ARTICLE III.-WESTERN COLLEGES: THEIR CLAIMS AND NECESSITIES.*

Ir is only when we survey the cordon of colleges, extending from the Ohio River to the shores of the Pacific, that the great work accomplished by the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West, can be appreciated. Since its organization in June, 1843, a quiet, constantly extending work has been followed up, while the results have demonstrated the sagacity and statesman-like views which animated its projectors and patrons. The exigences of struggling institutions have been met by the timely assistance this Society afforded them, and the energies and resources of friends of Western education have been happily combined, and wisely utilized. An immense amount of scepti cism had to be met and overcome, as to the practicability or necessity of any scheme for aiding the feeble collegiate institutions of the West. The objections made to the Society's plans and appeals, read like a chapter from the history of a far remote age. But it was less than forty years ago, that to the efforts to found and foster to a vigorous life Western seminaries of learning, it was objected that Eastern colleges needed all the funds that could be raised in the East. for educational purposes; that the West had already too many colleges; that these were mere pretenders and quacks in education; or further still, were the nurseries of all the worst ultraisms of the day. Moreover it was alleged at that early date in Western development, that the West will create, and ought to sustain, its own collegiate institutions. These may serve as a sample of the objections prevalent at the time of the Society's formation, all of which were measurably overcome, so that under its economical régime the work of aiding and founding the colleges which have been, and are so invaluable to the Commonwealths of the Interior and the far West, went on with increasing success. The total net resources of the

*Read before the Minnesota Congregational Club, Sept. 27, 1880.

five institutions the Society took upon its list at its organization in 1843, were not over $300,000, but after twenty-five years had elapsed, it reported the resources of the noble cluster it had aided up to that time, as not less than $2,500,000. During this period, while the Society had been instrumental in securing from eastern patrons and friends of education in the West between six and seven hundred thousand dollars, it was the estimate of its Secretary, that "more than twice six hundred thousand dollars were realized at the West, no small portion of which may be justly credited to the stimulating influence in question."

Educational Benefactions.-There is no grander proof of the estimate in which higher education is held in this country, than the munificent gifts of American citizens to promote the same. Theron Baldwin, venerabile nomen! who was the heart and brain, so long as he lived, of the College Society, summed up in his twenty-third annual report, a total from all sources, of $6,541,000, given to collegiate and theological institutions during our civil war and in the years immediately succeeding its close. Among the causes assigned for such unprecedented liberality in this direction, was one which attested beyond all question the wisdom of founding and fostering colleges in the East and West, viz: the spirit of loyalty to the Government developed in them, and the services rendered in the field and councils of State, by their students and alumni. This outburst of benevolence was a popular answer to objections which had obtained to a considerable extent, against our literary institutions. And so far as these princely contributions reached the treasuries of some of the young and still struggling colleges of the West, it was a deserved acknowledgment of the patriotism and noble service of their graduates or under-graduates, in the nation's hour of extreme peril. The humble and often despised seminaries of higher learning in the West, equalled proportionately in their contributions to the ranks of the Union armies, the older and well endowed institutions of the East. Since that report, made in 1866, the sum total of gifts to our Colleges, for a period of six years, closing in 1869, amounted to $12,514,050, not including $3,355,000 to other educational institutions and objects.

This wonderful exhibit of benevolence, when published, awakened astonishment and admiration in the university towns of the old world. At the same time it was a substantial testimony from the intelligent and wealthy of our people, of the high esteem in which they held the cause of letters.

Gifts to Western Institutions.-The colleges west of the Alleghanies received a comparatively small amount of the above named sum. Then, as now, their real needs, and more than that, their just claims were not apprehended. Of course as the donors of the greater part of these moneys resided on the sea-board, it was to be expected that the institutions by them best known and existing near to them, should receive the major part of what was given. It has always been difficult to secure large contributions to institutions in the Western field. The masterly pleas made by Dr. Baldwin when he was Secretary of the Society, in behalf of the same, no doubt accomplished much; and, indeed, without them these institutions would not have met with the favor they did. But since his decease, there has been apparent a tendency to disparage the claims of the new colleges of the Western States, and to converge upon those in the East gifts which in the judgment of many could more wisely, to say the least, have been divided between the institutions of both sections.

