USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume IV > Part 14
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Some skeptical persons failed to see anything but a joke in the latest wrinkle in the insurance craze, when in 1866 the Hartford Steam Boiler Company was chartered; but experi- ence has proved it to be not only novel but excellent. Origin- ating in the researches of a group of bright young men in Hartford, who were attracted by an account of the inspections made by the Manchester Steam-Users' Association in Eng- land, it wisely practiced economy in office expenditure until established business warranted luxury. To the ability and tact of the president, the late Jeremiah M. Allen, the success of the novel enterprise is greatly owing.
He used the "ounce of prevention" plan so sagely that more money is spent every year in inspecting boilers than in paying indemnity for ruined ones. The boiler that fails to come up to the standard cannot be insured; hence a great sav- ing of life and limb over the old hap-hazard way of thinking that steam-boilers were a lottery, and that with them danger and usefulness went hand in hand. For five years the business of the company was transacted in a single small room fur- nished with Spartan simplicity; but the dividends were lux- urious. So great care was exercised in inspecting that the losses were few, and the Insurance Department did not require any charge to liabilities for reinsurance reserve; and
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"in less than three years, out of surplus earnings, the cash capital had grown from $100,000 to $190,000."
But the good done has not been confined to rolling up dividends; for it has dispensed much valuable information and advice to its patrons. The results of scientific investiga- tion are given to the insured who ask for plans and specifica- tions for boilers, settings, and pipings, or for steam chim- neys, with supervision of erection at a reasonable price; or who come for advice about the structure of boilers, riveting of joints, or other practical questions. These appeals are so frequent that their answers require a separate department.
In some parts of the country the water is corrosive to boil- ers, and therefore, for a proper analysis of water and advice as to its use, the company has a chemical laboratory. Strict rules forbid any officer or employee to have any pecuniary interest in the sale of any boiler. In such ways has this com- pany become a standard of excellence and a safeguard to the public security.
The insurance of slaves, coolies, and later of live-stock, has proved the reverse of fortunate and has passed away-too much temptation being offered to shorten the lives of valuable slaves or high-bred horses. Indeed, we have not carried our insurance system to the elaborate details of England, where nearly every possibility of life, even to the chance of losing the insurance for the chance of seeing a royal procession, may be insured; but in magnitude of interests involved, in vigor of management, and in almost universal patronage, no coun- try exceeds the United States; and of these Connecticut easily takes the lead outside of New York.
The first "accident" insurance company in America, the famous Travelers of Hartford, owes its origin, in 1863, to James G. Batterson, its first president, who was inspired by
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examining casualty companies in England. The management followed the traditional prudence in details at the start, and has had phenomenal success and a world-wide reputation.
The result might have been doubtful had traveling facilities been less safe. The comparative security of travel and the vast number of travelers is shown by a careful computation made by experts, proving that one cent additional on each ticket sold by the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad would enable that corporation to defray all expenses resulting from accidents to its passengers; in other words, to be its own insurance agent. And again, during the forty years of the Travelers' life, the aggregate paid for the never- ending succession of petty and single accidents has in each year surpassed many times over the sum of any reimburse- ments for the wholesale disasters that appall a nation, and in general has been fifteen or twenty times as much.
The great secret of the business lies in classifying occupa- tions, or in excluding certain occupations from the classes to which they do not belong. The rates are only adapted to and remunerative for each class as long as the classification is maintained. The life business has become decidedly the most important part of this great company.
Insurance, with all its departments, has become so strict a science, and is now so interwoven with the habits and the financial affairs of the whole people, that the proper compre- hension of its intricacies requires a trained mathematical mind; the administration of details in any one of the great companies employs a small army of competent workers; and so seriously does the importance of the new profession impress the authorities of Yale University that insurance has been established as a new course of study, begun in 1903-4 by a carefully arranged course of lectures delivered by the
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men who as leaders and experts have helped to make it a science.
