is, however, in the scope of the second-
ary education a work which may be regarded as
distinctively Christian, I have, with some empha-
sis, advocated the full development of the sec-
ondary education for the purpose of bringing
that instruction to the doors of the people, and
into close relation with homes. Two practical
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 123
difficulties here present themselves. The first,
that there is a large body of youth who have lit-
erally no homes, — there are many who are worse
off than that, — who have fathers and mothers,
but no parents. There are also sons and daugh-
ters of persons holding public offices, military
and civil, the duties of which carry them to sta-
tions remote from schools and civilization ; there
are children of persons traveling or living tran-
siently in public houses. The number of children
thus incapacitated from resorting to the public
high schools from homes, will be found upon re-
flection to be very great. For this class the board-
ing school is the proper resource. What work now-
I ask can the Church better do than to thrown
her sheltering arms around these homeless ones,
and train them up to useful and blameless liv-
ing? There is room then in the system for the
Christian boarding school. I cannot pass from
this topic without stopping to advertise to this
national convention of teachers that our State
of Minnesota presents to-day the unique and un-
paralleled spectacle of the best boys' boarding
school in the northwest, built up in nine years
on the ruins of a paper university. Let me say
proposed ruins, for that university — thanks to
one wise and far-seeing man — never lifted the
first stone into daylight.
124 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
When Henry Benjamin Whipple came to Fari-
bault in 1859 to begin his work as Bishop of Min-
nesota, he found a Httle wooden "shack," in which
a little primary school was kept. Over the door
was a smart gilded sign "Bishop Seabury Univer-
sity." One of his first acts was to take a carpen-
ter's hammer and pull down that sign. His wiser
plan, which he presently put into operation, was to
build and organize a splendid academy, in which he
could proselyte to his heart's content. In a univer-
sity he could not freely make Episcopalians.
The other difificulty had in mind is this, that the
high school of any grade of development is pos-
sible only in the cities and larger villages. There
are fifty smaller villages, more or less, in Min-
nesota, which cannot support a high school in
fifty years. How shall these places, the most
favorable perhaps for the development of schol-
arly ambition, be supplied with secondary
schools? The answer is, by means of academies,
to be mainly supported by the people of the vicin-
ity, but aided liberally by the state. Such acad-
emies, public in the sense of complying with the
conditions necessary to insure the just expendi-
ture of the public funds, would habitually fall
under the control of some Christian body, who
would be responsible to the patrons for the judi-
cious training of their children. The Christian
academy may thus have its place in the system
of ptiblic instruction. There is one such in our
own state, scarcely known beyond the bounds of
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 125
a beautiful hamlet nestling- beside Lake St. Croix,
which sends more students to this University than
any high school in the state except three or four.
The Christian academy can do that work which
most of all the Church wants done, the work of
training the growing and impressible youth. The
time for training is past when the youth has gone
to college. Happy is that young man who leaves
school with his principles and habits so fixed and
grounded that the temptations of college life as-
sail his soul in vain.
The admirable little acadeiiij- at Afton on the St.
Croi.x was closed some years ago. It is still the
speaker's opinion that academies of high rank are
needed, and may properly be countenanced and aid-
ed by religious bodies. No better examples are
needed of the usefulness of such schools than the
Pillsbury Academy at Owatonna, the College of St.
Thomas in St. Paul and Shattuck School at Fari-
bault.
The hour will not permit me to speak of a third
sort of Christian work in education — that of
establishing Christian college homes around the
State universities, and thus to restore the college
to its original function. In such establishments
a church may gather its sons and daughters,
maintain its favorite cultus and ritual, and thus
gain to herself all the advantages of a college in
the modern sense, while saving the whole cost
of faculty, library, apparatus, laboratories, etc.
126 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
This idea was put into operation at the Univer-
sity of Michigan some years after. Harris hall has
served its purpose with great acceptance. Roman
Catholic friends have acquired a plot of ground
near the University of Minnesota on which it is
purposed to build a home for the accommodation
of students of that ancient faith. The Episcopalians
have established a "University House" with a clergyman
in charge, as a center of influence and co-operation.
I have said that the boarding school and the
academy may be Christian, meaning Christian in
the lower sense of being actually in the hands of
a Christian body, as a corporation. There is,
however, a higher sense in which these and all
schools may be Christian. There are many
schools, of many grades, which are Christian be-
cause they are owned and operated by Christian
men and women, but are not controlled by any
conference, synod or council. In this same sense,
all schools may be Christian. If the Church do
her duty there will be no other. The schools of
a Christian people will be Christian. The
Church might be more than content to surrender
entirely any immediate management of schools
in order to be at leisure to attend to the grander
w ork of molding and inspiring all the educational
agencies. The Church may then lay down the
text-book, and retire from the school-room, as
pedagogue, only to reappear in the clouds of a
new heaven, with angelic belongings, "with
THE MIXXESOTA PLAX 127
power and great glory," a messenger from above
to inform, to hallow, to sanctify and consecrate
all the agencies of human culture.
It took more than two hundred years for mod-
ern Christianity to learn the lesson that her
power over the nation would be greatest when
Church and State should be organically severed.
Have we not yet to learn the further and more
blessed truth that the Church will only then be
mightiest in culture, wdien she has surrendered
all mere schooling to the people?
Appendixes to the foregoing address.
Appendix i.
In 1872 the Board of Regents deemed it wise to
review their action in adopting the Minnesota plan.
The following brief was used by President Folwell in
its defense. The decision was to adhere to the plan.
I.
General Considerations had in view at the time the
the question of organization came up.
1. The great awakening to the supreme importance
of education in general. Witness, the development of
the free schools, the munificent gifts in the aid of edu-
cation, of Cornell, Peabody, Pardee, Packer. Williston
and others, and the State and N^ational grants to high-
er institutions.
2. An immense increase of youth demanding high-
er education : — not, however, of those looking forward
to the so-called "learned professions," but a number
much greater preparing to be engineers, merchants, ar-
chitects, chemists, miners and metallurgists, pharmaceu-
tists, dyers, manufacturers, merchants, navigators, jour-
nalists, naturalist-^, astronomers, and last, not least, hor-
ticulturists and agricultinnsts ; wherefore,
3. The general cou'^cnt that the old college, however
admirably suited to other wants, does not meet the de-
128 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
mands of these classes. In proof of the correctness of
this view,
4. The establishment of numerous polytechnic
schools, such as, e. g.,
The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y.
The Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College, New
Haven. Conn.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston.
The Columbia College School of Mines, New York
city.
The Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.
J., &c.
Likewise
5. The grant by Congress in 1862 of 9.000.000 acres
of public lands to endow colleges, intended to provide
"liberal and practical education for the industrial class-
es" : and under this grant the establishment of Agri-
cultural and Polytechnic Colleges in many States ; such
as, e. g..
The Cornell University.
The Kentucky University.
The Illinois Industrial Universitv,
The Agricultural Colleges of Massachusetts. Michi-
gan. Pennsylvania, &c.. — but further.
6. The voluntary exile of hundreds of our young
men to foreign countries in search of culture not to be
had on this side of the Atlantic.
7. The importation, chiefly by these persons and
through their writings, of foreign university ideas, tra-
ditions, customs and terminology, which, falling in with
the general sentiment favoring a broader development
of our higher education, had led to
8. The establishment of many institutions called
Universities, in expectation "of thinsrs hoped for."
9. The general acknowledged failure of our uni-
versities fo deserve that title, owing chiefly to lack of
material, i. e.. of students properly fitted for tmiver-
sity work. Therefore,
10. The need, as a condition precedent to the ex-
istence of a genuine university, of a large number of
academic schools of high rank, capable of fitting stu-
dents to enter unon the studies nroperly belonging to
the university. Stich schools, called "secondary," exist
in all countries in which universities exist.
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 129
II. An EXCESSIVE NU.MiiEK OF COLLEGES, insufficiently
endowed, indifferently officered, scantily attended, "hin-
dering rather than aiding one another by their jealous
rivalries, and wasting the most precious resources of
the country."'
12 In these colleges a general breaking down of
discipline, and a cheapening of degrees, things not to
be prevented in institutions demoralized by ruinous
competition.
13. In these colleges also, an overloading of the
course of study in the attempt to adapt the college,
with its single curriculum, to modern demands. But
14. A strong and decided reaction against the
tendency to overcrowd the college course, coinciding
with
15. A relaxation from the traditional custom of
forcing students over a single course, as shown in
16. The addition of so-called "scientific courses" of
study into many colleges and universities, or in
17. The introduction of so-called optional or elec-
tiz'c studies and courses of study : in connection with
which
18. The remarkable fact that the end of the second
(or Sophomore) year of the old college course has been
very generally pitched upon as the proper point at which
to admit optional studies and courses, thereby indicat-
ing that
19. Some university work proper begins now in
America (and will for a long time continue to begin)
with the Junior year, and that studies sliould be assort-
ed accordin^ily. Wherefore
20. Universities must provide for dropping the work
of the first two college years, belonging by its nature
to the secondary schools.
21. The higher secondary education cnil)racing the
first two college years, has been found to be an excel-
lent preparation for the "industrial professions,'" and it
is also sufficient for the mere practitioner in the so-
called learned professions, although in fact
22. The law and medical schools, receiving students
with merely the primary education of the common
school, are turning out under the spur of sharp compe-
tition hundreds of graduates every year, without culture,
without science — to the great infamy of the profession^;.
AVherefore
I30 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
23. The impending necessity that some public en-
dowed institution not depending upon tuition money
for support, should by requiring as the mininmm prepar-
ation the secondary education indicated, rescue the legal
and medical professions from the low condition into
which they have confessedly fallen.
24. For lack of suitable secondary or academic
schools to prepare students, the agricultural colleges
have very generally been forced down into the sec-
ondary field, and been obliged to offer courses of study
made up mainly of academic branches with merely a
seasoning of agricultural studies. Whereas
25. The agricultural college ought to be a special
professional school, analagous to law, medical, and en-
gineering schools, to which students shall bring a suffi-
cient preparation of general and disciplinary studies,
and it is only as such that the agricultural college can
form a co-ordinate department of the university.
26. The actual foundation and maintenance of uni-
versities by States is an experiment, the success of
which is not expected by some, and not desired by
many others.
27. The Christian Church, — under various denomi-
nations, — has immense investments in higher education,
and under her auspices.
28. Private individuals and corporate bodies will
continue to endow and support educational establish-
ments. Nevertheless there exists
29. A powerful tendency in the direction of com-
prehensive, not to say exclusive, state and national ef-
fort to control education and to develop complete
systems of schools culminating in universities. Where-
fore,
30. The evident need of such an organization of
education by competent authority as will invite and
ensure the co-operation of all parties interested in the
business, and secure economy and efficiency : accord-
ingly
31. The State University should be so organized
as to form an integral part of a State system of pub-
lic education, while free scope and room should be
allowed for the legitimate efforts of all private and
corporate agencies.
y2. The higher education of women, — a problem
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 131
not to be put aside when public funds form the 'endow-
ment of a proposed university.
IL
Local Considekatioxs : State of Minnesota, a. d.
1870.
1. An act of the Legislature approved February 18.
1868, "Re-organizing the University and establishing an
Agricultural College therein." —
2. The Board of Regents required by this act to
establish "five or more Colleges or Departiuents; that
is to say,
"A Department of Elementary Instruction ;
"A College of Science. Literature and the Arts;
"A College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts;
"A College or Department of Law :
"A College or Department of Medicine."
3. An endowment of public lands, consisting on the
one hand of University lands proper and on the other
of "Agricultural College" lands in the proportion of
about 3 to 5.
4. An evident and undoubted disposition on the part
of the Board of Regents to devote the funds to accrue
from the Agricultuural College lands with the utmost
fidelity to the object named in the act of endowment
passed by Congress. July 2. 1862. As an earnest of tliis
disposition,
5. The purchase of a farm for experimental pur-
poses and the election of professors of agriculture,
military science and civil engineering.
6. A provisional organization, in some respects ex-
cellent, but lacking in thoroughness — the various de-
partm.ents forming rather a mere association than an
organism. Indeed the separate establishment of the
colleges or departments demanded by the statute was
quite lost sight of.
7. Free Tuition in all departments: small annual
charge for "incidentals" only.
8. No dormitory system, but students of both sexes
left free to choose their residences in the city.
9. A faculty of ten persons, including the presi-
dent.
10. An attendance of 185 students — about one-half
of them young women.
11. Thirteen students, ranking provisionally as
132 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Freshmen, of whom probably but five were of that
rank.
12. A large number of students looking forward to
polytechnic studies, a great demand for instruction in
the German language, and an unexpectedly large num-
ber of classical students.
13. But one denominational college, partially devel-
oped, in actual existence in the State.
14. A very small number of fitting schools (3-5) in
private or denominational hands and all young and
feeble.
15. A considerable number of excellent public high
schools, ably officered and ready to co-operate actively
with the Liniversity, but as yet not having generally
adopted courses of study preparatory to it. Hence
16. The evident necessity of so planning the work of
the University as to begin where the high schools
should leave off.
Such was "the situation" when in June, 1870, the
question of organization came definitely before the
Board of Regents.
III.
The plan actually adopted was the following, being
the report of a special committee :
THE UNIVERSITY OF :\IIXXESOTA.
PLAN OF ORGANIZATION.
"There shall be established in the University of Min-
nesota, five or inore Colleges or Departments; that is
to say, a Department of Elementary Instruction; a Col-
lege of Science, Literature and the Arts; a College of
Agriculture and the ISIechanic Arts, including Military
Tactics; a College or Department of Law; also a College
or Department of Medicine." — [Laws of Minnesota, 1868. J
" * * * to teach such branclTes of learning as are related
to Agriculture and the ^Mechanic Arts, in sucli manner
as the Legislatui-es of the States may respectively pre-
scribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical edu-
cation of the industiial classes in the several pursuits
and piofessions of life, without excluding other scientific
and classical studies, and including military tactics." — ■
TAct of Congress granting land for Agricultural Colleges.
1862.]
A three years' preparatory department has been in
operation since 1866. Twentv students, most of whom
h'-ive passed through this Department, are now pursuing
the studies of freshmen in science or arts.
It is proposed to drop, as soon as may be practicable,
lire first year of this preparatory course, and to add
to the two remaining years, other two years, correspond-
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 133
ing to the freshman and sophomore years of our or-
dinary colleges, thus forming a department to be called
"The Collegiate Department;" of which the promi-
nent features shall be these, viz :
1. Two or more parallel courses of general scien-
tific and classical studies, designed to prepare students
either to enter one of the professional schools, or the
higher academic course of the University.
