In short, the connotations of the word "morality" are such as to put it out of the running as a name for a high educational ideal; and a high ideal we must of course have. It suggests hardly more than what Mr. Roosevelt is wont to call "decent living;" and decent living is not a matter that can very well be progressively unfolded, idealized and realized. For a pupil coming from a family where decent living is the rule, and associating with mates of whom the same is true, it is not much to live decently. There is almost nothing for him to learn. This is no doubt why it is generally assumed, and in the main quite correctly, that in a normally wholesome environment morality will take care of itself or come as a by-product of school experience, the teacher having nothing in particular to do except to look after the occasional transgressor.
But now suppose we put in place of mere morality, the perfection of the social mind. Suppose we say that the central purpose of popular education ought to be thedevelopment of a sensitive social conscience enlightened to the limits of opportunity. To put it a little differently: suppose we could agree that the best possible result of education is a mind trained and habituated to think in terms of social obligation, and to act accordingly. We should then have, at any rate, something that is high enough and big enough for anybody; something that is capable of progressive realization from the kindergarten to the university and thereafter; something, in fine, that would reach out from the humblest ego to the utmost periphery of human existence.
Thirdly, religion. Let it be granted at the outset that for an immense number of the noblest souls that haveever lived "Thou God seest me" has been the highest, most inclusive, most compelling incentive to right social conduct, that we know anything about. In practise, however, a great deal depends on the nature of the God that is feared, and still more, perhaps, on whether that God is really and truly feared or only spoken of with conventional respect in token of some ecclesiastical loyalty. Can religion be "taught" in school—any kind of school? Can it be taught, I mean, not as a matter of formal observance and glib recitation, but in its vital essence as a quickening spirit destined to stick fast in the character and be a permanent incentive to right living? It is only in this sense that the "teaching" of religion has any bearing on good government and the general welfare.
The difficulty of teaching religion in this socially effective way is not confined to the secular public schools. It does not grow entirely out of the neutrality of the state, the jealousy of sects and the impossibility of finding a common basis free from any sectarian tinge. It goes deeper than that, and affects also church schools that fly the banner of religion and are conducted for the express purpose of giving prominence to the beliefs and usages of some particular denomination. What can be done to teach religion? Of course the pupil can be exposed to what are called religious influences, and made to breathe what is called a religious atmosphere. He can be required to attend chapel exercises, and to go to church on Sunday; to read the Bible or hear it read; to memorize texts, creeds, hymns and commandments. He can learn church history, and familiarize himself with the arguments and tenets of "our people." But when, as is usually the case, all this precedes any vital personal experience of religion, it is apt presently to float away, along with the Latin and algebra, into the limbo of things once known but no longer usable. The teaching of religion so that it will stick fast, not merely as an ecclesiastical loyalty, but as asocially regenerative force, is a very difficult matter. Multitudes of parents who are profoundly anxious about the matter, fail in the home, clergymen fail rather notoriously with their own sons and daughters. Can the school be expected to succeed where they are baffled?
But suppose it were understood that the supreme purpose of all education, no matter what banner the schoolhouse or college might fly, is the development of character trained and habituated to think in terms of social obligation, and to act accordingly: should we not then have a formula on which all who really mean well by their fellowmen could unite? For surely the perfection of the social mind—that and nothing else—is the finest flower of the religious spirit.
There are reasons for thinking that such a theory of popular education as has been outlined, and a modified practise based on the theory, are needed at the present time as a measure of social therapeutics. Without joining the prophets of evil who think we are moving swiftly toward a social revolution, one may say in all sobriety that there are signs which look ominous for the future of our democratic experiment. It is not merely that there is wide-spread discontent and a general breaking away from old standards and restraints. All that, which is apt to look so threatening to elderly people, especially if they are not much given to the reading of history, may be nothing but the sign of healthy life and growth. Stable democratic society may consist with almost any amount of discontent, provided it discharges itself by way of legal channels duly provided for the purpose in advance.
But the really menacing symptom of our time, is in a word,—lawlessness. I have not chiefly in mind the shocking and increasing prevalence of outrageous crimes against person and property. That is certainly bad enough. That life and property are not as safe in the United Statesas they were a generation ago, and not as safe as they are today in the British Empire, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, is surely a fact to give us pause. And yet, in that fact alone there is nothing highly ominous for the future of democracy. In all ages, under all forms of government, there have been murderers, thieves and ravishers, but social order has never been destroyed or even seriously imperiled by them. Society has found ways to protect itself. The statistics of crime vary from decade to decade under the operation of causes that are fairly well understood by experts. An excess at any time can be corrected by known methods if a people sets resolutely about it.
The danger lies rather in a diminishing respect for law as such among large masses of the nominally respectable population. Multitudes have come to look on the will of the community as expressed in law, not as an obligation binding on the conscience, but as a sort of solemn joke—something meant for the other fellow. This cynicism with regard to law has become a veritable cancer of the social body. The matter is difficult to treat statistically, but surely there can be no doubt about it. It is no illusion of perspective, not the nightmare of a pessimist, but simple damning truth, that the law-abiding spirit has of late been losing ground rapidly. The case is not stated too strongly by a recent writer when he says:
In spite of his vulnerability he [the capitalist] is of all citizens the most lawless. He appears to assume that the law will always be enforced by some special personnel whose duty lies that way, while he may evade the law, when convenient, or bring it into contempt, with impunity. The capitalist seems incapable of feeling his responsibility as a member of the governing class, in this respect, and that he is bound to uphold the law that others may do the like.... He therefore looks on the evasion of a law devised for public protection, but inimical to him, as innocent or even meritorious.[26]
In spite of his vulnerability he [the capitalist] is of all citizens the most lawless. He appears to assume that the law will always be enforced by some special personnel whose duty lies that way, while he may evade the law, when convenient, or bring it into contempt, with impunity. The capitalist seems incapable of feeling his responsibility as a member of the governing class, in this respect, and that he is bound to uphold the law that others may do the like.... He therefore looks on the evasion of a law devised for public protection, but inimical to him, as innocent or even meritorious.[26]
Of course there are many honorable exceptions; indeedthis very remark is made by Mr. Adams himself. It may be said too that the influential men who fall as a class under this sweeping indictment can often allege a colorable excuse for their anti-social conduct—as that the law they try to "beat" was devised in ignorance or malice by corrupt politicians. And so they play the game of money against politics, and are not aware of the social menace of their conduct. They subordinate the greater to the less, and know not what they do—any more than the aristocracy and clergy of France knew what they were doing just prior to 1789. They think themselves the salt of the earth. Many of them are more or less zealous church-members, and have had a "religious education." And yet, in playing fast and loose with the law, they are playing with fire in their own cellars. When a ruling class—our government is a qualified plutocracy—loses its sense of responsibility, and takes to violating the law, it takes the surest way to bring all law into contempt. And when the general contempt for law reaches a certain point, then comes anarchy and—the strong man on horse-back to tell us what to do, and shoot us if we don't do it.
