ability; their activities too constantly dominated by an oppressive sense of accountability; when even their bread and butter is imperiled; when they are subjected to the humiliation of having others pass them by who have yielded where they have stood steadfast, who is there shall cast the first stone?
I had hoped to carry through my purpose without once more exposing the collegiate family expense account to the patronizing scrutiny of the affluent public. But, alas! it may not be. Bear with me in a brief "aside." The lack of proportion between the professor and his salary is regrettable yet remediable. More regrettable and I fear more difficult to remedy is the mode of determination and adjustment of such honorarium. Yet in this as in all related adjustments enlightenment is to be found in the common principle of academic supremacy. Here more than anywhere else must commercial encroachment and standards be resisted, not meekly, but strenuously. It seems plausible that if an incumbent of a professional chair is worthy to sit in the cathedra, he is worth the provision of a suitable living. The professor must not ask more nor for other reasons; the university must not offer less nor guide its offer by extraneous considerations, least of all of those that obtain in the auction room or the stock market. Professor Palmer says very plainly that Harvard University pays him for doing what he would gladly pay the university for the privilege of doing; and most professors pay and pay dearly for the privilege of the academic life. So let it be. But persistently and evasively are academic standards ignored, and ignored by those who do and those who do not understand. All honor to the few—alas the very few colleges, but among them the worthiest in the land—that have retained an academic adjustment of salaries. In the main, the influence of the college presidents has in no direction been more baneful, more insinuatingly subversive of what other merit their services have brought, than in this practise of speaking of supply and demand, the meeting of emergencies, the offset of a call from another institution, and a spurious attempt to apply a doctrine of merit and prizes. When a university president regards himself—a mere mortal—as capable to translate academic worth into dollars and cents even to the fraction of a dollar per weekly wage, I do not know whether to regard his position as an educational alchemist as sublime or ridiculous. I confess that it is astounding to me that men in this position, of such high attainments, such clearness of vision and sterling virtues, should maintain such a large and efficient blind spot when contemplating the salary question. Many a fellow professor in the mellow confidence of a growing intimacy has confided to me that he looks upon the attempt to apply such a procedure to himself as a farce, an affront or an evasion. Usually it is the last; for the answer given to Professor A is not that
