I '^'^UmvMsiTY OF OREGON BULLETIN 
 
 NEW SERIES 
 
 SEPTEMBER, 1912 
 
 Vol. X, No. 1 
 
 THE PROPOSED COMMONWEALTH SERVICE 
 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 
 
 The Husbandry of the Commonweal 
 
 By 
 
 F. G. YOUNG, 
 
 Head of the Department of Economic* and Sociology 
 University of Oregon 
 
 
 Published monthly by the University of Oregon, and entered at the post-oflftce In 
 Eugene, Oregon, as second-class matter 
 
■■ 
 
 ■i". 
 
 
 
 
 V. 
 
THE PROPOSED COMMONWEALTH SERVICE 
 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 
 
 The Hashandrv of the CoiuTnonweal 
 
 By 
 
 F. G. YOUNG, 
 
 Head of the Department of Economics and Sociology 
 University of Oregon 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/proposedcommonwe00youn_0 
 
THE PROPOSED COMMONWEALTH SERVICE 
 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 
 
 The Husband ol the Commonweal 
 
 I 
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION GETS ITS TRUE MEANING FOR STUDENT 
 AND FOR CITIZEN IN COMMONWEALTH SERVICE. 
 
 PLANE OF HIGHER EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY TO BE RAISED. 
 
 The University of Oregon proposes to raise the plane of higher 
 educational activity. The leverage relied upon is a more nearly normal 
 educational process and a more worthy educational purpose. All of the 
 institution’s work is to be brought into clear and conscious relation to 
 social service. University effort v/ill thus be invigorated by a new 
 motive; University courses shall be made to focus upon the effecting of 
 definite social achievements. 
 
 A WORTHY END IN SIGHT FOR ALL OF THE STUDENT’S WORK. 
 
 Substantial and worthy ends for the work of the students will be 
 brought into view. The immediate application of their fully matured 
 knowledge in active effort will mean attainment of power, and will arouse 
 interest far beyond what has been possible under the present less 
 edifying and less purposeful pursuit of their studies. This steady appeal 
 to the best in them will foster the motive of social service and leave in 
 the background where it belongs that of private gain. 
 
 CLOSEST ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PROGRESSIVE 
 CITIZENSHIP OF THE STATE TO BE REALIZED. 
 
 The University as a whole, with this new controlling spirit in its 
 purpose to have a part in social progress, will be brought into closest 
 alliance with the progressive citizenship of the State. Cooperative 
 effort between the University and social betterment movements will be 
 regular, sustained, and increasing. A munificent source of energy for 
 commonwealth uplift, now so largely latent or absorbed in more or less 
 haphazard and futile effort, will for the first time become fully active 
 and productive of largest results. The pace of progress will thus be 
 greatly accelerated. 
 
 THIS STEP BY THE UNIVERSITY AN OUTGROWTH OF ITS COMMONWEALTH 
 
 CONFERENCES. 
 
 This expansion of the University’s commonwealth service is but the 
 next stage of growth of the institution’s activities in the commonwealth 
 conferences that have been held during the last four years. These were 
 
a conspicuous innovation in American state university activity. 1. It is 
 now proposed to develop that line of effort in the direction of extending 
 the work of all University departments into phases of active effort that 
 have clear and vital relations to the promotion of the common good. This 
 aim for the first time makes higher education in the largest degree 
 practical and liberal. It is the only aim compatible with the idea (which 
 is perfectly true) that the major part of the University’s service 
 is realized through its securing for the people the highest standards of 
 professional service. Only as the University’s social service function is 
 clearly and fully comprehended in its widest bearings and rigidly 
 adhered to are its activities held true to the end of fostering highest 
 standards of efficiency in all vocations and professions. These standards 
 are high only by virtue of benefic/bnt and up-building social results. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY WITH ITS COMMONWEALTH SERVICE APPLIES THE MOST 
 ADVANCED PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT. 
 
