The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1893-06-12

Mr.. Gates and the Universities
State Universities are a curse. / say a curse;
a curse;-I say a curse.
So sayetil the Rev. NJ. L. Gates,
Pastor of Grace NJ. E. Church of this
city. Mr.. Gates has been treating the
public to an exhibition Of intellectual
curios for the last three or four weeks.
and. apparently, he hauled ont the
star specimen from his museum yes
terday. MIR. Gates is one of those
queer beings who begin by evolving
queer preiudices and then invent
sfacts' to suit. If he were a layman,
he would be called u crank. As he is
a preacher. his added ideas become
the subject of grave consideration,
and grave contradiction, just the same
as if this busy earnest world had not
real serious nlatters to occupy it
proitably thirty or forty hours a day.
They are a curse. because no religious or
moral restraint is put upon the yong mon who
attend them.
Oh, is there not? Well, this is i'm
portant, if true. We used to think
the moral supervision of the young
men was, if anything, rather overdone,
and as for tho religious, we would like
to hear of just Ii college, anywhere,
which was not mainly in the hands OF
clergyInen. There is our W State
university, for instance. commonly
known as Princeton College. We
hope there is religion enough about
that establishment TO suit anybody,
and as for morals, we'll it has been said
that the paternaiism of that institu-
ton went so far as to weaken its boys
power of taking care of themselves.
when it turned them out into the
world.
Mr.. Gates goes on
Our prisons today contain hundreds Of col
iege bred men, graduates OF our State uhiyersi-
ties. who have become aoscondiug bank cashiers.
forgers, and so forth, bee suse of this lack OF re :
ligious training in their younger days.
It is a most lainentable fact that
there. are q large number of ex-c clergy
men in our prisons. and it is painfully
true that plenty of the absconding
bank cashiers, forgers and the like, of
whom Nh. Gates speaks, were church
members and Sunday school gra'iu-
ates.
Far. be it from us to draw any in
furious conclusions; far be it from us
to depreciare in any way the inestim-
able value of religious and moral
training and associations. Our pur-
pose is merely to awaken Mr.. Gates to
the fallacy of prison statistics as illus
trating the origin of crime. Only
this morning, we find the following
remarkable extract quoted by a New
ark paper from an English publica-
tom
OF the murders in the United States last year,
1851 were committed by drunkards and l, 292 by
abstainsrs. which would seem to dispose of the
pet wteetotaI theory that murder is almost in
variabiy committed under the influence OF in
toxicating liquor.
The figures. it appears, ara based
upon returns in the United States cen
sus reports, Is Mr.. GATES prepared to
accept the inferenee frsm tneIn2
As a certain answer to MI. Gates
dismal preaching we desire to call
a tention to a notable passage from
an article by President THRIVING, of
Princeton. published in the current
number of the Forum. and now going
the rounds of the papers. 1t gives a
/ somewhat truer view of the work of
1.-THE American university, state and
4 sther. Here it is
l will assume til at at least a hundred millions
= people, who have lived and whose dust.
4 ngles with the common dust of this new isofl,
We not had a college training. Yet out of
se hundred millions only ten thousand have
wrought as to deserve such recognition as IS
nd in a e~yclorRdia of biography. Only ten
slsand out of ten thousand times ten thous-
Therefore only one out of every ten
#sand. But " the college men. one in every
has attained such recognition. Into one
gather together ten thousand infants and
10 ore TO college; one person out OF that
gathering will attain through some work
Esin fame. Into another group gather
Ahege men on the day of their grad ua-
out of these forty, one will attain
Son.