The progress of the last century in the various branches of science is an interesting study, and America has made no inconsiderable contributions to every one of them. In astronomy, six names are worthy of mention here. The first of these, John William Draper, was noted for his devotion to many other lines of science, especially to photography, and was the first person in the world to take a photograph of a human being. His service to astronomy was in the application of photography to that science. In 1840, he took the first photograph ever made of the moon, and a few years later published his "Production of Light by Heat," an early and exceedingly important contribution to the subject of spectrum analysis.

His work in astronomy and more especially in physics was carried on most worthily by his son, Henry Draper, who, at his home at Hastings-on-the-Hudson, built himself an observatory, mounting in it a reflecting telescope, which he also made. His description of the processes of grinding, polishing, silvering, testing and mounting it has remained the standard work on the subject. With this telescope he took a photograph of the moon which remains one of the best that has ever been made. Among his other noteworthy achievements were his spectrum photographs of 1872 and 1873, and in 1880 his photograph of the great nebula in Orion, the first photograph of a nebula ever secured. Perhaps the most brilliant discovery ever made in physical science by an American was that by Draper in 1877, when he demonstrated the presence of oxygen in the sun so conclusively that it could not be disputed. It was a sort of tour de force that took the scientific world by surprise and gained its author the widest recognition.

The services of Lewis Morris Rutherford to astronomy resembled in many ways those of Draper. Starting in life as a lawyer, he abandoned that profession at the age of thirty-three to devote his whole time to science, principally to the perfection of astronomical photography and spectrum analysis. The service which photography has rendered to astronomy can scarcely be overestimated, and these pioneers in the art were laying the foundations for its recent wonderful developments. He was the first to attempt to classify the stars according to their spectra, and invented a number of instruments of the greatest service in star photography. All in all, it is doubtful if anyone added more to the development of this branch of the science than did he.

Very different from the services of these men were those rendered the science of astronomy by Charles Augustus Young. Called to the chair of astronomy at Princeton University in 1877, he held that important position for thirty years, his courses a source of inspiration to his students. He was a member of many important scientific expeditions, invented an automatic spectroscope which has never been displaced, measured the velocity of the sun's rotation, and was a large contributor to public knowledge of the science.

Equally important have been the contributions made by Samuel Pierpont Langley, perhaps the greatest authority on the sun alive to-day. He showed a decided fondness for astronomy even as a boy, and at the age of thirty was assistant in the observatory at Harvard. Two years later, he was invited to fill the chair of astronomy in the Western University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh, and his work there began with the establishment of a complete time service, the first step toward the present daily time service conducted by the government. In 1870, he began the series of brilliant researches on the sun which have placed him at the head of authorities on that body. His scientific papers are very numerous and his series of magazine articles on "The New Astronomy" did much to acquaint the public with the rapid development of the science. In 1887, he was chosen to the important post of secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and his recent years have been spent in experimenting with aeronautics.

Simon Newcomb is another who rendered yeoman service to the science. Born in Nova Scotia, the son of the village schoolmaster, he lived to become one of the eight foreign associates of the Institute of France, the first native American since Franklin to be so honored; to win the Huygens medal, given once in twenty years to the astronomer who had done the greatest service to the science in that period, and to receive the highest degree from practically every American college.

In his autobiography he tells how, at the age of five, he began to study arithmetic, at twelve algebra, and at thirteen Euclid. At the age of eighteen, planning to make his way to the United States, he set out on foot, taught school for a year or so, and then attracted the attention of Prof. Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, by sending him a problem in algebra. The unusual aptitude for mathematics which the boy possessed so impressed Prof. Henry, that he set him to work as a computer on the Nautical Almanac; but he was soon attracted to "exact," or mathematical astronomy, which became his life work. Some idea of its importance may be gained when it is stated that every astronomer in the world to-day uses his determinations of the movements of the planets and the moon; every skipper in the world guides his ship by tables which Newcomb devised; and every eclipse is computed according to his tables. He supervised the construction and mounting of the equatorial telescope in the naval observatory at Washington, the Lick telescope, and Russia applied to him, in 1873, for aid in placing her great telescope.

A man of humor, sympathy and anecdote, he found, in the fall of 1908, that he was suffering from cancer, and hastened the work on the moon, which was to be his masterpiece. Ten months later, he was told that his course was nearly run—and his great work was still incomplete.

"Take me to Washington," he said, "I must work while there is time."

And there, lying in agony on his bed, for three weeks he dictated steadily to stenographers on a subject which required the utmost concentration. His indomitable will alone supported him, and a week after the last word had been written, came the end. Verily, there was a man!

The last of the great American astronomers whom we shall mention here is Edward Charles Pickering, whose name is so closely connected with the development of the great observatory at Harvard. Born at Boston, and educated at the Lawrence Scientific School, his first work was in the field of physics, but in 1876, he was appointed professor of astronomy and geodesy, and director of the Harvard observatory, which, under his management, has become of the first importance. His principal work has been the determination of the relative brightness of the stars, and many thousands have been charted. On the death of Henry Draper, the study of the spectra of the stars by means of photography was continued as a memorial to that great scientist, and the results obtained have been of the most important character, including a star map of the entire heavens. Other phases of the science of scarcely less importance have been carefully developed, and the work which has been done under Pickering's direction, is second to none in the history of the science. Not satisfied with the Northern hemisphere, a branch has been established in Peru, in which the observatory's methods of research have been extended to the south celestial pole. So for eighteen years and more, it has kept ceaseless watch of the heavens, with an accuracy of which the world has hardly a conception. For this great work the scientific world must pay tribute to the genius and perseverance of Edward Charles Pickering.

The second department of science claiming our attention is that of paleontology. Here one of the most eminent of American names is that of Othniel Charles Marsh. A graduate of Yale and firmly grounded in zoology and kindred sciences by a course of study at Heidelberg and Berlin, he returned to the United States in 1866 to accept the chair of paleontology which had been established for him at Yale. The remainder of his life was devoted to the original investigation of extinct vertebrates, especially in the Rocky Mountain regions. In these explorations, more than a thousand new species of extinct vertebrates were brought to light, many of which possess great scientific interest, representing new orders never before discovered in America. So important was this work that the national geological survey undertook the publication of his reports, which formed the most remarkable contributions to the subject ever written in this country, attracting the attention and admiration of the whole scientific world.

Associated with Marsh as paleontologist for the Geological Survey was Edward Drinker Cope, whose work was second only to the older man's in importance. He also devoted much of his attention to the exploration of the Rocky Mountain region, and found that there, in the strata of the ancient lake beds, records of the age of mammals had been made and preserved with a fulness surpassing that of any other known region on earth. The profusion of vertebrate remains brought to light was almost unbelievable. Prof. Marsh, who was first in the field, found three hundred new tertiary species between 1870 and 1876, besides unearthing the remains of two hundred birds with teeth, six hundred flying dragons, and fifteen hundred sea serpents, some of them sixty feet in length. In a single bed of rock not larger than a good sized lecture room, he found the remains of no less than one hundred and sixty mammals.

It was this work which Prof. Cope took up and carried forward. Its importance may be appreciated when it is stated that among these remains are found examples of just such intermediate types of organisms as must have existed if the succession of life on the earth has been an unbroken lineal succession. Here are snakes with wings and legs, and birds with teeth and other snakelike characteristics, bridging the gap between modern birds and reptiles. The line of descent of the horse, the camel, the hippopotamus and other mammals has been traced to a single ancestor, the result being the proof of the theory of evolution.

The whole work of American paleontology has, of course, been along these lines. Agassiz himself was a living and vital force in it, as were such men as Joseph Leidy and H. F. Osborne.

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It is a remarkable fact that one of the few truly original and novel ideas the past century can boast, and the one which has had the deepest influence on geology, had its origin in the brain of an illiterate Swiss chamois hunter named Perraudin. Throughout the Alps, on lofty crags, great bowlders were often found, which had no relation to the geology of the region and which were called erratics, because they had evidently come there from a distance. But how? Scientists explained it in many ways, but it remained for the mountaineer to suggest that the bowlders had been left in their present positions by glaciers. The scientific world laughed at the idea, but ten years later, it was brought to the attention of Louis Agassiz; he investigated it, became a convert, and saw that its implications extended far beyond the Alps, for these erratic bowlders were found on mountains and plains throughout the northern hemisphere. Agassiz found everywhere evidences of glacial action, and became convinced that at one time a great ice cap had covered the globe down to the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere. So came the conception of a universal Ice Age, now one of the accepted tenets of geology.

The dean of American geologists was Benjamin Silliman, who, at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, took up at Yale University the work which he was to carry on so successfully for more than fifty years. As an inspiring teacher he was scarcely less successful than Agassiz at a later day. His popular lectures began in 1808 and soon attracted to New Haven the brightest young men in the country. Among them was James Dwight Dana, who was to carry on most worthily the work which Prof. Silliman had begun.

James Dwight Dana was attracted to Yale by Prof. Silliman's great reputation and received there the inspiration which started him upon a scientific career. Three years after his graduation, he was appointed assistant to his former instructor, and two years later sailed for the South Seas as mineralogist and geologist of the United States exploring expedition commanded by Charles Wilkes. He was absent for three years and spent thirteen more in studying and classifying the material he had collected. He then resumed his work at Yale, succeeding Prof. Silliman in the chair of geology and mineralogy. His work was recognized throughout the world as most important, and many honors were conferred upon him.

Another famous name in American geology is that of John Strong Newberry. His name is connected principally with the explorations of the Columbia and Colorado rivers. He was afterwards appointed professor of geology and paleontology at the Columbia College School of Mines, and took charge of that department in the autumn of 1866. During his connection with the institution, he created a museum of over one hundred thousand specimens, principally collected by himself, containing the best representation of the mineral resources of the United States to be found anywhere.

Among the pupils of Prof. Silliman who afterwards won a wide reputation was Josiah Dwight Whitney. Graduating from Yale in 1839, he spent five years studying in Europe, and then, returning to America, was connected with the survey of the Lake Superior region, of Iowa, of the upper Missouri, and of California, issuing a number of books giving the results of these investigations, and in 1865, being called to the chair of geology at Harvard.

Still another of Prof. Silliman's pupils was Edward Hitchcock, whose life was an unusually interesting one. His parents were poor and he spent his boyhood working on a farm or as a carpenter, gaining such education as he could by studying at night. Deciding to enter the ministry, he managed to work his way through Yale theological seminary, graduating at the age of twenty-seven. It was here that he came under the influence of Prof. Silliman, and after a laboratory course and much field work, he was chosen professor of chemistry and natural history at Amherst College. He held this position for twenty years, and in 1845 was chosen president of the college, transforming it, before his retirement nine years later, from a poor and struggling institution into a well-endowed and firmly established one. He had meanwhile served as state geologist of Massachusetts, and completed the first survey of an entire state ever made by authority of a government.

The most important recent contribution to American geology has been the three volume work issued in 1904-5, under the joint editorship of Thomas C. Chamberlain and Rollin D. Salisbury. Both are geologists of wide experience, and their work presents the present status of the science interestingly and simply.

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America has had her full share of daring and successful surgeons, and in the science of surgery stands to-day second to no nation on earth, but perhaps the most famous American surgeon who ever lived was Valentine Mott. Dr. Mott was descended from a long line of Quaker ancestors, and was born in 1785. His father was a physician, and Dr. Mott began his medical and surgical studies at the age of nineteen, first in New York City, and afterwards in the hospitals of London, where he made a specialty of the study of practical anatomy by the method of dissection. At that time there was in this country a deep-seated prejudice against the use of the human body for this purpose, and the experience which Dr. Mott secured in London, and which stood him in such good stead in after years, would have been impossible of attainment here. A year was also spent in Edinburgh, and finally, in 1809, Dr. Mott returned to America with an exceptional equipment.

His skill won him a wide reputation and he was soon recognized as one of the first surgeons of the age. His boldness and originality were exceptional, and his success was no doubt due in some degree to his constant practice throughout his life of performing every novel and important operation upon a cadaver before operating upon the living subject. To describe in detail the operations which he originated would be too technical for such a book as this, but many of them were of the first importance. Sir Astley Cooper said of him: "Dr. Mott has performed more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did live." He possessed all the qualifications of a great operator, extraordinary keenness of sight, steadiness of nerve, and physical vigor. He could use his left hand as skillfully as his right, and developed a dexterity which has never been surpassed.

It should be remembered that in those days the use of anaesthetics had not yet been discovered, and every operation had to be performed upon the conscious subject, as he lay strapped upon the table shrieking with agony. To perform an operation under such circumstances required an iron nerve. Dr. Mott was one of the first to recognize the value of anaesthetics, and his use of them, immediately following their discovery, greatly facilitated their rapid and general introduction.

It is one of the boasts of American medicine that the first man in the world to conceive the idea that the administration of a definite drug might render a surgical operation painless was an American—Crawford W. Long. Dr. Long graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1839. When a student, he had once inhaled ether for its intoxicant effects, and while partially under the influence of the drug, had noticed that a chance blow to his shin produced no pain. This gave him the idea that ether might be used in surgical operations, and on March 30, 1842, at Jefferson, Georgia, he used it with entire success. He repeated the experiment several times, but he did not entirely trust the evidence of these experiments. So he delayed announcing the discovery until he had subjected it to further tests, and while these experiments were going on, another American, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, of Boston, also hit upon the great discovery and announced it to the world.

Dr. Morton was a dentist who, in 1841, introduced a new kind of solder by which false teeth could be fastened to gold plates. Then, in the endeavor to extract teeth without pain, he tried stimulants, opium and magnetism without success, and finally sulphuric ether. On September 30, 1846, he administered ether to a patient and removed a tooth without pain; the next day he repeated the experiment, and the next. Then, filled with the immense possibilities of his discovery, he went to Dr. J. C. Warren, one of the foremost surgeons of Boston, and asked permission to test it decisively on one of the patients at the Boston hospital during a severe operation. The request was granted, and on October 16, 1846, the test was made in the presence of a large body of surgeons and students. The patient slept quietly while the surgeon's knife was plied, and awoke to an astonished comprehension that the dreadful ordeal was over. The impossible, the miraculous, had been accomplished; suffering mankind had received such a blessing as it had never received before, and American surgery had scored its greatest triumph. Swiftly as steam could carry it, the splendid news was heralded to all the world, and its truth was soon established by repeated experiments.

To tell of the work of the men who came after these pioneers in the field of surgery and medicine is a task quite beyond the compass of this little volume. There are at least a score whose achievements are of the first importance, and nowhere in the world has this great science, which has for its aim the alleviation of human suffering, reached a higher development.

Among the physicists of the country, Joseph Henry takes a high place. His boyhood and youth were passed in a struggle for existence. He was placed in a store at the age of ten, and remained there for five years. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a watchmaker, and had some thought of studying for the stage, but during a brief illness, he started to read Dr. Gregory's "Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, Astronomy and Chemistry," and forthwith decided to become a scientist. He began to study in the evenings, managed to take a course of instruction at the academy at Albany, New York, and finally, in 1826, was made professor of mathematics there.

Almost at once began a series of brilliant experiments in electricity which have linked his name with that of Benjamin Franklin as one of the two most original investigators in that branch of science which this country has ever produced. His first work was the improving of existing forms of apparatus, and his first important discovery was that of the electro-magnet. His development of the "intensity" magnet in 1830 made the electric telegraph a possibility. Two years later he was called to the chair of natural philosophy at Princeton University, where he continued his investigations, many of which have been of permanent value to science. In 1846, he was elected first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and removed to Washington, where the last forty years of his life were passed in the development of the great scientific establishment of which he was the head. He steadily refused the most flattering offers of other positions, among them the presidency of Princeton, and like Agassiz, he might have answered, when tempted by larger salaries, "I cannot afford to waste my time in making money." To his efforts is largely due the establishment of the national lighthouse system, as well as that of the national weather bureau.

Besides his services to American science as instructor at Harvard College, Louis Agassiz rendered another when he persuaded Arnold Guyot, his colleague in the college at Neuchatel, to accompany him to this country. Guyot was at that time forty years old, and was already widely known as a geologist and naturalist, and the delivery of a series of lectures before the Lowell Institute, established his reputation in this country. He was soon invited to the chair of physical geography and geology at Princeton, which he held until his death. He founded the museum at Princeton, which has since become one of the best of its kind in the United States. Perhaps he is best known for the series of geographies he prepared, and which were at one time widely used in schools throughout the United States.

