Proceedings and addresses at the inauguration of Jacob Gould Schurman, LL. D. to the presidency of Cornell university, November 11, 1892

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PROCEEDINGS AND ADDRESSES

AT THE INAUGURATION OF

JACOB GOULD SCHURMARLLD.

TO THE

PRESIDENCY OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY

NOVEMBER n, 1892

ITHACA, N. Y.

PUBLISHED FOR THE UNIVERSITY
1892

CP

'3**

HENRY MORSE STBPHCM8

INAUGURATION

OF

PRESIDENT SCHURMAN.

At a special meeting of the Board of Trustees held on Mon-
day, the eighteenth of May, 1892, the resignation of President
Charles Kendall Adams having been presented and accepted,
Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman was unanimously elected president
of Cornell University. A committee consisting of Hon. Andrew
D. White and Dr. Daniel B. Salmon was appointed to notify
Dr. Schurman. of his' election and to invite him to come before
the Board and state his pleasure. In response to the invitation
of the committee, Dr. Schurman appeared before the Board, and
in a few brief remarks formally accepted the office to which he
had been elected.

At a subsequent meeting of the executive committee of
the Board of Trustees it was decided that the inauguration of
President Schurman should take place on Friday, the eleventh
of November, and a committee of arrangements was appoint-
pointed, consisting of Hon. Henry W. Sage, Chairman, and the
following members of the Board, Robert H. Treman, George
R. Williams, and Samuel D. Halliday.

This committee decided to hold the Inauguration Ceremo-
nies in Armory Hall, Friday, November nth, at 10:30 A. M.,
and by special announcement all regular University exercises
were suspended on that day.

The academic body consisting of trustees, faculties, grad-
uate and under-graduate students were requested to meet on

10700

4 CORNEIJ, UNIVERSITY.

the campus at 9:30 A. M., the places of assembly being assigned
as follows :

Trustees at the president's office.

Faculty, instructors and officers at the faculty's rooms.

Fellows and graduate students at Morrill Hall.

Students of the law school at the Law School Building.

Seniors and juniors at McGraw Hall.

Sophomores and freshmen at White Hall.

The procession, numbering about one thousand, was formed
under the direction of Lieutenant Bell, assisted by the Officers
of the Battalion, and preceded by the University Band marched
to the Armory Hall.

Gartland's Orchestra of Albany, N. Y., stationed in the
gallery, rendered the ' 'Austrian Army March' ' while the pro-
cession entered the Hall and proceeded to seats which had been
reserved for them. The ceremonies began promptly at 10:30
A. M., and the following was the

PROGRAMME:

Music, By the CORNEU, Gi,EE CUJB

Prayer, By the REV. STEPHEN H. SYNNOTT

Music, By the ORCHESTRA

Address in behalf of the Students,

By MR. HARI<AN MOORE,
President of the Senior Class
Address in behalf of the Alumni,

By MR. FRANK H. HISCOCK, '75
Address in behalf of the Faculty,

BY PROF. GEORGE C. CAI/DWEU,, PH.D.
Reply, By the PRESIDENT

Music, By the ORCHESTRA

Address in behalf of the Trustees,

By the HON. SAMUEL D. HAUJDAY

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 5

Presentation of the Charter and the Seal,

By the HON. HKNRY W. SAGK,
Chairman of the Board of Trustees

Acceptance of the Charter and the Seal,

By the PRESIDENT

Music, By the CORNELL GLEE CLUB

Inaugural Address,

By President JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN, LL.D.
Music, By the ORCHESTRA

Benediction, By the REV. CHARLES M. TYLER, D.D.

The Cornell Glee Club sang :

" Far above Cayuga's waters

With its waves of blue,
Stands our noble Alma Mater,

Glorious to view.
Lift the chorus, speed it onward,

Loud her praises tell,
Hail to thee, oh Alma Mater,

Hail, all hail Cornell !

Far above the busy humming

Of the bustling town,
Reared against the arch of heaven,

Looks she proudly down.
Lift the chorus, speed it onward,

Loud her praises tell,
Hail to the, oh Alma Mater,

Hail, all hail, Cornell."

PRAYER BY THE REV. STEPHEN H. SYNNOTT.

Almighty and everlasting God, our Heavenly Father, who
art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and are wont to
give more than we desire or deserve ; we humbly beseech Thee
to hear us as we come before Thee to present our supplications
and our thanksgivings. Thou art our Maker — our Helper and
our Redeemer, O L/ord ! Thou by Thy living presence — by Thy

UNIVERSITY.

sympathy — by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit, dost con-
descend to help us, and we acknowledge that it is what Thou
givest us — what we receive from Thee — what Thou dost help us
to do, that makes us to prosper. Without Thee nothing is
strong, nothing is Holy, nothing is really successful, and there-
fore we come before Thee this day to offer unto Thee our pray-
ers and our thanksgivings. Especially at this new beginning
of things in this institution, at this day of inauguration of a
future which we trust may be larger and grander than even the
past has been ; at this hour may we think and realize and
give thanks to Thee for that which from the beginning Thou
hast designed for the sons of man. What a future ! What
progress ! What power ! What an inheritance of the earth
and the skies. And may we all feel, and most of all, those up-
on whose young years this future is just dawning, the true
magnificence Thou hast planned, and that we are, indeed, fel-
low workers with Thee in laying the foundations and in rear-
ing the walls of the greatness that is to be, and in making ad-
vance to that perfect manhood and that supreme dominion over
the works of Thy hands, which Thou hast showed us in Thy
Beloved Son, our example and our model. And knowing that
in this institution and other like ones Thou hast put into our
hands the instruments and tools whereby we may work out
this larger future, may we humbly seek of Thee and obtain
wisdom to use them as thou hast ordained. Especially we im-
plore Thy blessings upon him who now takes the great respon-
sibility and the most serious charge of the presidency of this
University. May he be endued with strength of body and of
soul to fit him for the work that lies before him. Make him
humble in the hour of success and give him the grace of
patience in the hour of trial. Through sunshine and in cloud
may he ever rest upon Thee. And so crown with success his
efforts in the years to come, to guide, to plan and to build.
Bless all who are in any way his helpers and coadjutors in the
work of this University. May they be guided and governed by
Thy Good Spirit in the ways of wisdom and understanding.
May no means be wanting to enable them to fulfill their de-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 7

signs, and by the liberality of heart and hand of many of Thy
servants, in the years to come, may the cherished plans of the
founders of this University become a reality. And for those
who are and are to be students here we ask Thy blessing, that
they may be both perceive and know what things they ought
to do and may have power faithfully to fulfill the same. They
are face to face with the solemn future of their lives. May they
resolve to grow in all Christian manhood, in all courtesy of
manners, in all strength and purity of conduct, and in all dili-
gence and perseverance of study, so that they may be fitted for
that work in this world which Thou shalt give them to do.

We give Thee humble and hearty thanks for the blessings
of the past, for the labor and liberality that have founded and
sustained this University, for all who have been its benefactors,
for all who have been trained here and have honored it in their
successful lives.

Have us now and forevermore in Thy holy keeping, and
open unto us in the end the gates of everlasting life, through Thy
son Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Overture — "Erl King," by Gartland's Orchestra.

ADDRESS IN BEHALF OF THE STUDENTS

BY

MR. HARLAN MOORE, PRESIDENT OF SENIOR CLASS.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Fellow Students :

A few more than a dozen miles to the south of Ithaca there
stands in those lovely hills a majestic ridge, sloping rapidly to
the east and to the west. Known to the dwellers in that locality
as the ' 'Divide, ' ' it forms for the waters of Southern New York
a grand and stately water-shed. Whenever it rains, the drops
of water falling to the one side are mingled with streams that,
by cascades and caverned ways, seek the stormy Ontario ; borne
thence by the rapid St. Lawrence to its frigid outlet they are
carried northward, and frozen and lost in the barren ice-fields of
the Arctics. But the drops falling to the right smoothly wend
their way to the majestic Susquehanna ; flowing onward through
fertile valleys and rich fields to the blue Chesapeake, laving the
shores of fair Virginia, they are borne blessing and blessed of
nature to the warm, sun-lit waters of the Southern Ocean.

Just six month ago, the trustees of Cornell took a step
that marks a decisive moment in the history of our University.
With one accord they made choice of him who was to bear upon
his shoulders the president's mantle. Did that choice fall, as
it were, to the left ? Did it fall upon a man, the current of
whose thoughts and administrative policy would flow in a di-
rection harmful to the interests of this University ? Or did it
fall to the right — upon a man, the outpourings of whose
genius would bear the destinies of our Alma Mater to fields
rich with the blessings of nature and of Nature's God ? I need
not answer that the Trustees have chosen well ; I need but say
their choice fell upon JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN ! (Great
applause.) And, Mr. President, were the choice of the Trus-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 9

tees needful of student ratification, I can assure you from the
depths of my heart that I voice the unanimous sentiment of
the entire student body when I say, the trustees' action would
have been our action and their choice is our choice !

We do not greet you to-day, sir, as stranger to stranger ;
as, for the past six years, your services have been rendered to
Cornell, where already your efforts have given fame to her de-
partment of philosophy. We rather congratulate you upon
your promotion, while at the same time our most fervent pray-
ers storm the battlements of heaven that its choicest blessings
may forever rest upon you.

It is indeed, ladies and gentlemen, a beautiful truth that
succession to the presidency of Cornell University has been
apostolic in its nature. It was Andrew Dickson White, whose
interests as he now fills an honorable position abroad, are dear
to every true Cornellian's heart, — it was our first president who
chose the second ; and it was through the efforts of the second
that were first secured the services of the third.

In passing, I desire to pay a tribute of grateful thanks to
Charles Kendall Adams, the second president of our Univer-
sity. We owe to him a debt of gratitude which no words can
repay ; and in behalf of the students I would voice the spirit
and letter of the words regarding him, which appear in resolu-
tions adopted by our trustees: "His administration will be
remembered in the history of Cornell University as equally im-
portant to the interests of the institution and creditable to him-
self ; and we tender to him as a scholar, as an educator, and as
a man, the assurances of our sincere respect and regard, with
our best wishes for his future success and happiness."

This should indeed be a day of rejoicing ; a day of rejoicing
because we know that Cornell's third president is in no wise
inferior to his worthy predecessors ; and because we know that
under his guidance is assured the continued prosperity of our
beloved Alma Mater.

We congratulate you, Mr. President, upon the manifold
blessings that have attended you ; we congratulate you upon
your past career, a fitting example for us to follow ; we congrat-

io CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

ulate you upon your efforts as a preceptor, successful to the
highest degree ; and we congratulate you upon your election
to the presidency of this University, in truth a great Uni-
versity, of a great state, of a great country. But while, sir, we
congratulate the trustees upon their choice, and you upon being
chosen, we, as students of the University, would congratulate
ourselves upon being the chiefest recipients of this blessing.
When we reflect that we are members of this great and progres-
sive University, situated in the very heart of the Empire State,
we are proud to be Cornellians ! When we look about us, see-
ing these noble structures rearing their heads heavenward and
firmly founded upon these beautiful hills, whereon the God of
Nature hath lovingly laid His plastic hand, we are proud to be
Cornellians ! But when we climb these hills and listen to the
words of wisdom as the}'' fall from the lips of our faculty,
realizing that you, sir, are at their head, and that about us all is
the strong right arm of our generous trustee body, — then, not
only are we proud to be Cornellians, but we glory in the
name !

As students under your presidency we pledge to you our
hearty co-operation and support. The University's interests
shall be our interests ; and our most earnest endeavors shall be
directed toward advancing her policy along those lines of prac-
tical progress so characteristic of her history. And when we
have laid aside our active duties here, and as Alumni have
passed into the mystic future, our interest, I assure you, will
continue unabated, our loyalty to Alma Mater undiminished
throughout our allotted lives. Then, indeed, will our love and
devotion be strong and firm ; while to our ears no rhythm will
be more harmonious, no music more sweet, than the words of
our University anthem :

" Far above Cayuga's water,

With its waves of blue,
Stands our noble Alma Mater,

Glorious to view.
I/ift the chorus,

Speed it onward,
I/oud her praises tell ;

Hail to thee, our Alma Mater,
Hail, all hail, Cornell !"

ADDRESS IN BEHALF OF THE ALUMNI

BY

MR. FRANK H. HISCOCK, '75.

Mr. President:

In the name and behalf of a body of Alumni which is
strong in numbers and serious in its aspirations and ambitions,
and above all intensely loyal to its Alma Mater, I welcome you
to the presidency of Cornell and wish you the full measure of
success in its administration.

The discharge of this pleasant part which has been as-
signed me in these exercises has been all the more gratifying
because it emphasizes again and afresh at this time for you and
them the relation and interest which the Alumni have to and
in the government of the University.

A wonderfully short time has demonstrated beyond criti-
cism or dispute the sound and enduring wisdom of the princi-
ples and ideas upon which Cornell University was founded. It
seems to me that no provision of its constitution was wiser
or more far-sighted than that one which by giving them a lib-
eral part in the management of its affairs tended to stimulate
and at all times keep alive the active interest and attention of
its Alumni. They have come to realize more fully each year that
the privileges thus conferred upon them cany the corresponding
duty of a wise and careful exercise and to appreciate, I trust,
that to them this University has a right to look for material en-
couragement and aid in the future.

