doctrine was applied with telling force to the People's College at Havana, which owned nothing and was doing nothing. Irresistible arguments were urged by Mr. White for withdrawing the agricultural college grant from this institution and conferring it upon Cornell University. Other modes of disposition would require further investment on the part of the State, for the conditions imposed by the land grant allowed nothing for buildings. Mr. Cornell would place half a million at the service of the people without involving any taxation. "Rare, indeed, is it that a million of dollars is given by government for educational purposes; still more rare is it that an individual gives half a million; rarest of all is it that two such offers come together." The bill to charter Cornell University, carrying with it the agricultural-college grant, was passed April 27, 1865.

CORNELL ENDOWMENT FUND.

The agricultural college grant did not authorize the States to locate their college lands except within their own borders. In cases where there was no available public land within State limits, the Secretary of the Interior issued. land scrip entitling such States to lands outside their own boundaries, but not authorizing definite location within any other State or Territory. This measure was to avoid an imperium in imperio. To grant the State of New York nearly a million of acres of land in the State of Wisconsin would not have been good national policy. But individuals to whom the State of New York sold its land scrip, were permitted to locate the same upon any of the unappropriated lands of the United States, subject to sale at private entry at one dollar and twenty-five cents, or less, per acre," provided not more than a million acres were thus located in any one of the States.

66

So much land scrip was thrown upon the market by the Eastern States, that the price per acre soon fell to sixty cents. Before the incorporation of Cornell University New York had sold off 76,000 acres of her land scrip for about eighty-five cents an acre. In 1866 Mr. Cornell purchased scrip for 100,000 acres at fifty cents, binding himself to pay all profits to the trustees of Cornell University. It was obviously the policy of the institution to buy up all the remaining land scrip. Indeed the State offered it to the trustees in 1866 for thirty cents an acre. But there was no capital for such an investment. Mr. Cornell then came forward and generously offered to take all the remaining land scrip, 814,000 acres, at thirty cents, and allow from the profits thirty cents more to the college land-scrip fund, provided all profits in excess of that figure should be accredited to the Cornell Endowment Fund, and thus released from all conditions governing the agricultural college grant.

It was a perfectly legitimate and honorable proposition. The extra thirty cents profit per acre, which Mr. Cornell allowed the State treasury, brought up the Government fund to the full market value of the

scrip, sixty cents per acre. All profit beyond that figure was honestly due to the enterprise which dared risk private capital for a public good. Mr. Cornell's proposition was accepted by the State of New York, and he proceeded, on the advice of land surveyors and experts, to locate his scrip chiefly in the white-pine timber lands of Wisconsin, which, although at that time unproductive, promised generous returns in the future. The utmost sum which the State of New York could have realized from its land grant at the market price of scrip was less than $600,000. In consequence of Mr. Cornell's enterprise and far-sighted policy, Cornell University will ultimately draw vastly more than the income of the land-scrip fund. Whatever the future profits arising from Mr. Cornell's individual purchase, they will be added to the Cornell Endowment Fund, which now amounts to over $3,635,000.

The following figures, taken from the University treasurer's report for the year ending August 1, 1887, represent the material equipment and endowment of the University. The figures, however, do not include a number of items that have not yet been entered upon the treasurer's books, the most important of which are 163,000 acres of western lands still unsold, the President White Library, valued at $100,000, the Christian Association building, erected by Mr. A. S. Barnes at a cost of $45,000, and the additions made in 1887 by Mr. Sibley to Sibley College, at a cost not yet ascertained: Cornell Endowment Fund....

College Land Scrip Fund...

Sage College Endowment..

Dean Sage Sermon Fund.
Sibley Endowment...

Woodford Medal Fund

H. K. White Vet. Prize Fund.

Susan E. Linn Sage Fund..

McGraw-Fiske Funds

$3, 635, 000 475,000

135,000

30, 000

50,000

1, 500

500

Interest accrued to date

Real estate.

Equipment of Departments..

60,000 885,000

37,000

900,000

410,000

6, 619,000

of individuals are as follows:

Ezra Cornell

Henry W. Sage.

John McGraw.

Jennie McGraw Fiske.

Of the amounts included in the above table, the most important gifts

$700,000

350,000

140, 000

Hiram Sibley

Andrew D. White.

Dean Sage.

885, 000

150,000

100,000

30,000

757 ED, NO. 2- -9

2, 355, 000

PLAN OF UNIVERSITY INSTRUCTION.

The first steps toward the organization of Cornell University were suggested to the trustees in a report drawn up in 1866 by a committee of which Andrew D. White was chairman. In this report may be found, in outline, the main features which characterize the organization of Cornell University instruction to-day. There, in the first place, was the great idea of industrial education, or special courses in subjects related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, courses planned to meet the industrial wants of the American people, for whom the agricultural college grant was intended. There, too, was the university idea of broad and general training, in distinction from the narrow, special, oldfashioned college course, with only "a single combination of studies." This university idea was an expansion of the university system of Michigan, where, as early as the opening régime of President Tappan, began an evolution of that double combination of studies known in various American colleges as the Classical and the Scientific, but without the caste distinction for the former or the academic inferiority for the latter which at first prevailed outside of Ann Arbor. From the double combination in Michigan soon evolved the fourfold university combination known as the Classical, the Scientific, the Latin-Scientific, and the "Select Courses," now fully differentiated into a university system, beginning with junior year. Mr. White proposed not only a great variety of special departments, but also at least five general combinations, which were early characterized as: (1) The Classical course; (2) the Combined course, where Latin and German formed the joint linguistic basis; (3) the Modern course, where modern languages were substituted for the ancient; (4) the Scientific course; (5) the Optional course, which was entirely elective, or, in President White's words, "similar to that allowed American students in the greater German universities; also like the 'Select course' at the University of Michigan; and which, in both cases, has been found very successful.”

