NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The committee met at 8.15 o'clock p. m., Hon. Dudley M. Hughes (chairman) presiding. Mr. FESS. Mr. Chairman, the entire committee is not here, but I notice there are eight people to be heard from to-night, and the hearing is so general that unless we begin now probably we will have trouble in getting through and giving each person as much time as he ought to have. So I would suggest that Mr. Bush-Brown give us some suggestions as to how long a person would be asked to speak, so that we can in some way limit our time. The CHAIRMAN. You will appear first, Mr. Bush-Brown? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Yes, sir. I will only take about 10 minutes myself. Mr. FESS. I would suggest that we limit the persons in their first appearance, so that we could hear all of them, and then open up the whole discussion afterwards. Mr. BUSH-BROWN. I should imagine that 10 minutes apiece would answer the purpose at first, unless some of them want more time. Mr. SHIBLEY. I have prepared a bill, and I would like to speak for a half hour. Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Mr. Hoyt has something quite lengthy to say to us, so that those who can limit themselves will no doubt do so in order to give more time to the men who have more to say. The CHAIRMAN. How much time do you want? Mr. HOYT. Half an hour. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Phillips, how much time do you want? The CHAIRMAN. How much time will you want, Dr. Groszmann? Dr. SEWALL. I will only require about 15 minutes. Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Dr. Williams and Dr. Wiley are not here. ADDITIONAL STATEMENT OF MR. H. K. BUSH-BROWN. Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I would like to have put into the record part of an address that I have marked here which I gave at the time of the International Convention on Hygiene and Demography, which contains a few facts that perhaps bear on this question more or less directly, and I will not read any of it because it will be printed. Mr. FESS. Where was that address given? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. In the city of Washington. The date of it is on the document. I believe that President Hadley has suggested that we should exercise some caution in instituting a university here, on account of the possible danger of having such a university as dominates France, which has grown up out of their bureaucratic form of government. I quite agree with him that that particular kind of university is not what we want in this country, and that is why I stand here to-day, gentlemen, to plead for something else. I have lived in France and I know something of the French methods and the French life. Mr. THACHER. How many students are there in the University of Paris; do you know? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. I am not credibly informed. I would also like to suggest to the committee that if they want some detailed analysis of what the French system of education is I could refer them to De Moulin's book on Anglo-Saxon Superiority, which I refer to in my other address. It gives a very close analysis of the French system of education and points out its weakness, and that arraignment of the French system is in great part an arraignment of our system of education. De Moulin wrote that book after he had been to England to study the methods of British education. He found in Great Britain two schools, one in Scotland for the education of youth preparatory for college and one in England to educate for foreign service, for the diplomatic and commercial colonial service. He was so impressed with that kind of training that he went back to France and organized a school of his own on similar lines. That encouraged a German to establish in Germany, in the Black Forest, the same kind of school. We have one in this country, and there are two in Switzerland. These schools, which deal primarily with taking the pupils out of doors and teaching them in connection with nature, are dealing with education in a natural form. Mr. FESS. It would not interrupt you or interfere with you at all to question you, would it? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. No; I think not. Mr. FESS. Now, speaking of that out-of-door work, what grade of students have you in mind? How old or how far advanced? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Well, of course, we are dealing now with a university which is to have graduate students only. Mr. FESS. That is what I am asking you. You do not take in anybody here, in your conception, below graduates? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. No, sir; but I am talking about a research institution and our method of education, that that is one of the things that ought to be delved into to the bottom. We are not getting out of our American people the potency that is naturally born to them for the lack of opportunity in this country; and if this institution is going to stand for research, it must stand for research in the field of education. Therefore we have to consider education from rather a fundamental point-and I beg to excuse myself for going into detail in these things, because while it does not go to the question of a university, yet you can not consider the university without taking everything in a broad way. Our method of education is extremely expensive. It has grown up out of our expensive ideals and expensive ways of living. It seems to me that it is not always necessary for it to be so very expensive. That is one of the things which your own graduate school ought to take up, the way in which education can be more easily brought to the average citizens. Our institutions that are endowed have the use of this endowment to cheapen education, and they give tuition for less than the actual cost, so that the more students they have the poorer they are. They have to limit the number of students in order to keep the expenses of the institution within their income, and