Mr. TREADWAY. Then, there will be practically nothing new obtained for the educational institutions through this institution other than a different way of securing it with varying ease because of the splendid opportunities that exist here in the city of Washington to secure material?

Mr. PEARSE. The school need not necessarily offer anything beyond what could be furnished in a private school. I think, as a matter of fact, there will be things that may be developed and so well furnished in a private way that other schools would not attempt to duplicate. But with the resources referred to by the different speakers last evening in the way of science laboratories and collections, museums, libraries, and in other forms, there will be opportunities here which no private institution-private as distinguished from this institution which is proposed could hope to provide, and would be extremely unlikely to provide.

Mr. FESS. Do you not think the opportunity for establishing a school of consular service here, which can not be established anywhere else not in Harvard or Yale, or any place of that kind—would be a justification, from a financial standpoint, from the standpoint of our relationship with other countries, for the establishment of a na tional university?

Mr. PEARSE. I believe that such an institution as is proposed here could develop that work in a different way and give its students a viewpoint different from that of any private institution. I believe it is true that a school of that sort is now being carried on by cooperation between Yale and Columbia Universities, and that men are being trained in that school for the Diplomatic Service; but I do not think that any institution not national in its character can do that particular work in any way to compare with the manner in which it could be done by a national university.

Mr. FESS. Take the movement in New York-instruction for public service sweeping the city there. Where would there be any opportunity to develop that sort of movement equal to the opportunity here?

Mr. PEARSE. Training for the public service could be done in States, and in subdivisions of States, in State universities, as it is being done now; but so far as training for service to the Nation is concerned, it could be done nowhere so well as in an institution of this sort, situated at the Capital of the Nation.

Mr. FESS. Take the movement for a commission to work out any question in a city like New York or Chicago, municipalities generally, why should not there be a movement here at the seat of government to serve the municipalities of the country, the States of the Union, especially the Nation?

Mr. PEARSE. I believe, Congressman Fess, that if this institution is established, it will become a great engine for service to the Nation; that in ways that we can not now foresee, in methods that can not now be named, it will develop into a great service institution for the United States.

Mr. FESS. I infer from Mr. Treadway's conclusion that his idea is that there would not be anything done here that is not done or could not easily be done in other places. I think he is mistaken.

Mr. PEARSE. There are certain things of a national aspect which could be done here, and could not be done in private institutions.

In the way of research, geological, biological, historical, any particular line, might probably be carried on in private institutions.

Mr. FESS. Suppose Harvard should attempt to do the work of the national university here proposed, what sort of an endowment would be required to supply the museums and the libraries, the exchanges and the various bureaus that are here waiting for this sort of work? How much of an endowment would be required at Harvard for that, or at Columbia, or at Yale, or at any of these insti.tutions?

Mr. PEARSE. It would be out of the question. Nobody would care to compute the cost of providing for Harvard or Yale or Columbia or Princeton such opportunities as the National Government has. Mr. PLATT. Where have you anything in Washington to compare with the Peabody Museum or the Agassiz Museum at Harvard?

Mr. PEARSE. I can not tell you as to that; but I say here in Washington this Nation has resources which no private institution can hope to develop. We have two or three wonderful foundations created by men whose wealth is phenomenal; but even they must be limited in the directions of their research. They can not cover all the fields which are important to the Nation, as, I believe, the institution here suggested could cover it. If, at this particular time, a museum of a particular sort in this Capital is not equal to the Peabody Museum, for instance, or to the Agassiz Museum, or to the museums in the University of Pennsylvania, the resources of the Nation are such that whenever it is important or worth while to accumulate such material, it can and will be done.

Mr. PLATT. It could be done, but the accumulations are in the older universities, and, it seems, in connection with all your States. There is in New York State, in New York City, vastly more educational opportunity to-day than in Washington.

Mr. FESS. Not from a scientific standpoint?

