Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/23

Rh work much at the hazard of changing fortunes. A better financial basis is wanted. It has, therefore, been proposed to attempt to secure endowment, through personal benefactions, by the definite assignment of university funds, or through state aid.

Sooner or later the same problem must be met here in America. Sufficient funds have been forthcoming to start the movement and carry it through a highly successful season. That was the main thing. The good gained is now to be secured and extended. To do this it is very desirable that the revenues shall not be precarious. The present source of income, by subscriptions, will keep the movement alive, but it will not allow that more comprehensive policy which seems so desirable. Private endowment has already done something and will probably do more, as the opportunities for good become known.

The possibility of enlisting Government aid opens a larger question. University extension is a national movement which is intended to reach all classes and to promote the most vital interests of the nation. It has, then, as large a claim upon the national pocket-book as any interest which the Government can recognize. The States provide for primary and secondary education; the nation might well provide for the higher culture. It seems to me a possible and in many ways a highly desirable scheme that with the unification of university extension into one national society, and the division of the country into suitable districts, the work should assume a truly national character and should be brought into close relation with the Department of Education at Washington. The commissioner might have his representative in each extension district, and the local office thus organized would not only be the center of the extension work in the district, but it could also render material service in the collection of educational statistics, and in bringing the department into more vital touch with the schools of the country. In this way we should have a university coextensive with America, a truly national university, since it would include the entire people, and one which would be a much greater power for good than the elaborate institution which is dreamed of for the capital city.

It is a commonplace that the most vital interest of America is the education of her citizens, and that her greatest danger lies in the disintegrating force of ignorance within her own borders. But this largest interest, both in point of power and of danger, is given secondary place in the national councils. We have a Secretary of War, of the Navy, of the Treasury, and of such material interests, but we have no Secretary of Education. With the elevation of the commissioner to the place of a cabinet officer, the new portfolio would be well charged with power if it had linked to it the destiny of a work of such magnitude and promise as