The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-03-23
A Great Western Institution

This is Charter Day. at the Uni
 versity of California, the Golden
 Vests greatest institution of learn ] ing, as it was forty-eight years ago l today that it was established by act l of the California legislature. In
 reality the university was the suc-
 cessor of the College of California, which first organized classes in 1860. | The university was opened at Berke- Hey in September, 1869, and from it's modest beginning it has developed in 1 less than half century into one of I the foremost and richest of American universities. In the number of stu dents enrolled it stands practically | tied for second place with the Un1- Xers1ty of Minnesota, and is surpass- 1 ed apprecfably only by Columbia Un- iversity. Such ancient institutions of the effete east as Yale and Princeton have less than half as many students
 as California, and it has about a ] third more than either Harvard or Cornell.
 The co-educationaI seat of learn ing at Berkeley rivals the greatest un- iverstties of the East and middle west in wealth as well as in the number of students. While State institu- tion,i the University of California has been the recipient of many private benefactions, amounting to millions of dollars. Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst, the widow of Senator Hearst, and the mother of William Randolph Hearst, has been the most liberal of the i'm stitution'ss benefactors, her gifts run ming into the millions. The beautiful university library, which cost $87O,- 000, was built by the bequest of Charles Franklin Doe, and was dedi- cated on Charter Day four years ago. The various buildings of the univer- sity, have been. declared by famous architects to be among the hand sonest of their kind in the whole world.
 The first institutions for the high CT education of youth on the Paci- fic slope were the University of the Pacific, founded by the Meth odists in 1851, and Santa Clara College, estab- 1ished by the Jesuits on the site. of the old mission in the same year. Since then dozens of colleges and un- iversities have been founded in Cali fornia, Washington and Oregon, and, while the University Of California long ago assumed the leadership, it has ambitious rivals. The University of Washington at Seatt1e3 which was body of over 4,000, considerably. greater than that of Yale: Leland Stanford, IT,, University at Pa1o AL to, Santa Clara county, has made re- rnarkab1e progress toward greatness in it's brief existence of a quarter
  gon at Eugene dates from 1872, and while it does not compare with thea state universities of California and Washington, is still a f1ourishing in stitution.
 With such institutions las these at tracting students not only from the West but from all over the world the East may well look tc it's educational Iaurels. Young as it is compared with the majority of the great uni- versailles of America. the University of California does not suffer in com parison with the best of them.
 The great successes achieved by such comparatively young instituti ons as the universities of California, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Chicago, and by Cornell in the East, prove that Americans have little respect for tr adition in educational matters. In Europe most parents consider. that a college or university that is less than two centuries old has little to com mend it, but on this side of the At Iantic there is little respect paid to hoary antiquity. The oldest univer- sity must compete on equal terms with the newest, and if the venerable institution fails to keep up with the educational procession 1t is permitted i to languish or die: