History of Wayne County, Ohio, Volume I, Part 48

Author:
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1162

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Through some years, up indeed until 1891, efforts were made to sustain and develop certain academies into more or less intimate relations with which the university came. Visits were paid to these academies and such moral (not pecuniary) aid given as was possible with the faculty force then available. South Salem, Poland and Central College academies were co-operated with. Green Springs Academy was accessible if the university could have undertaken its administration and the payment of its indebtedness. This academy and that at Hudson were liberally assisted by Western Reserve University, but without any reasonable return for the expenditure and were finally abandoned (see Dr. Haydn's History of Western Reserve University). The whole acad- emy idea, once so prevalent and so really serviceable in Ohio, was moribund. The high school provisions became so ample and accessible that support of the other class of institutions became unnecessary. Constant efforts are now made to interest the high school pupils, and especially by the state colleges, which claim to constitute the natural termini of the whole system.

Some progress was made as to attendance. The catalogue of '87-8 records the first freshman class, I think, which reached one hundred. Seniors were forty, juniors forty-nine and sophomores fifty-five. Counting all de- partments, the enrollment reached seven hundred and fifty-seven. The de- nominational machinery was invoked in a request to have a standing com- mittee in each presbytery to keep the university before the churches, and each presbytery was asked to send annually a visitor. Propaganda was also sought through a little journal, "The Christian College." It promised to be valuable, but an unfavorable interpretation of the postal statutes made its continuance unadvisable. More liberal interpretations are now made and with great ad- vantage to the college world. The board's meeting of 1887 had been con- sidered in its records as "peculiarly glad and hopeful," in view of no deficit, increased attendance, and the completion of the twenty-five thousand dollar endowment of the Hoge chair of morals and sociology. This endowment was raised through painful persistence in finding smaller sums on the basis of Wil- liam Thaw's initial subscription of two thousand five hundred dollars. It was intended to allow the introduction of a chair of biology. This was authorized in June, 1887, but we could instal it only inconveniently in the fourth story of the main building.

The baccalaureate sermon of that year was the call to "Go Forward" (Exodus xiv :15). It was contended that our university was so clearly "of the stock and tribe of Israel" that we might rightly interpret our circumstances as the call of Divine Providence to push on-though only omnipotence could open the way for us through seas and deserts to the borders of the promised

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land. The special plea was for the sacredness of our enterprise as against those who thought of it too much as a secular thing, and with no special covenant relation to God and his church. In much the same way the dedica- tion of our university to the country through realization of our Presbyterian educational traditions was urged in the baccalaureate of 1888. "Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times." (Isa. xxxiii :6.) It was the centennial, approximately, of our federal constitution and of the full organiza- tion of our denomination in the first general assembly.

In June, 1890, the board of trustees approved of changes in the cur- riculum and the introduction of a larger scope of electives in the higher classes. That improved curriculum went into effect at once and constituted a distinct advance. Just at this time, also, came the missionary alcove in the library, with improvement of the gymnasium and the employment of an in- structor, plus the enlargement of Old Music Hall. They were not great changes, but they facilitated our work and each brought its own gratification. The alcove owed its origin to the talent and self-denial of one of the professors (Notestein ), who had gained a prize of three hundred dollars for an essay on an important politico-social theme and dedicated it to increasing intelligent interest in that which he has always and justly contended was Wooster's con- structive idea- the winning of the world to Christ. An important step was now taken in filling the hitherto vacant chair of Biblical instruction and com- bining with it the pastorate of the college ( Westminster) church. The uni- versity was every way fortunate in securing, at some pecuniary sacrifice to himself, the Rev. Edgar W. Work ('84), then pastor at Van Wert, Ohio. The board filled the chair and protested against the relinquishment of a thousand dollars of salary by the president in partial provision for the incom- ing professor. But that release of salary continued until the final vacation of the executive office in 1899.