Perhaps no family has been more closely associated with American science than that of the Huguenot Le Conte, who settled at New Rochelle, New York, about the close of the seventeenth century, moving afterwards to New Jersey. There, in 1782, Lewis Le Conte was born. He was graduated at Columbia at the age of seventeen and started to study medicine, but was soon afterwards called to the management of the family estates of Woodsmanston, in Georgia. There he established a botanical garden and a laboratory in which he tested the discoveries of the chemists of the day. His death resulted from poison that was taken into his system while dressing a wound for a member of his family.

His son, John Le Conte, after studying medicine and beginning the practice of his profession at Savannah, Georgia, was called to the chair of natural philosophy and chemistry at Franklin College, and after some years in educational work, was appointed professor of physics and industrial mechanics in the University of California, which position he held until his death, serving also for some years as president of the University. His scientific work extended over a period of more than half a century, being confined almost exclusively to physical science, in which he was one of the first authorities.

Another son of Lewis, Joseph Le Conte, like his brother, studied medicine and started to practice it; but in 1850, attracted by the great work being done by Louis Agassiz, he entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, devoting his attention especially to geology. After holding a number of minor positions, he became professor of geology and natural history in the University of California in 1869, and his most important work was done there in the shape of original investigations in geology, which placed him in the front rank of American geologists.

Lewis Le Conte had a brother, John Eathan Le Conte, who was also widely known as a naturalist of unusual attainments. He published many papers upon various branches of botany and zoology, and collected a vast amount of material for a natural history of American insects, only a part of which was published. His son, John Lawrence Le Conte, was a pupil of Agassiz, and conducted extensive explorations of the Lake Superior and upper Mississippi regions, and of the Colorado river. He afterwards made a number of expeditions to Honduras, Panama, Europe, Egypt and Algiers, collecting material for a work on the fauna of the world, which, however, was left uncompleted at his death.

American science recently suffered a heavy loss in the death of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, one of the most brilliant of the pupils of Agassiz, and from 1864 until the time of his death, connected with the geological department of Harvard University, rising to the full professorship in geology, which he held for over twenty years, and to the position of dean of the Lawrence Scientific School. He did much to increase public interest in and knowledge of the development of the science by frequent popular articles in the leading magazines, in addition to more technical books and memoirs intended especially for scientists.

Of living scientists, we can do no more than mention a few. Perhaps the most famous, and dearest to the popular heart is John Burroughs, a nature philosopher, if there ever was one, a keen observer of the life of field and forest, and the author of a long list of lovable books. One of the leaders in the "return to nature" movement which has reached such wide proportions of recent years, he has held his position as its prophet and interpreter against the assaults of younger, more energetic, but narrower men.

Prominent in the same field is Liberty Hyde Bailey, since 1903 director of the College of Agriculture at Cornell University. His early training took place under Asa Gray, and his attention has been devoted principally to botanical and horticultural subjects. He has written many books, his principal work being his Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, which has just been completed. Other recent important contributions to science have been made by Vernon L. Kellogg, whose work has dealt principally with American insects, and whose recent book on that subject has been recognized as a standard authority; by Charles Edward Bessey, professor of botany at the University of Nebraska since 1884, a pupil of Dr. Asa Gray and the author of a number of valued books upon the subject which has been his life work; by George Frederick Barker, now emeritus professor of physics in the University of Pennsylvania, and the recipient of high honors at home and abroad; and by many others whom it is not necessary to mention here.

It will be evident enough from the foregoing that American science can boast no men of commanding genius—no men, that is, to rank with Darwin, or Huxley, or Lord Kelvin, or Sir Isaac Newton, to mention only Englishmen. Its record has been one of respectable achievement rather than of brilliant originality, but is yet one of which we have no reason to be ashamed.

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Most of the men mentioned in this chapter have, in the widest sense been educators. Agassiz, Gray, Silliman, Guyot—all were educators in the fullest and truest way. It remains for us to consider a few others who have labored in this country for the spread of knowledge. That the present educational system of the United States is not a spontaneous growth, but has been carefully fostered and directed, goes without saying. It is the result, first, of a wise interest and support on the part of the state, which early recognized the importance of educating its citizens, and, second, of the self-sacrificing efforts of a number of intelligent, earnest, and public-spirited men.

One of the first of these was Horace Mann, born in Massachusetts in 1796, the son of a poor farmer. His struggle to gain an education was a desperate one, and its story cannot but be inspiring. As a child he earned his school books by braiding straw, and his utmost endeavors, between the ages of ten and twenty, could secure him no more than six weeks' schooling in any one year. Consequently he was twenty-three years of age when he graduated from Brown University, instead of seventeen or eighteen, as would have been the case had he had the usual opportunities. He went to work at once as a tutor in Latin and Greek, studied law, was admitted to the bar, elected to the state legislature and afterwards to the senate, and finally entered upon his real work as secretary to the Massachusetts board of education.

He introduced a thorough reform into the school system of the state, made a trip of inspection through European schools, and by his lectures and writings awakened an interest in the cause of education which had never before been felt. His reports were reprinted in other states, attaining the widest circulation. It is noteworthy that as early as 1847, he advocated the disuse of corporal punishment in school discipline. After a service of some years as member of Congress, during which he threw all his influence against slavery, he accepted the presidency of Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he continued until his death. It was there that the experiment of co-education was tried, and found to work successfully, and the foundations laid for one of the most characteristic of recent great development of higher school education in America. Oberlin College, also in Ohio, had by a few years preceded Dr. Mann's experiment, but the latter's great reputation as an educator caused his ardent advocacy of co-education to carry great weight with the public. From this time on it became a custom, as state universities opened in the west, to admit women, and the custom gradually spread to the east and even to some of the larger colleges supported by private endowments.

Turning to the three great universities, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, which have done so much for the intellectual welfare of the country, we find a galaxy of brilliant names. On the list of Harvard presidents, three stand out pre-eminent—Josiah Quincy, Edward Everett, and Charles William Eliot. Josiah Quincy, third of the name of the great Massachusetts Quincys, graduated at Harvard in 1790 at the head of his class, studied law, drifted inevitably into politics, held a number of offices, which do not concern us here, and finally, after a remarkable term as mayor of Boston, was, in 1829, chosen president of Harvard. The work that he did there was important in the extreme. He introduced the system of marking which continued in use for over forty years; instituted the elective system, which permitted the student to shape his course of study to suit the career which he had chosen; secured large endowments, and, when he retired from the presidency in 1845, left the college in the foremost position among American institutions of learning. Edward Everett, who was president of the college from 1846-49, was more prominent as a statesman than as an educator, and an outline of his career will be found in "Men of Action." The third of the trio, Charles William Eliot, whose term as president of the college covered a period of forty years, is rightly regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest educator this country has produced.



Graduating from Harvard in 1853, at the age of nineteen, he devoted his attention principally to chemistry, and, after some years of teaching, and of study in Europe, was, in 1865, appointed professor of chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The same year, a revolution occurred in the government of Harvard, which was transferred from the state legislature to the graduates of the college. The effect of the change was greatly to strengthen the interest of the alumni in the management of the university, and to prepare the way for extensive and thorough reforms. Considerable time was spent in searching for the right man for president and finally, in 1869, Prof. Eliot was chosen.

That the right man had been found was evident from the first. "King Log has made room for King Stork," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, then professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, to John Motley. "Mr. Eliot makes the corporation meet twice a month instead of once. He comes to the meeting of every faculty, ours among the rest, and keeps us up to eleven and twelve o'clock at night discussing new arrangements. I cannot help being amused at some of the scenes we have in our medical faculty—this cool, grave young man proposing in the calmest way to turn everything topsy turvy, taking the reins into his hands and driving as if he were the first man that ever sat on the box.

"'How is it, I should like to ask,' said one of our members, the other day, 'that this faculty has gone on for eighty years managing its own affairs and doing it well, and now within three or four months it is proposed to change all our modes of carrying on the school? It seems very extraordinary, and I should like to know how it happens.'

"'I can answer Dr. ——'s question very easily,' said the bland, grave young man. 'There is a new president.'

"The tranquil assurance of this answer had an effect such as I hardly ever knew produced by the most eloquent sentences I ever heard uttered."

