&^ < blo J uwK 
 
 BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA 
 ISSUED MONTHLY BY THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Vol. IX. 
 
 JANUARY, 1909. 
 
 No. 5 A. 
 
 The Visit of 
 
 William Howard Taft 
 
 to 
 
 The University of Georgia 
 
 January 16th, 1909 
 
 Entered at the Post Office at Athens, Georgia, as Second-Class Mail Matter, 
 August 30, 1905, under A<a of Congress of July 16, 1904. 
 
 SERIAL NO. 9 7 
 
 THE M9GREGOR CO. 
 
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 The Visit of Mr. Taft: 
 
 During. Mr. Taft's sojourn in Augusta 
 for a rest after the arduous campaign preced- 
 ing his election to the Presidency of the 
 United States, Dean Charles M. Snelling, Act- 
 ing Chancellor during the illness of Chancellor 
 Barrow, expressed a desire to have him visit 
 the University. Through Judge E. H. Calla- 
 way, of Augusta, an appointment was made 
 and a committee, composed of Dean Snelling, 
 Dr. A. M. Soule, and Professor W. H. Bocock 
 from the faculty, Messrs. A. L. Hull and 
 Hamilton McWhorter from the Trustees, 
 Mayor W. R Dorsey and Mr. H. J. Rowe from 
 the City Council, and Hon. William M. How- 
 ard, member of Congress and an Alumnus of 
 the University, called on Mr. Taft in the 
 afternoon of January second. 
 
 Mr. Howard had accompanied Mr. Taft 
 to the Philippines in 1906 and the most cor- 
 dial relations exist between them. It was 
 fitting, therefore, that through him the invi- 
 tation of the University was extended. 
 
 Mr. Taft had declined practically all in- 
 vitations from the numerous cities and organi- 
 zations that desired to entertain him. It was 
 only after the committee of the University 
 had convinced him of the position of influence 
 held by this, the oldest of American State 
 Universities, that the acceptance of the invi- 
 tation was secured. 
 
An honorary escort composed of Judge 
 Hamilton McWhorter, Hon. Peter Meldrim 
 and Col. Nat Harris of the Board of Trustees, 
 Dr. H. C. White and Prof. W. H. Bocock of 
 the faculty, Messrs. Prince Hodgson and 
 Harry Hodgson met Mr. Taft in Atlanta and 
 came with him to Athens. 
 
 Upon the arrival of the distinguished visi- 
 tor on the afternoon of January sixteenth, he 
 was met by a committee of the Faculty and 
 escorted to his carriage by Acting Chancellor 
 Snelling, ex-Governor Henry D. McDan- 
 iel and Mr. A. L. Hull of the Board of Trus- 
 tees. 
 
 The University Battalion of Cadets formed 
 an honorary escort from the train to the 
 Chapel, where a large audience of students, 
 the families of the faculty, Alumni of the 
 University and citizens were gathered to see 
 and hear the President-elect. 
 
 The Chapel was decorated in Tale colors in 
 honor of Mr. Taft's Alma Mater. The stage 
 was occupied by the University Faculty 
 in their official robes and by the distinguished 
 guests of the occasion. Hon. Henry D. Mc- 
 Daniel, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, 
 presided. 
 
 Dean Snelling, in the absence of Chancellor 
 Barrow, welcomed the President-elect to the 
 University. Hon. Hamilton McWhorter made 
 the speech of introduction, after which Mr. 
 Taft addressed the student body. The genial 
 manner and unaffected style of the distin- 
 guished speaker went at once to the hearts of 
 
his audience and he was greeted with cordial 
 and generous applause. 
 
 The addresses referred to are given in full 
 below. At the conclusion of the exercises in 
 the Chapel, Mr. Taft was taken to the State 
 Normal School, where he spoke for a few min- 
 utes to the students of that institution. 
 