 This evolution of University work is based upon the position taken by 
 all leaders in educational thought that “education is, fundamentally, a 
 whole-activity process in which the intellectual element functions as a 
 tool of useful progress, and only incidentally a purely intellectual or 
 knowledge process.” 2. The “whole-activ^ process” for which the State 
 University is maintained and with which the work of every University 
 student should be identified is clearly some line of commonwealth 
 improvement. The bringing of University work to this active and normal 
 process will go far towards giving the key to the problem of winning 
 the average student to a primary interest in his studies and away from 
 present athletic and social distractions. 
 
 THE STUDENT WILL FIND THE ABUNDANT LIFE IN HIS STUDY. 
 
 Through bringing the University courses to bear directly upon the 
 different social problems the work of the University student becomes a 
 normal regimen for the whole-souled and talented young men and young 
 women. Not only will the joy of an abundant life be theirs during their 
 four years of University preparation, but when after graduation they 
 take up their life-work their purpose and power of social uplift will 
 have been multiplied many fold. The commonwealth will also have 
 profited greatly through this full realization on the part of the student 
 of his possibilities for service. But of much larger measure will be the 
 social gain of the respective communities in which each finds his home. 
 
 1. Many most valuable commonwealth services outside of these conferences 
 have been performed from time to time by members of the University faculty. 
 Conspicuous among these were the surveys and investigations, the results of 
 which appeared as “University Bulletins”. It is necessary to name only such 
 as “Water Power on the McKenzie River” ; “State Systems of High School 
 Control” ; “Procedure for Tax Reform in Oregon”, etc., etc. There has been 
 also a rapidly growing line of social service developed through the theses of the 
 University’s graduate and undergraduate students in fulfillment of requirements 
 for Master and Bachelor degrees. However, the present purpose of effecting 
 such a fullness of espousal of commonwealth service as to bring it into a 
 vitalizing and dominating relation to all of the institution’s work constitutes a 
 new step. 
 
 2. This is the formulation given to this principle by Joseph K. Hart in a 
 paper on “The Failure of the Country School in the Modern City”, published 
 in the “American Journal of Sociology”, v. xviii, pp. 92-114. 
 
 4 
 
THE UNIVERSITY LEAVEN OF THE SPIRIT AND POWER OF EFFECTIVE SOCIAL 
 SERVICE WILL LEAVEN THE WHOLE SOCIAL MASS. 
 
 Our concern now is with the University regarded as a single working 
 agency, with all of its resources of youthful talent and idealism, with the 
 best light of science at its command and with the skill of scientific 
 methods to be applied to social problems. The proposed new departure 
 in University activity brings this agency into active alliance with all 
 other social agencies intent upon effecting civic improvement. A social 
 gain of equal importance with that obtained through the transforming 
 influence upon the individual students, because of this commonwealth 
 service of the University, is to be expected in the responsive cooperation 
 of the public to this University initiative. With this social purpose 
 characterizing the University work the problem of incorporating all of 
 the public spirit extant among the citizenship of the State with the 
 University into an integral whole is solved. All conditions that had 
 served as obstructions to the carrying of the full power of the University 
 influence and functioning to the farthest bounds of the State disappear. 
 A State-wide University activity becomes an established fact. 
 
 CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS ALL WORK AS UNIVERSITY OUTPOSTS. 
 
 With the advantage of the aid of a University imbued with the com- 
 monwealth purpose the civic organizations throughout the State will 
 attain a new efficiency. Federation with systematic and cooperative 
 effort along lines of coordinated activity and with the use of the best light 
 of science and scientific methods will now be realized by them. This 
 marshalling and organization of all the forces of progress means an 
 altogether new measure of achievement. By smoothing the way to 
 effective social effort all with generous impulses will be stimulated, sus- 
 tained and guided. Civic impulse thus reenforced by the University will 
 become habitual and a new and higher spirit will be engendered and will 
 reign among the citizenship of the State. 
 
 II. 
 
 COMMONWEALTH SERVICE THE NORMAL ROLE OF THE 
 STATE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY. 
 
