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

by D. W. Fisher

In casting about for a location for the Anglo-Chinese college, the choice narrowed down so that it lay between Canton, Nanking, Shanghai, and Tientsin. Chefoo was mentioned, but not seriously considered, yet even the possibility of location there, although remote, was so important a matter to the Shantung College that it compelled the men at the head of that institution to be on the alert so long as the question was undetermined. By and by Dr. Happer became disposed to turn over the management of his projected college to some other person, and he wrote to Dr. Mateer, sounding him as to the vacancy, should it occur. The scheme at that time seemed to be to locate the new institution at Shanghai, and to unite with it the Shantung College; and in a long letter in response, written January 9, 1890, Dr. Mateer went very candidly over the entire situation. Among other things he said:

It will be necessary, however, to settle the policy of the college, and also its headship, before making any definite move. Whoever undertakes to make English and self-support prominent features, and then aims at a Christian college, has, as things are at present in China, a difficult contract on his hands. I for one do not feel called to embark in such an enterprise, and my name may as well be counted out.... Nor can the school at Tengchow be moved away from Shantung. We might go, and the apparatus might be moved; but not the pupils. It is futile to talk of them or any considerable number of them coming to Shanghai; nor will pupils go from central China north to be educated save in exceptional cases. The distance and the expense are both too great. Each section of China must have its own schools.

Not long afterward the situation was such that Dr. Mateer and Mr. Hayes addressed to the trustees of the endowment a paper in which a suggestion was made that under certain conditions the fund raised by Dr. Happer should be turned over to the Shantung College. In that paper there was a frank statement of their attitude as to English. They were entirely willing to introduce that language, but only under such conditions that it could not seriously alter the character and work of the institution. The paper is too long for introduction here. It will suffice to quote from a letter sent by Dr. Mateer at the same time to one of the secretaries of the Board, and dated February 9, 1891:

There are one or two things I want to say in a less formal way. One is that in case our proposition in regard to English is not satisfactory, you will take care that the proposed school is not located in Chefoo as a rival of the college in Tengchow. It would be nothing short of suicidal for the Board to allow such a proceeding, and would be a great wrong, both to myself and to Mr. Hayes. We do not propose to engage in such a contest, but would at once resign, and seek some other sphere of labor. Again, I wish to call your attention to what is the real inwardness of our plan for English; namely, to teach it in such a way, and to such parties only, as will insure its being used in literary and scientific lines. We will not teach English merely to anyone, nor teach it to anyone who wants merely English. We will teach it to men, not to boys. Lastly, Mr. Hayes and I have for several years had in mind the idea of a post-graduate course in applied science, and have been waiting for my visit home to push it forward; and even if the present endowment scheme fails, we will still feel like pushing it, and introducing some English as already indicated.

Nothing came of the suggestion that the money should be turned over to the Shantung institution.

Dr. Mateer still continued to help in the college at Tengchow, as he had time and opportunity. Early in the “nineties,” and after the movement just considered had failed to materialize, he solicited from the Board the privilege of seeking to raise an endowment fund, but at that time he was unable to secure their consent. At the beginning of 1900 the Board changed their attitude, and authorized an effort to be made to secure contributions for this purpose. Of course, in order to be successful in this undertaking, a satisfactory plan for the control of the college was a necessity; and as to this Dr. Mateer was consulted, and he gave his opinions freely. His preference was expressed for a charter giving the endowment a separate legal status, but providing that the members of the Board of Foreign Missions, acting in this distinct capacity, should be the trustees. The general oversight of the institution he thought should be assigned to a “Field Board of Directors,” composed of members of the Shantung Mission. This was not a scheme that entirely satisfied him. The specter, on the one hand, of a diversion of the college into a school for teaching English, and, on the other, of making it a theological seminary, would not altogether down; but in the ultimate appeal to the members of the Board of Foreign Missions he recognized a safeguard that was not likely to prove inadequate. When he was on furlough in 1903, he spent a considerable part of his time in soliciting permanent funds for the college, then already removed to its present location; but he was unable to secure much aid. Ada was with him; and she says of his experience in this work, “He was so accustomed to success in whatever he undertook that it was hard for him to bear the indifference of the rich to what seemed to him so important.”

