which crowns the group of college buildings as the tower of Magdalen rises above the Quadrangle at Oxford, the building is constructed of Indiana limestone and Germantown stone very happily contrasted in color, the exterior lines expressing strength and dignity. The windows, designed and made by the Hardmans of Birmingham, must be counted among the most successful and beautiful church windows in America. Not only are apostles, martyrs, heroes, and promoters of Christian civilization represented, but the forces of earth and air are symbolized. The light is soft without being dim, and the general effect extremely harmonious and beautiful. Great credit is due to the architect, Mr. Francis Richmond Allen, of Boston, who also constructed the Thompson Memorial Library at Vassar, an account of the dedication of which was given in these columns last week. The Outlook will describe the Williams College Chapel more at length in its Educational Number, with illustration. Mr. Allen received the degree of M.A. on the Commencement stage, and was greeted with an enthusiasm on the part of the students and audience which showed how deeply his signal services to academic architecture in this country are appreciated. On Thursday the Commencement exercises, in spite of heavy rain, were attended by throngs of people, called together by the presence of President Roosevelt, Mr. Root, and Mr. Choate. The degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon Mr. Choate and Mr. Root, and that of Doctor of Letters upon President Roosevelt. They were greeted by the audience with tumultuous applause. The President signalized the occasion by a vigorous and interesting address, touching on many points of interest to the graduating class and also of interest to the public at large, and explaining at length the policy of the Administration in Santo Domingo. At the alumni dinner which followed the close of the Commencement exercises a number of generous gifts were announced, especially from Mr. Stetson, who made material addition to the endowment of the College for the purpose of increasing the professors' salaries. Sufficient funds have been

insured to provide for the erection of a new dormitory which it is proposed shall form part of what is to be known as the Berkshire Quadrangle.

The President at Clark

Special interest attached to the Commencement exercises of the Collegiate Department of Clark University, at Worcester, on Wednesday of last week. Under the able administration of President Carroll D. Wright the college has made remarkable progress, and the first class was graduated from the college, President Roosevelt making an incisive address, characteristically direct and forceful in its urgence of the necessity of every man doing his work in the world with courage, fidelity, and capacity. Special reference was made to the recent celebration of the Schiller anniversary as an occasion for recalling the value of idealism and for an appreciation of the special qualities which Germany has given to the United States :

From Germany this country has learned much. Germany has contributed a great element to the blood of our people, and it has given the most marked trend ever given to us along scholastic and university lines, to the whole system of training students and scholars. In taking what we should from Germany, from this great kindred nation, I wish that we could take specially the idealism

which renders it natural to them to celebrate such an event as Schiller's life and writings; and also the keen, practical common sense which enables them to turn their idealistic spirit into an instrument for producing the most perfect military and industrial organizations that the world has ever seen.

The President expressed the earnest hope that industrial as well as military peace should prevail among the nations, and declared that no man in public position, under penalty of forfeiting all right to the respect of those whose regard he cares for most, could fail, as the opportunity presented, to do all that in him lies for peace. The usual Commencement address was delivered by Mr. Mabie. Later the President spoke to a great out-of-door audience at Holy Cross College. Notwithstanding the heavy rain, the address was listened to with the greatest attention. The President declared that it must be the constant

endeavor of our people to do no wrong to any other people, and to stretch out the helping hand of friendship to any other power, and that what he most desires to see in the United States is the union of a lofty sense of the rights of others with the power to act efficiently and effectively. This week Commencement and anniversary exercises are going on in many colleges, and an account of the most prominent events will be given in the next issue of The Outlook.

The Control of College

Athletics

It is a misfortune which colleges share with the rest of the world that their normal, regular, quiet, and wholesome activities receive little public notice, but that the unwholesome and abnormal, the noisy and irregular, incidents of college life are widely published. An escapade, a bit of needless daring, or a silly piece of effrontery is meat to the newspaper. A ball game or a race between rival college teams has the same sort of journalistic nutriment in it that is contained in a railway disaster or an embezzlement. Because there must be something of the unusual in an incident to make it news, the public prints have fostered the too common impression that college life is a turmoil of hazing, stealing signs, and excited yelling at athletic contests. The fact is, of course, that the current of ordinary college life runs unobtrusively in other than public channels.

