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of education, etc., then the need of the dual house artificial clog to the exercise of the definite powers and duties of the legislature, if it exist now, will be lessened or abolished. And these practical reforms only will still the all but universal cry: "Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, or for some Buddhistic Nirvana where the wicked legislatures cease from troubling and the weary people are at rest-from them.


   POLITICAL SCIENCE IN AMERICAN STATE UNIVERSITIES.

  BY AMOS G. WARNER.

(Read before a meeting of the Society, January 9, 1889.]

   It has been said that students are apt to think too little of the amount that they do not know - to underestimate the extent of their ignorance. This is not true of students only but of mankind in general. Many have seen the ignorance of others and desired to educate them. The heads of paternal governments have desired to educate their subjects to obey. The infallible head of a world church has desired to educate all mankind to believe what he taught. The rich have desired to educate the poor to be contented and happy. The upper classes, whether political or industrial, have been anxious to educate the lower classes into the belief that "whatever is, is right." Philanthropists have sometimes been seized with an eleventh hour desire to educate posterity. And yet, however exceptional it may appear, the American people seem to have said in their hearts: "Go to, we are ignorant, let us educate ourselves."
   The conscious need of self education developed early in our history. A university was planned for Virginia before the pilgrims landed in New England, and practical steps were taken to establish one at so early a day that the tenants of its lands were swept off by an Indian massacre. Massachusetts took the practical lead, however, when her great and general court established Harvard college to fit youth "for ye university." In 1660 the colonial assembly of Virginia voted "that for the advance of learning, education of youth, supply of the ministry and promotion of piety, there be land taken upon purchases for a college and free schoole, and that there be, with as much spede as may be convenient, houseing erected thereon for the entertainment of students and schollers." It is not the purpose to follow through the development of our educational system, but merely to note the fact that wherever the American has settled new territory


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he has established new colleges and universities. The ordinance of 1787 which provided for organizing the northwest territory decreed that "means of education should forever be encouraged." Another step was the act of 1863, from which a part of our own endowment comes. This act was passed while, at least for all rhetorical purposes, the guns of the confederacy were shaking the senate chamber at Washington. Andrew D. White notes this fact, and would exalt the calm and confident dignity of this act above the auctioneering by Romans of the land on which Hannibal's soldiers encamped.
   So much for American confidence in higher education, and for the willingness of our national and state governments to provide it. As we turn to consider the claims of political science in the curricula of our state universities, I would speak for a moment of European experience in this matter.
   In the early part of the present century Germany was recovering from a great humiliation. The armies of Napoleon had swept over her, and when she drew herself together to avenge the insult it was in a humor that must henceforth forbid a German sovereign to keep in pay, as the great Frederic had done, a French corrector of bad verses. With genuine Teutonic thoroughness the work of fortifying the national sentiment was aided by the founding and strengthening of universities. In this work of revivifying German patriotism Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the acknowledged founder of the modern historical school, took an important part. He had been a politician before he had become an historian, and he studied the politics and even the economics of Rome that their lessons might be available in furthering German independence and German unity. Professor Maurenbrecher of Leipzig in reviewing the effects of this attempt to make the history of the past of practical service in dealing with the problems of the present says that for the most part history is not an experimental science, but in this case a chance to experiment occurred. Niebubr, Droysen, Ranke, and others, by the study of ancient and modern history had concluded that the unity of Germany might be accomplished and most feasibly under the leadership of Prussia. Bismarck experimented and verified the conclusions of the historians.
   At least four of the great modern historians, Ranke, Maurenbrecher, Freeman and Seeley, have taken for the subject of their