The vocation of the croaker is not lightly tolerated by the public opinion of our day. Every one votes him a nuisance. A deep-seated American optimism expects that we shall somehow weather the storms of the future as we have weathered those of the past. The writer of these reflections has the national temperament, but he thinks the time has come to reef sails and trim ship. For law and obedience to law there must be, if society is to cohere and go on its way; and in a democracy lawlessness is not so muchaperil astheperil. We must look to our democratic foundations, lest they be undermined while we go on gaily amusing ourselves, piling up money, and assuring each other that everything is all right in the best government the sun ever shone upon. There is need of a vast co-operative effort on the part of all the ethicalforces of society—an effort directed consciously and vigorously to the specific end of checking and turning back the rising tide of lawlessness. There is work for the home, for the church, for the voluntary association; and of course there is work for the school, with which we are here more immediately concerned.
What can the schools do for the better training of the social conscience? (I use the word "training" in the double sense of habituation and enlightenment). It is evident that that question needs more space than can be given to it here. A few words must suffice.
In the first place, teachers can recognize—that is, they can gradually be brought to recognize—that the training of the social conscience is the great work they have to do; that it is more important than anything else. A general recognition of that fact would itself have a highly stimulating effect. It would clarify ideas, furnish criteria of value that would be independent of personal or local whim, divert attention from piddling questions of routine, and so do something to elevate the business of teaching in the public estimation. It is now commonly spoken of as a noble profession, but only a very few really think of it in that light. In the better atmosphere I am thinking of, the teacher would not be a drill-sergeant bossing the details of a mental lock-step, but the physician of the social conscience. And, in harmony with the new drift in medicine, our physician would pin his faith to preventive treatment. He would not be able to avoid some punishment of the wrong-doer, but he would see his highest mission in the development of a sensitive conscience that would inhibit wrong-doing. This means skillful and well-paid teachers for children, not too many pupils to the teacher, and much friendly study of the individual pupil in school and out.
Then again teachers could put into practise far moregenerally than has been attempted hitherto, what has been found out by scientific men with regard to the social conscience and the way it works. They could appeal in every possible way to the social instinct, and make use of its well-known rewards and inhibitions. The foundation principle would be to make the penalty for misbehavior take the form, so far as possible, of social disapproval, with consequent suffering in self-esteem. To be effective, a penalty needs to be quick-acting and sure. It should depend as little as possible on the accident of getting caught. If a potential miscreant is taught to fear punishment at the hands of some authority outside of and above his own life, and if then he does wrong, and nothing unpleasant happens, he soon begins to enjoy the game of matching his wits against the law. Pretty soon he is really being schooled in the exciting art of law-breaking. Somehow he must learn to dread the disapproval of his mates and the prick of his own conscience.
Another principle, hardly less fundamental, would be to make the learner see that the rules he is called on to obey, at work or at play, are for the general good,including his own. Of course difficulty would be created by the young anarchist, the imp who refuses to play the game in accordance with the rules, is insensitive to communal opinion, and enjoys the excitement of beating the law. Such a mental twist is generally due to a vicious environment in home or street, where the standards are different from those of the school. How to deal with such cases, when they have reached the advanced stage of criminality, has always been one of the hardest problems of the civilized man, and no very satisfactory solution of it has yet been found. Down to quite recent time, our forbears put their faith in the deterrent effect of harsh and public punishments; and the rod of the schoolmaster kept pace, so to speak, with the stern decrees of the criminal law. It was found not to work very well, a humaner epoch set in, and with that too the schools have kept pace. We havecome to feel that society itself is to blame for the miscreant, because it creates and perpetuates the conditions that make him. Meanwhile society is experiencing the disastrous effects of dealing gently with the criminal, and the schools are breeding up a generation to which anything like stern discipline is on the whole rather repugnant.
The one hopeful idea on the horizon is the idea of prevention. The potential miscreant must be caught and cured in the early stages of his making. It is unfortunately true that even the most enlightened and single-minded efforts of the school will produce but lame results so long as society permits criminals to breed with their kind, and tolerates the economic conditions which create for decently born children a hopelessly bad environment outside the schoolroom. It is for society to remedy these conditions as fast as it can. Meanwhile much would be gained if we could once clearly see, and begin to act on the principle, that thechief endof popular education should be, not a smattering of knowledges, but the development of social-minded character.
Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artesEmollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.
Readers of Thackeray will remember that these are the lines in which Colonel Newcome used regretfully to sing the praises of those arts into which he had been but barely initiated. Of the thousands in the United States who are now annually certified as bachelors of arts, nine-tenths would be unable to translate the passage, and if the passage were translated, fully one-half would see little or nothing in it. When men are asking what is the matter with our colleges, one is tempted to suggest that perhaps this is the matter: that a controlling interest in the academic establishment is made up of those who have no belief that higher education should result in refinement of mind and transformation of character, and no comprehension of what these things would mean; or, in plain terms, that higher education is in the hands of the barbarians.