In speaking for them at this time, Mr. President, I feel
that I may assure you, entirely avoiding exaggeration or mere
affability of speech, that their entire confidence and absolute
good will attend you to-day in your formal inauguration.

12 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

They will watch your administration with a scrutiny be-
gotten of the intense eagerness which they will feel for its un-
qualified and lasting success. They very possibly may differ
from and criticise it, in some of its details. They may at times
even seem unreasonable and exacting, but I believe that you
may upon the whole rest secure in the expectation of a fair and
broad-minded judgment from the men and women who graduate
from this University.

It is at once your good, fortune and peril that you assume
your office at this time. We stand at the, thus far, flood-tide
of prosperity. The present hour is rich in the realization of the
dreams and aspirations of the past. In fact we may well doubt
if any one of those who labored upon the foundation of the Uni-
versity or of those who watched them with friendly interest
dared to really hope for the results which we see to-day. Even
since it was felt that success had been actually attained the pro-
gress has been wonderful. In 1884, President White, speaking
to a meeting of the Alumni of Western New York, almost felt
called upon to justify in some way his prophecy that the results
of the next few years would exceed those of the ten years then
closing. It was still more recently that we heard the venerable
Dr. Wilson, speaking in behalf of the faculty, at the inaugura-
tion of your predecessor, dwell with pride upon the fact that
the number of students had reached six hundred and twelve.

The University stands here in the foremost rank of univer-
sities, representing in its beautiful buildings, in its multitude
of students, in its body of earnest and able professors, the la-
bors and triumphs of the past, and now we commit to you, in
large measure, to answer, ' 'And what of the future ? ' '

Not forgetting that Cornell has now reached a position
where not to progress is to retrograde ; that the brilliant and
continuous advancement and enlargement of the past few years,
which make prosperity seem almost a matter of course, in fact
increase enormously the demands upon resources and executive
management, we still look with hopeful confidence to the suc-
cessful answer by the results of your administration of the prob-
lem cast upon it. We shall look to see each year a nearer ap-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 13

proach to that complete University where all persons may pursue
under the guidance of the ablest and best minds, through the
broadest avenues, any and every branch of useful knowledge.
And, in conclusion, to draw for the future a brief compar-
ison with the past, which is so natural upon an occasion like
this : Those who attended and graduated from this university
in its earlier days cherish with a peculiar fondness and loyalty
the memory of Cornell's first president. They may not at all
times have agreed with him in every detail of university policy
but by actually witnessing, and sometimes, to a small extent at
least, by sharing in them, they learned to properly appreciate
and value the unceasing, enthusiastic and unselfish struggles
which he made for its success. His personal identity and in-
fluence were always an inspiration to a more elevated manhood
and womanhood, and to a broader and riper scholarship. You
will appreciate, therefore, that I fill the limit of good wishes
for your Presidency when I express the hope that as the basis
and reward of its successful administration you may en-
joy the same enthusiastic, personal loyalty and esteem from
those who shall come here as did your first predecessor, Presi-
dent White.

ADDRESS IN BEHALF OF THE FACULTY.

BY

PROFESSOR GEORGE C. CALDWELL.

In the discharge of the duty that has been assigned to me
by the Faculty, as its senior member, it is fitting that I should,
first of all, extend to you, sir, the hearty welcome of those
whom I represent on this occasion, to the new relationship in
which you now stand to them. You are younger as actual age
is counted, you are younger, too, in years of membership of the
Faculty, than many of them ; moreover, it is but a few years
ago that you came to us from beyond the nation's border, a for-
eigner. If for any of these reasons there might under any con-
ditions be dissatisfaction with this promotion from out of the
Faculty to the Presidency, such conditions do not exist here. I
can assure you, sir, if indeed any such assurance is needed,
that the only feeling is that of most cordial good will towards
you on the part of all your former colleagues, and of confidence
that your administration of your difficult office will redound to
the credit and glory of the University, and of all who do their
share in helping you.

It cannot be questioned that it is the sacred duty of every
member of the Faculty, as well as of its President, to do his ut-
most to maintain this cordiality. There cannot but be differ-
ences of opinion in a body constituted as the Faculty of a large
University is — every member of it supposed to be capable of
passing sound judgment on questions at issue of which he knows
all the bearings. Such men are not apt to be content unless
they know the reasons for action affecting their interests. That
you, sir, on your part will meet each one of us fairly and open-
ly on this ground, we have no doubt. On the other hand you

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 15

have a right to expect on the part of the Faculty, where there
are so many and such varied interests, contesting in a rivalry
that should always be generous, a liberal measure of forbear-
ance ; and that each one of us should be slow to let an unfa-
vorable conjecture or opinion pass on into a conviction, and
possibly open the way for unhappy disturbances of that har-
mony in spirit and purpose, which is of such vital importance
to the welfare of the University.

As President of the University you hold many relations to
the Faculty — as its presiding officer, its executive officer, its
medium of communication with the Board of Trustees, besides
sharing with it the work of instruction. Of all these functions
belonging to your office, that one which places you between the
Faculty and the Trustees may cost you as much anxious thought
as any other. It is not to be supposed, we trust, that, because
you stand officially in this relation, there is to be no direct
communication between individual members of the Faculty and
of the Board of Trustees, on subjects of mutual interest. That
the members of these two governing bodies, both engaged in
the same great work, should have no direct intercourse with
each other about that work would be an unwise policy. But
even with such intercourse freely held, a large part of the im-
portant communications from the one body to the other, or from
its individual members, must pass through your hands. The
Faculty may justly expect that every such communication shall
be faithfully and fairly presented ; and we are sure that a right so
plain and equitable will be fully and cheerfully conceded by you.

It is I may well say the misfortune of many of us to have
to call upon the Trustees at stated times for large sums of
money, not unfrequently running up into thousands of dollars
annually. It is easy for the sum total of these requests to
greatly exceed the capacity to meet them ; so there come to be
arrayed on the one hand, year after year, these demands for
more means, prompted by each petitioner's appreciation of the
great need of his own department for additional equipment to
provide for increasing numbers of students, or for a higher
range of study ; and, on the other hand, the replies that less

1 6 CORNEXI, UNIVERSITY.

must be asked for, as there is not enough to go round ; and be-
tween these opposing parties the President must stand, as be-
tween the upper and the nether millstones, to attempt the
impossibility of satisfying both.

You may indeed, sir, have encouraged us to dream of the
possibilities of our several departments, with an unlimited in-
come ; but we know too well that it will be only castles in the
air that we build on such expectations ; we know too well that
this inadequacy of the supply to meet the want must always
exist. Indeed it would not be well for the University if it were
otherwise ; any department of its instruction that should stand
still, unmindful of the possibilities ever before it for more and
better work with larger means at command, would soon be left
behind by other departments ever on the alert to grasp such
possibilities and make the best of them ; a one-sided instead
of a symmetrical growth would be the unfortunate result.
Really disastrous would it be, on the other hand, if the treasury
were not carefully guarded by its custodians against exhaustion ;
a bankrupt University would be a mortification to its friends,
deep beyond expression.

In these times when new universities are opened on every
hand, the competition becomes keener and keener for more men
and women to come forward and make use of these new facili-
ties for getting an education. But if the competition is to be for
numbers mainly, with little regard for anything else, the result
of all this activity will be but a poor gain to the country ; there
are empty seats enough already, I imagine, in many of our col-
leges and so-called universities, if more room is all that is
needed.

But these new universities are often ably manned, as well
as munificently endowed, and the competition is not for num-
bers only ; able students are sought for, as well as able teach-
ers for them ; the aim is to give a broader and a better educa-
tion on these rich foundations ; and the older universities,
whether like ourselves only just passing their majority, or
hoary with old age, must grow in the best sense of the word,
or else fall behind in this rivalry.

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 17

The live university is always growing ; but growth is not
necessarily in mere size ; a really live man may be growing, even
though he long ago attained his full bodily stature — growing
intellectually or morally, of which there may be no outward
sign to the casual observer. So we may grow, as a University,
and so each department may grow, though the traveler on the
opposite hill five years hence, or ten years hence, may count no
more new buildings than he can count now, or the summary in
the Register may show no more students year by year.

The rate of progression in the sum total of the intellectual
forces engaged in the work of the college or University
shows what the growth is there that is of the best kind, rather
than the increase in the mere weight of flesh and bones on the
forms. That it will be your highest pleasure, sir, as President of
this University to foster this higher growth, that which is of the
kind most ardently to be desired, we of your Faculty are as-
sured.

One of the soundest manifestations of this growth is the
quickening of the spirit of research. New knowledge must
come out of our higher institutions of learning ; this is in re-
ality one of the missions of these institutions, one that is too
often lost sight of in the pride of mere numbers. This widen-
ing of the scope of knowledge in these days often requires
means and appliances which only a rich university can pro-
vide ; just in proportion to its means will be the demand for
new knowledge, that the world will make of each of these great
centers of learning, of which Cornell is justly proud to be recog-
nized as one.

You are fortunate, sir, it seems to me, in beginning your
administration with a University already so big that you can
give your thoughts freely to the quality of the work done here,
and let the number take care of itself of those who come to
do that work, day by day, in its class rooms, laboratories and
workshops. There is no truly appreciative friend of the Uni-
versity who would not be fully satisfied if it made no more
mere corporeal growth, provided that it should be alive with
seekers for higher and higher culture, each succeeding year, and

1 8 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

that from its private studies, its seminaries and laboratories
there should come out its share of contributions to the world's
knowledge, and from its workshops, draughting rooms, fields
and gardens, its share of what goes to make human life safer
and happier.

That you, sir, will do all that in you lies to help this
University to accomplish its part of this great work for the
world, we happily can have no doubt.

The conditions under which you enter upon your adminis-
tration here are in some important respects unique, so far as
our own history is concerned. Our first President had to deal
with a Faculty, with whose members he had for the most part
only the slightest acquaintance ; furthermore, a new University
was here launched into existence with important novel features
in its purposes and methods, and with perhaps at least as many
enemies as it had friends. It must have been with no small de-
gree of solicitude that President White took up the leadership
along these untried paths and with untried men to support him.
How much of anxious groping in the way there was in those
first years of the University's life, only those who lived through
them can realize.

The next President assumed his office with the work of
the University in successful operation along the lines laid
down by his predecessor, a Faculty in sympathy with it, and at
any rate many more friends than at the outset ; but, like his
predecessor, he labored under the disadvantage of only a slight
acquaintance with the members of the Faculty. The success
of these two administrations is now a matter of history. The
first President left the University and the particular educational
principles that it represented, firmly established on a sound
basis ; the second left it with a broader scope and a higher
standard of education, and in a far more prosperous condition
than when he came to it.

For you, sir, the way is, we hope and believe, made easier
than it was for them, in that you already know so well those
who are to work with you, and with all the world our friends,
for the further advancement of this University to a yet higher

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 19

degree of material prosperity, and, better and more glorious
than that, to raise it to a yet higher standard of educational
work — higher work not only in all that relates to the making of
more cultured men and women as the years roll by, but also of
truer and better men and women.

May your life and our lives be spared, and abounding
health and strength be given us all, for many years of earnest,
harmonious and happy effort together, for the accomplishment
of such a noble purpose.

REPLY TO THE ADDRESSES

IN BEHALF OF THE STUDENTS, THE ALUMNI, AND THE
FACULTY, BY

PRESIDENT SCHURMAN.

Fellow- Students, Fellow- Graduates, Fellow- Teachers :

I thank you for your words of welcome, of kindly cheer, and
of generous sympathy and confidence. Uttered not only with
the grace of scholarship but with all the cordiality of friendship
they have, I freely confess to you, gratified and moved me be-
yond any power of description. A man 'is especially sensitive
to the judgment of his peers ; and, with the exception of an early
apprenticeship to business, my life, like yours, has been devoted
to the things of the mind. But there is another reason why I
earnestly covet your good opinion. It is you who constitute
the University ; in its essence you are the University.

The students are the final cause of its existence. My young
fellow- workers we are all here for your sakes. And all we
have and are is yours. Take hold then with all your organs
on the life that environs you ; and let the thews of your minds
be nourished and strengthened by the truth on which spirit
feeds. The variety of the intellectual life of Cornell Univer-
sity is itself a liberal education to those who know how to use
it. Here, while learning everything of something, you may
also learn something of everything. And with all your getting,
get wisdom. Conduct is not merely three- fourths of life, as
Matthew Arnold said ; it is the whole of life. And it is my
earnest desire and prayer that Cornell University may go

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 21

on to evolve a more perfect type of manhood, — a manhood
which, shuffling off the animal coil and fulfilling the divine
idea of man, shall attain to a sense of honor that feels a stain
like a wound, to an integrity that will not palter with the
truth, to a justice and kindliness which, in their ministrations,
go out to meet the claims and needs of others, to a gentleness
which is harsh with nothing but meanness and a tolerence that
forgives everything except hypocrisy, and to a reverence and
piety which transcending all the sublimities of Time go on to
commune with the Spirit of Life and Truth and L,ove Eternal.
Students of Cornell University ! this is your moral vocation.
To keep it constantly before you is the highest duty of your
President.

