The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1905-04-02

| throughout the last thirty-five years
there have been few tendencies so de-
pressing as the inelination-one had al
most said the zeal-of many persons who
administer the affairs of colleges and uni
versities to solicit enormous amounts Of
money for endowment purposes. There are.
, few universities or colleges of high rank
in the union whose presidents In the last
score of years have not, by this eagerness
to get money, courted the risk of being
regarded as skilled professional beggars.
In explanation, IL not In defense, of this
course the average college president will
first admit that he has been guilty OF
this practice and then plead, in extenua-
ton of his conduct that modern condi-
lions compel heads of colleges and uni
versites to adopt this policy. Ours is ..
young country, they remind us, Its educa-
tional development none too far adj
vanceds the need for universities impera-
tive. To carry forward the work of higher
education, money-and money in constant
1y increasing announcement needs be had.
Rival colleges and rival universities, we
are told, are annually attempting more
and more in the educational field.
In the effort to get and to keep
a place in the front rank; each
university or college, as the case may
be, is required to summon all its energies.
to increase its physical equipment by
every possible means to broaden its cur
ricuum and to do everything that Is
| necessary to minister in all ways prac-
ticable to the needs of complex national
life. Industrial conditions, incident to re-
cent development and to more recent ten
denotes, impose upon colleges and ,univer-
cff tc s.Ah lad he nf
broadening thsir scope. of instruction il
not of narrowing their ethical standards in
| the effort to keep pace with the new or
der. To accomplish this great educational
| work. money Is admitted to be "the one
thing needful."
This process of reasoning adopted as
It. has been by many a college or uni
| versity president, Is at once the cause
and the result of sinister national ten
denotes and disheartening national coll
ditions. 1t reflects, as well as shapes. q
! certain ill-defined public opinion, Nance
ly, that the accumulation of money Ia
the cure-all and the end-all of mod
ern life. Fundamentally, this process
of reasoning on the part of university
men is a product rather than cause and
yet, by reason of the far-reaching influ-
ence exercised by colleges and UNIVERSE
ties, this school of sophistry-this sys-
tenn of adulterated ethics-becomes In
time original rather than reflected. That
which was primarily a result comes to be
a cause, and that which. to begin with,
was cause comes at length to be a
result. The relative Importance of crea-
ture and creator becomes transposed
The college or the university that may
have been. in the earlier stages of this
tendency. the victim of materialistic in
fuencec becomes at length the sanctuary
of Mammon worship.
1t would be difficult to state in the
limits of this article what are the rea-
sons why this unhappy tendency is re-
| markable in colleges and universities.
Primarily, the error was made of ac-
centuating too heavily the value Of
amassed millions In carrying forward the
work of the university. In too many
cases wealth rather than charact , has
| been stressed by persons who hive to
do with higher education In the rush
and flush of industrial development that
followed swift upon the civil war. the
temptation was strong to be blinded to
the lesson of that conflict. The pa
trlotic aspirations caught from the
tetanic struggle speedy passed away.
the spirit Of covetousness creeping into
every avenue of activity and dominating
the whole national life.
1t was an era of financial speculation
fortunes were made and lost over night.
| Men went to bed rich or poor and awoke
the next morning to find themselves not
famous as Byron did, but either bank
rupt or wealthy. The idols of Mammon,
once more in the world, though for the
first time in America, were set up. The
market place overshadowed the legisla-
ture. the bar the pulpit and the press.
| Evidences of wealth. vulgar and yulgeriz-
ing, and of its power. were plentiful every-
| where, and constantly growing more
abundant. The lawmaker, loosing his
dignity, as President Hadley of Yale re-
Gently pointed out dwindled in impor-
lance, becoming too often either tool of
corporate wealth, which was bad enough,
| or a pander 10 popular prejudice, which,
If possible, was even worse. The clergy
man, in synod or convention as the case
might have been, attuned his theology in
keeping with the altered social conditions.
The press. not unmindful of the main
| chance, adopted the maxim, Honesty is
| the best policy" forgetting that the man
| who is honest for that reason is not an
| honest man. In word, the ancient land
| marks set up by the fathers and to which
| the nation had been socially, relgiously
and politically moored for almost a hum
bred years, were unthinkngly removed.
| 1t may not be denied that the colleges
and universities which at this crisis were
expected to stem the torrent promptly
went with the stream Mammons most
| effective apologists were recruited in uni
versity halls. Sons of rich men were
hailed from afar by college or university
presidents with the expectation of hand
| some endowmentS. Men who. by every
consideration of right and righteousness.
should have Numbered their protest
against the evil influences at work prosti-