2. These courses to be open to both sexes alike.
3. A thorough system of discipline, by means of
marking system, military drill, gymnastics, etc.
_ 4. All students to be instructed in those principles
of agriculture (including horticulture), the mechanic
arts, and hj-giene, wmch every "educated man" or wom-
an needs to know.
5. No degrees to be conferred at the end of these
courses, but only a certificate of fitness to proceed with
some proper University course.
6. A shorter course of scientific studies for students
preparing to enter the colleges of agriculture, medicine,
etc.
The theory of this Collegiate Department is, that
the student having successfully pursued one or other
of its prescribed courses, will be suitably prepared to
enter the College of Science, Literature, and tlie
.Arts." or the College of that profession to which he
intends devoting his life. It is too much to ask now.
in a new country, that candidates for agriculture, law.
medicine, or business, shall generally have taken the de-
gree of bachelor of arts.
It is not thought necessary to enlarge upon the details
of the organization of the professional and technical
schools, the number and kinds of which must depend
upon the means of the University and the public de-
mands. The first of them to be organized will be
that of "Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts." The
higher acadeiuic deoartment will correspond nearly with
the junior and senior years of the Atuerican colleges,
t.\cei)t that there shall he entire acadenu'c freedom in
the selection of courses. Xo degrees shall be conferred
e.xcept after successful e.xaminations. and that to some
extent upon subjects upon which no direct instruction
shall have been given.
It is a part of the plan that from year to year some
branch or branches shall be dropped off the lower end
134 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
of the Collegiate courses, so that at length, the whole
Department having been relegated to the schools below,
shall "expire by limitation," leaving the federated clas-
sical, scientific and professional schools of the Uni-
versity proper. In fact the Collegiate Department is
intended to be a model "Secondary School."
The following diagram will suggest, though inade-
quately, the relations of the Departments :
Primary
School
Collegiate
Department
B. L.
B. AG.
B. A.
B. M.
B. E.
The essential features of the plan appear to be:
1. That while offering the old college course and
discipline in its best form to the literary and profes-
sional classes, the University will provide for the in-
dustrial classes that "liberal and practical education"
contemplated in the laws which have conferred her
endowments.
2. The separation of the natural epochs of second-
ary and superior education, and the ultimate liberation
of the University from the elementary work belonging
to the former. Coinciding with this separation, an ad-
vantageous assortment of studies, methods and disci-
pline suitable to the two periods respectively. As a
further result
3. The simplification of the question of "mixed edu-
cation."
4. The actual elevation of the professional schools.
by requiring of candidates for degrees a good general
education, as a condition for entrance, while, not in-
sisting in theory on the impossible demand that all
should have gone over the whole of the old college
cotirse.
5. The elevatio.n of the colleges of agriculture and the
mechanic arts to equal rank and standing with the
THE MIXXESOTA PLAN 135
law and UKclical colleges, and the scparatit)n of the-
studies and exercises properly belonging to them, from
the elementary branches taught, or Avhich should be
taught, in the primary and secondary schools, and which
it is not the business of colleges to teach.
6. That while proposing to provide instruction on
the most liberal scale in all subjects proper to be taught
in a genuine university, the institution shall not offer
an unlimited "option" of studies, but rather a suitable
variety of well-ordered courses of study, leading to
appropriate degrees.
7. The total abolition of all honorary degrees.
8. A close and organic connection with the system
of public schools, permitting and inviting the co-opera-
tion of all private and corporate institutions. "Tlie I'ni-
z'crsity begins, for the time being, n-herever the High
School leaves off."
g. That while the main features of the plan may
remain unchanged, it admits of great freedom in the
arrangement of details to suit varying conditions of
times and circtnustanccs.
10. A faithful adherence to the letter and spirit of
the laws, .state ajid national, which have established
and endowed the University, and Avhich contemplate
it as a federation of literary, scientific, professional.
and technical or industrial Colleges, each imparting
liberal and practical education.
Note.— It is a necessary corollary of this plan of
organization, that the University work be extended
beyond the baccalaureate graduation, as soon as may
be practicable, by the addition of studies or course's
of study leading to the master's degree or the doc-
torate.
Appendix 2.
opinions of distinguished american educators.
[Received, along with others of similar import, in
answer to a printed circular letter issued in February.
1870, setting forth the then proposed plan.]
President Porter and others, of Yale College: —
"The undersigned having had their attention called to
the proposed oreanizatiou of the University of Minne-
sota, as set forth by President Folwell, have been im-
pressed with its adnntation to the wants of a new
state, its harmonv with the work of other educational
institutions in Mimiesota, and its just recognition of
136 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
the value of literary, scientific and professional culture."
(Signed) Noah Porter, President of Yale College,
D. C. GiLMAN,
Wm. D. Whitney,
Professors of Yale College.
The undersigned agree with the foregoing expression
of opinion.
(Signed)
James Hadlev, Professor of Greek,
George F. Barker, Professor of Chemistry,
Wm. H. Brewer, Professor of Agriculture,
Thomas R. Lounsbury, Professor of English.
President Hopkins, of Williams College : — "The gen-
eral plan seems to me judicious, and I cannot think
you will find difficulty in adjusting it to your wants
and means as they shall be revealed."
President White, of Cornell University : — "Your
plan is interesting, and in view of the peculiarities of
your immediate education in the state, seems to be
excellent."
President Frieze, of the University of Michigan : —
"I sincerely hope that you may be able to realize your
plan for the development of a University. I can see
no deficiency in jt. * * * It is certainly correct in
principle ; and I am convinced that America will never
have a University until some of our institutions adopt
a course similar to that you propose."
President Morton, of the Stevens Institute of Tech-
nology : — "I can heartily approve of your course."
President Read, of the University of Missouri : —
"Your plan meets my entire approval. * * * You
have the correct view of agricultural education."
President Angell, of the University of Michigan,
says : — "A great point will be gained when we have
carried secondary education up to the mark you have
set. I cannot but applaud your courage in attempting
the experiment in a new state like yours. * * * j
do most earnestly wish the highest measure of success
to your praiseworthy efifort."
President Chadbourne, of the University of Wiscon-
sin : — "Your plan shows that you understand the
siHiation fully, and that your object is to organize
t'''e Universitv to meet the present wants of the state,
giving it, at the same time, the conditions of growth
as new demands are made. * * * I like the plan
THE AIINNESOTA PLAN 137
because it seems to me to aim at making the Univer-
sity supplement the common schools ; and it should
not shrink from humble work, while that is neces-
sary on account of the defect of the schools."'
Dr. J. M. Gregory, President of the Illinois Indus-
trial University: — "You know I am not an extremist,
any more than yourself, and I most heartily approve
of your plans, which have for their aim to hold fast
all that is good in the past, while you gain all the new
good the present offers."
Rev. A. P. Peabody, D. D.. of Harvard University:—
"I want to express my sincere and gratified interest
in the plan of your University. I think you have
placed your elective system just where it ought to
stand. Up to the term corresponding to the Sopho-
more year, the required course will no more than fit
a student to make an intelligent and judicious choice,
and the whole previous period is needed for studies
in which every student ought to be proficient."
Rev. Dr. Wilson, of Cornell University, Profes-
sor of Mental and Moral Philosophy : — "I express my
approval of it in general without reserve.* * * * It
would enable us to put the first and second year men —
preparing for the University courses proper — under a
regimen and training such as boys need, and at the
same time allow the University men the liberty for
wdiich men only are fitted. * * * it would allow us
in practice to take advantage of the difference between
the recitation and the lecture systems, and to use the
former almost exclusively in the preparatory or Col-
legiate course, and to make the most of the lecture
system in the University course where alone it can be
used with advantage, and where it is incomparably
superior to the recitation system."
Rev. Dr. Kendrick. of the University of Rochester,
Professor of Greek: "I am glad to see your young
State adopting a plan so comprehensive and liberal.
* * * The general plan seems to me unexceptionable
and excellent. The thousand questions of detail will
have to be settled by experience."
Dr. Asa Gray, of Harvard University, Professor of
Botany: — "I can .say in general, that your plan seems
to me well considered, and we wi^h ynn every suc-
cess."
138 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Dr. E. W. Hilgard, of the University of Mississippi,
Professor of Agriculture :— "I have read attentively, and
with great satisfaction, the various documents concern-
ing the proposed organization of your University.
- * * I cannot omit to express to_ you, in general,
my entire concurrence in your views."
Hon. Wm. T. Harris, Superintendent of Schools, St.
Louis, Mo. : — "Your views and plans seem to me to be
very catholic and very practical."
Rev. W. W. Washburn, late Principal of the Prepar-
atory Department of the University of Minnesota: —
"In your' scheme of organization, you have compre-
hended the actual situation of affairs, and provided for
the wants of that new state very fully. You have
crystallized and put into admirable form a thought that
has often presented itself to my mind, i. e., that the
University courses branch at the close of the Sopho-
more year."
Professor Wm. F. Phelps, Principal of the First
State Normal School, Winoua : — "I have studied with
much interest the courses of study and plan of opera-
tions laid down for the University of Minnesota. From
these examinations I feel prepared to say that they
seem to me to be well considered, judicious, and in har-
mony with the most enlightened views of Higher Edu-
cation, as entertained by our best thinkers. Time and
experience may make minor changes in details expe-
dient, but on the whole your plans are, I believe, most
wisely conceived.
Professor Jas. R. Boise, Department of Greek, Uni-
versity of Chicago: — "You have a noble work before
you, and I am glad you understand so well the im-
portance and the nature of your task. Your view-s ap-
pear to me to be enlightened and liberal."
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 139
Appendix 3.
later commendatory letters.
New York, March i, 1884.
My dear sir :
Your letter reaches me just as I am returning to
England, I wisli I could have come to MinneapoHs,
but in the summer I read in a newspaper an address
of yours on University education, and had the pleasure
of finding that you took all the points which I most
wish to see taken. You are perfectly right in saying
that secondary instruction is the weak thing here, and
that it is important to mark this ofif more clearly from
the superior instruction. But it seems to me, besides,
that your degree-granting bodies are far, far too nu-
merous.
I remain, my dear sir, most truly yours,
Matthew Arnold.
President Fohvell.
140 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
President's Room, Oct. i6, 1902.
Columbia University in the city of New York,
Dear Mr. Folwell :
I have read with great interest and pleasure your let-
ter of the 15th and the valuable article which ac-
companies it, and congratulate you on the prescience
which led you to hold the views so long ago.
With best wishes, I am cordially yours,
Nicholas Murray Butler.
The University of Chicago,
August 2, 1909.
My dear Dr. Folwell :
I distinctly remember placing in the hands of Presi-
dent Harper the address to which you refer. I can-
not recall the phraseology. I remember simply that he
expressed high approval and appreciation of the prin-
ciples involved. My opinion is that your plan was a
perfectly sound one. It happened to be ahead of the
times, and therefore could not be carried out. It is
still somewhat ahead of the times, but I can see many
signs of approaching changes which will make it, I
believe, at no long distance in the future entirely
practicable.
With cordial regards, I am very truly yours,
Harry Pratt Judson.
THE MINNESOTA PLAN 141
President D. S. Jordan in World's Work, July, 1908.
* * * the most important movement by far is that
towards the differentiation of the university from the
college, by the removal from the university of the "jun-
ior college," the work of the present freshman and
sophomore years.
This would at once make the college a support rath-
er than a rival of the university. It would enable the
university to throw its whole strength into technical,
professional, and research training. It would tend to
develop university teachers, men with skill and train-
ing for research, while it would at the same time
place equal stress on the excellence in teaching ability
demanded in the best colleges. It would raise the uni-
versities of America to the educational level of the
universities of Germany. * * * No institution
has yet made this change, but it is an inevitable one,
and about five years of discussion and preparation will
bring it about. Two years of preparation can be bet-
ter given in a well-ordered college than in an over-
swollen university. At the same time the university
can do better work in the junior and senior years than
the more narrowly equipped colleges can do. * * *
Another element in this change will be the release of
the university from drill-work and from the details of
boy-discipline. * * * The remedy is the revival and
rehabilitation of the college, and the reduction in popu-
lation, with intensification of work, of the great schools
called universities. Of these there are about thirty in
the United States at present.
III. THE SECULARIZATION OF
EDUCATION
The speaker had been president of the University
of Minnesota for thirteen years, and had grovVn
weary of hearing the institution publicly denounced
as "godless" and "infidel" by prominent ecclesiastics
adhering to the traditional belief that the higher ed-
ucation could be safely conducted only under church
auspices. He had become convinced that an attitude
of silence too long maintained, might be construed into
an admission that the state universities had no defense,
and resolved upon occasion, to attempt a statement of
the grounds upon which those institutions had a right
to exist. An opportunity came in the summer of 1882.
The president of the National Educational Association
invited him to make one of the principal addresses at
the annual convention of that year at Saratoga. New
York. In the years that have passed the state uni-
versities have grown prosperous and powerful, and
the Christian religion has not been demolished, nor
has society become less orderly, or humane, or de-
vout by reason of their existence. The paper, there-
fore, may have some interest in educational his-
tory.
Tlie development of a sy.stem of pttblic tini-
versities and colleges in otir cotintry within the
jxist half century is a phenomenon surjiri-sing to
the generation under wliose eyes it has taken
place.
144 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Without agitation, without pre-arrangement
or correspondence it has appeared. As if strewn
there by an unseen hand, a whole galaxy of these
institutions studs our educational skv from hori-
zon to horizon.
At first thought it would seem that such a re-
inforcement to the educational power of the
country would be welcomed by all ; but the fact
is, that a considerable proportion of our best
citizens look with doubt, not to say disfavor,
upon these late intruders into the field of higher
education.
These feelings find their expression chiefly
through the pulpit and the religious press, in a
manner more indicative of outworn prejudice
than of confidence in mending matters by ser-
mons and editorials.
Occasionally the discussions are diversified and
intensified by an earnestness naturally spring-
ing from personal or official interestedness ; and
under exasperating circumstances honorable and
reverend gentlemen permit themselves to speak of
state universities and technical colleges as "god-
less" and "infidel," denouncing them with a de-
gree of vigor bordering on recklessness.
Such denunciations cannot be meant to be tak-
en in their full literal and awful extent, but must
be charitably regarded as extravagant and ill-
considered utterances of strong convictions under
excitement.
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 145
Let us endeavor to state what seems to be the
general average sentiment of that respectable
body of persons who are not yet friendly to public
interference in higher education.