And you, older sons and daughters of Alma Mater, I have
heard your words with joy as I shall obey your summons with
alacrity. The spirit of Cornell University is mine as fully as
it is yours. And it bids us all work together for the liberal and
and practical education of the youth of all classes and profes-
sions of our people. I wish, however, to state, with all the
emphasis I can command, that Alma Mater has now reached a
point in her history beyond which further growth is impossible
without the united and cordial support of her children. It is
for you to consider how you can most effectually maintain the
University which from this time on must be so largely ne-
trusted to your keeping. Without you we can do nothing ;
with your aid all things are possible. Alumni, I appeal to you
because you are strong. Alumnae, I appeal to you because you
are quick-witted. We need the help of both. A giant's work
is before us. But through your heroism we shall triumph.

Fellow- teachers, I desire to magnify our office. We are
training minds. And, as Bmerson most truly said, ' 'the main
enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuild-
ing of a man." Methods of education, like metaphysics, must
be reconsidered by every generation. Therefore, besides teach-
ing and investigating, you must shape our educational policies.
And grave educational issues are now before you. Within the
very general limits prescribed by the charter, you must deter-

22 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

mine the constituents of a liberal culture and of a professional
training, and fix their proper relation to each other. All culture
should be humanistic and naturalistic at the same time ; but it
is no easy matter to adjust the claims of each. The humanities
are indispensable ; but the end is humanity : and it is at least
an open question whether the English language and literature are
not the most effective of all liberalizing disciplines. Cornell Uni-
versity must settle all such questions on their own merits. As
Goldwin Smith said at the foundation of the institution, it is for
Cornell "to remain uninfluenced, either in the way of imi-
tation or of antagonism by other educational institutions or
ideas." Gentlemen of the Faculty, it is your privilege as it
is your duty, to settle our educational problems in the way you
think best. The President is your chairman ; he is the expon-
ent of your ideas ; and the executor of your resolutions. But
yours is the responsibility of framing the legislation he admin-
isters.

Gentlemen, I thank you all once more for your messages.
Yet I do not misunderstand their import^ You pledge co-oper-
ation ; the work is still before us. You summon me to action ;
in your strength I say, Forward !

Music — "The Tyrolean," by the Orchestra.

ADDRESS IN BEHALF OF THE TRUSTEES,

BY THE

HON. SAMUEL D. HALLIDAY.

President Schurmun :

I cannot help on this occasion indulging in some reminis-
cences. Twenty-four years ago while a student at this Univer-
sity I became the owner of my first and only autograph album.
That album contains three names. They are the names of
three of those distinguised non-resident lecturers, who in the
early history of our University did so much to inspire every-
body connected with it. These names are, Louis Agassiz,
James Russell Lowell and George William Curtis. They have
all gone to their final home, and I have never allowed anybody
else to profane that album by writing their names upon its
pages. Curtis and Agassiz were present and took part in the
inauguration of our first President. I<ast night I hunted up that
old album. I found that Curtis and Agassiz had contented them-
selves with simply writing their names, but over the signature
of James Russell Lowell I found the following sentiment :
"I do not wonder that Ulysses longed to return to Ithaca."
That was written twenty-four years ago. It has been my good
fortune to reside continuously since that time under the very
eaves of Cornell and in that city to which every alumnus, like
the ancient Ulysses, will always long to return. Since that time
as a student, as an alumnus, as a trustee and as a citizen, I have
watched the wonderful progress of our University and its
growth in harmonious proportions from small beginnings until
now, on the occasion of the inauguration of its third president,
it seems to have become

"One stupendous whole,

Whose body nature is, and God the Soul."

It is not fit or proper, for me, at least, on this occasion, to
go in detail into the causes which have brought about this re-
sult ; nor could I in the brief time alotted me do any kind of
justice to the few honored members of our board during that
time, both living and dead, who in more ways than one have

24 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

done so much for this University. But while I am speaking for
the trustees, I may be permitted briefly and in general words to
speak to you, Mr. President, of them and about them.

Somebody has somewhere laid down the following wise
rule of action in governing bodies : "In essentials, unity ; in
non-essentials, liberty, and in all things, charity." Nowhere
has that rule of action been so thoroughly exemplified and fol-
lowed than in the Board of Trustees of Cornell University.
Differences have arisen. But these differences have been based
on honest differences of judgment among those who are inde-
pendent in thought, independent in speech and above all, inde-
pendent in action, and underneath them all was always to be
found a common purpose to be loyal and true to the institution,
whose interest it was their official and bounden duty to guard
and protect.

While I have thus spoken, boastfully perhaps, of the
Board of Trustees of which I am a member, I desire now to
contrast favorably my boasting, if such it be, with the extreme
modesty of a comparatively young man, with whom you, Mr.
President, are somewhat acquainted ; but whose merits I be-
lieve you yourself do not yet fully appreciate. I^ast May he
was suddenly and unexpectedly promoted to a very high and
exalted position. When he was informed of that fact in the
presence of the Board that promoted him, overwhelmed with
the responsibility of his new position, he closed a few brief re-
marks in the following modest, but to me almost immortal
words : "I do not know," said he, — "I do not know whether
I can succeed or not, but with God's help I will try."

I^et me here and now make a prediction. That modesty,
which is always an evfdence of genuine worth, that subdued
and earnest enthusiasm born almost of inspiration, will make
for this University a future greater even than its past.

On behalf of the Board of Trustees I am authorized to ex-
tend to you, President Schurman, their hearty greetings and
cordial welcome to the Presidency of Cornell University, and to
assure you that all your efforts to promote its interests and ad-
vance its glory will receive their hearty support.

ADDRESS OF THE HON. HENRY W. SAGE,

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES,

ON
PRESENTATION OF THE CHARTER AND THE SEAL.

Mr. President:

In May last (1892) you were unanimously elected third Pres-
ident of Cornell University to succeed Charles Kendall Adams.
On this day of your formal inauguration it is my duty as chair-
man of the Board of Trustees to deliver to your keeping the
charter and the seal of the University.

Twenty-four years have elapsed since real work under this
charter began. These years have been pregnant with results,
larger, broader and more far-reaching than most of us then
living had good reason to anticipate. Years of trial, we have
had, of poverty, of embarrassment, of labors without much
seeming result, but God's hand has always been near us and
with us and His inspiration has created faith much, caused
works many, and out of these have come crowns of glorious
fruitage. Our noble founder, Bzra Cornell, went to sleep be-
fore this fruitage came, but he had planted the seed which pro-
duced it.

Our honored first president, Andrew D. White, tilled it
twenty years with wisdom and care, leaving vigorous growth
at the roots and the top. Our second president, Charles Ken-
dall Adams, gave us seven years of his earnest life, and dur-
ing those years were growth and expansion in all ways not be-
fore known.

Under the guidance of your predecessors in office the fac-
ulty have always been able and efficient builders of a sound ed-
ucation. From the beginning, the various Boards of Trustees

26 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

have given labor without stint and without compensation, and
their hands and their hearts, their faith and zeal have ever been
constant promoters of the great work to which Cornell Univer-
sity has been committed.

A new era now dawns upon us. You, sir, succeed to
larger duties and responsibilities than did your predecessors
and their co-workers. What they built and established you
have. What they lifted to present altitude you are to lift
higher, ever higher. All are yours to strengthen where weak,
to add to, to build broader, deeper, better.

The labors of your office as President you begin to know
are vast enough in themselves to create no small tax upon
your powers. These are added to those already yours as Dean
of the department of ethics and philosophy. Your function
there of dealing with and teaching the higest problems of moral
and intellectual action is greater than the presidency — higher
than any known to me.

I know the extreme modesty with which you have assumed
these duties, and where you look for power to perform them
all. May it be given to you in abundant measure, and may
your administration of all the high trusts committed to your
charge be crowned with success equal to your own highest as-
pirations, and to the largest wants of Cornell University.

I have the honor to invest you with the charter and seal.

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT

IN

ACCEPTING THE CHARTER AND THE SEAL.

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees :

I take from your hands these symbols of the office to which
you have summoned me with mingled feelings of anxiety and
confidence. As I think of the magnitude of the actual inter-
ests of our University, and of the greater future to which the
Cornell ideal points, I am oppressed by the share of responsi-
bility you have put upon me in the management of its affairs.
The office is one that makes diverse and onerous demands upon
the incumbent ; and neither shall I escape mistakes nor you
disappointments. The confidence that supports me is not, you
will recognize, born of levity or even of want of foresight. It
arises chiefly from my knowledge of what the Board of Trus-
tees has achieved for Cornell University. In the management
of her affairs you have made a record without parallel in the
educational history of our country. The present and the future
of the University are secure in the hands of men who have
made the past illustrious. Gentlemen of the Board, you are
my hope and my stay. As you were pleased to call me to the
presidency by a unanimous vote, and as I have no desire or
ambition but to carry out the measures you devise for the best
interests of the University, I look for — and I desire now most
earnestly to bespeak — not only your confidence and support,
but even your patience, your forbearance, and your kindly
judgment. You will find many, alas, too many, occasions for
the exercise of these generous sentiments. But, if I should ever
cease to be the object of them, I should not desire to be presi-
dent. Fortunately, I have assurance of your attitude, not

28 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

only in the manner of the election, but in the kindness and
generosity with which your Board has always treated me.
And so relying upon your support, I enter formally upon the
new office. May the Spirit of L4ght and Truth whose cause
we serve, guide and strengthen us !

The Cornell Glee Club then sang :

The soldier loves his general's fame,

The willow loves the stream,
The child will love its mother's name,

The dreamer loves his dream ;
The sailor loves his haven pier,

The shadow loves the dell,
The student holds no name so dear
As thy good name Cornell.
We'll honor thee, Cornell,
While breezes blow
Or waters flow,
We'll honor thee, Cornell.

The soldier with his sword of might

In blood may write his fame,
The prince in marble columns white

May deeply grave his name ;
But graven on each student's heart

There shall unsullied dwell,
While of this world they are a part,
Thy own good name, Cornell.
We'll honor thee, Cornell,
While breezes blow
Or waters flow,
We'll honor thee, Cornell.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

MR. CHAIRMAN :

The institution which has summoned us to this
day's ceremonial is almost if not quite the youngest
member of the still too small fraternity of great
American universities. The oldest sister has already
celebrated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
of her birth. The present year is the twenty-fifth
since the opening of Cornell University. For our
years, the oldest American colleges show decades ;
and beside the venerable antiquity of their European
models we are but of yesterday. We can make no
pretense to the dignity of age, or to hereditary influ-
ence, or to sacred tradition, or to that subdued and
statuesque beauty of countenance which is born of
the travail of many generations. It may, however,
be suspected that the modern scholar, who nourishes
his spirit on the rich legacies of remote generations,
is, in consequence of a natural association of ideas,
under constant temptation unduly to exalt the past
and to admire what is old simply because it is old.
This, however, was not the habit of that wonderful
people who were the authors, and who continue to be
the unapproachable models, of scholarship and liberal
culture. Youth was the ideal aspiration, the dearest
yearning of the Greeks, from the time their litera-

30 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

ture opened with the story of the youthful Achilles
till their national history closed with the conquests of
the youthful Alexander. Cornell, I admit, has not
the stately splendor of those Old World seats of learn-
ing which thrill and almost pain the unaccustomed
sense of the American traveler. But if Cornell lacks
the transfiguring beauty of age she wears the fresh
glory of a vigorous prime. Hers is the portion of
youth — of youth with its lofty faith, its unquenchable
hope, its superabounding energy, its tingling sense
of activity, — of youth that counts not itself to have
attained, that lives not on the fading record of the
past, but on the promise of all the unrevealed and
splendid future. To have lived is good; but it is
better to feel the pulses now throbbing with the un-
tamed strength of fresh and unexhausted life.

In tracing the origin of Cornell University we go
back to the year 1862. The date stands a poor chance
of recognition just now with the Columbian Exposi-
tion before us and a surfeit of national centennials
behind. Yet that year marks the fulfillment of the
moral and intellectual promise of the nation's glori-
ous youth. The Declaration of Independence, the
noblest expression ever given to the rights of man,
remained a mere form of words till Lincoln announced
in 1862 the Declaration of Emancipation. In the
terrible years which followed the message was re-writ-
ten in blood ; but through Lincoln's first draft, which
is now among the treasures of our own state library,
the nation was purged of the foul stain of slavery and
consecrated forever to freedom. The enslavement of
man is a survival. of barbarism; civilization, by the

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 31

potency of science, makes a thrall of nature herself.
The genius of Lincoln rose to the height of the great
occasion. With one hand he smote the fetters of the
slave, and with the other he joined in a splendid effort
to subjugate nature. On the second of July, 1862,
while the announcement of emancipation was still on
his desk, he signed the act of congress, donating pub-
lic lands for the establishment of colleges of agricul-
ture and mechanic arts. This act had been introduced
into congress by the Hon. Justin S. Morrill, who after
the lapse of a generation, still adorns the senate and
whose name will live with later generations among
the noblest and wisest of our statesmen. The famous
Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the North-
west territory had declared it to be the duty of the
nation to support education, and it reserved public
lands for the maintenance of schools and colleges.
Speaking generally, there were set aside in each new
state thereafter one or more townships for higher edu-
cation, and in each township one section for common
school education. It was the spirit of this wise na-
tional policy which begot the Morrill Land Grant.
The greatest educational measure since the passage
of the Ordinance, it is a splendid embodiment of the
nation's long-cherished ideal of public instruction as
the contemporaneous announcement of Bmancipation
was the perfect fulfillment of our oldest charter of
personal liberty.

