Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/547

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ITHIN the past five years alone the benefactions to institutions of higher learning in the United States have amounted to a little more than sixty-one millions. That is to say, during that time money from private sources has been devoted to liberal education at the rate of a little more than a million dollars a month. In many cases, it must be admitted, the claim of the institutions thus favored to the rank of college or university is not very substantial, but the gifts themselves represent the loyalty of the donors to a certain ideal of education, however imperfectly that ideal may have expressed itself.

At first it would seem that this flood of gold, the high tide of a stream that began to flow about thirty years ago, could have left no need of the higher education unprovided for; but as usual a closer survey of the field shows not only many a nook not yet irrigated, but whole fields still arid and uncared for. Educational endowments have this in common with other investments, that they follow usually the line of greatest immediate efficiency; they are also controlled in a high degree by sentiment, and the two have so reinforced each other here in America as to turn great streams of wealth in certain directions, while but scanty dribbles have flowed in others. The habit of giving began to establish itself soon after the civil war, and the greatest beneficiaries during these intervening years have been the young men of the New England and north central states. The next most favored class have been the young men and women of the middle states and the west; least of all has the white population of the south profited by this generosity. And by the white population we do not mean the 'poor whites,' nor the mountaineers, nor the 'crackers,' nor any other class traditionally aloof from educational influences, but the white race in toto. 'The south,' also, should be defined. For our purpose here it means the ten cis-Mississippi slave states and Louisiana, since the slave states further west have been subjected to influences which have left the first group untouched.

Looking through the list of institutions of the higher learning issued by the Bureau of Education at Washington—a list which is comprehensive rather than critical—we find the advantage in every respect but one with the north. That advantage, to speak politely, is in the number of universities and colleges of liberal arts themselves.