Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1914-08-28

Willingly, the commission has become
the tool of the Carnegie Foundation in
furthering its own ambitious projects.
From the very beginning, the trail OF
the Carnegie serpent has been upon
this State investigation, and the end
Of the trail is not yet What was at
first only little home scheme of selfish
aggrandizement has by a surprising
turn of fortune become part of vast
scheme of Carnegie aggrandizement of
national proportions.
1t is an interesting circumstance that
the one really commendable part of the
investigation, that dealing with elemen-
tary education, was only an after
thought and not at first intended to
play any part in the main game. But
it has served as an effective cover for
the attack upon the colleges. The
Carnegie scouts discovered the strategic
value of this profession of interest in
lower education, so it was seized upon
and converted to the uses of the cam
pagn against higher education.
Why the Carnegie Foundation is en-
gagged in a crusade against state-aided
colleges, nobody knows. For no eX-
PLANTATION is given 1t is an arbitrary
decree issued by the president of the
Foundation, apparently with the pur-
pose of demonstrating his dictatorial
authority, and increasing his despotic
rule over college affairs to the point of
life and death power over all small
colleges. When the little educational
broil in Vermont lifted its dust above
the horizon, the golden opportunity was
presented to secure the first conquest
in the interests of the new propaganda,
and the Foundation swooped down like
vuture upon the Vermont colleges,
confident, boastingly confident, that a
small State and weak colleges could
make no effective resistance. This
invasion of Vermont by the Carnegie
Foundation with the predetermined
purpose of wiping out the colleges, or
destroying all relations of the colleges
to the State, is as high-handed and out
rageous as the invasion of Belgium by
the German Emperor.
The official attention of the Educa-
tional Commission seems to have been
concentrated especially upon the ques-
ton whether the State owns the Uni
versity of Vermont, or the University
of Vermont owns the State; whether,
in other words, Ira Aliens original
foundation effort is to be interpreted as
tweedledum or tweededee. This futile
question has been settled so many times
that it hardly required such vast
expenditure of expert, legal and his
torical effort, and sXty-siX pages OF
learned argument in the report to settle
it again. But it seems to have beer
assumed by the commission that every
Judgment of the Carnegie report must
be deliberately indicated. Hence we
are favored with another huge mono
graph upon this minute point in Yer
mont history.
1t is to be hoped that no more energy
will, be expended in threshing the dry
straw of this dead issue, an issue tha
the people of the State never cared (
picayune for anyhow. 1t is always {
misfortune for parents of limited means
to have too many children, but Their
is no arguing with Providence, Thes'
colleges are the children of Vermont
born and nourished and reared out o
the very flesh and blood of the peopl
of Vermont, and it is not likely, ant
never has been likely, that the Stat
will take the bread out of the mouth
of two of these children merely to fattel
the third. Such an inhuman PROPOSE
ton needs only to be stated to b
repudiated 1t is now time for tn
| colleges to stand together against tn
u common enemy, to work Loyalty an
; periodically to rescue higher educatio
e in Vermont from the peril in which
has been placed by an inscription
5 foreign influence to JOIN heart and han
J.; in the effort now demanded to preserv
/ the progress and good repute of tn
X State. 49, Burlington News.