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professional inaugurals, this relation of history to politics. One of the Germans mentioned satirizes those who like ancient history merely because it is ancient, and Seeley says that the only reason for studying the past is to make use of its lessons for guiding us in the present. History is, he says, the gymnasium and the arsenal of the statesman. He even goes so far as to say that the best way to understand the past is to begin by a study of the present. "No doubt," he says, "in that peaceful world of the past you escape all that is most uncomfortable in the present - the bustle, the petty detail, the slovenliness, the vulgarity, the hot discomfort, the bewildering hubbub, the humiliating spites and misconstructions, the ceaseless brawl of objurgation (sic) and recrimination, the painfulness of good men hating each other, the perplexingness of wise men flatly contradicting each other, the perpetual sight of failure or of success soon regretted, of good things turning out to have a bad side, of new sores breaking out as fast as the old ones are healed, the laboriousness and littleness of all improvement, and in general the commonness, and dullness, and uneasiness of life. We escape from all this in the past, but after all we escape from it only by an illusion." "Past history," he says, further on, "is a dogmatist, furnishing for every doubt ready made and hackneyed determinations. Present history is a Socrates, knowing nothing, but guiding others to knowledge by suggestive interrogations."
   You will doubtless agree with me that Prof. Seeley, for the sake of a sharp antithesis, has somewhat overstated the case against past history; but it would have been hardly possible for him or any man to overstate the importance of the study of present history, the study of present politics and economics. A knowledge of Adam Smith or Mill is now required of all students of modern history at Oxford, and they are asked to trace the economic history of the periods that they especially investigate. At this university is Prof. Freeman, author of the much quoted saying that "History, is past politics, and politics present history."
   I dwell thus on the connection between history and politics because I speak primarily to an historical association, because the studies of history and politics mutually aid and vitalize each other," because I feel that in this university the study of history needs to urge no further apology for its existence, and because a very large


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share of all that is helpful and progressive in modern political economy has been secured to it by the use of historical method. We are prone to trace great influences to great men, and this, perhaps justifies Maurenbrecher in ascribing to the influence of Niebuhr and his followers not only the modern historical school, but the incentive for the development of comparative jurisprudence and historical economics.
   But new and now united Germany is not the only modern nation, as we have seen, whose leaders wished that its people might be strengthened by the influences of colleges and universities. At the beginning of our own national history there stand two party chiefs, one a representative of the south, the other of the north; one a republican, the other a federalist; one the formulator of principles to which a great party still gives allegiance, the other the author of measures and policies whose influence is still powerful; one the author of the declaration of independence, the other the defender and establisher of our constitution. If Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton agreed in nothing else they at least agreed in thinking that education, and education in politics, is essential to intelligent citizenship. Hamilton was a graduate of King's (now Columbia) college, and was a prime mover in establishing the university of New York; Jefferson was from William and Mary's college and was the prime mover in establishing the university of Virginia. Many of the promoters of this institution were themselves graduates of William and Mary, which was the oldest college in the south, and the oldest, except Harvard, in the country. Besides Jefferson, it had graduated Peyton and Beverly Randolph, John Marshall, and given his commission as county surveyor to Washington.
   Jefferson was especially anxious that political science should be taught in the university of Virginia, which he was instrumental in founding, and of which he was the first rector. He himself translated a text book from the French to be used for that purpose. I will not give the details of the management and curriculum of this somewhat exceptional foundation, which has been to the south "The University." A study by Wm. P. Trent of the subsequent careers of about 9,000 students who attended it up to the year 1874, the semi-cen-


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ennial of its founding, gives the following rather remarkable results:
Members of congress 62
Congress of C. S. 81
Members of state legislature 348
Judges 16
Generals and brigadier generals, C. S. 30
Authors and artists 59
Mayors 22
Consuls and secretaries of legations 11

   These figures show what powerful influences flow from our universities, and perhaps, the strong tendency to politics is the outcome of the teaching of political science.
   Many seem to think that our constitution was given to this country by special inspiration. As a matter of fact it was evolved not only by "the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity," but by careful and scholarly study of the old Greek confederacies, such as the Aetolian and Achaian leagues. Careful notes regarding the constitutions of these old confederacies were found among Washington's papers, he having obtained them from James Madison.
   Washington himself supposed that in his will he had made adequate provision for the founding of a national university, and he declared "that the primary object of such an institution should be the education of our youth in the science of government."
   The first notably successful teacher of political science in this country was probably Francis Lieber. He went to college at Columbia, South Carolina, as professor of history, philosophy and political economy. The influence the university obtained in the practical politics of the state was remarkable. In the legislature there was a distinct university party made up of young, energetic and aggressive men, who usually managed to have everything their own way. Lieber's friends took part in practical politics with a view to securing the chancellorship of the university for him. He was defeated and resigned his place, going to Columbia college, New York, to teach modern history, political science, international law, civil law and common law. That is what Oliver Wendell Holmes would call a settee of professorships.
   I might go on to trace the development of this study in various institutions, to show it has gradually been separated from the chair of philosophy and joined to that of history; how Ann Arbor and other western institutions have encouraged it from the beginning; how in some