That our academic population has grown some three or four-fold within a generation, is no indication of a corresponding increase in the number of persons of cultivated intelligence. The growth has been brought about mainly through a change in the tone and purpose of the college course to appeal to those who formerly despised a college education as a useless luxury; so that now we have a large number of college graduates in whose eyes the degree confers no distinction and imposes no responsibility. It may be that the older science was crude and the older scholarship vague. By no means all college students of a generation ago were animated by a love of knowledge. Yet even the idlers, who sought the degree because it was reputable, testified to a general respectfor higher education, and bore witness to the idea that a college graduate was supposed to be a gentleman. No such expectation prevails today; and least of all in the West, where the increase of numbers has been most marked. Today a college education is supposed to be merely useful. Yet at the same time it is felt to be a ground for wonder that so many can pass through the college course with no visible refinement of taste or speech, no clarification of the sense of honor and justice, and no increase in thoughtfulness or in independence of mind—that, in a word, a college graduate is indistinguishable in general society. Some time ago I sat at a hotel table with six commercial travellers and one college graduate, who was also a college professor,—all talking baseball. Sherlock Holmes himself could not have identified the professor. Some time before, I had ventured to propose in a talk to some students that a college degree should impose the obligation ofnoblesse, and preserve a man from some of the meaner things which might be condoned in the less fortunate. I learned afterwards that the idea was resented as "undemocratic"—yet not by the students: for today it seems to be the college professor who is chiefly contemptuous of liberal culture.
It is rather difficult to see howhighereducation is to be conceived as "democratic" in the sense of creating no personal distinctions. Only, it should seem, if the gifts of education are purely external and without effect upon mind and character. On the other hand, if democracy is to stand simply for freedom of opportunity, and selection of the best, doubtless few will deny that the college should be open to every youth who shows himself capable of measuring up to the idea of an educated man. But this is another matter. The "democratic" theory of higher education stands for a process of measuring down. The process began when the teachers of science insisted that a student whose course was made up mostly of laboratory practice in natural science should nevertheless be graduatedas a bachelor of arts. One may cheerfully admit the importance of scientific conceptions for general culture: the point is that if scientific training had developed half of the intellectual qualities that were claimed for it, the degree in science should soon have displaced that of bachelor of arts. As it was, the issue was obscured, and under the blessings of the blanket degree, "democracy" has made rapid progress. No form of speech is now too destitute of ideas to be called a science. Leaving aside the last new science of "efficiency," we have a science of cooking and of dressmaking, a science of carpentering (called manual training), a science of commerce, a science of journalism, and a science of football, any of which may now entitle one to credit towards a degree of bachelor of arts—so that no one can now charge that the college degree implies an invidious distinction.
Such is the outcome of "democracy." At first glance the term conveys the pleasing suggestion that our universities attach a high importance to the cultivation of individuality. But the suggestion is misleading. In the academic "democracy" every student, like every dollar, counts for just one "and nobody for more than one," and the only question of importance is how many. Not long ago, while crossing the Rocky Mountains, and listening to the admiration expressed by my fellow-travelers for the impressive engineering and industrial undertakings of that region and the Pacific Coast, I became gradually aware that the conventional mode of describing such an enterprise was to speak of it as "a two-million-dollar plant" or "twenty-million-dollar plant," as the case might be, on the ground, evidently, that no other aspect of the matter could conceivably be interesting. Such barbaric innocence seemed to me diverting until I remembered that this was the point of view and these the same tribe of barbarians as those whose aspirations now control the policies of our institutions of learning. With few exceptions, our academic managers prefer to state their attainmentsand their ambitions in terms of an n-million dollar plant, with n-thousand students and n-hundred instructors. And in the interest of bigness any argument is good. Just now the argument is vocational, and college presidents and professors, especially in the state-universities of the West, are fairly falling over one another to prove that they are "practical men," and incidentally to disavow any interest in the promotion of liberal culture. When the fashion changes, as it doubtless will—for it is unlikely that even the agricultural communities are as uncivilised as the appeal that is made to them—the argument will change. Especially instructive from this point of view is the standing appeal for more money to make good a deficit; or to improve the quality of instruction by paying better salaries to the faculty. In the logic of academic administration there appears to be no contradiction between pleading poverty and at the same time using the funds in hand to establish some new department, some advertising feature, such as a summer session, correspondence courses, university extension, or what not, which will attract a more illiterate class of students, scatter the energies of the faculty, lower their teaching efficiency, preserve the deficit, and leave the institution less than ever free to shape its own course or to act as a critic of popular opinion.
Academic authorities are accustomed to explain these seeming inconsistencies by a vague appeal to the obligations of the university to the community. These "social obligations" will repay a careful study. To grasp the idea that is now current in most of the state-universities, one must think of a state-hospital for the insane in which the care of patients is regarded as secondary to the purpose of impressing the people of the state with the evil of insanity, and the need of larger appropriations for the state-hospital. A careful analysis of present academic conceptions of "social obligation" fails to show that such obligation differs in any essential respect from the obligationof a merchant to procure new customers, and incidentally to take some of them away from his competitors. The merchant's obligation is made humanly intelligible by considerations of profit or prestige. It is rather difficult to grasp the sort of academic prestige that comes from cheapening the college degree. And when we find that even the older and richer institutions show a disposition to sacrifice their academic distinction for the prestige of numbers, it seems simpler to abandon the search for rational motive, and to refer the ambitions of our institutions of learning to the same primitive instinct that prompts one man or woman to outshine his neighbor in the splendor of his diamonds or his dinners, and another in the size of his motor-car.