In publishing in this number the two articles, "The Money Power in College Athletics" and "The Reflections of a Sub-Freshman's Father," The Outlook does not wish to exalt unduly the place which athletics hold in American colleges. It believes, however, that in these articles is described a situation that actually exists. Athletics, which ought to be recreative and can be made actually educative, have largely lost their recreative value because undergraduates have taken them too seriously, and have not been of educative value because college authorities have not taken them

seriously enough. While undergraduates have been making a business of football, baseball, and rowing, college presidents and college faculties have been content to attempt some curtailment of their abuse.

Professionalism, violation of rules, the solicitation of athletic school-boys, extravagant expenditures, the concentration of effort in the specialized training of a few instead of the general development of the many-all these are but symptoms of a general condition. To punish the professional, to make the rules more stringent, to hamper, restrict, or prohibit this practice or that, may be necessary, but it is only to use a temporary expedient. The real task is the creation in American colleges of a condition like that existing in Oxford and Cambridge, which would make such temporary expedients unnecessary. There are several courses which college authorities can pursue :

are.

I. They can leave matters as they Nobody, we believe, seriously approves that.

II. They can attempt to abolish intercollegiate athletics. This is what the Sub-Freshman's Father advocates. It is at the very best a policy of despair, and, we venture to predict, it will never prevail. Prohibition never succeeds except in matters which are believed to be essentially evil; and no one has seriously asserted that intercollegiate athletics are essentially evil. On the contrary, there is nothing which has done so much to blot out the hazing and boisterous lawlessness which were once so prevalent among American collegians as athletic contests between the colleges. To abolish all such contests in order to get rid of their abuses would be to burn down the barn in order to kill the rats.

III. In order to bring about a reform, college authorities can depend upon denunciation of evils and upon moral suasion. Exhortation on the part of newspapers or periodicals is wholly inadequate and almost wholly useless. Undergraduate opinion is rarely if ever affected by the opinion of the world outside of college circles. Exhortation on the part of presidents and professors of colleges is, of course, to be expected, but that

will be heeded by undergraduates, and even by graduates, only as it comes from men who are more or less intimately concerned with the athletic activities of the colleges. In such a matter as this, involving social ethics, tradition and custom have more weight than any exhortation; and at present, while the athletic traditions and customs of the colleges are beyond the control of college authorities, exhortation from anybody will avail little.

IV. The college authorities can deliberately take the control of college athletics into their own hands. This is what we believe they ought to do, and what it is evident they must do if they are neither ready to abolish intercollegiate athletics nor content to let athletic affairs rest as they are. At present the real control of athletics in almost every college is in the hands of two classes; one consists of graduates of athletic experience and of some leisure, the other consists of professional coaches. Neither of these classes is responsible to the college; both of them are interested primarily in producing winning teams rather than in promoting pure sportsmanship, with all which that term ethically implies. The professional coach particularly has a great influence in molding the opinions of college men in athletic matters. This is illustrated by a recent incident. Before a boat race between Harvard and Cornell at Cambridge, the Harvard captain, acting within his rights, deprived the visiting crew of a chance to row over the course. This action humiliated every Harvard man who heard of it; for it was the action of a hostile commander, not the action of a host. The Harvard captain had simply acted on the advice of the professional coach-a man in no way responsible to to the University, unacquainted with Harvard traditions, and without an inheritance of college sentiment and idealism. He was hired to turn out a winning crew, and he gave this advice simply in the performance of his duty. If college presidents and college faculties are unwilling to put the ethical sense (to say nothing of the good manners) of undergraduates into the keeping of such men as this, they must

see to it that in some way they choose the men who direct the athletics. For it is certain that the athletic trainer has as much to do with determining what the social ethics of the college students will be as the professor of mathematics or Greek has to do with the sort of scholarship which the men of his classes will consider worthy of respect. If courtesy, fair dealing, and friendliness are as worthy of cultivation as are high standards of scholarship, and have as much to do with the honor and reputation of the college, then the athletic trainer should be as accountable to the college as any other instructor, and should be chosen by the same authority and with the same care.