they are constantly putting up bars, making it more difficult to become students, in order to have a better selected body of students and to keep within their income. If we are dealing with a national institution, it ought to be on the reverse principle, to make education more and more within the reach of the average citizen and those who are not so well endowed with money. In this connection I beg the privilege here to make a further explanation of what I meant the other day by a service institution. I made a reference to how the development of the park system of Washington might be made a part of our system of education. Let us take another instance, the building of the Lincoln Memorial. We have appropriated, I think, $2,000,000 for that purpose. Instead of turning that building over to the War Department, suppose we could turn it over to a secretary of education instead of to the Secretary of War. All monuments are educational. Now, suppose we have a secretary of education, or suppose we had this university established with its administrators, and that they should arrange it in such a way that the material for that building should be delivered here under one contract, and that the assembling and putting together of that material for the memorial to Lincoln should be within the administration of the educational affairs for the purposes of education. Suppose that our graduate students here should be made a part of that as a means of demonstrating how a college education can be made less expensive. Supposing that we made an advertisement for skilled mechanics who wanted to work on the temple to Lincoln as a means of getting a better and higher education. Their qualifications would be that they would be skilled mechanics, such as could be used in that work-masons, stonecutters, and steel fitters, and laborers. Now, from the War Department I was credibly informed yesterday that it costs 25 cents a day to provision a soldier. In other words, you can maintain a soldier-that is, the actual cost of his food-for one year on $91. Now, it is presumable that if these students could work half time on this building, as they do in Cincinnati, and the other half should be utilized for their studies, it could be worked out. In fact, George Washington University is now arranged for the use of the employees of the Government. Their lectures in the university are after half past 4, and a large portion of the students in George Washington University are employees of the Government who are taking advantage of the opportunities here. It is conceivable that with George Washington University doing a little of that work, that they could easily do a little more. In order to work out and demonstrate the ability to utilize half-time scholarships for the sake of building the temple to Lincoln, they would be ready and capable of cooperating in this plan. Our bachelor of arts students who have just received their degrees could be the advisers and mentors of their younger brothers who are here for education from the fields of mechanics. It would enable those who have become skilled in the industrial and mechanical arts to find that skill a means of opening up a higher education instead of its being, as at present, a barrier. Mr. FESS. Do you think there would be any difficulty in getting graduate students to do that kind of work? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. I do not think so. Mr. FESS. Would they do the sort of work that would be beneficial and not detrimental to the building itself? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Well, if they were skilled mechanics, they would. Mr. RUPLEY. What class of graduate students would you employ for that purpose? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. I am talking about the graduate students who are here for research work in the fields of education. Mr. RUPLEY. Well, they may be a very large class. Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Well, it is not necessary that they should beMr. FESS (interposing). Of course, the class that you are referring to are mechanics? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Yes, sir. Now, the average working man is hungry for a better education. He is looking for that opportunity. He is crying out for it and he does not get it. This is not an experimental thing. It has been already tried out at Oxford. They have a group of their graduate students who are assisting the mechanics to get better education. Mr. RUPLEY. What line of study would this particular group study? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. I do not quite understand you. Mr. RUPLEY. You say there is a group in the University of Oxford that are interested in this particular line of mechanics, along the line, you say, of the construction of the Lincoln Memorial. Now, what particular group of American post graduates could we interest in that work? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. You mean to have the college graduates assist in this work? Mr. RUPLEY. Yes. What group and from what line would they come? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Well, I assume that this university will gather a certain set of men here who are interested in education for itself. Most educational institutions have a group of people who are going in education as a profession. I scarcely know one educational institution in this country which does not produce teachers. Mr. FESS. As I understand it, the mechanics that would come here would be employed on this beautiful temple while they are here? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Yes. Mr. FESS. In half-time work? Mr. BUSH-BROWN. Yes, sir. They would be students who had taken their high-school degree, or who had qualified, to some extent, to take a course in the George Washington University, or some other institution of learning here, who are hungry to have a better opportunity intellectually. Now, you can see that there can be a few of such. We have in this country 28,000,000 children, and between the |