Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/165

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for contributions all through the state—these vulgar methods offend to the quick the sensibilities of men who studied ethics and learned to despise the dollar on foundations provided by benevolent corporation lawyers, and reclaimed banditti of high finance. "You send us your boy from the counter or the shop or the plow-tail," so runs the argument to the parent, "and in four years we will return him to you with tripled or quadrupled earning capacity." "You sow ten bushels of scientific investigation, and you will reap a thousand bushels of improvement." "Every cent put into technical research will increase and multiply, and, sooner or later, will come clinking back into your pocket as silver and gold." Irresistible! this appeal to the pocket. "But," says the Idealist, "is not this to join forces with the ominously popular journalism and that eloquent advertising which day and night in America burn incense before the Golden Calf? How in any way does this type of 'higher education' assist in giving the naturally sensual passions of a democracy a bias towards the stars?"

Merited and timely as such criticism may appear to a transient observer of the State university, it is recognized as superficial and essentially false by all those who have felt the