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of the leading universities it is given not a part of the time of one professor, but all the time of several; how political science, at least. in its rudiments, is taught in more than 2,500 institutions in this country, and how the publications of workers in this field are becoming more and more numerous and more and more useful. Yet I take it, that if the tale were fully told we should be disappointed at the smallness of the amount that is done as compared with the amount that obviously needs doing. The achievements of our colleges and universities in this direction have not fulfilled the promise of the early years of the republic, nor the wishes and hopes of our early leaders. There appear to be two main reasons for this state of things.
   The first reason is that administrative and industrial problems. have not, until recently, been pressing. With unoccupied land, undeveloped resources, and no need of a standing army, we could trust indolently to the divinity that is said to care for fools, children and the United States. Emerson says that "men are as lazy as they dare to be" and we have found it easier and pleasanter to hurrah than to think, to let the eagle scream than to let our conscience speak. But I suspect that the time has come when we are beginning to remember that there is a place known as a "fool's paradise," and to wonder if possibly we have been living there. Professor, now President Charles Kendall Adams, asks these questions among others when referring to American contempt for all forms of European governmental machinery: "Is it certain that our municipal governments are better than theirs? Are our systems of taxation more equitably adjusted than theirs? Do our public and private corporations have greater respect for the rights of the people than theirs? Can we maintain that our legislatures are more free from bribery and corruption than theirs?" Dropping the comparison with Europe I would go on to ask if we have indeed excluded corporations from politics by putting them beyond government control? Are trusts desirable, and if not, what are we going to do about it? The same of pools? Is trades unionism desirable, and if not, how is the laborer to defend himself? What reply can we make to the exaggerated but half plausible statement that only the rich can escape justice and only the poor can obtain it? Are we entirely certain that we shall eliminate anarchy by hanging a few anarchists?
   These and questions like them are beginning to be recognized as


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questions for even this country, and perhaps this country especially, to face. In this state of affairs President Adams is right in saying that our people want "not political cant but political candor; not eloquent frivolities, but earnest discussion." Under these circumstances the study of political science will be pushed. We can no longer - we do no longer, ignore the need of it.
   But however much popular indolence and indifference may have had to do with the neglect of political science in our schools and colleges, I think that the chief hindrance to its more extended cultivation was the unsatisfactory state of the science itself. When Thomas Jefferson was planning with rare and almost startling liberality the course to be pursued at the university of Virginia he still thought that it would be advisable to prescribe some orthodox text book in this branch, though in the other departments the professors were allowed to choose their own. His republican soul revolted at the idea that any text book smacking of federalism should be tolerated. So he ruled out Blackstone in the department of law, and himself translated a text book on political economy from the French. His partisanship in this matter, his stickling for political and economic orthodoxy as he conceived it, is a sad example of a, habit of which Americans are only just beginning to cure themselves. Sydney Smith tells us that "orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is your doxy." It has been so in this country regarding political economy. There was but one politico economic question that pressed for a solution and that was the question of protection vs. free trade. Two parties were accordingly formed, the free traders especially arrogating to themselves the title of orthodox economists. Their confession of faith was simple. "Do you believe that free competiton (sic) doeth all things well?" If you answered yes, you we're admitted to a seat in the sanctuary; if you ventured to doubt, you were cast at once into an outer darkness supposed to be peopled only by sciolists (sic), and cranks and demagogues.
   In his recent address at Philadelphia Gen. Walker said that this classifying economists into two divisions, as protectionists and free traders, was no more sensible than it would be for men to range themselves as "war men" or "peace men," it being understood that a war man believed in war all the time, and sought every possible occasion for it; while the peace man would not go to war under any