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CHAPTER XI YALE COLLEGE IN THE LAST CENTURY
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W ITH the inauguration, in 1795, of Timothy Dwight the elder, the grandson of Jon- athan Edwards, a new era in Yale's his- tory began. Of broad mind, warm heart, unusual attainments as a scholar, fine face and figure, ceaseless energy, and great personal magnetism, he brought to his new work the benefit of experience as a chaplain in the Revolutionary army, a successful teacher of a flourishing school, a writer of prose and poetry admired in his day, and a beloved pastor. The impulse of his far-seeing mind and wide-reaching ambition for his college, and the for- tunate results of his zeal, are still felt, and that the Yale of to- day has so nearly realized his dreams is because he combined with the vision of a seer the great executive ability of a man of affairs.
He taught the Senior Class, being Professor of English Literature and Oratory, and of Divinity, besides giving the inevitable two sermons every Sunday, and by his vigorous writings warding off from the country the danger of French atheism. At first, he and Professor Meigs and three tutors carried the whole burden of teaching; but as success brought large numbers, and the State gave encouraging aid, addi- tions were made to the Faculty.
The three men thus added were men of powers so rare and surpassing that they, with their vigorous head, swayed the destiny of the college: Jeremiah Day, James L. Kingsley, and Benjamin Silliman; the first, a mathematician whose text- books held a high rank for years; the second, called the Addison of America, and so accurate a scholar in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew that his brilliant classmate, Moses Stuart, Andover's great Hebrew scholar, dreaded his criticism; the
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third, recognized the world over as a matchless pioneer in science in the New World.
The work of these men, united in devoting every energy of their richly-endowed natures to the college, may be read in the present results. May it not be that the distinction which Yale has always since then held in the departments of mathe- matics, linguistics, and science, springs from the strong bent given by these three great scholars ?
President Dwight abolished fines and fagging; he pub- lished the first annual catalogue of students, only a single sheet, and a contrast to the thick volume of six or seven hun- dred pages of to-day, but still the first issued by this or any other college in America; he had the foresight to buy most of the land now included between College, Chapel, High, and Elm Streets; he bound the students to him by love and admiration which ended only with their lives, and to which has been traced the origin of the Yale spirit.
On the land so purchased, he succeeded in placing in 1800 some needed buildings, which formed a part of the famous "Old Brick Row;" North Middle and the Lyceum. In 1782, had been built the Laboratory, in which Professor Sil- liman was to perform the electrical experiments which may have inspired his pupil, Morse, to those achievements which have carried his name around the world on the wings of the telegraph. In 1804, the subterranean scene of these lectures in this old laboratory was so deep down in the earth that the lecturer's head was six feet below the surface of the ground; but nothing quenched the ardor of Silliman's zeal.
Dwight had always before him the vision of a future uni- versity with departments ably equipped and working as parts of a harmonious whole; and thus in 1806, he urged the
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establishment of a medical school, and helped to so effect the union between the college and the Connecticut Medical Asso- ciation, which had by its charter controlled the medical educa- tion of the State, that in 1810, the "Medical Institution of Yale College" was chartered, and in 1813 was opened. The Yale Medical School, the oldest of her departments, thus dif- fers from all other medical schools in America in being the direct offspring of the college.
The Medical Faculty consisted of Dr. Eneas Munson ; Dr. Eli Ives, a beloved and successful physician, famous for his knowledge of the indigenous materia medica; Dr. Jon- athan Knight, then only twenty-three, but to become a dis- tinguished surgeon, and an unrivalled lecturer on his chosen subject; Dr. Nathan Smith, who, defying poverty, had, by studying abroad, gained a medical education extraordinary for his time and, in the words of a great modern med- ical authority, "became famous in his day, is still more famous to-day, and has shed undying glory on the Yale Med- ical School, with a reputation which has steadily increased as the medical profession has slowly caught up with him;" and Benjamin Silliman, who had by this time "made New Haven the most important centre for scientific work and usefulness in this country."