A sure key to the interpretation of "social obligation" will be found in inter-collegiate athletics. I am speaking here, not of athletic sports as such, nor necessarily of athletic contests between colleges, but of inter-collegiate contests as a matter of public exhibition—"a Roman holiday"—and commercial enterprise. Only a finely drawn distinction saves the college athlete from being classed as a professional. It is true that (as a rule) he does not pay for his living out of the gate-receipts. But the gate-receipts pay for his sport, and the sport covers a good deal of expensive traveling and sojourning at expensive hotels, not to speak of the services of a professional coach, now commonly appointed by the college administration at a salary often higher than that of a full professor. And when we remember that the gate-receipts total many thousands—$50,000 from a single game is not uncommon—and further that such sums are needed to maintain the sport at its present (shall we not say "professional"?) perfection, it is hard to see that amateur sport is not a business enterprise of serious dimensions. The difficulty becomes greater if we define a man's profession to be that which consumes most of his time and attention. This applies especially to football. The verypurpose of the training is to provide that during the season no member of the team shall waste his time or strength on any other purpose. The schedule for practice would be sufficient to demonstrate this point, apart from the testimony of numerous football men, among them men of fair ability and conscientious students. During the season they can do little more than attend their classes and trust to the mercy of the instructor. This mercy they are pretty sure to receive, first, because they have, as a rule, carefully avoided electing the courses of the unmerciful, secondly, because even a rather independent instructor will often prefer to give a football man the grade needed to keep him on the team rather than face a storm of execration from students and colleagues, not to speak of a long argument in the president's office. Such arguments are not uncommon; and a college professor who attaches any importance to the reports published of the high average of scholarship maintained by athletes must be lacking in a sense of humor.
Older apologists for inter-collegiate athletics were accustomed to talk aboutmens sana in corpore sano. But every one knows now that inter-collegiate athletics are as little related to sound health as inter-collegiate debates to sound logic. Nor does it suffice to point to the need of a safety-valve for the spirits of youth. This argument may pass for some of the Eastern colleges, but the Western student is apt to be a sober and steady, if somewhat unimaginative youth, who looks at college mostly from a business standpoint; and it is fair to say that inter-collegiate sports would have amounted to little in the West if they had not been carefully fostered by the college administration. This is so far true that a youth who happens to be husky and strong can hardly hope to escape the football team except under the imputation of "disloyalty;" and more than one who had hoped to give his time to other things has yielded to the importunities, not so much of his fellow-students as of the faculty sports andthose connected with the administration. In the college community generally, and in the speeches made by the faculty before gatherings of students, the highest tribute is reserved for the athletic heroes. Those who win college honors, or who make Phi Beta Kappa or Sigma Xi, are rarely heard of. The present theory seems to be—and again, the theory, not so much of the students as of the faculty and administration—that the student who wins honors work only for himself, while he who helps win a game does something for the college.
A generation ago the management of athletics was in the hands of the students, and the faculty was content to confine itself to the task of keeping the games within proper limits. But the amount of money involved became too great for undergraduate business methods and, in some cases, for undergraduate honesty. Hence, in one college after another, the administration assumed the direction of athletics in the interest of good management and at the same time, it was claimed, of preserving their amateur character. This claim has been very strangely justified. The result has been rather that in the hands of the administration athletics became an instrument of competition, and for the first time a serious and important business; and in the prosecution of the business along professional lines, the administration has been shown to be, not more scrupulous than the undergraduates, but only more resourceful. Impecunious athletes could now be provided for by scholarships or by places in the library, the college office, or the college book-store. Why, pray, should a student be debarred from the privilege of "working his way through" because he happens to be an athlete? Or why, for this reason, should a president be deprived of the benevolent satisfaction of helping a deserving student out of his own pocket? Or why should a similar privilege be withheld from "loyal" alumni or from disinterested persons who happen to have money on the game? Cases of this kind are matters of commonreport in academic circles; and when players are disqualified for professionalism by the inter-collegiate conference, the circumstances point not seldom to complicity on the part of the academic authorities. Among men of the world who are gentlemen, it is thought to be one of the primitive moralities to be a good sport—to play the game on the square and to treat your opponent as a gentleman. Neither of these points seems to be quite intelligible to many of our academic sports. One college president might be named whose speeches at football "rallies" are said to suggest an expedition against savages.
A private citizen who should set up a billiard table in his house, and then earn the cost of it by giving exhibition games for admission fees, would be promptly put down as a professional sport. I have suggested to a number of colleagues that college athletics will never be a gentleman's sport until the gate-receipts are abolished, the professional coach dismissed, and the scope of athletics is limited to what can be supported by private subscription, preferably confined to students. One can readily see how this would improve themoraleof athletics. There would be some loss of proficiency, but in matters of sport no gentleman can afford to be too proficient. The usual reply has been, however, "Oh, that would never do." Now of course it would never do. But there is just one reason why, namely, that athletics are today regarded as the most important measure and criterion of academic prestige. They are indeed an abominable nuisance. They absorb the attention of the administration, take up the time of faculty meetings or of governing committees, send traveling about the country students who ought to be at work, and give to the members of the team a public importance which their personality fails to justify. But every institution feels itself bound to make a good showing for fear that a barbarian public, and the rich barbarians among the alumni, will judge that it is lackingin vitality. The fear is doubtless exaggerated, but such is therationaleof inter-collegiate athletics.
Further light upon the "social obligations" of our colleges and universities will be afforded by a study of the departments of education, or teachers' colleges, which have been established in most of the larger institutions, and which now often receive a greater share of the attention of the administration than any other part of the institution. It is unnecessary to ask whether the history or philosophy of education are important subjects of study. The fact remains that the history of education is about as necessary a preliminary to the practice of teaching, as the history of medicine to the practice of medicine, while any genuine philosophy of education implies a broad basis of ripe culture. Nor may we question the need of a higher standard of general culture for the teachers in the secondary schools. All of this is irrelevant to the department of education. The very last thing named there is the need of broad culture and sound knowledge. On the contrary, the idea is commonly conveyed that a too thorough knowledge of the subject will be bad for the teacher. As I write, there comes to me the published report of a speech by the dean of one of the teachers' colleges, who says that "it is harder for a Phi Beta Kappa to learn to teach than for medium students." Of course the moral is clear: no student who intends to teach, and who hopes to receive an appointment, can afford to waste his time in making a record for excellence of scholarship and breadth of culture, such as would recommend him to Phi Beta Kappa, especially since any deficiencies in these directions can be more than made good by a "professional training" in child-psychology, the science of method, and the social aims of education.
