Calvin Wilson Mateer, forty-five years a missionary in Shantung, China

by D. W. Fisher

In a letter dated April 4, 1885, the mission appealed to the Board for a new house to be built for the accommodation of the chief foreign assistant in the college, and incidentally gave a statement as to the plant. They said: “At a remarkably small cost to the Board it has come into possession of plain but extensive premises, which are very well adapted to the purpose. With the small additions and changes proposed for the current year it will have good boarding and dormitory accommodations for eighty or ninety pupils, with roomy yards and courts. It has also two large schoolrooms, three recitation rooms, one large lecture room, a philosophical apparatus room, a chemical apparatus room with a shop and storeroom. It has also a substantial stone observatory, costing one hundred and sixty dollars.” In 1894, a grant for new buildings having been made by the Board, steps looking to their erection were taken. Writing of these, March 23, 1895, Dr. Mateer said, “We staked off the ground to-day, and will make a start at once.” That year, however, on account of his duties on the committee for the revision of the Mandarin translation of the Scriptures, he laid down the presidency of the college, though he did not cease to assist in the instruction and in the management of it. February 8, 1896, he wrote to the Board: “The headship of the college is now in Mr. Hayes’s hands, and with it the major part of the work. I am especially thankful that the interests of the college are in the hands of a capable man; nevertheless, when I am in Tengchow a considerable share of the general responsibility still clings to me, and no inconsiderable share of the work, and Mrs. Mateer’s share is in nowise decreased. Our new buildings are finished, and are an unspeakable convenience. The wonder is how we did without them so long. They have served to raise our college in the estimate of the people of the whole city.” These new buildings consisted of a main edifice of two stories, dormitories, and chemical laboratory. The old temple structure was converted into a chapel and various alterations were made as to uses of the smaller houses. The original estimate of the outlay was eight thousand dollars. Whether this sum was sufficient is not stated in any of the records that have come into my hands; but inasmuch as nothing is said about a deficit, it is probable that there was none, except such as Dr. Mateer and others on the ground met out of their own pockets. The new buildings were supplied with steam heat and electric light from a house specially fitted for the purpose, with a tall chimney that seemed as if a landmark for all the region; and some other additions were subsequently made by means of special contributions. Taken altogether, the plant, into the possession of which the Tengchow College eventually came, though consisting largely of houses that were externally without architectural pretension, and in part of the Chinese order and somewhat inadequate, was extensive enough to indicate the magnitude of the work the institution was doing.

One of the things on which the members of the mission laid stress in their request for the elevation of the school to the rank and title of a college was that it already had “a good collection of philosophical and chemical apparatus, believed to be the largest and best-assorted collection in China.” Dr. Mateer also was accustomed to speak of this apparatus with a pride that was an expression, not of vanity, but of satisfaction in a personal achievement, that was eminently worth while. For instance, in his letter to his college classmates in 1897, he said: “I have given some time and considerable thought and money to the making of philosophical apparatus. I had a natural taste in this direction, and I saw that in China the thing to push in education was physical science. We now have as good an outfit of apparatus as the average college in the United States,—more than twice as much as Jefferson had when we graduated; two-thirds of it made on the ground at my own expense.” It was a slow, long job to produce it. Early in his career as a teacher in the Tengchow school he had little need of apparatus because the pupils were not of a grade to receive instruction in physics; but it was not very long until he recorded his difficulty, for instance, in teaching pneumatics without an air pump. Some of his instruction at that general period was given to a class of students for the ministry. He was always careful to let it be known that his school was in no degree a theological seminary; he held it to be vital to have it understood that it was an institution for what we would call secular instruction, though saturated through and through with Christianity. But again and again throughout his life he took his share in teaching native candidates for the ministry; and before the college proper afforded them opportunity to study western science he was accustomed to initiate these young men into enough knowledge of the workings of nature to fit them to be better leaders among their own people. Thus, writing in his Journal, February, 1874, concerning his work with the theological class that winter, he said:

I heard them a lesson every day,—one day in philosophy [physics] and the next in chemistry. I went thus over optics and mechanics, and reviewed electricity, and went through the volume on chemistry. I practically gave all my time to the business of teaching and experimenting, and getting apparatus. I had carpenters and tinners at work a good part of the time. I got up most of the things needed for illustrating mechanics, and a number in optics; also completed my set of fixtures for frictional electricity, and added a good number of articles to my set of galvanic apparatus. With my new battery I showed the electrical light and the deflagration of metals very well. The Ruhmkorff coil performed very well indeed, and made a fine display. I had an exhibition of two nights with the magic lantern, using the oxyhydrogen light. In chemistry I made all the gases and more than are described in the book, and experimented on them fully. They gave me no small amount of trouble, but I succeeded with them all very well. I made both light and heavy carbureted hydrogen, and experimented with them. Then I made coal gas enough to light up the room through the whole evening. Altogether I have made for the students a fuller course of experiments in philosophy or chemistry than I saw myself. They studied well and appreciated very much what they saw. I trust the issue will prove that my time has not been misspent. I have learned a great deal myself, especially in the practical part of experiment-making. It may be that I may yet have occasion to turn this knowledge to good account. I have also gathered in all a very good set of apparatus, which I shall try to make further use of.

