Kansas University Weekly
THE ONLY OFFICIAL AND AUTHORIZED WEEKLY PUBLICATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS.
FLFTY CENTS A YEAR.
LAWRENCE, KANSAS, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1897.
VOL. V. NO. 1.
FORMALLY OPENED. The Term's Work Commenced Yesterday.
Largest Audience Ever Assembled in Lawrence for a Similar Occasion Will White's Masterly Oration on Western Education.
The exercises in connection with the opening of the term's work each successive year have always been well attended but the attendance this year broke the record. Although every chair in the hall was occupied and the aisles and entrances packed with those standing many turned away unable to find even standing room. The fact that the greater part of the audience was composed of University students and not town people, was very noticeable.
It had been intended to begin the exercises at 10 o'clock but the audience was so long in assembling that it was fully 10:30 before the audience was called to order. The appearance of Chancellor Snow and Mr. White was the signal for prolonged applause.
While nearly everybody had heard of Mr. White many of the audience had never seen him and there was much curiosity to behold the man who became famous ia a day by an article entitled "What's the matter with Kansas." Chancellor Snow prefaced his introduction of the speaker of the occasion with a few remarks on the prospect of the coming year. He spoke in substance as follows: "It is with pleasuae that I greet this—the largest audience ever in attendance at the opening exercises of the University year in the thirty-two years of its existence. The wave of business prosperity which has just rolled over our state finds its first fruits in an increased attendance at our educational institution, the University of Kansas will this year surpass all previous records in the size of the student body but this will constitute the least element of success. The quality of the student body is of more importance than quantity. With this in view the faculty have been constantly increasing the requirements for admission, bearing in mind the fact that the University must keep in connection with the preparatory schools which serve as connecting links." The Chancellor's speech was several times heartily applauded, especially his reference to the returning wave of prosperity. After making a number of announcements in regard to the recitations for the remainder of the day, the chancellor introduced Mr. White in the following well chosen remarks: "Seven years ago the University parted company with one of its talented students who has since won distinction for himself in the fields of journalism and literature. This young man we now have with us, and I take great pleasure in introducing Mr. Wm. A White, who will address you on the subject, "A Western Education." Mr. White is rather short in stature and quite stout, with light hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion. At first he appeared somewhat embarrassed, but he soon warmed up to his subject and was perfectly at ease, speaking with a clear strong voice, so that it could be distinctly heard in all parts of the house. He had an earnest, forceful way of speaking that carried a conviction of sincerity to the hearts of his hearers. A pleasant and infectious smile always prepared the audience for a humorous simile or remark. Those who have heard any of his stories found his thoughts quite characteristic. The following is his address in full:
During the thousand years last past most of the world's history worth recording has concerned the development of the peoples who have lived upon a belt of land and sea stretching from Berlin, through London to San Francisco. In this zone lies the west. Herein industrial civilization has achieved better success than elsewhere on the globe. Herein federated government has triumphed more signally over tribal warfare—a barbarian relic—and here the individual is more surely archived in his fortunes than he is in any part of the earth beyond the boundless. This imagined parallelogram. The western people seem to be to be the ark of the covenant—the covenant between God and man to make the world better. Their heritage seems to be the ultimate establishment of peace on earth and good will among men. It is a magnificent bequest, one that should draw us together, nation to nations, as brother to brothers. One branch of this family should not boast of its variations from other branches, as the parallelogram exalted his piety. We of the
new west should not glorify our newness, nor should the old west make a virtue of antiquity. Yet we of the new—we of the newest west—we who dwell here in the Mississippi valley, we may well afford to be generous in our estimate of our kinsmen. If they seem insular, ignoring our accommodation, we must map of civilization, it profits us nothing to meet misinformation with anger, provincialism with provincialism.