"State universities," they say, "existing by vir-
tue of public law cannot be allowed to teach and
propagate religion ; they cannot be permitted to
compel their students to engage in religious ex-
ercises against their wills ; they may not exhort
their students to any distinctively Christian acts
or ritual, such as conversion, baptism, the Eu-
charist; they cannot enjoin any rules of conduct
simply and solely because contained in the Bible
of Christians. State universities therefore are
non-Christian institutions."
Ce it granted, still between non-Christian or
un-Christian in this mild and quasi-technical
sense, and anti-Christian, — openly or clandestine-
ly anti-Christian, — infidel, godless, diabolical, — is
the breadth of the whole sky. Justice to honest
argument requires, however, that it be said, that
these terms have, by an ingenious species of
rhetorical thimblerigging been so confused and
interfused as to appear synonymous. By such
means some of the elect have been deceived ; but
no cause, however worthy, can long depend on ar-
gumentation essentially dishonest, however well
meant.
"Xon tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis."
I hasten from this painful consideration to
146 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
acknowledge the profound respect due to that
large body of persons who honestly believe and
teach that the college must be distinctively and
aggressively Christian, regarding it as a part of
the machinery of evangelization, an organ of the
denominational propaganda. Their sentiments,
their prejudices even, are entitled to sincere re-
spect, when one remembers how constantly their
works have confirmed their faith. The colleges
are the monuments of their devotion, their sacri-
fices, and their loyalty. It were folly to abate one
jot of the just meed of praise due to the denom-
inational Christian colleges of America and their
supporters. For more than two hundred years
they held undisturbed and undisputed possession
of the field of the higher education in this coun-
try. It is not to be wondered at nor complained
of that their champions so promptly challenge
these late intruders, the state universities, and
the national schools of science. It is to be ad-
mitted that all innovators, all disturbers of pre-
scriptive trusts and easements must make good
their intrusions. It may not be too late to call
for the question, 'Ts there any need of these
public institutions, and have they been organized
on correct principles?"
Let us face this question with composure and
resolution, ready for whatever results a fair and
candid inquiry may yield. If there ever was a
time when it could be brushed away with an epi-
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 147
g-rain or a question-begging epithet, no candid
person will attempt that now. The American
people have a common and national interest in
the solution of this problem. If these higher
public schools are so mischievous and pestilent as
many good men have denounced' them to be, they
ought, I readily consent, to be swept from the
face of the earth.
If they shall in any degree be the means of cor-
rupting morals, undermining character, weaken-
mg true religion and piety, the American people
ought to utterly abolish them, no matter how-
great their contributions to science and the useful
arts may apparently be. If we must choose, give
us ignorance rather than immorality to the end
of time. The question in its simplest form is ,
Have the state universities any right to exist?
If this be settled in the negative, there need be
no further inquiry as to their character and man-
agement. The old law maxim, "Alalus usus abo-
lendus est," is here in point. A bad institution
like a bad custom is simply to be abolished, not
modified.
The first glance at the field of discussion shows
ui that the state university matter is but a small
corner of it. If they are non-Christian or anti-
Christian, so are all our high schools and normal
schools, and the greater number of our profes-
sional and technical schools; and if this catalogue
alarm us, may we not stand appalled at the spec-
148 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
tacle of our common schools, with their ten mil-
lions of children who may never learn in those
schools the Apostles' creed or Ave Maria, nor
be converted and baptized through their agency?
Several millions of our fellow citizens look
upon these godless public schools with abhor-
rence and while paying taxes for their support,
give thanks that their children are not forced to
attend them. Here I submit is the proper front
of attack, ^^'hy vex our souls about a score or
so of state universities and colleges, if our great
common school system is in the hands of the in-
fidels ?
The question broadens. We have to account
not simply for an isolated and trifling phe-
nomenon, but for a great, a prodigious historic
fact. Our conclusion will depend upon the judg-
ment we may form of this fact. If it be of God,
who can withstand it ; if of Satan, let us make
ready for battle.
To form a correct opinion of any great historic
fact, there is in our day but one means. No ipse
dixit of pope or philosopher or pamphleteer will
affect the minds of any who are not already per-
suaded. It is necessary to attack the problem
genetically, to ascertain its origin and trace its
development or evolution. In this way we study
the jury-system, slavery, ethnology, and even
psychology. It were presumption in our day to
attempt here any other than the "historic method."
SECULARIZATIOX OF EDUCATIOX 149
What then was the source. — what the causes con-
tributory, — what the development of the great
fact that the American schools are — I will not
say '"godless" — but rather, state schools than
Church schools, rather secular than ecclesiastical ?
It is necessary to remind ourselves that this
is the nineteenth and not the tenth century, and
that between these two ages a great change has
come over the civilized world — a change apparent
in all departments of life and action, most con-
spicuous, perhaps, in religion and politics. The
Reformation did not simply curtail the suprem-
acy of an Italian episcopate ; it established for-
ever the fact of private judgment in things spir-
itual. This will be admitted by all who will be
affected by the present discussion. Others will
not deny the fact of private judgment whatever
may be their opinions as to the right of private
judgment. The revolution in politics has been
as complete, and has constantly advanced with
equal steps beside that in religion. Let us as
briefly as possible explore the track of this joint
advance and revolution.
During those two centuries of blood and ruin
— the eleventh and the twelfth centuries — the
Church was omnipotent in Europe, religion was
the absorbing interest of men. theology the only
science. Europe for two hundred years was as
one vast camp, whence swarmed in successive de-
tachments the whole fighting force of Christen-
ISO UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
dom to the recovery of the Holy City. Kings
and emperors were so many papal lieutenants.
The offices of state were filled by ecclesiastics,
who controlled both the inland administration
and the foreign policy of nations according to in-
struction issuing from Rome. Politics and re-
ligion were one in actual organization and em-
bodiment.
Now it was for the Crusades, as is well known,
to set in motion a train of causes, which, operat-
ing with slow but certain force, have in the
course of six hundred years separated politics and
religion as wide as the poles.
The Crusades were eye-openers to the lay
nobles and yeomen of Europe, who, returning
from the East, brought home the experience and
accumulations of campaigning through many
countries, some knowledge of old and forgotten
literatures, many products, fabrics and arts, and
a profound respect for the skill, the refinement
and the nobleness of the infidel Saracens. The
blades of Damascus, the goldsmithing of Antioch
were not more wonderful in their eyes, than the
learning, the taste and the gentleness of Moham-
medans.
The Lombard cities which in the later cam-
paigns supplied the transportation and commis-
sariat of the French, German and English cru-
saders, acquired that taste and enthusiasm for
commerce, and that skill in seamanship which
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 151
awaited only the invention of the mariners' com-
pass to engirdle the globe with their adventur-
ous keels. It was a Genoese sailor who first set
foot on this new continent.
In the fifteenth century the Mohammedans,
pushing a counter-irruption into Europe, captured
Constantinople. In that historic capital had been
preserved through all the dark ages the philoso-
phies of Plato and of Aristotle, the histories, the
poetry and the oratory of the Romans and
Greeks. These precious books were now carried
by the fugitive Greeks into their exile, to ser\'e
as good seed falling upon good ground, in France,
in Italy and all the West. The story of the re-
vival of learning need not be told again. Aris-
ing thus remotely from the Crusades it wrought
together with other causes the great reformation
of the sixteenth century.
It is more than probable that those great in-
ventions of the fifteenth century, gunpowder, rag-
paper, and printing, and the mariners' compass
found their origin in suggestions acquired in
those numerous and extended journeys of trade
and exploration to the far East — to India and
Cathay, which followed, and were made possible
by the Crusades.
There is a class of philosophers who find in
such inventions the actual and efficient causes of
civilization, subordinating to them all other agen-
152 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
cies and influences, whether of commerce, in-
dustry, art, philosophy or reHgion. Such an er-
ror may receive charitable regard when one re-
flects upon their undeniable effects.
Gunpowder destroyed feudalism and quenched
out chivalry, by making the infantry soldier,
armed with a slight chemical tube, more than a
match for the mailed and mounted knight. It
made standing armies possible. Standing armies
put it in the hands of monarchs, to collect regu-
lar revenues, to suppress revolting nobles, abol-
ish private war and establish public justice. The
mariners" compass carried the merchants and their
wares to all quarters of the earth, and transfer-
red the decisive dueling nations from land to the
ocean.
But the invention of letters, coming also ages
before from the shadowy East. I take to be the
crowning achievement of human intelligence and
ingenuitv. I care not how many engines for
moving matter, how many devices for directing
force may in the course of time be contrived ; far
above them all. in point of difficulty, of world-
historic importance, will tower the work of Cad-
mus, the Phoenician, who gave mankind the pho-
netic alphabet. Faust and Gutenberg but
crowned the work of him we call Cadmus, by
spreading before men the printed page. With
the printing press, "the people" were born.
Thenceforth slavery of all sorts was doomed.
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 153
To men with open Bibles in llieir hands there
was a tremendous meaning in that scripture,
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make
you free." And within a single generation the
Reformation burst upon Europe like ten thous-
and meteors. In that far-spreading, far-pene-
trating light the darkness of ages, the thraldom
of centuries, were lifted, never we trust to fall
upon mankind again.
The Reformation, what was it, in its essence?
There are conflicting opinions, but none will ven-
ture to deny that, however insignificant the sparks
which kindled it. the Reformation became a great,
an all-embracing insurrection of Europe against
ecclesiastical power. Good or bad in its origin and
results, no one — not even the ultramontanes —
will deny that the Reformation was an insurrec-
tion. It is on this very ground that they con-
demn it. The right of private judgment in things
spiritual has ever since been asserted ; and right
or no right, it is the fact that millions of men
exercise the privilege of private judgment and
interpretation in religion since that time ; a thing,
before that age. to be spoken of in darkness and
with bated breath.
Xo great revolution is fully comprehended
by the men of the time. ■ The Reformation was
not. Religious liberty was deemed rather a
choice of contending masters, than an emancipa-
tion from all masters.
154 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
The effect on civil affairs was apparently slight.
It left politics about where it found them. The
consolidation of fiefs, principalities and king-
doms, brought about by the bankruptcy of Cru-
sading chieftans ; the alliances of nionarchs with
the money-lending cities and boroughs had, by
the close of the fifteenth century, crystallized
Europe into a loose aggregation of great mon-
archies. The successors of Gregory VII having
failed in their efforts protracted through cen-
turies, to reduce the sovereigns to a condition of
vassalage, undertook the more feasible plan of
ruling the kingdoms by finesse. The papal
nuncios and legates became the power behind
the thrones. They conducted the diplomacy of
Europe. They kept not only the consciences of
kings, but the keys of their treasure. Ecclesi-
astics filled the council chambers, and held the
great offices of state for generations. Courts
spiritual absorbed a large proportion of legal
jurisdiction, and bishops and cardinals rode at
the head of battalions in many a battle and foray.
This alliance of church and state was an im-
mense obstacle to the advance of civil liberty. It
served all the ends of a conspiracy of the powers
temporal and spiritual against the rights of man.
The Divine right of kings, and its corollary, the
duty of non-resistance to tyrants even, were
everywhere proclaimed and inculcated. So
passed the ages till Richelieu, who, priest and
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 155
cardinal that he was, transacted for France and
his nominal master precisely as a lay minister of
modern times would do. States, he proclaimed,
must be ruled by statesmen. The change thus
heralded we do not need to trace. It is the story
of the rise and progress of civil liberty and that
constitutes modern history.
In this hurried sketch I have purposely sup-
pressed the observation I now desire to bring
forward in the hope that it may be more im-
pressive.
At, the time of the Crusades all art, litera-
ture, philosophy, government — were ecclesiastical.
There was no distinct secular power.
At this day all power is, or is becoming secu-
lar. That government which we delight to call
the "best government on earth" is wholly and
forever secular. The history of the civilized
\\orld from the twelfth century is the story of
the decline of ecclesiastical control and authority,
and the steady growth of lay learning, influence
and power. Within the past century has been
developed a new science of political econom}^,
utterly inconceivable in its nature and scope, to
the mediaeval citizen. Statesmanship has be-
come a profession. "Liberty, not theology, is the
enthusiasm of the nineteenth century."
In the time of Henry III of* England, one-
half of the House of Lords were spiritual peers.
They are now but one-fourteenth. Xo clergy-
iS6 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
man has held an important civil office in Eng-
land since the beginning of the last century (i8o
years). The fact is similar in our own country
and in some degree in others. To this great and
universal revolution from a state of things in
which ecclesiasticism was supreme in government
and society, to another in which it has utterly
disappeared from public affairs a profound mod-
ern thinker has given the happy designation of
tl:e "secularization of politics."
At this point I ask only that this .great
fact be agreed to. The syllabus of Pio Nono in
the act of condemning the fact concedes it.
It is now my desire to show that this great
movement in politics has been accompanied by
another, only second, if second, in importance —
the steady, persistent cumulative secularization
of education. To this end I ask that you note
the succession and import of the events in the
history of education which must now pass in re-
view.
The public schools established in every city and
town by the later emperors of Rome did not long
survive the destruction of the empire. Then for
many generations. Western Europe, raided over
by successive hordes of barbarians, remained
without order or institutions, a wild chaos of
contending social and political forces. Learn-
ing was quenched out. schools abolished, litera-
ture and philosophy obliterated. Only religion,
SECULARIZATIOX OF EDUCATION 157
niainicd aiul disturled, survived, and it is lo the
survival of Christianity as an organized institu-
tion the world owes the recovery of Europe to
civihzation. i'iety was driven by the rough be-
havior of barbarian chieftans to the secure and
mysterious shelter of the cloister. Monasticisni
became epidemic in the sixth and seventh cen-
turies. In the monasteries were treasured and
multiplied precious copies of the \'ulgate, and
there survived traditions at least of the Roman
authors. We shall never know how many noble
attempts were made by bishops and abbots, by
priests and monks to spread their little knowl-
edge through the society to which they belonged.
Not much was accomplished in instruction till
the time of Charlemagne, one of those great spir-
its who are not willing to endure ignorance, dis-
order and misery.
Among the reforms introduced by this
great monarch in the ninth century, was the
establishment of schools, in connection with re-
ligious houses and establishments naturally under
the control of the clergy, the only class of persons
in any way capable of conducting schools. From
Charlemagne till the beginning of the eleventh
century there were, as Mosheim informs us, "no
schools in Europe but those which belonged to
monasteries and episcopal residences." and it ap-
pears that the Benedictine monks had obtained
the monopolv of the masterships of those schools.
158 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
Those schools, it must be remembered, were
not for the people, nor yet for the professional
classes as we know them. They were essentially
theological schools, for the instruction of the
clergy alone. It should be remembered also that
in that age, the clergy still formed the only
learned profession. They were not only min-
isters of religion, but ministers of State also.
They were the lawyers and physicians of the
time. The differentiation of the professions had
hardly begun in the tenth century. It did how-
ever at length begin ; but it has not yet been com-
pleted. The separation of the lawyer from the
priest, and the physician from the monk has
everywhere taken place. The profession of
teaching has yet to be fully and finally divaricat-
ed from the clerical function.
The progress in this divarication since this was
written has been revolutionary. The college profes-
sor is rarely "in orders," and few employing boards
concern themselves about his church affiliations.
While it is eminently and forever true that it
was Christianity, which saved Europe from per-
pettial barbarism, it is only justice to admit that
to the Jew and the Arab we owe it that the Chris-
tian civilization, (for so we may term it), of the
ninth century did not perish of dry rot. Let it
be granted that Draper and Lecky and Buckle
overestimate and overemphasize the Semitic
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 159
contributions, still there is no denying that to the
Hebrews we owe the survival of medical science
and to the Saracens of Spain and Sicily that of
mathematics, astronomy and philosophy.
Before the close of the tenth century the fame
oi the great Arabian schools of Seville, Granada,
and Cordova had spread throughout Christian
Europe, and students in considerable numbers be-
gan to flock into Spain to hear the Arabic doc-
tors. Conspicuous among these was that "great
and exalted genius," Gerbert. who afterwards be-
came Pope Sylvester II. It is interesting here
to compare with this movement, the analogous one
which during the last quarter of a century has
carried so many young American scholars to the
universities and technical schools of German}'.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries the young
men of Europe journeyed likewise into Spain
for post-graduate study.
It is of record that some of these returning to
their homes in France and Italy, set up schools
for the instruction of youth in the studies of the
then "new education." Geometry, medicine and
astronomy constituted that "new education," and
were denounced by the ultra orthodox as the in-
ventions of the devil. They held their way for
all that and we shall hear again of these schools
in which they were taught.
Passing forward into the twelfth century we
find the free citv movement in the ascendant, hi
i6o UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
this age the cities of Western Europe became
free, rich and ambitious of splendor and influence.
It was the age of the great "free city" move-
ment. It was the time when the artisans, talcing
a lesson in co-operation from the monastic sys-
tem of the Catholic church, organized the prim-
itive trades-unions, the guilds and crafts, which
spreading like a vast net work over Western Eu-
rope exercised for generations on labor a self-
imposed slavery.
In such an era of co-operation we may not
wonder to find a learned historian asserting that,
"Associations of learned men were formed in
many places, for teaching the various branches
of knowledge ; and as the youth resorted to them
in great numbers eager for instruction, those
higher schools, which the next age called uni-
versities, were gradually established."'
It is a most curious and interesting circum-
stance that the universities borrowed from the
trades-unions, their very name and many cus-
toms.
"When those particular incorporations which
are now peculiarly called universities were first
established, the term of years which it was neces-
sary to study, in order to obtain the degree of
master of arts, appears evidently to have been
copied from the term of apprenticeship in the
common trades, of which the incorporations were
much more ancient. As to have wrought seven
SECULARIZATIOX OF EDUCATION lOi
years under a master properly (pialifiecl, was
necessary, in order to entitle an}- person to be-
come a master and to have himself apprentices
in a common trade; so to have studied seven
years under a master properly (pialified. was
necessary to entitle him to become a master,
teacher, or doctor (words anciently synonomousj
in the liberal arts, and to have scholars or ap-
prentices (words likewise ori,qinally synono-
mous) to study under him." It was a most
natural thing that teachers and scholars observing
all other classes of society formed into unions or
guilds, should follow the fashion, and give at
length to their associations the then common name
of University."* There were then universities
of smiths, of tailors, of weavers, etc., before there
were universities, i. e., incorporations of teach-
ers and scholars, but there is no record of the use
of the word "university" as now applied, till we
reach the thirteenth century.
Xow the university of the Crusade era was
the very germ from which have grown all mod-
ern schools and educational systems. Tliat germi-
nal establishment we have discovered to be an
incident of the great free citv movement and in a
great degree secular and not ecclesiastical in or-
ganization.
It is a mistaken and superficial view which
displays the universities as being merely devel-
opments of the cathedral and monastic schools.
*Adani Sniitli. Wealth of Xation.';. 1:1S5.
l62 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
coming down from Charlemagne. It is rather
the fact that the new city schools smothered out
the cathedral and monastic schools, in spite of the
vigorous efforts of Alexander III and other popes
to rescue them from extinction. There were,
however, without doubt instances, where as in
Paris, the new city school became attached to or
associated with the cathedral school, but soon to
absorb and obliterate it. The testimony of Hase
is clear. "They" — the universities — "owe their
establishment not to the favor of popes or of
princes, but to the necessities of the times, as
thousands of students were drawn together by
the reputation of some distinguished teacher.
Acts of incorporations were not sought for from
the Pope until a later period, when the younger
universities endeavored by such means to rival
those which depended upon their own reputa-
tion."' *
Captured at length and harnessed into the serv-
ice of ecclesiasticism, at times appearing to be
the very citadel and strongholds of intolerance,
still the universities have never been untrue to
their origin. If there was intellctual movement
anywhere, it was within their halls. When Peter
the Hermit and Godfrey of Bouillon and St.
Louis, were leading their hosts of infatuated
devotees to death on the plains of Syria, Abelard
and his disciples were proclaiming in the Sor-
*History of the Church. N. Y. Appleton. p. 230.
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 163
bonne the then intolerable heresy that a man, —
at least a philosopher, — might seek for a reason
for the faith that is in him. From that time
until now the universities have been the nurseries
of free thought, science, philosophy, art, free-
dom. In every democratic uprising their stu-
dents have been first in the bloody arena. In our
own day absolutism in Russia aims its first blows
at the universities, because there resides its most
dangerous, because most irreconcilable foe.
Secular in their origin and motive the univer-
sities of continental Europe have at length gen-
erally escaped from ecclesiastical leading strings
and reassumed their secular character. They arc
teaching places of science, in the full sense of that
word, their professors are teachers, and not teach-
ing-priests. Just in proportion to their degree of
emancipation have they grown in estimation and
usefulness.
Turning our attention to the schools next below
tlic universities we shall obsers'e a similar move-
ment and outcome.
Luther, to his immortal honor, no sooner saw
the triumph of his cause, the emancipation of the
German people, than he foresaw the means neces-
sary to the perpetuation of that dear bought lib-
erty. Luther, who was no mere religious zealot,
foresaw that if the faith was to be committed to
the people, the people must be enlightened. Of
what use the book to those who cannot read?
i64 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
The education of the people was a natural and
inevitable sequence of the emancipation of mind
efifected by the Reformation. He therefore pro-
posed and secured the establishment of numerous
grammar schools, to prepare youth for admission
to the universities.
Aleantime the opposing powers were not idle,
nor ignorant of the signs of those times. The
Jesuits, no doubt, understood far more clearly
than the reformers themselves the full meaning
and tendency of the reform movement. They
too saw the importance of capturing the schools.
The society of Jesus of continental vastness, yet
compact as a single battalion, wielded by the cen-
tral power of a single will, as no military force
was ever yet controlled, undertook nothing less
than to monopolize the education of Europe and
the civilized world. Nor did they stop at that.
Their teachers and missionaries spread them-
selves among the savages of both Americas, they
penetrated Africa to the mountains of the Moon,
they surmounted the everlasting snows of the
Himalayas and trod the streets of Pekin. Wher-
ever they went they carried the "Ordo Studio-
rum" of the founder, Loyola, a book which is to
this hour the hand book and directory of the
Jesuit pedagogy.
We cannot trace the events and incidents of
this contest for the mastery of society through
the mastery of its education. The efforts of both
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 165
parties were greatly neutralized ; the times were
not favorable to their operation. The Reforma-
tion opening with the sixteenth century was not
consummated till the middle of the seventeenth
century, when by the peace of Westphalia, Cath-
olic and Protestant Europe agreed to stop cutting
throats and content themselves with turning up
noses. In the fierce and desperate struggle of
one hundred and fifty years not much could be
done for, or with schools.
Still another period of about equal duration, a
period of rest, inquiry and preparation, was to
pass, before the glorious appearing of a new-
epoch in education.
In this time the globe was circumnavigated,
and the Xew World occupied by Europeans. The
inductive method popularized, but not invented
by Bacon, had started science on an infinity of
new lines of research and advance. The phi-
losophy of Descartes had loosed the pinions of
speculative thought to new and nobler excursions.
Chief of all facts a new science was born, and
it was given to the world in the immortal work
of Adam Smith, in the same year in which our
Declaration of Independence was signed in Phil-
adelphia.
The new science of political economy had for
h> central postulate, that the causes which move
society, to elevate or to degrade, to enrich or to
impoverish, to barbarize or to civilize, lie in the
i66 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
nature of man, as modified and limited by his
natural surroundings. Adam Smith lived to see,
as perhaps no other great thinker has, his doc-
trines, not fully understood, but appreciated in
some degree, and the policies of empires shaped
and molded on new principles. More than ever,
nation building, nation culture, became the am-
bition alike of monarch, nobles and subjects.
All Europe was stirred and leavened with the
new doctrine, and the problem of statesmen be-
came, not how to increase and fortify the priv-
ileges of the aristocracy, but how to direct and
multiply the industrial, commercial and intellec-
tual powers of the nation.
Again as in the days of Gratian and Charle-
magne, of Luther and Loyola, the answer came,
"Take hold of the schools and through them train
the rising generations, and your work will work
itself."
It chanced that Germany was the readiest soil
to receive the new and precious seed. As the
smoke of battle rose from the plain of Jena, from
which the French invader had driven in hopeless
defeat the last reserves' of the German armies,
Stein, the Prussian statesman, was working out a
plan, under which Germany was to rear up a gen-
eration which should not only maintain its
"Wacht am Rhein," but should take bloody ret-
ribution beneath the towers of Notre Dame.
Then was organized that Prussian system of
SECULARIZATIOX OF EDUCATION 167
public schools, the model on which all modern
civilized states are building' up their education.
Under it all the schools of all degrees are organ-
ized, into a complete and harmonious system un-
der the superv'ision of the supreme power of the
state. They are completely secularized in their or-
ganization and management notwithstanding the
fact that religious teachers are allowed to give
instruction at fixed hours of the day or week.
The continental nations have adopted similar sys-
tems, and even conservative England has entered
upon the same path and made a considerable ad-
vance.
It is in our own country, however, that the
separation of both church and state, and church
and school have been most complete. Since the
disestablishment of religion in the New England
states, the common schools have been everywhere
secular. The public high schools are so, and so
are the normal schools. All law and medical
schools are virtually secular, for wherever they
are attached to denominational corporations they
are never, or very rarely at least, brought under
denominational influences or supervision, nor are
any religious opinions or exercises taught or re-
quired in them. The national schools founded in
every state under the law of 1862, and the tech-
nical schools of Troy, Hoboken, Worcester and
other cities, operate independently of the action
of councils, svnods or conferences.
i68 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
There remain under ecclesiastic control besides
the theological seminaries, a large number of
colleges, and a considerable but steadily decreas-
ing number of academies in the older states.
Most of them will probably within a generation
be merged in the local high schools.
Within the colleges ecclesiasticism has lost
much ground. A few years ago their professors
were generally clergymen ; to-day but a small pro-
portion of the teachers are in orders. Even in
the most rigidly orthodox denominational institu-
tions , the professional teacher, the trained expert,
who has learned his art and specialty in Paris or
Berlin, in Heidelberg or ]\Ianchester is driving
the cleric from the laboratory and lecture room.
Our denominational colleges are generally affil-
iated with, not managed by conference, synod or
council.
The highest authority on the subject, Presi-
dent Porter, of Yale, has plainly shown and
enunciated the fact, that just in proportion as
American colleges have become great and popu-
lous, have they become the less denominational.
We now come back to the proposition from
which our discussion set out. Parallel with the
secularization of politics we have traced the secu-
larization of education. Over against the separa-
tion of church and state, we have set the co-
related fact of the separation of priest and peda-
gogue.
SECULARIZATIOX OF EDUCATION 169
In the ninth century theology (so called) was
the only science ; the priest and monk the only
teachers ; in the nineteenth century theology is
one of a multitude of sciences, and the priest is
not the exclusive teacher of that even. Phi-
losophy has passed into lay hands, and the lay
schoolmaster is abroad in the land. Were this
not the fact no such convention as this were pos-
sible.
Now of this secularization of education, which
none will deny to be a fact, I desire to say that it
has not been the work of any gang or clique of
atheists, infidels or agnostics. No schools of
materialists in philosophy, or of anarchists in pol-
itics have wrought it out. It is not the offspring
of a corrupt and decaying Christianity, nor any
relapse into barbarism.
It is rather a part, an essential part and fac-
tor in the purest, fairest. Christian civilization the
world has known. It is a movement co-equal
and co-temporaneous with the march of liberty,
the extension of science, the efflorescence of
literature and art. It cannot be diabolic in its
origin or progress. It is. it must be a- great provi-
dential fact, — a moment in the great divine
evolving of human history.
If this be so. if education is passing forever out
of the control of the church into that of the state,
out of the hands of priests into those of profes-
sors. I put to those who are declaiming against
170 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
the movement, denouncing it as godless, infidel,
tliabolic, — I put to them that most cogent, though
perhaps inelegant question, "What are you going
to do about it?" Will you stem the rising Atlan-
tic with your brooms, or embarking on the
mighty wave of progress, be borne onwards with
the advance of true Christian civilization?
Here the present discussion might close. Hav-
ing traced the rise and progress of a great provi-
dential historic movement and development of
secularization in politics, science and education
we might rest, leaving on the shoulders of dis-
sentients the onus of proving this progress a mis-
direction, this development an aborted process.
Let those, we might say, who now deny_ the
right and the duty of the people to educate, let
them show cause why after abandoning the whole
field of the primary education, the larger part of
the secondary and a wide scope of the superior
education, they ought to be left in undisputed
possession of the scanty remnant. When they
gave over to the people the common schools, they
gave up the only principle on which they might
now stand with consistency if not with success.
