Morning journal and courier., 1890-05-05
THE CHARTER OF HARVARD. Some Interesting and significant Com.
 pafieOD9.

parisOns.
 To the editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 When Yale men look abroad in a spirit of comparing they always look at Harvard. That Columbia can show over seventeen hundred names on its catalogue, Cornell over thirteen hundred and even Princeton over seven hundred are facts in which they take little interest. They ought to, but they don't Comparisons, if delayed, may become odious
 The history of the charter of Yale having been presented in a pamphlet lately publish ed, the present series of papers will present the history of the charter of Harvard, that Yale men may compare and draw conclu- sions.
 from the last catalogues of the two institu- tions will not be out of place. Harvard has in all 2, 2,074 students and 217 officers engaged one instructor to svory ten students Yale has 1,477 students and 13S in- struotors. That is little less than one instructor to every ten students. Mathe- matically. therefore. there is not only very much more instruction given at Harvard, but each student gets larger personal fraction. In the colleges proper there are at Harvard
 
 one instructor to every twelve students; at Yale 736 students and forty six instructors, or just one instructor te every sixteen students. Of the two ratios tho Har- yard one is by far the better. At the Sheffield scientific school there are 343 students and thirty-two instructors; or about one instructor to every ten students. According to unanswerable mathematics, therefore, the best place for young man to get his quota of instruction, as far as Har- yard and Yale are concerned, Is at the Shelf field school. Two facts about the school are interesting. As already stated the school has 343 students. In. 1880 it had 175. Ia 1870, as well as can be made out, 1t had 113. Can any department in any of learning show e better growths The second and causative fact is both interesting and instructive. When Mr. Shef- field gave the funds for founding the school which bears his name, he refused to entrust their care to body of Congregational clergy men, but selected trustees as trustees are or- dinarly selected. This pregnant fact in the history of Yale is not recorded in the eata- logue, nor are the names of the trustees of the most aourishing department of the insti- tuition therein inscribed. Are the compilers of the catalogue afraid that a record of the soand business sagacity of MT. Shelf fields .act might serve as an ex- ample for future donors and thus cash be defected from the clericalsa The clericals deprived of cash would easily and speedily relegate themselves, or be relegated, to those acts of virtue and piety for which they were originally created and be relieved from duties of which the performance requires an intimate and secular knowledge of the world and of it's wicked doings. Or may it be that the clericaIs, on the supposition that the legislation of 1887 prevents the recurrence of act, have concluded that so excsp- tional a thing in tho history of the institution had better be ignored and forgotten! The president in his annual report cries for cash, and for unconditional cash. AS if capitalists nowadays would put cash into the hands of an irresponsible gregational clergymen for others than pres ent, particular and personal purposes, or te perpetuate names in enduring monuments. | If clericals wish to resume drawing cash from the purses of the terrified or the grateful, they must preach the terrors of hell and the beatitudes of heaven, as did Fra Apgslice | and Jonathan Edwards. Harvard has three times the productive funds that Yale has. If this one fact not enough to set men think inga But these papers are for the s'crim- 1 son" and not for the ssblue." They must | be historic and not polemic.
 To give the whole history of the charter of Harvard would be fatiguing and would not serve Yale purposes. Tho two points ot interest to Yale men are: First, how the de. nominational control of Harvard was remov- ed; and second, the autonomy of the institu l tion. That is, its relations to tho state. Thif latter question Is of interest to every college in the Union and to every state of the Union 1 REMAINDER.