The Morrill act provided for a donation of public
land to the several states, each state to receive thirty
thousand acres for each senator and representative it
sent to congress. States not containing within their

32 CORNEIJ, UNIVERSITY.

own borders public land subject to sale at private en-
try received land scrip instead. But this land scrip
the recipent states were not allowed to locate within
the limits of any other state or of any territory of the
United States. The act laconically directed "said scrip
to be sold by said states." The proceeds of the sale,
whether of land or scrip, in each state were to form a
perpetual fund, the capital of which should remain
forever undiminished or, if diminished or lost, should
be replaced by the state. This fund being invested
in safe stocks yielding not less than five per cent, up-
on their par value, the interest was to be inviolably
appropriated by each state to the endowment and sup-
port of at least one college for promoting "the liberal
and practical education of the industrial classes in the
several pursuits and professions of life." The lead-
ing object of the college was declared to be the teach-
ing of "such branches of learning as are related to
agriculture and the mechanic arts," but other scien-
tific and classical studies" might be embraced in the
curriculum and the subject of "military tactics" was
specifically prescribed.

Such are the principal features of the college
land grant act. It is the only congressional measure
dealing with education which applies to every state
in the Union. And it must be pronounced worthy of
this unique distinction whether we consider the terms
of the act itself or the far-reaching and splendid re-
sults it has produced in the educational life and work
of the last quarter of a century. It created thirty-
three colleges and infused new life into half as many
more. And these institutions, which the liberality

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCIJURMAN. 33

of the nation animated, have become the objects of
the munificence of individuals and of the bounty of
the states. A careful estimate shows that the dona-
tion of congress has been doubled by the grateful
offerings of its beneficiaries. The states have ten-
derly cared for the seed planted by the Union. And
this was obviously the intention of congress. In-
deed the Morrill act, though national in origin, is in
the scope of its provisions and in the mode of its ad-
ministration less a system of national than of state
education. The state pays out of its own treasury
the taxes and other expenses incident to holding and
selling the land and the cost of managing and in-
vesting the proceeds. The state is under obligation
to maintain the capital of the fund forever undimin-
ished. The state has supervision and control of the
teaching, which is to be "in such manner as the leg-
islatures of the states may respectively prescribe."
And the state has one other duty — or shall I say
privilege — which though not mentioned in set terms
is clearly implied, and which has been performed by
nearly all the states in the Union. I mean the duty
of making appropriations in aid of the college found-
ed on the land grant. And congress specifically
invites and even compels such co-operation by for-
bidding the use of any portion of the congressional
grant, or of the interest thereon, for the purchase,
erection, or repair of any building or buildings.
The state in accepting the gift accepted the condi-
tions. And for the effective teaching of the sciences
and branches of learning contemplated in the Morrill
act buildings and laboratories costing millions of

34 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

dollars are nowadays indispensable in any large in-
stitution. The days when science could take airy
nothing for its local habitation are gone forever ; that
insubstantial element, however inflated, serves no
longer to even make a name !

But the college land act, besides rallying the sev-
eral states to the support of higher education, set forth
a new and indeed a revolutionary conception of the
constituent studies of a college curriculum and of the
persons to whom it was addressed. Remember that
in 1862 the universally accepted type of higher edu-
cation was the four years' course of the classical col-
lege. This course included mathematics and some-
times physics (which, however, was taught from a
text book !), but its leading aim was to impart a lib-
eral culture by means of the study of the ancient lan-
guages of Greece and Rome. Bilt for causes which
I need not stop to recite, classical scholarship never
flourished widely or struck deep roots in the soil of
the new world. English ourselves, our minds have
derived their sustenance almost exclusively from na-
tive sources. If we went beyond these, the French
interested us more than the Romans ; and by degrees
the Germans have taken the place which the Greeks
never filled. But neither this essentially indigenous
character of American culture nor this new field of lin-
guistic scholarship found the slightest recognition in
the classical colleges. And they were still less re-
sponsive, if that were possible, to another and a far
greater intellectual revolution. Of all occurrences
in history since the invention of writing none has
witnessed more clearly to the godlike quality of the

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 35

Human mind, and none has had more stupendous
consequences for man's life on earth, than the dis-
covery by the searching light of modern science of
the laws and processes of the material universe. To
the modern student, nature always an object of won-
der, shows herself also the embodiment of law, of
order, of rational intelligence. Such knowledge is
not only elevating and stimulating to our spirits, it
is a powerful instrument in our physical lives. By
means of it man has subjugated nature, so that air
and water and steam, nay, those subtle but more
potent agencies which the eye has not seen or the
touch felt, have been harnessed to bear our burdens, to
carry our messages, and in general to minister to all
our bodily wants. Science is the good angel of the mod-
ern world. As generally happens in such cases, it came
unobserved of the learned and the wise. But though
the cloistered scholar scarce heard the rustle of its ap-
proach, the common people saw the splendid vision
and rejoiced. It gave new dignity to their lives and
pursuits. Shut out from the schools of learning which
were consecrated to the minister, the doctor, and the
lawyer, the common people carried on their humble
pursuits by immemorial rule of thumb. I know there
are those who hold that the thumb has redeemed us
from the bar of simian ancestry. All honor to this an-
cient badge and organ of humanity ! But whatever the
beginning, I am sure that we shall all agree that the
goal is the rule of mind — the suffusion of life by a
moral and rational intelligence. To this end the act
of congress of 1862 was a rare and well-timed instru-
ment. Its fundamental idea, as Senator Morrill

36 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

afterward declared, was "liberal and larger education
to larger numbers." Its beneficiaries were not the
select classes contemplated by the ancient colleges,
the gentlemen of sedentary professions but the
masses of the people who with no advantage of
higher instruction, but engaged actively in industrial
pursuits and professions, were carrying on the larger
part of the world's business. To these "larger num-
bers" the act offered a "larger education." The civil
war, then in the direst year of its protracted course,
suggested one requirement of the curriculum — mili-
tary tactics. And our experience shows, as Milton
long ago saw, that a moderate amount of military
drill conduces markedly to the health and physical
development of the students, while at the same time
it fits them in case of war for immediate service
in the defense of their country. * The leading ob-
ject of the land grant, however, was "to teach such
branches of learning as are related to agriculture
and the mechanic arts," though "without excluding
other scientific and classical studies." This language
is clear enough, though it has often been misquoted
if not misunderstood. All agree that the grant was
not made primarily for the benefit of the old educa-
tion, though on the other hand the old education was
not excluded from the scope of its fostering influence.
But it is generally assumed that the object of the
new college was to teach agriculture and the me-
chanic arts. Now I have no doubt that the intention
of the legislators was to promote better farming and
better manufacturing. But the function assigned, and
wisely assigned, to .the colleges was to teach all those

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 37

branches of learning which are related to agriculture
and the mechanic arts. This program embraces, be-
sides mathematics, all physical and natural science.
Take out languages, literature, philosophy, history,
and political science and there is no branch of knowl-
edge (professional training apart) taught in the great-
est university in the world which is not prescribed
for the colleges created by the Morrill land act. And
the end of this comprehensive curriculum is "to pro-
mote the liberal and practical education of the indus-
trial classes in the several pursuits and professions
of life."

"Liberal and larger education to larger num-
bers !" Such was the commission given by congress
to the states in endowing them with grants of public
lands. In the execution of this trust the State of
New York was hampered by great and almost insu-
perable obstacles. For its distributive share it re-
ceived land scrip to the amount of nine hundred and
ninety thousand acres. The munificence of the en-
dowment awakened the cupidity of a multitude of
clamorous and strangely unexpected claimants. Never
surely was a great state so much embarrassed in
making the greatest good of so great a gift. Heaven
forbid that I should call from oblivion the jealousies,
the wranglings, the indecent tactics of the despoilers.
One thing, however, let us never forget. If the
princely domain granted to the State of New York by
congress was not divided and frittered away, we owe
it in great measure to the foresight, the energy, and
the splendid courage of a few generous spirits in the
legislature of whom none commanded greater re-

38 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

spect or exercised more influence than Senator An-
drew Dickson White, the gentleman who afterwards
became first president of Cornell University, and who
now, returned to his first love, holds for the second
time the dignity of Minister Plenipotentiary of the
United States at one of the great imperial courts of
Europe.

But the all-compelling force which prevented the
dispersion and dissipation of the bounty of congress
was the generous heart of Ezra Cornell. While rival
institutions clamored for a division of the " spoils,"
and political tricksters played their base and desper-
ate game, this man thought only of the highest good
of the State of New York, which he loved with the
ardor of a patriot and was yet to serve with the hero-
ism of a martyr. Mr. Chairman, in entering upon
the presidency of Cornell University I covet earnest-
ly the best gift of a baptism with the spirit of the
Founder. On this solemn occasion piety demands a
votive offering : and, here, by the altar sacred to the
memory of Ezra Cornell, I humbly dedicate myself
to the service of those high ends for the achievement
of which he established this university. Sir, this
vow is a digression from my theme, though not, you
will believe me, a deviation by a hair's breadth, from
my thought and intention. When the legislature of
the State of New York was called upon to make some
disposition of the congressional grant, Ezra Cornell
sat in the senate. A man of striking presence, tall,
muscular, of rugged features, with high cheek bones,
a firm-set mouth, a strong but unruffled brow, he
looked out upon the world with a steady eye of de-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 39

liberate blue, wearing always a grave, almost stern
expression of countenance, and showing a reticence
and coldness of manner which strangers took for in-
grained hardness but which friends knew to be the
superficial mask of kindness and charity unexampled.
A pious man, he held converse with the realms of
faith and imagination, not in any conventional way,
but with the fruitful inspiration that goodness and in-
telligence, to which our race is called, must ultimate-
ly triumph in the world. Accordingly he lived much
in the future ; and all who knew him agree that he
possessed a miraculous gift of foresight — a power of
divination that illuminated the foreground of his work
with the light of its distant, still uncreated perspec-
tive. A courageous, independent soul, he was as pa-
tiently persevering and inflexible as he was restlessly
active. Already verging towards sixty, he had known
in the long course of his life many varieties of voca-
tion and many vicissitudes of fortune. Farmer, pot-
ter, carpenter, mechanician, engineer and man of busi-
ness, he had stretched our first telegraph line from
Baltimore to Washington when Morse and his asso-
ciates had failed ; and full of faith in the new inven-
tion, he had, undaunted by sickness, by disaster, and
by overwhelming debt, poured the electric current in-
to the great Northwest, though capital shrank terri-
fied from the enterprise, and not a dollar could be
raised in the great city which to-day, the seat of the
World's Fair, pulsates with telegrams from every
quarter of the globe. Enriched beyond all expecta-
tion by the consolidation of his scattered lines into
the uWestern Union," he had devoted himself, in the

40 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

manner of an ancient patriarch, to the service of his
fellow citizens and his country. A snblime figure
anywhere, he seemed to the historian Froude the
most surprising and venerable object he had seen in
America. He ministered to the poor and needy ; he
cheered the sick and weary on distant battle-fields ;
he established, on the most liberal basis, a free pub-
lic library in Ithaca ; he strove zealously for the im-
provement of agriculture ; and when his fellow citi-
zens summoned him to the trust he undertook the
high responsibilities of legislation, first as a member
of the assembly and afterwards as a member of the
senate. Proud of his state he served her with the
fidelity and zeal of an ancient Roman. Of his minor
legislative achievements I shall not speak. One act,
however, has made his name as immortal as the state
it glorified. By a gift of half a million dollars (a vast
sum in 1865, the last year of the war !) he rescued
for the higher education of New York the undivided
grant of congress ; and with the united endowments
he induced the legislature to establish, not merely a
college of applied science but a great modern univer-
sity— "an institution," according to his own admirable
definition, "where any person can find instruction in
any study." It was a high and daring aspiration to
crown the educational system of our imperial state with
an organ of universal knowledge, a nursery of every
science and of all scholarship, an instrument of liberal
culture and of practical utility to all classes of our peo-
ple. This was, however, the end ; and to secure it Ezra
Cornell added to his original gift new donations of
land, of buildings, and of money. He approved himself

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 41

an educational reformer and practical philanthropist
who came to serve the state ; but though we who see
the fulfillment recognize the sanity and purity of his
dream, the men of his own time, if they did not think
him visionary, accused him of planning to rob the
state" and mulcted him twenty-five thousand dollars
for the patriot's privilege of giving half a million.

Libel and contumely is the reward the world
gives its benefactors. Ezra Cornell endured the com-
mon lot of these exalted spirits. But the congres-
sional grant was saved from partition ; and the people
of New York saw a new type of university arise in
their midst, — the first in the history of education, —
an institution embracing the entire range of human
knowledge and attainment and opening its doors to
young men (and women too) who craved the light
and power of intelligence for any purpose whatever,
whether to live or to make a living ; — they saw, in a
word, the beginnings of a People's University.

