/ -Nol LtLi / *7 // ~j , Contents PAGE Prefatory Note 5 I. Commencement Address: Relation of the State University to the Commonwealth. By President Edward Janes James, Univer- sity of Illinois 8 II. Addresses in Connection with the Presentation of the Sword of General Walter Q. Gresham — 1. Biographical Sketch of General Gresham. By Profes- sor James A. Woodburn, Bloomington, Indiana 28 2. Address of Presentation. By Mr. Otto Gresham, Chi- cago, Illinois 37 3. Address of Acceptance. By President William Lowe Bryan 38 III. Address to the Graduates of the School of Law: The New Ideals. By Judge George DuRelle, Louisville, Kentucky 39 IV. Alumni Address: Public Service Reform. By Hon. Cyrus E. Davis, '80, Bloomfield, Indiana 47 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/commencementnumbOOjame INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN VOL. IX BLOOMINGTON, IND., JUNE 15, 1911 NO. 6 Entered as second-class matter May 16, 1908, at the postoffice at Bloomington, Indiana, under the Act of July 16, 1894. Published from the University office, Bloomington, Indiana, semi-monthly April, May and June, and monthly January, February, March, July, September, and November. Prefatory Note The principal events of the 1911 Commencement were the ad- dress before the School of Law by Judge George DuRelle, of Louis- ville, Kentucky, on the evening of Friday, June 16 ; the baccalau- reate sermon Sunday evening by Rev. A. B. Storms, Indianapolis; the address Tuesday morning before the Alumni Association by the Hon. Cyrus E. Davis, ’80, of Bloomfield, Indiana ; the Phi Beta Kappa address Tuesday afternoon by Professor Andrew C. Mc- Laughlin, of the University of Chicago ; the Commencement ad- dress, on Wednesday, by President Edward Janes James, of the University of Illinois ; and the addresses during the Commence- ment exercises in connection with the presentation to the Univer- sity, by Mrs. Walter Q. Gresham and Mr. Otto Gresham, of the sword of General Walter Q. Gresham. Of these latter there were four: a Biographical Sketch of General Gresham, by Professor Woodburn, of Indiana University; Personal Reminiscences, by General Anson Mills, of El Paso, Texas; an address of presenta- tion, by Mr. Otto Gresham, of Chicago, Illinois, and one of accept- ance, by President Bryan on behalf of the University. Six of these nine addresses are printed in this Bulletin. Interesting features of Commencement week in recent years are the quinquennial reunions of the various classes. This year re- unions were held by the classes of 1871, 1881, 1886, 1891, 1896, 1901, and 1906. The following list shows the members of each of these classes present at its reunion ; in addition, the husbands, or wives, and children of a number of members were present: [21 ( 5 ) 6 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN CLASS OF 1871* Prof. Thomas G. Alford, West Lafayette, Ind. Mrs. Helen Alford Berry, West Lafayette, Ind. Lev. John W. Culmer, Indianapolis, Ind. Mrs. Susannah Hamilton Anderson, Quincy, Ind. Mrs. Elizabeth Harrison Dunn, Louisville, Ky. Lester L. Norton, Houston, Texas. Mrs. Louise Wylie Boisen, Bloomington, Ind. CLASS OF 1881 Charles A. Burnett, Lafayette, Ind. Dean Horace A. Hoffman, Bloomington, Ind. John C. Shirk, Brookville, Ind. Harry H. Sums, Worthington, Ky. Robert A. Woods, Princeton, Ind. CLASS OF 1886 Prof. Carl II. Eigenmann, Bloomington, Ind. Mrs. Kate Milner Rabb, Indianapolis, Ind. Francis Thomas Singleton, Martinsville, Ind. John Carr Wells. Bloomington, Ind. CLASS OF 1891 Mrs. Anna Bowman Hoffman, Bloomington, Ind. Prof. Lewis S. Davis, Bloomington, Ind. William E. Jenkins, Bloomington, Ind. William M. Louden, Bloomington, Ind. Mrs. Nancy McMahon .Tones, Bloomington, Ind. Prof. David M. Mottier, Bloomington, Ind. Mrs. Martha Orchard Malott, Bloomington, Ind. Miss Mary Polk, Manila, P. I. Dr. Robert C. Rogers, Bloomington, Ind. Daniel T. Weir, Indianapolis, Ind. Samuel Ashby (LL.B), Indianapolis, Ind. Theodore J. Louden (LL.B.). Bloomington, Ind. CLASS OF 1896 Mrs. Georgetta Bowman Giles, Marion, Ind. Prof. Robert C. Brooks, Cincinnati. O. Miss Blanche Iv. Freeman, Palo Alto, Cal. Miss Lucy J. Hunter, Bloomington, Ind. Dr. Abraham J. King, Indianapolis, Ind. Mrs. Cora Loehr Mason, Bloomfield, Ind. Daniel K. Miers, Chicago, 111. James F. Organ, Vincennes, Ind. •The class of 1871 decided to hold another reunion in 1916. COMMENCEMENT N UMBER 7 CLASS OF 1901 Dr. Fred H. Batman, Bloomington, Ind. Mrs. Alta Brunt Sembower, Bloomington, Ind. Mrs. Anna Cravens Rott, Bloomington, Ind. Grant E. Derbyshire, Portland, Ind. Miss Grace H. Griffith, Vevay, Ind. Wiley J. Huddle, Madison, Wis. Ora A. Rawlins, Kewanne, 111. Mrs. Jessie Ritter Farmer, Bloomington, Ind. Mrs. Florence Smith Stott, Union City, Ind. Miss Lola .T. Smith, Bloomington, Ind. Mrs. Lena Triplett Rogers, Bloomington, Ind. Sanford Trippet, Princeton, Ind. CLASS OF 1906 Miss Cordelia J. Adams, Charlestown, Ind. Will J. Blair, Bloomington, Ind. Arthur G. Bobbitt, Lebanon, Ind. Carlyle Bollenbacher, Chicago, 111. Mrs. Ruby Bollenbacher Beck, Bloomington, Ind. Edgar E. Botts, West Lafayette, Ind. Mrs. Lila Burnett Louden, Bloomington, Ind. Miss Irene Burtt, Jeffersonville, Ind. Miss Elizabeth Demaree, Bloomington, Ind. Daniel W. Donovan, Muncie, Ind. Mrs. Mary Hamilton Beck, Bloomington, Ind. Mrs. Olivia Harvey Wylie, Bloomington, Ind. Miss Emma Holiday, Monticello, Ind. Prof. George A. Hutchinson, Pittsburg, Pa. Harry M. Ibison, Macon, 111. Mrs. .Tosie Koons Ruch, Mulberry, Ind. Miss Mary Lewis. Bloomington. Ind. James L. McIntosh, Brook, Ind. Miss Grace Norwood, Lebanon, Ind. Miss Edna Nowland, Indianapolis, Ind. Miss Nellie Ober, Auburn, Ind. Mrs. Carolyn Read Karsell, Bloomington, Ind. Miss Carolyn Mabel Reed, Bloomington, Ind. Manuel O. Roark, Aurora, 111. Dr. Burton A. Thompson. Kokomo. Ind. Norman M. Walker, El Paso, Tex. Joseph A. Williams, Bloomington, Ind. Andrew T. Wylie, Bloomington, Ind. Charles Kemp (LL.B.), Tipton, Ind. Percy V. Ruch (LL.B.), Mulberry. Ind. Herbert A. Run dell (LL.B.), Spencer, Ind. Ora L. Wtloermuth (LL.B.), Gary, Tnd. 8 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN RELATION OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY TO THE COMMONWEALTH Commencement address by President Edward J. James, of the University of Illinois. The erowth of the state university is one of the most striking facts in the field of higher education in the United States during the last twenty-five years. Down to the middle of the last century it looked as if the United States would for an indefinite time follow the example of England during the last two hundred and fifty years, and leave the field of higher education entirely to the care of the church, or private secular organizations, or of private individuals, and it was not un- til well into the ’80 ’s of the last century that it was perfectly clear that a fundamental change was taking place in this respect through- out the length and breadth of the country. With the founding of the new state universities, and the enlarge- ment and development of the older state institutions, it became evident that the state was going into the field of higher education as an important, if not dominant, element, over most of the terri- tory of the United States. To the states lying along the Atlantic seaboard, and north of Mason and Dixon’s line, the state university idea is still a foreign one, though even here, Maine and Vermont have shown a growing interest in the educational movement which has produced the state university; and Cornell University in New York is ac- customing the people of that state to making appropriations on a large scale for certain departments of university work. But along the Atlantic seaboard south, in the Mississippi Val- ley through its entire extent, north and south, and along the Pa- cific slope from southern California to Washington, the state uni- versity has already become the typical institution of higher learn- ing. There are, of course, in this region also great private founda- tions. Chicago, Northwestern, Western Reserve, Tulane, Leland Stanford, Washington, are great institutions, rivaling not only the greatest of the state universities, but the greatest of the private foundations along the Atlantic coast. The number of these great private institutions is likely to increase in the future, and we who are engaged in state university work can only wish them well ; for with their enormous resources and great educational insight they commencement number 9 are not only doing a great service to their own students, but are showing state institutions, in many directions, the way which leads to the highest usefulness. Besides these larger institutions, there are many smaller colleges and seminaries, supported by churches or private individuals, which taken together are performing a most useful function for the states and the nation. They deserve our sympathy and good wishes. Indeed, I do not see how our state universities can do their most useful work except upon the basis of the thorough cultivation of their special constituencies and their special localities by these private or church institutions. All hail to them, therefore, and God speed in their great task ! But numerous and valuable as these foundations may become, it does not seem likely that they will ever become the typical or dominant type of higher institutions throughout the south, center, and west of this country. Already in most of the states of the union the state university has become the most important single institution of higher learning within its territory. Even in those states like California, Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri, where there are great private foundations, as noted above, such as Northwestern, Chicago, Armour, Western Reserve, Washing- ton, and Leland Stanford, the state universities have become im- portant elements in the educational life of the state; while even in the territory of the private institution par excellence, namely the Atlantic seaboard north of Virginia, there are not wanting per- fectly evident signs of a growing interest in this, for us, compar- atively new form of higher education. Of the forty-eight states in the American Union, thirty-eight have established the state university pure and simple, under the direct control of the state, and one, New York, has in Cornell an institution which is developing more and more completely along state university lines. The tendency and attitude of the western communities toward the state university idea is shown by the fact that nearly all the newer states had established state universities while still in the ter- ritorial condition. This is true of the two latest additions to the list of states, New Mexico and Arizona. The attendance at the state universities and other state-aided institutions of higher education during the year 1908-1909 was 90,187b 'Compiled from Bulletin, 1909, No. 11, U. S. Bureau of Education. 10 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN The importance of this group of institutions for American edu- cation is therefore evidently great, and it is eminently proper and surely worth our while on such an occasion as this to give some little time to the discussion of its significance for our American life. It may be interesting to note in passing that the educational literature of our time, neither in this country nor in Europe, has given any adequate attention to this great movement. It is not, of course, surprising that the standard histories of education by European authorities ignore the state university entirely, or make only the briefest reference to it; for standard histories in any de- partment give little or no attention to recent events or recent move- ments: but it is rather astonishing that even the most recent official reports made for European governments by special agents contain little or no reference to this remarkable movement, and this is true even of the newest letters and books written by passing travelers who may take occasion to discuss the educational system of the United States. It is surely more surprising that in our own country men along the northern coast of the Atlantic have shown almost as little ap- preciation of the significance of this development for the present and future of American education. The historians of the next generation will regard this sweep to- ward government participation in higher education as one of the most remarkable educational phenomena of the last half of the nineteenth century. It would be interesting to study the development of this move- ment and trace out the effect which various elements may have had in working toward this common result. The causes of this peculiar and unexpected departure from the custom and habit of the preceding period in American history, and from the ideas of our English forefathers, are partly national, partly local, partly financial, partly temperamental; possibly also partly racial, and surely partly political and partly social. But interesting as this study might be, it would take us too far afield on the present occasion, and I must turn aside to the more immediate subject of my remarks, namely : The relation of the State University to the Commonwealth. What is a university ? It is difficult to define a term which has had such a long history and has meant, therefore, such different things at different times. It is difficult to define a term which is used in all modern languages and in all civilized countries and means something different in each country from what it means in COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 11 any other. It is difficult to define a term which even in a single country like our own covers such a multitude of diverse institu- tions, and diverse elements. We speak of Harvard University, of Clark University, Johns Hopkins University, Florida University, and yet it would he difficult to select four institutions, called by the same name, with more remarkable differences among* themselves than these. I do not know, however, that it is necessary to obtain a defini- tion upon which all will agree. At any rate I am confident that no such definition can be formulated at present. I shall, therefore, make my own definition for the purposes of this argument, and you will see from the definition and from the development of the subject, what I think the state university is, in idea at any rate, and what it is likely to become more and more fully as it develops, according to its inherent nature. I should define a university briefly, as that institution of the community which affords the ultimate institutional training of the youth of the country, for all the various callings for which an ex- tensive scientific training, based upon adequate liberal preparation, is valuable and necessary. You will note the elements in the de- finition. By virtue of the function thus assigned to it, it is in a certain sense the highest educational institution of the community. It is the institution which furnishes a special, professional, techni- cal. training for some particular calling. This special, technical, professional training must, however, be scientific