The courses above mentioned have been modified in various ways, but they were the origin of the present general courses at Cornell University, described as the course in arts, or the classical course; the course in letters, based on the modern languages; the course in philosophy, based on Latin without Greek; the course in science, without Latin or Greek, but with French and German; the course in science and letters, without Latin or Greek. In the two courses last named the modern languages are regarded as substitutes for the classics.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY IDEAS.

The corporate seal of Cornell University is a portrait of its founder, a stern man of inflexible energy, whose own motto was Firm and True." Around the portrait is engraved his most memorable saying, which, more than any other words, have been accepted as character

istic of the main idea of Cornell University: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." But those words, pregnant as they are with meaning, are vastly more significant when taken in connection with the context from the address of Mr. Cornell at the inauguration of President White, October 7, 1868: "I desire that this shall prove to be the beginning of an institution which shall furnish better means for the culture of all men of every calling, of every aim; which shall make men more truthful, more honest, more virtuous, more noble, more manly; which shall give them higher purposes and more lofty aims, qualifying them to serve their fellow-men better, preparing them to serve society better, training them to be more useful in their relations to the state and to better comprehend their higher and holier relations to their families and their God. It shall be our aim and our constant effort to make true Christian men without dwarfing or paring them down to fit the narrow guage of any sect. "Finally, I trust we have laid the foundation of an university-'an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.'"

In the inaugural address of President White, who, from the beginning, was foreordained to execute the great bequest of Ezra Cornell, there are certain thoughts which still further characterize Cornell University. Among the fundamental ideas are (1) the close union of liberal and practical education; (2) non-sectarianism, the charter itself providing that "no professor, officer, or student shall ever be accepted or rejected on account of any religious or political views which he may or may not hold," and, again, that "a majority of the trustees shall never be of any one religious sect or of no religious sect" (this great idea of religious freedom in the higher education President White defended by quoting the example of the University of Michigan, "the greatest of educational successes in our country"); (3) a living union between the University and the whole school system of New York, the charter providing that the University shall annually receive, free of charge, one student from each assembly district of the State, the appointment to be made by the school commissioners upon the basis of a competitive examination; (4) concentration of revenues for advanced education, a policy again justified by appeal to the experience of the University of Michigan.

Among the formative ideas suggested and since realized by President White are (1) equality between different courses of study, an idea first established by the University of Michigan; (2) a combination of study and honorable labor, an idea of immense educational significance in these days when excessive bounty is degrading poor students and extravagance is enervating the rich; (3) prominence of scientific studies; (4) opportunity for historical, political, economic, and social studies; (5) adaptation of the University to American needs. At the very outset Goldwin Smith advised President White to take for "general culture those subjects which are most important to the citizen and the man."

For the government of the University these ideas were adopted: (1) The regular and frequent infusion of new life into the board of trus tees; (2) student self-government; (3) student accountability; (4) a simple military organization, without harshness of discipline, under a general commandant. The best features of Dr. Arnold's admirable system at Rugby, which re-appeared at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Cornell University, were self-government, responsible government, and sovereign authority, the very elements of the English constitution. The crowning ideas of the university were declared to be: (1) "The need of labor and sacrifice in developing the individual man, in all his nature, in all his powers, as a being intellectual, moral, and religious.” It was urged that the university, while fostering history and literature, science and the arts, should "work toward some great sciences and arts which have been sadly neglected, which nevertheless are among the most powerful in developing the whole man." Among college presidents Mr. White has always stood foremost for the fine arts and for music, the last and greatest of all. Among his own gifts to Cornell University, one of the best and richest is his great and ever-increasing collection for illustrating the history of art, which Herman Grimm, of the University of Berlin, calls the very flower of history, die Blüthe der Geschichte.

The art-idea might well seem the crown of all university education, which began with the liberal arts, and tends to the fine arts, more liberal than all the rest. But, there is yet a higher idea, approaching ever nearer to Religion. It is the idea of applying the humanities to Humanity itself, or, as President White expresses it, "bringing the powers of the man, thus developed, to bear upon society." In no way can education better take a religious, a truly Christian form, than in cultivating a spirit of humanity and in improving the condition of our fellowmen. President White was the first of American college presidents to speak out for the masses. "More and more," he said, "the universities should have the wants of the great 'fourth estate' in view. We should, to meet their wants, provide ample instruction in history, in political science, in social science, in modern literatures." In the light of present tendencies in university education and in the darkness of present problems, how true are these words spoken nearly twenty years ago! If there is one demand more pressing than that of wealth for more wealth, it is the cry of poverty for help and of ignorance for light.

HISTORY IN THE PLAN OF ORGANIZATION.

If there is one idea which President White has represented more strongly than any other at Cornell University it is the idea of educating American youth in history and political science. This is and always has been the leading idea of his life, from his student days at Yale under Dr. Woolsey, and in Berlin under Ranke, Ritter, Böckh, Stahl, and Gneist, to his retirement from the presidency of Cornell University in