The result of this appeal is to bring to the university a large class of students whose personal ambition does not extend beyond the desire for a comfortable job, and who regard the university, not as analma mater, butsimply as an emporium from which they may procure a professional outfit; and at the same time to instal in the faculty a set of men whose prevailing point of view is that of theentrepreneur. In all of our universities, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, the department of education, with its courses, students, and instructors, is an object of ridicule and malediction on the part of most of the faculty. Even the less fastidious are disposed to resent the presence in the university of a department whose intellectual and cultural status is hardly superior to that of a normal school. There would seem to be only one reason for the importance attached to the department by the administration, namely, the large and steady constituency which it is able to command through the questionable logic of its vocational appeal. For the purpose of enlarging the "plant," nothing better has been yet devised than the plan of offering "professional training" for teachers.
Hardly less significant, however, for a study of the social obligations resting upon our universities is the graduate school. In the West local patriotism demands that every state shall have its state-university, and no institution is a complete university without a graduate school. That several states should combine to form one graduate school of really good quality has, to my knowledge, never been suggested. Meanwhile, to measure the urgency of the need for graduate schools, it will be sufficient to contemplate the kind of men who are awarded fellowships in the graduate schools already well established, in the East or in the West. A dispassionate observer might readily conclude that the capacity of the country for graduate work had been satisfied for a century to come. And he would be the more confirmed in his opinion if he should reflect upon the cost of graduate instruction, the small number of students who attend the graduate courses, and the few who are not subsidized to attend. In his book onUniversity ControlProfessor Cattellhas called attention to the fact that our graduate schools procure most of their students only by paying them, and to the more significant fact that, with all the inducements offered by scholarships and fellowships, the material is of not more than mediocre quality. Even at Harvard it has been noted that the graduate students were as a class inferior in personal genius and intellectual endowment to the best class of undergraduates. Nor does it seem worth while to increase the stipend. Some years ago one of our college presidents, an artist in inflation, conceived the idea of splitting his fellowships into two; with a scarcely observable change of quality, he obtained two graduate students for the price of one. From all this one would be led to conclude that what is now needed is, not more graduate schools, but a working outfit of really eligible students for those already established.
Since the college faculty is recruited from the graduate school, this means that there is a corresponding lack of eligible material for college professorships. Professor Cattell suggests that the lack of good material for the graduate fellowships is due to the unsatisfactory conditions which, in America, surround the profession of scholar and teacher. Doubtless this is true, but the deeper fact seems to be that cultural conditions in the United States have not yet developed a sufficient number of men with a taste for academic work to fill the places created by a policy of hasty expansion. The result is that a fair number of those composing our college faculties—fully half, one might say, viewing them as a whole,—are men who have no special sense of professional dignity or of professional responsibility; and some of those who write "Professor" before, or "A.B., Ph.D." after their names are all but illiterate. An unselected group of college professors leaves no impression of special culture. Their ordinary conversation conveys no impression of superior insight in matters of politics, or of art, or of socialreform—very probably the subject of conversation is football and the prospects of the team. In any community a group of college professors is likely to represent, not a higher level of culture, but simply a fairly assorted average, a vertical section, so to speak, of the culture of the community. Under normal conditions many of those who now compose our college faculties would probably be teaching in the elementary schools, while others, especially those, now highly esteemed by the administration, who prefer the stir and bustle of traveling and speech-making to the humdrum of study and teaching, would be carrying a case of samples or selling life-insurance. One of the striking things about our college professors is their frequent distaste for quiet occupations. Hence, while it is true that the conditions prevailing in the profession react upon the graduate schools, the reverse is also true. One reason that operates against better salaries for college professors is that so many are now worth no more than they get, while for men of a better quality there is no immediately promising source of supply.
On the other hand, it is obvious that a policy of indiscriminate expansion is committed to the employment of Chinese cheap labor in teaching. To this necessity we owe the elaborate academic hierarchy extending through the grades of fellow, assistant, instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, full professor, to the culminating dignity of "professor and head of the department;" to this we owe the employment of women in the coëducational colleges (who rarely get beyond the grade of instructor); and to this we owe the fact that, even in the oldest and richest of our universities, a great part of the instruction is given by instructors at about a thousand dollars a year. Yet all the while a course by a thousand-dollar instructor yields the same amount of credit towards the degree as a course by a full professor. From the administration's standpoint, however, it is foolish to pay four or five thousand dollars for one man when you can get two orthree for that sum; and especially when your public is of a kind that only a small portion of it will know the difference.
Peculiarly favorable to this policy has been the importation from Germany of thewissenschaftliche Methodeand, in particular, of the scientific method of creating a Doctor of Philosophy, based upon the curious Teutonic conception of a "contribution to knowledge." One such contribution is sufficient for a Doctor of Philosophy; the number of them is the measure of a scientific reputation. What is positively needed to constitute a contribution to knowledge, is not altogether clear. It seems quite certain, however, that a contribution to knowledge need not be a contribution to ideas. And a census of the contributions printed by the journals devoted to special departments of knowledge suggests that little more is needed than an industrious description of some region of unexplored fact. It matters little that the fact is insignificant, or that the analysis (if there be analysis) throws no new light upon the principles of science or upon the motives of history or of literature—a fact is still a fact; and a "negative result" in response to an improbable hypothesis is still a "contribution." It is evident that the "scientific method," whatever be its first intention, need not in practice imply the operation of intelligence. And this may help to explain why the "results of science" are occasionally indistinguishable from those of manual labor, and how a man may rank as a scientific authority whose general intelligence would not clearly distinguish him from an ordinary carpenter or bricklayer. All of this, indeed, is implied in the logic of "method." As the purpose of a machine is to be foolproof, so is it the purpose of scientific method to make scientific discovery independent of personal endowment or genius. In the wholesale creation of academic establishments the method plays a particularly important part, since it furnishes a supply of accredited reputations at a relatively moderate cost.