in character, and must be based upon adequate preliminary preparation of a liberal sort. By this requirement of a liberal preparatory training the university is differentiated from the technical school or trade school of secondary grade. It is further differentiated from trade schools by the more scientific character of its training; and also by this same feature from the mere preparatory cram school for public' examinations, such as the private professional schools of this coun- try have been down to within a very recent date. We might paraphrase this definition of the university, for even at the risk of repetition I desire to fix in your minds the funda- mental thought underlying this presentation. A university is a higher institution of learning which prepares the suitably trained youth of a country for the adequate practice of the learned professions. A learned profession is a calling which for its adequate pursuit requires a special training in the sciences underlying the art, which 12 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN special training is itself based upon an adequate preliminary train- ing of a liberal sort. The learned professions at one time included only medicine, law, and theology. Today they include teaching, engineering, scien- tific farming, dentistry, pharmacy, chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, etc. Tomorrow they will also include banking, insur- ance, railroading, merchandising, journalism. It will be noted that this definition distinguishes the university from the trade school of all kinds, because of its emphasis on two things: first, the need of adequate liberal training as a condition of the special technical training suitable to the profession; second, the emphasis on the scientific element in the professional training itself. Thus a medical school, for example, which did not insist upon an adequate liberal training on the part of the student be- fore he was admitted to the study of medicine, would not be a uni- versity medical school, whatever else it is. Nor would a medical school which contented itself with giving the student rules of thumb for the treatment of patients, instead of a thorough ground- ing in the sciences underlying the art, be a university medical school, whatever else it might be. So a law school which did not in- sist upon a liberal preparatory training as a condition of admis- sion would not be a university law school. Nor would a school which was satisfied with giving students directions as to how they should do this, that, and the other, and with giving them knowledge presented in a mechanical manner which should serve the student as a mere means of doing his routine work, instead of training him in the broad principles underlying the history and development of the law, be a university law school. This idea we must dwell upon a little further, ai the risk of be- ing somewhat tedious, so as to get clearly before us the points we are trying to elucidate. It would be possible to establish, for instance, a trade school in ceramics, that is, in the clay working industries, which should sim- ply take the untrained, uneducated boy from the grammar grades and give him the necessary technical training to enable him to practice the art as it is carried on in the ordinary brick yard or terra cotta factory or porcelain establishment. That, of course, would be, strictly speaking, a trade school ; but if we establish in the university a school of ceramics or a department of ceramics, and wish to have it a truly university school, we must do two things. First of all, insist upon a liberal training on the part of students who shall be admitted to this school or department. Second, we COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 13 ruust train them in the sciences underlying the practice of their art in such a way that they shall be able to understand the princi- ples on which the art is based, and be able to do their part in de- veloping and improving this trade or profession which they pro- pose to take up. It is plain enough that one school trains the mechanic or the artisan. The other trains the leader, the director, the manager, the investigator. An ideal arrangement, of course, in any country, would be that under which the men especially qualified to do this directive, this forming, this shaping, this developing work, should have the benefit of the highest form of scientific training. Now in discussing the relation of the state to such an institution as this, namely an institution which undertakes to provide special training for all these callings, the successful pursuit of which is based upon an extensive scientific training, involving for its com- plete assimilation a preliminary liberal training, and therefore an institution composed of many departments, reaching out to an- swer the needs of all the professions in this sense of the term — I say our first question is, Why should the state concern itself about such an institution at all? Why not leave all professional, special edu- cation to the care and nurture of private institutions or private in- dividuals ? This is what was done in England, for example, down to a com- paratively recent time. The English government concerned itself but little as a government with the development of professional training of any kind. It required examinations from people who wished to practice surgery, or medicine, or law, but entrusted to private individuals themselves or private corporations, to a large extent, even the conduct of these examinations, and the determina- tion of what should be required. At first we followed England’s plan, which we had inherited, though we began to break away from it in many respects early in the last century, and every passing year has made a greater difference between the English and Ameri- can methods of doing things. In Germany we have a striking illustration of a country which adopted a different plan, namely one in which the government di- rectly and immediately undertook to provide means of special edu- cation as rapidly as it demanded special preparation from all peo- ple who were to practice a given profession. So completely did Germany adopt this system, that private institutions of all kinds in the field of higher education have almost entirely disappeared. 13] 14 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN In tills country we have adopted a plan combining the benefits and drawbacks, the advantages and disadvantages of both systems. We left, in the first place, the entire matter to the private individ- ual, to private institutions, church or secular. We then began by slow steps to provide in some of the states, ultimately in the major- ity, for this training for some professions, but not for others ; and the question we raise today then, first, is why should the state do this at all ? My first answer is that the so-called learned professions of a country are specifically potent for the public weal or woe, accord- ing as the members of the profession are adequately or poorly trained. When a calling becomes a profession, i.e. when it has reached a time when the function which it performs for the com- munity is an important one, and can be performed far more effici- ently by men who have had a thorough scientific training than by those who have not had such training, then it becomes greatly to the advantage of the community that all persons practicing that profession should have that training. When this point has been reached in the development of any profession, then the community will find it to its advantage to assist in the provision of adequate facilities for such training; since the history of education in all countries demonstrates beyond a doubt that unless the state does so assist, adequate means for attainment of such education will not be forthcoming. If the state desires to improve the quality of its primary, sec- ondary, and higher schools, and wishes to increase the number of these institutions to any considerable extent, educational history demonstrates beyond a doubt that that community must itself pro- vide, or assist in providing, adequate facilities for the training of teachers in such schools, or such facilities will not exist, such teachers will not be trained; and such improvements in the edu- cational system, therefore, as are desired, cannot be carried through. The same thing is true of medicine. If the time has come when the community, for the sake of the community, insists upon a greater degree of knowledge on the part of the men who practice the medi- cal profession, if the community is really in earnest about improv- ing the conditions of public health and proceeding in a policy of prevention of disease, it must in some way or other provide ade- quate facilities for the training of the men who are to devise these policies and carry them out in the interest of the community. Otherwise the whole proposition will fail. COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 15 And so of the condition in other professions. Now I should say, first of all, that we must keep in mind that the state undertakes such support, if it does it at all, not primarily from a consideration of the interests of the men who are going to practice these profes- sions, but rather from the point of view of the interest of the com- munity as a whole. If it provides opportunities for legal educa- tion, that is not done to aid private individuals in improving the means by which they shall make a living, but it is done because the profession of the law is one of the most important professions of the community. Some of our highest interests are entrusted to it. The functions which it performs are vital to the existence of soci- ety, and the proper performance of those functions is vital to the welfare of society. The administration of justice is such a compli- cated matter at best that only intelligent, honest, and educated men ought to be entrusted with it, or permitted to have any part in it. No community can persuade the requisite number of properly trained men to devote their lives to the administration of justice, on the bench and at the bar, unless it itself provides the kind of training which will help produce this product which it demands. Any given lawyer is interested, so far as his own case is concerned, in getting a training which will enable him to get ahead of his com- petitor and win the cases before the courts. But it is you and I who are interested that the man who practices the law shall be a competent and well trained man. This is true of me, who, I am happy to say, have never found it necessary to resort to the courts of law, as well as of my neighbor, who may spend perhaps the larger part of his life in litigation ; for the case decided in the courts, if properly decided, benefits far more the men who never resort to the courts, than it does those who have been compelled to take on the expense of prosecuting such suits. My neighbor helps me when he secures a positive definition of the law, and shows that it can be applied in such a way as to secure substantial justice, and this makes it unnecessary for me to go to law. Any particular judge is interested in having such a training as will enable him to hold his place on the bench, but you and I are interested in his having such a training as, in the performance of his duty, will insure to you and me the rights which our laws and institutions are intended to secure to us. Now my proposition is simply that we can never have, in a country like this, a properly trained bar unless the community whose interests it serves insists upon such a training as will produce the highest type of lawyer 16 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN and judge, and no such training can be secured unless the state steps in to sustain and assist, if not to provide absolutely, the fa- cilities for this kind of work. The farmer whose interests are involved in the adequacy of his title to his land, whose interests are involved in his right to the water in a country which needs irrigation, or in the organization and proper enforcement of the laws which control his buying and selling, is vitally interested in having some one within his reach, of honesty, of intelligence, and of adequate training in this particular department, to give him the advice which he needs at critical times in his business and social relations. A country which cannot and does not support an honest, intelligent, and highly trained bar and bench must suffer incalculable loss because of its unwillingness or its inability to provide for this great department of its life. The case is just as true of public health. No community can expect to prosper in the long run and under the intense competi- tive conditions of modern life, growing more and more strenuous all the time, unless it provides adequately for the care of its public health. That means not merely the treatment of the sick by indi- vidual physicians, but the prevention of disease by the application of modern science. First of all by the discoveries of modern science, then by their practical application for this particular pur- pose. Now it has become so perfectly plain that this care of the public health cannot be obtained unless there is an adequate supply of properly trained physicians to undertake this work of curing and this work of prevention, that the medical school has become a char- acteristic feature of all modern civilized societies, and that no man would think of entering upon the practice of medicine today with- out attending some kind of a school for some length of time. Here again the same principle holds as in the case of the law. The community is interested in this matter, not for the purpose of making it easier for private individuals to get a living by the practice of medicine, but for the purpose of securing as high a level as possible of theoretical training and practical skill on the part of the people to whom this work must be entrusted. Some one of you sitting in this room may on leaving the building be struck by an automobile and possibly have your skull cracked. Whoever picks you up may summon the physician who lives across the street, or he may simply stand on the street corner and cry out, “Where is there a doctor?” and you may fall into the hands of an extremely incompetent man, the result of whose practice upon you is that COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 17 your life is suddenly brought to an end, or your continued life be made a burden to you for many years to come. It is to the interest of the doctor who is called to have enough of a reputation or enough of a recognition to get permission to practice medicine, but it is to your interest that he should have the highest possible skill when he comes to treat you. So a disease may be on the verge of break- ing out in your village, which if allowed to get a foot-hold may sweep away a large portion of the population. The only men who can handle such a situation are adequately trained scientific men. No others can do the business. It is therefore to your interest and to mine, the people who are practiced on, the people who suffer from defects