 Later in the afternoon a beautiful reception 
 in honor of Mr. Taft was given by Mrs. M. 
 W. Welch in the name of the University, after 
 which the President-elect was escorted to his 
 car and accompanied back to Atlanta by an 
 honorary escort composed of Judge Hamilton 
 McWhorter, Hon. Peter Meldrim, Col. K E. 
 Harris, Prof. John Morris, Dr. J. T. McPher- 
 son, Prof. W. D. Hooper, Prof. S. V. Sanford, 
 Prof. J. S. Stewart, and Prof. W. 0. Payne. 
 
 The visit of Mr. Taft was not marred by a 
 single unpleasant incident and the friends of 
 the University congratulate her upon enter- 
 taining so successfully one of the first of 
 American citizens. 
 
Address of Welcome 
 
 by Acting Chancellor Snelling 
 
 We are unfortunate today in that the Chan- 
 cellor of the University is unable to welcome 
 in person the distinguished gentleman, the 
 guest of this occasion. 
 
 I need hardly say that though absent in 
 body, the great heart that throbs in sympathy 
 with everything making for the uplift of the 
 lives which this institution touches, is here. 
 
 I bring to you, Sir, greeting from our Chan- 
 cellor. 
 
 Inheriting the traditions and ideals of the 
 " mother of colleges" and " mother of men," 
 the University of Georgia, oldest of the State 
 Universities, for more than a hundred years 
 has ministered to the life of Georgia, so that 
 now there would be no history of the state at 
 all, were the University's part in it wiped out. 
 
 Today the institution stands on the thresh- 
 hold of a new and larger usefulness. Con- 
 scious of its own potentiality it is reaching 
 out to the people and aspires to be, what it 
 must be, the most potent factor in their life 
 and thought. 
 
 We welcome this afternoon the splendid 
 American who honors us with his presence, 
 not only because he is soon to occupy the most 
 exalted position within the gift of our coun- 
 try, but also because his whole life, since 
 early manhood, has been dominated by the 
 
spirit for which we stand; because as the 
 product of our foster mother Yale, he is the 
 highest expression of academic efficiency, a 
 realization of our ideal in love of country, 
 love of humanity, of sanity and of service. 
 
 On behalf of the Board of Trustees, Judge 
 Hamilton McWhorter now presents him to 
 you. 
 
Introductory Speech 
 
 by Hon. Hamilton JXCcWhorter 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen of the Student 
 
 Body, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 This is a rare assemblage, and this occasion 
 will forever remain distinct in the history of 
 this venerable institution and the Classic City 
 of Athens. 
 
 In the past century of its endeavor and 
 usefulness, from this stage many notable 
 names have been presented, but this day and 
 this occasion is illumined and made memora- 
 ble by the presence of the illustrious son of 
 Yale — our foster-mother — who furnished, in 
 its formative period, to this institution, its 
 first President, Abraham Baldwin, ankl 'its 
 second President, Dr. Josiah Meigs — and from 
 its historic campus the replica of its first 
 building, "Old College," which still stands 
 as the cherished memorial and lingering token 
 of the primal relationship between Yale and 
 Georgia. 
 
 Hovering, therefore, like the silent atmos- 
 phere, about this occasion, is the aroma of 
 this related association and the glory of its 
 achievements; for if its foster-mother should 
 call for an account of its stewardship, Geor- 
 gia, with pardonable pride, could point to its 
 own sons who have left its consecrated walls 
 to adorn and add lustre to the councils of the 
 state and of the nation. 
 
As the most illustrious son of Yale, we 
 salute him — as the chosen President of a sov- 
 ereign people, the most exalted official station 
 known to man, we honor him. 
 
 And, may I be permitted to say that his 
 peerless equipment, attainments, and judicial 
 training, presages an administration of wis- 
 dom, justice and moderation, guided by a 
 statesmanship as broad and a patriotism as 
 generous as the circumference of our com- 
 mon country — which in its course and desti- 
 ny, is as inseparable as the interwoven Stars 
 and Stripes of our common flag, and, in its 
 fraternity and amity, as enduring as the blood 
 which pulsed and vitalized the veins of our 
 common, but glorious, ancestry — forming a 
 Union as imperishable as the flight of time. 
 