Professor Jeremiah Day, who was ordained as a minister of the gospel on the day when he succeeded President Dwight in 1817, was of a different type. Quiet and retiring, while he may have lacked the magnetism of his predecessor, his con- trol of himself and others, his spotless life, and his great administrative ability won unbounded respect. He inspired the tradition of system and order which has since prevailed. Whether the independent sentiments fostered by the great war, or failure to understand the best ways of managing
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young men, were responsible, it is evident that during Presi- dent Dwight's administration and the early part of Presi- dent Day's there was much turbulence, even reaching the climax of pistol shots being exchanged between teachers and scholars. This unhappy state of things was wisely met by the gentle firmness of the president. During his thirty years of office there were some famous "rebellions ;" one known by the suggestive name of "Bread and Butter," and another by the more exalted one of "Conic Sections," which in 1830 brought matters to a crisis. The battle was decided in favor of the Faculty, even though it cost the expulsion of forty-four Soph- omores, a serious loss in those days. But insubordination was changed to the habit of obedience; and since then the supremacy of the college authorities has been broken by none but transient and superficial disturbances.
There were new professors: the gifted Alexander M. Fisher, whose early death at sea inflicted a lasting loss; Eleazar T. Fitch, the college preacher, of extraordinarily rare and varied powers of mind; Chauncey A. Goodrich, of per- suasive utterance and invaluable personal influence, known also as the son-in-law and coadjutor of Noah Webster; Deni- son Olmsted, whose text-books on Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, in a day when text books were few, carried his name far and near. The Faculty now had organized control of the students; the treasury, which had been for long years nurtured by the wise management of James Hillhouse, was strengthened, in the last years of his term, by the fund of 1831, $100,000, raised by determined effort. This assured such permanence and security to the work as it had never before had.
In 1822, the Divinity School, for which Dwight had hoped and planned, was established as a department, and was made
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From the engraving by John Sartain. Rev. Jeremiah Day Rev. Theodore Woolsey Prof. Benj. Silliman COMMENCEMENT DAY YALE COLLEGE, JULY 26, 1860
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noted by its great light, the illustrious Nathaniel W. Taylor. The Law school, which as a private enterprise had existed for some time, came under the wing of the college in 1824 through the fact that Judge David Daggett, one of its able teachers, then became the Kent Professor of Law in the col- lege.
To Day's period belong some buildings that have become historic in college annals,-North College, the Old Chapel, Divinity Hall, the Cabinet, and the Treasury, all since demol- ished. The Cabinet was the repository of the collection of minerals that Colonel Gibbs had brought from Europe and lent to the college. Its fame brought visitors from far and near, and when in 1824 it was necessary to buy it or lose it, it was felt that no possible effort should be spared to keep it; and with the liveliest satisfaction, the friends of the college saw the required sum, $20,000, raised, and the danger of parting with the treasure averted. This beautiful collection thus became the nucleus of the magnificent mineralogical treasures of the Peabody Museum.
President Day left the college with greatly increased num- bers, with a zealous and well-proportioned faculty, and more systematic organization than it had ever had. In the light of present theories, nothing about him is more remarkable than that having been, in his youth, condemned to the prospect of enforced idleness and an early death on account of repeated hemorrhages and advanced tubercular disease, he lived by judicious care to use his mind and body, for the signal benefit of mankind, to his ninety-fifth year.
Yale, always fortunate in having presidents of lofty Chris- tian character and exact scholarship, was never more so than when Theodore Dwight Woolsey became the successor of President Day, in 1846.
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He had brought ideas of profound scholarship from the Old World, and had been a professor of Greek for fifteen years when he was elected president. He had Edwards blood, and the high ideal which was his by inheritance hav- ing been intensified by his years of study in Europe, his influ- ence was very soon seen in the elevation of the standards of the whole college. Great as a student, a thinker, an expert in international law, he was also great as an administrator, and thus inspired veneration for both his mind and his office, gave to learning a momentum it has not lost, and made of his term a memorable epoch. His stringent requirements gave a high tone to undergraduate life, and his fearless assumption of authority when necessary strengthened the habit of subor- dination established by Day.
