Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/222

 MINOR EDITORIALS.

FREE INVESTIGATION. following is a fair specimen of numerous communications which have come to hand during the past month: , Aug. 5, 1895. To the Editor of The American Journal of Sociology: I have just received your interesting circular. I have the highest respect for the able members of the University faculty who are at the head of the undertaking and for the scholars who are cooperating with them. But I feel it a duty to say that I can look for no lasting good from a work that is conducted by an educational institution founded by the arch-robber of America and which already, by its treatment of Professor Bemis, exhibits a determination to throttle free investigation of sociological or economic subjects wherever there is any danger of running counter to plutocratic interests. For this reason I regard the tendency to make our higher educational institutions in this country dependent upon private benefactions a very serious menace to the cause of scientific truth, and calculated to make our scholars timorous and truculent, rather than fearlessly devoted to arriving at the truth, pure and simple, as science demands. Very truly yours, ____________ _____________

It is no part of the mission of this to eulogize, still less to defend The University of Chicago, its founder, its faculty or its policy. Neither do we propose to use the pages of the in apology for its own conduct. The contents will justify or condemn themselves. We refer to the above letter just as we would if it concerned matters with which we were personally familiar at Harvard, or Cornell, or Leland Stanford.

The specific reason alleged for lack of confidence in the rests upon grounds which persons acquainted with the facts know to be utterly and ludicrously imaginary. We may therefore be pardoned for declining to treat it in the most serious vein. Our correspondent's easy surrender to appearances, in his phrase "timorous and truculent," gives reason for pointing a moral without strenuous effort.

The alliteration is forceful, but the ideas thus associated seem to be