The bishop of Rome and his consistories have
not committed this dialetic suicide. Modern civ-
ilization, say they, is a retrogression from so call-
ed liberty, and an enslavement ; free government is
a delusion. The church through her infallible head
delivers the rule of faith and the maxims of con-
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 171
duct for men and communities. The priesthood
are the divinely commissioned teachers of the
race and shepherds of peoples. Accordins^ly all
public and secular schools are anathema in a
lump. Here is consistency and good logic. Grant
the premises, and the conclusion is inevitable. But
it will be impossible to convince any modern na-
tion, that the state may conduct the education
of the people in the common schools and high
schools, but that to the church or churches must
be reserved the training of the leaders. The
power which educates the people will educate the
educators.
Refusing then to agree with the ultramontane
doctrine that modern civilization is diabolic, free
government a snare, and public schools a satanic
invention, let us now inquire whether there may
not be in public education some elements which in
their nature and relations justify the fact of its
existence.
First of all. it needs to be observed that the
task of the educators in our times is far other
from that which exercised the ingenuity of Al-
cuin and John Scotus in the ninth century, or of
Abelard and Anselm in the twelfth. Then it was
a few ecclesiastics who were to be trained and
furnished. To-day the millions of the people are
demanding to be schooled. The self-education
of whole nations is to the thoughtful student of
sociolog>' the most interesting and the most mag-
172 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
nificent spectacle of modern times. Nowhere
has this idea penetrated, but it has carried with
it the other and inseparable idea, that only the
people can educate the people. No sect, no
church, nor all the sects and all the churches com-
bined are equal to that gigantic labor. No power,
save the supreme power of the people, operating
through their appropriate agency, the state, can
collect, co-ordinate and conduct the immense
forces and revenues necessary to that work. Re-
garded as a mere business, as an industry, no
private nor corporate agencies can handle it.
Supremely amusing then are the pretensions of the
"True Church," whether called Sandemanian,
Second Adventist, Hicksite or Dunkard, to be
the teachers of the people. The education of the
people must be public or not at all. To entrust
the education of the people to the churches,
would be no more absurd than to confide the de-
fense of the frontiers to the journeymen tailors.
War is the business of the nation : so is educa-
tion. Public education is universal in its aim.
But what are the advantages of public schools?
First, economy. The private and denomina-
tional academies of New York and New Eng-
land, are rapidly giving place to public high
schools. Why? Because the large schools can
be closely graded, and the teachers distributed
according to their special gifts. The small
school must lump its work and keep its teachers
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 173
jacks of all trades and masters of none. This
same principle will sooner than most of us will
now believe reduce the numbers and proportions
of the small colleges which now exist in all our
states. The great colleges are specializing their
instruction. The metaphysician, the chemist, the
physicist are permitted to confine themselves each
to his specialty. The result is a kind of instruc-
tion, which the small college with its limited fac-
ulty cannot offer.
Now the operation of this economic principle
of the division of labor is just as certain in its
course, as the movements of the planets, or the
action of gravitation. No beating of ecclesiastic
drums or chanting of litanies can check its steady
progress.
Such professorial titles as "Professor of Mental
and Moral Philosophy, History and Political Econ-
omy," "Professor of Natural Sciences," "Professor
of Mathematics, Astronomy and Civil Engineering,"
are simplj' ridiculous in this day.
Next, organization, uniform, comprehensive,
inspiring, will be possible. It needs no prophet
to foresee that the American state will at no
distant day organize her education as other civ-
ilized nations have done, forming the progressive
stages of schools into a complete and harmonious
organism, offering to the people a free course of
school privileges, beginning from the kinder-
1/4 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
garten and ending in the university. Into this
system the existing private and denominational
institutions will make haste at length to enter,
for I trust that system will be broad enough and
catholic enough and elastic enough to embrace
and employ all the benefactions of the pious and
all the labors of the devotee. As indicating even
now the tendency of private institutions to take
on a public character, it is curious to note the
assumption by some most respected denomina-
tional colleges of municipal titles : for instance
— the Universities of Chicago, Rochester, Syra-
cuse, Boston University, etc. Institutions which
are to depend on public schools for recruits, must
inevitably become themselves public, and will at
length be glad to become so.
Doubtless the motive for assuming such titles
was in part to invite local support on the under-
standing that the institutions would not be offen-
sively sectarian. There is, however, a trace of dis-
honesty about it.
The public school of whatever grade is demo-
cratic, in the good sense of that term. When the
sons and daughters of governors and senators
and carpenters and saloon keepers and so on,
sit side by side and compete in the same classes,
we need not fear any dangerous outbreaks of
the spirit of caste. The public schools may do
more to break down aristocracies of birth and
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 175
wealth, than any amount of preaching could do
without their aid. Those who are to live and
move among the people obtain then best prepara-
tion in the schools of the people whether higher
or lower. The public schools by ignoring sec-
tarianism are doing the greatest possible service
to pure and genuine Christianity. There can bo
no doubt that the great and general liberali-
zation of the past generation has been largely due
to the public schools in which all kinds of re-
ligion have been tolerated. The Protestant has
learned that the Catholic does not carry on his
brow the mark of the beast. Presbyterians,
Methodists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists,
have found that they do not need to regard one
another as a better sort of infidels. So powerful
is the influence of the public school in mingling
and unifying discordant social elements, that 1
believe attendance upon them ought to be com-
pulsory in all the new states, into which is now
pouring a tide of migration which has not
been paralleled since the days of Attila and The-
odoric.
Compulsory attendance on public schools does
not seem to the writer at the present time to be
generally necessarj-. The excellent instruction of-
fered in tliem without money and without price,
will draw in all children except those of a few zea-
lots, who would contrive to evade a compulsory
statute. However, a recent statute of Minnesota re-
176 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
quires every person having control of a child between
the ages of eight and sixteen years to send him to
some school in which the common English branches are
taught, under penalty of fine or imprisonment.
The public schools of whatever grade are best
calculated to develop good morals and good char-
acter. Here we reach disputed ground. It is no
longer sound theology, to found morality on re-
ligion, but religion is built on the rock of moral-
ity. Every system of practical morals involving
the theory that the sanction of conduct is only
to be found in the region of faith has proved a
failure. The teaching that only true believers
can be good and do right, and that nothing is
true or right except as sanctioned by the com-
mands of religion, can only end in the deteriora-
tion or destruction of character. Those persons
who have been trained under a system which per-
mits escape from responsibility for conduct or
misconduct through repentance or penances or
indulgences, are those whose powers of re-
sistance to evil are generally weakest. It is ruin-
ous to character, the teaching that men have not
in their own power the control of their motives,
and that punishment will not inexorably follow
transgression.
Education postulates the essential goodness of
human nature. It proposes to educe what is in
him, not to transform his nature. The public
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION 177
school assuming the essential goodness in human
nature, is in the best position to inculcate a sound
morality, founded upon man's nature and devel-
oped by experience. It can and ought to instill
all the virtues, because of their essential loveli-
ness, and adaptedness to man's best nature and
highest happiness. It can condemn and denounce
vice because of its essential ugliness and its dia-
bolical influence on men and society. I think it
a great gain that under a public school system
moral training can be fully separated from the
religious and sectarian instruction of the family
and the church. It is a gain alike to morals and
religion. Yet I am aware that this separation is
made by many sincere and excellent persons the
very ground of condemnation, believing it to be
essential to learning and religion alike, that
youth shall take equal doses of the Lord's prayer
and logic, the Creed and chemistry, effectual call-
ing and the binomial theorem.
It needs to be added that the very fact that the
public school is public is advantageous. Public-
ity purifies society, as free air and water wher-
ever they can have access, dissolve and dissipate
the germs of disease. That it exists under and
by virtue of the law of the land, gives the school
dignity in the eyes of the jnipil and the parent.
To live and act under law is of itself a moderat-
ing, sobering process. In jiroportion as public
law has been actuallv extended over higher edu-
178 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
cation, the tricks and deviltries of the mediaeval
monastic school and the university of the earlier
ages with its special law, have been eradicated.
They will not disappear from our state univer-
sities into which they were imported from in-
stitutions arrogating the name of Christian, until
the operation of the law of the land shall be
recognized to be the guardian of right and the
sanction of conduct. Living under public law
inculcates respect for law. regard for order, pride
in city or state, patriotic devotion to country.
It is high time that the law of the land become
operative on the population of all schools and uni-
versities. The suggestion of special courts has been
made cm a foregoing page.
It may be that I have wasted your time in this
brief argument in favor of public schools as nur-
series of morality and character, for the late ad-
mirable legislation of our own state providing for
systematic instruction in morals and conduct as-
sumes the ground contended for. Already our
normal schools are organizing this new depart-
ment of work in order to fit their pupils to carry
its methods and results into the common schools.
I believe this to be the beginning of a great move-
ment in our state for which future generations
will bless and applaud the originators.
There is of course no available gauge or meas-
ure of the effect of the statute in improving the
SECULARIZATIOX OF EDUCATION 179
morality of the people. It is part of a joint cause
whose operation cannot be separated out. As
concerns the required instruction in the effects of
narcotics and stinuilanls. State Superintendent John
W. Olsen in a letter of April 29, 1908, states that
-"the majority of the teachers have been conscien-
tious in complyin.cr witli the spirit of this legisla-
tion" and believes that the instruction given has
been very beneficial. It is also his belief that
temperance instruction in the public schools has
already established a public sentiment in favor of
local option in 60 to 70 per cent, of the Minnesota
counties.
There remains but one other inqtiiry. Will the
church lose or gain by relegating to the state the
small corner of the educational domain on which
she has maintained her hold?
In my judgment the church rather loses than
gains by the effort expended in founding
and perpetuating colleges and academies.
The results, viewed from the denomina-
tional standpoint, are inadequate to the sacrifices.
The employment of the college as a part of the
apparatus of evangelization is not only unprofit-
able, but I believe it to be mischievous, and the
cause of a vast deal of unhappiness to many ear-
nest souls. I solemnly believe it to be a capital
advantage of the public university that its stu-
dents may there quietly pursue their studies, un-
harrassed by the untimely importunities of pros-
elyting comrades or professors. But proselyting.
i8o UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
I hasten to say, has become so offensive that
many Christian colleges disclaim it in emphatic
terms in their announcements. ]\Iy experience is
that in the "godless" state universities you will
find less wild speculation and fewer skeptics, than
in the most orthodox and evangelical denomina-
tional colleges. Young men and women do not
want to be, or to be called, "infidels," but if you
will draw a line of separation between sheep and
goats, some will for very recklessness take the
left hand road.
The church gains whenever through her
agency, society is elevated and purified, and souls
are ransomed and disenthralled. She is not and
cannot be self-aggrandizing. She is not for her-
self, but for her work. She is the agency of
Divine Providence for the performance of cer-
tain high and peculiar services to humanity.
Every work which she can relegate to other
agencies economizes power for her higher per-
manent duty. The church has in our day thrown
upon the state the care of the unfortunate classes,
the deaf, the dumb and the blind, the insane and
the imbecile, the drunkard and the pauper. Is
the church therefore short of employment ?
The state has assumed the conduct of the pri-
mary education, and is rapidly and surely em-
bracing the secondary and superior schools. Will
the church's occupation be gone?
Nearly 1900 years have passed since our S.^v-
SECULARIZATION OF EDUCATION i8i
iour gave his life for us men and our salvation,
and yet that great sacrifice and benefit are known
but to a fraction of mankind. In every Chris-
tion land the majority of the people are strangers
to the church door. Why? Because the church
from the apostolic days has been constantly la-
boring not so much for souls as for the formation
of powerful societies, the collection of vast es-
tates, the maintenance of hierarchies, the erection
of costly and magnificent edifices and the enter-
tainment therein of men through scenic and
artistic displays. Protestant and Catholics alike
have' striven with prodigious energy to dominate
and control the state ; to create and maintain a
state within the state.
"My Kingdom," said the Master, "is not of
the world." Christianity is only a power as she
is a moral power. Estates, endowments, princi-
palities, dynasties, colleges, simply encumber and
enthrall her.
Says Dr. McCosh, whom none will suspect of
unorthodox proclivities, "The business of the
church is to proclaim and enforce the doctrine
and the duties of the word of God on all who are
under her influence, and then make them, while
not slothful in business, to be at the same time,
fervent in sj^rit, serving the Lord, whether in
their farms, their factories or their stores. And
just as little is it the direct office of a church to
set up a college to teach such branches as mathc-
i82 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
matics, and natural history, and chemistry, or to
plant schools for teaching penmanship and arith-
metic. This is not one of the injunctions laid on
the church in the Word of God : this is not one
of the powers which Christ has committed to her.
Of this I am sure, that a church, a church court,
a general assembly, a presbytery, is not the fittest
body for conducting a factory or an infirmary.
The history of England, Scotland and Ireland
confirms this. The churches in those countries
were never good managers of general educational
institutions, and the people are now proceeding
to take these out of the hands of the churches.
I have not the least fear that religion will suffer
in consequence. The truth is that the colleges,
such as Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin and Edin-
burgh, under the churches, did not promote the
cause of religion to any extent, and for ages past
the parochial schools of Scotland have not been
in any special sense seminaries of religion."
The church, then, will gain by abandoning
fields in which she has no longer a call to work.
Liberated from a labor once incumbent on her
she may now throw her unincumbered force in-
to her proper work, the evangelization of man-
kind, the leavening of all society with that true
leaven which alone can transform or rather re-
form mankind in the image of the Creator. The
market needs to be purified, but the church will
not open a produce or bullion exchange. Edu-
SECULARIZATIOX OF EDUCATION 183
cation must be infused and consecrated with the
spirit of the great teacher, but the church need
not keep the keys of the schoolroom. Under her
mild, serene, but omnipotent moral supervision,
all enterprises, all functions and relationships of
men will be sanctified. Influence, not power is
the panoply of the church.
Let it be finally agreed that as the church has
abandoned all grand and systematic charity, as
she has given up the schooling of the people, so
she must by the same inexorable logic of events
be forced to resign the higher education of the
leaders of the people. The people, thanks to the
church and to churchmen, have at length been
brought to the point at which they resolve to
educate themselves.
This is the crowning summit of that true
democracy prescribed by the founder of our
religion, the brotherhood of man. Its near ap-
proach is just as sure as the return of the earth
to the zero of its orbit.
Shall we not further and finally agree that this
process is beneficent and its culmination to be de-
voutly expected? Shall not the sons of God
rejoice, and the circling stars chant a thanksgiv-
ing that the visible company of all faithful people
called the church, is at length emancipated from
all huckstering, police duty and pedagogy?