The graduate school came into being in 1846; in 1847, the law school was expanded by the addition to its Faculty of Governor Bissell and that able jurist, Judge Henry Dutton, afterwards Governor.
The college developed rapidly on intellectual lines. Pro- fessors were added whose names have since been household words as makers of Yale,-James Hadley, the variety and perfection of whose attainments, accentuated by a phenom- enal memory, remind us of the famous scholars of old; Elias Loomis, whose mathematical powers applied to astronomical and mathematical publications brought him a fortune; Noah Porter, of "Human Intellect" fame; James D. Dana, one of the great geologists of his time; George P. Fisher, a master in Ecclesiastical History ; Josiah W. Gibbs, the Hebrew scholar, Hubert A. Newton, a leader in Meteoric Astronomy; Thomas A. Thacher, who for more than forty years, as a professor of Latin, exerted incalculable good by his wonderful personal in- fiuence.
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These men, all stars of the first magnitude in the galaxy of American scholars, were quite as remarkable for their devo- tion to Yale. They labored as one family-as indeed many of them were linked by ties of blood-for the holy cause of building up their college. The history of these struggling years can never be fully written, for the archives to be con- sulted are often locked in the grave; but the pinched salaries, the totally inadequate fund-the entire income of the col- leg in 1849 beign less than $34,000-and on the other hand the glorious results, speak for themselves of persistent and ex- alted devotion. This is one of the glories of Yale-the schol- arly heroism of many of her most eminent teachers, men whose world-wide reputations brought them tempting offers to go elsewhere, but whom no lures however generous, no so- licitations however urgent, could persuade to desert the life- work of upbuilding the college of their love. So conspicuous has this been that it was remarked as an era when in 1879, for the first time since the opening of the century, a full professor left to accept a chair in another college.
The year of President Woolsey's inauguration was sig- nalized by the completion of the first fitting abiding-place for the library. To the building, the first of stone and the first of Gothic style on the campus, President Woolsey was the second largest donor; and to the library itself he afterwards gave his fine private Greek library. The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the college was celebrated with due pomp, and the graduates subscribed money for Alumni Hall, another Gothic building endeared by the associations of after years. It was with great rejoicing that, in 1850, a second fund of $ 100,000 was raised. It probably cost as much effort as the $2,000,000 raised for the Bicentennial Fund.
Senior year became anything but the period of rest for-
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merly longed for, biennial examinations cast their dread shadow over the whole course; and in every way President Woolsey inculcated the motto of Edwards :- "Resolved : While I do live, to live with all my might."
Professor Edward E. Salisbury, the only man in America who could teach Sanskrit, became identified with the college; an event momentous, not only in the acquisition of so schol- arly a presence and influence as his and for beginning the line of great Oriental scholars who have made Yale illustrious, but in fixing in permanent position by his generous endow- ment those great men, William D. Whitney and James D. Dana; the one as comparative philologist and Sanskrit scholar, the other as geologist, taking the highest rank among the world's scholars, finally gathering a long trail of honorary initials from learned societies, and by lifelong devo- tion to the college work, giving it an international reputation. Dana assisted and continued the work of the Sillimans in the "Journal of Science." Whitney, indefatigable to the last, combined with the Indo-European studies that made New Haven a center of philological study for the country, his labor as the guiding spirit of the Century Dictionary.
Athletics, too, became bold enough to claim a gymnasium as a college building, in which were actually the hitherto ques- tioned tenpins. This was a great contrast to the beginning of the century, when, if contemporary engravings may be trusted, men tried to pursue the flying football in silk hats and tight coats, or even the later time, when, as the second President Dwight records with glee, his class won both as Freshmen and Sophomores in "the annual game on the Green."
From 1853 on, the hammer and chisel have seldom ceased in Yale's behalf. During President Woolsey's term, besides
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the before-mentioned buildings, there were given and reared, the Art School, the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Augustus R. Street, who, by this building and a fund, provided for the encourage- ment of the study of art; Farnam and Durfee Halls, dormi- tories; and the Winchester Observatory, to be devoted mainly to original astronomical research; and the foundations were laid for the Peabody Museum, the generous gift of George Peabody, the American banker in London.
