Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1

by Andrew Dickson White

CHAPTER XXII

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY COURSES—1870-1872

In close connection with the technical departments were various laboratories. For these, place was at first made here and there in cellars and sheds; but at last we were able to erect for them buildings large and complete, and to the opening of the first of these came Mr. Cleveland, then Governor of New York, and later President of the United States. Having laid the corner-stone of the Memorial Chapel and made an excellent speech, which encouraged us all, he accompanied me to the new building devoted to chemistry and physics, which was then opened for the first time. On entering it, he expressed his surprise at its equipment, and showed that he had seen nothing of the kind before. I learned afterward that he had received a thorough preparation in classics and mathematics for college, but that, on account of the insufficient means of his father, he was obliged to give up his university course; and it was evident, from his utterances at this time, as well as when visiting other colleges and universities, that he lamented this.

Out of this laboratory thus opened was developed, later, a new technical department. Among my happiest hours were those spent in visiting the various buildings, collections, and lecture-rooms, after my morning's work, to see how all were going on; and, during various visits to the new laboratory I noticed that the majority of the students were, in one way or another, giving attention to matters connected with electricity. There had already been built in the machine-shops, under the direction of Professor Anthony, a dynamo which was used in lighting our grounds, this being one of the first examples of electric lighting in the United States; and on one of my visits I said to him, ``It looks much as if, with the rapid extension throughout the country of the telegraph, telephone, electric lighting, and electric railways, we shall be called on, before long, to train men for a new profession in connection with them.'' As he assented to this, I asked him to sketch out a plan for a ``Department of Electrical Engineering,'' and in due time he appeared with it before the executive committee of the trustees. But it met much opposition from one of our oldest members, who was constitutionally averse to what he thought new-fangled education, partly from conservatism, partly from considerations of expense; and this opposition was so threatening that, in order to save the proposed department, I was obliged to pledge myself to become responsible for any extra expense caused by it during the first year. Upon this pledge it was established. Thus was created, as I believe, the first department of electrical engineering ever known in the United States, and, so far as I can learn, the first ever known in any country.

But while we thus strove to be loyal to those parts of our charter which established technical instruction, there were other parts in which I personally felt even a deeper interest. In my political reminiscences I have acknowledged the want of preparation in regard to practical matters of public concern which had hampered me as a member of the State Senate. Having revolved this subject in my mind for a considerable time, I made, while commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1878, a careful examination of the courses of study in political and economic science established in European universities, and on my return devoted to this subject my official report. Like such reports generally, it was delayed a long time in the Government Printing-office, was then damned with faint praise, and nothing more came of it until the following year, when, being called to deliver the annual address at the Johns Hopkins University, I wrought its main points into a plea for education in relation to politics. This was widely circulated with some effect, and I now brought a modest proposal in the premises before our trustees. Its main feature was that Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, a graduate of Harvard, Secretary of the Board of Charities of the State of Massachusetts and of the Social Science Association of the United States, should be called to give a course of practical lectures before the senior class during at least one term,—his subjects to be such as pauperism, crime (incipient and chronic), inebriety, lunacy, and the best dealing of modern states with these; also that his instructions should be given, not only by lectures, but by actual visits with his classes to the great charitable and penal institutions of the State, of which there were many within easy distance of the university. For several years, and until the department took a different form, this plan was carried out with excellent results. Professor Sanborn and his students, beginning with the county almshouse and jail, visited the reformatories, the prisons, the penitentiaries, and the asylums of various sorts in the State; made careful examinations of them; drew up reports upon them, these reports forming the subject of discussions in which professor and students took earnest part; and a number of young men who have since taken influential places in the State legislature were thus instructed as to the best actual and possible dealings with all these subjects. I still think that more should be done in all our universities to train men by this method for the public service in this most important and interesting field, and also in matters pertaining generally to State, county, and city administration.

Closely connected with this instruction was that in political economy and history. As to the first of these, I had, some years before, seen reason to believe that my strong, and perhaps bigoted free-trade ideas were at least not so universal in their application as I had supposed. Down to the time of our Civil War I had been very intolerant on this subject, practically holding a protectionist to be either a Pharisee or an idiot. I had convinced myself not only that the principles of free trade are axiomatic, but that they afford the only means of binding nations together in permanent peace; that Great Britain was our best friend; that, in desiring us to adopt her own system, she was moved by broad, philosophic, and philanthropic considerations. But as the war drew on and I saw the haughtiness and selfishness toward us shown by her ruling classes, there came in my mind a revulsion which led me to examine more closely the foundations of my economical belief. I began to attribute more importance to John Stuart Mill's famous ``exception,'' to the effect that the building up of certain industries may be necessary to the very existence of a nation, and that perhaps the best way of building them up is to adopt an adequate system of protective duties. Down to this time I had been a disciple of Adam Smith and Bastiat; but now appeared the published lectures of Roscher of Leipsic, upon what he called ``The Historical System'' of political economy. Its fundamental idea was that political economy is indeed a science, to be wrought out by scientific methods; but that the question how far its conclusions are adapted to the circumstances of any nation at any time is for statesmen to determine. This impressed me much. Moreover, I was forced to acknowledge that the Morrill protective tariff, adopted at the Civil War period, was a necessity for revenue; so that my old theory of a tariff for revenue easily developed into a belief in a tariff for revenue with incidental protection. This idea has been developed in my mind as time has gone on, until at present I am a believer in protection as the only road to ultimate free trade. My process of reasoning on the subject I have given in another chapter.