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circumstances whatever. The absurdity of it is obvious, yet how many instructors in political economy have been selected without reference to their standing on this question? A few certainly, of whom Dr. Ely says he is one, and of whom I am happy to consider myself another, but most of those thus happy have received their appointments within the last few years. No later than last spring a college president came to the Johns Hopkins university looking for a teacher in political economy and said that inasmuch as one of those from whom a handsome legacy was expected was a large manufacturer, it would be just as well that the future professor should be at least a mild protectionist.
   At the time the science of political economy was born its professors had excellent opportunities for saying "don't." Not only was the, interference of government with commerce as then practiced obviously harmful, but even where the government had interfered directly on behalf of the poor, as in the case of the poor laws, its action had often been ill advised and conspicuously mischievous. The result of pruning the powers of government in certain particulars were so entirely satisfactory that the doctrine of laissez faire became a dogma, and a scientific dogma is a nuisance. Translated into English it is the doctrine of governmental do-nothingism, and found expression in Jefferson's saying that that is the best government which governs least. It was said that the "natural" organization of society presupposed free competition. That word natural is the most slippery tool in the whole workshop of social science. In one sense of the word it is proper to say that it is more natural to have the small pox than to be vaccinated, more natural to get wet than to carry an umbrella. As usually used in economic discussion it is a mere verbal screen behind which to beg the question. I only know of two prominent writers on economics who are, at present, using this word to any great extent - one is Prof. Summer and the other is Henry George.
   Another doctrine by allegiance to which the self styled orthodox economists of the country helped to side track themselves and their science was the doctrine of the trusteeship of capital. It was held that the interests of employer and employe are so nearly identical that the employer, in looking after his own interests, will by that very act adequately protect the interest of the laborer. Walker, in the address already quoted, draws the parallel between this doctrine and


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the older one of the political trusteeship of the upper classes. It used to be said that the lower classes did not need the suffrage because their interests were so bound up in the community at large that they never could be oppressed. England, you remember, once thought that the colonies ought to be content to let her manage all their affairs because it must always be to her interest to see them prosper. But the doctrine of political trusteeship has gone down. It was found that each class was the best guardian of its own interests. So, also, have gone down the arguments by which it was sought to defend the aristocratic organization of industry. Books were written to prove labor and capital allies and not enemies, but the laborers steadily refused to accept the conclusion that the capitalist could do no wrong. The fact is now acknowledged to be, as Prof. Clark has shown, that while capital and labor are necessarily allies in production they are necessarily antagonists when it comes to distribution. The economists had "cried peace, peace, when there was no peace" and had discredited themselves accordingly.
   The second and most cogent reason, therefore, for the neglect of social and political scientists seems to me to have been the blunders of the scientists themselves. They were apostles of do-nothingism, though they lived in a time when many things needed doing. But the question will be asked, and is very much in order, if economists have made so many blunders how can we be sure that they will not make just as many more? What assurance have we that the new economists will teach more wisely than the old? I reply by saying that the new political economy asks you to accept none of its conclusions except such "as you yourself find apt and reasonable." It evolves no "economic harmonies" from its inner consciousness when all about it is nothing but economic discord. It is not a machine where a lot of definitions are put into the hopper and assorted rules for the management of the universe are taken out in the meal bag.
   A new instructor in biology had just been employed at one of our eastern colleges and, the president, a rather pompous scholar of the old school, said to him: "I suppose, sir, that you will begin with great fundamental principles?" "No, sir," said the young biologist, "I shall begin with a clam." So in political economy we no longer begin with a doctrinaire explanation of the industrial world, but begin to study the industrial world at whatever points it happens to


