Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/419

Rh all to watch the great state universities begging the favor of a private corporation. Thirty-two state legislatures have approved the request for money, and the foundation finds that four of the universities are worthy, while the others—institutions such as California and Illinois—must be further investigated. The president tells the governor of Ohio how the universities of that great state should be administered; he says that "in nearly every state" there is "educational demoralization."

In his last report Dr. Pritchett makes all kinds of recommendations. Some are in themselves good and some bad, but all are bad in so far as they come from that source., for there is an implicit threat everywhere that institutions must do as they are told or they will not receive Carnegie money. The best thing that could happen would be for the foundation to retire its president with a liberal pension to write about education over his own signature, and then, as the Peabody Fund has wisely done, to dissolve and distribute its funds among our colleges.

the death of Dr. Dolbear, for thirty-six years professor of physics and astronomy at Tufts College, America loses a man of science of a type that is now becoming rare. Born in New England in 1837, and left early an orphan child, he worked on a farm and at other odd jobs, attending the district school when he could. He became a machinist, had various adventures, and when twenty-six entered