Before this can be done, however, college authorities will have to regard competitive athletics more seriously than they do at present; they will have to recognize their own responsibility for the sort of social morality that prevails among undergraduates, and will have to realize that intercollegiate athletics afford the principal medium in which the undergraduate's social morality is practically developed; they will have to intrust largely to those of their own number who are interested in athletics the task of developing and conserving high standards of sportsmanship as they are created and conserved by the dons of Cambridge and Oxford; and they will have to regard the man whose vocation it is to give practical direction to the athletic activities of the college as in as worthy and dignified a place as the teacher of history or economics, so long as his concern is chiefly not for athletics as such, but for the social traditions and honor of the college. Something but not enough has already been done in this direction in some of our American colleges. Dr. Sargent's position at Harvard has the requisite dignity; but he controls only the gymnasium; he does not touch the spontaneous and social physical activities as does the athletic trainer. A better illustration of what The Outlook desires to see accomplished in all our universities is afforded by the position of Mr. Stagg at the University of Chicago. He is the right sort of man for the head of athletics in a great uni

versity; his position as Director of the Division of Physical Culture puts him in the right relation to the students; and his office as a member of the University Council gives him the right position of academic dignity. Perhaps in this as in other things the colleges and universities of the East can learn something from the newer and more progressive universities of the West.

Full of abuse as intercollegiate athletics are, they are essentially sound; they are, indeed, a most potent means for the development of character. The condition into which they have come is very far from being hopeless. It simply marks the present stage in the progress of our colleges from little isolated communities to inter-related communities composing a complex college world. If sometimes we in America are chagrined by the inferiority in spirit of our college athletics to that found in Great Britain, we must remember that English university men have traditions which we never have had and never can have, and that we must work out our own traditions for ourselves.

200,000 miles and over of railway; and of these 200,000 miles, 120,000 miles are controlled by six men. Professor Parsons gave the facts as to this concentration of power in greater detail. There were once 5,000 railway companies in the United States; there are now 2,078, of which 805.only are "independent companies," and most of these are massed in six groups, while with them are affiliated, under their practical control, so large a proportion of the other railways that "the six groups dominate directly about ninetyfive per cent. of the vital mileage of the country, and indirectly dominate nearly all the remaining lines of any importance." Some of the men who control these railroads are at the same time interested in other great industrial enterprises, and use their power to fix rates in the interest of these other enterprises. Some of them manage the roads in the interest of the owners of the propertywho are a minority, though a large and influential minority, of the American people—and avowedly declare it their policy to charge all that the traffic will bear. A few of them recognize a duty toward the general public; but few or none of them put the public interest

A contributor on another page, who needs no other introduction than his own opening paragraph, puts the railroad issue now before the American people in a nutshell in the following sentence: Is it wise to have a Federal Commission authorized to determine a maximum and minimum freight rate (as the Legislatures now determine the maximum passenger rate), or to have rates made and natural markets destroyed by the caprice or the interest of an irresponsible freight agent-appointed, perhaps, by the owner of the trust whose business his railroad must transport?

Those who object that giving Government power to fix maximum and min mum rates may bring terrible evils upon the country should consider the evils actually inflicted by the alternative policy that of a practically uncontrolled private regulation. We here put that alternative policy briefly before our readers.