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touch us. The old text book and the earlier teachers of political science began by telling us how things ought to be; the newer shade begin not with dogmas but questions; (1) What are the existing facts in a given case? (2) How have these facts come to exist? (3) What rules can we derive from them for our future guidance? Buckle says of even Adam Smith that his facts were subsequent to his argument; they were illustrations rather than proofs. The modern endeavor in this science as in others is to make the arguments subsequent to the facts.
   We hear a great deal about the historical method, also the comparative method, also the biological method, also the statistical method, also the scientific method of study and research. They do not differ greatly, and the fact that we have so many names for practically the same thing shows that the workers along many lines have arrived at a common conclusion by converging paths. What are any or all of these methods good for? Simply this, to enable us to see things as they are. It was said of Alexander Hamilton that he excelled in "argument by statement." That is he stated a question so lucidly and so completely that when he had done nothing remained to be said; formal agreement was gratuitous. Prof. Seeley says that "to produce persuasion there is one golden principle not put down in the rhetorics; it is to understand what you are talking about." The teacher of political economy is not so much to teach truths as ways of finding out truths, not dogma, but method; he is not to fill the minds of his class with facts, but to train their minds to discern facts.
   Let us take one of the most difficult problems or series of problems in the whole range of modern economic and. industrial science and divine if possible what is necessary to a solution. Let the question be a living one, and nothing less than the transportation problem. We see that railroads are at once necessary and dangerous; that they have made and unmade cities; that they have shown favoritism and so built up monopolies in nearly everything capable of being monopolized; that they have raised and lowered their rates to influence the market price of the great staples. We have seen millions upon millions wasted in building parallel lines for which there was no use; we have seen competition between these parallel lines that was not competition proper, but merely a fight to the finish; we have then


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seen resulting pools and combinations and two or three roads trying to make a living off of business one could more than do; we have seen the outcome of this to be at once exorbitant rates and worthless stock-robbery at both ends and bankruptcy in the middle; we have seen the courts of a state influenced by railroads until legal authorities caution us against following their decisions on corporation questions; we have seen legislatures and public officers corrupted until the result has been described as "a devil's dance of public servants in every posture of official dishonesty;" we see our own legislature, realizing that something must be done, about to go forward - into the dark.
   I believe that there is one word that will indicate the way out of all these labryinthine difficulties. That word is "publicity." If we once had all the facts in the case, if we could once state the problem fully, "a wayfaring man, though a fool," might solve it.. If the railroads take more than justice gives they are thieves, and if we allow them less than justice demands we are robbers. It will at once be urged that publicity is impossible in the railroad business; that the corporations could not live a day if a full statement of their affairs had to be made. I know that it is no answer to this to say that there are those who "love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil," but I should like to draw a parallel between these corporations and some that were avoiding publicity from the beginning of this century down to 1863. I allude to the private and state banks that were issuing paper money. In 1856 and '57 the territorial assembly of Nebraska was as much exercised over the problem of controlling the banking corporations as our legislature now is in trying to control the railroads. Probably there are many here, who, like myself, cannot remember a time when we had multifarious and vexatious issues of paper money ranging in worth all the way from face value to worthlessness. Early in this century the evils began and grew. The secretary of the United States treasury could not tell at a given time how much money was afloat, and in guessing at it he gave himself a margin of eleven millions. "Wildcat," "coon-box" and "red dog" banks were numerous and mischievous. Large issues of notes took place unsecured by anything but the capital of banks that had no capital at all. State bank inspectors were fettered, bribed, cajoled, and hoodwinked. The papers published the rates of discount on various sorts of money as


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regularly as our dailies now print the weather reports. Violent alterations of expansion and contraction of the currency followed each other. The cost of domestic exchange was ridiculously high. At this time it was said that banks could not thrive if they must keep books that could be understood and that. an inspector was allowed to see. Banks were said to be private corporations, and it was alleged that the government had no right to meddle. Yet how did we get out of these monetary quicksands? How awake from this financial nightmare? By letting individual competition have its perfect work? Not at all. We escaped by positive legislation which created banks of issue that must conform to specified rules laid down by the government, and that must submit to regular and most searching investigation. The circulation of all other banks was taxed out of existence. The national banking act was modelled after the general banking act of the state of New York, and in the construction of the latter a Columbia college professor of political economy, Dr. McVicar, had had a very considerable share.
   Now a college teacher cannot get all the facts about the railroad problem and so settle it, but he can probably find some new facts, if he tries. He can systematize, and make more useful the old ones, and above all be can point the students to the way by which alone the solution of such a problem is to be reached, and he can teach by precept and example, tboroughness and caution in the work of investigation.
   The nearer the student can be got to the facts the better it is for him. In some degree this science is susceptible of laboratory work. The students attending lectures on municipal and state charities at the Johns Hopkins were encouraged to visit the various institutions and take work on the visiting committees of the local societies. When one of the college fellows, while trying to get work for a man out of employment, found that it was necessary to have what is called a "political pull" in order to get the man a place as a stable cleaner for a street car company, he realized as never before the beauties of ward politics, and the fact that by leaving the management of our street car lines to private corporations we have not put them outside of politics. When another of these visitors found that he could not get justice for a poor woman until be brought the police magistrate a letter of introduction from a wealthy leader of the dominant party,