The bland young man's innovations did not seem to do much harm to Harvard, for under his administration, her financial resources have been multiplied by ten, as has the number of her teachers, while the number of her students has been multiplied by five. Dr. Eliot has grown into the real head of the educational system of this country; his influence has wrought vast changes in every department of teaching, from the kindergarten to the university. It was his idea that common school education and college education ought to be flexible, ought to be made to fit the needs of the pupil. The result has been the broad development of the elective system—broader than Josiah Quincy ever dreamed of. The same system has changed the whole aspect of the teaching profession, resulting in the demand for a competent training in some specialty for every teacher.

Dr. Eliot, who is in a sense the first living citizen of America, has not attained that position merely by success in his profession. He has devoted time and thought to the great problems of our government, and has taken an active part in many public movements—the race question, the relations of capital and labor, the movement for universal arbitration. He has been honored by France, by Italy, and by Japan, and resigned from his great office, in 1909, at the age of seventy-five, with mental and physical powers in splendid condition, not to retire from active life, but to devote himself even more wholly to the service of his countrymen. In this age of commercial domination, a career such as Dr. Eliot's is more than usually inspiring.

In the history of the administration of Yale university, the most striking personalities are the two Timothy Dwights and Noah Porter. The first Timothy Dwight, born in 1752, and graduating from Yale at the age of seventeen, began to teach, and at the outbreak of the Revolution, enlisted as Chaplain in Parson's brigade of the Connecticut line. It was at this time he wrote a number of stirring patriotic songs, one of which, "Columbia," still lives. At the close of the war, he continued preaching and also opened an academy, at which women were admitted to the same courses with men, and which soon acquired considerable reputation. In 1795, he was called to the presidency of Yale, a position which he held until his death. His administration marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the college. At his accession, the college had about one hundred students, and the instructors consisted of the president, one professor and three tutors. He established permanent professorships and chose such men to fill them as Jeremiah Day, Benjamin Silliman, and James Kingsley. The result of this policy was a steady growth in the number of students, until, at his death, they had increased to over three hundred.

Noah Porter, who came to the presidency in 1871, had been graduated from the college forty years before, during which time he had studied theology, held a number of important charges, was called to the chair of moral philosophy at Yale, and finally elevated to the presidency. His work was most important, one feature of it being the introduction of elective studies, though he insisted also upon a required course, as opposed to the Harvard system. Some of the University's finest buildings were erected during his administration, and at its close the student body numbered nearly eleven hundred.

He was succeeded in 1886 by Timothy Dwight, grandson of the elder president Dwight, who, for many years has been closely associated with the University, its financial growth being largely due to his efforts. Under his management the growth of the institution was unprecedented, the number of students increasing nearly fifty per cent within five years. He was also prominently identified with the general educational movement throughout the country, and his "True Ideal of an American University," published in 1872, attracted much attention.

Princeton has also had its share of eminent men, among them Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, and James McCosh. Jonathan Edwards was one of the most remarkable characters in American history. Born in 1703, he was the fifth of eleven children and the only son. As a mere child, he developed uncommon qualities, entered Yale College at the age of twelve and graduated at the age of seventeen. His father was a clergyman, and the boy had been brought up in a household and community intensely religious, so that he very early began to have "a variety of concerns and exercises about his soul." It was inevitable, of course, that he should become a minister, and, at the age of nineteen, was ordained and began to preach at a small church in New York City. Edwards seems to have been afflicted from the first with what is in these days irreverently called an in-growing conscience, and early formulated for himself a set of seventy resolutions of the most exalted nature, which, however praiseworthy in themselves, were too high and good for human nature's daily food, and must have made him a most uncomfortable person to live with. He developed, however, into a powerful preacher, and his services were much sought, especially at revivals. One of his sermons, called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is said to have created a profound impression wherever delivered.

A difference with his congregation at Northampton caused him to resign his pastorate there, and, declining a number of calls to established parishes, he went as a missionary to the Housatonick Indians, at so small an income that his wife and daughters were forced to labor with the needle to support the family. It was while engaged in this work, that an unexpected call came to him to take the presidency of Princeton. He accepted and was installed as president early in 1758. At once he began a series of reforms in the college administration, but an epidemic of small-pox broke out in the neighborhood, and Edwards, exposing himself to it fearlessly, contracted the disease and died thirty-four days after his installation.

Jonathan Edwards probably came as near to the old idea of a saint as America ever produced. Self-denying, stern, of an exalted piety, and intensely religious, he lived in a world of his own, and was regarded with no little awe and trembling. That he was a power for good cannot be doubted, and his sermons are still read, where those of his contemporaries have long since been forgotten.

Much more important to Princeton, was John Witherspoon, who came to the presidency in 1768, after a distinguished career in Scotland, one of the incidents of which was being taken a prisoner while incautiously watching the battle of Falkirk. He never wholly recovered from the effects of the imprisonment which followed. He brought with him from Scotland a valuable library which he gave to the college, and, finding the college treasury empty, he undertook a vigorous campaign to replenish it, making a tour of New England, and even extending his quest as far as Jamaica and the West Indies. Through his administrative ability and the changes and additions which he made in the course of study, the college received a great impetus.

The service to his adopted country by which Witherspoon will be longest remembered, was the course he followed at the beginning of the Revolution. From the first, he took the side of the colonies, and by precept and example, held not only the great body of Presbyterians true to that cause, but also the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who were naturally Tories by sympathy. He was a member of the Continental Congress, urged ceaselessly the passage of the Declaration of Independence, was one of its signers, and as a member of succeeding Congresses, distinguished himself by his services. After the close of the war, he returned to Princeton and devoted the remainder of his life to its administration.

Greatest of the three as an educator was James McCosh. A Scotchman, like Witherspoon, a student of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, a pupil of Thomas Chalmers, he was ordained to the ministry in 1835, and was a leading spirit in the movement which culminated in the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland. His publications on philosophical subjects brought him the appointment as professor of logic and metaphysics in Queen's College, Belfast, where he remained for sixteen years, drawing to the college a large body of students, and publishing other philosophical works of the first importance. In 1868, he was chosen president of Princeton, and his administration, lasting for nearly a quarter of a century, was remarkably successful. Under him, the student attendance nearly doubled, the teaching staff was more than doubled, and the resources of the college enormously increased. During these years, too, he continued his philosophical work, publishing a series of volumes which are the most noteworthy of their kind ever produced in America.

The temptation is great to dwell upon other educators connected with the great universities: Ira Remsen, and his contributions to chemistry; David Starr Jordan, and his great work on American fishes; Woodrow Wilson, and his contributions to the study of American history; Jacob Gould Schurman, and his work in the field of ethics;—to mention only a few of them—but there is not space to do so here. However, this chapter cannot be closed without some reference to the career of a remarkable woman, an educator in the truest sense, whose influence for good can hardly be estimated—Jane Addams.

John Burns, the English cabinet minister and labor leader, has called her "the only saint America has produced." Her sainthood is of the modern kind, which devotes itself by practical work to the alleviation of suffering and the uplifting of humanity, as opposed to the old fashioned kind of which we were speaking a moment ago in connection with Jonathan Edwards.

Graduating at Rockford College, in 1881, Miss Addams, then a delicate girl, spent two years in Europe. The sight which impressed her most, and which, to a large extent, determined her future career, was that of Mile End Road, the most crowded and squalid district of London, where she beheld a dirty and destitute mob quarreling over food unfit to eat. This vision of squalor and sin never left her, and the result was the establishment, in 1889, of the Social Settlement of Hull House, in the slums of Chicago. For Miss Addams had come to the conclusion that the only way to reach the destitute and despairing was to dwell among them.

How right she was has been abundantly proved by the splendid work Hull House has done. Its object, as stated in its charter, is "to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago." All that it has done, and much more; for it has been a beacon light of progress, pointing the way for like undertakings elsewhere. But most valuable of all has been Miss Addams's personal influence, the inspiration which her life has been to workers everywhere for social betterment, and the message which, by tongue and pen, she has given to the world. As an example of a useful, devoted and well-rounded life, hers stands unique in America to-day.

SUMMARY

AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES. Born near New Orleans, May 4, 1780; published "Birds of America," 1830-39; "Ornithological Biography," 1831-39; "Quadrupeds of America," 1846-54; died at New York City, January 27, 1851.