At the opening of the university there was but little instruction in political economy, that little being mainly given by our professor of moral philosophy, Dr. Wilson, a man broad in his views and strong in reasoning power, who had been greatly impressed by the ideas of Friedrich List, the German protectionist. But lectures were also given by free-traders, and I adopted the plan of having both sides as well represented as possible. This was, at first, complained of; sundry good people said it was like calling a professor of atheism into a theological seminary; but my answer was that our university was not, like a theological seminary, established to arrive at certain conclusions fixed beforehand, or to propagate an established creed; that, political economy not being an exact science, our best course was to call eminent lecturers to present both sides of the main questions in dispute. The result was good. It stimulated much thought, and doubtless did something to promote that charity to opposing economical opinions which in my own case had been, through my early manhood, so conspicuously lacking.

The second of these departments—history—was the one for which I cared most. I believed then, and later experience has strengthened my conviction, that the best of all methods in presenting every subject bearing on political and social life is the historical. My own studies had been mainly in this field, and I did what I could to establish historical courses in the university. The lectures which I had given at the University of Michigan were now developed more fully and again presented; but to these I constantly added new lectures and, indeed, new courses, though at a great disadvantage, since my administrative duties stood constantly in the way of my professorial work. At the same time I went on collecting my historical library until it became, in its way, probably the largest and most complete of its kind in the possession of any individual in the United States. Gradually strong men were drawn into the department, and finally there came one on whom I could lay a large portion of the work.

The story is somewhat curious. During the year 1877- 1878, in Germany and France, I had prepared a short course of lectures upon the historical development of criminal law; and while giving it to my senior class after my return, I noticed a student, two or three years below the average age of the class, carefully taking notes and apparently much interested. One day, going toward my house after the lecture, I found him going in the same direction, and, beginning conversation with him, learned that he was a member of the sophomore class; that he had corresponded with me, two or three years before, as to the best means of working his way through the university; had followed out a suggestion of mine, then made, in that he had learned the printer's trade; had supported himself through the preparatory school by means of it, and was then carrying himself through college by setting type for the university press. Making inquiries of professors and students, I found that the young man, both at school and at the university, was, as a rule, at the head of every class he had entered; and therefore it was that, when the examination papers came in at the close of the term, I first took up his papers to see how he had stood the test. They proved to be masterly. There were excellent scholars in the senior class, but not one had done so well as this young sophomore; in fact, I doubt whether I could have passed a better examination on my own lectures. There was in his answers a combination of accuracy with breadth which surprised me. Up to that time, passing judgment on the examination papers had been one of the most tedious of my burdens; for it involved wading through several hundred pages of crabbed manuscript, every term, and weighing carefully the statements therein embodied. A sudden light now flashed upon me. I sent for the young sophomore, cautioned him to secrecy, and then and there made him my examiner in history. He, a member of the sophomore class, took the papers of the seniors and resident graduates, and passed upon them carefully and admirably— better than I should have ever had the time and patience to do. Of course this was kept entirely secret; for had the seniors known that I had intrusted their papers to the tender mercies of a sophomore, they would probably have mobbed me. This mode of examination continued until the young man's graduation, when he was openly appointed examiner in history, afterward becoming instructor in history, then assistant professor; and, finally, another university having called him to a full professorship, he was appointed full professor of history at Cornell, and has greatly distinguished himself both by his ability in research and his power in teaching. To him have been added others as professors, assistant professors, and instructors, so that the department is now on an excellent footing. In one respect its development has been unexpectedly satisfactory. At the opening of the university one of my strongest hopes had been to establish a professorship of American history. It seemed to me monstrous that there was not, in any American university, a course of lectures on the history of the United States; and that an American student, in order to secure such instruction in the history of his own country, must go to the lectures of Laboulaye at the Coll<e!>ge de France. Thither I had gone some years before, and had been greatly impressed by Laboulaye's admirable presentation of his subject, and awakened to the fact that American history is not only more instructive, but more interesting, than I had ever supposed it. My first venture was to call Professor George W. Greene of Brown University for a course of lectures on the history of our Revolutionary period, and Professor Dwight of Columbia College for a course upon the constitutional history of the United States. But finally my hope was more fully realized: I was enabled to call as resident professor my old friend Moses Coit Tyler, whose book on the ``History of American Literature'' is a classic, and who, in his new field, exerted a powerful influence for good upon several generations of students. More than once since, as I have heard him, it has been borne in upon me that I was born too soon. Remembering the utter want of any such instruction in my own college days, I have especially envied those who have had the good fortune to be conducted by him, and men like him, through the history of our own country.[6]

[6] To my great sorrow, he died in 1900.—A. D. W.