The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1875-07-22

lation to the geu, raj public by the facilities
OF modern travel forbids that they should |
be confined to a local, and be raised to do |
a national service. BY no means is 1t to |
be denied that these institutions have each |
a local value and are each to do local |
work-to this end were they born and to |
this end shall they live. But 1t was never |
supposed by their founders, nor is IL to be |
supposed by us or anybody else, that they |
are to do an exclusively LEGAL work Their
gates are open to all corners, near or re-
mote and they are accounted as all the |
better fitted to do home service by the in
fusion OF life into them through students
of varied culture from all sections of the
country. Shut in as these colleges were at
the start by mountain range and lake, hav-
ing none of the present facilities of travel,
their dependence was mainly upon sur
rounding towns for students And had
these towns fulfilled their original promise
of growth, and never been encroached up
on by foreign institutions through avenues
opening to them by steam and rail they would
hay furnished for our colleges in pe,petuo
SUI ply of students. But that promise was
not fulfilled, end meanwhile every home In
W. stern Vermont has been placed within a
Fl W hours ride of the Oldest and most rich
ly endowed institutions in New England.
When President Dwight, century ago,
was finding his way through the primeval
forests and new settlements, to this local
ity and giving inception to Middlebury col
lege as a local necessity, George Stephen
son was beginning to put his thought into
lines of steel, and creating that brazen
monarch which, laundering through our
valley, has presumed to question that ne
cessity. We need to keep in mind the con-
dition of things as things were when these
two colleges sprang INTO being. The stage
coach and the family carriage and the POM
mel were the instruments of conveyance.
Dartmouth college was two or three days
remote from this meridian. Williams and
| Union could be reached with no greater
| facility Yale and Harvard were as dis
tant as Oxford and Heidelburg
| ale to us to-day. In this condition
| of things it is no wonder that the christian
ministry and the churches in despair of the
state, stimulated by the echo of the wood
mans axe and the crash of the falling tree,
full Of the spirit Of frontier enterprise and
furecasting dense population singing
through this valley. accounted these col
legrs local necessities and applied their
| consecrated Drawn ut once to putting them
into being. But the steam engine, that
instrumental might which is laying its
hand with such controlling force upon the
destinies of empire the world over, has as
serted its authority in Western Vermont,
changing the location of villages and the
balance of power and our townships, ia
miliarizing the minds of the people with
the idea of travel, putting them in imme-
date proximity with the great centers of
trade and thought, and forcing upon them
the habits and artificial usages and prac-
tees of city life. The revolution is tre-
mendous to many minds is appalling.
For good or evil it has reconstructed the
whole order of New England commercial
and social life. 1t has stirred the founda-
tions of society, impaired the strength of
our churches and infringed upon the integ-
rity of the family. 1t would be strange
indeed if in the midst of these transforma-
stand unaffected. They have felt the
shock and trembled above it. Our young
men, catching the spirit OF the age, are
enamored of things seen and temporal, and
gone in pursuit of them. The compare
lively few who seek an education decry
our colleges as inadequate. Harvard or
Yale or Dartmouth are near OF hand; and
the name of each carries with it the fas-
cination of a potent charm to ayoung Yer
monter Just waking from his slumbers in
his mountain home with his eye kindling
like young eagles at the morning sun
beam. Local distance is no hinderance.
In one third the time that DIR. Eaton wai
pursuing his journey with his son Horace
from Enosburgh to Middlebury college
} fifty years ago, the young man to-day from
the same goodly town can reach, with
, more convenience If not with less expense
, the doors of any college in New England
and when he has reached them he, in point o
| time ic upa rpr homo than xyaa vOupU Ea
, ton when in college. Thus our Vernon
, colleges are suffering from that tendency
, to consolidation and monopoly which
seems to be asserting itself with the fore,
of destiny throughout the country. w,
live in an age of mastication, when grea
! things are eating up the smaller ones
when not only the larger railroad ant
steamboat companies and mercantile estab
lishments ARE extending their omnverous
magnanimity to all smaller companies an(
establishments and when the metripolital
newspaper, secular or religious, is goinl
. about like a roaring lion through the liant
, | seeking whom it may devour in the form o
Z some rural sheet but when even our owl
older and larger colleges show hankerinl
: for country diet, and willingness t,
, have served up for their tables the smalle
institutions that may chance to stand il
| tuClI way 4NOl tuCy Oh IluCu w ~
blamed for what would Yale or Harvar,
Z do for students were they circumscribe,
to their original local patronage, not per
| mitted their modern national range.
needs to be remembered that our moderl
| | facilities for travel, our postal and expires
i | systems and the telegraph, have so put dis
1 lance at defiance and concentrated the lif
. | of the nation, that no institution, journal
stic, mercantile or educational retains it
| old local Importance. Hence to groun,
q our argument for our Vermont coll, gcs OF
the old plea of local necessity Is to mis-
q the line of defense which best justice
n their continued existence. Without hav
: ing lost one iota of their local value, havinl
r home service to render more important
n and doing it all the better the more widel
. they are patronized, if possible, than eve
a before-they yet assert claim to patron
e age that has no metes or bounds Max
: either "a pent up Ctca," confined "to tn
!. necessity which the people in its neighbor
q serts, not necessity that transcends thes
b limits, 1t is thing 30 meager in deman
/. that perish 1t must and perish it ought.
l. Nor is this expansion of their fields O
i labor peculiar to Vermont colleges. Ever
r college in New England has ceased t
s plead the old local necessity argument, an
Q is asserting claim to patronage as exten
Q sive as its influence and its fame. A refer
l ence to our college catalogue will sho,
o that this claim is honored by young me
c meeting each other and on the way tray
c ersing each others paths as they gathc
e from here and there aud the remotest sec
i tions of the country at their chosen lnstitu
J, tons. To great degree this matter of dis
il lance is dropped from the reckoning. !
b this then is the changed relation of all til
Y colleges to one another and each is runnin
i out its roots and the lines of its life into til
!. country at large and has the whole coun
= try for its field, what becomes of this CON
j. plant against our Vermont institution
Q that they have the same an
d that very limited and not pop
e alous region of country to dra'