AGASSIZ, JEAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE. Born at Motier, canton of Fribourg, Switzerland, May 28, 1807; professor of natural history at Neuchatel, 1832; studied Aar glacier, 1840-41; came to United States, 1846; professor of zooelogy and geology at Cambridge, 1848; curator of Cambridge Museum of Comparative Zooelogy, 1859; travelled in Brazil, 1865-66; around Cape Horn, 1871-72; died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 14, 1873.

AGASSIZ, ALEXANDER. Born at Neuchatel, Switzerland, December 17, 1835; came to United States, 1849; graduated at Harvard, 1855; developed Lake Superior copper mines, 1865-69; curator of Cambridge Museum of Comparative Zooelogy, 1874-85; died at sea, March 29, 1910.

GRAY, ASA. Born at Paris, Oneida County, New York, November 18, 1810; professor of natural history at Harvard, 1842-88; died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 30, 1888.

TORREY, JOHN. Born at New York City, August 15, 1796; professor at Princeton and in College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York; State Geologist of New York; United States assayer; died at New York, March 10, 1873.

DRAPER, JOHN WILLIAM. Born at St. Helena, near Liverpool, England, May 5, 1811; came to America, 1832; professor of chemistry University of New York, 1839; president of the Medical College, 1850-73; died at Hastings-on-the-Hudson, New York, January 4, 1882.

RUTHERFORD, LEWIS MORRIS. Born at Morrisania, New York, November 25, 1816; graduated at Williams College, 1834; admitted to bar, 1839; abandoned law to devote himself to study of physics, 1849; died at Tranquillity, New Jersey, May 30, 1892.

YOUNG, CHARLES AUGUSTUS. Born at Hanover, New Hampshire, December 15, 1834; graduated at Dartmouth, 1858; professor of astronomy at Princeton, 1877-1905; died at Hanover, New Hampshire, January 4, 1908.

LANGLEY, SAMUEL PIERPONT. Born at Roxbury, Boston, August 22, 1834; secretary Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1908.

NEWCOMB, SIMON. Born at Wallace, Nova Scotia, March 12, 1835; came to United States, 1853; graduated Lawrence Scientific School, 1858; professor of Mathematics, U. S. navy, 1861; director Nautical Almanac office, 1877-97; professor mathematics and astronomy Johns Hopkins University, 1884-94; died at Washington, July 11, 1909.

PICKERING, EDWARD CHARLES. Born at Boston, July 19, 1846; graduated Lawrence Scientific School, 1865; professor of astronomy and director of Harvard Observatory since 1877.

MARSH, OTHNIEL CHARLES. Born at Lockport, New York, October 29, 1831; professor paleontology Yale University, 1866, to death at New Haven, March 18, 1899.

COPE, EDWARD DRINKER. Born at Philadelphia, July 28, 1840; professor of natural sciences, Haverford College, 1864-67; paleontologist to United States Geological Survey, 1868 to death at Philadelphia, April 12, 1897.

SILLIMAN, BENJAMIN. Born at North Stratford, Connecticut, August 8, 1779; graduated at Yale, 1796; tutor there, 1799, and professor, 1802; professor emeritus, 1853; died at New Haven, Connecticut, November 24, 1864.

DANA, JAMES DWIGHT. Born at Utica, New York, February 12, 1813; graduated at Yale, 1833; assistant to Professor Silliman, 1836-38; professor of geology and natural history, 1850-64; died at New Haven, April 14, 1895.

NEWBERRY, JOHN STRONG. Born at Windsor, Connecticut, December 22, 1822; professor of geology at school of mines, Columbia College, 1866-90; state geologist of Ohio, 1869; died at New Haven, Connecticut, December 7, 1892.

WHITNEY, JOSIAH DWIGHT. Born at Northampton, Massachusetts, November 23, 1819; graduated at Yale, 1839; geologist with New Hampshire survey, 1840-42; Lake Superior, 1847-49; state chemist of Iowa, 1855; state geologist of California, 1860-74; professor of geology at Harvard, 1865 to death at Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, August 18, 1896.

HITCHCOCK, EDWARD. Born at Deerfield, Massachusetts, May 24, 1793; professor of chemistry, Amherst College, 1825; president of the college, 1845-54; died at Amherst, Massachusetts, February 27, 1864.

MOTT, VALENTINE. Born at Glen Cove, Long Island, August 20, 1785; graduated Columbia College, 1806; professor of surgery at Columbia, 1810-35; died at New York City, April 26, 1865.

LONG, CRAWFORD W. Born at Danielsville, Georgia, November 1, 1815; graduated medical department University of Pennsylvania, 1839; died at Athens, Georgia, June 16, 1878.

MORTON, WILLIAM THOMAS GREEN. Born at Charlton, Massachusetts, August 19, 1819; practised dentistry at Boston, 1841-58; discovered anaesthetic properties of ether, 1864; died in New York City, July 15, 1868.

HENRY, JOSEPH. Born at Albany, New York, December 17, 1797; professor of natural philosophy at Princeton, 1832-46; first secretary of Smithsonian Institution, 1846; died at Washington, May 13, 1878.

GUYOT, ARNOLD HENRY. Born near Neuchatel, Switzerland, September 28, 1807; came to America, 1847; professor of physical geography and geology at Princeton, 1855; died at Princeton, February 8, 1884.

LE CONTE, JOHN. Born in Liberty County, Georgia, December 4, 1818; professor of physics University of California, 1869, to death at Berkeley, California, April 29, 1891.

LE CONTE, JOSEPH. Born in Liberty County, Georgia, February 26, 1823; professor of geology, University of California, 1869; died in Yosemite Valley, California, July 6, 1901.

LE CONTE, JOHN LAWRENCE. Born at New York City, May 13, 1825; surgeon of volunteers during Civil War, and chief clerk of mint at Philadelphia from 1878 until his death there, November 15, 1883.

SHALER, NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE. Born at Newport, Kentucky, February 22, 1841; graduated Lawrence Scientific School, 1862; professor paleontology at Harvard, 1868-87; professor of geology, 1887, to death, April 11, 1906.

MANN, HORACE. Born at Franklin, Massachusetts, May 7, 1796; admitted to the bar, 1823; secretary of Massachusetts Board of Education, 1837-48; member of Congress, 1848-53; president of Antioch College, 1852-59; died at Yellow Springs, Ohio, August 2, 1859.

QUINCY, JOSIAH. Born at Boston, February 4, 1772; member of Congress, 1805-13; mayor of Boston, 1823-28; president of Harvard, 1829-45; died at Quincy, Massachusetts, July 1, 1864.

ELIOT, CHARLES WILLIAM. Born at Boston, March 20, 1834; graduated from Harvard, 1853; taught mathematics and chemistry in Lawrence Scientific School, 1858-69; president of Harvard, 1869-1909.

DWIGHT, TIMOTHY. Born at Northampton, Massachusetts, May 14, 1752; graduated from Yale, 1769; president of Yale, 1795-1817; died at New Haven, Connecticut, January 11, 1817.

PORTER, NOAH. Born at Farmington, Connecticut, December 14, 1811; graduated at Yale, 1831; tutor at Yale, 1833-35; pastor of Congregational churches at New Milford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts, 1836-46; professor of metaphysics at Yale, 1846-71; president of Yale, 1871-86; died at New Haven, March 4, 1892.

DWIGHT, TIMOTHY. Born at Norwich, Connecticut, November 16, 1828; graduated at Yale, 1849; studied divinity, 1851-55; professor of sacred literature, 1858; president of Yale, 1886-98.

EDWARDS, JONATHAN. Born at East Windsor, Connecticut, October 5, 1703; pastor of Congregational Church, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1727-50; missionary to the Indians, 1751-58; president of Princeton College, 1758; died at Princeton, March 22, 1758.

WITHERSPOON, JOHN. Born in Haddingtonshire, Scotland, February 5, 1722; president of Princeton, 1768; delegate to Continental Congress, 1774-75; died near Princeton, September 15, 1794.

MCCOSH, JAMES. Born at Carskeoch, Ayrshire, Scotland, April 1, 1811; president of Princeton, 1868-88; died at Princeton, November 16, 1894.

ADDAMS, JANE. Born at Cedarville, Illinois, 1860; graduated Rockford College, 1881; opened Hull House, 1889.