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he realized as never before how alleged justice might appear to the poor and defenseless in this land of the free. Some of the Hopkins students, through interest in the labor problem, joined the Knights of Labor. Many more subscribed for labor papers. Andrew D. White advises students of political science, as soon as old enough, to attend political caucusses, and have themselves appointed on petit juries.
   But in the main, our study of facts must be a study of recorded facts. Statistics is a word that we nearly all are afraid of. Wright speaks of it as an "unlovely" science. It has been said that figures always lie, and there is truth enough in the statement to make us handle them with extreme caution. Edward Atkinson applies to statistics Sam Weller's remark about veal pie. Sam says that "veal pie is a wery good thing if you only know who makes it." Certainly the statistics contained in our state and government reports are unlovely, and for the most part useless enough. Prof. James asserts that it is all the president and his cabinet can do to make head or tail of even the department reports. We have produced the bulkiest census report on earth, and yet we have not very much reason to boast about its scientific value.
   In Germany there is the closest possible connection between the university of Berlin and the Prussian statistical bureau. The work is under the direction of Engel, the professor of political economy at Berlin, and permission to join his statistical seminary and to be employed in the work of the government comes as a prize for faithful and successful work in the department of political science. As one result of this employment of trained experts upon the bureau it may be said that the census of 1875 was completed on noon of the day appointed and within the estimated cost. This is a marked contrast with our own experience. Some branches of the tenth census are not yet finished, and it has required appropriation after appropriation to carry through the work. The proposition for a civil service academy at Washington to train men for expert work in this and other lines as Annapolis and West Point train men for military service has already been made by Dr. Adams, of Baltimore, and has been received with some favor by the secretary of the interior. There is said to be hardly a professor of political economy in Germany that is not engaged in government work of some sort. Is it too much to
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think that the state governments may at last find it advisable to draw on men trained in the state universities for the really expert work in statistical and administrative science, of which an ever increasing amount is waiting to be done?
   Gideon Wells and Dr. Ely have done excellent service on state and city tax commissions, and anyone who knows the condition of the systemless system of taxation in Nebraska can understand that similar work ought to be done here. Prof. James of the university of Pennsylvania undoubtedly saved several millions to the city of Philadelphia by his study of the relation of the modern municipality to the gas supply. At a critical period of our financial history Andrew D. White of Ann Arbor and Cornell was able to give a congressional committee facts of immense significance regarding the history of paper money in France.
   At least if the state universities are not allowed to supply experts, they can supply good critics of the work of other men. I do not use the word "critic" as standing for a faultfinder, but rather in the sense of one able to appreciate all the facts that are contained in the state and national reports. Contrary to the general opinion, this country greatly needs a race of small politicians; men small in their political aspirations, but who intellectually and morally have reached the full stature of manhood. As we do not find great artists except where there is a public that knows what good art is, so we shall hardly find the highest type of politician except where there is a large and intelligent public taking an unselfish interest in politics. A state university will inevitably train many political leaders, but it would be worth its cost if it did nothing more than scatter through the state, in the offices and editorial rooms, in the pulpits and on the farms, citizens trained to see political facts with clearness and disposed to bold our public servants to strict accountability.
   First, then, a professor of political economy in a state university is a teacher of method. Secondly, be is a gatherer and a student of facts regarding industrial society. He does not say to the student "go," but "come." He ought to be able to show how to investigate by investigating.
   The third function of such a professor and the last of which I shall speak tonight is to be an interpreter between class and class. In the autumn of '85 I was going through a fair sized rolling mill in


