The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

James Burrill Angell was inaugurated President of the University of Michigan in June, 1871. From that time his life was the life of the University except for interludes of diplomatic service in China, Turkey, and upon various commissions. His diplomatic career, though only incidental to his life work as an educator, showed that he possessed the necessary qualifications for what might well have been a very distinguished career in other fields. At the time of his appointment to China as Minister Plenipotentiary, diplomatic relations in the East were decidedly indirect and characteristically Oriental. It had just taken Germany two years to conclude a rather unimportant commercial treaty, and upon his arrival at Peking his colleagues in the diplomatic service laughed at him for supposing that his one year's leave of absence would suffice for his far more important mission. Yet the revision of the Burlingame treaty, restricting the importation of cheap coolie labor into this country, which he sought, was accomplished within two months. Another important commercial treaty relative to the importation of opium was likewise completed at the same time. He was also successful in his mission to Turkey in 1898 and as a member of the Alaska Fisheries and other international commissions.

But his heart was in his work at Ann Arbor, and thither he always returned despite flattering temptations to enter diplomatic life. A great opportunity lay before him when he took up his new duties and he recognized it. It was his task to bring the State, exemplified in particular by a not always sympathetic Legislature, and by a Board of Regents of continually varying complexion, to a realization of the true function of a university supported by the State. He must arouse the enthusiasm for education and learning which he knew lay deep in the hearts of the people of Michigan. As Professor Charles Kendall Adams, later President of Cornell and Wisconsin, said: "What was called for first of all was the creation and dissemination of an appreciative public opinion that would produce, in some way or other, the means necessary for the adequate support of the University." So well did Dr. Angell accomplish this purpose that of late years he loved to dwell, in his speeches before the alumni, upon what he chose to call the "passion for education" on the part of the people of the State, forgetting utterly the yeoman service he performed all his life toward bringing about that same regard for popular education.

It is true that the foundation and declaration of the educational ideals of the West cannot be ascribed to him. Nevertheless he must be regarded, more than any other one man, as the successful pilot who avoided the difficulties which the very novelty of the situation presented. The comparative freedom from precedent offered an unrivaled opportunity to try new theories in education, and was a continual temptation to try policies which must have proved too advanced for the place and the time.

Alumni Memorial Hall

A survey of the educational system in the West at the time he came to Michigan may be of interest. As regards the number of students, quality of work, and the eminence of the men upon her Faculties, Michigan stood far in advance of other state institutions. This very pre-eminence, however, threw a greater responsibility upon the new President. Lacking precedents, he had to make them for himself, so that the place of the state university in the educational world today is in great degree the measure of success he had in dealing with the practical problems which confronted him throughout his extraordinarily long term of office. When he came to Michigan there was only one other state university of any size, Wisconsin, although several others had already been established. According to the report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1871, none of them except Michigan, and possibly Wisconsin, were in anything like a flourishing condition. While Michigan had, all told, 1,110 students, of whom 483 were in the Literary Department, Wisconsin had only 355, omitting a preparatory department of 131 students. Minnesota had but 167 students with 144 in the preparatory department, while Kansas enrolled 313. No figures were given for Illinois, which was then the Illinois Industrial University, and Nebraska, both of which had been established for several years.

Yet Michigan, although she was well in the lead in point of numbers as well as in the strength of her professional schools, was far from realizing her possibilities. It would, of course, be a rash assertion to say that she has realized them now. But it is safe to say that no state has maintained more truly the type of the well-rounded university, a large college of liberal arts, with traditions of culture and scholarship which began with its very foundation, surrounded by a ring of effective professional schools.

Two years after he came the present system of revenue from the State was first made operative. This came in the form of an annual proportion of the state taxes, fixed at first at one-twentieth of a mill on every dollar of taxable property; a proportion which continued for twenty years. Since then it has been increased several times until it is now three-eighths of a mill on every dollar; it netted the University in 1909, the last year of his administration, $650,000 instead of the $15,000 of 1873. The total income of the University for that year was $1,290,000 as against $76,702.52 received during his first year.

It was perhaps on the more strictly academic side of the development of the University that Dr. Angell's peculiar genius as an administrative officer was most apparent. When he came, he was forty-two years of age, and in Professor Hinsdale's words, "brought to his new and responsible post extended scholarship, familiar acquaintance with society and the world, administrative experience, a persuasive eloquence, and a cultivated personality." This urbanity and extraordinary ability as a speaker won for him from the first a place in the hearts and in the imaginations of the people of the State. But the most vital administrative task which faced him was to make Michigan a true university as distinguished from a college. He had to correlate and concentrate the various departments, and make them complete by making a place for effective graduate work. Certain revolutionary measures, such as the admission of women, the first tentative steps toward free election of studies, the introduction of a scientific course, had been instituted by his immediate predecessors; it became his duty to make them a success.