This university should be a beacon set upon a hill. The progress of the world depends in a considerable degree, upon the reasonable and catholic view of life, which each student here takes back with him to his home community. You are the men and women who will influence Kansas thought, and thereby western thought, during the next three decades. Much of the strength of the new west lies in the fact that its broad fertile lands are occupied by liberal, intelligent people. The danger that threatens us is vanity. Here in this great valley we are in the breakers of a westward moving wave that has carried the world's progress for ten centuries. We are the descendants of a race of pioneers. For two-score generations our ancestors have been felling forest, plowing strange seas, and turning the furrows of new lands. We have the blood of brave men in our veins—the blood of conquerors. Blood tells. When the last western forest had fallen by the axes of our fathers, when the sea was encased by our father's attacks, and if the western island were taken by the plows, the energy in our blood made us—the children of conquerors—restless in the walks of peace. So we set about to conquer time. And cities have sprung from the fields in a day. We fought with space, and we defy its law, while we talk across a thousand miles and hurl our messages over mountains and under rivers. We have abolished the wilderness. We have led civilization into the desert. We have melted our fathers swords and cannon, and we have moulded therefrom the marvelous machine of commerce that is as pittiless as war. These things have we done, here on these plains of the new west. In our last contest, battling with time and space, we seem to have conquered more in three decades, more than our fathers conquered in as many centuries. The glow of victory is upon us—the glow that has turned to ashes, how many million times since it burned the cheeks of Babylon.
If drunk with sight of power we loose,
Wild tongues that have not the Tree in awe.
Such boasting as the Gentiles are,
Coleridge broads without the law
Otterless breathers with him,
Lord God of hosts be with his yet-
We have not solved the problem of living, we remain the problem of the new vies and the old west can give to theigma no adequate answer. Each of you people here today who seems to be the center of a vast circle in the universe, is of consequence to the world only as he yields up the measure of his years to the right living. We are as corals on the reef. Some lay when countless millions of good lives made the wall of justice between men secure it will curb the wave of wrong. Then truth which is the will of God, will prevail. Then the problem of living will be solved and men be proud. But now the engines we have made, the peace we have established, the intelligence that we have spread broadcast, — what are these things in themselves? Have we elected an intrinsic value, then contrast with a crown. What worth has the prince berown coil more than the smoked rocks of the cave man if each device gives heat to men who have no mercy in their hearts? What are newspapers, books, literature that we should bow before them if they only multiply modern instances of man's inhumanity to man and furnishes us with nice excuses for it? What is this field thing in truth education—but a tool in truth's mighty workshop—a kind of brain chiseller, a convolutional tool, but only a tool, a powerfu
And that brings us to the meat of the matter: It is of no moment to consider what education has been, nor what it is now in China or Arabia, or in any other dead lands. It is the education which will complete the evolution of this western race, the education which will so
form the living active brains in the occipital, that future generations may find the problem of life solved here,—this education—this western education—if you please is a subject that has vital interest or us. As this education is but means to in end, it seems to me that education should be defined as the most practical preparation for conduct that will get the best happiness from the life that is now, while it returns the most happiness to one's fellows. This definition must be subject to amendment and debate as the world moves on. For education changes with the times. The philosopher of yesterday may the fool of tomorrow. The ancient Persian learner to draw the bow, to house horses, to train the trunk and to an old figure here. Let us hope that a graduate of this university would walk more easily in the world a thousand years hence. This hope—if we have defined education wisely—should have reason in it. For you young people should be ahead of the van. The graces of mind, and soul, and heart, which should shine through your countenances, should be those graces which will make the world much better and brighter, when they are reflected from the average man. The educated man should be a hopeful prophecy—even unto the third and the fourth generations. I you are not that—you students of Kansas university—no matter what feats of memory you have perform, no matter what knowledge you possess, no matter what accomplishments your claims to education are fraudulent. If the quickening brain does not soften the heart then our system of education is worthless. For it is not in the current that is pushing life onward. It may be heresy, yet I am forced to the conviction that an alumnus of Kansas state university might have spent the four years which he devoted to the usual university course more profitably to himself and to the world rolling stones with Sisylphus, if he cannot find another's heart ache as exactly as he finds a star. It is not education of the head that will solve the problem of living and make justice prevail. The day has come when you have performed some important human being entering the struggle for existence, if he would attain the most satisfactory results, shall cultivate his sympathies. Education is no long "base authority from other's books." It is that and something more—something more worth the while, something that will make the life of man more certainly worth living. One leaves the skeletons of his life in the coral reef, only when he has lived that well—only when he has lived it approximating the perfection possible in his age. A calamitous error is often made by the teachers of that form of individual selfishness known as altruism. In teaching the strong man to surrender his surplus for his own spiritual good, he acquired the belief into the popular mind that the surrender from the strong