Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/363

 FURTHER EXPANSION 319 duty toward the students who have placed themselves under his care; whether also he has time for that work which in a university must be recognized as higher than instruction the work of production No man becomes a member of the University staff of whom great things are not expected. The University will be patient; for there is no greater folly, no more common folly, than that of making public what is not yet ready for the world to know. The University, I say, will be patient, but it expects from every man honest and persistent effort in the direction of contribution to the world's knowledge. It was necessary, therefore, that journals should be established through which the results of the professors' investigations could be made known to the public. The President's plan contemplated a journal for every department, or at least for every group of closely allied departments. It was his confident belief that these journals, with the prestige of the University behind them, would be self- supporting, if not financially profitable. With these views it is not to be wondered at that President Harper strongly urged from the beginning the starting of depart- mental journals. His recommendations did not meet with as cordial a response from the Trustees as almost always greeted his proposals. Such was the confidence of the Trustees in him, that, as a rule, what he proposed they approved. Such was their affec- tion for him that it hurt them to refuse any request he made. Their impulse was to give him anything he wanted. When, how- ever, it came to entering into the business of publishing journals they hesitated. But there was something about the President's faith that was peculiarly contagious, and when he urged the great educational value of the undertaking opposition disappeared. As has been related in the story of the first year, the Journal of Political Economy was the first to be established. At the second Convocation, only six months after the University opened its doors, the President was able to say: No part of our university work has attracted the attention of the outside world more than that which is represented in the University Press. The Journal of Political Economy, of which the second number has appeared, and the Journal of Geology, the first number of which has been published during the last quarter, give evidence of what in time may be expected in other depart- ments. It is a source of regret that the money is not at hand for the publica- tion of work already prepared in other departments. Papers of great value await the necessary means for publication.