Mr. PEARSE. I do not quite see your point.

Mr. PLATT. The city of New York does work almost as large as the National Government itself. The city of New York spent nearly as much on a water system as the National Government has spent on the Panama Canal, for instance.

Mr. PEARSE. No doubt some undertakings of the city of New York are equal to or greater than many of the undertakings of the National Government.

Mr. PLATT. Yes; that is true.

Mr. PEARSE. The National Government may not have undertaken any single works of irrigation or reclamation so great as certain labors of New York City. But New York City is a part of the Nation, and rather a small part, relatively, when you come to figure it

out.

Mr. POWERS. This bill provides that one of the objects of this university shall be to cooperate with the scientific departments of the Government and agricultural colleges throughout the country and with other institutions of higher education. I want to know just in what way you expect to cooperate and just in what you expect to cooperate. To make myself more clear, suppose this bill were now a law, with a good deal more appropriated than now is, and you had your grounds all purchased and your buildings erected, and every

thing ready for business. In what way would this institution cooperate with the scientific departments of the Government?

Mr. PEARSE. Do you mean with the Government departments or with other educational institutions?

Mr. POWERS. With the Government and with the other institutions. Just in what way do you expect to cooperate?

Mr. PEARSE. The detailed plans would be far better discussed by some of these gentlemen directly connected with universities; but I should say, if this institution were established and had its buildings, its classrooms, its lecture rooms, and its museums and collections of material, that anything which the National Government has in any of its bureaus or any of its departments for scientific research would be at the disposal of the university in so far as their use by the university would not destroy the material or take it from other uses for which it was necessary.

Mr. THACHER. Do you mean they would loan some of their materials, for instance?

Mr. PEARSE. The bureaus or museums could loan some of their materials temporarily to the university or the students could be sent to the bureaus where the material is regularly kept.

As for cooperation with other universities and institutions, public, or privately endowned, such institutions could send their men to Washington for purposes of inquiry and research. There would be material here available, I believe, which would be available in few, if in any other schools. Professors could be sent here for three months or for half a year or for a year to make studies and take back the results of their research to the institutions with which they were connected. Students of more than ordinary talent could be sent here to work under the direction of the men in charge of the departments in this university and could then go back to the institution from which they had been sent. Material, I have no doubt, could be loaned temporarily to other institutions to permit them to make special studies. If necessary or desirable, many other ways of cooperation could no doubt be found.

Mr. TREADWAY. In reference to cooperation, your experience, as I understand it, has been more with the popular line of education rather than higher education?

Mr. PEARSE. It has.

Mr. TREADWAY. That is, you are superintendent of city schools, as I understand it?

Mr. PEARSE. I have been.

Mr. TREADWAY. As you undoubtedly realize, this is going to cost the Government a great deal of money?

Mr. PEARSE. Yes.

do

Mr. TREADWAY. And it is a dream, as one of the professors stated last evening, as to what the final figures may reach. Suppose the Government saw fit to embark on the expenditure of any such amount of money as this bill will eventually involve, in what way you think that amount of money could be best used to do the most good to the people-through the establishment of this kind of institution, or through division, on the part of the Government, with respective States or cities or whatever the methods might be, in assistance, financial assistance, in their own line of work?

Mr. PEARSE. I am glad to have you ask that question, because I have an answer which seems to me a reasonable one.

The National Government has in the past contributed sums of money, either through gifts of land or in other ways, for the encouragement of certain kinds of education-to the land-grant colleges, for instance-for the encouragement of education in agriculture and the mechanic arts. These grants, for the most part, are the mere priming of the pump.

The people of this country have, if they only believed it was worth while, enough wealth of their own to carry on these enterprises; to care for their common schools, to care for their high schools, to maintain their State colleges. Although my State government is giving bounties to high schools for a number of different things, the bounties are not given because the high schools could not be carried on by the local communities with such aid as comes from the general school fund of the State; they are given because the communities have not realized the value of such education; and these subsidies are given for the purpose of stimulating interest in and encouraging the people to embark upon these kinds of education which are thought desirable.