The assistance of Doctor Work in teaching and in the pulpit was the more necessary that the means might be founded for enlargement of the main building. The board resolved (June, 1890) that, "urged and encouraged by the growth of the institution and the growing demands of the higher educa- tion, we proceed immediately to raise the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars for additions to our central building, and the additional sum of five thousand dollars for additional heating apparatus now imperatively needed." The synod approved, much begging was done, the fund grew and in June, 1891, the board "took recess till after the laying of the cornerstones this afternoon." It was 1802 before the work was completed, at a cost ( with new laboratories and facil-

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ities) of more than forty thousand dollars. We had reason to be grateful that just at a moment when further progress seemed especially difficult the legacy of Sclah Chamberlain (elder of the Second church of Cleveland ) came, most unexpectedly, to our help. The inspiration of this gift, ten thousand dollars, lifted us over the difficulties at once. The added accommodations were a relief beyond what can be appreciated by those who have not passed through similar experiences of hampering restrictions and their removal. It was like a new life in some departments. The architect might facetiously call the architecture "factory-style" and the many windows did admit the "cauld, cauld blasts" of our occasional blizzards. But it was "factory-style" in the other and more important sense. We filled its larger spaces with the hum of enlarged intellectual industries. The improvement increased our library facilities, relieved our embarrassed hallways, and brought all the natural sciences into a new and deserved prominence. We thanked God and took courage.

In 1892 the granting of Master of Arts in cursu was disapproved and the faculty authorized to carry into execution some plan for bestowing the Master's degree. But the execution of this decree was arrested for years by failure of the Ohio Association of Colleges to stand together for the much- needed reform of a discreditable practice. Items of gratification appreciated by the board of trustees in June, 1893, were "enlarged preparations made in some departments for special study ; the healthy religious life of the univer- sity throughout the year, the increased interest in the work of the literary so- cieties, the furnishing of the Willard and Lowell society halls, the success of Wooster's representative in the state and interstate oratorical contests; the encouraging growth of the post-graduate department, and the very large matriculation of new students during a year of great financial stringency." It was recorded that, "with the forty-eight thousand dollars expended on recent improvements," the university now represents contributions in property and endowments "of not less than half a million dollars." "It presents in its solid basis of property and patronage and in its unique relation to the Pres- byterian church of Ohio, a signal opportunity and a cogent argument for progress. Its present and possible future value is becoming annually more evident."

From the beginning it had been felt that cottages for the young women were desirable. The feeling grew with experience and an organization of ladies had been formed to advance that interest. As early as June, 1884, the board of trustees recognized the need as one of highest importance, but it was not until 1895 that the donation of Mr. Hoover, made in 1894, could be

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utilized. The cottage bearing his name was opened in January, 1896, and proved at once helpful and attractive. The committee was fortunate in its selection of a place and the structure remains a worthy member of the new group of buildings, because a true cottage, at once homelike and convenient.

In the catalogue of 1894-5, as the twenty-fifth year was reached, a special declaration was made emphasizing the denominational relation of the uni- versity : "The denomination to which this university belongs has, during this period, finally settled its own policy as to denominational colleges by erecting a special board to represent this great interest. The basal principles in the assembly in the wider work and the synod in the university are identical and it is certain that the churches will ultimately respond to the plans of both bodies." Allusion was also made to the general assembly's establishment of "College-Sunday," from which much was hoped. Through this close re- lationship much that was gratifying had been accomplished in the twenty-five years past. "By further extension and intensification of it. the next quarter of a century will far surpass the record of the first." Only fifteen years are gone and already it is evident that these words were prophetic. Faith in the church, so confident in 1895, has abundant justification in the university of 1910 and will find further ground of assurance at the semi-centennial in 1920!