 THE NEW IN THE SITUATION OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY — A NEW 
 WORLD, A NEW UNIVERSITY OUTFIT AND NEW LIGHT ON THE 
 UNIVERSITY PROCESS. 
 
 It has been pointed out what it means to the University student to 
 have the spirit of the University determined by the espousal of direct 
 commonwealth service and by the molding of all of its activity in conform- 
 ity to this mission. Reasons have also been given for believing that the 
 spell of the University will then be cast over all those throughout the 
 State who are susceptible to any public spirit, and that their civic 
 organizations will have their efficiency, because of reliance on the certain 
 aid of science, brought to a university standard. The consequent gain 
 to the State in all lines of achievement is evident. 
 
 That the proposed espousal by the State University of the role of 
 direct participation in the promotion of social progress is a departure 
 from the traditional function of such institutions is fully appreciated. Is 
 there sufficient reason for this repudiation, or at least distinctive modifica- 
 tion, of the time-honored sphere of University service? In the first place, 
 there has been a wide disparity in the respective rates of transformation 
 which the world outside and the University have experienced. And more- 
 
 5 
 
over, the very character of the v/orld movement toward democracy with 
 its timely insistence upon equality of opportunity has created a new 
 responsibility for the State University. Then too, the University has a 
 largely new outfit of knowledge in the sciences, especially the social 
 sciences with their immense humanitarian utility. Does not the disparity 
 between what the world was and now is, between what the University 
 had as its tools then and what it has now, seem to make a strong prma 
 facie case against adherence to the traditional indirect service of the 
 State University? Are not the chances strong that the time-honored 
 ‘Truth for truth’s sake” motive of the traditional activity has become 
 “an ancient good” and that it is “uncouth” under present day conditions? 
 
 And furthermore, new light has been thrown on what makes the 
 normal educational process in itself — a light that reveals the fact that 
 the new essential element for the University student is a conscious and 
 vital purpose. The carrying out of this purpose in activity is the life- 
 giving element for the University student. In view of all of these 
 unsatisfied conditions under adherence to the old University function can 
 anything be more certain than that the State University must advance 
 beyond its traditional indirect service if it v/ould have a part in molding 
 the higher social order? 
 
 THE COMMON’WEALTH REALIZES ITS HIGHEST DESTINY ONLY AS STATE 
 UNIVERSITY FUNCTIONING OBTAINS IN IT. 
 
 Factors of highest potentiality for progress are ready at hand in the 
 State University. It embodies the most precious elements, in the best 
 working order, of the social heritage. A people that fails to avail itself 
 of these in its upward climb will be subject to much stumbling, will 
 encounter many pitfalls that might easily have been avoided, and will be 
 doomed to drag itself along the steepest and most rugged paths. 
 
 From the world’s best literature in the University library shine forth 
 entrancing ideals; from its laboratories science offers the most effective 
 tools of progress; its graduates set the standards of highest efficiency. 
 The State University is the nursery of a large part of the best promise 
 of each generation. And why should not the university youth exemplify 
 faithful and effective effort for the deeper and higher interests of all the 
 people? With this great and growing flood of aspiring talent passing 
 upward through its halls, why should not the State University function 
 directly as the well-spring of the spirit and achievements of progress? 
 To leave university mediation out of the practical affairs of a com- 
 monwealth is on the par with leaving moral and religious principles out 
 of life. It would bespeak a very primitive social economy, indeed, not 
 to bring the best theory available into direct bearing upon daily 
 practice. 
 
 Just now Oregon has critical need of university functioning in direct 
 commonwealth service. Without such service by it, and by a pure 
 press, the forces making for confusion and the betrayal of the people’s 
 weal seem to have the upper hand and threaten to lead to a weary 
 wandering in the wilderness of futile devices and policies — if not to 
 bring a near approach to anarchy. It devolves upon the University here 
 and nov7 as the commonwealth pilot not only to point out the breakers, 
 but also to chart the course for the ship of state leading to the haven 
 of highest destiny. 
 
