The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-05-28

ship of Harvard and the culture of her sons.
 "Great gifts have been made for spe- cial objects and different departments of the University in recent years, but the addition to the endowment of tho teaching force of the old College has , been comparatively small. Meanwhile students, teachers, subjects and course: have multiplied. The classics, philos' ophy, modern languages, history, math- ematics, the standard studies, have al | increased their corps of teachers. with what results?
 Pacing deficits in seven of the past nine years, the Corporation has now cut down the general expense to th' danger point, has refused the usual ad' vance in salaries and reduced the stan
 dard of salaries of new teachers until on Decemebr 14, 1904, the overseers passed this vote:
 That 1t Is the sence of this board that salaries of professors and instruc- tors should be maintained and that the
 customary and expected increase oi salary be paid in every instance, ire
 spective of any other economies. Among the statistics of salaries paid at Harvard as cited by the committed
 is the significant statement that the average annual compensation of 8 teacher in the college is $1.510. "Ir
 these days" the letter goes on to say "of increasing cost of living and oi higher salaries in commercial and in-
 dustrial pursuits. the Alumni and friends of Harvard will not allow the men who teach their boys and who fill
 their chairs of the great teachers oi
 the past to receive these meagre
 wages"
 In substantiation of the contentious of the committee of Harvard Alumni that urgent need exists for betterment of conditions of teaching in our col leges an article in the Atlantic Month 1y for May on What Should College Professors Be Paid," by a college teach CT who signs himself G. H. M, gives
 in detail the experiences of man, who
 from various internal evidences in his
 story appears not to be of the teaching
 force at Harvard. G. H. Ms financial
 circumstances, perhaps in a Western
 college town, are plainly typical He
 Is fortunate-in so far forth as a col
 lege teacher who is married can be said to be rtunate at all-in- having a
 wife who for the past nine years has
 kept itemized accounts of the family expenses. At the end of this period.
 during which the head of the family has been continuously employed by the same institution, it appears that the family expenditures have averaged to the bread winners salary at the ratio of 2.1 to 1. Only from the fact that this college teacher has a small inde- pendent income has he been able to re- main in the occupation at all. Specif- ically, the average annual expenditure of the family has been $2,794. 27; the average salary paid G. H. M during the nine years, two of which were spent as instructor. two as assistant
 professor, and the next five as associa- ate professor. has amounted to $1,32S15 Tn other words, this man whose prelim-
 mary education, as standards of mod ern scholarship go, must have repre- scented the expenditure of from s5,0O0 to $10.000 capital and of from six to eight of the best years of his life, has in return for the privilege of efficient Iy conducting his classes-for in any American college of standing a man
 must do good work else he cannot hold his position from year to year-actual- ly paid out of his own pocket $1.466.12 annually.
 In order to very specific c. H. M. in the article in question makes detailed statement regarding the fi- nances of an ideal family correspond ing to his own-one of two adults, two children and one maid of all work. Such a family as this he assumes a college teacher has a right to expect to be able to support by his own efforts. Thirty-one items of regular expenditure are set down, all of them in proportions of a character to seem to the average well-to-do American exceedingly moderate. They include such items as $6 a month for house. hold furnishings and repairs, $55 for