With the Peabody Museum is indissolubly connected the memory of Othniel C. Marsh, who taking the chair of pal- æontology in 1866, gave the remaining thirty years of his life to unremitting research in his chosen field, and to amassing an almost peerless treasure of fossils. He organized and con- ducted a series of "Yale Scientific Expeditions" to regions difficult of access beyond the Missouri River, bringing back in six years "four hundred specimens of vertebrate fossils new to science." The expedition of 1871, at a cost of $40,000, collected fifteen thousand specimens. Thus he could arrive at very important conclusions. Marsh completed his generosity by giving all his private collections to the Museum, and his beautiful house and grounds to the university, for the further- ance of the study of Botany.
During the same period, Addison E. Verrill was making his study of deep-sea life, bringing in, in a few years, over 200,000 zoological specimens, and thereby enhancing the value of the opportunities for study.
Nothing in the reign of Woolsey was so fraught with future harvest as the founding of the Scientific School, which, in its beginning with small things, has often been likened to the parent college; in the second case, however, the period of probation was short. Had not Yale possessed Benjamin Silli- man, the rising tendencies towards scientific study might have
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produced a school elsewhere. But his great work, of which more hereafter, was pre-eminently that of arousing interest. Students were attracted to New Haven by his laboratory. In 1846, his son, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., who had given instruc- tion in scientific branches, and John Pitkin Norton, began under the roof of a college building, and with the approval of the authorities, but on their own financial responsibility in nearly every way, a school for practical instruction in Analyt- ical Chemistry and Mineralogy; thus beginning the Scientific Department of Yale College, now the Sheffield Scientific School. Benjamin Silliman, Jr., had the advantage of inher- ited tendencies and of familiarity with the work from child- hood; John Pitkin Norton, son of one of Nature's noblemen, John T. Norton of Farmington, had had his undeniable tal- ents cultivated by foreign study to a then uncommon degree in a then uncommon department of science, and became the first American Professor of Agricultural Chemistry. To these two young men, both personally most attractive, was given to do a memorable service for the coming university.
Professor Norton's career was cut short by a lamented death. We cannot say that he lived in vain, when it is said that he prepared the way for the phenomenal success of the department which in numbers and importance ranks next to the Academic.
Soon two new professors, William A. Norton and John A. Porter, added great weight to the school.
The massive gates of great events turned on the circum- stance of Professor Porter's appointment; for as he married the daughter of Mr. Joseph E. Sheffield, already well known in railroad enterprises, the attention of his father-in-law was drawn to the great needs and possibilities of the school, with the effect of inducing him to bestow benefactions so generous
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that to this day he stands at the head of Yale's ever open- handed donors.
In suitable recognition, in 1861, the Department of Phil- osophy and the Arts having been divided, the scientific part was called the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College. Mr. Sheffield had the rare wisdom to give while he was alive, and could not only adjust his gifts to the precise need of the moment, but could have the pleasure of seeing the seed bring forth the harvest. Accordingly, having bought the former Medical School building, he enlarged it and pre- sented it to the Scientific School, which he endowed with a fund, followed by constant donations of large sums and the encouragement of his advice and interest; and he completed all by the bequest of his house and grounds and other valua- ble property. Few benefactors have been more faultless in their generosity; fewer still more fortunate in living to see the success that proved the wisdom of the gifts.
In 1856, the school was strengthened by the accession of Professor Samuel A. Johnson, now long acknowledged as a chemist of pre-eminence, and the leading spirit in establish- ing agricultural stations all over the country ; and of Professor George Jarvis Brush, who had been one of the first class grad- uated from the school, and who not only added to Yale's list of great mineralogists, but became, as Director, the helmsman of the newly launched ship, with hand so even, eye so far- seeing, judgment so unerring, devotion so sleepless that he brought it into the port of success as if blown by a favoring tradewind. The department was again fortunate in his suc- cessor, the noted expert in physiological chemistry, Russell H. Chittenden.
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