 There is a growing permanent need of this University commonwealth 
 service as our social order is becoming more and more dynamic. It is 
 not as in all the centuries past virtually at a standstill, or moving at a 
 snail-like pace. With this twentieth century pace of change our hit-or- 
 miss social ventures entail an awful waste of labor and of life, with 
 
imminent danger of most dire disaster — there are so many ways of 
 going wrong to one of going right. Safe principles of guidance are 
 available. The University is largest sponsor for them. It must be 
 counselled with if our public affairs are to be handled so as to secure 
 consistent progress with least mishap and social cost. 
 
 III. 
 
 SOME SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS IN WHICH THE 
 NEED FOR COMMONWEALTH SERVICE CREATES AN 
 OPPORTUNITY FOR THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 ANALYSES OF THESE AS SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND THE PROCEDURE FOR REFORM 
 OUTLINED. — SOME FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS LISTED. 
 
 It is hoped that enough has been said to indicate that with common- 
 wealth service fully espoused as the characteristic function of the 
 University this institution would become a pervasive regenerating agency 
 affecting the lives of all of the people of the State. Regularly registered 
 improvements in vital conditions of life, brought about through move- 
 ments under University auspices, and under the observation of the 
 citizen whichever direction he turned, would kindle his imagination to 
 picture ideal social conditions and spur him to resolve upon the future 
 realization of them. A community made up of people with such visions, 
 and cognizant of the means of certainly realizing them, would be like “a 
 going concern” operating with maximum efficiency. 
 
 There is virtually no limit to the objects of public welfare to which 
 the salutary influence of the University could be directed. Attention 
 will be called only to a few of those for which the department of 
 economics and sociology should feel some responsibility: 
 
 1. Our POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, represented in the school district, the 
 municipality, the county and the state and federal governments, as a 
 slightly modified heritage from a past of more primitive conditions, 
 involves a series of problems of re-adjustment. Suitable as each of 
 these public agencies might have been to past conditions the adjustment 
 of each has not kept pace with the rapidly changing social conditions 
 and needs. And moreover, lack of effective publicity in the conduct of 
 public affairs by these agencies results in a low degree of efficiency. For 
 the raising of this and for effecting the reorganization needed to adapt 
 to present day condtions the University can be an essential instru- 
 mentality. 
 
 2. Our industrial organization developed under a dispensation of 
 almost unregulated competition accomplishes wonders never before possible 
 to humanity, nevertheless there are excrescent features in our system 
 of business and the elimination of these would in no wise interfere with 
 the normal working of the industrial system as a whole. Evidence of this 
 excrescent development in our industrial organization is found in the 
 wide margin between the price received by the producer and that paid 
 by the consumer under conditions where there is no necessity for this 
 burden of excessive cost. This involves the problem of supplanting the 
 ‘‘middleman” through more extended public and voluntary cooperation. 
 The University’s mediation for effecting this end can avail much. 
 
 3. Our economic organization includes not only excrescent features 
 that should be eliminated but it also exhibits relations that involve a 
 GRIEVOUS DEGREE OF SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL INJUSTICE. If the Causes of 
 the misery of the ill-paid and over-worked classes are not removed 
 destruction awaits the civilization as a whole. But the remedying of 
 these evils makes probably as hard a problem as man will ever have 
 
 7 
 
to face. Moreover, the problem of forestalling the wretchedness of the 
 poor will always be with us. For civilization moves forward, from now 
 at least, not so much on ‘‘the powder cart” as on increasingly complex 
 social and industrial relations. The burden of a rising civilization is 
 one of maintaining salutary social relationships, those yielding justice 
 and liberty as well as life enrichment. 
 
 For the maintenance of this social equipoise light as well as sympathy 
 will always be needed — depth of social insight as well as vigilance and 
 the spirit of fraternity. The American conscience is just now being 
 thoroughly awakened on this matter. No other agency so well adapted as 
 is the State University can a democracy devise for simplifying and 
 clarifying these exceedingly complex problems so that the good sense 
 of the people will suffice to comprehend the issues and lead them to 
 right decisions. For the work of indicating the privileges to be eliminated 
 and the social increments to be appropriated and outlining the proce^dures 
 to be followed, that will not cause as much injustice as it is aimed to 
 cure, the services of the State University are indispensable. 
 