in the organization of public health, to see that there is an adequate supply of trained men, as highly trained as pos- sible, to safeguard the interests of the community in this great de- partment of its life. Now educational history has demonstrated beyond a doubt that private individuals, private initiative, whether through the church or through secular organizations, will not — nay, I think we may say it is demonstrated that it cannot — provide adequate facilities in this particular department, and that in spite of all the magnificent gifts which have been made for this purpose by the wealthy men of this and other countries. Do the people of this State wish to have public health organized and administered in the proper way? Do they wish to have the best skill available for the cure and prevention of disease in their midst? If so they must themselves as a unit and a corporation assist in the development of facilities for the attainment of this particular form of higher training. Let us take another illustration, from a department about which perhaps there would be more difference of opinion. Take the sub- ject of banking. Most people believe that banking cannot be taught. It must be learned by going into a bank. Most people believe there are no principles underlying successful banking which can be taught in any school. That may be. We shall leave that for the moment, anyhow, undebated. But suppose that there are such principles. Suppose they can be taught. Would it be to the interest of the people of this state and the people of the other states to develop such instruction in our universities for the purpose of turning out 1 r ained bankers ? Everybody is aware that our banking system in the United States is very far from perfect. That we have in this country crises and panics, which have ceased to be characteristic of Eng- 18 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN land or France or Germany, what we should call sudden panics or currency panics. All of you can remember a time not very long ago when you could not get your own money out of a' bank in which you had deposited it. In other words, when the banks of the entire country as a whole suspended payments; i.e. when the banks went into bankruptcy, properly speaking. Now whose fault was it ? How did it come about ? Why did it happen ? There is a very considerable difference of opinion, but surely there must be some explanation for such a phenomenon as. that. There must be some way of preventing that particular kind of a panic or crisis, for other nations have succeeded in preventing that sort of thing, and even if they had not succeeded, it would still be probable that there would be some way ascertainable, by investigation and experi- ment, of remedying such a situation. Now certainly one of the reasons is the fact that our bankers for some reason or other, or the country for some reason or other, failed to adopt a proper bank- ing system. Now if by the better education of our bankers we could develop a profession which would be interested not simply in making money at the desk from day to day, but also in study- ing the system in the large, if we could create a profession by which a sound banking system can be developed and maintained — I say that if it were possible for the university to contribute toward bringing about this result by an institution for the training of bankers, surely it would be well worth the while for North Dakota and Illinois and Michigan and Missouri and Indiana to spend a cent upon something which in the long run and in the large might save them a dollar. The bankers of the country as a whole, only a brief while ago, broke down in their business and in their theories and in everything else, and the loss was not theirs by any means, but it was yours and mine, and those of us who had to sulfer from the inadequacy and defects of this system. So I might follow this thought in various other departments; but I have, I think, given a sufficient number of illustrations to bring before you the funda- mental proposition, namely, that it is worth the while of the state to undertake to provide facilities for the scientific training of men in all callings for the successful pursuit of which a scientific train- ing is necessary or desirable. If this point of view is correct, we need not stop to discuss whether the medical school is justifiable, or the law school is justi- fhible, oi* the engineering school is justifiable, or the agricultural school is justifiable. We have already definitely determined in all the states that an agricultural school which has for its object the COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 19 production of scientific fanners is worth the while of a nation to maintain, for we have such a school in every state in the union. We have also decided beyond any peradventure that it is worth the while of a nation to establish and maintain engineering schools for the development of the engineer, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the country, for your sake and mine ; since the federal government contributes to the support of such a school in every state in the union. With these two points conceded, there is of course absolutely no possible ground for objecting to any other p o fessional school except for the simple reason that it is unnecessary, or that the time has not come for such professional schools, or that the need is already supplied by private individuals and organiza- tions. Having arrived, then, at the conclusion which I believe is now accepted, in practice if not in theory, by all the states of the Ameri- can union, namely that the states may properly support these uni- versities whose object is the training of the young people of the community for their respective callings, we may ask what are some of the fundamental principles of sound university organization, and what things may these universities, these great centers of profes- sional education, do for the community which they are not doing or are not doing to the fullest extent. I have defined the university thus far as an institution for the training of the youth of a nation. Now of course the work of such institutions must be carried on by teachers, by men who will train these young people who come up to the university; and the first question which comes to them as a vital question is what method of treatment shall we adopt, how shall we train these young people. The limits of this address forbid my going into a long exposi- tion upon this subject, and yet I should like to set forth in a few words my own views, and leave them for your consideration. I believe that the proper way to train the man or woman who is going to practice one of these learned professions, .so far as a school can train him, is to prepare him for independent work in the sciences underlying his profession. Now I am aware that this is a much mooted question. I wish simply to get before you the exact point of dispute, and then my own view, and leave it with you for consideration. Some people maintain that 1 lie proper plan for a university professor to follow is to train the university student in a text-book or in his lectures, letting him learn by rote what may be given to him, insisting upon attendance at classes, insisting on examinations as a test to determine whether he is attending 20 INDIANA UNIVEKSITY BULLETIN to liis work, and finally graduating him when he has acquired a certain amount of knowledge, has taken a certain number of courses, etc. I wish to join issue on this particular point. 1 maintain that the proper training is one which will result in mak- ing that individual an independent investigator on his own account in his chosen field of study; will equip him so that he can form, upon a scientific basis and upon reasonable grounds, his own judg- ment in the field of his work. Now there is a vast difference be- tween this and the former idea. Suppose we are to train a teacher of mathematics, for example. He may learn algebra, geometry and trigonometry, and calculus and theory of functions and group the- ory, and other subjects of which I do not even know the names, in such a way as to have a large body of knowledge, and yet not have at any time attained to a point where on his own account he can solve difficult problems, on his own account start out into some field of work, on his own account judge properly the scientific value of the work of other men. Now it is this last attainment, that of an inde- pendent judgment, which it seems to me is the fundamental one in the development of a successful practitioner of any profession, I care not what it is. The physician, for instance, should not expect to know at his graduation how to treat all diseases, or perhaps any disease at all, in any very efficient way. He ought to know how to study the diseases and how to go to work to plan a method of treat- ment and carry it out. He ought to be in a condition to check up his opinions in one direction by actual scientific observations. He ought to know how to make these observations. He ought to be able to judge as to their bearing upon one another, etc. In other words he should be able by the application of his scientific method to un- dertake the solution of the problem before him. A man who knows the whole pharmaceutical field, and has by heart the whole descrip- tion as to how he should administer drugs, w r ould be perhaps a learned physician, but would not be a scientific physician. He would not be a man who could be relied upon to meet any new situ- ation in a successful way, and this should be rather the test of ade- quate professional education. In other words, the university should train these people who are to practice these various professions in such a way that they have the requisite mental development and the requisite knowledge to grapple in a scientific manner with all the various problems which come before them in the actual practice of their professions. A clay worker, for example, the ceramist, or keramist as he may COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 21 be called, should know not only the formulas which may have been developed up to the time he goes into business concerning the proper treatment of clays for the purpose of making brick or fine china, but he should have such fundamental knowledge of chemistry and the allied sciences that he can determine beyond any doubt, so far as our present knowledge extends, or his possibility of adding to knowledge extends, what any particular situation in defective clays or defective treatment calls for. In other words, using this term in a large sense, the university should train its students to become independent and original inves- tigators each in his own field, each standing on his own feet, each able to form an independent judgment over against himself and all other people. This is a very different ideal from that of the learned student, and if accomplished it would be a very different result from that which is characteristic on the average of our American colleges; but I believe it is the ideal upon which the development of the uni- versity depends. If this be the correct ideal, then it is perfectly evident that the professors in such an institution must themselves be original in- vestigators, must themselves be men of independent judgment and independent power within their own departments, and the faculty of the university, therefore, should be made up of men each of whom is contributing by his own personal endeavors to the scientific advance of his subject, and no man should be a member of a uni- versity faculty in this sense of the term w r ho does not fall within that category. Thus v r e see that such a university w r ould inevitably become by the very law of its own being a center of scientific investigation and research, a center from which should pour forth as from a boiling spring, in every direction, streams of private w T ork and private ef- fort, swelling the great tide of human science, increasing in every direction our hold over nature and over ourselves, and raising so- ciety to an ever higher level. If this exposition be justified, one question which is often asked in regard to state universities answers itself, namely what is tin 1 relation of the state university to research. Why, research is the fife of the state university! It is fundamental to it! Without that it could not be a university in any proper sense of the term. If its professors are not doing this, they are not qualified to give the training which w T e have in mind for the youth of the state who Ml 22 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN gc there. So that research, investigation, is a fundamental and necessary quality of the state university, which is going to do for the people of the state the service which they have a right to expect. In the light of this discussion I think we may go back to our definition of the university, and say that a university is not only an educational institution, not only a place for the training of young people, but is also a great center of scientific investigation, and that these are the two fundamental qualities in any university, and therefore, of course, of the state university. There are two other points which I should like to bring out, and with that I shall have to leave the subject for your further consider- ation ; namely, what can this institution thus defined, as fundamen- tally a great center of scientific investigation and a great center for the professional training of the youth of the community — what else can it do for the state ? What other service can it render to society without interfering with these fundamental purposes, or, if you please, what other services can it render which will of them- selves increase the efficiency of these two functions which we have described ? It may, first of all, itself become in a very real sense the scien- tific arm of the state government. All branches of the state gov- ernment find it necessary from time to time to have the advantage of expert scientific advice concerning the soundness of large poli- cies. No better source of information could be found than the properly manned scientific departments of a great state university. And they may properly be called upon to render the state such serv- ice. The scientific departments of a state government, such as the geological survey, the entomologist’s office, the water survey, the forestry division, etc., should all be organized in close touch with the state university. Two dangers lie ever present, of course, in such close co-opera- tion. First, politics may be so strong as to influence the scientific departments. In such a case the close union can only be produc- tive of evil; and if the state university in this work can not main- tain absolutely its scientific independence, it should avoid such co- operation as it would the pest. Second, the state departments may only wish to use the uni- versity to do their routine work for them, e. (]., make ordinary chem- ical analyses of commercial fertilizer, ordinary chemical analyses of water, analyses of coal for its public institutions, etc. Such a COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 23 relationship is also full of practical dangers. The university may be degraded to a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water for other state departments, and that to such an extent as to interfere seri- ously with its proper work. By watching carefully against the possibility of injury from these two directions, the state university may find in this close co- operation with the state government one of the most vital and hope- ful forms of its activity. To do this, of course, its chairs must be filled by competent scientific men. There is another field in which it may be of great, perhaps of the greatest of all, benefit to the state after the training of its young people to their highest usefulness, and that is in the scien- tific investigation of the great problems of its society. This is a mere extension of the scientific research spoken of above. But I refer here to the systematic investigation of the large practical problems of its society ; such work as is now going on in the agri- cultural experiment stations throughout the country, begun many years ago, and as is being done in the engineering experiment sta- tions more recently started. Here an effort is being made by so- ciety in its corporate capacity, through this organ of its life, to for- mulate and solve the problems which present themselves from time to time in its progress. Such is the problem of how to secure a permanent agriculture ; the problem of poverty and how to remedy it; the many problems of engineering; the problems of manufacturing so far as they de- pend on scientific elements ; the problems of insurance and of bank- ing and railroading — in a word, any and all the questions which arise in the course of a developing civilization, and the answer to which depends chiefly or wholly upon scientific investigation. We are, in our army and navy, studying the problem of how to kill the largest number of men at the smallest possible expense, and creating machines to do this. We have repeatedly spent more upon a single modern leviathan than any state has spent in fifty years upon the buildings and equipment of its state university. When we conscientiously devote to the scientific study of the pioblems of peace as much money as we devote to preparing for war, we shall make progress at a rate of speed such as the world has never seen. When we devote as much money to the scientific study of the prevention of poverty and disease as we do to our attempts to re- lieve or cure it, the world will take on a new face and we shall in- deed see ere long a new heaven and a new earth. 24 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN In closing, I should like, if I might, to send a message through this audience to the people of this great state. You have here a noble institution — an institution of which you and your children may well be increasingly proud, because of the great service which it has rendered and which it may render you and yours. But the conditions on which you may get this service, and on which you may feel this pride, are set by the nature of things, and the nature of things is something you cannot get away from. If you permit any men or set of men to manage this institution as if it were a respecter of persons you can have no pride in it — but only a feeling of humiliation when you think of it and its work. If you appoint any man to a position in its faculty because he is a democrat or a republican or an insurgent or a socialist, or for any other reason than because he is the best man pedagogically and scientifically whom you can find, with due reference, of course, to that fundamental consideration of character — surely you will have no pride in such an institution. If you appoint a man to a position because he is a citizen of In- diana, or because he is a Methodist, or a Baptist, or a Catholic ; or because he is a son or nephew of a member of the board of trustees or of a dean or professor in the university ; or because he is a Swede or Norwegian or German or Yankee, you will surely in the long run have to hang your head in shame, for in this way no university can be built up. Political, territorial, sectarian, and family considerations must be absolutely barred in the choice of members of your faculty, or you will never be able to build up a true university at all. Science knows no country, no sect, no political party, no family, and in seeking for your servants — the members of this faculty — you must take them where you find them. This, friends, is not a mere idle remark. I could name you in- stitutions today, some of them well known and of good repute, which are suffering sorely because the trustees have selected some men because of their political affiliations; others because of mem- bership in particular sects ; others because they were born in a par- ticular state; still others because they were sons or relatives of trustees, president, or members of a faculty. The favoritism of family — one of the worst forms of illegiti- mate influence — is the curse of more than one great institution of learning in the United States today. COMMENCEMENT NUMBEB 25 Out upon all such forms of betrayal of trust — for such it is to appoint any man to a university position because of any other reason than that he is the best man for that task who can be found at that salary in all the world! But, citizens of Indiana, having found the best man for the sal- ary you are able and willing to pay, you must do certain other things if you wish to get the service you are looking for. First of all, you must give him adequate equipment in labora- tories and libraries to enable him to do his work properly. You must, then, give him the necessary time and assistance so that he can do original work, carry on his researches along some useful line. Above all — and this, friends, is something which large portions of our American people are even yet unwilling to do — you must leave him absolute freedom to follow his investigation after truth, no matter whither it leads him. Some people are still unwilling to permit the geologist to follow his investigation if it should seem to threaten the accuracy of the story of the Noachian deluge; others would not permit a man to demonstrate the fallacy of 16 to 1, or vice versa. You can still send the cold chills down the spine of many of our worthy fellow citi- zens by crying out that the college professors are blasting at the Rock of Ages, or that the teaching of professor so-and-so leads straight to socialism. And I heard a very distinguished business man say not long ago, that if he had his way a gag would be put in the mouth of Jane xlddams and all similar apostles of socialism. The university must be free to pursue scientific investigation with absolute freedom — the alliteration is intentional — or it is not a university at all. Now the people of the state must in their own interest insist on this and maintain it unimpaired, since a thousand and one “in- terests” are ever striving to close the mouth of anyone whose mes- sage threatens their welfare. In this great work of building up a university which shall bo as comprehensive in its organization as the needs of the common- wealth itself, the people of our American states will find it neces- sary to be on their guard against advices of many kinds in their own midst. Some will tell you that you do not need scientific men as law- yers or doctors or farmers — all you need is “practical” men- -by practical men they mean ignorant men, routine men, rule-of-thumb 26 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN men — just the kind of men whom modern progress is relegating to the background as fast as our most advanced steel mills are scrap- ping their old plants. Beware of them and their leaven — it means stagnation, falling behind in the race, dropping out of the proces- sion altogether. Others will tell you to save your money. Harvard and Yale and Princeton, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Cornell, Wisconsin and Minnesota, will furnish all the training which our lawyers, doc- tors, farmers and engineers need. You can draw upon them and save the money and the trouble. This sounds plausible — all the more because we have drawn so largely upon these sources for the supply of our leaders in many lines. But such a policy is a losing one for a great commonwealth. The richest men in the community — your bankers, your suc- cessful lawyers, may go to Chicago, or New York, or even Paris, Berlin, or Vienna if they need the service of some great specialist in medicine or surgery. They may even bring such a man to this country to aid their family, as Mr. Armour is said to have paid Dr. Lorenz $30,000 to make a trip to Chicago to treat his little daughter. But you and I, and the rest of the common run of men, cannot do this. We must be content with the best we can get at home, and the best we can get at home as a regular thing is not the best of Paris or Berlin or London, but the best that our own schools will provide. If a great corporation wishes a lawyer to represent its interests it can get one where it will, but the people of Indiana will get to represent their interests as a rule only the best which Indiana itself produces and trains. If the people of Indiana then wish well trained physicians, den- tists, pharmacists, lawyers, farmers, engineers, architects, chemists, physicians — they can get them in the large and in the long run only by producing them themselves. And the only way it can pro- vide them is to develop the modern university to the full stature of its perfection. Massachusetts cannot do this for you, nor Connecticut, nor New Jersey, nor Michigan, nor Wisconsin, nor Illinois — but only Indi- ana. May God speed you in this undertaking ! One word more : You have a great leader in this great work. You have a man who by common consent is peculiarly well adapted for this undertaking — COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 27 a man of scholarship, of tried administrative ability, of pleasing qualities; now stand by him — one and all, students, faculty and citizens. Be thoroughly loyal to him and his leadership while he holds this position. He can do twice as much if he feels that you are with him, heart and soul, as he can when you stand off and say “go in and win if you can.” You wish him to win — his victory is your victory — so stand shoulder to shoulder. The work of a uni- versity president is hard enough at the very best. Make it as easy as you can, so will he do all the more for you and your children. Illinois brings you a hearty greeting and prays for President Bryan and the University of Indiana an ever increasing prosperity. 28 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF GENERAL WALTER Q. GRESHAM By Professor James A. Woodburn. The principal events in General Gresham’s public career were his admission to the bar in 1854; his service in the State Legisla- ture in the winter of 1860-61; his four years’ service as a soldier in the Civil War; his service as United States District Judge for Indiana, 1869-1883; his service in President Arthur’s cabinet as Postmaster-General and as Secretary of the Treasury, in 1883-84 ; again as judge of the United States Circuit Court from 1884 to 1893; and his service as Secretary of State in President Cleveland’s cabinet from March, 1893, till his death in May, 1895. In this career from humble life to high place of power and influence, what was the nature of the service he rendered and what was the char- acter of the man revealed? To understand a man we need first to understand his ancestry and the environment which produced him. In early life and train- ing Gresham’s career was not greatly unlike that of Lincoln’s and he was to a notable extent of the Lincoln type. His father had en- dured pioneer trials and conditions and he himself knew the train- ing that comes from early struggles and adversities. Walter Q. Gresham was of English descent on his father’s side. He was born on a farm near the village of Lanesville in Harrison County, Indiana, March 17, 1832. Harrison is one of the old counties of the State and is of more than usual interest in the State’s early history. Corvdon, its county seat, was for three years the territorial capital and for nine years the capital of the State. Under the shadow of its historic elm our first Constitution was made. In this region lived many of the early founders of the State, the Heths, the Floyds, the Jenningses, the Pfrimmers, the Penning- tons and others who were active and prominent in early Indiana life. Gresham’s grandfather, George Gresham, came from Virginia, abiding awhile in Kentucky, settling in Indiana in 1809, the year of Lincoln’s birth and before Tom Lincoln had thought of moving into the Indiana Territory. Gresham’s father was born in Kentucky but he grew up in In- diana under conditions very like those that Lincoln knew. He was tall, athletic, hardy, handsome, and popular, of notable personal courage, just the kind to be elected, as he was almost by common COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 29 consent, as the captain of militia and the sheriff of his county. As a backwoods sheriff he had to do pioneer work for civilization. As a servant of the State he suffered a martyr’s death for law and order, being instantly killed while in line of duty in an attempt to arrest a desperado and an outlaw. Gresham’s father thus died in one sense like a soldier of civilization on the field of battle, at the age of thirty-two, leaving a widow and five small children. The oldest was eight and Walter was two, and the widowed mother under most trying circumstances was to become both father and mother to her little brood. Mrs. Gresham was a remarkable woman. Her father and mother, John Davis and his wife, came through Virginia and Kentucky to the West. They were of Scotch-Irish descent and of long-lived stock. They were old fashioned folks in their ways. They had sixteen children, ten sons and six daughters, and Sarah Davis, the mother of Walter Q. Gresham, was one of these. She lived, like all of her brothers and sisters, except two, to a ripe old age, and to her humble cabin in her declining years her distinguished son made annual pilgrimages, and these visits to his mother and to his old Harrison County home were the chiefest joy of his life. Wat Gresham, as the people called him in the neighborhood, grew up on his mother’s farm. He had two or three winter’s schooling, in primitive country schools where, as Lincoln said, they taught “readin’, writin’ and cipherin’ to the rule of three.” He had but few books to read, but these led him into visions of greater things. When his older brother returned from the Mexican War in 1848, Walter was given an opportunity to go to Corydon to at- tend the seminary there, whose fame was known through the coun- try around. The seminary was in charge of James G. May, one of the old-time famous teachers of early Indiana. Young Gresham was given a clerkship in the auditor’s office, by Samuel Wright, the county auditor, a friend of the Gresham family, and by this means the young student was able to earn enough to