"My country, 'tis of thee!" / Or, the United States of America; past, present and future. A philosophic view of American history and of our present status, to be seen in the Columbian exhibition.

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

As the greater colleges increase in financial and intellectual strength, the weaker ones must either drop out of existence, or be satisfied to impart merely the high-school course of instruction, and prepare their more aspiring pupils to enter colleges worthy of the name. Ex-President White, of Cornell University, foreshadows their future as follows:

“Our country has already not far short of four hundred colleges and universities more or less worthy of those names, besides a vast number of high-schools and academies quite as worthy to be called colleges or universities as many which bear those titles. But the system embracing all these has by no means reached its final form. Probably in its more complete development the stronger institutions, to the number of twenty or thirty, will, within a generation or two, become universities in the true sense of the word, restricting themselves to university work; beginning, perhaps, at the studies now usually undertaken in the junior year of our colleges, and carrying them on through the senior year, with two or three years of special or professional study afterward. The best of the others will probably accept their mission as colleges in the true sense of the word, beginning the course two years earlier than at present, and continuing it to what is now the junior year. Thus they will do a work intermediate between the general school system of the country and the universities, a work which can be properly called collegiate, a work the need of which is now sorely felt, and which is most useful and honorable. Such an organization will give us as good a system as the world has ever seen, probably the best system.”

There is no lack of money for institutions of learning which show special aptitude in any direction. A belief in thorough education is common to almost all progressive men, whether they themselves are college graduates or “self-made” men. President White, after naming many men who have given largely to different colleges, says:

“Such a tide of generosity bursting forth from the hearts and minds of strong and shrewd men who differ so widely from each other in residence and ideas, yet flowing in one direction, means something. What is it? At the source of it lies, doubtless, a perception of duty to the country and a feeling of pride in the country’s glory. United with this is, naturally, more or less of an honorable personal ambition; but this is not all; strong common sense has done much to create the current and still more to shape its course. For, as to the origin of this stream, the wealthy American knows perfectly that the laws of his country favor the dispersion of inherited wealth rather than its retention; that in two or three generations at most his descendants, no matter how large their inheritance, must come to the level determined by their character and ability; that their character and ability are most likely to be injured, and therefore the level to which they subside lowered, by an inheritance so large as to engender self-indulgence; that while, in Great Britain, the laws and customs of primogeniture and entail enable men of vast wealth to tie up their property, and so to found families, this, in America, is impossible; and that though the tendency toward the equalization of fortunes may sometimes be retarded, it cannot be prevented.

“So, too, as to the direction of the stream; this same common sense has given its main channel. These great donors have recognized the fact that the necessity for universal primary education will always be seen, and can be adequately provided for, only by the people as a whole; but that the necessity for that advanced education which can alone vivify and energize the whole school system, drawing a rich life up through it, sending a richer life down through it, will rarely be provided for, save by the few men wise enough to understand a great national system of education, and strong enough efficiently to aid it.

“It is, then, plain, good sense which has led mainly to the development of a munificence such as no other land has seen; therefore it is that the long list of men who have thus distinguished themselves and their country is steadily growing longer.”

But in opposition to the spirit which founded and has supported our many institutions of learning there has arisen a pestilent theory, born of the sudden increase of wealth and love of luxury, that no education is worth anything which does not enable a man to make more money and make it easier than his neighbor who has had no liberal schooling. Because technical schools—of which the more we have the better off we will be—teach men to use their wits about many practical things, there seems to be prevalent a stupid notion that material things are all there are of life, and that sentiments, principles and aspirations are not worth cultivating. Such stuff might do if we were a nation of shopkeepers, but we are not that kind of people. For each man who is thinking and caring only for money and what it will bring him are half a dozen earnest, clear-headed people who know that all human needs are not satisfied when the stomach is full and the senses satiated.

In a recent and admirable address to a college society Bishop Potter fairly stated and answered the current sneer at the higher education, as follows:

“We are met by a spirit which it is time, I think, that we recognize, as there is a need that it should be challenged. We Americans are, of all peoples under the sun, supremely a practical people. No mechanism is invented, no book is written, no theory is propounded, but that straightway there is heard a voice demanding: ‘Well, this is all very interesting, very novel, very eloquent; but what, after all, is the good of it? To what contrivance, to what enterprise can you hitch this discovery, this vision of yours, and make it work? How will it push, pull, pump, lift, drive, bore, so that, employed thus, it may be a veritable producer? Yes, we want learning for our young men, our young women; but how can it be converted by the shortest road and in the most effectual way into a marketable product?’ ‘The man of the North,’ says De Tocqueville, writing of our North, ‘has not only experience, but knowledge. He, however, does not care for science as a pleasure, and only embraces it with avidity when it leads to useful applications.’ And the worst of such an indictment is the fact that it is still so often true.

“The conditions of this generation demand that we should be reminded that, beyond bodies to be clothed, and tastes to be cultivated, and wealth to be accumulated, there is in each one of us an intellect to be developed and, by means of it, truth to be discerned, which, beside all other undertakings to which the mind of man can bend itself, should forever be foremost and supreme. The gratification of our physical wants, and next to that the gratification of our personal vanity or ambition, may seem to many people at once the chief end of existence and the secret of the truest happiness. But there have been men who have neither sought nor cared for these things, who have found in learning for its own sake at once their sweetest rewards and their highest dignity.