The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1880-06-09

| IL ouulIIOn W furnishing comfortable
quarters for the college community, those
worthless of fifty years ago, subscribed an
endowment fund of $4,000; for our peo-
pie of that era had begun to realize, as
European countries ad'realized genera
tons before, that higher education must
be supplemented and secured by income
from vested funds. All this was in keep
ing with the old spirit and energy that
could found school in the connections
of war, and cling to it in the distresses of
peace. Circumstances which need not be
enumerated here, produced the loss of
nearly all this fund and corresponding
reduction of students, so that in 1847-'8,
seventy-two years after the opening of
the school as an academy at Hampden
Sidney, not twenty students were on the
college rolls, nor was $4,000 of the en-
dowment paying interest.
Then it was that the third generation
from the founders of the college came to
the rescue of this imperiled enterprise
and, in the short space of fourteen months,
raised the 100000 which not only rem
dered the college permanent, but secured
it patronage number of students
which made it an efficient factor in the
education of our people.
This was agrand rally of friends at a
great crisis in the history of the college,
and was work worthy of the sons of its
heroic founders. The effect of that effort
was to secure, on the one hand, fund
which could not be alienated from the
support of the teachers in the college,
and, on the other, body of students to
be taught. 1t was a virtual guarantee
for all time, of three professors at an
annual salary of 81 200 for each professor,
and sixty students year, at the present
price of tuition, or ninety students at the
price of tuition then charged. If these
events are too recent to secure reverence,
they are, at least, striking enough to be
regarded with some good degree of ad-
miration. High hopes for the college had
been disappointed repeatedly; yet the
people, in l847-'8, with wise forecast,
and restored faith in the college, planted
it much more firmly than all their ances-
tors had done From eighteen students
in 1878, the number went up to one
hundred and fifty in 1849-'5O, and aver
aged about one hundred and forty for the
next eleven years. Then came the
deluge," and since then fifteen years
struggle with adversely.
This adversity-the greatest that ever
visited any civilized people-has affected
all our colleges, (the University of Vir-
ginia had six hundred students in 1860,
and in the struggle, few, if any, have
maintained themselves so well as Hamp-
den Sidney. The number of her students
from year to year has varied from her
average number since the war, less than
these numbers have varied in any other
college in the State-a less per cent.
In 1928 there were 1925 students in
all the colleges and universities of the
State,-the largest number since the war.
In 1889, there were only ], 338,-a loss
of 587, or 30 per cent, on all the college
students in the State. In 1928, Hamp-
den Sidney had 80 students, and in
1889, she had 65-a loss of II, or 20
per cent. Her average number of students
during the period from 1922 to this
year, 1879-'80, has been re, and the
number for this year 56,-a difference of
20, or a loss of rs per cent, which is less
than the average loss of the other colleges.
Only three of our colleges have lost less,
while five have lost an average nearly
twice this per cent. These facts ought
to be known and properly understood by
the friends of the college.
When one hears the enemies of the col
lege, or it's timid friends, croaking about
the present small number of students,
let him remind these croakers of these
significant facts, and let all remember
that the unparalleled pecuniary distress
of our people for the last seven years has
diminished the number of students in all
our colleges, and that Hampden Sidney