The scientific method represents the introduction of"democracy" into the fields of science and scholarship. And thus it enables us to explain the paradox, otherwise mystifying, that college professors are the first to teach the student to attach a superior importance to men of affairs; to value a practical experience of things above a clear understanding of them; the intuitions of the plain man, or of the child of nature, above the decisions of reflective judgment; and that they are the first to warn him against allowing plain common sense to be disturbed by the exercise of reason. All of this would be rather perplexing if one were unfamiliar with the democratic theory that a contribution to knowledge implies no exercise of intelligence, and that intellectual discipline works no change in the quality of the man.
When, however, it becomes a question of democracy for the faculty—or, in other words, of a form of academic administration appropriate to the idea of a learned profession—the democrats of this type are apt to be either silent or contemptuous. One of the reasons why academic administration is imperialistic in democratic America, while it is democratic in imperialistic Germany, is that American scholars have no illusions regarding the dignity of their profession. On the other hand, a commercial, or, if you please, scientific, theory of academic organization leads quite naturally to the conception of the college-president as a captain of industry—while a study of the acts of college professors in their corporate capacity as a faculty might easily lead one to believe that most of them are capable only of doing what they are told. But all this is but one manifestation of a deeper reason. For a true basis of comparison, we must turn, not to the German university, but to the German army, and then back again to the citizen soldiery of the United States. On a peace footing, if academic progress be the end in question, there appears to be no reason why a body of academic teachers, presumably men of culture and of experience in academic affairs, should not be able to govern an educationalinstitution both efficiently and progressively under the presiding direction of one of their number responsible to themselves. Nor may we see why any scholar should be disinclined to interrupt his studies for a term to assume the office. But for an aggressive campaign against the state-treasury, or the pockets of the wealthy, or a raid upon the constituency of a rival institution, such a form of organization would be as little fitted as our National Guard for an invasion of Canada. A campaign of conquest calls for the autocratic powers of a captain of industry.
In institutions of established reputation, the tradition of culture is usually strong enough to demand that the president be a scholar and a man of distinction—though he need not be a conspicuous illustration of the theory that familiarity with the artsemollit mores, nec sinit esse feros. A glance, however, at what is expected of the president in the great majority of colleges and universities will convince one that it is easier for the rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for the president to live up to the ideal of a scholar and a gentleman. It will also help to account for the number of strange and even grotesque characters which have figured in the office. Every one has known college presidents whose personality would suggest the politician, the promoter, the theatrical manager, or the quack-doctor—anything rather than the head of an institution of learning. When a professor is elevated to the presidency, he ceases to be a teacher, and becomes an "educator" (with a longo). The duties of the office leave no time, as a rule, either for teaching or for study—for which, doubtless, those who have been "training" for the office are often grateful. The result is that the educational manager is usually far removed from the realities of education. And, indeed, the last thing of which our college presidents are expected to have any personal knowledge is the courses that are given in their institution and the ideas of the instructor who is givingthem. What is chiefly demanded of them is "executive ability," especially that kind of which the chief ingredient is a histrionic capacity for attracting attention.
Thus the duties of the office are only remotely academic. On the side of internal administration, the first duty of the president is to swell the volume of "life" by a paternal encouragement, mingled at times with insistence, of all the organizations representing "student interests"—those athletic, first of all, but then the countless other societies, religious, social, dramatic, musical, terpsichorean, journalistic, forensic, or what not, which give a tone of "vitality" to our academic life (or, as you may choose to put it, make a howling wilderness of the academic halls); and among which the literary society of the older days is the least considered. If college life is to yield material for publicity nothing should be left to the student's spontaneity; on the other hand, the modern college student is apt to blame the administration if he is backward in making friends or fails to make a place for himself among his fellows. On the side of external administration, the duties of the president may be summed up in the two words, money and publicity. To procure the first of these, he is expected to make himself acceptable to men of wealth; or, in the state-university, to the politicians. Those who idealize the independence of the state-university are apt to forget that it has its own seamy side. At the same time, to strengthen his appeal, the college president is expected to create a larger clientele among the public, and, for all these purposes, to organize the alumni into a compact fighting force. This means that he must be half the time traveling and making speeches. The demands upon him for talk alone are usually far in excess of any normal capacity for thinking; and it would be an extraordinary man who, under all these conditions, should preserve a high sincerity or a deeply thoughtful attitude towards life.
All of this is the outcome of an expensive "democracy,"based, we are told, upon broad conceptions of social responsibility. How far the elevation of society is involved in this democratic program I have tried to make clear. In any case there would seem to be a need for a few institutions of learning with the courage to be aristocratic. An aristocratic college (or university, as the case may be) would necessarily limit the scope of its work, in range of courses and number of students, to what it could do well upon the income at its command. Several of our academic endowments might seem to be already sufficient for maintaining a uniformly high standard of very fair scope. An aristocratic institution of learning would then be represented by an aristocratic faculty, composed of men whose life and teaching rest upon the conviction that exercise of intellect and cultivation of taste produce a finer type of man. With the possible exception of a few of the younger men, an aristocratic faculty would be made up of men worthy of the rank and salary of a full professor. In the aristocratic college or university the competition for students would be replaced by the competition of applicants for entrance; and an institution which preserved its independence by thus deliberately determining the scope of its work would have the choice of the best. Admission to college would then become what it might conceivably be expected to be, an aristocratic privilege. Of course, an aristocratic institution of learning could not hope to make a constant noise in the world. It should none the less be an inspiring and pervasive influence in the direction of a higher tone of thought and morals for all of society.