CHAPTER VIII

PHILANTHROPISTS AND REFORMERS

This has been a country celebrated for its great fortunes, and the makers of some of those fortunes will be considered in the chapter dealing with "men of affairs"; but many who have been grouped under that heading might well have been included under this, since, for the most part, the richest men have been the freest in their benefactions. It is worth noting that the recorded public gifts in this country during 1909 amounted to $135,000,000. The giving of money is, of course, only one kind of benefaction, and not the highest kind, which is the giving of self; but the good which these gifts have rendered possible is beyond calculation.



This kind of philanthropy is no new thing in the United States. It is almost as old as the country itself. Indeed, few of the older institutions of learning but had their origin in some such gift. One of the earliest of such philanthropists was Stephen Girard, whose life-story is unusually interesting and inspiring. The son of a sailor, and with little opportunity for gaining an education, he shipped as cabin-boy, while still a mere child, and after some years of rough knocking around, rose to the position of mate, and finally to a part ownership in the vessel. In 1769, at the age of nineteen, he established himself in the ship business in Philadelphia, but the opening of the Revolution put an end to that business. Not until the close of the war was he able to re-embark in it. The foundation of his fortune was soon laid by his integrity and enterprise, but it was largely augmented in a most peculiar manner.

Two of his vessels happened to be in one of the ports of Hayti, when a slave insurrection broke out there, and a number of the planters hastily removed their treasure to his vessels for safe-keeping. That night, the insurrection reached its height, and the planters, together with their families, were massacred. Heirs to a portion of the treasure were discovered by Mr. Girard, but he found himself possessed of about $50,000 to which no heirs could be traced.

With remarkable foresight, Mr. Girard invested largely in the shares of the old Bank of the United States, and in 1812, purchased its building and succeeded to much of its business. He was the financial mainstay of the government during the second war with England—in fact, it was he who made the financing of the war possible. And yet he was, to all outward appearances, a singularly repulsive and hard-fisted old miser. In early youth, an unfortunate accident had caused the loss of one eye, and his other gradually failed him until he was quite blind; he was also partially deaf, and was sour, crabbed and unapproachable. In small matters he was a miser, ready to avoid paying a just claim if he could in any way do so, living in a miserable fashion and refusing charity to every one, no matter how deserving. He was forbidding in appearance, and drove daily to and from his farm outside of Philadelphia in a shabby old carriage drawn by a single horse. No visitor was ever welcomed at that farm, where its owner dragged out a penurious existence.

Yet in public matters no one could have been more open-handed, and when, after his death in 1831, his will was opened, it created a shock of surprise, for practically his whole fortune of $9,000,000 had been bequeathed for charitable purposes. Large sums were given to provide fuel for the poor in winter, for distressed ship-masters, for the blind, the deaf and dumb, and for the public schools. Half a million was given Philadelphia for the improvement of her streets and public buildings; but his principal bequest was one of $2,000,000, besides real estate, and the residue of his property, for the establishment at Philadelphia of a college for orphans. In 1848, Girard College was opened, and has since then continued its great work, educating as many orphans as the endowment can support. So Girard atoned after his death, for the mistakes of his life.

Almost equally singular was the life of the founder of that splendid government enterprise, the Smithsonian Institution—perhaps the most important scientific center in the world. James Smithson was in no sense an American. Indeed, so far as known, he never even visited the United States, and yet no account of American philanthropy would be complete without him. He was born in France in 1765, and was the illegitimate son of Hugh Smithson, afterwards Duke of Northumberland. He went by his mother's name for the first forty years of his life, being known as James Macie, until, in 1802, he assumed his father's name.

Born under this shadow, the boy soon developed unusual qualities, graduated from Oxford, with high honors in chemistry and mineralogy, and added greatly to his reputation by a series of scientific papers of great importance. A large portion of his life was passed in Europe, where he associated with the greatest scientists of the day, honored by all of them. He died at Genoa at the age of sixty-four, and, when his will was opened, it was seen how the circumstances of his birth had weighed upon him. For, "in order that his name might live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands are extinct and forgotten," he bequeathed his whole fortune "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." After a suit in chancery, the bequest was paid over to the United States government, amounting to over half a million dollars. In 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was formally established, its first secretary being Joseph Henry, of whose great work there we have already spoken. It has increased in scope and usefulness year by year, and stands to-day without a counterpart in any country.

Peter Cooper also left a portion of his wealth for "the diffusion of knowledge among men," but a different sort of knowledge—the knowledge that would help a man or woman to earn a living. His own career had shown him how necessary such knowledge is. His father was a hatter by trade, and the boy's earliest recollection was of his being employed to pull hair out of rabbit-skins, his head just reaching above the table. But the hat business was unprofitable, and the elder Cooper tried a number of businesses, brewing, brick-making, what not, the boy being required to take part in each of them, so that he had no time for schooling, and had to pick up such odds and ends of knowledge as he could. Finally, in 1808, at the age of seventeen, he was apprenticed to a carriage-maker, and remained with him until he was of age.

After that, the young man himself tried various occupations without great success, until the establishment of a glue factory began to bring him large returns. By the beginning of 1828, he was able to purchase three thousand acres of land within the city of Baltimore and to establish the Canton iron-works, which was the first of his great enterprises tending toward the development of the iron industry in the United States. Other plants were built or purchased, rolling mills and blast furnaces established, and a great impetus given to this branch of manufacture. He practically financed the Atlantic Cable Company, in the face of ridicule, and made the cable possible, and he saved the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad from bankruptcy by designing and building a locomotive—the first ever built in this country—especially adapted to the uneven country over which the track was laid.

The fortune thus acquired he devoted to a well-considered and practical plan of philanthropy. His career had shown him the great value of a trade to any man or woman. The schools taught every kind of knowledge except that which would enable a man to earn a living with his hands, which seemed to him the most important of all. He determined to do what he could remedy this defect, and in 1854, secured a block of land in New York City, at the junction of Third and Fourth Avenues, where, shortly afterwards, the cornerstone was laid of "The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art." It was completed five years later, and handed over to six trustees; a scheme of education was devised and special emphasis was laid upon "instruction in branches of knowledge by which men and women earn their daily bread; in laws of health and improvement of the sanitary condition of families as well as individuals; in social and political science, whereby communities and nations advance in virtue, wealth and power; and finally in matters which affect the eye, the ear, and the imagination, and furnish a basis for recreation to the working classes." Free courses of lectures were established, a free reading room, and free instruction was given in various branches of the useful arts. From that day to this, Cooper Union has been an ever-growing force for progress in the life of the great city; it has been a pioneer in the work of industrial education, which has, of recent years, reached such great proportions.

Peter Cooper lived to see the institution which he had founded realize at least some of his hopes for it. He himself lived a most active life, taking a prominent part in many movements looking to the reform of national or civic abuses. In 1876, he was nominated by the national independent party as their candidate for president and received nearly a hundred thousand votes. Since his death, the institution which he founded has grown steadily in importance; other bequests have been added to his, and Cooper Union has come to stand, in a way, for civic righteousness.

The year 1795 saw the birth of two children who were destined to do a great work for their country—George Peabody and Johns Hopkins. Both were the sons of poor parents, with little opportunity for achieving the sort of learning which is taught in schools; but both, by hard experience with the world, gained another sort of learning which is often of more practical value. At the age of eleven, George Peabody was forced to begin to earn his own living, and a place was found for him in a grocery store. His habits were good, he did his work well, and finally, at the age of nineteen, was offered a partnership by another merchant, who had noticed and admired his energy and enthusiasm. The business increased, branch houses were established, and at the age of thirty-five, George Peabody found himself at the head of a great business, his elder partner having retired. He decided to make London his place of residence, and became a sort of guardian angel for Americans visiting the great English capital. He had never married, and it seemed almost as if the whole world were his family. His constant thought was of how he could elevate humanity, and he was not long in putting some of his plans into effect.

In 1852, his native town of Danvers, Massachusetts, celebrated her centennial, and her most distinguished citizen was, of course, invited to be present. He was too busy to attend, but sent a sealed envelope to be opened on the day of the celebration. The seal was broken at the dinner with which the celebration closed, and the envelope was found to contain two slips of paper. On one was written this toast, "Education—a debt due from present to future generations." The other was a check for twenty thousand dollars, afterwards increased to two hundred and fifty thousand, for the purpose of founding an Institute, with a free library and free course of lectures. Four years later, the Peabody Institute was dedicated, its founder being in attendance. Soon afterwards, he decided to build a similar Institute at Baltimore, only on a more elaborate scale, as befitting the greater city, and gave a million dollars for the purpose. It was opened in 1869, twenty thousand school children gathering to meet the donor and forming a guard of honor for him.