During 1894 (February ) the present writer had opportunity to plead the cause of Ohio's many colleges before the Ohio Society of New York. In that plea Ohio was presented as not ashamed of the fact that most of her col- leges were denominational. "She takes good care that not one of them shall be sectarian in any offensive or unchristian sense, and each one of them con- tains the neighborhood representatives of every form of Protestant faith." It was held that this condition of things was the logical sequent of the his- torical facts that Ohio was the first meeting place of the various population- elements in their new movements just after the Revolution and that all forms of church organization were planted very early on Ohio soil. It was declared to be in harmony with the noticeable fact that we had no metropolis in Ohio and needed none-our three great cities being ideally distributed for effective- ness in state control and for extended commerce and trade. Ohio has a claim to being the spot from which shall emerge the typical American character, and the typical American must come largely from the ranks of college-culture. It was claimed, moreover, that Ohio colleges were making a record in "draft- ing the best brains into the service of the world's moral and spiritual interest." and that "Ohio college people, professors, trustees, patrons and students are happy in putting forth year by year a healing touch upon the whole vast world from which, Ohio men of New York, you are drawing your vast pecuni-

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ary gains." The many colleges of Ohio provide the choicest product of Ohio's greatest industry-that of "making men, the most men and the best men." Her numerous colleges are her "declaration of faith in the average man. She resiliates from Carlyle's Königmann and "gigmanity" and from Caesarism and all that. She knows there is no aristocracy of brains.

She holds to her heart the real source of her pride-those who in church and school and state have demonstrated that the tough resolution of medium or narrow circumstances finds just the fibre it needs in the strong frame, the healthy brain and the high morals of her Tom Corwins and her Abram Gar- fields. * Instead of offensive discriminations, we open our college-

doors to all races, as to all fortunes.

Who doubts our need of

men? And who denies the traditional belief of the race since Charlemagne's universities that the colleges are the seed-plots and propagating houses for men. * Men are not accidents. It requires the highest social vitality to start them, and the most assiduous care to protect them, and the most ingenious devices to direct them, and winds from all quarters to deepen their roots and straighten their trunks, and sunshine from favoring social conditions to stimulate them and the purest atmosphere for the leafy respiration of them and the richest soil for the burrowing roots of them. All, sirs, and all at their best-as when nature summons her marvelous ener- gies to rear some incredible triumph of vegetable architecture like a Calaveras pine four hundred feet high. The task and tax of every community that has ever risen to the elevated consciousness of Christian civilization is the rearing of men. It demands the supremest energies and repays the most lavish ex- penditures. And that is the reason Ohio's surface is dotted with colleges. And that is the reason why so many of them are so rapidly increasing in everything that helps to form and fashion manhood. And that is the reason they can afford the reproaches sometimes cast upon them, and even the partial disloyalty of those who overlook them, because they have faith that the waking passion for man-making will presently overcome the passion for gewgaws and frippery. And then, sirs, they will be, every one of them that does its work honestly. as large as any college had better be and as thoroughly equipped as every college ought to be. Last of all, we extend the great pur- pose of Ohio, through her many colleges, from man-making to the making of public men. What kind of public men do you want Ohio to pro- duce? Are American statesmen needed to preserve and guide that which has demanded hecatombs of sacrifice to win and build ? Where then is the broad foundation to be laid which prevents men from becoming doc- trinaries with Guizot on the one extreme, or opportunists with Gambetta on

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the other, and poises them as saviors of the country with Thiers in France or Cavour in Italy and our own peerless Washington? Where, I say, but in our colleges in which eager youth are held in check to ripen, and fed while they grow, and stimulated to the noblest views of patriotism and cosmopolitan- ism before they go out to the frequently narrowing tendencies of practical politics ? And in what colleges if not in Ohio's colleges? I believe in Ohio's young men of the twentieth century. Aye, sirs, our past and our present assure us of the best material the sun ever shone upon. And the colleges of Ohio, linking hands with the whole secondary education, are press- ing eagerly forward toward the goal of an ideal fundamental education of statesmen. * In the whole Ohio college policy there is nothing but that which has come through our great commonwealth's historical develop- ment. Nothing which does not already go powerfully toward manmaking for private life and public, and therefore everything to set forward and develop with a generous and confident loyalty."

