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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

another at the head of the educational affairs. Our universities will not do their work as it should be done so long as the two offices are held by one man.

Some excellent people who have no money, and others who have money but do not give, are quick to censure those who donate buildings instead of funds. College men, being especially affected, are apt to repine much after the fashion of a good professor, who, in speaking of a generous benefactor, said, 'We asked him for bread and he gave us a stone.' But the criticism is unjust. Donors are said to be selfish, seeking only to perpetuate their names. Even so, they have done only what every man ought to do and they have chosen a praiseworthy method; they will be remembered as doers of good. It must not be forgotten that the steady stream of buildings had its origin in the most pressing need of our colleges. At the close of the civil war, colleges had their faculties and the professors were receiving fairly good salaries; but there were not buildings in which to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of students and every effort was devoted to supplying this crippling deficiency. When, later on, it became necessary to add to the staff of instructors, the older professors gladly consented to the lessening salaries, expecting soon to have the conditions restored, but never suspecting that by enduring hardness for the sake of their institutions they were making a standard for the future.

But now, in most of our colleges, additional buildings are not the urgent need; the time has come to impress upon the community the necessity for endowments, that qualified instructors may be obtained so as to utilize properly the buildings and equipment already provided so generously. Buildings are necessary, but they do not make the college, no matter how complete their equipment may be. The college is not here to cultivate public taste in architecture or even to restore the Grecian games; primarily, its purpose is to train men for life's struggle; secondarily, to advance the world's welfare by investigation. Without a thoroughly efficient staff of instructors, the college is a farce, no matter how magnificent its plant may be, how numerous the students or the victories in athletic contests. The prolonged effort to obtain buildings has obscured this fact, and now, with increased cost of maintaining grounds and buildings, with increased and increasing number of instructors to satisfy incessant demands for new courses—which those in authority have not the moral courage to deny—with constantly increasing numbers of students and with practically no compensating increase of income from endowments, the ability of colleges to pay salaries deserving of the name has disappeared. Nowhere in the United States are there salaries which mean more than a very modest living. It is true that a few salaries in the larger cities are such as to appear enormous to those living in small villages; but even those are larger only arithmetically, not in purchasing power;