It was in this way that the collection was begun. As he added to it in succeeding years, every piece had a history that lent it an individual interest. Much of it continued to be produced by his own hand, or at least under his own superintendence, and at the expense of himself, or of his friends, who at his solicitation contributed money for this use. Some of the larger and more costly articles were donated by people to whom he appealed for help, and therefore peculiar personal associations clustered about them. For instance, when home on his first furlough, he met Cyrus W. Field, on a voyage to Europe, and interested him in the Tengchow School. After reaching China again, he wrote a letter to Mr. Field and solicited from him the gift of a dynamo. In the course of some months a favorable response was received; and, eventually, that dynamo rendered most valuable service in lighting the buildings. Two friends, whose acquaintance he had made in the United States,—Mr. Stuart, of New York, and Mrs. Baird, of Philadelphia,—gave him money to buy a ten-inch reflecting telescope, with proper mountings and accompaniments; and when, as so often happens in such matters, there was a considerable deficit, his “Uncle John” came to the relief. In ordering through an acquaintance a set of telegraph instruments he explained that the Board was not furnishing the means to pay for it, but that it was purchased with his own money, supplemented by the gifts of certain friends of missions and education.

This must suffice as to the history of that collection of apparatus. It is, however, enough to show why he had so much pride in it.

It was in 1895 that he laid down the headship of the college. He took this step all the more readily because in his successor, Rev. W. M. Hayes, now of Tsingchow fu, he had entire confidence as to both character and ability. On his arrival in China Mr. Hayes was immediately associated with Dr. Mateer in the school, and showed himself to be a thoroughly kindred spirit. He continued at the head of the college until 1901, when he resigned his position in order to start for the governor of the province a new college at Tsinan fu. It may not be out of place to add here that the governor at that time was Yuan Shih K’ai, a man of large and liberal views, and that there was, as to the new college he was founding, in the requirements nothing that made it improper for a Christian and a minister of the gospel to be at the head of it. It is due to Mr. Hayes to say that in accepting this position he was confident that he had the approval of nearly all the missionaries associated with him. However, it was not very long until Yuan was transferred to the viceroyalty of the province of Chi-li, which dominates Peking, and a successor took his place in Shantung, who was of a different mind, and who introduced such usages into the new institution that Mr. Hayes felt conscientiously bound to lay down his office. He is now one of the instructors in the theological department of the Shantung Christian University, into which the college at Tengchow has been merged.

In the request of the members of the mission for the elevation of the Tengchow school to the rank and title of a college one of the articles specifically left the ultimate location of the institution an open question. The main objection to Tengchow was its isolation. It is away up on the coast of the peninsula that constitutes the eastern end of the province, and it is cut off from the interior by a range of rather rugged hills in the rear. Though a treaty port, its commerce by sea has long been inconsiderable, and gives no promise of increase. At the time when that request was made, it is likely that some, though signing, would have preferred that the college should be removed down to Chefoo. To any project of that sort Dr. Mateer was inflexibly, and with good reason, opposed; and it never assumed such strength as to give him much apprehension. Along in the later “eighties” and in the early “nineties” the question of location again arose in connection with the Anglo-Chinese college which Dr. A. P. Happer, of the Presbyterian missions in China, undertook to found. He progressed so far as to raise a considerable sum of money for endowment and had a board appointed for the control. The project at no stage received the hearty support of Dr. Mateer, though, of course, so long as it did not threaten hurt to his own college or the ideas which it represented he did not make any fight against it. Dr. Happer had long been a missionary in southern China, and was beyond question earnestly devoted to his work; his idea was that by means of the Anglo-Chinese college he would raise up an efficient native ministry for the churches. The conviction of Dr. Mateer was that, so far as this result is concerned, the institution, by the very nature of the plan, must be a comparative failure. English was to be given a large place in the curriculum, and for students it was to draw especially on such as could pay their own way. In a long letter dated March 18, 1887, called out by the question of the location of the proposed college, and signed by Dr. Mateer and Mr. Hayes, they frankly expressed to one of the secretaries of the Board their reasons for believing so strongly that an institution conducted on the plan proposed could not realize the main object which its founder sought. They had found it necessary years before, in the Tengchow College, to meet the question as to the introduction of English, and the decision was in favor of using Chinese alone in the curriculum; and so long as the school remained in charge of Mateer and Hayes, they rigidly excluded their own native tongue. When the Tengchow school was just emerging into the Tengchow College, Dr. Mateer thus expressed his convictions on that subject:

If we should teach English, and on this account seek the patronage of the officers and the rich, no doubt we could get some help and countenance. We would be compelled, however, to give up in good measure the distinctively religious character of the school. We would get a different class of pupils, and the religious tone of the school would soon be changed in spite of us. Another result would also be almost inevitable, namely, the standard of Chinese scholarship would fall. The study of English is fatal to high acquisition in the Chinese classics. We would doubtless have great trouble in keeping our pupils after they were able to talk English; they would at once go seeking employment where their English would bring them good wages. Tengchow, moreover, is not a port of foreign residents, but rather an isolated and inland city, and it would not be a good place to locate a school in which teaching English is made a prominent feature.

His observation since had served to confirm him in the conviction of years before, and in the letter to a secretary of the Board, Hayes united with him in stating clearly and forcibly their joint opinion on the subject.