 4. Oregon should be ambitious. It comprises a people and a land 
 and resources that are unique. The road to pre-eminence for this State 
 is open only through a wider and higher use of the principle of cooper- 
 ation in commonwealth organization and policies and by the people in 
 their different private enterprises. The University as the agency for 
 assimilating the records throwing light on the public welfare activities 
 of all advanced peoples is in position of advantage to serve as the eye 
 for the people of Oregon to discern the elements advisedly incorporated 
 in the plans for developing and utilizing their prodigious water power; 
 for subduing, draining and irrigating the immense areas of unimproved 
 lands; in capitalizing projects for more intense cultivation of Oregon 
 farms; and in securing unparalleled facilities for community recreation 
 and life enrichment. 
 
 5. The possibility looms of doubling the legionary forces of progress. 
 A consciousness is rapidly developing among us that the normal role of 
 woman in promoting the cornmonweal, with or without the instrumentality 
 of the ballot, is not only as important as that of man but also of an 
 allied character. The actual attainment by women of this equal efficiency 
 in social achievement depends upon an inviting scientifically planned 
 guidance being available for giving her insight into the pith of the 
 social problems. 
 
 Such instruction is possible only as it based upon a complete grasp 
 of the situation in which woman finds herself — of her heredity, of the 
 peculiar environmental influences affecting her and of her outlook. The 
 University with its adequate comprehensive view of the social process 
 as whole alone is able to give that service to womankind. Such systematic 
 aid will be available to her as will most readily and fully fit her for 
 responsibilities of citizenship on the same plane with those of man. 
 University correspondence courses in civics and sociology for women’s 
 clubs should be in great demand. 
 
 HOW THE UNIVERSITY WILL PROCEED TO RENDER EFFECTUAL AID TO THE 
 
 PEOPLE WITH THESE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS THE METHODS RELIED 
 
 UPON CALL FOR CHARACTERISTIC UNIVERSITY ACTIVITIES AND 
 HA\E RECENTLY SECURED HIGHEST RESULTS APPLIED IN 
 PRIVATE BUSINESS SYSTEMS. 
 
 The list of problems defined gives a fair sample of the matters upon 
 which the people could make the best use of aid from the University. 
 There is no denying the fact of increasing popular restlessness in regard 
 
 8 
 
to evils suffered, burdens borne and needs left unsatisfied. Some new 
 agency must be the source of relief. 
 
 The common corrective that the people need in their political and 
 economic systems is efficiency. This includes the doing cheaply and the 
 doing well, but also the doing all, of the things the conditions of the 
 community require should be done by public agencies. During the last 
 few years private business systems have received wonderful impulses 
 toward higher efficiency. If the different methods used in gaining this 
 efficiency in private enterprise reveal a common principle, this factor 
 should be applicable in effecting the same degree (or as we shall see an 
 even greater degree) of transforming improvement in public business. 
 An analysis of the different methods relied upon in private business 
 for the purpose of finding this common factor is made by Charles Buxton 
 Going, Editor of the Engineering Magazine, in an article published in the 
 September (1912) Review of Reviews. I quote the conclusion he reaches: 
 
 “The great common divisor of all the methods (not the entirety of 
 any one, but an imposing factor of all, whether they be incentive, 
 scientific, or suggestive) is discovery, illumination, definition and 
 DISSEMINATION OF KNOWLEDGE — the Open, accessible declaration of all 
 the material facts affecting any transaction, for the information and 
 guidance of all whose interests are involved therein. 
 
 “Using the term, not in its lower and narrower meaning, but in the 
 highest and finest sense that can be given it, the universal factor — the 
 great common divisor — of all the new philosophies by which industrial 
 efficiency is increased is — Publicity.” 
 
