Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/417

Rh scope—the General Education Board and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, to which, respectively, Mr. Rockefeller has given $53,000,000 and Mr. Carnegie, $12,000,000.

The General Education Board does not even make public its activities or its accounts. It has concerned itself with agricultural education in the south, but its income has been spent in the main in contributing to the funds of colleges and universities on the condition that four times as much should be collected from other sources. It is not clear how the foundation is more useful than if the whole capital were at once distributed among the colleges and universities of the country in proportion to their existing endowments. The Carnegie Institution was established as an emergency fund for scientific research, but it was not found feasible to conduct it on these lines, and it now administers certain research institutions. Here again there seems to be no advantage in maintaining at Washington an expensive administrative office. It would be better to divide the capital among the observatories and laboratories and let them develop as they can.

Mr. Rockefeller's most useful and important benefactions are the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. It would probably be of greatest benefit for society if he should use his fortune to establish three or four great universities with their research institutions, libraries, museums, theaters and hospitals. Chicago could be further endowed and universities established in the city of Washington, Texas and Oregon, or, if it were preferred to make the influence world wide, the universities could be in Washington, South America, China and Russia.

benefits and dangers of a centralized endowment for public purposes are well shown by the Carnegie Foundation, the fourth annual report of whose president has recently been issued. On April 16, 1905, Mr. Andrew Carnegie addressed a letter to twenty-two college presidents and three business men whom he had selected as trustees, transferring to them $10,000,000 in bonds of the U. S. Steel Corporation "to provide retiring pensions for the teachers of universities, colleges and technical schools in our country, Canada and Newfoundland." He says that "expert calculation shows that the revenue will be ample for the purpose" and "I have reached the conclusion that the least rewarded of all the professions is that of the teacher in our higher educational institutions."

These college presidents drew up an act of incorporation and rules which in the main would distribute the income among certain institutions for their advantage rather than for the benefit of the individual professors. Cornell and Williams have continued to pay the pensions for which they had contracted, so their professors receive double pensions, but other institutions having pension systems have withdrawn them and diverted the money to other purposes. Professors in colleges accepted by the foundation and not having pension systems may benefit, as they receive annuities which they did not earn; but the salaries will soon be adjusted with a view to the I pensions, and the income of the foundation will be distributed among certain institutions having pension systems, not at all to individual professors.

The professors benefit only if a pension system is advantageous to them. Any one can purchase an annuity, and j it is doubtful whether the enforced purchase of annuities by professors combined with dismissal from their work is of benefit to them. A centralized system works especially to the disadvantage of the individual professor. If an institution had to pay a pension from its own funds, it would be much more conservative in retiring