Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/449

SOME IMPORTANT EVENTS 395 further progress, and sent preachers and teachers back to their churches and classrooms with enlarged resources, filled with new ideas about their work, their minds fertile in new plans, and in many ways equipped for increased efficiency. In 1900 President Harper reported at the Summer Convocation that there had been in attend- ance during that Summer Quarter one thousand and sixty-nine teachers. In 1915 the attendance included nine presidents of other universities, colleges, and normal schools, two hundred and eighty- seven principals of secondary schools, sixty-six pastors of churches, and totaled above two thousand, two hundred and fifty teachers and pastors. It may be questioned whether the next event to be recorded was an important one. President Harper, however, felt it to be such. He was much interested in it and expected much from it. At the annual meeting of the Board in June, 1896, on the recom- mendation of the President, the Trustees adopted a statute insti- tuting the University Congregation. It was a body composed of all the officers of administration and instruction above the rank of Associate, all Doctors of Philosophy of the University, officers of affiliated colleges when elected by the Congregation, and repre- sentatives of the Doctors and Bachelors of Law, Bachelors of Divinity, Masters and Bachelors of Arts, Literature and Science. The Congregation was to meet quarterly, and oftener if necessary. There was to be a quarterly Congregation dinner. Changes in the statute were made from time to time. One of these, made in 1909, provided for annual instead of quarterly meetings. This significant change indicated clearly that the Congregation had disappointed the hopes that led to its institution. The trouble about it was that there was no important function for it to perform. It was to consider subjects referred to it, to make recommendations to the governing bodies, to recommend to the Board the Convocation Orator, and conduct the Celebration of Founder's Day. It might interpose a temporary veto of an action of a faculty. It will be seen at once that these duties were for the most part trifling and such as could be performed better by a smaller body or by the Presi- dent himself. The Congregation was clothed with no authority. Its routine work was so unimportant that its quarterly meetings