 It will be noticed that Mr. Going finds that the common factor in all 
 methods of gaining a higher efficiency comprehends the “discovery, 
 ILLUMINATION, DEFINITION AND DISSEMINATION OF KNOWLEDGE.” (The 
 emphasis is his own.) This generalized efficiency-securing process is 
 absolutely identical with the State University process or function. 
 Need there be any further evidence adduced regarding the propriety or 
 the desirability of commonwealth service by the University, or any 
 hesitation as to the method of procedure for rendering such common- 
 wealth service? It is true that the securing of social and industrial 
 justice was included along with efficiency as one of the general aims of 
 University commonwealth service. But if publicity, “in the highest and 
 finest sense that can be given it,” makes for efficiency it surely will 
 suffice also for the end of social justice. 
 
 The first step in entering upon any improvement work means a 
 survey. With this the facts in the situation are discovered. There 
 comes then the charting, diagramming and mapping of the data secured 
 to illuminate and define this knowledge. Reorganization or reconstruction 
 to secure conformity to the normal or ideal type is next in order. This 
 will be effected through the publication in reports (dissemination) of 
 the organized knowledge to evoke the power of enlightened public opinion. 
 Cooperative effort will then obtain towards reaching a higher plane of 
 social life. 
 
 In securing these social surveys, the experting of accounting systems 
 and in promoting the work of reform and improvement the distinctive 
 role of the University is that of the guide and counselor. Its most 
 productive effort is that which secures the federation and stimulation 
 of the different organizations of social uplift and in bringing about a 
 coordination of their activities. Granges, municipal leagues, women’s 
 clubs and other civic organizations should get light and leading from 
 the State University. Only when such conditions obtain are the agencies 
 of social progress in normal working order. 
 
 9 
 
BRIEF AND TENTATIVE ANALYSES OF ASPECTS OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS EXHIBITED 
 IN OREGON CONDITIONS. 
 
 Many symptoms indicate that much is awry in in the organization 
 and functioning of our political and economic systems. The burden of the 
 support of the political agencies are inequitably shared. Taxes almost 
 impoverish some, others hardly feel their portion. The average rates 
 levied are high with no proportionate return in public services, indicating 
 a state of inefficiency. Many community requirements are not met at 
 all. Our systems for effecting exchanges of products and of labor .ire 
 clumsy in the extreme, involving inordinate costs. 
 
 Unearned increments are enjoyed by some who luxuriate in idleness 
 while others suffer dire conditions of poverty. Unworthy standards of 
 living are too common. We need to shift as rapidly as possible our 
 social order from its basis of property to that of function and 'has 
 make it a moral order. 
 
 Our enterprises lag and we go without comforts and 3ontinue in 
 drugery. We are slow in applying the beneficent principles of cooperation 
 and of concentration of our capital. We are wasting non-renewable 
 resources, and leaving undeveloped others the use of which would not 
 involve any depreciation or consumption. 
 
 Need enough there is of a diagnosis of the perversities in the different 
 aspects of our social order. Slight analyses will be attempted merely for 
 the purpose of illustration. 
 
 1. Our COMMONWEALTH POLITICAL MACHINERY, represented in our 
 school district, municipal, county and State organizations, is liable to 
 deterioration in service and maladjustment to our needs. With lack of 
 publicity the incompetent and the designing introduce inefficiency and 
 graft. An equally or more important impairment arises out of the 
 conditions of social progress itself. Social conditions are fluid but these 
 social structures are comparatively fixed. Readjustment of these organ- 
 izations, both in functions and forms is needed or social waste, and 
 social wrong as well as obstruction to advancement, occur. 
 
 For the securing of all these, publicity, readjustment, and reorganiza- 
 tion — the service of the University will be most helpful. 
 
 (a) Through its aid uniform systems of accounting for the same 
 orders of institutions will be developed and installed. These will serve 
 as means for determining and comparing costs of like units of service 
 by the different governments of the same class. Publicity and efficiency 
 will thus be promoted. 
 
 (b) Scientific budget-making will then be possible and will be installed 
 so that expenditures proportionate to the respective measures of social 
 need will be realized. Readjustment and efficiency, in the sense of getting 
 right service, will be gained. 
 