Two other great gifts marked his life—the sum of three million dollars for the erection of model tenements for the London poor, and a like sum for the education of the American negro. When, in 1869 the end came in London, a great funeral was held at Westminster Abbey, and the Queen of England sent her noblest man-of-war to bear in state across the Atlantic the body of "her friend," the poor boy of Danvers.

It is a strange coincidence that Baltimore, which had profited so greatly from George Peabody's philanthropy, should also be the object of that of Johns Hopkins. The latter was of Quaker stock, was raised on a farm, and at the age of seventeen became a clerk in his uncle's grocery store at Baltimore. He soon accumulated enough capital to go into business for himself, first as a grocer, then as a banker, and finally as one of the backers of the Baltimore & Ohio Railway. In 1873, he gave property valued at four and a half millions to found in the city of Baltimore a hospital, which, by its charter, is free to all, regardless of race or color; and three and a half millions for the endowment of Johns Hopkins University, which, opened in 1876, has grown to be one of the most famous schools of law, medicine and science in the country.

Another Quaker, Ezra Cornell, is also associated with the name of a great university. Reared among the hills of western New York, helping his father on his farm and in his little pottery, the boy soon developed considerable mechanical genius, and at the age of seventeen, with the help of only a younger brother, he built a new home for the family, a two-story frame dwelling, the largest and best in the neighborhood. He soon struck out into the world, engaged in businesses of various kinds with varying success, but it was not until he was thirty-six years old that he found his vocation.

It was at that time he became associated with S. F. B. Morse, who engaged him to superintend the erection of the first line of telegraph between Washington and Baltimore. Thereafter he devoted himself entirely to the development of the new invention; succeeded, after many rebuffs and disappointments, in organizing a company to erect a line from New York to Washington, and superintended its construction. It was the first of many, afterwards consolidated into the Western Union Telegraph Company, which, for many years, held a monopoly of the telegraph business of the country, and which made Ezra Cornell a millionaire. He himself was well advanced in years, and finally retired from active life, buying a great estate near Ithaca, New York, where he lived quietly, devising a method for the best disposition of his great fortune.

He at last decided to found an institution "where any person can find instruction in any study." Work was begun at once, and in 1868, Cornell College was formally opened, over four hundred students entering the first year. The founder's gifts to this institution aggregated over three millions. Many other bequests followed, which have made Cornell one of the most liberally-endowed colleges in the country. Froude, the great English historian, visited it on one occasion, and afterwards said:

"There is something I admire even more than the university, and that is the quiet, unpretending man by whom it was founded. We have had such men in old times, and there are men in England who make great fortunes and who make claim to great munificence; but who manifest their greatness in buying great estates and building castles for the founding of peerages to be handed down from father to son. Mr. Cornell has sought for immortality, and the perpetuity of his name among the people of a free nation. There stands his great university, built upon a rock, to endure while the American nation endures."

The next great benefaction we have to record is, in some respects, unique. John Fox Slater was born in Slatersville, Rhode Island, in 1815. He was the son of Samuel Slater, proprietor of the greatest cotton-mills in New England, and he naturally succeeded to the business upon his father's death. The business prospered, receiving a great impetus from the invention of the cotton-gin, and Slater's wealth increased rapidly.

He had, on more than one occasion, visited the south and seen the negroes at work in the cotton fields. As time went on, the idea grew in his mind that he should do something for these poor laborers to whom, indirectly, his own fortune was due, and in 1882, he set aside the sum of one million dollars for the purpose of "uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern States, and their posterity." For this gift he received the thanks of Congress. No part of the gift is spent for grounds or buildings, but the whole income is spent in assisting negroes in industrial education and in preparing them to be the teachers of their own race. By the extraordinary ability of the fund's treasurer, it has been increased to a million and a half, although half a million has been expended along the lines contemplated by the donor. This, with the Peabody fund, comprises a powerful agency in working out the difficult problem of negro education.

* * * * *

The fortunes of such men as Peabody and Cornell and Hopkins and Peter Cooper seem small enough to-day when compared with the gigantic aggregations of money which a few men have succeeded in piling up. Not all of them, by any means, devote their wealth to philanthropy. Here, as in England, there are men concerned only with the idea of building up a family and a great estate; but there are a few who have labored as faithfully to use their wealth wisely as they did to accumulate it.

First of them is Leland Stanford, born in the valley of the Mohawk, studying law, and moving to Wisconsin to practise it, but losing his law library and all his property by fire, and finally joining the rush to the newly-discovered California gold-fields, where he arrived in 1852, being at that time twenty-eight years old. After some experience in the mines, he decided that there were surer ways of getting gold than digging for it, and set up a mercantile business in San Francisco, which grew rapidly in importance and proved the foundation of a vast fortune. He was the first president of the Central Pacific Railroad, and was in charge of its construction over the mountains, driving the last spike at Promontory Point, Utah, on the tenth of May, 1869. He was prominent in the politics of state and nation, being elected to the United States Senate in 1885.

It is not by his public life, however, that he will be remembered, for he did nothing there that was in any way memorable, but by his gift of twenty million dollars to found a great university at Palo Alto, California, in memory of his only son. On May 14, 1887, the cornerstone of this great institution was laid, and the university was formally opened in 1891. The idea of its founder was that it should teach not only the studies usually taught in college, but also other practical branches of education, such as telegraphy, type-setting, type-writing, book-keeping, and farming. This it has done, and so rapid has been its growth, that it now has over seventeen hundred students enrolled.

After Senator Stanford's death in 1893, the university was further endowed by his widow, Jane Lathrop Stanford, so that the present productive funds of the university, after all of the buildings have been paid for, amount to nearly twenty-five million dollars.

The second of the great givers of recent years is John Davison Rockefeller, whose name is synonymous with the greatest natural monopoly of modern times, the Standard Oil Company. His rise from clerk in a grocery store to one of the greatest capitalists in the history of the world is an interesting one, as well as an important one in the commercial history of America. Born at Richford, New York, in 1839, his parents moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was a boy of fourteen, and such education as he had was secured in the Cleveland public schools. He soon left school for business, getting employment first as clerk in a commission house, and at nineteen being junior partner in the firm of Clark & Rockefeller, commission merchants.

At that time the petroleum fields of Pennsylvania were just beginning to be developed, and young Rockefeller's attention was soon attracted to them. He seems to have been one of the first to realize the vast possibilities of the oil business, and in 1865, he and his brother William built at Cleveland a refinery which they called the Standard Oil Works. They had little money, but unlimited nerve, and very soon began the work of consolidation, which culminated in the formation of the Standard Oil Trust in 1882. They were able to kill competition largely by securing from the railroads lower shipping rates than any competitor, in some cases going so far as to get a rebate on all oil shipped by competitors. That is, if a railroad charged the Standard Oil Company one dollar to carry its oil between two points and charged a competitor a dollar and a quarter for the same service, that extra quarter went, not into the coffers of the railroad, but into the coffers of the Standard Oil Company. Such methods of business have since been made illegal, and the Standard is compelled to do business on the same basis as its competitors, but its vast resources and occupancy of the field give it an advantage which nothing can counteract.

The operations of the Standard Oil Company naturally piled up a great fortune for John D. Rockefeller—how great cannot even be estimated. Not until comparatively recent years, did he turn his attention from making money to spending it, but when he did, it was in a royal fashion. Ten million dollars were given to the University of Chicago, which opened its doors in 1892, and now has an enrollment of over five thousand students; ten million more were given to the General Education Board, organized in 1903, for the purpose of promoting education in the United States, without distinction of race, sex, or creed, and especially to promote and systematize various forms of educational beneficence; a million was given to Yale; the great Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was founded at New York and liberally endowed; and Mr. Rockefeller's total benefactions probably exceed a total of thirty millions. This will soon be greatly increased, for he has just asked Congress to charter an institution to be known as the Rockefeller Foundation, which he will endow on an enormous scale to carry out various plans of charity, through centuries to come.