pay for his board. Gresham studied two years in the Corydon Academy, and then he came a year (1850-1851) to the State University at Bloom- ington. He returned to Corydon to act as deputy clerk, and for three years in this office he spent his leisure hours in studying law under Judge Wm. A. Porter, a noted lawyer in southern Indiana, Porter was a graduate of Miami University, who in 1827 had set- tled in Harrison County, where he taught school and afterwards practiced law. Gresham often said in later life that Porter’s teach- ing was the training that made him. 30 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN Gresham was admitted to the bar in 1854. It was the year of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, one of the most important legislative acts in American history. The country was in political ferment. To combine law and poli- tics was almost the universal custom in the west and the young lawyer at Cory don proved no exception to the rule. The Gresh- ams had been Whigs, but now the Whig party was dissolving and a new party was arising. Into this new Republican party, created from many elements for the purpose of withstanding the further spread of human slavery in America, Gresham cast his lot with youthful and patriotic ardor. In 1856 his law partner, Judge Slaughter, was a delegate from Indiana to the first Republican national nominating convention at Philadelphia, the convention that nominated Fremont for the Presidency. Young Gresham stumped Harrison County for the “Pathfinder,” and to his meet- ings he carried the New York Tribune and solicited subscriptions to Greeley’s paper, which showed that he knew well the reasons for the faith that was in him. His habit was to appeal to the reason rather than to the prejudices of his hearers. In 1858 Mr. Gresham married Miss Matilda McGrain, a daughter of Thomas McGrain, of Scotch-Irish descent. Miss McGrain was born in Louisville and was educated in Kentucky, but her father’s business took the family much of the time to Corydon, where young Gresham wooed and won his Kentucky belle. Thomas McGrain was a slaveholder and a sympathizer with the South during the war, though the daughter cast her lot and sympathy with the Union. Mrs. Gresham herself knew many of the officers of General Morgan, the raider, who brought his invading forces into Indiana in 1863. Many of the Corydon people thought it strange that she could help nurse Morgan’s men who were wounded in the skirmish at Cory- don. While this connection of General Gresham with a Kentucky slaveholding family did not abate his Union spirit nor his anti- slavery views, it did, no doubt, make him more considerate of the feelings and sensibilities of those on the other side in our great civil conflict. To Mr. and Mrs. Gresham were born two children, a son and a daughter. We have the honor and pleasure of having the mother and the son with us today. In 1860 Mr. Gresham was made the Republican candidate for the Legislature in Harrison County. He faced an adverse Demo- cratic majority of 500. But he entered upon this great Lincoln campaign with spirit and conviction, canvassed every school dis- CO MMEN CE M E XT N U M 15 E R 31 trict in the county, challenged his opponent to a joint discussion, drove him in discomfiture from the platform, and scored a victory in the election by a good majority. In the Legislature lie served on the committee on military affairs, and he proved a valuable helper and coadjuter to Governor Morton in placing Indiana on a better war footing. When the war came Gresham was appointed by Morton Lieu- tenant-Colonel of the Thirty-eighth Indiana Regiment, but before the regiment got into active service he was appointed Colonel of the Fifty-third Indiana, in December, 1861. He was in Grant’s command in the West, barely missing the battle of Shiloh by being placed in command to guard the post at Savanna, nine miles down the Tennessee. He participated in the siege of Corinth, in the North Mississippi campaign, and in the famous siege of Vicksburg. In Au- gust, 1863, after Vicksburg had fallen, Colonel Gresham was made a Brigadier-General on the recommendation of Generals Grant and Sherman, and was placed in command of the post at Natchez. Here he met the difficult duty of restraining the cotton speculators, the cotton thieves and smugglers, who flocked to Natchez as soon as the Union arms had taken possession. In Gresham they met an in- corruptible man. Not being able to corrupt, the speculators sought to hoodwink and deceive. They employed a noted lawyer, a friend of Gresham’s, who had been a colonel of a Union regiment at Shi- loh. It was expected that this attorney would control the General, and that the crooked cotton operations might go on uninterrupted. The upshot of the matter was that General Gresham invited the lawyer colonel to leave Natchez before sundown on pain of being sent away in irons. The irate colonel and cotton attorney went off to headcpiarters to appeal to General Grant. “Did Gresham say he would put you in irons?” asked Grant. “He did,” responded the indignant colonel. “Well, then,” said Grant, “I advise you to stay away from Natchez, for I have always found Gresham a man of his word.” In the summer of 1864 Gresham took part in the campaign against Atlanta. He was under McPherson’s command. At Leg- gett’s Hill on July 20, 1864, the day before McPherson fell, Gresh- am’s knee was shattered by a ball, and that severe wound on Leg- gett’s Hill inflicted a lameness from which he never recovered. General McPherson himself gave personal attention to having Gen- eral Gresham conveyed to the railway station, and the next day at the station Gresham saw the remains of his general, who had been killed the day after their parting on the field of battle. Gresh- INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN 32 am’s wound forced his retirement from active service. He lay at home for the best part of a year before he was able to attend to any work. At the end of the war, in 1865, he was breveted Major- General for “gallant and meritorious conduct” on the field of battle. After the war he continued his interest in politics. He was the Republican candidate for Congress in the New Albany district in 1866 and 1868 against Hon. Michael C. Kerr, an able and popular Democrat, who was afterwards elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. Gresham reduced the Democratic ma- jority in his district, and he ran ahead of his ticket in every county. When General Grant became President he offered Gresham the collectorship of the Port at New Orleans and the District Attorney- ship for Indiana, but both of these lucrative offices Gresham de- clined. Grant then offered him the appointment of United States District Judge for Indiana, which he accepted, and it is said that in his more than twelve years incumbency in that office not one of his judicial decisions was overruled. In 1883 Judge Gresham was called into the cabinet of President Arthur as Postmaster-General. He served but a short time in this office, but his postal service will be distinguished in history for two notable achievements : He accomplished the reduction in letter postage from three cents to two, and he excluded the Louisiana Lottery from the use of the mails. For either of these achieve- ments a Postmaster-General should have a memorial tablet. Neither was accomplished without great effort. In his report in 1883 Gresham made a strong argument for cheaper postage, arraying statistics to show that the reform was feasible, and he personally interested himself in the cause to the extent of seeing and enlight- ening members of Congress. It can be easily imagined to what kind of pressure Gresham became subject when he set out to oppose the Louisiana Lottery. There was a powerful and unscrupulous lobby to fight. But the Postmaster-General had in large measure the spirit of a reformer; he had the courage of his ancestry, and a burning hatred of dishonesty and fraud. He fought that battle to a finish and put a gigantic and swindling lottery out of business. Gresham held the secretaryship of the Treasury but for a brief interval under President Arthur, being transferred to the Treasury upon the death of Judge Folger of New York. In December, 1884, he succeeded Judge Drummond to the bench of the United States Circuit Court, holding his court in Chicago. In his nine years of service in this court he heard and decided many important cases COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 33 calling for judicial fairness, fearlessness, and impartiality. Here he met the same kind of influences, perhaps more subtle and power- ful, that he had had to resist when he met the cotton thieves at Natchez and the forces of the Louisiana Lottery in the postoffice. The famous Wabash case will best illustrate the character of Gresham’s service on the bench. It is not easy to condense the complicated history of that celebrated case. There was a ring of railroad managers with Jay Gould and Russell Sage at its head. They were men of vast wealth and influence, representing “big business,” such men as were usually “Democrats before a Demo- cratic legislature, Republicans before a Republican legislature, but always for the Wabash.” Their end was money, which they sought by hook or by crook. They were not used to being circumvented by trivial matters like law and equity nor by little judges upon the bench. These railroad managers, under whose management their road had become bankrupt, anticipated their creditors by institut- ing foreclosure proceedings, and through a shrewd attorney and a pliant judge secured the appointment of their own nominee as re- ceiver, thus really retaining control of the road. This receiver, supposed to be an officer of the court, made a carrying contract with a coal company, all of the stock of which was held by himself and his friends in the ring, and under this contract the railroad paid back to the coal company in rebates — the left hand paying to the right — a sum exceeding its entire capital stock. This receiver contrived also to pay interest on the bonds held by those bond- holders in the ring and to default in interest payment to those who stood out against the nefarious scheme of reorganization. That is to say, the receiver managed the road not in the interest of the honest stockholders and bondholders who had invested their money in the road, but in the interest of Jay Gould, and his associates, who had wrecked the road for their own gain. It was financial piracy under the forms of law or by evasions of law. Such an operation in railroad management may not have been unusual in those days. But Gould’s operation in this case came up against something unusual. That was Walter Q. Gresham, an honest, fear- less judge upon the bench, who believed in popular rights and who dared to resist the vast power of wealth. When a suit was brought before Gresham for setting aside the previous proceedings he cut through the sophistry and the intricate points in the law by which adroit attorneys had sought to confuse the case, and rendered a decision leading to the discharge of the recreant receivers, and putting the Wabash lines east of the Missouri in the hands of the 34 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN great jurist, Judge Thomas M. Cooley, of Michigan, an honest man, who had the confidence of all, who would conduct the road in the interest of its owners, and who would act as an officer of the court instead as an agent of Gould, Sage & Co. The Wabash decision revealed a progressive judge, and the case will alwaj^s stand out in the history of American regulation of rail- ways as a landmark in judicial control of great public utilities and corporations. Other more conservative judges have since followed in Gresham ’s steps, with the result that real investments and public interests are being better protected by the courts and the people are coming into their own. When the Wabash decision was ren- dered Jay Gould said, “That man Gresham must be a candidate for the presidency.” It is safe to say today, as we note the moral courage and purposes of Gresham ’s decision, that only the Gresham kind will ever again receive the approval of the American people for that high office. Gresham heralded the dawn of what is now our high noon. Shall the Government control the railroads, or shall the railroads control the Government? There was serious doubt on that issue a quarter of a century ago. Judge Gresham’s railroad decisions materially helped to solve the doubt in the interest of the people. Gresham was a candidate for the presidency before the Repub- lican nominating convention in 1888, the year General Harrison was nominated. He had a large popular support and received 122. votes in the convention, but General Harrison had the party or- ganization behind him in Indiana, and as Gresham had not been an ardent supporter of Blaine, the forces that controlled the delegates were not attached to his more popular and democratic cause. The regular party men had come to look upon him with disfavor, and if the term had then been in use, he would probably have been called an “Insurgent.” He had been a tariff reformer while in Arthur’s cabinet, and his railroad and labor decisions, as in the Wabash case and his injunction decision in the C., B. & Q. strike, had made him popular with the laboring men and radical demo- cratic elements of the country. He would have been nominated for the presidency by the Populist party in 1892 if he had con- sented to the use of his name. He believed, in common with this earnest and radical party, that there was grave danger of the con- trol of the country by capitalism and great combinations of wealth. When his party, as he believed, had committed itself too much to these interests and to a permanent policy of high protection, he came out in a public statement of great weight and influence, ad- COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 35 vocating the election of Mr. Cleveland, thus breaking the party ties of a lifetime. When Cleveland became President he invited Gen- eral Gresham to be his Secretary of State, and the country wit- nessed the spectacle of a life-long Democrat calling a life-long Re- publican to the chief seat in his cabinet councils. In the State office Judge Gresham negotiated an important and complicated treaty with China and an equally important treaty with Japan, covering vexed questions of exterritoriality and citi- zenship. By a friendly attitude toward Great Britain he induced that power to surrender her protectorate over the Mosquito Coast, thus ending a controversy that had plagued the Department of State since the days of Marey, under Pierce. He pursued a conserv- ative policy toward Hawaii, and sought to restore the government of that country to its native rulers, refusing to permit his country to profit by collusion of Americans in the Hawaiian revolution ; and for this, and because he was not quick to threaten other powers in defense of what was supposed to be American rights, he was fero- ciously attacked and denounced as weak and un-American. The whole truth was that he was not a Jingo; that he was not always ready to point the big guns at other powers, nor make great speeches to foreign diplomats about the greatness and power of the Ameri- can people. He loved peace and pursued it earnestly, and he aimed to walk in dignified and courteous ways. “Judged by the inter- national standard,” said the New York Nation at the time of his death, “ — the only true standard by which to judge a Secretary of State — Judge Gresham has made a great success, and has made American honor, capacity, and courtesy, mean more than they have meant in many a day. He fairly earned the praise bestowed upon him by eminent jurists and experts in international law as the ablest Secretary the country has had since Hamilton Fish.” As Postmaster-General, United States ‘Judge, and Secretary of State, General Gresham’s career illustrates one quality supremely — the moral courage required to face powerful interests bent upon ex- ploiting the public for selfish ends. Every man in place of power and responsibility will find that quality tested within him. Gen- eral Gresham met this supreme test of a real man in a splendid way. Judge David Davis, a friend of Lincoln and a friend of Gresham, whom Lincoln appointed to the Supreme Bench, said not long before his death : “I have always admired Judge Gresham far beyond anything that I ean now say of him, but T do desire to say this, that I never met a man who possessed the moral courage of Judge Gresham.” 