 (c) The University will foster reorganization effecting concentration 
 of responsibility, will help to make rewards proportional to service, and 
 tenure and promotion will be made to depend on desert. Elective officers 
 will be limited to those who determine policy so that with short ballots 
 the personnel for the offices may be intelligently selected. 
 
 A burdensome cost of maintenance now rests upon all who do not 
 share in unearned increments, legal privileges or monopoly gains. Relief 
 will be secured by getting a portion of the public funds needed through 
 appropriation of social increments and through the special taxation of 
 those who have franchise and other monopoly profits. 
 
 The University coming to the aid of the people mystified and confused 
 by these undesirable political conditions will succeed in pointing the 
 way to mastery of the situation because of its bringing to bear an insight 
 into the principles underlying it. Using all significant facts that are 
 
 10 
 
ascertained through surveys, analyses are made of the elements of each 
 problem. With charts, diagrams, maps and exhibits the whole is brought 
 to intelligent comprehension by the people, and their successful adminis- 
 tration of their public affairs with the largest realization of the common- 
 weal naturally follows. 
 
 2. The EXCRESCENT FEATURES that our INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM exhibits 
 deserve the attention of people who desire to get rid of an unnecessary 
 handicap. Evidence of the uneconomic processes in the business world 
 is found in the excessive cost to society of the work of effecting the 
 exchange of commodities and services. The extent of the ‘‘middleman’s” 
 toll is measured by so much of the wide margin between the price 
 received by the producer and that paid by the consumer as it exceeds 
 the cost of the process — performed most economically — for effecting this 
 social service. 
 
 The situation is a challenge to communities to organize and maintain 
 private and public agencies of cooperation. The art of administering 
 associations for cooperative buying and selling and of maintaining public 
 markets is to be acquired. Labor exchanges in the shape of a system of 
 free employment offices and agencies need to be instituted that unemploy- 
 ment with its woeful consequences may be reduced to the lowest limit. 
 Land exchanges should be established to obviate the social cost of main- 
 taining a horde of almost parasitic real estate dealers as well as to 
 protect unsophisticated purchasers from ruining impositions. 
 
 In connection with this social problem of reaching a higher plane 
 with our organization for effecting exchanges the University will lend 
 substantial aid. There will be the collaboration of the different forms 
 that organizations for cooperation have assumed. The significant history 
 of projects having fields similar to those presented by Oregon will be 
 traced. An inductive study of the facts thus ascertained will be made 
 with reference to ascertaining the requisites for success under Oregon 
 conditions. The problem as a whole is one of acquiring a higher degree 
 of economic and social competency. The University’s service toward 
 simplifying and clarifying the conditions to be met, in making available 
 the light of all experiments in this line, and in bringing about a clearer 
 realization of the measure of the gain success would yield — all this 
 together should suffice toward reaching a new goal of victory in this 
 struggle for freedom from a burdening handicap. 
 
 3. Industrial and Social Injustice. The range of need which a 
 commonwealth has for counsel and aid is wider far than that of keeping 
 its political organizations at highest efficiency and adjusted to present day 
 requirements. Relief of a more general character too is sought than 
 that which will be obtained through an economic performance of the 
 middleman’s function. Our highly developed social organism is suscep- 
 tible at every point to preying propensities. Not unlike is it in this 
 respect to the highly bred scions of the orchard and the farm. (But there 
 the figure ends.) Citizens otherwise exemplar and well-disposed are 
 implicated in these parasitical gains. So great are the prizes and so 
 disguised the transactions that many fall into temptation. The money- 
 getting spirit of the age creates a maelstrom current towards these doors 
 opening into relations that involve grievous injustice especially to the 
 weaker members of society. 
 
 The wide separation between the producer of any considerably trans- 
 formed or com^pounded product and the consumer of it not only gives 
 opportunity for a highwayman act by the middleman but it also renders 
 the producer fairly safe in any act of adulteration or debasement. The 
 far remove of the capitalist participant in any enterprise from the 
 laborer, effected through corporate and trust organization, shields the 
 
 11 
 
sensibilities of the stockholder from the oppressive cruelties that through 
 stern demands for dividends, are inflicted upon women and children 
 employees. 
 
