AUG b '^'"^ 
 GIFT 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
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UNIVERSITY ADDRESSES 
 
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 ,: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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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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