 I beg to present our foster-mother's most 
 illustrious son and our country's next Presi- 
 dent, Honorable William Howard Taft, who 
 will now address you. 
 
Address of Mr Taft to the Stu- 
 dents of the University 
 
 Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Chairman, Judge 
 
 McWhorter, Gentlemen of the Student 
 
 Body, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 The first thing that comes into my mind is 
 whether, when I was in college, I looked as 
 young and had as chubby cheeks and seemed 
 to be altogether as happy as, I was going to 
 say, "the boys" before me — but I remember 
 in college we were all "men." The truth is, 
 I have a boy in the preparatory school who is 
 only eleven years old and he refers to the 
 "men" of his class, but I suppose it is true 
 that we looked as young as you look now. And 
 yet, as I look back to that period of my life, it 
 seems to me that we thought that Daniel Web- 
 ster did not have any advantage of us in mat- 
 ters of statesmanship or anything else. Cer- 
 tainly, when we became seniors, we knew a 
 good deal more than our fathers did, and it 
 took the subsequent year, after we stepped 
 down and out of the great dignity of that last 
 year in college to convince us that we were 
 not altogether indispensable to the growth 
 of civilization. At least if the world needed 
 us, if the world was yearning for us, the world 
 was able to conceal it. 
 
 Yet, boys, you are enjoying today the 
 period that, after all is said and done, and as 
 
you look back upon it from any stage in life, 
 will seem the sweetest, will seem the purest 
 in ideals, will seem the purest from sordid 
 cares and will seem to you the time when, 
 of all, you have made the most abiding 
 and valued friendships. It is the time when 
 you, each of you, has a window in his 
 bosom and each fellow can look through that 
 window into heart and soul that are beating 
 together with the ideals of college life. 
 
 I never come into the presence of any young 
 men like you, never come under the influence 
 of an academic atmosphere without feeling 
 uplifted, without feeling as if the place where 
 I lived was lower in point of aspiration, in 
 point of the high morality, and the high am- 
 bition that ought to be and are in a college 
 atmosphere. 
 
 You have a society among your professors 
 and their wives, than which there is no more 
 refined, or cultured, or advanced. They do not 
 have much to live on, they are paid poor sal- 
 aries, and yet, perhaps, that is the explan- 
 ation why they constitute the society of plain 
 living and high thinking, but whatever it is, 
 it is better for them and is better for the col- 
 lege community over which they exercise an 
 influence and in which they are the leaders. 
 
 Now, I assume that I am speaking to young 
 men who are looking forward generally to 
 going into the learned professions, that is to 
 becoming ministers, lawyers, and physicians. 
 I think that during the last twentyfive or 
 thirty years the ministry has been deprived 
 
by circumstances of some of the material 
 that it perhaps took into its ranks fifty years 
 ago. There was a time in New England 
 when the minister was the head man of the 
 community, when the congregation stood and 
 waited until he walked down the aisle and out, 
 and when his views were more or less law. 
 
 At that time the ministry attracted the 
 ablest of those who graduated from your insti- 
 tutions of learning. That has passed away, 
 possibly with the introduction of more mate- 
 rial and lower ideals with respect to life. I 
 am hoping that the time will come when the 
 best ability of those graduating from univer- 
 sities shall again be attracted into the minis- 
 try, for that is a great profession and one 
 upon the ability and energy of which depend 
 the welfare of our people. 
 
 Again, with reference to Medicine. I want 
 to encourage some of you gentlemen that are 
 doing what we used to term in the colloquial 
 expression of college, " wrestling with the tail 
 of the class. " I judge by the applause that 
 there are some here who understand that. 
 When you have gone through college and 
 have done the best you could to stay in, with 
 as little work as possible, I hope that you may 
 have a very successful future, especially in 
 the direction of the medical profession. That 
 is pretty hard on the doctors, I agree, but 
 what I mean to stress is that the study of 
 medicine more than any other of the profes- 
 sions developes an enthusiastic interest In 
 those who pursue it that transforms! them 
 
from listless, idle students into the hard- 
 est workers. The enthusiastic feeling of be- 
 ing on the brink of constant discovery of 
 something that pertains to the human make- 
 up that shall benefit mankind, has done more 
 to make the profession of medicine the great- 
 est in this country than anything else con- 
 nected with its practice. 
 