Comparative Resources.-From figures cited by President Magoun of Iowa College, in 1872,* only one New England College had a valuation under $250,000 dollars, but twelve Western colleges had less. At that date the next two smallest colleges in New England were rated at over $300,000, while the two next largest in the West were valued respectively at $300,000 and $258,000. Oberlin, which was then, and is now, the richest of our higher seminaries this side of the Ohio, has yet but one-half the valuation of Amherst, and one-fifth that of Yale. Moreover, according to Dr. Magoun, the whole property of eighteen Western colleges was less than one-third that of the eight in New England. Here is a disproportion I cannot believe the friends of education in the East are aware of. One result of the restricted resources of these Western institutions is their still meagre equipment for the educational

* Sermon before College Society, Oct., 1872.

work they are called upon to do. In addition to this, their professors and instructors, who average higher for scholarship and ability to teach than is popularly supposed, receive utterly inadequate salaries, and are to-day, by remaining at their posts of service, making greater sacrifices for the cause of education than any other class of persons. The period of self-denial has unhappily not yet passed, and the bread and butter question is still a perplexing one to those who in these colleges are doing a great work for the Church and their country. There is no doubt now in the minds of thoughtful, candid men, that these Western colleges are needed, and ought to be more generously sustained, but how to secure for them their proportion of the contributions made to the cause of education, is still an unsolved problem.

President Bartlett, of Dartmouth College, said in 1871,* when connected with the Chicago Theological Seminary: "I find a recorded amount of at least seventeen millions given to the higher institutions of learning in this country. But where was it laid out? Fifteen-seventeenths of it, so far as I can trace, hug the Atlantic coast. Doubtless there was a good use for the fifteen millions there. Make it not a dollar less. there was a far more vital need elsewhere."

But

While princely gifts to Eastern colleges have been frequent, running up as high as even a half million of dollars to one institution, which does not include such bequests as those of Johns Hopkins, Daniel Stone, Asa Packer, and others,-the largest individual benefaction to any Western college was, up to 1871, the fifty thousand dollars of Mr. Carleton of Boston, given to the institution in Minnesota, since honored by his

name.

Iowa College reports as its largest single gift, during a period of more than a score of years, $20,000 from Mr. Benedict of Waterbury, Ct. Beloit, with a history extending now over thirty-three years, never received a larger donation from one person, than the Hale fund of $35,000. Illinois College, founded in 1829, struggled bravely on through multiform embarrassments, before its greatest benefaction of $50,000 from S. A. Hitchcock of Massachusetts in 1873, relieved in a measure

* Sermon before Home Missionary Society, May, 1871.

its pecuniary distress; and latest of all to chronicle a like gift, is Drury College of Missouri, the recipient of $50,000 from the Stone estate. These all were exceptional donations, and have been notably infrequent. Not until many such gifts have been made to Western seats of learning will a liberality and farsighted beneficence have been exhibited, such as meet the demands of the case.

The fields occupied. -The foregoing assertion cannot be deemed extravagant, when the fields occupied by Western colleges is taken into account.

Oberlin and Marietta Colleges stand in Ohio, with its population already numbering 3,200,000, and still rapidly increasing. The former had in 1878-79 only seven less students than Harvard University, but its endowment funds were $175,881 as against $3,678,595 of the latter in 1877. Reckoning the total valuations of Oberlin, Marietta, and the Western Reserve Colleges together, they equaled in 1873, but little over onesixth that of Harvard.

Again, can it be alleged that Illinois and Knox Colleges are any less necessary to the great State of Illinois, with its population of 3,100,000, than Amherst and Williams are to Massachusetts with its 1,783,812?

Wisconsin has Beloit and Ripon Colleges in the midst of a population three times as great as that of Vermont, which has Middlebury College and the University at Burlington, each of which is better endowed than the former two, and together exceed by one-half the valuation of the Wisconsin institutions.

Minnesota has an area larger than all New England, with half the Empire State added; equals seventeen and one-half Connecticuts, with a population of 780,072. In this imperial State stands Carleton College, the great beacon light of the Northwest, and yet its valuation is only $133,766 as against $2,500,000 of Yale.

Iowa College, with a geographical position the most central of any in the Union, founded by the sacrifices of pioneers of Puritan principles, in a State which has already a half a million of youth to be educated, has assuredly a claim upon the patrons of education equal to that of Dartmouth. Yet within a period of less than three years, Dartmouth has had given to