The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-26
Our Strenuous College Presidents.

From Current Literature.
 The old deal of a college president is seldom realized nowadays except in some small and lockwood institution. He was rather aged and always venerable. His aspect was spiritual. His wisdom was fixed upon the enternal verities. He was prone to deep abstraction He was a!- ways a doctor of divinity. He had cloistral air and q cloistral voice, and he was at home only when talking on philosophy, theology and metaphysics. The humanities and the classes were his realm and the realm of his institution.
 All that has changed. The university president of today is "a good mixer as the politicians say. He has the air or a man of affairs. He may be venerable. but he doesn't pride himself on the Tact and he doesn't care to look so. lie ls no longer of necessity preacher lie is not scholastic in the old classical sense. President Eliot, of Harvard, was a scientist, professor of chemistry, and author of a Manual of QuoltcatiVe Chemical Analysis" and Manual or Inorganic Chemistry before he became a president President Hadley was an expert on railroad matters, author of ? book (one of the best of it's kind) on 'Railroad Transportation, Its History and Laws" and a commissioner of sta tistics for the state of Connecticut. President Woodrow Wilson of Prince ton, was a practicing lawyer at ifst' then an expert on jurisprudence, politics. and political history; and is today more or less receptive candidate Tor presidential nomination which lie is not going to get. David Starr Jordan, presi- dent of Leland Stanford university, was a scientist, and if you are yearning for geological information, get his "Manaul of Vertebrate Animals or Northern United States or his "Food and Game Fishes of North America.' or his "Guidge to the study of Fishes, and read them There is no nature-fakng about them. President Judson ot Cii- cago university. specialized on politicai science, and when, q few years ago, ne went into active municipal politics Tn Chicago he broke all academic records in such cases by working with his party organization. President Angell of Mich iean university was the editor of an important daily paper-the Providence Journal--for six years during the period of the Civil war. He has been our minister to China and Turkey and mas served on various important governmental commissions Benjamin Ide Wheeler of the University of California, and Nieh- olas Murray Butler of Columbia, come little nearer in their specaltes, to the old college ideals. President Wheeler's speciality was philolosy, especlaly dfeek philology. but he has developed so far beyond his speciality that the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology has been trying Gin vain so far) to get him as it's president. President Butler specialized on philosophy and education. but when you see him presiding over an assembly Of any kind, you nre not reminded of cloistcrs and academic shades He is a parliamentarian from way back and he nae more the air of a bustling captain of industry than of a scholastic philoso- pher. President Schurman of Cornell has made philosophy and psychology his speciality. but, clean shaven. alert, ob- servant he has none of the abstract air of the traditional philosopher.
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