pelled to find room and board where they can about the city and for the most part in boarding and lodging houses built and operated by private individuals with a view single to the income which they derive therefrom.

Over these private establishments the University can obviously exercise no control or supervision whatever, thus losing one of the most effective means of safeguarding the health and the social, moral and physical well-being of the undergraduate body, while the disadvantages from an educational and even disciplinary standpoint arising from the fact that so large a majority of the students are so widely scattered under so many different roofs, are at once appreciable when it is considered what effective forces would be at work for the promotion of healthy social intercourse, solidarity, and the crystallization of student public opinion, were all these young men brought together under common roofs and at common tables.

But it is not merely a social question, nor even an educational question alone. The rapid growth of the student body, a growth which has far exceeded the extension of student lodging facilities in the city--and as this report goes to press the President is in receipt of figures indicating a large increase in the registration for the coming year--has created an economic problem of the gravest consequence and one which strikes at the very root of that democracy of which the University has always been so justly proud. All recognize, of course, that the cost of living has substantially advanced during the last decade, and it should be stated in fairness that perhaps the advance in the price of table board which the students now have to pay as compared with earlier years only reflects this general condition. But quite aside from this the charges imposed upon students for rentals in these private lodging houses have been forced by peculiar local conditions up to a level altogether dis

proportionate to the general advance in the cost of living. Cornell has long held the proud name of "The People's University," endeavoring always to minister in terms of higher education to every legitimate need of the people of the State and nation, and it would be unfortunate, indeed, and a sad check to one of the noblest ambitions of' its Founder, if for any reason the opportunities which it affords should be denied to any one who is physically and mentally fitted to pursue and profit by its instruction. But there is danger of this very result if some provision is not made soon for the proper housing of the young men of the University under conditions that will afford them the ordinary conveniences of life at a moderate and reasonable cost.

In failing to provide halls of residence for these thousands of young men the University, however unintentionally or unavoidably, is fostering a monopoly which imposes great financial hardship upon its students. And, though the President has referred to the matter again and again both in his annual reports and in his public utterances, he repeats with renewed and added emphasis the statement that no friend of the University could render it a greater or more lasting service than to make possible the establishment of a system of residential halls on the campus such as was described in the President's Report for 1906-1907 (pp. 14-17).

COLLEGES AND DEPARTMENTS

(1) The Graduate Department. In an earlier section mention was made of the proposal to organize this division of the University as a separate School with a Faculty distinct from the University Faculty. This new Faculty would consist of those professors and assistant professors who are actively engaged in the work of the Graduate Department either by giving instruction to graduate students

in the class room or guiding and supervising their investigations in laboratory and library. This improvement in organization is likely to be effected in the course of the coming year. It is certainly needed as this division of the University has outgrown the present cumbrous machinery of administration. The attendance of graduate students has increased fifty per cent in ten years and almost 500 per cent in twenty years. In 1887-1888 it was fifty-two, in 1897-1898 it was 166, and in 1907-1908 it was 249--the largest enrollment in the history of the University. It is to be borne in mind too that this augmentation of numbers has been in spite of the charge for tuition which was imposed in 1894, tuition before that date having been free to graduate students.

In the Graduate Department as in the University as a whole there is constant danger that the national tendency to worship mere magnitude may distort the vision of the Faculty and especially of the Trustees and friends of the University. It is important, therefore, to keep clearly in view the essential objects of a graduate school. These are the enlargement of existing knowledge and the training of young men and women of superior ability and education in methods of independent investigation so that they too may in time make some contribution to the stock of human knowledge. A love of knowledge, an ardent desire to wrest something from the unknown, a conviction that science and scholarship are along with virtue the chief good of human life, would seem to be the animating motives of a life of research. Given this subjective equipment in combination with superior powers of observation, reasoning and imagination, and productive scholarship and science are assured. But these gifts are not possessed by all professors, and still less by all graduate students. And it is a grave question whether graduates of mediocre ability

minds lacking in energy, ambition and imagination— should, after they have demonstrated their quality in a probationary year, be encouraged or even permitted to continue work intended to fit men to become scholars and investigators. Similarly there should be a differentiation among professors of those who are qualified to engage in research and guide others in the same path and those who are pre-eminent as teachers and assimilative scholars. Surely both are honorable careers, though different. That everybody is fit for everything is a fallacy dangerous enough in politics, but in education it is fatal and paralyzing.

The problem, therefore, which confronts the University in connection with the Graduate School is to find the right sort of men for investigators, whether as professors or students. And having found them it is the duty of the University to provide the necessary means for the prosecution of their work. This involves suitable salaries for professors, leisure for productive work, and the requisite apparatus and other instrumentalities for research. It is not creditable that a professor, in order to get time for scientific investigation, is compelled to make large pecuniary sacrifices, as Professor Gage has done at Cornell. What better use can be made of money than to invest it for the support of original research? This is an obligation which men of wealth and great states owe to the progress of civilization. And there are departments at Cornell University which, with such support, would amply demonstrate the wisdom of the investment. For example, the department of physics last year published or prepared no less than forty investigations, an output not equaled in amount as it was not surpassed in quality by any other physical laboratory in the country. And Professor Nichols reports that "in the absence of a special fund for this pur

pose we are at a serious disadvantage and I desire to point out as the most urgent need of the department at the present moment an annual appropriation of not less than $5,000 to be used exclusively for the furtherance of research."

It is not necessary that professors should abandon teaching to pursue research. As the late Lord Kelvin said. to the President, when he visited Cornell a few years ago, the ideal arrangement for the investigator is to combine research with teaching, but with the amount of teaching reduced sufficiently to leave leisure and vigor of faculty for research. The biographer of Pasteur records that that eminent scientist entertained similar sentiments:

"Pasteur did not suggest that a scientist should give up teaching; he recognized, on the contrary, that public teaching forces him to embrace in succession every branch of the science he teaches. 'But let him not give too frequent or too varied lectures! they paralyze the faculties,' he said, being well aware of the cost of preparing classes."

(2) The College of Arts and Sciences. The subject of liberal education, both in the humanities and in pure science, was discussed at considerable length in the Report of last year (pp. 18-37). Of the important events of 19071908 in connection with the College, the first is the selection of Professor Charles H. Hull to succeed Dr. A. Ross Hill (now President of the University of Missouri) as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The appointment was received with universal satisfaction, and Dean Hull may feel that he enjoys, in an unusual degree, the confidence of the Faculty, Trustees and Alumni of the University.

The legislation affecting the College has already been described. The statute creating the Administrative Board for Freshmen and Sophomores involves a clear differentiation of under-classmen from upper-classmen and a less definite differentiation of under-class teachers from the rest