Jordan's attention was early drawn to the study of fishes, and the general ignorance concerning them determined him to make them his special line of work. As a source of food supply, fish stands close to meat, and millions of people depend on the fish supply rather than on meat. Yet concerning the habits, breeding, and geographical distribution of fish, there was little known. In studying his chosen subject Jordan has traveled more than two hundred thousand miles, and to-day he is the accepted authority on fish. Much of the important work accomplished by the United States Fish Commission, of which he has been a member since 1877, has been due to his initiative.
The value of American fisheries averages fifty million dollars annually, but for a long time the business was carried on in a haphazard fashion, and few naturalists thought it worth while to devote any considerable amount of attention to the study of fishes. Jordan did as much to change that state of affairs as any other man.
The breeding of food fish, now extensively carried on by the United States Government, is largely the result of his advice, and he has greatly increased the efficiency of the fishers by placing at their disposal new knowledge concerning the habits and migrations of food fish.
Selecting His Aids.
His work in connection with the fisheries was only part of what he has managed to crowd into a busy life. As professor of zoology at Indiana University he stimulated his pupils to a thorough study of their subject, and his influence in this department was felt even outside the university. It was while he was in Indiana that he was called to the presidency of Leland Stanford University. His first work was to bring together a faculty.
A big trunk full of applications for positions was turned over to him, and he was told he could do what he liked with them. He never opened the trunk. He knew the men he wanted for the various positions, and he drew them from Cornell and Indiana. To this day Jordan does not know even the names of the applicants.
The students who come under the influence of Dr. Jordan do not have a life of scholastic ease and idleness. Their president has said, "The problem of life is not to make life easier, but to make men stronger."
He accepted the presidency of Stanford University with the distinct understanding that he was to do nothing that it was possible to hire another man to do. As a result he has had a free hand, and has devoted himself to the larger affairs of the university's development. The result is that Stanford in a short time has been able to push well to the front as a solid and progressive place of learning.
Dr. Jordan is straightforward in his methods and utterances.
"You can't fasten a five-thousand-dollar education on a fifty-cent boy," he said, and that dictum has been his guide in conducting the university.