He seems recently to have experienced a change of heart, too, toward the public. During his early years, he gained a reputation for coldness and reserve, which made him probably the best-hated man in the United States. Then, suddenly, he changed about. Instead of refusing himself to reporters, he welcomed them; he seemed glad to talk, anxious to show the public that he was by no means such a monster as he was painted; and he has even, quite recently, written his life story and given it to a great magazine for publication. Seldom before has any public man shown such a sudden and complete change of heart. He still remains, in a sense, an enigma, for it seems possible that the smiling face he has lately turned to the world conceals the real man more effectively than the frowning countenance he wore in former years.

As the dramatist saves his finest effect for the fall of the curtain, so we have saved for the last the most remarkable giver in history—Andrew Carnegie, whose total benefactions amount to at least one hundred millions of dollars. A sum so stupendous would bankrupt many a nation, yet Mr. Carnegie is so far from bankrupt that his gifts show no sign of diminution. The story of how, starting out as a poor boy, on the lowest round of the ladder, he acquired this immense fortune, is a striking one.

Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland in 1835. His father was a weaver, at one time fairly well-to-do, for he owned four hand looms; but the introduction of steam ruined hand-loom weaving, and after a long struggle, ending in hardship and poverty, the looms were sold at a sacrifice and the family set sail for America. Mrs. Carnegie happened to have two sisters living at Pittsburgh, and there the family settled—by one of those curious chances of fate, the very place in all the world best suited to the development of young Andrew Carnegie's peculiar genius.

At the age of twelve years, he became a wage-earner, his first position being that of bobbin-boy in a cotton mill at Alleghany City, where his salary was $1.20 a week. Pretty soon he was set to firing a small engine in the cellar of the mill, but he did not like this work, and finally secured a position as messenger boy in the office of the Atlantic & Ohio Telegraph Company, at Pittsburgh. One night, at the end of the month, he did not receive his pay with the rest of the boys, but was told to wait till the others had left the room. He thought that dismissal was coming, and wondered how he could ever go home and tell his father and mother! But he found that he was to be given an increase in salary, from $11.25 to $13.50 a month.

"I ran all the way home," said Mr. Carnegie, in telling of the incident, long afterwards. "Talk about your millionaires! All the millions I've made combined, never gave me the happiness of that rise of $2.25 a month. Arrived at the cottage where we lived, I handed my mother the usual $11.25, and that night in bed told brother Tom the great secret. The next morning, Sunday, we were all sitting at the breakfast table, and I said: 'Mother, I have something else for you,' and then I gave her the $2.25, and told her how I got it. Father and she were delighted to hear of my good fortune, but, motherlike, she said I deserved it, and then came tears of joy."

It was at the dinner given, in 1907, in his honor as "Father of the Corps," by the surviving members of the United States Military Telegraph Corps of the Civil War, that Mr. Carnegie spoke these words, and he continued as follows:

"Comrades, I was born in poverty, and would not exchange its sacred memories with the richest millionaire's son who ever breathed. What does he know about mother or father? They are mere names to him. Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune. Some men think that poverty is a dreadful burden, and that wealth leads to happiness. They have lived only one side; they imagine the other. I have lived both, and I know there is very little in wealth that can add to human happiness, beyond the small comforts of life. Millionaires who laugh are rare. My experience is that wealth is apt to take the smiles away."

But we are getting ahead of our story. That small increase in salary meant a good deal to the little family, whose father was working from dawn to dark in the cotton-mill, and whose mother was contributing what she could to the family earnings by binding shoes in the intervals of housework. Meantime the superintendent of the company for which the boy was working happened to meet him while visiting the Pittsburgh office, and it was discovered that both of them had been born near the same town in Scotland. The fact may have had something to do with the boy's subsequent promotion, and it is worth noting that forty years later, he was able to secure for his old employer the United States consulship to the town of their birth. But for the time being, he was busy with his work as messenger-boy. He soon learned the Morse alphabet and practised making the signals early in the morning before the operators arrived. He was soon able to send and receive messages by means of the Morse register—a steel pen which embossed the dots and dashes of the message on a narrow strip of paper. But young Carnegie soon progressed a step beyond this, and was soon able to read the messages by sound, without need of the register. It was, of course, only a short time after that when he was regularly installed as operator.

He was not to remain long in the telegraph business, however, for Thomas A. Scott, superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, offered him a position at a salary of $35 a month. Carnegie promptly accepted, and on February 1, 1853, at the age of seventeen, entered the employ of the road. His promotion was rapid, and he rose to be superintendent of the Pittsburgh division before the success of his other ventures caused him to resign from the service. These ventures were, in the first place, investment in the newly-developed oil-fields of Pennsylvania, which yielded a great profit, and afterwards the establishment of a steel rolling-mill, in the development of which he found his true vocation, building up the most complete system of iron and steel industries ever controlled by an individual. Some idea of the value of the business may be gained from the fact that, when the United States Steel Corporation was organized in 1901 to take over Mr. Carnegie's interests he received for them, first mortgage bonds to the amount of three hundred million dollars.

It is this sum which he has been disposing of for years. Unlike most other philanthropists, he has not used his wealth to endow a great university, but has devoted it mainly to another branch of education, the establishment of free public libraries. He conceived the unique plan of offering a library building, completely equipped, to any community which would agree to maintain it suitably, and, by the beginning of 1909, had, under this plan, given nearly fifty-two millions of dollars for the erection of 1858 buildings, of which 1167 are in this country. Among his other great gifts was one of $12,000,000, for the founding at Washington of an institution "which shall, in the broadest and most liberal manner, encourage investigation, research, and discovery, show the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind, and provide such buildings, laboratories, books, and apparatus as may be needed."

The sum of ten millions was given to the great Carnegie Institute, of Pittsburgh; still another ten millions were given to Scottish universities, and still another for the purpose of providing pensions for college professors in the United States and Canada; and finally five millions for the establishment of a fund to be used for the benefit of the dependants of those losing their lives in heroic effort to save their fellow-men, or for the heroes themselves, if injured only. What great benefaction will next be announced cannot, of course, be foretold, but that some other announcement will some day be forthcoming can scarcely be doubted, since Mr. Carnegie has announced his ambition to die poor.

Although born in Scotland and maintaining a great estate there, he is an American out-and-out. He proved his patriotism during the Civil War by serving as superintendent of military railways and government telegraph lines in the east; and has proved it more than once since by enlisting in the fight for civic betterment and good government. Thousands of benefactions stand to his credit, besides the great ones which have been mentioned above, and it is doubtful if in the history of the world there has ever been another man armed with such power and using it in such a way.

We will end here the story of American benefactions, although scarcely the half of it has been told. During the last forty years, not less than one hundred millions of dollars have been given to American colleges; nearly as much again has been given for the endowment of hospitals, sanitariums and infirmaries; vast sums have been given for other educational or charitable purposes, so that, of the great fortunes which have been accumulated in this country, at least three hundred millions have been returned, in some form or other, to the people. And the end is not yet. Scientific philanthropy is as yet in its infancy. Just the other day, Mrs. Russell Sage set apart the sum of ten million dollars for a fund whose chief and almost sole purpose it is to obtain accurate information concerning social and economic conditions—in other words, to furnish the data upon which the scientific philanthropy of the future will be based. The disposition toward such employment of great fortunes, and away from the selfish piling-up of wealth is one of the most cheering and promising developments of the new century in this great land of ours; the kings of finance are coming to realize that, after all, wealth is useless unless it is used for good, and the next half century will no doubt witness the establishment of philanthropic enterprises on a scale hitherto unknown to history.

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We have already said that the highest form of philanthropy is not the giving of money, but the giving of self, and we shall close this chapter with a brief consideration of the careers of a few of the many men and women who, in the course of American history, have devoted their lives to the betterment of humanity, either as ministers of the gospel or as laborers for some great reform.



Among ministers, no name has been more widely known than that of Beecher—first, Lyman Beecher, and afterwards his brilliant son, Henry Ward Beecher. Lyman Beecher was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1775, the son of a blacksmith, and his youth was spent between blacksmithing and farming. His love of books soon manifested itself, however, and means were found to prepare him for Yale, where he graduated at the age of twenty-two. A further year of study enabled him to enter the ministry. For sixteen years, he was pastor of the Congregational church at Litchfield, Connecticut, and soon took rank as the leading clergyman of his denomination. His eloquence, zeal and courage won a wide reputation, and in 1832, he was offered the presidency of the newly-organized Lane seminary, at Cincinnati. This place he held for twenty years, and his name was continued as president in the seminary catalogue, until his death.