I look upon the grants which might be given to encourage agriculture and the mechanic arts, extension courses by which education is carried to the homes of the people, as merely a stimulant, as merely the seed-the yeast that shall start the thing to working in the local communities. It ought not to be necessary to continue the payment of these bounties. The people can do this thing for themselves. They have the money; all these great rich States of ours have the money to do what they need for their own children on their own ground.

Mr. TREADWAY. Right there permit me to interrupt for this question: You are perhaps familiar with the legislation recently passed called the Lever bill?

Mr. PEARSE. I am.

Mr. TREADWAY. Would you say these millions that were to be distributed in certain ways among the States under that act would be more useful centered in such an institution as this, because you argue that the States themselves could do that work if they saw fit?

Mr. PEARSE. Do not misunderstand me.

Mr. TREADWAY. I do not want to do so. I am drawing that inference from what you state.

Mr. PEARSE. No; I do not want you to draw that inference. I say the encouragement which has been given for 40 years or more to the land-grant colleges was perfectly legitimate. I do not believe that will be permanently necessary. I believe that eventually that support will be withdrawn, and those schools will go on prospering and doing their splendid work. I believe at present it is well worth while for the National Government to appropriate money as it proposes to do under the Lever bill, to stimulate certain forms of education among its people. I believe it is well that the people shall be encouraged to do this work and to recognize the importance of carrying it on. I believe measures like the Lever bill help to bring this about more quickly. I do not believe such help will be permanently neces

'sary.

But a national university can only be established by the Nation. No State can do it; only the Nation can accomplish this thing. Any

funds which you put into it must be not merely for the present. You must expect to continue the support permanently. I believe it is worth while. All these other grants are probably temporary matters and the burden will eventually be assumed by the people in the different localities; but this great enterprise can be carried on only in this way, and I believe the investment which would be required is comparatively small when measured against the benefits which should

come.

STATEMENT OF MR. GUY POTTER BENTON, PRESIDENT OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT.

Dr. BENTON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I come as the secretary of the National Association of State Universities to represent officially that organization; and, lest I be misunderstood, I ought to say that I am representing my own personal convictions as well. My time is rather limited, and I shall, therefore, speak very briefly.

It would be a work of supererogation to say to the gentlemen of this committee that a university is something more than a college. Universities are public institutions. They are maintained not for the support of those who are responsible for their operations. Of course, I am speaking now not of the European ideal, but of the American university, which is a different sort of institution. Certainly it was different in its origin, and has been somewhat different in fruition from older institutions of the world called universities. The continental university in the first stages of its existence was a mere scholastic guild or voluntary association of scholars and teachers. Its members owed no obligations to any but themselves. These original universities, instituted for the most part by ecclesiastical teachers and organized independently of the State, were entitled to manage their own affairs without let or hindrance from the outside world.

In the United States, on the other hand, the great university foundations have been almost wholly extramural in their origin. It must be very clear, then, that those who disparaged American universities because they are not conducted by the same methods and for for the same ends as the older institutions bearing the same titles in Europe, are disparaging on the basis of analogies that have no actual existence.

The American university, I suppose, will continue in the future to be a complex of colleges-undergraduate, graduate, and professional. In the first place, it will adhere to its original function as a place for instruction. It will perpetuate the best accomplishments of mankind in all ages by providing for the study of the languages, literature, philosophy, laws, religions, and customs. It will extend the domain of knowledge through study of the phenomena of nature in cooperation with scholars everywhere by newer and better methods of research. It will disseminate as widely as possible, by publication or otherwise, the knowledge its members have gained. It will seek to discover new and promising talent by encouraging unusual abilities among all classes, and, finally, it will continue to uphold the highest standards of character, of scholarsip,