The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-24

ton, so Ine government or any eillCleHl- ly conducted American university isa
 despotism tempered by a possible dis missal Of course the ultimate sov- ereignty lies in the hands of the fellows
 or governors or trustees; but as | against the president this ultimate sov- ereignty cannot in practice be readily | invoked by any subordinate officer or set of officers, and so long as the presi-
 dents administration is regarded as
 successful upon the whole, there is
 really no one to call his acts in ques- | tion. In President Eliot of Harvard
 was probably first evolved the despotic 1 type of the university president; to-day
 no other type exists.
 This concentration of power in the l hands of single man has, of course, it's 1 advantages and it's defects; but its most
 conspicuous merit is this That under
 such a system things are actually done. 1 In European universities, where the re- /, sponsibility and the power are divided | and subdivded and where boards and committees meet and talk and deliber- ate and block each others action any | change, however desirable, must come about very slowly-so slowly, inded, as often to work serious harm to many inn portant interests In this country what ever needs to be done is done at once with swiftness and decision. The result represents the clear conviction of a single intelligent mind, which has at it's disposal those forces which can instant ly embody conviction in an accomplish
 ed fact. Perhaps the wrong thing may
 be sometimes done, perhaps a mistaken
 policy may sometimes be adopted; but,
 at any rate, something happens. There
 is no lethargy, no rusting out, no loss
 of opportunity, no wasteful, wearisome
 delays. An in this our system of uni
 versity government is essentia lily
 American, for it's organization is iden-
 tical with the organization of our great
 commercial enterprises. In it's spirit is
 is essentially a. military system sys-
 tme of quick decision and of prompt
 response.
 No other system, indeed, could in
 practice be made to work without a
 radical change of theory and violent
 break with the traditions of our educa-
 tional past. Little by little the small
 colleges-of 30 years ago have grown in-
 to immense seats of learnig, with
 thousands of students, with officers of instruction numbering many hundreds, and grouped into faculties which repre- sent the different departments of the higher learning The educational inter- ests of this great congeries of schools require the sympathy, the understand ing, and the constant supervision of one who is himself at once a scholar and an educator On the other hand, the finan- cial demands of an American university are extremely complex and insistent. The preparation of the annual budget alone, with it's thousand of items of in- come and expenditure, the classified tion of these items, the comparison of past budgets in order to make an intelli- gent estimate for the future-this task in itself is one which requires a high or der of administrative ability, together with the practical grasp of mind we'll trained in business methods. The edu. catonal function alone would seem likely to tax the ability of as ingle man. and the financial problems might also well absorb his thoughts to the exclu- sion of all else. Yet, in fact, the Amer ican university president has not only to bear both of these burdens, but he has also the cermonious duties of his office to fulfil. He must be something of an orator; he must travel from place to place at any and every season of the ! year to address learned societies of gatherings of the alumni in distant cit ies: he must be the guest of sister uni ! is expected in short to be | at everybody's beck and call while at ! the same time he is supposed to fa- i himself with each detail of the , daily life of his own institution He | must know and judge the men who car l ry on it's work, he must remove their | difficulties and adjust their differences, soothing the irascible and satisfying the and carrying off the whole thing with tact and yet with con- scientious fidelity to duty, When one l thinks of it, who can wonder if it is of- I ten very hard to find efficient presidents 1 for our universities? Is it not instead quite remarkable that there have been .ound men to discharge these complex 1uties as we know that many men are now discharging them ?-From Harper's Weekly.
 MANY USEFUL PRODUCTS ARE l