The writer of this sketch was asked to introduce an admirable volume by Prof. John Marshall Barker on "Colleges in America," and wrote (in July, 1894) thus: "I cannot be unwilling to avail myself of any opportunities to turn the attention of the Christian public to the Christian colleges. It is a noble public and an equally noble object. I can conceive of no worthier thing than the care-taking of one generation that the next one, which must neces- sarily lie so long under its influence, and for which it is therefore so thorough- ly responsible, should receive a Christian education. To put Christ at the center and make Him felt to the circumference (as Bungener said in speaking of Calvin's school-policy ) is exceedingly difficult. But it is exceedingly im- portant. It is, indeed, vital and pivotal." The dangers which surround this ideal were noted and traced to their causes in "general worldliness; specula- tive infidelity ; lowering the Bible from supreme consideration ; false theorizing with regard to the limits of government and the liberty of conscience issuing in the demands for utter secularization of the states ; the divided opinion of the church universal." These dangers were held to be both "imminent and actual. One section is thrown over towards utter secularism in public education by recoiling from a church education, exclusive and reactionary. The leading of the little child-the favorite indication of the millennium's arrival-is frus- trated amid the clamor of the free thinkers and the uncertainty of the church and the (supposed) necessities of the state. We are slowly but surely, if we go on in this way, taking our children out of Christ's arms and our youth from beside his footsteps. And that is at once the most fearful sin against Him and the most terrible injustice to them we could possibly commit. Who

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can do anything to stay this destructive tendency? "God bless him," I would say in Livingstone's spirit, "whoever he may be, that will help to heal this open sore of the world." I believed that Mr. Barker's book would help as I am convinced the astonishing success of the whole group of Ohio's denomina- tional and Christian colleges has helped powerfully. These expressions of conviction are given space because they are but the common opinions of all who have given devoted service to Wooster University as to many others of the group mentioned.

No special effort was made to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary in 1895. The board of trustees recorded its "gratitude that the institution has more than fulfilled the most sanguine hopes and purposes of its founders in the quarter century of its past history." By this we are to understand, of course, thankfulness for progress toward the original ideal. The attendance had reached an aggregate much beyond three thousand in the collegiate de- partment alone-the graduates approaching eight hundred. The number of missionaries and ministers sent out had equaled forty per cent of the male graduates, and next in order followed the number of those who had entered the profession of teaching. Three hundred thousand dollars of productive and promised endowment were counted upon, buildings had been erected for astronomy, gymnastic instruction, and musical culture, with other such im- provements as gave ample equipment for laboratory, library and literary work. The faculty had been enlarged and those now occupying the chairs had acquired invaluable experience. The inner history had been marked with unanimity and there had constantly been in attendance a large majority of Christian students fairly representative of the homes of the university's con- stituency. Coeducation had proved successful. Cases of discipline had been comparatively infrequent, though a high standard of conduct had been re- quired. Some gracious revivals had been experienced and the religious life of the university had been quickened constantly by earnest work on the part of the Christian associations. The outlook for further improvements was regarded as decidedly encouraging. Large advance in every direction was con- sidered as not only imperatively demanded but as just within reach and the settled church relationship of the university was regarded as a sufficient guar- antee of large expectations.

- The twenty-sixth year ( 1895-1896) was the transition year to a much improved curriculum with additional electives. The attendance during the following four years was not quite sustained, probably owing to increasing dis- satisfaction with the continued exclusion of intercollegiate games. a policy adopted in June. 1891. The totals, not reckoning post-graduate or medical

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students, but including summer students, were these : For 1895-6, five hundred and eighty-nine ; for 1896-7, five hundred and sixty-five; for 1897-8, six hun- dred and thirty ; for 1898-9, six hundred and ninety-four. Subtracting the summer students, the totals were respectively five hundred and forty; four hundred and twenty-five ; four hundred and twenty-three; four hundred and eleven. Regarding only the collegiate department, the totals were respectively : two hundred and sixty-nine; two hundred and forty-three ; two hundred and forty-seven ; two hundred and forty-four.