 Now, as to the profession of Law. For two 
 or three years you will have the opportunity 
 after you receive your diploma, or license, or 
 whatever you call it in this state, to look upon 
 the blank walls of your office and wonder at 
 the inability of the public to understand a 
 man of genius and his use in the community. 
 Now, if while you are entertaining pity for 
 the public, you devote your attention to the 
 further study of your profession as a science 
 you will find that in those two or three years 
 you are putting away what will return in 
 abundance to you afterwards to aid you when 
 you are called upon for real work, and when 
 the public has discovered how useful you are. 
 
 Now, one word with reference to the men 
 who lead the classes, because those who come 
 between are usually included in the extremes. 
 I had a brother who took the valedictory at 
 Yale, and while he was walking through New 
 York one day he met a class chum of his who 
 stopped him. He told him that he wanted to 
 catch a train but he said that he was going 
 to spend some time with him anyway, " Be- 
 cause, " he said, "I attended to one end of the 
 class and you, the other." In what I want to 
 
say on this subject, I do not want to be misun- 
 derstood. I believe that everything that is 
 worth doing at all is worth doing well, 
 and that if you are here to study and 
 learn the lessons that are put before you and 
 the subjects that are made part of your cur- 
 riculum; the better you learn them, the bet- 
 ter for you. I do not mean to say that that is 
 all of college life. On the contrary, if it were 
 all of college life, and if you think it is all 
 of college life, and if you have gone through 
 college finding it all of college life, you have 
 not lived as you ought to have. I mean to 
 say that the men who make among the first 
 ranks in their classes and who devote them- 
 selves to study have the qualities that in fifty 
 cases out of a hundred make for success in 
 life. I do not mean to say that there are 
 not a number of young boys in the classes 
 who do not reach their full sense of responsi- 
 bility and who go through and develop later, 
 but I am speaking now of the average student. 
 Therefore I believe in rank and I do not be- 
 lieve in abolishing all marks of rank. I think 
 it is the proper means of stirring up the 
 students to study. I do not mean to say that 
 there are not other and proper methods of 
 comparison, matters of competition, as in ath- 
 letics, in popularity, in literature, and in 
 power of speech. In almost every subject 
 that comes in college life, competition is a 
 good thing. But I wanted to speak in par- 
 ticular of the high-standing men and hold 
 that up as perhaps the first object that a man 
 
ought to devote himself to. But now, is that 
 all? By no means. It is the associations with 
 your fellow students, it is the love that each 
 bears to the other, it is the epitome of life in 
 the struggle for your college rewards, it is 
 the^ development of character at a time when 
 character is most formative, and when what 
 happens impresses itself most deeply on you 
 that you gather from college life like this. 
 And if you do not cherish every brick in the 
 sidewalks of your campus and every vista of 
 this beautiful country, then, as something con- 
 nected with the best part of your life, you 
 have not gotten out of college what you ought 
 to have gotten out of it and what it is possible 
 to get out of it. 
 
 It is a great pleasure for me to talk to the 
 young men of a college which looks to Yale 
 as its foster mother, because I love Yale as 
 I love my mother, and I am sure from the 
 origin and derivation of this University the 
 same feeling has come down through it, be- 
 cause I know that you number all, or almost 
 all, of the prominent Georgians who have ren- 
 dered services to their country and state 
 among your Alumni and that your great men 
 have sent their sons here, and their grand- 
 sons, and that there is gathered about this in- 
 stitution a wealth of memory that in itself, 
 with the ideals formed here, is ever to main- 
 tain, as it always has maintained, the civiliza- 
 tion of the Imperial State of Georgia. 
 
