Take the Southern Methodist Church once more for the purpose of illustration: four times a year every preacher must answer to his superior officer this significant question, What is doing in the bounds of your work for the cause of education? It reminds him with regular persistency of his duty, as a moral leader in his community, to look after the interests of the common schools and to urge attendance. Thus with a proper knowledge of needs and conditions he can be a potent force in the educational problem. If he carries out faithfully the spirit and aim of his church, he is such a force.

Now back of these agencies-organized special movements, regular boards for educational propaganda, and the individual work of the preacher as a missionary in the high cause of bringing a kind of intellectual gospel to the people through the school house is the denominational college as the real brain and directing force. What the college is, what are its educational ideals, what is its efficiency, what is its conception of its mission as a college of and for the people; how far it regards itself as the source from which all the efforts of the church to make education a real factor in the life of its membership shall receive their constant inspiration and wisest direction, all measure the vital and intimate relation of the denominational college to this problem of popular education. Indeed, when one takes into view all the elements involved, there is certainly no other single agency more vitally and intimately related.

But the denominational college is itself directly active in trying to arouse interest not only with reference to itself, but also with reference to the general question of education. This it regards as a part of its mission. If the people do not value education, if they will not seek it, the college, as an essential part of a great church whose aim is the uplifting of men, endeavors of necessity to do its share by going out after them and taking to them what they really need regardless of their indifference or indeed of their hostility. It makes education a matter of religion, holding unfalteringly to the belief that Christ came to put men on their feet, and one step in this is to make them more intelligent and wiser, and to train them to do in the best possible way a full

2

amount of the world's work,- -not one man, not a group or sect of men, but all men. This is the high motive under which the better type of the denominational colleges has striven and is striving unceasingly to create among the masses what is called an educational conscience. Many of them on this account keep an agent actively in the field,-a man whose duty is suggestively defined when we call him a sort of evangelist of education,—a greatly needed evangelist, any one must say who knows eye to eye and heart to heart the people with whom one must deal in the South and the general nature of the problem. It is a total misunderstanding of the college agent to think of him merely as a "drummer" for boys. He is very much more than this. He is usually a man of popular address, and his influence in drawing ambitious and capable boys to college and in awakening public sentiment in the matter of education simply cannot be overestimated. His very position gives him free access to homes, to platforms, and to pulpits, and thus, in very truth, he is a missionary—a home missionary— in one of the highest of human causes. Through him, boys fresh from the heart of the people, are induced to take up higher education; through him education generally, the building up of local schools, the sending of children to them regardless of the weather or the demands of the crops, are all made matters of conscience, of religious duty as well as of individual and public expediency. If I had space, I could add here to the fine romance of education that gathers about almost every American college, a number of stirring incidents not only of boys fired to an heroic struggle for educational betterment and finally winning a large manhood and a full measure of worldly success, but also of whole communities so awakened in conscience and effort that such superior school facilities were established as, in a few years, to transform the entire community life into something higher than it was, all through the single visit of a representative of a denominational college who knew at first-hand the temper and point of view of the people he was trying to help and was therefore able to get at them and move them as no other could. All of this shows once more how vitally the denomi

national college is connected with that very important problem of reaching men on the question of education.

Now let us turn to another side of the subject. In having all these agencies for reaching the masses the denominational college draws from its constituency a large body of choice young men and women. These are brought into contact with higher education; not to be sure of the sort to be had at Yale or at Harvard; yet of a sort with sufficient virtue in it to train the brains and give wise direction to energies that are today re-making the South in every department of activity. The colleges get the raw material of a pure, unwasted American stock; they develop the latent power in this material, give to it definite purposes, train it to work efficiently, awaken it to broader ideals, and send the men who make up this material back to their respective communities as examples and leaders-leaders in sections, where, from the very nature of the case, the chief want is a want of the right kind of leadership, not only leadership in all that makes generally for the higher life of the community, but also, in particular, a leadership for better educational facilities. But not all of these young men go back to their native sections. There are those who continue their education at the universities and are called to larger duties and wider spheres of activity.

These considerations, then, seem to make the denominational college an unusually important element in the Southern educational problem-particularly at its present stage: the preponderating number of students in these colleges shows how close they are to the people and consequently to popular education; they are the heads, in their respective churches, of systematic educational propaganda; they have all the machinery of the church at their command for reaching the people and for using the religious motive as an appeal in favor of education; they even keep special agents in the field doing a sort of missionary work in putting the "educational idea" into the thought and upon the conscience of the masses; they draw choice young men and women from their constituency and either send them back to become trained leaders there or prepare them for wider fields of activity.

Now what of the future? Without assuming any of the qualities of a prophet, it seems to me that the stream of tendency points to the strengthening of those colleges whose history and present condition give promise of assured permanency. Few, if any, new ones will be established. The law of the survival of the fittest, assisted by a broader and saner and more expert educational thought on the part of the churches will cut off the weak, strengthen the strong, and prevent any needless and wasteful multiplying of others. The splendid support and equipment which the states will give and ought to give to their institutions will serve as a fruitful stimulus to the churches to be more active than ever in the matter of endowments and physical resources and needs. The relations between the three kinds of institutions, church, private, and state, will grow more and more harmonious, each occupying its own field, supplementing, assisting, and even correcting, where needed, the work of the other. Each will join cordially in the noble words of *President McLean of the State University of Iowa: "To draw civilization out of the depths of ignorance we need the three-fold cord of private, church, and state education. In the neverending contest of liberty with tyranny we must have the same three-fold cable to make a cordon against the dominance of tyranny. When the private institution is constrained to hamper freedom under the pressure of a private patron, or the church institution to sacrifice freedom to ecclesiastical policies or dogmas, then we must turn to the state for freedom. When the politicians would constrain freedom in the state institution, we must depend upon the one or the other of the first two institutions to save the day. The community of interests among these institutions each having a special cause for existence is greater than their diversity of interests. It is as shameful for the institutions of culture not to have cordial relations and propagate 'sweetness and light' as it is for the so-called christian denominations to quarrel. There is enough work for all."

*Quoted by President Thwing in Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1903, Vol. 1., p. 303.

The Railroads and the People

BY WILLIAM H. GLASSON,

Professor of Economics in Trinity College

We are having free discussion of the public relations of the railroads and plenty of it. In fact, the country is flooded with literature on the subject. The President of the United States has ably and often, in season and out, preached railroad regulation to his countrymen; the magnates of the transportation business have sent far and wide tons of pamphlets "for the railroads;" the newspapers have contributed to the discussion countless columns of editorials pro and con; the popular magazines have employed their sharpest witted scribes to discover and depict the misdoings of the railroad oppressors; the journals of the scientist and the scholar have been filled with expert discussions; the practical men have drawn upon their experience, the academic men have theorized, and the economists have waxed warm and acrimonious in their annual session; the politicians have strained one ear to catch the murmur of popular opinion and have kept the other open to the voice of corporate influence; and now, at last, a wise Congress is in session at the seat of government and something will be done.

All this discussion has not been without result. Progress has been made. Upon certain fundamental ground agreement has been reached between most railroad men and practically all plain citizens who do any thinking at all upon public questions. While, the title to railroad property is vested in private owners, the roads are conceded to be the great public highways of the nation. As private property they are not in the same class with shoe factories and clothing stores. Persons who have invested private capital in constructing transportation lines have gone into a business which is charged with a vital public interest. It is the right and duty of the state to prevent any use of such property which is opposed to the public welfare. Upon this view of the proper and necessary management of railroad property there is so