At the close of the commencement exercises of 1897, on an issue con- nected with collegiate dramatics, the president tendered his resignation to the board, which had not sustained a policy to which he was conscientiously com- mitted. It was to take effect at the close of the following collegiate year, the expressed wish and hope of the president being that by special effort the insti- tution might be entirely freed from debt. The issue was submitted to the synod in October, which put on record a declaration sustaining the president's position. In the following March, he stated that "the resignation placed in the board's hands at the last commencement and held in abeyance according to the request of the board, is now withdrawn, because the occasion for it then had been removed in his view by the action of the synod at its last meeting, which has fixed the policy of the institution in the matter then under con- sideration. He then offered his resignation, constrained by the conviction that under the present circumstances the needs of the institution demanded the trial of a new policy for its development, i. e., an executive president. He wished to open the way for this policy and to do all he could to persuade the board to adopt it." ( Minutes Vol. II, p. 37.) The resignation was accepted. the services of the retiring executive were continued in the chair he had already occupied ( Hoge professorship of morals and sociology ) and kindly resolutions were passed. Some gratifying things were mentioned in the board's. reports of 1898 (June). "The close of the administration of the retiring president leaves matters in an excellent condition for the one who shall be chosen to follow him, who will add, we trust, another record of advancement in strength and influence to the already remarkable career of the institution." Thanks were tendered to the faculty for the "generous and self-sacrificing spirit they have exhibited in contributing during the past year one-tenth of their salaries to the financial relief of the institution."

The presidency was tendered to the Rev. Dr. J. C. R. Ewing, of the Presbyterian College at Lahore, India, but his missionary zeal would not per- mit him to accept it. Thereupon the board requested the former president to continue in the discharge of the official duties so long as would be neces-

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sary. This tenure extended throughout the following college year. The board took a contented view of the year and a confident view of the future mainly because success had again been attained in relieving the institution from all indebtedness. "Hopefulness," the record reads, "seems to pervade all ranks that the university of Wooster is upon the eve of a new era of use- fulness and prosperity." The board expresses the greatest anxiety that "the faculty in all its plans and work as well as the individual professors in all their contact with the students" should "labor unceasingly for the cultivation of the hearts no less than the minds of those committed to their training." The presbyteries were again requested to appoint two visitors annually in order that the university might be brought into "closer and more vital relations with the churches." It was also advised that "earnest and successful pastors" should be invited to spend Sabbaths now and then in the college pulpit. A high-grade teachers' department was advised and the expediency of keeping in touch with the teachers of the state was urged. The board concludes: "Now is the time for all friends of Wooster to join hands to push forward and enlarge the work of our beloved university. We must have half a million of dollars in the next ten years to equip the university so that she can offer all the ad- vantages which any other institution can offer within the borders of our state. We must attempt great things and expect great things as servants of God.

Let our motto be : 'No second place' for Presbyterians in the edu- cational field in Ohio."

In closing the review of this period, the financial aspect of it deserves notice. It proved, fortunately, the end of the system by which the president was to be responsible for the pulpit of Westminster church, general adminis- trator, even to giving excuses, charged with the duties of a full professor- ship and still expected to represent the university among the churches, to plead its cause before the synod and to beg from door to door the funds necessary for maintenance and development. These various tasks could not all have been carried forward in any fashion but for the kind cooperation of the fac- ulty, the timely help of the board of trustees, the confidence shown in the idea of the university in general response by contributions and patronage. Per- haps it was necessary that this stage should have been continued for the first twenty-nine years of the university's career, with occasional help from finan- cial agents-who found their work exceedingly difficult. But it is a matter of congratulation that so feeble and inadequate a policy should have been now and forever abandoned.

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History of Wayne County, Ohio, Volume I, Part 48

Author: Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen Number of Pages: 1162

Author:
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1162