Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/547

Rh force" and the "educational plant," of "efficiency" and "output," of "investment" and "returns." One university not more than a thousand miles from where I sit has a noon whistle. If things keep on at this rate, some day when it blows, some hungry or time-grudging scientifically managed professor will drop an expensive piece of apparatus, and the state will pay dearly for its whistle.

No one, however, need worry lest this sorry day come in very truth. Teaching is an inspirational calling. Love of the intellectual life is its foundation and its effect. Inspiration may not be handled, weighed, measured, bought or sold. No college professor ever succeeded because he was "managed." The possible loss through irregularity in the college professor's work is nothing compared with the certain loss should he learn to work in the spirit of the clerk or the union man.

A second aspect of the college professor is less familiar. I mean that in which he is seen in the larger or richer institutions, where the greater amount of money has made it possible for him to realize more fully the ideals of his class.

It is in this second aspect that the college professor is most freely criticized. The general public, usually in the person of some one with a political or journalistic axe to grind, runs an eye through the columns of the semester program, and is surprised to find a professor scheduled for twelve hours, or ten, or even as few as six.

"Six hours!" exclaims the general public. "But of course that means six hours a day."

"No, six hours a week. Be assured of the incredibly outrageous fact."

The general public is aghast.

"What? Three thousand dollars a year for teaching six hours a week for nine months? Why, that's $13.888888. . . an hour!"

No wonder the general public is aghast. It was scandalized even before, when told of the professor in the smaller institution who received a smaller salary for four or five times the instruction. If it is the case of a state institution, and the general public pays the professor's salary and owns him, there is likely in these days to be at least the threat of investigation and "general cleaning up." For the public has been educated by the professional demagogue to assume that dirt is normal.

The demagogue does not encourage the public to reflect. It would interfere alike with his pleasure and his profit.

And yet reflection is easy. Like the professor in the small college, the university professor has administrative duties. He is chairman of a large department, perhaps, and that sometimes means oversight of the work of a score of instructors and the expenditure of large sums for books and apparatus. If he is not, he must nevertheless keep office hours, attend meetings and conferences, conduct a correspondence with