IV. THE CIVIC EDUCATION
The speaker had resigned the presidenc}- of
the University of Minnesota in l*>l)ruary, 1883, and
was at the same time elected professor of political
science. It was the expectation that his succes-
sor would be selected in time to assume his duties
at the beginning of the following college year. The
regents did not, however, succeed in filling the
vacancy by that time, and at their request Mr. Fol-
well remained in office an additional year, it was
his hope and ambition to build up a strong depart-
ment of political science, and he took advantage of
the occasion for a baccalaureate address to formu-
late and express his views on the "Civic Education."
The following is a reprint from the Minneapolis
Tribune of May 28, 1884.
To the candidates for gradttation I beg to offer
a word of explanation. You might with reason
expect me on this occasion to speak of things of
the past and to sum up the work and experience
of the years we have spent together in this place
of study. This task, happily for my own feelings,
I am able to devolve upon your valedictorian,
leaving him to speak our novissima verba.
It is the immemorial tradition that the bacca-
kiurcate degree is a first or minor degree. By it
the apprentice is admitted as a journeyman stu-
dent to the guild of scholars, to be at length
i86 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
further promoted to the full rank of master or
doctor. It is rather the opening than the closing
of the course. 1 am well aware that in later times
and in our country but few scholars continue
their studies according to ancient custom, within
the precincts of the university. Still the time-
honored doctrine has never departed from the
minds of college instructors. No college execu-
tive ever fails at some time to say to candidates
as I now, on behalf of my respected colleagues,
say to you : "Up to this time you have been learn-
ing the use of your tools. Your proper work as
scholars now begins. The commencement cere-
monial signalizes your admission to citizenship in
the republic of letters. You face a rising, not a
setting sun." For this reason I think myself
justified in asking you to join me in a discussion
of vast moment in that field which you are just
entering. As beneficiaries of a public endowment
for higher education you cannot be indififerent
to any subject which concerns either that educa-
tion or that public which has endowed it. I there-
fore propose to you as a theme for discussion on
this occasion "The Civic Education" as a part of
the higher education. I trust, dear friends, that
you will none the less receive with patience what
I have to say as addressed to yourselves, because
it so chances my paper will incidentally serve all
the purposes of an inaugural address upon as-
suming the duties of the department of political
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 187
science in our university, to which 1 hope to de-
vote an ahiiost undivided attention. It is a rare
occasion that enables one to combine valedictory
and salutatory in the same address.
The passage of the Civil Service reform act
by the forty-seventh Congress astonished and,
in spite of the gravity of the measure, amused the
country. Convinced that the people were re-
solved, our national solons disposed of the bill
with the promptness of a boy who, seeing no way
of escape from the doctor's orders, swallows his
dose precipitately, feeling that it "were well done
if 'twere done quickly." Besides, there was the
conspicuous incongruity that in the ranks of the
great party of moral ideas and reform no cham-
pion could be found for the great reform of all ;
which, therefore, had to accept the hospitality of
that other great party whose motto had some
time been, "To the victors belong the spoils."
It was a full generation from the adoption of
the constitution to the time when the infamous
doctrine that public offices are proper rewards
for political services, went into practical effect.
I-'rom that time the tyranny of the majority has
been established and maintained, and govern-
ment by the people has been supplanted by gov-
ernment by party. Except as far as influence
extends, the outvoted minorities might as well
have been disfranchised. Our national elections
have become tremendous contests of one political
i88 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
army against another for the possession of the
pubHc treasury, the armed force of the country
and all other instruments of government.
Happy is it for our nation that the tyranny did
not seize upon the Government in its infancy, and
that under the guidance of a body of trained and
experienced statesmen our legislatures and our ex-
ecutive and judicial administrations were organ-
ized. There is no present occasion for describing
in detail the operation of the spoils system as it
has existed from Jackson's first administration.
We are chiefly concerned with the fact that by
the passage of the civil service reform act, the
doom of that system has been spoken. The law
has gone quietly into effect and with great wis-
dom its operation has been confined to a limited
range of offices. Of the 110,000 positions in
the United States civil service only 14,000 have
been brought under the operation of the law.
The first report of the Civil Service Commission
I think to be the most important public docu-
ment of the age, as proving the feasibility of the
law, and showing how it may be extended to all
the ministerial offices in the service. Hereafter
we shall hear no machine politicians proclaiming
that it will not work. It does work and
works well. Some states have taken up the
good cause and others will follow. Let it take a
generation or more to fully develop the details of
this reform ; it is glorious for men of our day
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 189
to have established its principle. The civil service
act means that by and by no majority shall have
the right or the power to seat its bosses and whip-
pers in the public offices. It means that no party
in power shall organize the hundred thousand
public servants into solid battalions for political
campaigns. It means that no political party shall
have the right or the opportunity of depriving the
people of the services of capable and experienced
servants. It means, country and people before
party and spoils. The principle will be extended
to our public education, and will result in perma-
nent employment for competent teachers, who
will then and not sooner, form a profession.
The just principle of this reform — that only those
>hall do things who know how to do them — will
at length be carried over from the administrative
functions of government to directive and legis-
lative functions. If it shall be settled that only
those who know how shall execute laws, it will be
demanded that only those who know how shall
make laws ; and the people will not suffer a politi-
cal party to drive from their service in legislative
halls their most capable law makers, siniplv be-
cause they have been there long enough, in the
estimation of i)arty wheel horses waiting for their
places.
An ultimate result of the civil service reform —
and all I have said up to this point has for its pur-
pose to emphasize the statement I am now mak-
I90 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
ing — an ultimate result of civil service reform
must be the opening in our country of a
legitimate political career for young men.
That time may not be so far away as
many of us now feel it is. Reforms in
modern time move with an immense momentum.
Certainly the result I mention will appear, for
it cannot be possible that in America — free, en-
lightened, Christian — we shall not attain to a
system which China, heathen and despotic, has
enjoyed for centuries. When the public offices
shall be open as a fact and not as a theory, to
the competition of all aspiring youth, the coun-
try may, by a wise selection of the best, form
for herself a true aristocracy — a government of
the best. When no accident of birth or wealth
or political connection can insure political em-
ployment, young men may honorably aspire to
obtain it by proving their merit.
The report I have already referred to shows the
operation of this principle already. It is rather a
damage to a candidate to be recommended to the
civil service examiners by a congressman. It is at
this point that we meet an objection constantly
brought forward by opposers of the reform,
who say : "Your body of permanent office hold-
ers will soon become a clique or caste of narrow,
supercilious, mechanical snobs. In place of the
true aristocracy you promise, you will give the
people a 'bureaucracy,' like that which forms the
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 191
inachinery of a Russian despotism.'" 1 think the
danger of "bureaucracy" must be achnitted. It is
natural for a body of men retaining ofifices for
long terms to fall into the delusion that they have
a kind of proprietorship in them, and the proper-
ties intrusted to themselves. Especially is this
true when admission to the office holding craft
is by grace of an appointing power, and family
interest and political interest unite in main-
taining the caste. The old army gave proof
of this. The new army, officered by cadets select-
ed by competitive examinations, will not lose
in efficiency, but will gain by emancipation from
the snobbery of family and social cliques.
For a graphic and most interesting showing of
the evils of "Bureaucracy," see Balzac's novel under
that title.
Granting the dangers of bureaucracy we have
to inquire whether they will be greater under a
reformed civil service than they now are under
our present deformed system.
There is a social principle of vast energy and
far penetrating activity, which now demands
tardy recognition in our governmental operations.
I mean the principle of division of labor — division
of labor, remitting each individual to that em-
ployment in w hich he can be most efficient ; as-
sorting employments so that to the strong may
fall the heavy tasks, to the weak the lighter
192 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
ones ; assorting abilities so that brains may be
sent to the quarter deck and brawn to the fore-
castle — division of labor at once a cause, con-
comitant and consequence of civilization. This
principle everywhere acknowledged to be the
master power in industry and commerce — this
fundamental economic postulate — we have been
vainly, as will appear, endeavoring to shut
out of public affairs. Plato, the Greek, un-
derstood this better than we moderns, saying in
his Republic : "We should make it our special
business to choose what men and what talents
are suited for the guardianship of a state."
The circumstances of our English colonists
naturally directed them toward primeval forms of
democracy. The town-meeting system was ap-
propriate for rural communities, economically in-
dependent, growing their own food, manufac-
turing their own fabrics, and under congrega-
tional forms conducting their own worship. L'n-
der a system of restricted suffrage, it was the
general fact that almost any elector could dis-
charge the duties of any office. All voters were
supposed to be equally competent to make and
to be officers. For several generations the fact
corresponded sufficiently near to this theory —
the primeval theory of democracy. I need not
say that time has passed. The American farm-
er no longer cobbles his shoes or wears his home-
spun coat. The rural handicraftsman has dis-
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 193
ai)i)earc{l. 'I'lic factory system has massed the
manufacturing population into urban centres and
associated them as attachments, ahiiost automat-
ic, with machines. As labor is now organized
and paid, the wage-worker cannot leave his bench,
his lathe or his loom to take part in public aftairs.
The words which the son of Sirach spoke of the
husbandman, the carpenter, the smith and the
potter twenty-five centuries ago, have come true
again in these latter days.
"They shall not be sought for in ])ublic council,
nor sit high in the congregation ; they shall not
sit in the judges" seat, nor understand the sen-
tence of judgment: they shall not declare jus-
tice and judgment, and they shall not be found
where parables are spoken." — Ecclesiasticus,
xxxviii : 33. To which he adds (verse 34):'
"But they will maintain the state of the world,
and their desire is in the work of their craft."
Employers in their fierce competition for prof-
its, are as unwilling as laborers are imable to
take their share of public duty. The refusal of
business men to take office, their reluctance to do
jury duty, and their carelessness about voting are
notorious. Division of labor still has been work-
ing with the silence and unceasing energy of
gravitation in politics as well as out of politics.
While sending some men to the farm and others
to merchandise, it has set apart others to fix
the primaries, to manage the caucuses, and to
194 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
tinker the laws. The poHtics of nation, state,
county, and town have gone into the hands of
a class — a self-constituted body with its bosses
and workers and strikers as perfectly organized
as a modern army. Happily for our freedom,
this body is commonly divided into two or more
contending hosts : yet it has happened that they
have been in secret alliance in schemes of plunder.
If there are any who do not know, they ought
at once to learn, that money is now the one great
power in politics. A great metropolitan jour-
nal has published a systematic schedule showing
the average cost of obtaining the principal of-
fices, state and national, to candidates and their
backers. It is simply notorious that in the last
presidential contest money was poured by the
millions, by both great parties into the doubtful
states. It is an ominous fact that many seats in the
United States Senate are occupied by million-
aires, and some fearful citizens say, ''None others
need apply." It is no secret that no citizen need
aspire to the House of Representatives unless
he or his friends have many thousands to spend.
To a plutocracy then we have come ! Let those
who denounce civil service reform, for fear of
bureaucracy, now take their choice. They ma}-
content themselves with the present system of
bosses and strikers working the public for spoils,
or join in the efifort for a better one, under
which merit and competency shall be the pass-
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 195
port to office. The conclusion of this matter
now is, that under the inevitable operation of
the principle of the division of labor, there must
and will be a body of persons set aside for pulj-
lic functions, and choose we must between a self-
constituted body, actuated by greed and ambi-
tions, and one composed of men selected by ap-
propriate tests for proven fitness.
In beginning the reform of our civil
service we have made our choice, and I
have too much faith in the sound sense of my
countrymen to believe that they will not carry it
forward. And when at length it shall be the set-
tled policy of our country, approved and glorified
by experience, I trust that the name of one man
now little heard may be named with honor, the
Hon. Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island, who almost a
generation ago. when the great Republican party
was in unchallenged control of the Government,
in vain contended in Congress for the passage of
a civil service reform bill. If I have spoken at
too great length upon a matter which is merely
introductory in this address, it is because I am
impressed with its vast moment and because
I foresee that it will introduce a most impor-
tant revolution into our education. We have
agreed that to escape the tyranny of a self-con-
stituted oligarchy we shall at length, as the
only and the happy alternative, entrust public
functions to a selected body of trained experts
196 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
and specialists. For this body there will be need-
ed a new education as for a learned profession.
This need is an obvious one ; already considerable
movement has been made in response to it. But
this education is only part of a greater one far
less likely to be cared for. Under all forms of
government and all kinds of administrations
eternal vigilance is ever the price of liberty. The
more we specialize in politics the greater the
need of political knowledge in the people. The
greater the powers and skill of a body of ofificials,
still greater the need of a large body of men
learned in civil affairs out of office. This is
simply saying that employers must understand
their business as well as employes. It will be a
fatal day for liberty if ever the American peo-
ple turn their public affairs over to any body of
men and excuse themselves from further concern
about them. If, therefore, the civil service re-
form shall be a blessing and not a curse to the
country, we must provide an ampler ciz'ic educa-
tion for the i^'liolc people, as zvcll as for special
instruction of our public seri'ants. The schools
of the future may or may not teach less mathe-
matics, less language, less natural science, but
they must teach something about the admini-
stration of public aft'airs, about the great polit-
ical questions of suffrage and citizenship, taxa-
tion and public education, and about the great
THE CIVIC EDUCATION I97
economic doctrines of population, rent, wages,
profits, value, money, and credits.
An inquiry into knowledge of public afifairs pos-
sessed by first year students in a large number of
our American colleges and universities, by Profes-
sor William A. Schaper in 1907. has disclosed a
depth of ignorance beyond belief.
All teachers — and I include the clergy and the
jotirnalists — must be thoroughly furnished with
the body of established economic and political
truth. To a tremendous task, then, has the civil
service reform committed us — that is, to the polit-
ical and economic education of a nation of a
hundred millions of people. Immense, however,
and important as this work is, I think it possible
to make haste too quickly in it. I doubt if it
would be wise, if practicable, to introduce the
study of political economy into our common
schools in the present condition of that science.
It is only a hundred years or a little more since
the subject assumed a form to which the name
of science could be given. There are very few
topics upon which authorities are united. We
are probably not ready to introduce the dog-
matic teaching of political economy into common
schools.
There are present indications that elementary
political economy will be rapidly introduced into
our western high schools.
198 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
On the other hand, we probably are ready to
introduce instruction in the organization of our
Government and its administration, and in regard
to this we ought to adopt the excellent method
now used in teaching geography — that of be-
ginning with the local and proceeding gradually
to the distant and foreign. Our children should
first of all be taught the nature of the town or
city government, then that of the county or
state, and later that of the nation. The exist-
ing manuals of civil government reverse this
natural order when they do not wholly ignore
all but the United States Government. In re-
gard to social instruction I think no better be-
. ginning can be made than is now made in some
of our states by the introduction of compulsory
instruction upon the injurious effects of alcohol-
ism. A generation of such work will do more to •
wipe out the curse of drunkenness and its dread
accompaniments, misery and crime, than all the
Maine laws and prohibitory amendments that
could be passed in a century. Why should we
not use our schools for so beneficent a work?
