Selecting His Aids.
His work in connection with the fisheries was only part of what he has managed to crowd into a busy life. As professor of zoology at Indiana University he stimulated his pupils to a thorough study of their subject, and his influence in this department was felt even outside the university. It was while he was in Indiana that he was called to the presidency of Leland Stanford University. His first work was to bring together a faculty.
A big trunk full of applications for positions was turned over to him, and he was told he could do what he liked with them. He never opened the trunk. He knew the men he wanted for the various positions, and he drew them from Cornell and Indiana. To this day Jordan does not know even the names of the applicants.
The students who come under the influence of Dr. Jordan do not have a life of scholastic ease and idleness. Their president has said, "The problem of life is not to make life easier, but to make men stronger."
He accepted the presidency of Stanford University with the distinct understanding that he was to do nothing that it was possible to hire another man to do. As a result he has had a free hand, and has devoted himself to the larger affairs of the university's development. The result is that Stanford in a short time has been able to push well to the front as a solid and progressive place of learning.
Dr. Jordan is straightforward in his methods and utterances.
"You can't fasten a five-thousand-dollar education on a fifty-cent boy," he said, and that dictum has been his guide in conducting the university.