But one danger threatened this latest birth of
time. The act of congress donating land scrip re-
quired the states to sell it. The markets were imme-
diately glutted. Prices fell. New York was selling
at an average price of fifty cents an acre. Her princely
domain would bring at this rate less than half a mil-
lion dollars ! Was the splendid donation to issue in
such disaster ? If it could be held till the war was
over, till immigration opened up the Northwest, it
would be worth five times five hundred thousand dol-
lars ! So at least thought one far-seeing man in the
State of New York. And this man of foresight had
the heart to conceive, the wisdom to devise, and the

42 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

courage to execute — he alone in all the states — a
plan for saving to his state the future value of the
lands donated by congress. Bzra Cornell made that
wonderful and dramatic contract with the State of
New York ! He bound himself to purchase at the
rate of sixty cents per acre the entire right of the
commonwealth to the scrip, still unsold ; and with the
scrip, thus purchased by him as an individual he
agreed to select and locate the lands it represented,
to pay the taxes, to guard against trespasses and de-
fend from fires, to the end that within twenty years
when values had appreciated he might sell the land
and turn into the treasury of the State of New York
for the support of Cornell University the entire net
proceeds of the enterprise. In the peaceful annals of
history I know no grander act of patriotism and of
statesmanship. Within a few years Ezra Cornell had
located over half a million acres of superior pine land
in the Northwestern states, principally in Wisconsin.
Under bonds to the State of New York to do the
state's work he had spent about $600,000 of his own
cash to carry out the trust committed to him by the
state, when, alas, in the crisis of 1874, fortune and
credit sank exhausted and death came to free the
martyr-patriot from his bonds.

The seven years that followed were the darkest
in our history. Even at this day the official reports
of the board are more moving than any tragedy. It
was the struggle of brave men against impending
ruin and appalling disaster. With the consent of the
state the board of trustees had taken the lands loca-
ted by Ezra Cornell, assumed his obligations, and

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 43

bound themselves to carry out his contract. It was a
period of great commercial and financial depression.
There was no demand for land. On the other hand,
nearly all the available funds of the university were
in the land grant. Up to June, 1 88 1, the proceeds
from the sale of the lands were less than the cost of
carrying the lands ; and the cost had reached the
enormous figure of a million dollars. The very ex-
istence of the university was in danger. The num-
ber of students fell to 320. There was no money to
pay even the beggarly salaries the professors nomin-
ally received. With debt at the door, and bankruptcy
not far off, it was no wonder that a majority of the
board was willing to sell the lands for a million dol-
lars. But as it is written, " those who believe shall
not make haste." And there presided over the delib-
erations of the board a man who to the gifts of su-
perior judgment, imagination, enthusiasm and con-
viction added the acquirement of a great practical
experience in the management of pine lands. In full
view of inevitable catastrophe this leader and coun-
selor set his face like flint against the sale of the lands.
You, sir, were the Fabius who saved the university !
Captain of our salvation, all hail ! Ezra Cornell was
our founder ; Henry W. Sage followed him as wise
master-builder. The edifices, chairs, and libraries
which bear the name of "Sage" witness to your later
gifts : but though these now aggregate the princely
sum of $1,250,000, your management of the university
lands has been your greatest achievement. From these
lands, with which the generosity and foresight of Ezra
Cornell endowed the university, there have been

44 CORNKU, UNIVERSITY.

netted under your administration, not far short of
$4,000,000, with over 100,000 acres still to sell.

Ezra Cornell's contract with the state was for
twenty years. It expired August 4, 1886, when a ten
years' extension was granted by the state. The trust
will be closed in 1896. And when the commonwealth
receives the report of the trustees, I think she will
reward a generous "Well Done" to Ezra Cornell and
the men who succeeded to his obligations. Never
was a great trust more faithfully, more generously,
and more brilliantly administered. Let me by a com-
parison bring home to your minds the nature of this
really wonderful achievement. The grant of land
made by Congress under the Morrill act to the several
states and territories amounted to 9,600,000 acres, of
which the share of New York was 990,000 acres. The
gross receipts from the sale of this land — for it has
nearly all been sold, and what is unsold may be eval-
uated— will aggregate $15,900,000, of which between
$6,000,000 and $7,000,000 must be credited to the
State of New York. In other words, the State of New
York with one-tenth of the entire grant of land has
realized from three-eighths to one-half of the entire
proceeds. The price per acre, realized from the lands
belonging to New York State is about $7 ; it is $i for
the lands belonging to all the other states of the
Union. The New England States sold their lands at
an average of 61 cents per acre ; the Middle states,
(New York excepted) at 56 cents ; and the Southern
states at 89 cents. Of all the states only eight be-
sides New York succeeded in obtaining as much as
the regular government price of $1.25 per acre for their

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 45

land ; and these eight were states in which public lands
were open to entry within their own borders. Bnt
even the most fornnate of these highly favored states
sold its lands at a price per acre much lower than
that received for the New York lands. These latter, it
is true, when managed by the state, itself, did not bring
more than the price realized by the other Middle and
the New England states. Their enhanced value was
created by the wise management of Ezra Cornell and
the trustees of the university. It is no part of the do-
nation of the Union or of the grant of the state, which
as the courts have decided, amounts to only $603,000.
Was I not justified in saying that when in 1896
the trustees of Cornell University come to render to
the state an account of their stewardship, the record
will be one of which all New Yorkers may well be
proud ? Where else can you find an example of such
splendid financiering ? And the university making
the best use of the talents entrusted to it by the state
has thereby stimulated and encouraged private boun-
ty. Its friends have, in general, been business men,
who, desiring to make the most of their money, felt
that there could be no better investment than Cornell
University. Is not this true of Henry W. Sage and
his sons, of John McGraw, of Andrew D. White, of
Hiram Sibley, of Daniel B. Fayerweather, of Jennie
McGraw-Fiske, and of the two gracious ladies who
have just presented us with the Moak law library in
memory of Judge Boardman ? Their gifts, combined
with the net receipts ¥rom the sale of lands, carry the
value of our aggregate property, exclusive of lands
still unsold, beyond $8,000,000. Of this nearly
$6,000,000 is in the form of productive funds, and the

46 CORNELIA UNIVERSITY.

residue in buildings and equipments. The university
estate embraces 270 acres. We use for purposes of
instruction sixteen buildings, eighteen laboratories,
and six seminary rooms. Our income from all sources
for the current year is about $500,000. We have over
1600 students and nearly 150 professors and instruc-
tors. Our curriculum, with the exception of courses
in medicine and theology, is so broad and compre-
hensive that it may safely challenge comparison with
the best in the world. If I may single out one part
of our material equipment, I do not hesitate to say
that our library building, with which also was donated
an endowment yielding $15,000 for the annual
purchase of books, is unapproached by any other
university on this continent. And this crowning
work, like the university itself, is a victory snatched
from apparently inevitable defeat. Cornell Univer-
sity is an embodied miracle. It has shot up a luxu-
riant growth out of a soil of impossibilities in the
short space of a quarter of a century. When the au-
thorities of New York come here in 1896 to examine
into the administration by Cornell University of the
grant of land conferred by congress upon this state,
our voucher will be the institution itself, and we shall
proudly say Si monumentum requiris circumspice!

Look now upon the other side of the picture.
New York, among all the states, rejoices, thanks to
the trustees of this university, in a brilliant and
uniquely successful administration of the great trust
committed to us by congress in the interests of high-
er education. But the very splendor of its achieve-
ment has entailed' consequences highly injurious and
even disastrous to the continued efficiency of our uni-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 47

versity. Of these baleful consequences I will men-
tion two in the hope and prayer that their blighting
influences may henceforth be counteracted and an-
nihilated.

In the first place we suffer from the popular im-
pression that Cornell University is fabulously rich.
A friend of mine not long ago signalized his advent
to the control of a great bank by writing off one mil-
lion dollars of bad debts. Confidence was shaken.
Stock fell from 124 to 116. But as always happens
when the truth is spoken, confidence speedily recov-
ered from the first shock ; and the stock of that par-
ticular bank is now selling it at 145. Ever since your
honorable board, much to my surprise, made me a par-
taker in the high trust of administering the affairs of
Cornell University, I have been oppressed by my
share of so great a responsibility ; and deeply conscious
of the limitations of my own natural ability I have
cast about with more than common pains to discover
what one so poorly qualified but so well disposed
might contribute to the noble undertaking with which
the state has charged us. Those who have hitherto
been active in our affairs might, I knew, be relied on
for the proper execution of our trust. But one duty
summoned me too. I determined to take the public
into our confidence, and to lay before the people of
the commonwealth we serve, a true picture of the
affairs of Cornell University. In obedience to this
resolution I have troubled you with figures, and more
are to follow. You know what our wealth is, and
what portion is fixed capital and what productive.
You know what our income is. But you do not know

48 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

the calls made upon it even for the maintenance on
its present basis of the educational work we already
have in hand. I say nothing here of additions and
enlargements, which indeed are imperative, because I
am to treat of them in another connection. At this
point I desire to state, without going into details, that
Cornell University is not able to meet the obligations
already incurred for the prosecution of work already
undertaken. Measured by income she is rich, as men
estimate the wealth of universities ; though for my
own part I should say that to cultivate properly all
the intellectual elements of our civilization which
ought to be represented in a modern People's Univer-
sity, she would not be rich with quadruple her in-
come. But I do not wish to measure our resources
by future calls upon them. They are inadequate to
our present needs ; worse still, they are inadequate
to our present obligations. Cornell University is poor
and needy. I wish this could be gainsaid. I wish it
were rhetorical pathos. But it is steely fact. The
board of trustees yesterday, because there was no help
for it,adopted the report of the committee on appropria-
tions. I well remember how at the first meeting of that
committee (of which I have the honor to be chairman)
a blood-curdling chill came over me when, after cutting
down all appropriations to an absolute minimum, sav-
ing $10 here and $i there, we discovered that our total
appropriations were just $36,000 in excess of our in-
come. But there was no help for it, and so the matter
stands. The myth of Cornell's superabounding wealth
will,I suppose,not stand the shock of this annual deficit!
And so I scarcely, regret it ; for with this illusion dis-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 49

pelled we shall meet, as in the past, so in the future,
wise and benevolent men — with eyes fixed on the
after ages — who for the good of the commonwealth,
the nation, and humanity, will desire to make invest-
ments in the everlasting endowments of Cornell Uni-
versity. For one I have no anxiety, no fear. The
heart behind American wealth is at bottom generous
and discerning ; and so long as money can foster in-
telligence, that heart will not suffer our civilization
to become a prey to ignorance, brutishness, and stupid
materialism. No one knows better than the million-
aire that man lives not by bread alone. And when it
becomes generally understood that Cornell is not en-
compassed by a forbidding mountain of gold, streams
of private benevolence may be expected to flow hith-
er under the constraining influence of a body of this
importance, — a body which, as it is the educational,
is also the geographical centre of our commonwealth.
The state ! This brings me to the second subject
for lamentation. Ezra Cornell and his successors, as
trustees of New York, put into the management of
the educational land grant such a wealth of patriot-
ism, generosity, and matchless executive ability, that
the state, dazzled I suppose by the result they created,
has itself done nothing. Not one cent of its own mon-
ey has ever been given by the State of New York to Cor-
nell University. This indifference of the common-
wealth is as unique as the success of the trustees.
Elsewhere, if little was realized from the congressional
grant, much was and is given by the state. In fact,
I find that, with two or three insignificant exceptions,
every other state in the Union makes appropriations,

50 CORNEA!, UNIVERSITY.

annual or special, or both, and in many cases very
large appropriations, in aid of the institution which
received that state's share of the bounty of congress.
And an unusual liberality is practiced by those states
which, instead of establishing special colleges, as-
signed their lands to large universities. But this im-
perial State of New York, which has the largest of all
these universities, has given it up to this date abso-
lutely nothing. I say "up to this date ;" for when the
people of our commonwealth understand all the facts
of the case I am sure they will not suffer the contin-
uance of this unparalleled, not to say discreditable,
singularity.

Cornell University was called into existence to
serve the State of New York. The people of this com-
monwealth are its authors, its patrons, its proprietors,
and its beneficiaries. The larger part of its endow-
ment has been derived from the lands granted to the
state by congress. For certain legal purposes two dis-
tinct trusts have been established of the funds real-
ized by the sale of these lands. One, known as "The
College Land Scrip Fund," was formed from the pur-
chase money received by the state for the sale of the
lands. This fund, which is held by the comptroller
of the state, now amounts to $473,400 ; and when the
lands are all sold there will be added $129,600, mak-
ing a total of $603,000. The other trust was created
by the gift of Ezra Cornell and the profits subse-
quently made by the university on the lands he pur-
chased from the state. It is designated "The Cornell
Endowment Fund," and at present falls little short of
$4,200,000. By a recent decision of the Supreme

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 51

Court of the United States, affirming the decision of
the Court of Appeals of our own state, it was decided
that "The Cornell Endowment Fund" belonged abso-
lutely to Cornell University, and that it was entirely
free from all the limitations and restrictions contained
in the congressional act of 1862 under which the land
was originally derived. The effect of this decision
was to throw upon the university the expense of the
management of the lands and the taxes, which at this
date aggregates more than $1,350,000. On the other
hand, "The Cornell Endowment Fund" has been used
by the trustees to build up for the State of New York
a university worthy of its people and of its primacy
in the Union. I hope the time is not far distant when
it will be universally recognized that the distinctive
function of Cornell University is to serve this state.
When that day comes, instead of higgling over the
interest which the act of congress prescribes for "The
College Land Grant Fund," New York may follow
the example set by most of the other states and care
for all our land grant endowments at a rate not lower
than five per cent. At present it occupies the unen-
viable position of being the only state that pays less
than five per cent. — and that too on the entire princi-
pal of the fund derived from the sale of the lands
granted under the Morrill act. I admit that the action
of the state has been legally competent. But I ap-
peal from legality to equity, and to the spirit of mod-
eration and practicability, and to wise self-interest and
mutual convenience. Cornell University is a very
important organ of the body politic, and why should
it alone be deprived of the nourishing life of the or-

52 CORNKU, UNIVERSITY.

ganism ? Other states have acted more wisely. The
question is, not what the state may do, but what in
justice and wisdom it ought to do. If good policy and
generosity point in the same direction, a sovereign is
none the less politic for being generous. After all,
the university is not less indispensable to the state
than the state to the university.