For the effect of the instruction given in the
common schools of Minnesota on the use of nar-
cotics and stimulants the reader will please see
page 178.
Hitherto we have been teaching the children
the things likely to be useful to them in the
shops and the market. Let us begin to in-
struct them as to the duties and relations of
THE CIVIC EDUCATION i99
home, and social circle, and the ballot box.
r.nsiness, after all, forms but a small part of
life and that a mere incidental part. "Conduct,"
savs Matthew Arnold, •"conduct forms three-
fourths, if not seven-eighths of life." Let us
educate for life and not for mere dicker. In
spite of the great and distracting activity of a
political class, deceiving ourselves as well as
foreigners into the notion that wc are wholly en-
grossed in public affairs, I think it to be the
American habit to underrate politics and govern-
ment. Nor is this fact strange. Few in numbers,
sparsely occupying vast and fertile areas, reaping
unlimited harvests and trading to all the ports
of both oceans, our farmers, artisans and mer-
chants have thought it puerile business to be
assessing and collecting taxes, adjusting accounts
and tinkering the laws. This all the more, be-
cause the laisses-faire doctrine preached by the
English economists, who were our early teachers,
obtained and has held so general acceptance. At
length we are slowly opening our eyes to a
new order of afifairs. We are no longer a
band of colonists hanging on the fringe of the
Atlantic border. We are no longer an aggrega-
tion of rural democracies, managing our public
affairs in the town meeting. We are not a mere
federation of states. We are a great nation,
conveniently subdivided, but having a central
power practically omnipotent. Our population is
200 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
gathered into and about certain great cen-
ters of industry and commerce. In these
great cities democracy is confessedly a failure,
and we find them resorting to the State Govern-
ments to impose upon themselves a government
v/hich shall make life and property safe. Under
the socialistic tendencies of the age we are calling
on the Government to execute functions which
our forefathers left to the operation of the vol-
untary principle. We are making of the Govern-
ment a great mutual benefit and insurance institu-
tion, in place of confining it to the protection of
person and property. We place the whole in-
dustries of the country under the protection and
control of the Government, and there is not a
business man from Boston to San Francisco
but breathes easier when Congress has adjourned
v>ithout disturbing the markets and demoralizing
our vast enterprises. Wliat government may do
then is a matter of immediate and often vital
concern to every citizen. The power to tax is
a power to rob ; the power to arrest and imprison
is a power to enslave ; the power to take life is a
power to commit judicial murder. Certainly we
cannot overestimate the civic education which
may train citizens to perform their duties and de-
fend their rights.
But let us extend our view beyond the ordi-
nary run of things, beyond routine functions and
conceded immunities. We are met at once by an
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 201
array of political problems, tremendous and ap-
palling to the trained publicist, but which every
American citizen will have to pass upon, probably
before the generation to which you belong shall
have left the stage. I must pass with simple
mention the question of legalizing the caucus in
the way of a preliminary election under legal
regulation, so that the voter's choice shall not
be narrowed down to the brace of candidates
offered by the corner groceries and the engine
houses.
In i8ij7 the legislature of Minnesota provided
for "primary elections" of party candidates for the
elective offices of counties and large cities. The
effect has been to greatly weaken the power of the
boss and the machine; also, to give an advantage to
popular gentlemen desiring office, without earning
nomination by party service. Aspirants to the of-
fices mentioned are, however, obliged to make a
double campaign; one, to secure the nomination,
the other, the election. IModest citizens who would
accept nominations tendered by a caucus or conven-
tion, arc little disposed to make oath that they
"seek" the ofiices. and to devote themselves for
weeks to personal solicitations for support at the
"primary." It is specially distressing to see aspi-
rants to judicial places peddling their cards, photo-
graphs, and other advertising devices on the streets.
The experiment has not been long enough contin-
ued to warrant a conclusive opinion. The voters,
meantime, arc content to see the bosses unhorsed.
202 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
We are already wrestling witli the problem of
an election system which may insure to minorities
a just representation, and to the people honest re-
turns of an honest count of honest ballots. Is
it not astonishing that after so many ages of
democracy mankind has yet to invent the means
of getting the ultimate elementary act — a tally
of the votes — honestly done?
The election law of Minnesota provides for the
voluntary use of voting machines, and a state com-
mission has been appointed to select from the nu-
merous devices the one they deem most practic-
able. The first voting machine was, as is believed,
the invention of J. W. Rhines, a citizen of Min-
nesota, who did not perfect it.
The further extension of the suffrage
is a question already upon us, and the crack of
the door is already open by the entering wedge of
school suffrage for women in our own state. The
same kind of argument which persuaded the
people that women are good voters for school
officers will at length carry us to the ground that
they are good voters for all kinds of officers.
Without doubt we shall soon extend the suffrage
to its furthest possible limit. For one, I have
no objection to extended sufi'rage, provided it be
restrained by proper checks and guards. What
those shall be will soon be a practical question.
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 203
The only addition to woman suffrage up to this
time in Minnesuta, is that authorizing them to vote
for public library ofticers and to hold office accord-
ingly.
It ought always to be understood that the suffrage
is a political trivilege and not a right of any species;
and as such, ought to be exercised only by such persons
as are generally capable and truly patriotic. This
principle, if it could be applied, would disfranchise
many unworthy men. and might admit many women.
Of all propositions which have so far been
made none seem to me so well worthy to be en-
tertained as that of the establishment of a body
of intermediate electors, chosen by the people,
who shall be charged with the selection of all
publics officers required by the constitutions to be
elected. This plan is not new in our country.
The electoral college for the choice of President
and A'ice-President of the United States was de-
signed to form a body of electors who should
vote freely for such candidates as they should
severally prefer. It needs not to be said that this
wise plan was early turned awry by the operation
of party government.
The suggestion ''or the revival of the plan of in-
termediate electors so strongly favored l)y many
wise publicists, is not likely to be welcomed in a
democracy in which ''manhood suffrage" has been
once introduced. There is, as is well-known, at
present, a strong drift of sentiment in favor of re-
lieving state legislators of the duty of serving as
bodies of intermediate electors of United States
204 UXIVERSITY ADDRESSES
senators, by an amendment of the constitution. So
difficult a task is this that some states are resorting
to experiments for placing their legislatures under
an extra-constitutional popular mandate. In a late
case the unexpected election of a democratic sena-
tor by a republican legislature has taken place.
Another great question soon to gain the at-
tention of all thinking people, as it already has
that of the serious few, is that of land monopoly.
A social arrangement which permits a fraction
of the population to monopolize the land which
forms the standing room of all the people on this
planet, and permits those few landlords to ap-
propriate from generation to generation that
steadily advancing increment of value due to
population alone cannot long stand unchallanged.
Nor has it so stood. The Code Napoleon, re-
quiring an absolute and equal division" of land
among heirs, is an instance of one form of solu-
tion. What plan we shall adopt will demand the
highest social genius of the next generation. No
question is so vital in politics as that of the tenure
and descent of lands. Any change in them means
revolution, farther reaching than any changes in
the machinery of government. This essentially
socialistic question of land tenure cannot be
handled without involving others similar. If
to-day you ask the question, "Ought land to be
held in severalty?" to-morrow you will be asking
ought anything to be owned by individuals? Is
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 205
not property robbery, as Proudhon teaches us?
German Socialists have already pronounced bold-
ly for the government ownership of capital, in-
cluding all manufactories and means of trans-
portation.
The book of Henry George, "Progress and Pov-
erty," as eloquent as it is misleading, has neverthe-
less had the effect to awake many people to the
truth tliat property in land especially is a creation
of law, and not a naked, sacred right antecedent to
all law as affirmed in the infamous Lecompton con-
stitution of Kansas. The national and state gov-
ernments are being invoked to guard the public in-
terests in the public domain and to co-operate with
private owners in conserving the natural resources
of the country. The national government is tardily
beginning to cease giving away to luckj^ prospectors
the mines, forests, and water powers, which are in
some sense the heritage of all.
A considerable political party in our own
country is already making substantially the same
demands as to factories and railroads. The
transportation question, which has already con-
vulsed many states, will recur again and again.
A nation which monopolizes the carrying of let-
ters, which is soon to absorb the telegraphic busi-
ness and which carries merchandise of many
sorts to every neighborhood in the land, cannot
object on the ground of principle from assuming
the direction if not also the management of all
transportation.
2o6 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
In spile of "government ownership" planks in
party platforms, and corresponding declarations of
prominent candidates for high places, the American
people seem resolved to work out the experiment of
railroad regulation before assuming ownership of
them.
Much encouraging progress has been made,
against the opposition of railroad proprietors, re-
senting interference with their "business" and de-
siring to be let alone. They will not be let alone
until they furnish transportation at reasona. L- .
equal prices to all passengers and shippers.
Few are aware how largely modern legislation
is socialistic in principle. Our public school sys-
tem, rapidly extending to embrace all grades of
schooling, is essentially socialistic. On the same
ground rest the broad powers conceded to boards
of health and medical examiners, out of which a
system of state medicine is likely to grow. We
have another instaiice in the numerous experi-
ments to regulate and suppress the liquor traffiic.
The modern legislature is simply overwhelmed
with propositions to do good by force of law I
am neither approving nor condemning them now,
but simply emphasizing the prodigious burdens
of the modern citizen. In any catalogue of live
questions that of protection will have a
leading place, and it is worthy of at-
tention simply as an instance of an institution
defended at successive periods on different
grounds. The system of high duties on foreign
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 207
goods imported was urged in the early years of
our present government for the purpose of filling
up the empty treasury vaults of the United States
which had succeeded to the debts of the old Con-
federation, but to no corresponding revenues. A
few years later we find the partisans of protection
demanding its perpetuation for the nourishment
of the infant industries of the country. That
plea served its purpose and gave way to that
in vogue of late years, protection of American
labor against the competition of the pauper
operatives of Europe. Meantime a result has sud-
denly appeared of which no party dreamed. Un-
der the active and beneficent operation of our
protection system,' old industries supported, new-
ones nourished into full life, labor generally well
rewarded, the national government finds itself
in possession of a hundred and fifty millions of
surplus revenue, and this after paying the in-
terest on a debt of $2,000,000,000. An Ameri-
can Congress is sorely puzzled how to dispose of
this unlucky accumulation. Is it true that a pro-
tective system necessarily implies the power to
spend unlimited money? Must American labor
gc down in the unequal competition with Eu-
ropean pauperism, because the tax upon foreign
cheap manufactures yields a revenue needlessly
and unmanageably excessive? But I am bring-
ing forward the protection question chiefly as
an illustration of the manner in which great poli-
2o8 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
tical questions change their aspects and relations.
Arguments which justify an institution in one
age have to give place to new reasons in the next.
At this time the country is not in danger from any
excess of revenue and the advocates of high pro-
tection do not intend that it shall be. Unlimit-
ed money can be spent in pensions, battleships,
irrigation, drainage and river-deepening projects, and
ambassadorial hotels. When the time comes that
the tariff shall be so much reduced as to render it
necessary to resort to other forms of national taxa-
tion, the choice will call for the greatest wisdom
in finance.
And curiously enough there is a new phase of
the protection question just looming on the verge
of our political horizon. It has been a favorite
method with a respectable school of political eco-
nomists to discuss labor and wages as mere com-
modities. It is a short and simple way. So
much money in bank ; so many days' work on the
market. Given dividend and divisor arith-
metic fixes wages. Who can fight the multipli-
cation table? If you workmen do not like your
v^/ages, some of you can clear out. What busi-
ness have so many of you on the planet any-
how? Within a year or so the labor union men
have caught a lesson from the wage fund the-
orists. Labor is a commodity. Good. Wages
depend on relative demand and supply. Very
good. Then what business, say the New York
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 209
and Bufifalo stevedores to dock owners, have
you to import free of duty whole colonies of
Poles and Italians to underbid us in the labor
market? The factories of New England and the
iron works of Pennsylvania are protected against
foreign competition by heav}- duties on imported
goods, but the operatives in both states see
wages kept down by the importation of solid
blocks of Irish and Hungarian labor. Already
they demand "protection" for the domestic article
of labor. And if labor is merchandise and pro-
tection is the right of any, can it be denied to
our ultimate producers?
In the years that have passed notable restrictions
have been placed on foreign immigration. Under
treaty arrangements Chinese and Japanese laborers
are excluded ; paupers, criminals and anarchists have
been forbidden to land on our shores ; and corpora-
tions may no longer import gangs of hands under
contract. Still the tide of immigration has stead-
ily swollen, and the proportion coming from Latin
and Mohammedan countries rises. Since the panic
of October, 1907, however, a return tide of great
volume has set in, carrying many hundreds of
thousands of men and women back to their native
countries. This phenomenon seems to indicate that
labor in these times is mobile, flowing easily to
the places offering the most favorable conditions
of employment, and also, that our country is not
for the moment offering those conditions.
Such are some of the social problems now
before us, demanding early and rational solu-
210 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
tion. I fear most of them will be left to solve
themselves while we amuse ourselves with our
farms and our merchandise. And there is one
problem greater than all these which always con-
front us : How to preserve liberty ? We are
extending the powers of government in the inter-
est of physical comfort and economy. Are we
equally providing for spiritual freedom, the most
precious thing conceivable? May not State
charity, and State schools, and State medicine,
and State transportation, and State insurance,
and State ownership of land, transform us into
a set of patient, unimaginative, human drones,
fat and well-liking? When there is universal
peace and comfort will anybody care for free-
dom? "Before all things, liberty," was the mot-
to of Selden — before all things, liberty — and I
commend this motto to the consideration of all
conscious and unconscious socialists.
The question of the balance of socialism and in-
dividualism may be left as it will be left, to be kept
by that state of mind which exists and dominates in
any generation. Before the might of that state of
mind ("spirit of the age," we call it), laws, institu-
tions and customs give way.
I have said we are a great nation. As one of
the great powers of the earth we have come into
great and responsible international relations,
which are rapidly multiplying. They form the
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 211
subjects of a special code of laws. We have
ministers resident at all great capitals, and our
commercial interests arc watched by consuls sta-
tioned in every considerable mart. Questions of
extradition, naturalization, arbitration, are con-
stantly arising. The doctrines of privateering,
blockade, neutrality, have still to be definitely
settled. Wisely, our nation keeps out of Euro-
pean quarrels ; but avoid the duties of comity and
of protection to our citizens we cannot. Mis-
takes in home politics may simply cause the loss
of wealth ; blunders in international politics may
bring war.