Remarks of Mr. Taft at the 
 Normal School 
 
 A Branch of the Unbersity 
 
 I have been talking over at the University 
 to the students, discussing their future by a 
 division of them into ministers, doctors and 
 lawyers, and by some oversight, which was 
 very blameworthy, I left out altogether the 
 learned profession of the teacher; but, to my 
 gratification, I was told, after I got into the 
 carriage, that I was coming to the Normal 
 School, where that which I had forgotten to 
 take up with the student body of the Univer- 
 sity would be peculiarly appropriate. 
 
 There is no higher profession than that of 
 teaching. It is a profession that, when one 
 becomes interested and finds that he has a 
 faculty for it, he ought not to give up. One 
 member of my family, my youngest brother, 
 began the practice of the law, but he found 
 that the satisfaction incident to the instruc- 
 tion of youth, the winning of their confidence 
 and leading them up to be good men and 
 women appealed so strongly to him, the fasci- 
 nation was so great, that he departed from 
 the law and has gone into teaching. There 
 were four brothers of us and a sister. He is 
 far and away the best member of the family. 
 I think it is because he is engaged in the pro- 
 fession that calls for possibly the greatest 
 
sacrifice and is the greatest instrument for 
 the uplifting of youth. 
 
 I have had a good deal of experience in the 
 matter of teachers. When we went to the 
 Philippines we reached the conclusion that 
 the best thing to do for the Filipinos was to 
 teach them English. They wanted to learn 
 English, and so we sent for one thousand 
 American teachers. Quite a number got mar- 
 ried on the way out, so that somewhat inter- 
 fered with our plans, but there were enough 
 of them who adhered to the profession to make 
 a nucleus about which we have built up the 
 educational system of the Philippines. 
 
 We have now in the islands upwards of 
 seven thousand Filipino teachers, who have 
 been taught by the one thousand American 
 teachers whom we took out there; upon the 
 structure which they make we base the whole 
 hope that we have of success in the experi- 
 ment that we are making in the discharge of 
 the trust which Providence has thrust upon 
 us with reference to those people. As the 
 teachers shall be successful, so our policies 
 shall be successful. Hence it is that in the 
 presence of teachers or of those who are mak- 
 ing ready for that profession, I always feel 
 like bearing testimony to the good that they 
 can do in the world. I know that the female 
 teacher is not sufficiently well paid. I am not 
 sure that if she had a vote, she would get any 
 better salary. I don't think she would, be- 
 cause those things are determined rather by 
 supply and demand; there is a greater supply 
 
of female teachers than of male teachers, and 
 the salaries are accordingly different. 
 
 It does not seem just at times when a 
 female teacher is more capable than her male 
 competitor that she does not get the same 
 salary that he receives. Of course, sometimes 
 a man's family responsibilities are greater 
 and he needs more money, but I believe the 
 tendency is going to be that as the opportuni- 
 ties increase, salaries and, in consequence, the 
 comforts of life will increase. How rapid that 
 progress will be I do not know. I hope that it 
 will be as rapid as possible, for the benefit of 
 all of you, but whatever happens, you may 
 always have the satisfaction of knowing that 
 there is no higher profession, none in which 
 self-sacrifice is manifested more clearly, and 
 none in which more good can be done than 
 that of the teacher. 
 
 I congratulate you that you are begin- 
 ning your life in that way, and I hope that 
 you will continue the work through life and 
 not regard matrimony as necessary. 
 
 I think that the secret of most domestic 
 infelicity is in the thought that unless young 
 women are married their lives are not a suc- 
 cess. As a matter of fact, I think the reverse 
 is true. Look into your own lives and y^ur 
 families. Take some aunt of yours who did 
 not marry — what a sweet, self-sacrificing, 
 disinterested and lovely character she has 
 grown to be, and what beneficence she has 
 spread over the family circle in which she 
 lives; will you tell me she would have been 
 better off if she had been married? I do not 
 believe it. 
 
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