There is still a stronger claim, under the terms of
the Morrill act, which Cornell University must urge
upon our commonwealth. It has been shown that no
part of the funds derived from the bounty of the
United States or the interest thereon can be applied,
directly or indirectly, to the "purchase, erection, pres-
ervation, or repair of any building or buildings." On
the other hand, each state is put under obligations by
the Morrill act to provide "at least not less than one
college." This condition has been fulfilled, and its
obvious intention, by the several states, with scarcely
an exception. But the State of New York has not
provided a single building for Cornell University
which, however, it charges with teaching the branches
of learning related to agriculture and the mechanic
arts. At present the university is greatly in need of
an agricultural hall and of an addition to the build-
ings devoted to mechanical engineering, as I shall
point out hereafter ; and I consider the occasion very
opportune to remind the legislature of this long de-
ferred, but not yet outlawed, obligation.

Still my strongest argument in favor of support
from the public treasury is that Cornell is in fact the
university of the State of New York, just as, for ex-
ample the institutions at Ann Arbor and at Berkeley

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 53

are the state universities of Michigan and California.
Unfortunately our institutions could not take that
name ; for it was already borne by one of the oldest
organizations in the state. The University of the
State of New York, which is substantially the crea-
tion of Alexander Hamilton, is a unique example of
a supervisory university. It has no teachers, it gives
no instruction, it seldom (I trust I may soon say,
never) holds examinations for collegiate degrees. It
is the agency by which the state conducts its rela-
tions, not indeed with all its educational institutions,
but with those of the higher and secondary education.
This important and venerable organization, which is
in reality a department of public instruction, had a
vested right in the name, misnomer though it is, of
the University of the State of New York. And so
nothing remained for the new institution at Ithaca
but to adopt the name of the benefactor whose muni-
ficence saved for the highest educational work of the
state the undivided congressional land grant. Ezra
Cornell himself did not originate the name. And had
he supposed it might breed misunderstanding re-
garding the true relation of the university to the
state we may be sure he would have forbidden its use.
For nothing is more certain than that the object of
his patriotic benefaction was to enable New York to
establish a state university — an institution coming
from the state, freely educating the state, and depend-
ent upon the state for its support.

This, too, I cannot doubt, was the intention of
the legislature. In granting the charter of the uni-
versity, the legislature reserved to itself the right of

54 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

altering and amending it. And this right it has ex-
ercised on different occasions. Furthermore, the leg-
islature has asserted its control of the institution by
the appointment of a committee to investigate its af-
fairs. The state guarantees to the United States com-
pliance on the part of Cornell University with the
terms and conditions of the congressional act of 1862.
The university is an object of the state's supervision,
control, and ownership, as it is also the product of its
creation. And in the constitution of the board of
trustees the legislature asserted, in no uncertain
terms, the sovereignty of the state. All the high
state officials beginning with the governor himself,
who could properly be charged with the duty, were
made ex officio members of the board ; and, though
other clauses of the charter have since undergone
modification, this primary requirement has, very prop-
erly, remained unchanged. Through these officials
the state exercises a minute inspection of our affairs
and a constant control over them ; and, as though the
owner's right could not be too strongly guarded, be-
hind this intermediary body is the general supervis-
ory supremacy of the legislature. It is written in our
charter, in the laws of the state, and in the acts of
the legislature, that Cornell is the state university of
New York.

If this conclusion, which rests on a cumulative
argument that I have not time to give in detail, seem
to admit of the possibility of doubt which generally
infects that species of reasoning, I am willing to stake
the entire case on a single point which I have still to
mention. The state directs Cornell University to

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 55

give free tuition to 512 students annually, "as a re-
ward for superior scholarship in the academies and
public schools of this state." The charter of the uni-
versity does not, indeed, contain this requirement. It
provides that the institution shall annually receive
students, one from each assembly district of the state
free of any tuition fee or of any inci-
dental charges." Now there are only 128 assembly
districts ; but the state has demanded that each free
scholar shall have the right to his scholarship for
four years, and the university, in its desire to pro-
mote the educational interests of the commonwealth
has not contested the claim. Furthermore, to keep
all the scholarships full, the state has authorized the
filling of vacancies in any assembly district in which
there are no qualified applicants, by students from
other assembly districts. Instead of 128 free schol-
arships with many of them unfilled, as the charter
contemplated, we have now 512 free scholarships with
all of them likely and liable to be filled. Now what
is the value of this service of the state ?

The entire cost of educating about 1,600 students
is for the current year, apart altogether for interest
on fixed capital, about $500,000. Nearly one-third of
these students are free scholars from the State of New
York. It needs no figuring to see that New York
obliges Cornell University to contribute annually to
the good of the state more than $150,000. Cornell is
the state university of New York with a vengeance !
But though obligation is a sufficient test, unilateral
obligation can scarcely be the sole portion, of a great
public institution.

56 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

I say that if Cornell University be compared
with any of the state universities in the great and
flourishing commonwealths of the Northwest and far
West she, will be found to possess the higher char-
acteristics which distinguish them and which, mak-
ing her a true People's University, mark her off from
the other colleges of the Eastern States. Like them
she has a charter changeable at the will of the legis-
lature. Like them she has a curriculum which is de-
signed for the liberal and practical education of all
classes of the people. Like them she opens her doors
to women on equal terms with men. Like them she
gives free tuition to students from the state. Like
them she is the organ, instrument, and multiplying
centre of all the interests — material and spiritual —
embraced in the life and civilization of the state.
Like them she is free from all party and sectarian
control, diffusing her blessings without respect of
persons or regard to creed, in obedience to the act of
incorporation and under the control of the state
which ordained it. Like them she stands both for
liberal culture and professional training ; and like
them too she has enlarged the notion of "profession"
till round the once narrow circle of clergymen, lawyer,
and doctor are now grouped all those callings in
which knowledge in any way ministers to practice, —
so that agriculture, engineering, and architecture
here stand on the same footing as language, history,
or philosophy. Like the great state universities of the
West in all these respects, Cornell yet differs in one.
There the university is the beneficiary of the state ;
here the state is . the beneficiary of the university.

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 57

The State of New York, which has never contributed
from its own treasury one cent to Cornell University
demands of Cornell University 512 free scholarships at
an annual cost of more than $150,000 !

"But," it will be said, "New York assigned to
Cornell University the federal land grant." Well, I
do not know why one politic act should be a bar to
further wisdom. But let us see precisely the value
of the grant. Does it include all that has since been
realized by the university in the management of the
lands purchased of the state by Ezra Cornell ? No ; for
the courts have decided that "The Cornell Endow-
ment Fund" is no part of the congressional grant,
but is owned absolutely as it was created entirely, by
Cornell University. There remains, as the assignment
of the state to Cornell University, only "The College
Land Scrip Fund" or $473,402, on which the state
pays us annually $18,000. If the state could in any
way be credited with "The Cornell Endowment
Fund," she would be under obligations to pay ulti-
mately more than $1,500,000 for the management of
the land and taxes, and to keep the net proceeds in-
vested in good securities. It is then clear as any fact
can possibly be, that the State of New York, which
itself has never given a cent to Cornell University,
demands in return for $18,000 a year, which was
given by congress to enable us to provide instruction
in pure and applied science, the free education of
512 students at an annual cost ranging from $150,000
to $175,000.

Free education is certainly a desirable thing. I
rejoice to think of the inestimable boon which Cor-

58 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

nell University has been to the poor young men and
women in every assembly district in this state. She
has educated thousands who would otherwise have
missed the life and power which a modern university
education imparts, and to that extent she has directly
enriched the state. And if I might venture to improve
on Senator Merrill's saying, I would express the
hope that Cornell University may continue to be for
this state the instrument of larger education to larger
numbers at the very lowest prices. I look with sadness
and alarm on the growing cost of a collegiate educa-
tion. Forty-four years ago when Edward Everett,
then president of Harvard College, appeared before a
joint committee of the Board of Education of the leg-
islature of Massachusetts, to secure for collegiate ed-
ucation the support of the state, his first argument
was that the cost to the student' would be thereby
cheapened. Massachusetts, for excellent reasons, did
not grant the memorial of the petitioners. And the tu-
ition fee at Harvard, which was then $75, is now double,
and in some departments nearly treble, that charge.
The rates are almost, in some cases quite, as high in all
the larger universities to the east of the meridian of
Cornell. And this fact seems to me the doom of private
universities. To maintain their efficiency the charge
for instruction must be so high that the masses of the
people cannot afford to pay it. The great states to
the west of us have adopted the policy of cheap, or
even free, university education, the state itself bear-
ing the cost, as in the case of public schools, high
schools, and institutions of charity. With these en-
terprising commonwealths freely educating all uni-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 59

versity students that claim the privilege, New York
cannot afford to abandon the free education of at least
512. Rather, I say, let the number be increased.

But shall a great state practice injustice that she
may be benevolent ? What then is New York to do ?
Mr. Chairman, this is a grave question, if ever there
was one. And unwilling to trust my own judgment
in a matter so momentous, I have consulted the
greatest of political philosophers — a thinker who by
his marvelous insight into the American Revolution
of which he was a contemporary, has approved him-
self worthy of our absolute confidence. In my perplex-
ity I turned to Burke's great speech in the House of
Commons on moving his resolutions for concilia-
tion with the colonies. As often before I was charmed
by the resounding magnificence of his language, but
I was never more clearly illuminated by the princi-
ples it re-echoed. I learned "that magnanimity in poli-
tics is not seldom the truest wisdom ; that a great em-
pire and little minds go ill together." I shut the book.
The problem was solved ! The State of New York
must take Cornell University to her bosom. Is it
objected that the state has the right to neglect or even
to oppress the university ? I reply that the question
is not whether the state has the right to injure the
university but whether it is not to its interest to make
the university prosperous. Of what use to the state,
I should like to know, is the right to injure a mem-
ber of its own body ? From such an absurd right, I
appeal to the reason, the humanity, and above all
to the good policy of my proposal. In the name of
equity and expediency, and for the sake of her meritor-

60 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

ious sons and daughters whom we educate free of tui-
tion, I ask of the State of New York an annual ap-
propriation to Cornell University of not less than
$150,000.

No one can fail to recognize the justice of our
claims upon the state. If these claims are not imme-
diately satisfied, I shall not be disquieted, for they
are of a nature to bide the slow award of years. And
I am sure the people of this commonwealth will
eventually open their eyes to the ill husbandry of in-
justice to the state university. There are, however,
two considerations which at the present time may be
used to pervert their mental vision and to close up
their hearts to the sentiment of duty, justice, and
generosity. On the one hand, it will be said that the
state cannot afford to make such large appropriations
to Cornell University ; and, on the other, that the state
ought to have nothing to do with the maintenance and
support of the highest education. Both these argu-
ments I shall now briefly consider.

Assuming the righteousness of the claims of Cor-
nell University, and the absolute justice and expedi-
ency of satisfying them, the first question is, Can the
state afford to make such considerable annual appro-
priations to the university ? It will be admitted that
the most satisfactory mode of answering this question
is to compare the population and resources of our state
with those of sister states which maintain universities
at the public expense. New York is by far the most
populous state in the Union, having, according to the
census of 1890, a population of 6,000,000. Ohio comes
fourth in rank with a population of 3,700,000. Not to

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 61

enter into minute details, I will simply observe that
the population of New York is almost three times as
great as that of either Indiana or Michigan, three and
one-half times as great as that of Wisconsin, four and
one-half times as great as that of Minnesota, five times
as great as that of California, and five and one-half
times as great as that of Nebraska. Turn now from
population to property. The estimated true valuation
for 1880 of all property within the state of New York
is $6,300,000,000. This is twice the value of the prop-
erty of Ohio, four times that of Indiana or Michigan,
four and one-half times that of California, five and
one-half times that of Wisconsin, eight times that of
Minnesota, and sixteen times that of Nebraska. Al-
though we habitually think of the Western states as
the paradise for farmers, New York is not surpassed,
either in the value of farms or in the value of farm
products, by more than one state in the Union. And
when we come to manufactures, the value of products
is not only very high in itself, and the highest in the
Union, it is more than three times that of Ohio, more
than seven times that of either Indiana or Michigan,
more than eight times that of Wisconsin, and more
than nine times that of California.

