Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/426

 372 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO universities had been doing and were likely to do in much greater bulk in the future viz., pass along the tradition of accumulated knowledge. He wanted the University to mark out for itself a distinct field. In brief, its aim should be to find out how to do better than had ever been done before everything that falls within the scope of teaching and research. It was the conviction of President Harper that in the Graduate Schools his ideals as to research work were realized. In his Quarterly Statement made at the 1903 Spring Convocation he said: Nearly every member of every Department in the University is today engaged in investigative work in which effort is being put forth to make new contributions toward the better understanding of the subject studied. He then took up nine departments and detailed the investigations under way in each of them. He described sixty-five pieces of research work being pursued at that time by the professors of these nine departments, promising later to present the work of investiga- tion being done in other departments. The sickness which ended his life prevented him from carrying out this purpose. But the work went on, and the volume of it became so great that President Judson made reports of research in progress a regular part of his Annual Report. These reports of investigations going forward filled between twenty and thirty closely printed pages and repre- sented every year twenty-five or more departments. This work of original research was not confined to the instructors. The students of the Graduate Schools had their part in it in laboratory and field work and in the seminars, in which small groups of advanced students met with a professor, from time to time, to work out problems given them for investigation. High honors came to many of the professors for their achieve- ments in the advancement of knowledge. Some of them were employed for a part of their time to conduct special investigations for the Carnegie Institution. Some received great prizes for notable achievements in science. Some were called on by foreign nations for assistance in arranging their fiscal systems. Some were called to Paris and Berlin for courses of lectures in the French and German universities. In the annual call made on the universities of this country for heads or resident professors at the American