 Public opinion in our modern democracy, acting directly or through 
 legislative, administrative or court officials, takes all these matters into 
 its own hands. It is at a fearful disadvantage. These forms of social 
 injustice made possible by the widely extending and enmeshed character 
 of our business and economic relations are myriad. Without trained 
 social insight and imagination the citizen who helps to create public 
 opinion is non-plussed by the situation. The exploiter wears sheep’s 
 clothing. His personal habits are exemplar. His bearing in the family 
 and in the local community is above criticism. He poses as a philanthrop- 
 ist. A moiety of the ill-gotten gains go into the box for home and 
 foreign missions and to endowment funds for hospitals and universities. 
 
 A glance at the general aspect of the slum; at the maimed workman, 
 the fatherless household or the child factory-employee there; at the 
 unsafe and insanitary factory; at the penniless found everywhere whose 
 all was with the bank that was wrecked, or was enveigled into the hands 
 of some swindling schemer — such things prove beyond any possibility of 
 question that public opinion with its present help is far too slow and 
 too dull of sense. The people must be trained to an insight into social 
 relations that has the X-ray power for detecting elements of social 
 injustice. A mind’s eye sense that suflices for visualizing these invisible 
 but momentous matters for our welfare will be developed only as the 
 thought of the people is trained to a comprehensive and facile grasp 
 of the vital parts of our social organization. The University alone can 
 lead in the attainment of competency by a democratic people for 
 twentieth century conditions. 
 
 Constructive changes in our social order must be in progress so that 
 the present sweeping power of temptation will be lessened. Reforms that 
 will bring motives of service into play where those of greed now hold 
 sway must be instituted. Public ownership supplanting the privately 
 owned monopolies will effect this if imagination and civic spirit can be 
 made to grow apace with these changes in the social order. The other 
 alternative ‘‘is to fence off the downward paths and leave competition 
 to spur rivals into the upward path.” For the installation of the most 
 efficient systems of regulation and control the University’s aid is indis- 
 pensable. 
 
 But at best our “spread-out manner of life” and highly capitalized 
 industry must havd its attending systems of relief. In devising and 
 perfecting these, too, the University becomes normally the main factor. 
 
 4. The Larger Cooperation. Industry had its great historic and 
 revolutionary expansion through capitalization. This was but a larger 
 combination of the productive power of past ’labor with present labor. 
 It was a synthesis. Through a similar alliance of the present capitalized 
 units the next higher order of expansion will be realized. The trusts 
 were more or less perverted anticipations of this development, due to the 
 fact of their being surcharged with sinister motives. 
 
 Success on this higher plane demands a larger plan and higher 
 purpose. It involves using any line of resources of the commonwealth in 
 a coordinated unit and having in view social productivity rather than 
 private profit alone. The very statement of this problem indicates that 
 the steps towards its solution must be assisted by the University. Take 
 for example Oregon’s power resources. Nothing like the best development 
 of them is possible except as the enterprise is worked out as a whole. 
 And a state university worthy the name would figure in that development. 
 
 5. The civic awakening of the womanhood of the State is a movement 
 
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of highest importance. Realization of largest results from it can be 
 expected only as the best encouragement and guidance are available. 
 The wealth of light that social psychology, sociology and allied sciences 
 can throw upon the aims woman is intent upon attaining should be 
 brought into service. The University is the agency for the opportunity. 
 Through its activities in this line of service the team hitched to the car 
 of progress will be doubled. 
 
 Thus in the clear and conscious and devoted espousal of commonwealth service 
 along all lines the University for the first time gets into normal relations with 
 the other agencies of social uplift and into helpful and inspiring service of all 
 of the people. Its spirit as the exponent of light and co-operation will have a 
 transforming power even greater than that of its active efforts. The University 
 of Oregon will then truly have the relation of prophet and redeemer to the pure 
 democracy of Oregon. 
 
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