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Akron, O., and stopped to talk with one of the puddlers. In the pause of his exhausting work he was communicative enough and I inquired about the labor unions, etc., in the place. At first, I had spoken of myself as a western farm hand, and gave desired information about the condition of agricultural labor in the west. All went well until the fact came out that I was the son of the one who owned the farm upon which I worked and then the other fellow shut up like a clam. I belonged to a class that he did not trust. I have been with a company of men who were planning nothing more incendiary than a co-operative store, and yet they convened with all the caution of conspirators; they talked about the "competitive system" as about some tangible and tyrannous power against which they were darkly plotting. A labor paper in reviewing one of Dr. Ely's books said that it was glad to have such ideas as some the books contained advanced by one "in a position to reach the upper classes." We have heard a good deal about reaching the lower classes; here is indicated another side to the problem. It is possible for two classes to occupy the same country, speak the same language and yet not understand each other. Who shall mediate between them? The press should, but for the most part it declines to do so. It prefers to be partisan on one side or the other. In a great measure people have ceased to trust it. This is not mainly through the influence of notoriously venal papers - papers where a sordid counting room buys its editors in the cheapest market and sells them in the dearest, but rather through the pervasive but often unrecognized influence of class prejudice. The pulpit should mediate between class and class and in some cases it does, but its influence is not adequate.
    It is said that a man ought to be honest without receiving pay for it. It is true. How much more then ought he to be honest if he is paid for it? That is the case with a teacher in the state university. He is the representative of no class, no party, but of the people. In a denominational college be may have to avoid collision with dogma; in a college whose funds are invested in railroad stocks, he may be advised to treat the railroad question gingerly; in others he may be other on free trade - in a state university he should owe allegiance to truth alone. We talk glibly about a constant search for truth and forget what it implies. It im-


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plies, among other things, that a man shall be constantly searching for what is false in his own opinions and for what is true in the opinions of other men. A teacher of political science in a state university owes it to all classes to keep up that search intelligently and assidiously (sic) so long as he holds the position. So may he mediate between classes by understanding not only the real interests, but even the feelings and prejudices of them all.
   These, then, are the three chief functions of the state university worker in political science - to teach, to investigate, to be an interpreter between classes. In this work he needs intelligence, industry and honesty, but the greatest of these is honesty.
   Prof. Seeley spoke of present history as a Socrates continually propounding questions. There are times when present history is not a Socrates, but a Sphinx, when we must answer its political and industrial riddles or. be destroyed. Guess work will not always do. Washington was right in thinking that in educational institutions supported by the government training should be given in the science of government.


HISTORY AND ART

BY SARAH WOOL MOORE.

[Read before a meeting of the Society, January 10, 1888.]

   Some score of years ago Thomas Bryan of New York City, a man of refined tastes, and of wealth sufficient to gratify those tastes, placed his valuable collection of pictures, in the accumulation of which. he had passed many years, upon the walls of the New York Historical Society rooms.
   Like most American collectors he felt the force of that fatality by which, in our country, what one generation amasses the next as industriously disperses; and, anxious that his labor should not be altogether futile, that his treasures should be safely and permanently housed in an atmosphere congenial to their spirit, where appreciative eyes might, in quiet pauses rest upon the suggestive creations of the artist, where those creations could bring to the study of the great past, not merely vivid illustrations, but an actual survival of the freshest and most joyous part of its life, he turned - and in fact he had no other choice - to the New York Historical society. Those glowing canvasses still remain where his hand placed them, though the great city has long since provided costly, fire-proof buildings where such collections are eagerly received and magnificently lodged, and much dispute has arisen as to the propriety of removing Mr. Bryan's trust. But the society will never consent to part from a guest which has added such grace to the place of its long occupancy.
   There is certainly no very strained connection between the provinces of fine art and the history of nations and of states.
   The Muse Clio, like her sisters, acknowledges the inspired leadership of the patron god of the higher aesthetics. Amid the recital of the multitudinous struggle, the disaster, the oppression, the slow dragging progress of the races, her pen must willingly linger over the story of the arts as if in them the fable of the golden age was stirring into life, and mingling itself with the thread of authentic history.
   In the ordinary course of human events the infant years of nations and of states have been absorbed in the individual struggle for exist-


