Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/613

Rh medicine, law, politics, etc., or giving expert training in subjects such as the biological sciences or the classics. A student may devote three years to exclusive and intensive work in mathematics; and the training has proved excellent, having produced not only many of the ablest mathematicians of the last century, but great men in all departments of activity. The English system of public schools and scholarships selects for the universities a large share of the ablest and most earnest young men of the country; Oxford and Cambridge have continuously sent forth their men to lead the nation. None the less it is true that in numbers, in resources and in educational methods they have remained nearly stationary, while the great movement in higher education in England has been the establishment and growth of the metropolitan and provincial universities. These are essentially trade schools, similar to our own state universities, and having but little in common with our country clubs of the North Atlantic states.

It is not desirable to support at public expense certain country clubs or detention hospitals in which rich boys may be segregated. The idle rich and the lazy poor we have with us always and everywhere. Colleges only contribute their share to the failure to solve a problem at present insoluble. It may be that these rich boys cost society more than they are worth; it may be that their value is a minus quantity. They will, however, occupy a far more important place in society than others. From the vast numbers born in the cottage, there are a few who grasp "the skirts of happy chance" and live to shape a "state's decrees," but in the main those who eat at the high table of the palace are born there or in its dependencies. Thanks to heredity and opportunity combined, there are more dominant personalities, such as Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Pierpont Morgan and Mr. Lawrence Lowell, from this small upper class than from the working millions. Whether or not we should be better off without such men is not the question. Until opportunity can be equalized we shall have them; the college must bear its share of responsibility for what they do in the world.

These rich boys are as a rule nice boys and many of them will become leaders in their own class and in the community. The luxury to which they are inured at home does not especially hurt them in college. The difficulty is twofold—they set false standards for the boys who are not rich and they do not themselves profit greatly from their college work and life. The college community is more democratic than any other; but as an institution increases in size sets are formed, and the rich are segregated in dormitories, clubs and fraternities. They enjoy the social life which the idle classes maintain after reaching years of discretion, and are turned in that direction rather than to ideas of useful work and service. They do not see the use of the college courses, but study as little and pay their coaches as much as may be necessary to pass