36 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN Such is a brief summary of Gresham’s career, as lawyer, legis- lator, soldier, magistrate, cabinet minister, statesman, friend of hu- manity. He ran a race from lowly poverty to exalted station that could hardly be run in any other land than America. In making official announcement of his death to his countrymen President Cleveland referred to their loss of “a pure and able public ser- vant, a wise and patriotic guardian of their rights and interests, a manly and loyal American and a generous and honorable man.” This man was an undergraduate student here sixty years ago. Later, in 1883, he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the university. We claim him as a son of our common alma mater. To the young men of Indiana, the purity, the unselfish patriotism, and the moral independence of his life will ever remain a noble and inspiring example. COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 37 ADDRESS OF PRESENTATION By Mr. Otto Gresham, Chicago, Illinois. “Let ns have peace” were the words of General Grant, and his conduct at Appomattox makes it plain that he then understood the great problem of the day. It was to make us a united and homogeneous people. Commercialism never did and never will lead a people aright. The seed of our civil strife was sown in the compact of 1787, which the lawyers who graduate today understand as the Consti- tution of the United States. This seed was the commercialism of South Carolina and Massachusetts. Virginia, led by James Monroe, protested that the compact — the Constitution — or the sacred instru- ment, if you please, contained too much slavery or commercialism. Massachusetts was more to blame than South Carolina because she, after the separation from Great Britain, made a practical applica- tion of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and em- bodied in her Constitution, that of 1780, the proposition that there could not be property in man. The development of our industrial system may make the cap- tains of industry a necessity, but we should not be dependent upon them for our system of education. Well may Dr. James urge the importance of instruction by the state in legal and technical sub- jects. It is for the benefit of all the people. The knowledge or light disseminated here will be reflected back; and all we of the smaller college desire, is to aid in the good work. As a graduate and trustee of Wabash College, I say the State of Indiana should foster and liberally support the public and high school system with this great university at the apex. The sword that is presented to you was not as an original gift a mere emblem of brute force. It was wielded in no spirit of con- quest, envy, hate or malice, but to preserve our glorious union for those who went out as well as those who stayed in. These are some of the sentiments which came to us from the fireside, and it is with these in view that we offer to your keeping the sword that is pre- sented to you today. 38 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN ADDRESS OF ACCEPTANCE By President William Lowe Bryan* Let all members of the University, the undergraduates, the can- didates for graduation, the alumni, the faculty and the trustees who will join in receiving this memorial, stand. Members of the University, let the receiving of this sword be no empty ceremony. Let us make it an act of piety toward our sol- dier alumni; toward all the soldiers of Indiana who fifty years ago stood for their ideal of justice at the peril of their lives; and es- pecially toward the bearer of this sword, who, when he was a pri- vate citizen, and when he was judge upon the federal bench, and when he was a counselor to the President, showed a courage as reso- lute for justice as on that day when he was struck down upon the field of battle. Let the receiving of this sword mean also that we ourselves en- list. For the war is not done. The war for justice is never done. One may join the traitors to the human brotherhood and in whatever occupation may live by preying upon the lives and souls of other men. One may join the cov r ards seeking for himself a shameful safety, as those of whom Dante wrote : “They are mingled with the abject choir of angels who were not rebellious nor were faithful to God, but were for themselves. Heaven chased them forth to keep its beauty from impair, and the deep hell receives them not, for the wicked would have some glory over them.” Let it not be so with us. Men of Indiana, I charge you in the presence of this sword to enlist for some good fight. Choose your cause. Choose the cause which your soul cannot deny wdthout damnation. But when you have chosen, then if you would possess the joy or the value of a man you must fight. And I charge you so to fight that in the end your children and your alma mater may have from you a memorial as unblemished as Gresham’s sword. And now, Walter Gresham, soldier, lawyer, jurist, minister of state, v r hom the University once received as an undergraduate and upon whom it once conferred its highest degree, we now receive from your wife and son this perpetual memorial of your life. COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 39 THE NEW IDEALS Address to the graduation class of the School of Law, June 16, 1911, by Judge George Du Relle, U. S. District Attorney, Louisville, Kentucky. Some dozen years ago or more, in one of the Eastern states, there lived a lawyer on whose birth Fortune had smiled. All the good fairies attended with exceeding good gifts. A competence was his, enough to remove the fear of necessity, but not enough to dull the spur of ambition. He was of distinguished family on both sides. He had a robust and tireless physique and a finished education. His appearance was fine, but not too fine, his manners engaging, his speech both fluent and effective. Ilis amazing mem- ory seemed to attract and hold facts and illustrations, principles and precedents, as a magnet attracts and holds iron filings. Physi- cally, mentally, and morally he was trained to the minute. So strict was his moral training that when lie was thirty years old he had never seen the inside of a theater. When he came to the bar, his capacity and his connections united to give him a clientage and practice such as rarely falls to the lot of so young a man. lie was equal to his opportunities. His reputation and his practice in- creased. He had ambitions and ideals. He wished to render pub- lic service. Here Fortune smiled again. A high and important office fell vacant, and he was appointed to fill the vacancy. Here again he rose to his opportunities. He surpassed the expectation of his warmest friends. He won golden opinions from the luke- warm. One grew a little tired of hearing Aristides called “the just.” The time to fill his office by election drew near, and his election was conceded. Just then a cpiestion came up in his office, the determination of which might almost just as well, but not quite as well, have been deferred until after the election. If it were de- termined one way it would greatly please a rich and powerful poli- tician, and all his adherents. If it were determined the other way it would please a couple of bankrupts. Nothing absolutely required that it should he disposed of before the election except his ideal of the duty of an officer of the state. That ideal required him to determine such questions as they arose, if he could, and to do so without regard to consequences. He determined the question be- fore the election. The rich politician was outraged, found and brought out another candidate — managed and financed the cam- paign and financing a campaign meant a good deal at that time. 40 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN The election was shamefully and shamelessly corrupt. On the one side were the hosts of sin, a veritable Macedonian phalanx, dis- ciplined, prompt, understanding the game — on the other the scat- tered friends of the idealist, who had the courage, with broken ranks and untried weapons, on foreign territory, to enter an un- equal contest. The very good of his own party were mostly asleep in their pews. The very good of the other party saw no particular reason for breaking party ties because a gentleman of the opposing party had done what was merely his duty. He was beaten by a small but sufficient majority. Worse still, some of his friends undertook to fight the devil with fire — to carry the war into Africa — and made a feeble and futile effort to match corruption with corruption ; so that he was denied the poor privi- lege of claiming that, though beaten by corruption, his own skirts had remained immaculate. This excellent young man was punished for attempting to live up to his ideal of public duty. It cured him. In a financial way it was a good thing for him. He returned to the practice, of the law. His clients returned to him. Corporate wealth recognized his abilities and paid for their exercise whatever the traffic would bear. His personal character remained spotless. Indeed it was one of his most valuable assets. Whenever there was a public move- ment which met the approval of the entire so-called better element, his name headed the subscription list. His aid was given to every church or charitable undertaking endorsed by the respectable rich. Also, when the machine of his party had run too deep in the mire and needed rehabilitation in the eye of the public, he was first choice for chairman, and so high did he stand in public esteem that his mere presence gave character and tone to the meeting. Also, his corporations received semi-political favors which other corpora- tions found it difficult to obtain. He dispensed an apparently lavish hospitality, though there were captious critics w r ho whispered that each guest either contributed something to the entertainment, a story, a song, a poem, or possessed the potentiality of contributing more substantially to future entertainments. Altogether, no man stood higher in the estimation of the people of his state. But corruption stalked in high places, and though his arm was strong, it was not raised to smite. His voice was loud and clear and the people heard him gladly, but it was not heard in protest or denunciation. At the time of which I speak he was between fifty and sixty years old. He was speaking of his youthful hopes, and a friend COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 41 asked him if his ideals were as high as when he was a young man. There was a certain grim humor in his reply : ‘ 1 When I was twenty- one I wouldn’t have shaken hands with a man who did the things I now do every day.” This is no example for you to follow, young gentlemen ; this is a shocking example. I congratulate you, gentlemen of the graduating class, that your lines have fallen, if not in pleasanter, in more wholesome places; that you go out into the world and take up your life work at a period when your ideals are in less danger of tarnish or corruption from contact with the common, everyday, working ideals of the general public. No man who has lived on the big road and read the papers thoughtfully for the past twelve or fifteen years can doubt that there has been a great change in the public estimation of many vital matters, in the public ideals in regard to them, and that the change has been greatly for the better. To whatever cause we may ascribe this change, we cannot doubt that it has taken place. The thoughtful observer can see the evidences everywhere, in the higher tone of business relations, in the loftier ethics of the pro- fessions, in the livelier sense of official duty and responsibility, in the keener realization of the governmental obligations of the indi- vidual citizen. In business we see a steadily* growing disposition on the part of the managers to consider the rights and interests of the public, and a still stronger disposition on the part of the public to insist upon its rights. In the professions the change has not been so ap- parent to me, perhaps because we do not notice the changes in things close to us, and perhaps because the ethical standards of the true representatives of the professions have always been relatively high. With regard to our own profession, my old friend Judge Barr used to say that he thought a lawyer who was reasonable hon- est to start with, and had sense, was probably the “honestest” man in his community, for he could not deceive himself. I confess that I have not thovight there was much change for the better in our professional standards, but a matter came to my personal knowl- edge recently which rather astonished me. Three great lawyers representing three great interests were called together to consider a claim. It was not a legal claim. It was not claimed that it was. There were no circumstances which by way of estoppel or other- wise could have made it cognizable by a court of equity. The claimant was absolutely without remedy except to reclaim his property, which when reclaimed would have been junk. His labor, which amounted to at least 75 per cent, of his claim, was lost if 42 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN the strict letter of the law prevailed, and he was bankrupt. After due consideration, these lawyers said “We are in nowise respon- sible for what has been done; our clients are in nowise responsible legally. But what has been done is for their benefit ; it is what they would themselves in time have necessarily done. We recognize a moral obligation, and they will accept what has been done and pay the full value.” It was more than a million dollars, I doubt if this could have happened twenty years ago. I doubt if the lawyers would then have so advised, or that the parties would have followed such