Ohio State University - Makio Yearbook (Columbus, OH)

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fications, without regard to their ecclesiastical or political affiliations. This atmosphere of freedom has been a principal condition of the strong and constant progressive spirit that has always pervaded the institution. 'l'rue intellectual and moral progress is possible only where liberty prevails. 'l'o nothing else is freedom so essential as to thought. The higher nature of man can expand, the consciousness of responsi- bility and the sense 'of power which responsibility implies can attain complete realization only under the vital and stimulating influence of freedom. The University has been faithfully conservative of the essential elements and forces not only of the purely academic life, but of the moral and religious life: yet it has, at the same time, sedulously sought to reinforce these with every available and befitting aid. It has kept its face steadhtstly to the future. Its doors stand open to new ideas, new doctrines, and new methods. When these come, their claims receive candid consideration, and a generous hospitality is extended to all that pass the tests of truth and experience. In all things the University seeks the truest and the best, let it be found where and by whom it may. Finally, the past of the University has been distinguished by a rapid and continuous growth. Every year has witnessed an increase in resources or in buildings or in equipment or in teaching force or in the number of students. In some years an increase has occurred on several of these lines. In a few years it has occurred on all of them. Yale began with a site and forty books, and at the end of a hundred and sixty years had forty-five teachers, about six hundred students and forty odd thousand volumes in its library. Harvard began with less than 510,000 all told, and at the end of two hundred and fourteen years had fifteen buildings, fifty-onefteachers, seven hundred and thirty students, a library of nearly a hundred and twenty-five thousand volumes, and invested funds amounting to more than a million dollars. The Ohio State University opened in 1873 with three buildings, besides residences and barns, two laboratories, seven teachers, twenty five students and a certain income of about ElS3o,ooo. In 1883 it had five buildings, six laboratories, twenty-one teachers, three hundred students and a certain income of about fli46,ooo. ln 1893 it had twelve 25

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buildings, fourteen laboratories, sixty-three teachers, eight hundred students, and a certain income of fB16o,ooo. The present year it has twelve buildings, with three more in course of erection, sixteen labora- tories, an astronomical observatory, eighty one teachers, nine hundred and sixty-nine students, and a certain income of S250,000. With such a Past and such a Present, so broad inpolicy, so catholic in spirit, so vigorous and expansive in growth, who can foretell the pace or set the limits of the future progress of our beloved University? Its history, short though it has been, abounds in omens of greatness. May the years to come fulfill them all. gifye fu. and the guture. F THE great institutions of learning of the East, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, for example, one can say what Webster said of Massachusetts, the past, indeed, is secure. Of the great institutions of the interior states, the universi- ties of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, for example, it is equally safe to say, the future is secure. These last named institutions are so bound up with the best life of the states to which they belong that they are certain to grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength. Our own institution has a short but honorable past, marked from the beginning by a steady and promising growth, and in these latter years by a phenomenal expansion. Can its future be predicted as positively and as auspiciously as that of the University of Michigan P That the institutions do not occupy exactly common ground is evident, and the explanation ofthe differences between them is equally obvious. Ohio was settled before the true relation of the state to Higher Education was discovered, and because of the intellectual activity and moral earnestness of its earliest occupants a dozen colleges were planted within its borders by the end of the first quarter of the century and when, at the beginning of the last quarter of the century, 26