The transfer of the college to another location was a question that would not permanently rest. So long as it was whether it should go from Tengchow to Chefoo, or be swallowed up in another more pretentious institution at Shanghai, and not yet in existence, it was comparatively easy to silence the guns of those who talked removal. But at the opening of the twentieth century, even out there in north China, important changes indirectly affecting this problem had occurred. The missions had been strengthened by a number of new men, who came fresh from the rush of affairs in the United States, and eager to put their force into the work in China in such a way that it would tell the most. Even China itself was beginning to awake from the torpor of ages. In Shantung the Germans were building railroads, one of them right through the heart of the province, on by way of Wei Hsien to the capital, and from that point to be afterward connected with Tientsin and Peking. It is not strange that, under the new conditions, the young members of the mission especially should desire to place the college which loomed up so largely and effectually in the work to which they had consecrated their lives where it could be in closer touch with the swarming millions of the land and with the movements of the new times. February 26, 1901, Dr. Mateer wrote to the Board:

At a meeting of the Shantung Mission it was voted to remove the Tengchow College to Wei Hsien, and then give up the Tengchow station. Being at Shanghai, engaged in the translation work, I was not able to be present at the mission meeting, and it seems incumbent on me to say something on a matter of so much importance, and that concerns me so much.... First, with reference to the college. The major part of my life has been given to building up the Tengchow College, and, of course, I feel a deep interest in its future. As you can easily imagine, I am naturally loath to see it moved from the place where Providence placed it; and to see all the toil and thought given to fitting up the buildings, with heating, lighting, and the other appliances go for nothing; as also the loss of the very considerable sums of money I have myself invested in it. The Providence which placed the college in Tengchow should not be lightly ignored, nor the natural advantages which Tengchow affords be counted for nothing. It is not difficult to make out a strong case for Wei Hsien, and I am not disposed to dispute its advantages, except it be to question the validity of the assumption that a busy commercial center is necessarily the best place to locate a college. In view of the whole question, it seems to me that unless an adequate endowment can be secured—one which will put the college on a new basis—it will not pay the Board to make the sacrifice involved in moving the college to Wei Hsien.... However, I would rather go to Wei Hsien than be opposed strongly at Tengchow.

On that part of his contention he lost; and it would be useless now to try to ascertain the respective merits of the two sides to that question. The second part of the letter just cited discussed the abandonment of Tengchow as a mission station. The plan of those who took the affirmative of this debate was to leave that city to the Southern Baptists, who almost forty years before had preceded the Presbyterians a few weeks in a feeble occupation, but who had been entirely overshadowed by the development of the college. For the retention of the station Dr. Mateer pleaded with his utmost fervor and eloquence. Though the decision remained in uncertainty while he lived, and the uncertainty gave him much anxiety, large gifts, coming since, from a consecrated layman, have rendered the retention of the Tengchow station secure. The wisdom of the decision is vindicated by present conditions. At the close of 1909 the station reported a city church with three hundred members; a Sabbath school which sometimes numbers five hundred pupils; thirty out-stations with about five hundred members; twenty-four primary schools, giving instruction to three hundred and sixteen boys and girls, and taught by graduates of the higher schools of the station; a girls’ high school with an average enrollment of forty-six pupils, and for the year then closing having twelve graduates, nearly all of whom became teachers; a boys’ high school with an attendance of forty, and sending up a number of graduates to the college at Wei Hsien or to other advanced institutions, and having a normal department with a model primary department; and also a helpers’ summer school; besides other machinery for reaching with the gospel the three millions of people gathered in the neighborhood of Tengchow. Nor has the work of the Presbyterians in the least hampered that of the Southern Baptists.

The actual removal of the college was not effected until the autumn of 1904. In the interval between the time when it was determined to take this step and when it was actually accomplished a number of important things affecting the course of Dr. Mateer’s life occurred. Mr. Hayes, as elsewhere stated, resigned the presidency; and Rev. Paul D. Bergen, who had come out to the mission in 1883, was chosen in his place. Dr. Mateer had been so closely associated with Mr. Hayes, and had such complete confidence in him, that the resignation came almost like a personal bereavement; but he rose nobly out of the depths, and wrote home to the Board: “Mr. Bergen is clearly the best man that our missions in Shantung afford for the place. He is very popular with the Chinese, which is much in his favor. The time is as auspicious as it is important. Educational affairs are taking a great boom, and it looks as if Shantung was going to lead the van. If it is properly supported the college should do a great work.” During the interval here covered Dr. Mateer came to the United States on his third and last furlough, reaching China again in the autumn of 1903, and bringing with him some substantial fruits of his efforts for the college.