Marietta daily leader. (Marietta, Ohio) 1895-1906, 1900-09-28
The Marietta Daily Leader.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2S, 1900.
Reopening the Colleges.

The reopening of the colleges at
tracts more and more attention year
by year. 1t vies with golf and horse
shows and commands wide notice
even in the thick of "a Presidential
campaign. Nor is interest in 1t con-
fined by any means to the prospects of
the football teams. Despite the popu-
lar regard for manly sports, and de-
spite much bantering upon the subject.
colleges are still recognized to be
primarily institutions of general edu-
cation and not merely of athletic
training The increasing interest in
the opening of the college year arises
partly from the noteworthy growth
and development of the colleges them
selves, partly from an increased recog-
milton of the value of collegiate culture
to all men, whether in learned profess
sions' or Gin trade" and partly be-
cause the number of college alumni in
society at large is rapidly increasing.
There are those who can remember
when a college graduate in business or
anywhere outside of the professions OF
law, medicine and theology was a rar-
ity. Now the non-collegian is becom-
ing the exception to the rule.
The development of the colleges
themselves is one of the most inter
esting features of the case. Time was
when the college was a sort Of hermit
age whose inmates were oblivious or
irresponsive to the great f1owings and
ebbings of the human tide without the
walls. Such is no more the case. 1t
ds now recognized that the scholar
must be a man of affairs, the man of
thought must be man of action; and
so the college is kept in the closest pos
Kible touch with the general progress
of the Nation in social, industrial and
even political affairs. No sooner is a
new popular want manifested or new
sphere of activity opened than the
college establishes chair of instruc-
tion or a department to deal with it.
More than one noteworthy illustration
of this fact is to be perceived at the
present moment in local and neighbor-
ing institutions. Thus the marvellous
expansion of American commerce and
The demonstrations of the fact that
this is henceforth to be one of the chief
commercial nations of the world
promptly inspired NewYork Univer-
sity to found school of Commerce, Ac-
counts and Finance, and Columbia I'm
iversity to create a similar depart
ment, while the widespread demand
for a higher grade of politics and for
a better dissemination of the higher
reforms of political intelligence has
led to the establishment of chair of
politics at Princeton.
We recently remarked approvingly
upon the good work which university
summer schools were doing in making
stronger and more intimate the rela-
tionship between the institutions of
higher culture and society at large. 1r
is of most auspicious omen that in all
departments of their work, and at all
seasons of the year, cur best colleges
and universities are doing the same
thing. They are demonstrating their
faith and practice not that men and
women are made for colleges but that
colleges are made for men and women,
for the betterment OF society and for
the advancement Of all the best well
fare of humanity. In that view of
their mission and of their work their
reopening for another year of activity
may we'll be an incident of the widest
and deepest popular concern-New
York Tribune.