Now let us see what these states, some of them in
comparison with New York poor and sparsely settled,
contribute to their universities. I have the data up
to 1888, and in one or two cases even later. The Uni-
versity of Michigan, whose present organization goes
back to 1837, received no aid from the state till 1867,
when it had grown to be strong, renowned, and very
numerously attended. Up to 1889 the total appropri-

62 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

ations of the state of Michigan to her university
amounted to $1,850,000. This aid consisted partly of
special grants and partly of a fixed annual tax of one-
twentieth of a mill on every dollar of the appraised
valuation of the taxable property of the state. In
Michigan the congressional land grant of 1862 was
not given to the university but to the agricultural col-
lege, which had been opened in 1856. And this institu-
tion has also received legislative appropriations which
at this date amount to over $900,000.

In Wisconsin, as in New York, the colleges of ag-
riculture and mechanic arts are a part of the state uni-
versity. And for some years the university had the
same fate as Cornell. Though enjoying the income
of the congressional grant (as also of the state semi-
nary lands) she did not receive a dollar from the pub-
lic treasury till 1870, when the legislature gallantly
entered upon its new and splendid educational career
by appropriating $50,000 for the erection of a ladies'
college. Not satisfied, however, with irregular contri-
butions, the legislature enacted in 1878 that there
should be levied and collected annually for the income
of the university, a tax of one-tenth of one mill on each
dollar of the assessed valuation of taxable property of
the state ; and this tax has since been raised to nine-
fortieths of a mill. This tax at present produces
between $70,000 and $80,000 a year. But the legis-
lature has supplemented it by special appropriations.
For example, it granted, between 1885 and 1888,
$350,000 for buildings, apparatus, and cabinets. One
other act I shall mention not for the magnitude, but
for the wisdom, of the appropriations. In 1889 the leg-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 63

islature passed an act appropriating annually the snm
of $ 1,000 to aid in maintaining a summer school for
teachers in connection with the university.

I regret that time does not permit me to give even
a short account of the evolution of the duty of pub-
licly supporting their universities in other Western
states. I know of no sentiment of so late a growth
which has attained such strength and efficiency. In
Minnesota, the university, to which in 1868 was as-
signed the income of the congressional land grant, has
received from the legislature special appropriations
which, up to July 31, 1888, amounted to about $600,000;
and the regular annual appropriation is now $40,000.
The University of California, which was opened for
the reception of students in 1869, grew up out of the
congressional act in much the same way as Cornell.
Before the close of 1885 the state had appropriated
about $750,000 for buildings, equipment, and supplies,
special preference being shown among the depart-
ments to the college of agriculture ; and in 1887 the
legislature established for the support of the univer-
sity, a perpetual state tax of one-tenth of a mill on
each dollar of assessed variation of property. From
this ever-increasing source of income the university
now receives not far short of $100,000 annually. The
University of Indiana, which is now in receipt of a
large annual appropriation, will have had from the
state, by 1895, grants and appropriations, aggregat-
ing more than $1,200,000. In Nebraska the congres-
sional grant was united with the state seminary lands,
and the consolidated fund set apart as an endowment
for the university. But the state, in the very year in

64 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

which the university was chartered, voted it a tax of
one mill on each dollar of taxable property. This rate
was subsequently changed ; but it is still three-eighths
of a mill, which is the highest university tax in
America.

The history of state taxation for university pur-
poses in the neighboring commonwealth of Ohio is
for us of special interest and encouragement. The uni-
versity which received the congressional grant is lo-
cated at Columbus. The people of Ohio took little in-
terest in it before 1888 ; and the legislative appropri-
ations did not average more than $15,000 a year. Its
pretensions to be the state university were resisted by
sister colleges, — and Ohio has more colleges than any
other state in the Union. But the duty of providing at
the lowest rates the highest and the largest education
for the masses of the people finally made itself felt in
Ohio. And in 1890, Governor Campbell, in his mes-
sage to the legislature, recommended the levy, for the
use of the university, of an annual tax of one-twentieth
of a mill on every dollar of the valuation of the as-
sessed property of the state. Public sentiment strong-
ly favored the measure, and a bill introduced by the
speaker of the house speedily became law, placing the
university on the same footing as the common schools
and providing for its support by the one-twentieth of
a mill tax, which yields this year about $80,000.

In Pennsylvania the land grant college was up
to 1887 almost as much neglected by the state as Cor-
nell University. But agitation awakened the people
of that commonwealth to a perception of the obliga-
tion imposed upon them to furnish buildings and ap-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 65

pliances to tlie college endowed by the bounty of con-
gress. The land grant act of 1862 forbade the states
to use the congressional fund for buildings or repairs,
and at the same time obligated each state to provide
"at least not less than one college." In fulfillment
of this obligation the State of Pennsylvania has since
1887 provided its land grant college with several large,
commodious, and costly buildings ; so that Pennsyl-
vania no longer keeps New York company in neg-
lecting to comply with the conditions on which each
state received the federal land grant.

Next ? Why, New York ! And I leave the forego-
ing facts without application. They tell the wealth of
our state ; they indicate its duty ; and (sursum corda /)
they auspicate its future.

I recollect, however, almost too late, that I prom-
ised before finishing this branch of my subject to say
something of the proposition that the state is not called
upon to support higher education. Well, let me say
at once that I look with the profoundest suspicion on
every abstract theory of the functions of the state.
The speculations of the individualist and of the so-
cialist are alike castles in the air. In civil as in pri-
vate affairs men are guided, not by metaphysical spec-
ulations, but by a desire to attain the highest good.
Subtle disputations are for the schools ; the true states-
man aims at the highest welfare of the citizens. And
in the pursuit of this object he finds that the com-
munion and fellowship of a great commonwealth ne-
cessitates the healthful activity of a great variety of
organs. One of these is the agency, — called school,
college or university, — which maintains, diffuses, and

66 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

multiplies the intelligence of the commonwealth. The
old classical colleges were supported by your ances-
tors so long as they represented the intellectual life
of the people. When they withdrew from the living
present (or rather when the living present left them
behind) to the seclusion of antiquity, the states re-
fused to support them from the public treasury. A
new and better organ of our intellectual life was de-
manded ; and universities like Cornell, which date
their origin from the Morrill act, have been framed by
educators to give larger and better instruction to the
youth of our own time. In voting them support from
the taxes of the state, legislators are not doing any-
thing new ; they are simply following in the tracks of
their ancestors. They cannot do better than revert to
that treasury of maxims and principles which enabled
the colonists to frame the constitution and set up the
Republic. But our history only begins with the colon-
ies ; and there have been great statesmen since Wash-
ington and Jefferson and Hamilton. I appeal, therefore,
not only to the oldest practice of your forefathers in
the Bast, but to the newest practice of your brothers
in the West. The support of the higher and highest
education by the state has the warrant of experience ;
and experience tells us of no other means at all effect-
ual for the purpose.

How else can we provide for our youth the knowl-
edge on which our civilization rests, even if nothing
be said of increasing that knowledge ? The artisan
needs it ; the farmer needs it ; the mechanic needs it ;
the engineer needs it ; the architect needs it ; the teach-
er needs it ; the lawyer, doctor, and minister need it ;

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 67

all classes and conditions need it, either to enrich their
lives or procure a livelihood. Who will undertake the
task of supplying it, if the state will not ? The church-
es ? No ; for the churches as such are interested, not
in every kind of liberal and practical education, but
merely in that particular sort necessary for the train-
ing of the clergy. The denominational colleges are
the old-fashioned classical colleges. And nothing is
more patent than that the college-founding instinct,
with the ever increasing growth of knowledge, is be-
coming atrophied in all denominations. I cannot think
of a great modern university which owes its origin
to a religious body. The very newest one may indeed
seem to be an exception ; but whatever the charter of
that institution may prescribe in regard to the relig-
ious complexion of the board of trustees, its original
endowment came from a wise and philanthropic gen-
tleman in this state, and the later reinforcements have,
it is said, been derived from local, not denominational,
sources. Shall we then entrust the cause of higher
education to private universities ? No ; they are in
supply too capricious, in maintenance too precarious,
in efficiency too variable, and in the charge for instruc-
tion they are too far beyond the means of the masses
of the people. Denominational and private colleges
belong to an age which is passing away ; and though
we may trust and believe — as I certainly do — that
higher education will continue to enjoy the support
of philanthropic wealth, its main reliance must be on
the state ; the future must be with the People's Uni-
versity.

68 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

I say then that if New York had not a great state
university it would be her duty to establish one. The
principle on which the public school rests is that all
the property of the people must provide education for
the children of all the people. Last year we levied
taxes, state and local, amounting to $18,000,000 for
the maintenance of the public schools of this state.
There is not a single argument in favor of the free
public school which is not equally cogent as an argu-
ment in favor of the free public university. The pub-
lic school is maintained at the public expense because
it is a powerful instrument for the preservation and
promotion of that variety of agencies, influences, and
results, to which we give the collective name of civili-
zation. Universities have the same end and attain it
more completely. Both institutions train human fac-
ulty and conserve the results it achieves, while one
also multiplies these results. The cost of maintain-
ing the state university is, therefore, as fairly charge-
able upon the property of the people as the cost of the
public school establishment. This maxim admits of
no exception, provided the university represents im-
partially all the intellectual interests embraced with-
in the circuit of our civilization, and offers its privi-
leges without charge to all classes of the people. Such
an university is the best practical answer that can be
furnished to the charge — dangerous anywhere, but
especially dangerous in a democracy — that our citi-
zens have not all a fair chance, and that the state is
an instrument of organized injustice. I hold it im-
possible in the nature of things to equalize men's
property ; but it is perfectly feasible, as experience

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 69

shows, to give equal opportunities for mental cultiva-
tion and attainment. In the interest of the large ma-
jority of our people, it is both just and politic for the
state to offer universal free education of the highest
as well as of the lowest order. As Huxley has well said :
" No system of public education is worthy the name
of national unless it creates a great educational ladder,
with one end in the gutter and the other in the uni-
versity." The people already enjoy political liberty,
but the spirit of fraternity now invites the poor boys
and girls of every district in our state to share with
their more fortunate fellows the intellectual goods and
forces to which the modern world is heir. I am sure
the good sense of this commonwealth, when it express-
es itself by ballot, will not reject a reasonable propo-
sition, because it is recommended by humanity, good
policy, and justice, as well as by reason itself. Or are
we so taken up with the rights of property that we
totally forget the rights of man ? Is the end of the
state merely the accumulation of wealth ? No, the
state is to be regarded with other reverence. In the
noble language of the philosopher who saw the weak-
ness and the irrationality of the French Revolution,
the state is "not a partnership in things subservient
only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and
perishable nature ; it is a partnership in all science ;
a partnership in all art ; a partnership in every vir-
tue, and in all perfection."

In the communion of the state the people are to
be sharers of all the good things of civilization in so
far as that is possible without invasion of personal
rights. Foremost among these good things, and ab-

yo CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

solutely indispensable to the existence of a civilized
state as well as to the welfare of its citizens, are
knowledge and the power which knowledge gives.
The school is the organ of the state's intellectual life.
The university is the highest school. It stands to
the institutions of primary and secondary education
in a relation similar to that sustained in the natural
body by the brain to the lower centres of the nervous
system. It is the originating, directing, and regu-
lating organ of the higher intellectual life and activ-
ity of the state. And just as the brain draws from
the bodily organism as a whole the copious and fre-
quent supplies of energy which it exhausts in its
work, so the genuine university is dependent, for
healthy and vigorous functioning, upon large and con-
tinuous appropriations from the treasury of the body
politic. And great as is our country as a whole, great
as is this empire state, our people have not yet, either
here or elsewhere, formed any adequate idea of the
needs of a modern university. This is all the more
deplorable as the most potent ally of the people is an
efficient People's University.

Cornell University, which is the only official
organ of the higher intellectual life of New York,
has an income not exceeding $500,000. And with
this income she is to promote, so the charter directs,
the liberal and practical education of the young men
and women of this commonwealth in all the ranks
and professions of life ! Observe that Cornell is to be
a seat both of "liberal" and of "practical" education ;
and observe, furthermore, that this education is to be
adapted to the intellectual needs of all workers in the

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 71

state. Mr. Chairman, it is a high and sacred voca-
tion to which we are called ; and we have made every
effort to fulfill it. But let us make full confession to
the state which has entrusted us with this work. Our
means mock our vocation ! Were our revenues doub-
led,— as I trust they may soon be doubled by public
grants and private gifts-^— we should still fall far short
of a realization of my ideal of a true modern People's
University. And to give definiteness to this propo-
sition I will close by stating briefly some of the most
urgent needs of the university.

A university must have costly buildings and ap-
pliances, but these are only means to enable the teach-
er to do his work efficiently. In the most literal
sense, therefore, it is the instructing staff that makes
the university. And the teacher's, I hold, is the high-
est calling among men. But it is, I believe, the worst
paid. Now there is always danger that the remuner-
ation customary in a profession may determine the
estimation in which that profession is held. And to
the great detriment of the commonwealth, the profes-
sion of teaching has already fallen into some dises-
teem. The board of trustees of Cornell University
recognize that, as a matter both of private justice and
public policy, the salaries of our professors should be
higher than they are. But, hemmed in by necessity,
they are at present unable to accomplish what they
so earnestly desire ; and they appeal to all who appre-
ciate the value of high and trained intelligence to
come to their relief.