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NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

ence; the state must have time to materialize, and, as Buckle says, as long as every man is engaged in collecting the materials necessary for his own subsistence there will be neither leisure nor taste for higher pursuits" but, the prosperity of a state once assured, the mind relaxes its strenuous endeavor and that beneficent and instructive hunger for beauty makes itself felt. Then the artist and the artistic artisan come to the front; the state demands them and develops them, and their growth reacts again upon its prosperity, giving it an impulse from within - the best pledge of vitality, the most substantial evidence and enduring monument of civic or territorial importance. Naturally, as yet, Nebraska has no art history. That may begin with an organized art life - a life that does not bang every hour on the verge of extinction; but Nebraska has art possibilities, and happy will it be for the State, if, in the year 1988 the task of preparing for your society a chronicle of art growth in our midst, be one somewhat onerous. To no other source could art culture look with more confidence for sympathy and encouragement than to such an association as is here represented; an association whose avowed object - to rescue from oblivion the little beginnings of great things, to the successive steps which have led on to the results we see - prepares it to realize the significance of the little beginnings of today and to have faith in them. Few besides students of history are aware how important and how practical this matter of art culture is. In the different states of our union where it has prominence, an accident, rather than any deliberate action on the part of the people, has generally thrust it forward. Thus Cincinnati has become a conspicuous art center through the bequests of Longworth, Springer; and West. Around the splendid gifts of Corcoran at Washington, Walters and Peabody in Baltimore, Mr. Fred Layton in Milwaukee, Rogers in Buffalo, are already crystalizing schools of design. The St. Louis school of fine art, the most highly organized school of our country, is however, an example of what persistent and determined endeavor may do. This school has been contemplated as an essential part of Washington University for twenty-five years, and the bequest of Wayman Crowe of a two hundred thousand dollar building was the first of a series, which, most judiciously expended, have made the institution a power in the city and in the state.


HISTORICAL PAPERS.

27

   This power, being interpreted, means home production, of home decoration; it means a "race of powerful designers for art and manufactures;" it means rivalry with other centres and artistic competition; it means, in short, commerce - not, as now, the exchange of raw material, but material stamped with the thought of man, its value thereby augmented a hundred fold.
   They are not dreamers, they are practical men who see beautiful forms in common iron, in rough quarried stone, in wood and glass and steel, in our textures and draperies, in our fire place tiles and house furniture.
   In search of such articles, in artistic form, the wealth of the state wilt go out, and invariably will find them grouped around the source of their strength - some school of design, some art academy - as palms round the springs of the desert. Are not such institutions, then, worth cherishing at home? The East has its scores of private galleries, some of them, like the portrait gallery in the Wentworth house, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, dating back a couple of hundred years; but what the West cannot purchase, perhaps it can produce.
   A wise and discriminating judge recently said that the expenditure of fortunes for paintings which go to private galleries is not so healthful a sign of interest in art as the unselfish activity in behalf of art education, which is now to be noted in the West but not in the East." I believe that the Greeks had no private galleries; the master-pieces of art were there the possession of the state: cities, as such, were the purchasers of single pieces of statuary.
   For a private man to claim the ownership and exclusive enjoyment of a creation of Phidias or of a creation of Escliylus would be an equal impertinence. "The Greek understood that art is an education, and as such a necessity; and instead of repressing it and doing all he could to confine the knowledge of it to a few, he displayed his master-pieces in every public building, square, and avenue, where they were the common property of all, the poor as well as the rich, the uneducated as well as the educated; and so it came to pass that the people learned through daily contemplation of the best art, to discriminate between what is true and what is false in art."
   We Americans need to cultivate that same generous policy. With


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