A German economist recently visiting the United States was asked to explain how Germany's policy toward industrial combinations differed from ours. He said the difference that struck him most was that Germany did not go about solving the problem through legislation in the same light-hearted way that we seemed to. Perhaps, he added, this is because the old fashioned view still prevails in Germany that laws once enacted are to be rigidly and impartially enforced. He continued, that beyond amending her corporation law to insure that actual assets should bear a constant relation to nominal capital, to impose personal liability upon promoters and directors for losses due to untrue or misleading information which they might circulate, and to punish severely all forms of unfair competition, Germany had refrained from legislating on the subject. Nothing, he pointed out, like our anti-trust act,—to say nothing of our New Jersey seven-sister laws or our pending federal five-brother bills,—was to be found in German legislation. On the contrary, he asserted, combination agreements fixing prices and controlling outputs are enforced by German courts as readily as any other contracts, and the dissolution of a combination like the Westphalian coal cartell would be regarded not as a matter for public rejoicing, but as a serious blow to national prosperity. He did not maintain that Germany had solved the trust problem, but said that her attitude was well described as one of "watchful waiting."
To American statesmen the policy of Germany must seem weak and pusillanimous to a degree. They have become so habituated to the thought that "the anti-trust act is themagna chartaof our business liberties," that attorneys-general and members of Congress vie with oneanother in the race to add fresh victims to the list of busted trusts to the credit of the dominant political party. Presidents "point with pride" to the number of prosecutions carried to a successful conclusion during their administrations. If the zeal of the department of justice seems to flag, Congress creates special committees to investigate the steel trust or other suspected combination, and thus a healthful rivalry is maintained which not only keeps the names of the "busters" prominently before the public, but supplies an unending stream of near facts for our newspapers, ever fearless champions of truth and justice.
Exhilarating as is this national pastime of trust-busting, the latest legislative proposals in Congress may well give pause even to the most ardent. Four bills have been seriously put forward which if enacted would make criminal many of the most common practices of American business men. The climax is reached in a clause in one of these measures that specifically makes it a crime for business men "to make any agreement, enter into any arrangement, or arrive at any understanding by which they, directly or indirectly, undertake to prevent a free and unrestricted competition among themselves or among any purchasers or consumers in the sale, production or transportation of any product, article, or commodity." Under this clause California orange growers who join together for the grading, packing and marketing of their fruit would be parties to a criminal conspiracy. Milk farmers who maintain coöperative creameries would be equally culpable. Labor organizations restraining the competition of their members in the sale of their labor are condemned. This bill, if enacted and rigidly enforced would make of business abellum omnium contra omnes, and bring us back to the atomic stage of our industrial development. That such ill-considered legislation will be enacted is highly improbable, but its serious proposal invites a sober reconsideration of our whole trust policy.
The first aspect of the present situation that must strike the impartial observer is the inconsistency of the policy we are adopting toward our railroads and other common carriers. Since 1887 these businesses have been subject to regulation through the Interstate Commerce Commission, justified on the ground that for them competition is not an adequate means of control, and that unless their monopolizing greed is subjected to rigid regulation, the interests of the public must suffer. That these businesses are natural monopolies of organization, that is, businesses that can be most efficiently and economically administered as single or closely combined organizations in each of the localities to which they minister, every economist would agree. Competition in rates among railroads is undesirable because it means costly and destructive rate wars that can only end in rate agreements, tacit or open.
The policy of empowering the Interstate Commerce Commission to fix rates, and thus secure reasonableness and stability, is thus sound public policy. Amendments to the interstate commerce act, giving the commission a similar power over express rates and telegraph and telephone rates, where competition is also absent or self-destructive, have been made or should be made.
But while we are committed to this policy of regulated combination of common carriers, we still apply to them the Sherman act prohibiting combinations! Without any attempt to decide or even discuss whether the combinations into which the railroads have entered (the lease of the Southern Pacific by the Union Pacific, for example) make for economy and efficiency, the Attorney-General feels compelled by the law which he is bound to administer, to search out such combinations and force their dissolution. No well informed railroad man would maintain that any benefit redounded either to the public or to the railroads by forcing the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific apart. Yet the Attorney-General congratulates himself on the achievement, and public opinion approvesbecause it is clear that the process was both costly and painful to the railroads themselves. That what is bad for the railroads must be good for the rest of us seems to be the popular logic of the matter.
The most recent triumph of the department of justice, in this field, is the forcing apart of the telephone and telegraph monopolies. That these businesses can best be operated in combination, is obvious to anyone who has given any thought to the character of the services they render. Receiving and delivering telegrams by telephone add greatly to the efficiency of the system, not only because of the saving of time, but because of the multiplication of offices from which either telephone calls or telegrams may be despatched. In many localities the same poles may be used for stringing both kinds of wires. Finally, on the administrative side, the opportunity for saving through concentration of management is considerable. At the same time that the Attorney-General was effecting this divorce, the Postmaster General was urging the advantages not only of having these two businesses combined, but of having both managed by the government in connection with the postal service. As has been well said, if the Postmaster General is right in advocating the operation of both the telegraph and long-distance telephone businesses by the post-office, the Attorney-General cannot be right in thinking the dismemberment of the telegraph-telephone combination was in the line of wise public policy.
It has long been clear to thoughtful citizens that as the policy of regulating natural monopolies is perfected, the policy of prohibiting combination in this field of enterprise should be abandoned. No such amendment of the anti-trust act is, however, included among the trust bills now before Congress! They continue to ignore the distinction between natural monopolies and ordinary businesses, and to force upon both theformof competition; although, as regards the former, the reality has long been notoriouslyabsent. Under the law as applied by the Supreme Court, it is still criminal for the railroads to enter into rate agreements. That they do enter into such agreements, however, is tacitly recognized even by the Interstate Commerce Commission, in entertaining from them a collective demand for a five per cent increase in rates. No wonder a German visitor is led to remark upon the contrast his country presents, where the old fashioned view still prevails that laws should be enforced!