But even professors are for the sake of students.
And Cornell has always had an unusually large num-

72 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

her of poor, struggling, able, High -minded youth,
especially from the State of New York. Some of them
are candidates for advanced degrees ; most of them
complete the undergraduate course. For the former
we are greatly in need of fellowships. One or two hun-
dred fellowships of the annual value of $500 each,
could be distributed with great profit to able and stu-
dious graduates who come here for the master's and
doctor's degrees. We have admirable facilities for ad-
vanced research and investigation ; and within the last
few years our graduate department has become one of
the strongest, best known, and most frequented in
America. What it now needs, above all things, is a
large fund for the benefit of poor and deserving grad-
uates who wish to become expert in their specialties.
Here is a fine field for the bounty of individuals. How
can a man better perpetuate his name than by con-
necting it with one or more of these fellowships ?
And what a luxury to be able to aid the poor but tal-
ented young men and women who are to mould the
civilization of the next generation ! In regard to un-
dergraduates I recommend a plan which has been in-
itiated by the wisdom and bounty of Mr. Amos Padg-
ham, of Syracuse. Mr. Padgham has founded a schol-
arship in this university for the student from the
public schools of Syracuse who enters with the high-
est standing. This is a stimulus to local schools, a
prize to students, and a help to the university. I com-
mend Mr. Padgham 's example to the rich men and
women in every city and village in the state. There
is no limit to the number of scholarships of this sort
which might be established in Cornell University.

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 73

And what a variety of good ends would be observed
by each endowment of $5,000 !

In the work of investigation, which is the crown-
ing achievement of every large university, we are
straitened by lack of means for the publication of
results. Thanks to the generosity of a constant
friend, the department of philosophy has a publica-
tion fund, and no other investment of the same sum
could have been so helpful as The Philosophical Re-
view. Other departments have masses of material,
the valuable results of protracted investigations, which
cannot see the light because, like most new discov-
eries, there is no money in them for publishers.
Consequently the endowment of publication is im-
perative. We need at once an income of $10,000 a
year for this purpose, and twice that sum in the near
future. The communication of knowledge by word
of mouth alone is a singular phenomenon in a uni-
versity, now that reading is taking so generally the
place of speech. And to illustrate how Cornell suf-
fers, I may say that other institutions are publishing,
naturally without giving us any credit, investigations
which were undertaken and completed in this uni-
versity.

One other general need is that of dormitories.
With the rapidly increasing numbers of our students,
the friends of the university should come to the aid
of the city in providing lodgings for them. The
cost of living in Ithaca must be kept low. And the
city in the next few years is likely to be full, even
though a dozen benefactors should give the univer-
sity as many dormitories, each at a cost of $100,000.

74 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

The rent received for rooms, which, however, should
always be kept at a moderate figure, would be a con-
stant source of income to the university. Let us see
to it that Cornell never ceases to be the poor man's
university.

When I turn from general university needs to
the specific needs of departments, I know not where
to begin amid all the urgent appeals that come to the
board. But I will follow the order of our register and
start with the literary, historical, and philosophical
disciplines to which we give the collective term of hu-
manities. I notice, in the first place, that of the two
great sources of human civilization, one is not even
mentioned in our curriculum. It would be shameful,
were it not a tragic proof of our poverty, that Cor-
nell University is still without chairs of Semitic and
Oriental civilization, even without a professorship of
that Hebrew literature which has furnished the sub-
limest content of modern civilization. Though the
historical department is otherwise strong, it needs
much money for new chairs and additional books,
especially in the way of original sources, to keep pace
with the progress of historical investigation. But of
all the studies whose object is man, that dealing with
the production and distribution of wealth is the one
which the university is most urgently called upon to
strengthen. It is a sad confession to make here at the
centre of the richest state in the Union. Perhaps the
knowledge of this need will cause wealth at once to
flow to its relief. We should have professorships of
economics, finance, statistics, social science, etc., and
an equipment of books for verification of any state-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 75

ment that might be made regarding the wealth of the
world. For philosophy I ask nothing ; the endow-
ment given by Mr. Sage has put that department on
a solid basis, and the work is commanding no little
attention. The collection of casts, donated by the
same benefactor, will hereafter furnish illustrative
material for the studies of the ancient classics such as
few other universities possess ; but for the establish-
ment of a well-equipped school of fine art, — of paint-
ing, statuary, and music, — an endowment of not less
than $1,000,000 will be necessary. As to language
and literature, both the group of ancient and the group
of modern languages and literatures demand rein-
forcement ; and in the interest of the schools of the
state, as well as for their own sake, these subjects
should be supported by liberal grants, very much
larger than the university is now able to make. This
is pre-eminently true of Bnglish, the constant need,
as it may be the constant inspiration, of every stu-
dent at every age. And I hold it to be one of the sev-
eral missions of Cornell University to train a certain
number of students directly for English teacherships
and to obtain for them positions in preparatory schools.
Passing from the literary to the scientific field,
we meet mathematics at the entrance. In this uni-
versity it is now taught to nearly 700 students, either
for the purpose of liberal or of practical education.
Our staff, though large, is overworked ; and our rooms
are altogether inadequate. We should have, besides
a large building, many thousands ,of dollars a year
to add to the efficiency of this department. Astron-
omy, the oldest and sublimest science, fares rather

76 CORNEU, UNIVERSITY.

worse than any other. I do not say we must excel
the Lick or any other observatory, though I should
rejoice in a donation for that purpose ; but I do say
that, investigation apart, we need, even to make our
teaching effective, an observatory which could not be
built, equipped, and maintained for much less than
$500,000. In chemistry, though we have a strong
staff and a laboratory whose equipment is confessed-
ly very complete, we need new chairs of theoretical,
technical, and physiological chemistry, additional lab-
oratories for the increasing number of students, and
annual appropriations twice as large as those now
available for apparatus and material. In the flourish-
ing department of physics, the classes have already
outgrown the present large building ; and a new lec-
ture room and two new laboratories for research are
indispensable, as well as increased funds for new
equipment, including perhaps in the not distant fu-
ture the transmission of power from Niagara Falls.
Among the pure sciences the group formerly desig-
nated natural history is urgently in need of strength-
ening. The department of botany should have at
least another professorship and also better equipment ;
and a botanic garden, a museum of economic botany,
a herbarium, and an arboretum cannot long be defer-
red. Our entomologist should be relieved of inverte-
brate zoology. And for that subject, as well as for
vertebrate zoology, comparative anatomy, and physi-
ology, new professorships should be established, so
that the two professors who now make a specialty of
the morphology of the brain and vertebrate histology
might be relieved of all other responsibilities. In the

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 77

department of geology, we need in addition to a
general professorship, chairs of paleontology, petro-
graphy, economic geology, and physical geography
with all their accompaniments. Besides these speci-
fic wants, the buildings and museums now available
for the several departments of natural history will in
the near future prove altogether inadequate.

Look in the last place at our professional schools.
The school of law after being domiciled several years
in the attic of Morrill Hall, now rejoices in the pos-
session of a new, commodious, and even luxurious
building of its own. And its library with the recent
addition of the Moak collection, is one of the best in
the country. But the school needs endowments to
keep up its innumerable series of reports ; and if the
increase in attendance continues at the rate of this
year, additional professors will have to be appointed
in the near future, as indeed a librarian should be
appointed now.

Lincoln Hall is no longer large enough for the
departments of architecture and civil engineering.
The former requires a separate building, which should
provide enlarged draughting rooms, a museum for
the display of models, casts, materials of construction
and products, and a gallery for the exhibition of pho-
tographs and prints. This would cost at least $60,000.
And twice that sum is necessary for increasing the
staff of instruction and for adding to the permanent
equipment.

In this age of rapid locomotion the importance
of civil engineering, in its most obvious province, is
abundantly manifest. But few persons realize the

78 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

cost of maintaining a thoroughly equipped college of
civil engineering. We hold ours to be second to none
in the country. But the entire value of its equip-
ment for all purposes is not as large as the value of
the machinery and apparatus of the cement testing
laboratory alone of the great school at Zurich. Re-
call the subjects that must be taught in a completely
organized college — railroad construction, bridge con-
struction, hydraulics, methods of drainage, etc., — and
you will agree that $1,000,000 would be a moderate
sum to add to the endowment of our college of civil
engineering.

Still larger are the demands of the department of
mechanical engineering, because of the greater num-
ber of students. Everything is now too small in Sib-
ley College. We need more class-rooms, more engi-
neering laboratories, more draughting rooms, more
professors. The limitation of funds has prevented the
establishment of many branches of engineering ; and
those already established await further development.
The first manufacturing state in the Union, New York
can afford to foster a first class school of mechanic
arts ; and in accepting the congressional grant of 1862
it pledged support to this one. It is to the interest of
the state, not less than to the interest of Cornell Uni-
versity, that there should be liberal and steady appro-
priations for the maintenance of a department which
contributes so largely to the progress of the material
side of our civilization.

From the very beginning Cornell University has
paid special attention to the two subjects, which, more
than any other, vitally affect the interests of the ma-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 79

jority of our people — I mean agricultural and veter-
inary science. What the university has achieved in
these fields is known, not only to educators but to the
farmers of our state. But it is the merest fraction of
what with adequate resources might be done. We
need an appropriation, for a college of veterinary sci-
ence, of at least $40,000 a year. This is demanded
alike in the interests of health and wealth. In the
State of New York, for a period of eight years ending
with 1887, every eighth death was from tuberculosis ;
and the infection in most cases comes from the lower
animals. Three per cent, of our cattle are tuberculous.
Comparative pathology will probably be the next
fruitful field for medicine. It is a field for which Cor-
nell University has unusual facilities and to which it
is especially summoned by the legal mandate to give
liberal and practical education. Nothing is needed for
success but a fair appropriation from the treasury of
the state. And at the same time liberal provision
should be made for agriculture including horticulture.
The first and imperative need is that of a building
large enough to house along with the department of
agriculture, those of horticulture, entomology, and
dairy husbandry. It should contain a museum for the
exhibition of all kinds of agricultural implements.
The home of teachers and investigators, it should be
made the living centre of all the agricultural interests
of the state. Students would come for the regular
courses, or for short winter courses ; and those who
could not leave their homes might receive instruction
by correspondence. Bulletins would be published giv-
ing the result of investigations. All this and more,

8o CORNKU, UNIVERSITY.

if we had aid from the state, could be done for the ben-
efit of our farmers, as we already do a good deal even
without that aid. We should need at least $200,000
for the building, and then such appropriations as
would make the work in it worthy of the vast agri-
cultural resources and wealth of this imperial state.
Consider the importance of our live stock and dairy
products merely. The census of 1880 gives the value
of the live stock of the United States as $1,500,000,-
ooo, and of New York State as $117,000,000. There
are 1,500,000 cows in the State of New York. An in-
crease of one cent per pound in the average price of
our dairy products would amount to $1,875,000. And
how easy it would be to create this wealth by scien-
tific instruction in the art of making butter and cheese.
But I have tired you by a long discourse. The
gist of it all, however, may be briefly put. Cornell Uni-
versity was designed for the benefit of the people of
this commonwealth. But in accepting the land grant
from congress, New York pledged state aid to the
institution receiving the proceeds. This is Cornell
University. Now Cornell University has never re-
ceived one cent from the treasury of the State of
New York. On the other hand, the state requires
the university to give free tuition to 512 students
annually, at a cost ranging this year from $150,000
to $175,000, thereby imposing upon the university
burdens never contemplated by the charter. But
the university has now reached a point in its de-
velopment at which, if it is to furnish liberal and
practical education to the largest numbers in all
the pursuits and .professions of life, it must have sup-

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT SCHURMAN. 81

port from the public treasury as well as from the
bounty of private individuals. Thus only can the
university fulfill its vocation of furnishing the high-
est education to all classes at the lowest cost. Its ends
are the ends of the state. It is dedicated to truth and
to utility ; and between these there is no incompatibil-
ity ; for, as Plato has well said, the divinest things are
the most serviceable. We are at once realistic and
idealistic. And while we cherish the old we are
always in quest of something better. The genius of
Cornell University stands on the solid earth ; and
while his eyes front the dawn, the ancient heavens
are about him, and through all its resounding spaces
he hears the noble mother call, Excelsior ! So may
it be ! So shall it be ; for the people of New York will
not suffer either private gifts or public grants to
fail us.

Benediction by the Rev. Charles M. Tyler, D.D.:

Now, may the blessings of God the Father Almighty, the
grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the fellowship
and communion of the Holy Ghost, abide with us all forever.
Amen.

Music — "Furore," by the Orchestra.

82 CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

THE UNIVERSITY RECEPTION.

A reception was tendered President and Mrs. Schurman
by the University at Armory Hall, Friday evening, from 8 to 1 1
p. M. The hall was suitably decorated and the music was fur-
nished by Gartland's Orchestra of Albany. The reception was
largely attended by the trustees, members of the corps of in-
struction, their families, students and friends of the University
and was a very successful social event.

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