Springfield College - Massasoit Yearbook (Springfield, MA)

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8 THE MASSASOIT nothing. The greatest difficulty in the case sprang from the fact that among association leaders there was the utmost diversity of views as to what was wanted and many did not believe that such a thing was wanted at all. Dr. Doggett brought to the inchoate school a remarkable combination of qualities. He had had experience as a local and state secretary and was profoundly in sympathy with the work on its religious and practical side. He was also a college, theological seminary and university graduate, familiar with the educational world of America and Germany. Thus he was prepared to apply university ideals to practical problems. Best of all w r as his rich endowment in unselfishness, patience, sympathy, firmness and unconquerable faith. He has met the enormous difficulties of his task in a spirit that has illustrated the meaning of the word Christian. The friends of the School will never forget what it owes to the noble men who were on the ground when Dr. Doggett came and what to those wffio have since entered its service; but all will agree that in the marvelous prog- ress of the last fourteen years he has been in fact, as in name, leader. He has borne the main burden of re- sponsibility and to him, more than to any other, belongs the praise.

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CLASS OF 1910 7 Presiden L a arence Locke Domett, Pk. D. IE are sure that when the history of the higher education in America at the opening of the twentieth century comes to be written the name of Laurence Locke Doggett will stand high on the roll M of farseeing and forceful leaders. The place which he fills and has filled is unique and no one else in the Association brotherhood could have brought to it the same qualifications. The Young Men’s Christian Association has had in America a growth far beyond that which it has attained in England, the land of its birth, and far beyond anything contemplated by its founder George Williams. It has become in every city a great institution looking after the bodies and souls of young men and boys every day in the week. It has gained a hold upon the confidence of the religious public such as no other single agency possesses, which is shown by the fact that Christian business men have put more than sixty millions of dollars into its buildings and their equipments. The operation of such a vast enterprise has called into being a new profession and the new profession re- quired a new type of professional school. The Training School (which has long since outgrown that ambiguous and inadequate name) is an institution that belongs peculiarly to the spirit of the new century and to its novel industrial, social and intellectual conditions. It unites religious zeal with scientific method and temper in a way that would have been incomprehensible a generation ago, and it prepares men for the new profession of “guides of young men and boys in work and sport”. The founding of another college of the usual type would have been a comparatively simple thing, for there are hundreds of precedents. But the development of an institution of a new kind for a new purpose was a serious matter. Here was a call for initiative, constructiveness and courage of a high order. A new ideal had to be created, a course of study devised, a constituency gathered, trustees, faculty and students assembled and organized, money raised, buildings, grounds, endowments, libraries, apparatus, all made, so to speak, out of

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TOALLWWHO LOVE OLD SPRINGFIELD