America has been forced to take her place among
the great powers of the world, and she may claim
that her amateur diplomacy has deserved the re-
spect of the nations. International law has accord-
ingly advanced in the estimation of her statesmen
and now has its place in the curriculum of every re-
spectable university.
Such are some of the problems and duties of
the time in the domain of politics. To dispose
of them we find ourselves in possession of the
most complicated political machinery the world
has known. I doubt if our political system is
thoroughly understoood by any of our states-
men, except the few who have read foreign books
upon it. We are indebted to a Frenchman for
the most convenient and philosophical text-book
upon our political institutions.
212 UN-IVERSITY ADDRESSES
De Tocqueville's book may still claim the first
place in importance, but those of Bryce and Ostro-
gorsky cannot be neglected by students of our in-
stitutions.
To most citizens the United States Government
is a foreign power, so rarely does it touch them
with a bare hand. What cities may do and what
cotmties, what jurisdiction the various courts of
justice have, and such like questions, but few
citizens ever know except in a few particulars.
If ever a people needed a civic education, is it
not ourselves? Virtue is indispensable, it is
true, to good government ; but virtue is not
enough. We must add knowledge. Rational con-
duct is the fruit of principles well understood,
and facts exactly comprehended.
I have expressed the opinion that it is not now
practicable to introduce political and economic
instruction on any large scale into lower schools.
The university, I stiggest, is the appropriate
place for collecting, assorting, and diffusing the
knowledge essential to a better civic education.
That is the very function of the imiversity. It
is probably true that great ideas, great inventions,
great systems, or works do not arise within aca-
demic walls. It is just as true that the university
is the conservator of them all. Genius is chary
of collegiate trammels, preferring the freedom
of the garret, the workshop, and the studio. It
is the useful and honorable function of the uni-
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 213
versity to gather up the work of a Copernicus, a
Bacon, a La Place, a Watt, a Morse, or an Edison,
co-ordinate and explain it and hand it down in the
form of science to succeeding ages. I believe
the time has come for the university to under-
take the task of collecting and arranging the facts
and principles from which we may develop a
fuller and wiser political science than we yet
possess. We have seen how great is the need.
The time seems to favor the attempt. The great
historians of our age have unfolded the life, so-
cial and public, of all great nations of the past,
so that we have innumerable examples of con-
duct, policy and legislation.
The sciences of political economy and national
economy are still in an unsettled condition, but
the study and discussion of them has produced
a certain state of mind of far greater moment
than any of their particular conclusions can ever
be. These subjects cannot be considered except
on the presupposition that history — that has been,
and is yet to be — is one mighty chain, in which
cause and effect are indissolubly linked. As men
and nations sow, so shall they also reap. It is
the habit of our age to look for the causes of
economical and political results among the ante-
cedent phenomena, and not to eclipses, the move-
ments of the powers of the air, or the prayers,
however fervent, of opposing hosts on the eve of
battle. Upon the basis of this truly scientific habit
214 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
of mind have been laid the foundations of a new
science whose walls are just rising into view,
but whose rounded dome will remain to be reared
by future hands. To have drawn the ground
plan and sketched a superstructure will have been
glory enough for our age. I speak of the science
of sociology, and I think it but justice to say that
whatever may be the verdict of the future as to
his contributions to philosophy, Auguste Comte's
fame as the founder of this science is secure.
And upon the same foundation with sociology
must be built the included and partial science of
politics, which till lately has been but a name
smce Aristotle's day: but the writings of Woolsey
and Bluntschli have made political science again
more than a name. The time, then, seems
to be ripe for the vmiversity to assume and or-
ganize instruction in social and political science.
Some such great function the university must as-
sume or sink into a position of unimportance. She
will cease to be honored whenever she ceases to be
concerned about the highest things. Neither the
pursuit of abstract science, nor the applications of
science in the useful arts will keep the university
in repute, nor will philosophy, nor mathematics,
nor philology keep her venerable among men.
The highest things — the problems of humanity,
the conduct of states, the goyernment of cities,
the economies of communities and nations, the
establishment of peace, and above all the educa-
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 215
tion of peoples — these things must be made chief
studies, or men will look outside of universities
for their guiding lights.
With the pulpit and the press teeming with dis-
courses upon burning social problems, the uni-
versity cannot content herself with teaching
merely sines and tangents, the rules of prosody
and the magic lantern. No, the university must
adopt as her motto those noble words of an old
Roman poet, "All that concerns humanity belongs
to me." I fear that the American colleges have
not kept up with the times, and have given too
much reason for young men to conclude that the
best education for public life is to be got in the
reporters' room of the great newspaper.
It is my desire to establish the duty of the uni-
versity to become the seat and teacher of social
and political science at the point of convergence
of these four lines of argument :
1. The opening of a legitimate public career
to young Americans, as a result of the civil serv-
ice reform ;
2. The press of a great variety of most com-
plicated and difficult problems already demand-
ing practical solution ;
3. The late development of the science of so-
ciology, and of the scientific method in that and
the included sciences ;
4. The need of the university to be engaged
2i6 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
in the study of the highest things, under penalty
of losing prestige and influence.
If you will charitably allow me to assume this
ground as well taken, I will go on to consider
briefly some practical questions of detail. It is
much easier to propose the introduction of new
studies into a college course than place them in.
It was part of Solon's constitution that the pro-
poser of a new law should come forward with a
halter round his neck, with which to be righteous-
ly hanged if his bill should be rejected. It is
much the same with him who suggests the addi-
tion of new studies to a curriculum already over-
crowded. If a new study comes in an old one
must make way for it. Accordingly it has been
proposed that no attempt be made to introduce
sociological and political studies into an under-
graduate course, but to arrange courses to be
pursued by graduates — post-graduate courses so
called. There is no speculative objection to this
plan, but there is a serious practical objection —
that we cannot expect that any considerable num-
ber of students will be willing, and if willing,
able, to extend their studies beyond the ordinary
period of graduation. To put the studies in ques-
tion out of the undergraduate field is to put them
out of the university. These studies are of the
greatest value, they are attractive to fascination,
and they are well adapted to furnish that disci-
pline which is a chief, if not the chief end of the
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 217
unclergraduate work. The earlier years of col-
lege life beine- devoted to the completion of the
secondary education begun in school, we must it
possible find in the later years a place for our
courses in social and political science. To this
solution the three or fonr American universities
which have organized this work have come and to
the same our own university must come, when-
ever it shall be in order to propose any liberal
and comprehensive plan of instruction in this
field, and there will be here a college of politi-
cal SCIENCE, co-ordinate with the colleges already
formed and to be formed. Given our college of
political and social science what shall be its w'ork?
No College of Social and Political Sciences yet
exists in the University of Minnesota. The hope and
ambition of the speaker when giving this address
has been bitterly disappointed. There were perhaps,
other interests, which for a time demanded the ex-
penditure of the moderate appropriations obtain-
able; but that time long since passed. To the rep-
resentations of the speaker and liis colleagues the
regents have turned a deaf ear. The only assign-
able reason for their indifference is that they have
not known what the crowning duty of a state uni-
versity is, that of providing the "Civic Education"
for the men who are to rule and control in public
affairs.
To his honored successor at the head of the de-
partment of political science the writer bequeaths
the task of converting an ignorant and prejudiced
opposition to the full and proper development of
that one branch of studies which is eminently the
2i8 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
function of a state university supported by public
funds.
At the bottom of all must rest a solid basis of
historical knowledge, and if that shall have not
been laid down in an earlier stage of the stu-
dent's progress it must be put there at the be-
ginning of that we are speaking of. And it is of
first importance that this knowledge be clear. It
is possible to know history as geography, by
great features. He who knows the outlines of
continents, the trend of great mountain chains,
the courses of great rivers, the boundaries of
great states, and the situations of great cities,
knows geography in a certain just sense. In a
like way history may be known by epochs and
great landmarks. The imagination will fill in de-
tails. The history next of our own Anglo-Sax-
on race should have been made the subject of
more extended and most careful study. We are
English in blood, language, law, and institu-
tions. Spite of some unmotherly conduct, we
look to England still as our motherland, and
join in her laureate's celebration of her as:
"A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown.
Where freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent."
Assuming the possession of a body of clear,
historical knowledge. I think the next thing
would be to co-order and explain it by a course
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 219
o\ instruction in the philosc^pii}- of history, for
which a model has been furnished by Guizot not
Hkely to be surpassed. These foundation timbers
should next be crossed with a study of the ele-
ments of political economy, and the history of that
science, and this I would in turn bind down with
a course in the elements of law. Thus upon the
foundation of histor}' we should have reared a
solid platform in alternate layers of the phi-
losophy of history, political economy and the ele-
ments of law. These studies, at least, should be
compulsor}^ upon all degree students. The ma-
terials for our superstructure embarrass by their
number and magnitude. They are such branches
as these : history of political ideas and institu-
tions ; history of federal government ; history and
science of administration ; English constitutional
history ; American constitutional history ; politi-
cal ethics ; political economy in many ramifica-
tions ; national economy, particularly American
national economy, embracing a multitude of
topics, such as taxation, finance, immigration,
protection, banks, currency, land laws, pauper-
ism, public health, public education, sumptuary
laws, and so on ; American government — federal,
state, county, town ; city government, its history,
its practice, ancient and modern ; international
law and the history of diplomacy.
220 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
It was thought important at the time to specifi-
cally mention the leading subjects of study which
a College of Social and Political Sciences should em-
brace. They have their places in the detailed scheme
of instruction in those universities where they are
appreciated.
This partial enumeration shows of itself that
no single course could possibly include them all,
were it extended over a life time. Without doubt
it will be necessary to separate them into suitable
natural groups and thus offer them to the choice
of students.
We have viewed a magnificent field of
study. These are noble and fascinating sub-
jects for the young men of a great and free
nation. Whoever should obtain a good degree in
such a faculty might proudly congratulate him-
self ; and, yet, he might on stepping out into life
find the wayfaring man, though a fool, to have
greatly the advantage over him. Whoever,
equipped merely with a mass of political knowl-
edge, goes forth into the world expecting to find
facts and events conforming to his fine, ready-
made categories, will certainly find himself ridicu-
lous and impossible. The political boss "will
walk all around him" and leave him literally cir-
cumvented in his fine schemes of reform. Above
all knowledges there is a knowledge without
which they are worth nothing — I mean that in-
sight into the nature of things, and the way to
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 221
deal with them, which, in its ordinary manifesta-
tions, we caU "common sense." If our bachelor
of political science shall not have learned the
true nature of his subject and the true method of
dealing with it, his knowledge, however great,
arithmetically considered, must be marked with
a minus sign. The more knowledge a fool has,
the bigger fool he is. In politics, there are no
principles, but maxims ; no laws, but generaliza-
tions. Only the things which have been written,
are written. The Frenchman's mot, that "noth-
ing is sure to happen but the unforeseen," might
serve as a perennial warning to the statesman.
The election of a certain clique of candidates
ought, we cry, to bring contempt and damage,
but it does not ; the passage of a certain bill ought
to entail ruin, but it does not. The ways of
Providence are truly not as our ways ; they dis-
appoint our feeble logic. In such matters but
one method is tolerable — that called the historic
method which is after all merely the inductive
method applied over great spaces and epochs.
To establish and assure the student of political
and economic science in the historic method, he
should be required to perform some amount of
original work. It does not matter much what the
line of work should be, whether the personal his-
tory of some family of paupers, a great strike of
artisans, the evolution of banking, the rise and
progress of a granger movement, or the long de-
222 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
velopment of a constitution, if by its patient and
earnest pursuit the student shall learn the use of
his tools ; learn to investigate and record.
At least one honest and successful piece of re-
search and analysis should be a condition pre-
cedent to graduation.
I have dwelt on these details too long, perhaps,
but because a general idea will not have accepta-
tion unless shown to be workable in at least one
Vv'ay. I care but little about this or any particular
way, and will heartily welcome a better. My
chief contention is that the civic education be
recognized ; things are known by their names.
There is no time to be lost. The old and simple
ways have passed. \\"e have left the agricultu-
ral stage of civilization for the industrial stage.
The farm is not so much the homestead as a
mere instrument for raising salable produce.
Business is the enthusiasm of our age. We are
sixty millions, shall soon be a hundred, all virtual
dwellers in cities, or on wheels. A new life, a new
civilization is before and upon us. Wisely we
cling to old constitutions and economic customs,
but already we see that the common law brought
by our English forefathers from the forests of
Germany, the constitutions based on British and
colonial charters, and an economic system bor-
rowed from the free cities of mediaeval Europe
are giving way under the pressure and impetus of
the tremendous forces now in action.
THE CIVIC EDUCATION 223
I beg my young friends now leaving us not
vainly to fancy that the good Ship of State is
sure to float in quiet waters in their time — that
public afifairs will glide on in safe grooves ready
formed for them, so that they have only for their
parts to buy and sell and get gain and enjoy the
repose of the vine and the fig tree.
It is but a few years ago that I was one of
srxh a company as yours, going out from Alma
Mater to slip, as we thought, into peaceful and
unregarded careers of mercantile and profession-
al life. We had no more expectation of the near
outbreak of a great revolution than you have of
an earthquake on graduation day. Three short
years passed and the great rebellion was upon us.
Oh, it was glorious to see the young men of that
time fly to the rescue of the assaulted nation.
With what magnificent devotion they sprang to
the saddle and fell into the ranks, "marching to
their graves like beds," at the country's call.
1 pity the men of my years w'ho had no share in
that contest.
The war drums long since ceased their beating,
and the tattered battle flags are fretting into dust,
but the spirit of patriotism which fired the hearts
oi the young men of '61 abides in the hearts of
the young America of to-day. There are, we
trust, no fields of fire and blood awaiting you,
but there are high duties, tremendous civil is-
sues and conflicts. There will be room and need
224 UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES
for self-devotion and all the glorious proofs and
acts of patriotism. There are even harder things
for men to do than to die in the front of battle.
Finally, I bid you be of good hope, and never
to despair of the Republic, however dark and
low the clouds may hang. There must be a vast
and splendid career for the free men of our race
who have been planted in this latter day upon this
wide and fertile continent. There must be a rich
and glorious national career before us. Still, im-
mense as are the duties and interests committed
to nations and to governments, immense as are
the powers and influence of governments over
men, let us not forget that "men have a higher
destiny than states."
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY
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