I. In an address before the Economic Club of Boston last March, Mr. Prouty, of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, said that "we have in this country

tem, can do so. Personal rebates, though not a thing of the past, are less common But the same than they used to be. practical injustice is effected by other methods by discrimination between localities; by raising of rates with the effect, and sometimes with the purpose, of destroying an industry; by giving special rates to the owners of private cars, in which railroad directors have an interest; by dividing freight rates on unfair terms with the owners of private lines. Mr. Prouty is authority for the statement that the Santa Fé, by raising its coal rate from San Antonio to El Paso, put a coal operator at San Antonio out of business. Judge Grosscup is authority for the statement that "there are

instances of arrangements with the great transcontinental lines by which the rates are divided between the switch and the roads in the proportion of onehalf, or one-third and two-thirds, or onequarter and three-quarters," so that the owner of a switch railroad of from onequarter of a mile to two miles and a half in length gets all the advantage of rebate, and practically can drive his competitor out of business.

II. For such inequality and consequent injustice the law at present furnishes no adequate remedy. In the first place, the individual shipper, if he appeals to the courts, has arrayed against him an enormous moneyed interest, fights his cause at great disadvantage, and even if, after long delays and great expense, he wins, his victory is a barren one. For the court can only declare the rate charged to him to be an unjust one, but has no power to determine what a just rate is. It sometimes happens that this inability of the court to fix upon a just rate practically prevents it from overturning an unjust one. Thus, the Illinois Central Railroad was sued by the G. W. Robinson Lumber Company for raising the rates two cents per hundred pounds on lumber in Mississippi to points on the Ohio River and beyond. And the court held that it could not grant any relief, because, in the language of the court, "if it did so, this would in effect fix a maximum rate, and this was not a judicial act which the court could perform." The proposal to leave the railroads without Governmental regulation is practically a proposal to leave the highways of the Nation under the control of half a dozen men, possibly half a score. The proposal to provide no remedy for private or public injustice except an appeal to the courts is a proposal to allow no remedy at all, since the courts can only declare what is unjust, but have no power, and under the Constitution cannot be given power, to determine what is just and to require the railroads to do justice.

III. The President has not proposed as a remedy to confer upon the InterState Commission power to fix ab initio railroad rates for the entire coun

try. It is probably true that no body could do this with equity. The task would be too great, the conditions are too complex. The President's proposal is thus stated by him, and his proposal is so carefully defined that it is difficult to see how it can be misunderstood:

THE INTER-STATE COMMERCE COMMISSION SHOULD BE VESTED WITH THE POWER, WHERE A GIVEN RATE HAS BEEN CHALLENGED AND AFTER FULL HEARING FOUND TO BE UNREASONABLE, TO DECIDE, SUBJECT TO JUDICIAL REVIEW, WHAT SHALL BE A REASONABLE RATE TO TAKE ITS PLACE; THE RULING OF THE COMMISSION TO TAKE EFFECT IMMEDIATELY, AND TO

OBTAIN, UNLESS AND UNTIL IT IS RE

VERSED BY THE COURT OF REVIEW.

Under the law as it now stands a given railroad rate can be challenged and an appeal taken to the courts, and they are clothed with power to declare it unjust and illegal; but this is all they can do. What is proposed is to give to a special tribunal created for that purpose, a tribunal administrative, not judicial, added power to declare what is a just rate and to require such just rate to be substituted by the railroad. No one, so far as we know, has proposed to confer on the Commission any power to act except upon the complaint of some interested party. Certainly the President has not done so; nor has the InterState Commission; nor has the most active advocate of the enlargement of the powers of the Commission, Mr. E. P. Bacon, the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Inter-State Commerce Convention. Mr. Prouty, of the InterState Commerce Commission, describes the policy of the Commission in defining that of the President: "The President's policy simply says that, when the rate has been made, some tribunal shall have power to inquire into the reasonableness of that rate, and to correct it if wrong." Mr. Bacon defines the policy which he and the shippers whom he represents desire to see adopted when he defines what the famous Esch-Townsend Bill does: "It goes no further than to provide that, when rates complained of are found upon hearing to be either unreasonable per se, or discriminative in their effect in relation to different com