The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-03-06


 general discussion of Harvard finances following President Eliot's report and the immediately succeeding revelation of a plan, already on foot among Har- ward alumni, to raise a fund of two and half million dollars for the pur- pose of increasing College salaries, att tention has been widely called to the large proportion of unendowed profess sorships at Harvard as one reason for the constant drain upon the unre- stricted funds of the College. The dis tinction between endowed and unen- dowed professorships has undoubtedly aroused curiosity among persons un- familiar with college administration, for there is surprisingly prevalent misleading notion that the tuition fees aret,supposed to pay the costs of in- struction. Such a condition, as a mat ter of fact. exists neither in this coun- try nor in any other. Tn Germany, the State practically supports it's univer- sity professors; in England there have been royal grants and private endow- ments ever since the foundation of the first colleges; and in this country Harvard has grown almost entirely by private gifts restricted for the most part to special purposes.
 Compared with the typical English college. moreover. Harvard represents a very different development and the present need of endowed professor ships grows naturally out of this diff ference. The colleges that constitute the University of Oxford, for example, have no place in their course of in- struction for many of the subjects taught at Harvard-such as political economy, government. architecture. landscape architecture, foresty, epgi- neering and others not included in the accepted British notion of a college ed ucation. The American college thus stands in closer touch with the daily life and thought of the nation and must support not only a constantly growing force of teachers but also an extensive equipment of laboratories, apparatus and special collections.
 Funds given to the College for the endowment of existing professorships are therefore equivalent to an unre- stricted gift. for while, on the one hand, the money Is restricted to pIac- ing certain instruction On a perma- nently salaried basis, on the other it sets free the amount already being paid by the College for that particular salary. During the past year Harvard College paid In salaries for instruction $436,61936 to do which, as a. result of the deficit produced by other current
 
 equipment. 1t was necessity to draw upon the college capital. And the de- sirability'of endowed professorships Is therefore just now extremely evident not only to the corporation. but also to all other persons familiar with the reasons for this condition.
 The present list of unendowed pro- fessorsnips includes forty-three full professors-nearly two-thirds of the rnf fnc tt.- Sciences-together with an even long CT list of assistant professorships. What Is perhaps even more remark able. 1t numbers practically all the subjects that would seem most likely to have received the honor of an en- dowment long ago. And in college cir cles this matter of endowment is es- sentially something more than an as- | surance of an income; it is a special l honor held In the highest regard by men to whom many of the prizes for which other men strive are matters of | indifference and who have often de- voted to pure science. to knowledge l for its own sake, abilities that would unquestionably have given them good ly fortunes if applied to more money making activities. Cases have been known. for example, where Harvard professors have preferred an endowed chair. in which the endowment income was comparatively small but stood as memorial either to some college ben efactor or to some worthy name in the branch of learning in which the incumbent was naturally most inter- ested. to a chair less rich in tradition although carrying larger monetary compensation.
 | The memorial character and tradi- | tons of an endowed professorship are therefore it's really supreme distinc- tion; although, so far. these memorials | at Harvard have stood rather for col lege benefactors than for the famous l names in art, science or education
 The Asa Graw professorship of Syste- matic Botany is one of the few in which the name of a great scientist has been thus perpetuated, and is dis l tinctly suggestive of the kind of en- dowed professorship for which every l department of the College can fairly | be said to offer an unclaimed oppor- tunity. The Hollis professorship of | Mathematics and Natural Philosophy l founded in 1727. stands as a living re- hinder of one of Harvard most gen | erous friends in the early 18th century | twhose name also remains in Hollis | Hall, one of the oldest existing dormi- tories) and the Hancock professorshir of Hebrew and other Oriental Lan- guages. founded by the Hon. Thomas | Hancock in l763, mas the distinction of being the first chair established by any American in an American col- | lege.
 Even more important. perhaps. than this original memorial character is the | list of splendid men, longer or shorter according to the date when the profes- sorship was founded. who have already | occupied aH endowed chair-the special | character of the professorsnip giving an almost tangible reality to these fig ures of the past and making their lat lest successor very much alive to the | honor of succeeding them. To the Smith professOrship of French and spanish languages and belles lettres | one finds such names as George Tick l nor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell~-to take three names immediately familiar and there is certainly no endowed ,chair at Harvard a list of whose oc- Leupants does hot include men of far
 reaching national and scholaric i'm | portance. Yet so few are these en.