THE C. L. S. C. COURSE FOR 1884-5.
Students and graduates of the C. L. S. C. will examine with interest and with much satisfaction the course of study for next year printed in this number. It does not appeal to the jealousy but to the pride of the alumnus to know that Alma Mater is providing better things for the student of to-day than she did for him. Certainly the work of next year is so constituted as to yield most satisfactory results. It is neither too wide nor too narrow; neither too deep nor too shallow. It is admirably arranged, embracing most important and attractive subjects, by authors of highest qualifications for their work.
That which impresses us most is the scope and thoroughness of each department. Let him who has imagined that this work is “smattering” surface work, scrutinize the single department of Greek in next year’s study. True, there are not four or six years of drill in translating the language, but we do not hesitate to say that the student who studies the works prescribed here will know more of the Greek life and thought than the average graduate after his six years’ translating. He will also be able to stand comparison with the latter in his acquaintance with the Greek literature. Nor is this designed as a criticism of the work done by the college, but as a word to that particular critic of the C. L. S. C.
In the department of science the titles of the text-books themselves indicate that the C. L. S. C. is abreast of the times in repudiating the absurd notion that science can be learned by the memorizing of descriptions and definitions. Such titles as “Home Studies in Chemistry,” “The Temperance Preachings of Science,” and “Studies in Kitchen Science and Art,” bespeak the scientific method which requires the observation and arrangement of facts and phenomena by the learner himself.
We are glad to note the liberal attention bestowed upon our English in the curriculum of the coming year. “The Art of Speech,” by Dr. Townsend, “Talks about Good English,” in The Chautauquan, and “Lessons in Every Day Speech,” by Professor MacClintock, are a quantum of English quite beyond the fashion of these times. No study has been so inexcusably neglected by our schools of every grade. Just now there are signs of repentance in some quarters. President Eliot of Harvard is pleading for its admission to a place equal with Greek and Latin. If what should be will be, not many years hence will witness it so.
Prominent also, as heretofore, is the aim to keep before the C. L. S. C. both the moral and the religious. No one can read “The Character of Jesus,” by Bushnell, without mental and moral profit, without the awakening of a deeper homage of soul for the world’s Redeemer. Then there is Mrs. Field’s work on that perplexing, every-day question, “How to Help the Poor.” Bishop Hurst’s “History of the Reformation” is among the very best works on that eventful period in church history. These are to be supplemented by the continuance of those well-chosen Sunday Readings in The Chautauquan. Beside these classified departments we are promised a series of articles on miscellaneous subjects, such as Memory, Self-Discipline, Thinking, Selection of Books, etc. Taken altogether, a course of study for a year which, faithfully pursued, is an education in itself. We predict for the C. L. S. C. a year of increased interest, pleasure and profit.
THE WALL STREET TROUBLES.
The panic in Wall Street has not extended to the whole country in the same form and intensity as the great crises of 1857 and 1873; but, no doubt, the effect of the shock at the money center will distribute itself gradually over the entire country. The country is not any worse off now than it was at the beginning of May; it is, rather, better off, because an evil has been uncovered and a remedy applied. We did not think ourselves on the verge of ruin on the first of May, nor do we now know that we were. The evil we have discovered in action we knew to be in existence then. But having been forced to take medicine for the sickness, we shall experience some inconvenience from the drastic dose. It is hardly possible to make an 1873 over again. None of the factors of a great general depression exist (so far as we can see); but the cure of the speculative disorder, from which the whole economical body must more or less suffer, may be exasperatingly difficult. All chronic maladies yield very reluctantly to medical treatment; and our economic maladies are equally stubborn. The seat of the present trouble is the organization of railroad property and its management; the principal owners and managers of railroads are speculators in their own property. This disorder has existed from the beginning of such property. It is a twist which the property was born with. It has tortured the patient for fifty years. And to this date no one has applied any adequate remedy. Reformers abound, but the patient does not hesitate to call them quacks; and, denying that there is any serious trouble, it asks to be let alone.
We can estimate the evil by a comparison of three groups of figures. Take first the figures which show the cost of railways. Take next the figures for the nominal capital in stocks and bonds; add the figures which show net income. It is not necessary here to give the actual figures in either group. The fact is that the net income is less than a fair interest on the actual cost of the roads, and perhaps not one per cent. on the nominal value as shown by capitalization. A road has cost five millions; the nominal value is twenty millions; the net income is six per cent. on four millions. Take out a dozen corporations which are wholesomely managed, and the rest of the companies are, in varying degrees, bankrupt as to their nominal capitals and unprofitable as to their actual cost. Speculation trades upon the delusion that the roads are presently, or in some “sweet by-and-by,” to pay dividends upon all their capital. To economize this delusion, the speculative owners of the lines carefully conceal the facts about the condition of their property, or pour out these facts in a torrent of apparent losses—according as they themselves are long or short of the property. The real condition of a railroad property can not be known except when it is bankrupt. At other times railroad book-keeping is too confusing for average brains, and exuberant hope makes the future out of the “astonishing growth of the country.” To remove the railroad property from the sphere of speculative manipulation is the pressing demand of all legitimate interests vested in such property. Until this is done this kind of property will be a squalling baby in the financial household, falling into convulsions periodically and alarming and distressing the whole family of industries and investments.