Johns Hopkins University - Hullabaloo Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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The University's Real Assets. aa . LTl1tlL'tiH the L'niversity is not yet quite Z1 quarter of a century old, it has already a W' 5 i noble history. That it has also its traditions, high and fine, in which every one of its depart- .- - 'T - X ' ments has a share, is abundantly evident in such reminiscences, for instance, as were 9 X my contributed to last year's llt'i.i..xi:.xi.oo by President tiilman. ln this closing year of ' pf y 1 if the century there will be not a little thoughtful reviewing of what has been accomplished in ty ti i the L'nited States in various lines of scholarly research, as well as in the general field of T y - i advanced education. Hopkins men may well be proud that their own cherished L'niversity i Q. ' L . i has taken so significant and so essential a part. .Xny account of scientific or educational 1. 1-if n W I progress in the L'nited States for the Nineteenth Century that should omit what has been done at Baltimore, would be as incomplete as an arch without its keystone. , 1 i lf the johns llopkins were to complete its twenty-five years and then close its doors s' T i'T' forever. it could not be forgotten among American universities. It would live on through the transforming influence it has exerted upon other institutions, and through the stimulating effect it has had upon the life work of many men who in turn have become scientific and educational leaders. But. of course. the L'niversity is not destined to close its doors. and its splendid work, vital as it has been to the scholarly interests of the country in the closing quarter of the nineteenth century, is only now at its beginning. XYe shall not be likely to undervalue the generosity and solid wisdom of the man whose name the L'niversity bears. XYhatever his precise conception of the L'niversity may or may not have been, he made possible, in the selection of trustees and in the discretion he accorded them, the initiation of a university on lines wholly new in this country, and also its invaluable alliances with the llospital, the Peabody Institute. and other establislnnents and institutions of the vicinity. The will of 'Iohns llopkins having provided a large sum of lllf'lZCj' and a wise board of trustees. it remained to organize and launch a university. There are people who seem to imagine that almost any man, at almost any time and almost any place, might create a real university if only the requisite money should be provided. Upon that theory, if the opulent De lleers Company shculd so ordain, with a portion of its incomethere might innnediately be established at Kimberly, South Africa. the greatest university in the world. XVe must all certainly recognize the fact that a university can use I3

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y ,. fx FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY HOLLINGER, NEW YORK W 1 I 1

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money, and ought to have it. But I, for one, am not ready to admit that money can create a university, although I acknowledge cheerfully that a true university, once created, deserves. and ought to have an ample income. Since it is not a secret that the funds left by Johns Hopkins for the perpetual endowment of the University have become materially impaired through the decline in value of certain investments, I do not see any reason why I should hesitate to allude to that fact, in view of its bearing upon a remark that I wish to make as the key or text to the very informal discourse with which I mean to proceed, After reading again Dr, Gilmanls notes in last year's 'iT'TULLABALOO'U upon the founding of the University, I find two main facts left in clear outline upon my memory. First, an adequate sum of money was left in trust for the founding of a university, and, second, a university was founded in a certain way, with certain definite ideals. The money thus left has had its history, and the University thus founded has also had its history. The money served a vital purpose at the beginning, without it the University would not have been planted. But it is not the money that is the vital thing now. The University itself,-with its record of great services to science and mankind, and its quarter-century of history unparalleled in brilliancy by that of any other university in the world,- has accumulated assets of such priceless value that one feels like apologizing when he mentions mere money in the same connection. It is men that make the University what it is. The amount of money permanently requisite to the maintenance of a university is greatly affected by the nature and history of the institution, regarded on its purely educational side. No other university in America is so situated as to be able to accomplish at a like cost anything like such results for learning, and for the advance- ment of knowledge by original research, as the Johns Hopkins, To take an old-fashioned American college with undergraduate work as its basis, then to attach professional schools to it, and gradually to superimpose post-graduate courses and university work in the highest sense, is an exceedingly expensive process. In spite of everything, the undergraduate tone dominates the institution. The instinctive struggle towards university freedom creates an elective system, the operation of which seems to turn the college boy into a 'varsity man 'I at a time when he may well need disciplinary, rather than special studies. Wlieii this method of transforming an old-fashioned American college into a university is joined with the active policy of seeking to draw undergraduates by the hundreds and thousands, not from the immediate vicinity but from the remotest parts of the land, there results a situation which would be confusion thrice confounded, if there should be lacking an enormous income with which to provide the varied and extensive plant, and to employ the army of instructors and tutors as well as professors needed to maintain anything like the semblance of order and system. The trustees at Baltimore supported President Gilman in the creation of a university upon a diametrically 'opposite plan. The beginning was made with a very few learned professors and a score of young post-graduate men, holders of fellowships, each of whom had shown high merit in a distinctive field, as a nucleus around which to gather little groups of earnest graduate students, with no other purpose in the world than hard study under inspiring leadership, and with opportunity and guidance in special research. T4