But it may seem that the smallest of the sums named is large for a poor man. It may be believed that even after restraint and wisdom are used, Harvard remains the college of the rich. There is much in our circumstances to make it so. An excellent education is unquestionably a costly thing, and to live where many men wish to live calls for a good deal of money. We have, it is true, this splendid hall, which lessens our expense for food and encompasses us with ennobling influences; but it costs $150 a year to board here. Our tuition bill each year is $150. The University owns 450 rooms; but not a third of them rent for less than $150 a year, the average rent being $146. These large charges for 278 tuition and room-rent are made necessary by the smallness of the general fund which pays the running expenses of the college. Very few of the professorships are endowed, and so the tuition-fee and room-rent must mainly carry the expenses of teaching.
Still, there is another side to the story. Thus far I have figured out the expenses, and have said nothing about the means of meeting them. Perhaps to get the advantages of Harvard a student may need to spend largely; but a certain circumstance enables him to do so,—I mean the matchless benevolence of those who have preceded us here. The great sums intrusted to us for distribution in prizes, loan-funds, and scholarships make it possible for our students to offset the cost of their education to such a degree that the net output of a poor boy here is probably less than in most New England colleges. At any rate, I have asked a large number of poor students why they came to expensive Harvard, and again and again I have received the reply: “I could not afford to go elsewhere.”
The magnitude of this beneficiary aid I doubt if people generally understand, and I have accordingly taken pains to ascertain what was the amount given away this year. I find that to undergraduates alone it was $36,000; to members of the graduate department, $11,000; and to the professional schools 279 $6000: making in a single year a total of assistance to students of the University of more than $53,000. Next year this enormous sum will be increased $13,000 by the munificent bequest of Mr. Price Greenleaf. Fully to estimate the favorable position of the poor man at Harvard, we should take into account also the great opportunities for earning money through private tuition, through innumerable avenues of trade, and through writing for the public press. A large number of my correspondents tell of money earned outside their scholarships.[13]
These immense aids provided for our students maintain a balance of conditions here, and enable even the poorest to obtain a Harvard education. And what an education it is; how broad and deep and individually stimulating,—the most truly American education which the continent affords! But I have no need to eulogize it. It has already entered into the very structure of you who listen. Let me rather close with two pieces of advice.
The first shall be to parents. Give your son a competent allowance when you send him to Harvard, and oblige him to stick to it. To learn calculation 280 will contribute as much to his equipment for life as any elective study he can pursue; and calculation he will not learn unless, after a little experience, you tell him precisely what sum he is to receive. If in a haphazard way you pour $2000 into his pocket, then in an equally haphazard way $2000 will come out. Whatever extravagance exists at Harvard to-day is the fault of you foolish parents. The college, as a college, cannot stop extravagance. It cannot take away a thousand dollars from your son and tell him—what would be perfectly true—that he will be better off with the remaining thousand; that you must do yourselves. And if you ask, “What is a competent allowance?” out of what my correspondents say I will frame you five answers. If your son is something of an artist in economy, he may live here on $600, or less; he will require to be an artist to accomplish it. If he will live closely, carefully, yet with full regard to all that is required, he may do so, with nearly half his class, on not more than $800. If you wish him to live at ease and to obtain the many refinements which money will purchase, give him $1000. Indeed, if I were a very rich man, and had a boy whose character I could trust, so that I could be sure that all he laid out would be laid out wisely, I might add $200 more, for the purchase of books and other appliances of delicate culture. But I should be sure that 281 every dollar I gave him over $1200 would be a dollar of danger.
Let my second piece of advice be to all of you graduates. When you meet a poor boy, do not rashly urge him to come to Harvard. Estimate carefully his powers. If he is a good boy,—docile, worthy, commonplace,—advise him to go somewhere else. Here he will find himself borne down by large expense and by the crowd who stand above him. But whenever you encounter a poor boy of eager, aggressive mind, a youth of energy, one capable of feeling the enjoyment of struggling with a multitude and of making his merit known, say to him that Harvard College is expressly constituted for such as he. Here he will find the largest provision for his needs and the clearest field for his talents. Money is a power everywhere. It is a power here; but a power of far more restricted scope than in the world at large. In this magnificent hall rich and poor dine together daily. At the Union they debate together. At the clubs which foster special interests,—the Finance Club, the Philological Club, the Philosophical Club, the French Club, the Signet, and the O. K.—considerations of money have no place. If the poor man is a man of muscle, the athletic organizations will welcome him; if a man skilled in words, he will be made an editor of the college papers; and if he has the powers that fit him for such a place, the 282 whole body of his classmates will elect him Orator, Ivy Orator, Odist, or Poet, without the slightest regard to whether his purse is full or empty. The poor man, it is true, will not be chosen for ornamental offices, for positions which imply an acquaintance with etiquette, and he may be cut off from intimacy with the frequenters of the ballroom and the opera; but as he will probably have little time or taste for these things, his loss will not be large. In short, if he has anything in him,—has he scholarship, brains, wit, companionability, stout moral purpose, or quiet Christian character,—his qualities will find as prompt a recognition at Harvard as anywhere on earth.
FOOTNOTES:
Delivered in Memorial Hall, Cambridge, June 29, 1887. Since this date the scale of expenditure in college, as elsewhere, has been steadily rising.