As combination in the railroad, telegraph and telephone businesses is a perfectly normal economic development, conducing to the public interest rather than opposed to it, so it is far from proven that combinations among manufacturers, such as are freely permitted in Germany, are not often advantageous. The steel industry may be used to illustrate the argument. Here is a branch of business in which concentration and large scale production make for economy, until a scale of operations is attained calling for millions of dollars of capital and thousands of employees. The Carnegie Steel Company, the Jones-Laughlin Steel Company, the Illinois Steel Company, all grew up under highly competitive conditions, and each attained a gigantic size without passing the point where enlarging the scale of operations continued to make for economy in production. But when an industry is of such a character that success necessitates the investment of millions of dollars in each competing aggregation of producing units, a situation is presented where the losses due to unrestrained competition are correspondingly enormous. In times of prosperity, each producing organization expands to realize more fully the economies of large scale production. Iron and coke properties are secured to insure uninterrupted supply of raw materials; transportation facilities are acquired, since the business is so large as to require for its exclusive use fleets of vessels and special railroad carriers; blast furnaces and rolling mills are built in convenient proximity, to permit the conversionof raw materials into finished products with least expenditure of time and effort. This development is in obedience to the laws of expanding trade. If the industry is to be economically conducted, it must occur, and the public interest demands that it shall occur.
A period of depression now ensues. If each of the competing units pursues its own interest blindly, disregardful of the general good of the trade, each will compete desperately to secure the largest share of the diminished trade. Prices will be recklessly cut. It is better to operate mines and mills at low profits, at no profits, or even at a loss, than to have mines and mills shut down, the properties deteriorate, and the skilled labor force that has been slowly drawn together dispersed far and wide over the country. There is thus no limit short of actual bankruptcy to which the competitors will not find it to their interest to go so long as they remain competitors. But why should they carry their competition to such reckless lengths? Will it not be better for each and for all to produce moderately at low profits until the depression has passed, and conserve all the producing machinery for the time when business will revive, as it surely will revive, and all will again be needed? Is such combination to restrain competition opposed to the interest of the whole community? What useful purpose, after all, is served by forcing large numbers of steel plants into bankruptcy in every period of depression, with the result that the machinery for production becomes quite inadequate to meet the demand when prosperity returns, and prices are forced to levels as unreasonably high as they were unreasonably low during the depression? Instead of having steel either prince or pauper, is it not better to have steel a contented and moderately prosperous citizen at all times? It is contended that this life and death competition makes for more rapid improvement in productive methods, but does it? Under a regime of regulated combination, each producing unit is still under strong pressure to cut down its expenses ofproduction, and to make its profits by that much larger. Is there any real evidence that improvements in methods have not been introduced as rapidly since the steel trust was organized in 1901, as they were before? In that period the open hearth process has been substituted on a vast scale for the Bessemer process. The Steel Corporation has spent millions of dollars in developing its plants at Gary to the highest efficiency yet known in the industry. Its smaller rivals have been equally active. Although in many lines prices have been steadied, and run-away markets in either direction prevented, there have been as eager efforts to improve on existing methods, and to concentrate production at the points best fitted for it, as there ever were before.
There are, of course, considerations to be urged on the other side. If allowed to combine to prevent disastrously low prices, steel manufacturers will be under temptation to take advantage of the situation by imposing unreasonably high prices. "When producers reach for one another's hands, let consumers guard their throats!" If such combination is to be tolerated, it must be under the restraining influence of a strong federal commission that will enforce publicity, will prevent unfair and oppressive methods toward non-members of the combination, and will be prepared as a last resort to ask Congress for authority to prescribe reasonable prices in exceptional cases, just as the Interstate Commerce Commission has been given authority to regulate in the public interest the charges of common carriers.
The objection most strongly urged against such a policy in high quarters is that it means "regulated monopoly" and that monopoly is intolerable. There are three possible policies which government may apply to business: that of enforced competition, that of regulated competition, and that of regulated monopoly. The bill that we have criticized would enforce competition by penalizing every slightest departure from it in the direction of coöperation.This is so obviously not in harmony with the coöperative spirit of the day, that the latestpronunciamentofrom Washington declares in favor not of "enforced" competition but of "regulated" competition. Regulated competition is a policy on which all may seemingly unite, but there is wide difference of opinion as to what it will ultimately lead to. Those who consider regulated monopoly intolerable believe that in all lines of business, provided that small business men are protected from unfair and oppressive methods of competition on the part of their larger rivals, that a reasonable amount of publicity is required, and that artificial methods of bringing about monopoly are prevented, competition will remain a dominant force. They make light of the alleged economies of combination and view the whole trust movement as the offspring of monopolistic greed and the profit-hunger of the promoter and high financier. Those who believe that in other lines of business than the recognized natural monopolies, all embracing combinations would be able to produce more efficiently and therefore sell more cheaply than smaller producing units, think that regulated competition, at least for these lines, must develop in the long run into regulated monopoly. Instead of regarding regulated monopoly as intolerable they view it as natural and inevitable. While they admit that the superiority of large combinations cannot be proved from American experience, since regulated competition is only just beginning to have a fair trial here, they point confidently, in support of their theory, to what is going on in Germany. In view of this diversity of expert opinion, it would seem to be the part of prudence to give regulated competition a fuller trial before going in either for enforced competition, on the one hand, or regulated monopoly, on the other.
As a step toward a wiser solution of the combination problem, than the blind condemnation and prohibition of all combinations, which has thus far dominated American legislation, the proposal to create an Interstate TradeCommission now before Congress merits the support of all classes. Such a commission could aid materially in the enforcement of the anti-trust act, and should therefore be favored by the trust-busters. It could pass on the plans of business men before they enter upon them, and thus give at least negative aid in avoiding arrangements that might be held unlawful. Finally, it could collect the information necessary to a wise decision between our present policy of prohibiting combinations and the German policy of permitting them, subject to a policy of "watchful waiting" on the part of the government.
It is indicative of the present state of mind of our public men that the very committees of Congress which are considering the creation of such a commission, are considering at the same time measures that would largely prevent it from accomplishing the good that is to be expected from it. It is earnestly to be hoped that Congress may be induced to content itself at this time with creating a competent trade commission. If it is not prepared expressly to exempt from the operation of the anti-trust act the common carriers subject to regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, may it at least refrain from making that act odious as well as ridiculous, and leave to the Supreme Court the task, on which it is so well advanced, of giving it an interpretation that is at once clear and reasonable!