advice. It gave me a pleasant feeling about our profession. It is in the public sense of official duty that there appears the greatest change, and this applies both to public and corporate offi- cials. I do not mean that all officials have a just or proper or high sense of responsibility to their public or their corporations. There are too many officials who never realize a public responsibility un- til it clutches them by the back of the neck and slips the handcuffs on. I mean the sense the public has of the responsibility of its officers, and that this sense has been quickened a number of officials can bear melancholy testimony. When we come to governmental ideals the air is so full of new panaceas that I hesitate to speak of any. The initiative, referen- dum, and recall are those whose advocates are now most insistent. We have a sort of combination of the initiative and referendum in our local option laws which, when properly drawn, work very well indeed. The recall, especially for judges, I do not believe in. It seems to me that it would speedily degenerate from being a popular rebuke of a corrupt or incompetent officer, to a mere party device for trying over again a close election, with a bigger campaign fund. Then there is the scheme of working-men’s insurance which is en- gaging the attention of the English Chancellor. There are the nu- merous plans for dissolving the lewd partnership between vice and public office, which has existed so notoriously in many of our larger cities; and there are many other governmental plans now before the public. But it is not necessary for our purpose to go into the merits of those plans. All of them seem well meant. Some of them are good. Most of them are ineffective. Some are utterly bad. What is encouraging is the interest which the public every- where is taking in its own government, and this interest has sprung up or revived to such an extent, and become so vital that we may look forward to the good day when men of the so-called better ele- ment, who in the past have notoriously neglected their political du- ties, will be as much ashamed of neglecting to vote as they would COMMENCEMENT NTJMBEE 43 be of failure to pay their pew. rent or their washerwomen. Just a little while ago a preacher of my church, a church which in the past has not been prone to mix in political matters, said in a sermon before the presbytery in substance this, “Though a man perform al] his religious duties and be active in the church and Sunday- school work, I hold him not to be a good man if he fail to protest by voice and vote against public corruption.” What has been the potential cause of the change a prudent man will hesitate to say. It may be that we have just caught the mighty upward surge of the nation’s moral pendulum. It may be the re- sult of one of those mysterious movements in the nature of man- kind, which work unseen till the appointed time, and then produce, sometimes a tidal wave of horror, like the French revolution, some- times a beneficent and fructifying Nile inundation, like the Refor- mation. Such results seem spontaneous, but are no more sponta- neous than the San Francisco earthquake or an eruption of Vesu- vius. We do not know — that is all. We cannot see the hidden fires, or hear the roaring hammers, where the thunderbolts are forged. But among the things which we can see, and know, and partly understand, which have contributed to quicken the public con- science, to raise the sea level of public morality as a new base line from which to measure the heights of integrity or the depths of guilt, I should say w’e owe most to one man. Honor to whom honor is due. Some of us do not like him, more do not like his style and his teeth. Some are hostile to his political principles; some say he stole them from his one-time rival. But Theodore Roosevelt, with his iteration and reiteration (his damnable iteration, some call it) of the old moralities, in season and out of season, from the White House, from the stump, from the jungle, ex cathedra and ex mero motu (ipse dixit, if you will), has, more than any force we can measure with our mental instruments, caused the public conscience to open its eyes, like a nine days’ old puppy, and look out on a world full of a number of curious things, many of which it does not yet understand. More than any other human agency he has contributed to the existence of the present public ideals. Are they new? In a sense, yes. When I was a boy, a new paper was started in New York which published a text of Scripture every day at the head of its news columns. The editor said it would be news in Wall Street. Should we call our ideals new? Not so. They are the new evangel — glad tidings of great joy — of the old, old ideals, the ideals that were given us at our mothers’ 44 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN knees — truth and honor and duty and love — the ideals that seemed good in the Garden of Eden— that Eve taught Cain and Abel after she had learned the difference between good and evil. Has this new evangel availed to affect the daily life of the na- tion? Yes, and it should be said boldly — yes. There are scandals in business, perhaps more than there used to be, but we know now that there are men who smite corruption when they find it. Haven’t we seen some of the satraps of ill-gotten wealth, trying to sit still in grand jury anterooms, hoping for an immunity bath? And as for scandals, wasn’t there great and unheard of scandal in Jeru- salem when He overthrew the tables of the money-changers in the temple? Will the ladies tell us whether there is any way of clean- ing house without finding dirt, and if you carry the dirt out, won’t the neighbors see it? Scandals and dirt there will be to the end of our time. Be it your duty to see that the proper house cleaning takes place at proper intervals. I shall not take up your time to say to you that the law is a jealous mistress and requires constant devotion ; to exhort you to be true to the high ideals of that great profession which offers more opportunities of public service, as I see it, than any other. These things have all been said to you. I have no code of ethics to recom- mend to you except the old moralities. If you have ideals you will work for them ; if they are vitally a part of you, you will be true to them. When Mr. Pingy Connors, the New York boss, was break- ing into society, he was reproved by one of his social mentors for his ostentatious display of big diamonds, and plain pearl buttons were suggested as a substitute. Said he, ‘ ‘ I notice them as has ’em wears ’em.” So those who have real ideals are proud to wear them, and they are as a lamp unto their feet. And so, I congratu- late you again on the period when you go out to do your part of the world’s work; that there is a public sentiment to sustain you in it ; that there will be a public opinion behind you strong enough to force vice to wear the mask of virtue. And before we part, I wish to congratulate you upon another thing — upon the fact that the future is all before you. Everything good is there for your selection. Sometimes I have wished that the experience of the elders could, in some way, be made available for the young. But if it could, would anything great be done ? Youth knows better. It wants its own experience, and gets it. Who’s afraid? As my old friend General Baker (the youngest man of his age I ever knew) used to say, “We belong to the blue-eyed, red- COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 45 boned race, the conquerors of the earth and the inheritors of its fatness. You can strike fire from our shin bones after they have been in the cemetery vaults a hundred and fifty years, ” For us the new and the untried; the time of new songs for us; the pure joy of living, or convertibly, the joy of pure living, when the blood is full of iron and gunpowder and the leaping pulses respond to every emotion. Let the old console themselves with that familiar sour grapes hymn which begins, £ ‘ I would not live alway, I ask not to stay.” The time will come no doubt, though we do not believe it, when we shall be looking backward, when like the Hebrew king, we shall exclaim “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;” when we, too, may take a melancholy pleasure in recalling the lines of the good English Bishop, though I venture to say that before he wrote them he had sailed over his new seas: “Tbe happiest heart that ever beat Was in some quiet breast That found the common daylight sweet And left to heaven the rest.” Sickness comes sometimes, which is a temporary form of age. and then of course we must moderate our transports. My old friend, the poet, who used to come over and smoke with me some- times in Frankfort, came in one day, just before the Spanish War broke out. His clothes were not brushed and he did not care. He was smoking the remains of a dilapidated stogey. His digestion was out of order, his liver wasn’t working, his hair was beginning to fall out, he had a troublesome tooth, some corns, and wasn’t feeling very well himself. He had a poem with him. It began this way: ‘‘Give us new seas to sail ; the cry is, give us new seas to sail, New seas to sail, be they ever so mad, and we ship in the teeth of the gale ; For the old seas pall on our souls like death, their deeps and their tides we know, The slope of the Continents under the brine, and the black ooze beds below.” After Dewey had sailed into Manila Bay, over the torpedoes, which providentially were not there, and Spain had acquired a sub- marine fleet at Santiago, he came in again. He was evidently feel- ing better. He had on a new silk hat, a new suit of clothes, and a big cigar tilted in the corner of his mouth. He was well and young and happy. His future was before him again, as yours is 46 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN before you tonight. He had a new poem, appropriate then and now, and it concluded like this : “We have broken at last from the fettering past, we have done with the dawdling years, With the slothful lease of a selfish peace, secure from intruding fears. The swaddling clouts are off, thank God, and we’re into the shining mail ; We have taken our place in the van of the race, we have got new seas to sail.” COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 47 PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM An address before the Alumni Association, June 20, 1911, by the Hon. Cyrus Davis, ’SO, of Bloomfield, Indiana. In casting about for a theme for this occasion, it has occurred to me that the alumni of Indiana University, as the chief benefi- ciaries of the state’s educational system, owe a duty paramount even to that of others to concern themselves with problems relat- ing to the welfare of the state. Accordingly, I have proposed to discuss for a brief time the subject “The Reform of the Public Service.” It is perhaps common observation that the American people are inclined to expect their laws to be self executing. Ac- cordingly, when some tendency appears to need reform or some course of human conduct seems to need restraint, existing statute-; are at once blamed, and there is a clamor to the legislature for new laws, which, when enacted, show the same perverse lack of effi- ciency to execute themselves, and soon meet the same fate in un- popularity as their predecessors. Gibraltar itself would cease to be impregnable if garrisoned by traitors or imbeciles. The wisest, most beneficent laws will fail to conserve the happiness of the people if administered by unscrupu- lous or incompetent officers. An autocracy administered by a wise and benevolent monarch will for the time being bring more happiness and satisfaction to its people than so-called free insti- tutions administered without conscience or without wisdom. This fact has more than once caused nations, discouraged by in- competent, selfish or criminal administration of comparatively free forms of government, to seek refuge in the arbitrary power of a gifted and just-minded autocrat. In their shortsightedness, such nations have forgotten that two things are fundamentally necessary to permanent good government : First, free institutions, and, sec- ond, their righteous and wise administration. A scarcely lesser error is that of a people who get into the habit of thinking that when free institutions are secured, the character of their administration is of secondary importance. It has become a favorite saying in our country that ours is a gov- ernment of law and not of men, and the thought has done its full share of harm in creating in our people a submissive dependence on our free institutions to secure good government, with only a minimum concern for the character of the men who are to admin- ister them. This view of our civic situation has only the one ele- 48 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN ment of truth, that public officers are, if competent and conscien- tious, guided by law and not by caprice. But suppose these officers are either incompetent or unscrupu- lous. What boots it to be protected by a constitution, if the execu- tive vested with final power, through blindness or viciousness, ig- nores that constitution. What boots it to have the law on your side, if the court of last resort, through ignorance or prejudice, puts a silly or wicked construction upon that law. What boots it to have wise statutes, if weak or dishonest officials evade those stat- utes. The practical importance of this thought to us as a nation receives daily illustration. A large number of our officials, mu- nicipal, county and state, give little attention to their offices ex- cept to draw their salaries, depending on deputies hired by a small percentage of their annual stipend. Official irregularity and crook- edness has become so common, that in Indiana the people have sought refuge in a law creating a public accounting board, charged with the duty of enforcing the honesty and efficiency of officers who have themselves been invested by the people with power, pre- sumably for their honesty and efficiency. There are judicial circuits in this state in which one-half the prosecuting attorneys that have held office in the last thirty years have been bribe takers. It is so recent as to be fresh in the memory of us all that a state officer has been removed from office and sent to the state’s prison for a crime which every lawyer who has studied the case knows had been ignorantly or wilfully committed by one-half the officers who had handled public moneys in Indiana for the preceding quar- ter of a century, and this law, until resurrected by a Governor of the State, had for that time remained a dead letter. Every observant man who has served in, or lingered about the sessions of legislatures in this and other states, knows that an in- creasingly large number of the membership prove themselves lack- ing in judgment or integrity to resist the sophistry and corruption of the special interests. As much as is heard about graft in city government, only those who habitually do business with these municipalities have any con- ception of the alarming extent of the evil. These business men know that the half is not told in the public prints. The judiciary of Indiana has been kept the purest and most efficient of any branch of government, and yet it is not at all un- common to find on the bench in our State men who are only third- rate lawyers. COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 49 The only way to have more upright and efficient officials in onr elective offices, is for the voters to elect better men. It is not de- nied in theory, and yet in practice it seems scarcely to be appre- ciated that, after all, the voters are responsible for these official delinquencies. The advocate of the so-called short ballot excuses the voters on the ground that we elect so many officers that it is impossible for the voters to ascertain the real character of a large per cent of the candidates. The remedy these advocates propose is to limit elective offices to the chiefs, and let the chiefs appoint the others. This may be wise, but is it not a confession of the partial in- capacity of the people for self-government? An implication that the voters are only to a limited extent capable of selecting their rulers? Is not the proposition a kindred plant to all the othef propositions sprouting out of our rapidly centralizing civilization, proposing limitations upon the direct power of the people? More- over, observation will convince that the mistakes that are made at the elections are most frequently the result of something other than want of information. It cannot be doubted that many candidates succeed in conven- tions and at the polls, whom the electors know to be bad or incom- petent. Continued observation will enable any observant man to cite many instances to prove this proposition. The most notoriously corrupt prosecuting attorney that ever disgraced that office in Indiana had been out of office for a short time only, when his party nominated him for judge of the same ju- dicial circuit, and but for a convention row in no way caused by his character, he would have been elected. A man generally known to have been guilty of more than one felony, has in recent years been elected by his neighbors to a high municipal office. A man was recently nominated for office by the dominant party in his county before he had settled with his bondsmen a defalea- tion in a former office. The same county once sent a man to the legislature who, among his other known incapacities, was intoxicated during the greater part of the session. In the same county, the opposite party once sent a man to the state senate who was drunk the day he was nominated, and was 50 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN drunk oftener than sober from that day till the end of the first session to which he was elected. These cases may be exceptional, but they are the extreme prod- ucts of causes that lead the people to commit hundreds of lesser, yet distressingly disastrous errors in the selection of their public servants. Intellectual incapacity on the part of our voters is not one of these causes. The education of the American voter on the intel- lectual side has not been neglected. The average American mind is well trained and well informed on economic and social problems. The questions relating to the tariff, the trusts, the finances, to mu- nicipal government, to administrative reforms are really well un- derstood. The American electorate is capable of judging the character and motives of men. It is to no serious degree wanting in acumen to prevent it from being deceived as to the merits of either meas- ures or men. The difficulty lies in what may be called the moral attitude of the voter toward the duties incident to the right of the elective franchise. The people as a rule care much less than they pretend for the character of their public officials. At every election, large numbers of voters are influenced and, indeed, many are in the main controlled by motives, which, from the standpoint of good citizenship, are absolutely illegitimate. The best appreciated, perhaps, of these motives is direct bribery. The balance of power is not infrequently held by that lowest stratum of the electorate who sell their suffrage for money, but as appall- ing as is this evil, there are numbers of other motives which, though less base, cause a vastly greater number of votes to go astray than does direct bribery. First, the personal element enters too largely into our elections. Thousands of average citizens will in their party primaries and conventions, and not infrequently in the general elections, vote for a man they like, though secretly knowing him to be unfit, in preference to a man they do not like, though secretly knowing him to be fit. A capacity for hand shaking has nothing to do with a man’s qualifications for office, and yet it will get him more votes than a score of real qualifications. The so-called good fellow who spends his money freely will, as a candidate, walk completely away from a close-fisted, careful man. COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 51 though in a majority of such cases, his popularity is bought with money that either belongs to the public or his creditors, and he is for that very reason an improper man to elect. Secondly, the difficulty in securing desirable public servants is increased by a foolish sentiment among the people that a man ought not to have an office who will not beg them for it. The office seeker is, as a rule, much less desirable for a public servant than the man who refuses to enter the scramble for office, and yet the maxim that the office should seek the man and not the man the office, has little weight in practice. There is only one motive that should lead a man to seek office, namely, that by holding office, he may be able the better to serve his fellows, and yet the man who seeks office from any such motive is the exception and not the rule. If it were generally felt to be as much of an impropriety for man to seek official employment, as it is for him to seek profes- sional employment, the nation would soon be blessed with a much higher grade of public officials. Custom and public sentiment makes it well-nigh impossible for us to obtain our public servants from among any but the office- seeking class, whose very selfishness disqualifies them in a measure for a disinterested discharge of public duty. The last to mention, but chief in importance among the per- verted criterions of the voters of our republic, that obstructs the procurement of desirable public servants, is that which for want of a better name I shall call political commercialism. I mean not the spirit of commercialism controlling big business which seeks with unlimited effrontery to dominate our government and laws; I mean the spirit of commercialism which has come so largely to actuate the individual voter, which causes him to gauge every pro- posed man or measure by the question. Will his or its success bring financial prosperity or adversity? Ninety per cent of the thought energy of the American voter as to the casting of his vote centers on the proposition whether his vote will bring good times or bad times. Ninety per cent of our political oratory makes this question the dominant note of its appeal. Ninety per cent of our partisan literature is addressed to the propagation of this idea. Compara- tively little attention is given either to moral aspects of a political program, its effect on character or even its effect on liberty. At the present rate of the growth of this spirit, in less than a generation a political orator may propose with impunity and con- sistency that it is permissible to submit even to arbitrary power, 52 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN if only it will bring good times. Even now we can scarcely con- ceive of the defeat at the polls of any man or measure whose suc- cess it were generally conceded would greatly increase financial prosperity. Quite as much as socialism this political commercialism is bot- tomed on the belief that it is the business of government to fur- nish every man a living, but unlike socialism it has not the merit of treating this idea as a corollary of fundamental moral truth. The moral and patriotic fervor that fired the heroes of our na- tion’s infancy, and that more than once since has aroused the soul of the republic to material sacrifice for the sake of moral truth, forbids the conclusion that as a people we are naturally sordid or selfish in treating public 5 problems. The perverted conceptions of public duty we have noted in our voting population are not inherent in the American mind, but the result of false education. The blame for this false education of the electorate lies chiefly at the door of our politicians, small and great. The people have simply been trained to this attitude by their political leaders. From the ward captain who persuades the indigent voter that it is all right for him to sell his vote to the politician of nation-wide prominence, who claims persistently that a man should gauge his vote according to its supposed effect on his occupation or business, these leaders one and all have been pouring this poison into the American mind until it has become a controlling factor in politi- cal life. Candidates almost without exception have encouraged the feel- ing that personal likes and dislikes form proper motives for deter- mining a voter’s choice. Politicians of all grades proclaim the sentiment that a man is not entitled to support for office unless he seeks it. This poisonous propaganda has been spread for so long and so persistently that these pernicious standards of citizenship have become the controll- ing forces behind the exercise of the elective franchise. Of all the tendencies in the Republic that are supposed to be undermining our national life, this unsound attitude of the elec- torate toward the selection of their public servants is believed to be the most dangerous. Of all the obstructions to reform, this perverse attitude is be- lieved to be the most formidable. Sound theories and righteous laws will not work reforms un- less our official life is purged and purified. COMMENCEMENT NUMBER 53 A high standard of popular intelligence will not qualify for successful self-government if false standards of civic duty con- tinue to cloud the moral vision of the electorate. The evils that corrode the elective franchise, like most other evils that afflict society, cannot be cured by statute. The greater per cent, of right doing among men comes not from fear of legal con- sequences, but from the bent of individual character. If a majority of men were disposed to right conduct only from compulsion and not from choice, government would soon fail, society soon lapse into anarchy. As these base criterions of the electorate are born of false edu- cation, so they must be removed by true education. The voter must be educated to feel that the elective franchise not only confers a privilege, but imposes an obligation. He must be educated to realize that his franchise belongs to the state, and that he has no right to use it to reward friends, to punish enemies, to gratify personal liking, or to avenge personal wrongs. He must be educated to know that a capacity for office seeking does not indicate a capacity for office holding, and that position h not to be bestowed on a man because he desires it, but because the public needs the man. Above all, must it be engraved in his moral fiber, that bribe tak- ing at the polls or in office is as disgraceful as stealing and treason, and that voting for one’s private business against the public weal, while more respectable, is no less a violation of civic duty. The greatest need of this nation is a baptism of patriotism. Not the patriotism which vaunts itself on our commercial, and physi- cal, and military greatness, not the patriotism which makes the heart beat quicker at the sound of martial music, which makes the shout ring louder at the Jingo’s boast, which makes the soul thrill stronger at the roar of cannon. We have enough and to spare of that kind already, and the pity of it is that its superabundance chokes the growth of the better kind. The patriotism we need to acquire is the love of country for liberty’s sake, the wish that America may be great in making her people happy, that she may not only be powerful but pure. That she may be an instrument not to conquer mankind but to bless man- kind, and that her excellence shall be not so much in diplomacy and war and commercial power, but in the justness of her laws and the purity of their administration. 54 3 0112 105651977 INDIANA UNIVERSITY BULLETIN Even if it were' a part of my purpose so to do, I should con- fess myself unable to solve the problem definitely as to the source which is to supply this needed education of the voter. Certain it is that we cannot depend for this good upon the teachings of our politicians, whose greed for office and victory has been the fountain of the evils of which we complain. It is likewise permissible t > suggest that our schools and colleges have not given to this item of education the prominence which its importance to society de- mands. We do not forget that other influences, such as the press, lecture platform and even the church, are responsible factors in pa- triotic education, and that the entire defect in our training for citizenship cannot, therefore, be charged to our schools and col- leges. But these institutions are our primary forces in education. Besides, the voter can best be reached at the impressionable stage. Along with other education, these debasing tendencies in American political thought can best be arrested and effaced, and hence from the class room and lecture room preferably should sound the trum- pet that calls them to judgment. Our institutions of learning must awaken to the fact that in- tellectual training but half prepares for citizenship, and that high ideals of civic duty must complete the equipment. That silence on this subject in the class room and lecture room must give place to vigorous and persistent admonition, that no student, male or fe- male, shall be permitted to go forth to the task of civic life with- out having eradicated from his mind these prevailing sordid and selfish views of civic duty. In the course of this instruction, standards of civic conduct must cease to be incidental, and be pro- moted to the list of the essential, and they must be treated with such emphasis and enthusiasm that they will not die on com- mencement day, but live and extend into civic life to thrill and in- spire the public conscience, that the light which is shed from the class room and lecture room shall not fade with the borders of the playground and the campus, but tinge with its beneficent glow the farthest horizon of our commonwealth. Let me leave this summary : Good laws are useless without wise and just administration. Reform of the public service can only be secured through the reform of the electorate. The electorate cannot be reformed by law, but through an education of the indi- vidual voter, which shall drive from his mind every criterion of civic conduct and every motive for the casting of his vote except the ultimate well-being of that portion of the community affected