should be demanded chiefly, not solely, to perpetuate the weak. No more dangerous doctrine was ever preached. An order built upon this theory of life would produce moral, mental and physical atrophy. "Trust in myself" says Emerson. "Every heart vibrates to that iron string." Self reliance is the foundation of our western political institutions. It should be the basis of western education, it should furnish you, young men and women, with a store of dignified courage which you may spread among the people by precept and by example that the western civilization may not perish from the face of the earth. No lesson is needed more generally by American education than the individual responsibility. There has been no time in past history when young men and women could look life in the face and say as you can. "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." And yet the notion is gaining headway, particularly in western America, that some nefarious influence, some law, some custom, some intangible hoodoo, works out a person's failure, while diabolical luck brings success. This superstition should be met by reason. If it is not rooted out speedily the rule of the demagogue, who thrives in all political parties, and in all religious organizations, will be established. It is under the cloud of such a danger that we have a right to look to Kansas state university for the light. The entire university plan will help widen the vital points of difference between being your brother's keeper, and clamoring for some richer brother to divide his wealth and keep you. While so many people are running up and down the earth demanding of a man that he love his neighbor as himself, it is a bit odd that some class in human science studying reform the laboratory plan has failed to note what an overwhelming majority of the doctrinares of this altruistic philosophy, are ready to immolate themselves and act as neighbor, while they repress heroically any consuming desire they may feel to officiate as lover. A long felt want would cease哭ing if some college would support a chair of Christian sociology with a book that would help widen the text "To him who hath shall be, and from him who hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath." Occasionally this same professor might put in a felicitous hour with the primary class explaining that when Christ told the rich young man to go and sell his goods and distribute his wealth among the poor, Christ was trying to reach an immortal soul by making that young man unselfish. The injunction was not given for the benefit of the poor. Christ didn't say to the bystander "If this fellow doesn't divide you shall make him." They were not told that they had the slightest right, title or interest legal or
moral in the rich young man's estate. By exemplifying the vanity of riches Christ was trying to teach us the spiritual suicide of greed. Yet where does he say that any human law is powerful enough to stop it? Therefore we should know that while faith in riches is a vain thing, faith in legislatures and congresses, to accomplish any lasting and substantial good, is a vexation of spirit. It is not laws that this world needs, it is the elimination of selfishness in the men of all classes and conditions. In the case of small means usually covetous as the slave or millionaire who gives us such distress, merely magnifies the spirit of aggrandizement in the world about him. He has larger powers of meanness than we have—that is all. The hated plutocrat is just as selfish as the humble reporter. Aristodes was no better than Cleon and probably no worse. The attempt to wipe out the evils following selfishness by curbing the plutocrats' greed with law, so long as he does not violate the simple common laws, will be as futile as an attempt to becalm the ocean, by pouring oil upon the big waves while the little waves rage on. All the legislatures and congresses on the globe assembling together, cannot better condition that now exist while the greedy man lives in the farmer and hired man, finds in the farmer, and the storekeeper has to outwit in the hired man. This greed works wrong. It accomplishes the ends of injustice. No one can deny this. Yet it is in the blood of men. It cannot be legislated out. It must be educated out. Purify the blood.
We Kansas people call ourselfs, and we without reason, pioneers in western thought. But where is our reason? What have we done? Count over the achievements of Kansas, and the one that transcends all others is the school system of the state. It is our greatest glory—it, more than our hogs, more than our corn, more than our long horned steers, more than our statesmen living and dead, more than wheat, more than our history, gives us a reason for our pride. And our very pride is God's voice whispering in the heart of our family's goo-goo environment. We are at the head of the procession. We have the magic stone that will do the world's miracles. The establishment of one school like this upon these western prairies will bring about justice far more surely and in fewer years, than will the slaughter of a million oppressor of the poor. So long as the weak and the strong exist there will be oppression, but I assume that it is the purpose of the university to make the percent of the weak,—the ignorant, the violent, the vicious—smaller year by year, while more teachers and students than what are here for friends—to grow strong in mind, in soul, in heart, that with our very strength gentility—in the new fashioned meaning of the word—may come to us. You, who are students here, if you come following the tendencies of the times,—are not here merely to acquire the tricks of trade, to master the details of a profession, to discover, by some hook or crook the secret of making money. If there is any fault in modern education, it is its tendency to make mere machines. If you come here to fit yourselves to make money—go home—the better are places to catch the knack of business, the easier the business to make, you have here to learn how to make a living, which is an entirely different procedure from that making money. The truth is that the man or woman who gets the best happiness back to his fellows, who really makes a living, does not live to make money. Any fool can make money, most fools can squander it. Many fools can board it. The primary object of an education should be to instruct men and women in the gentle art of spending money after they have earned it. It is not a simple matter, when one think of the joy one may bring, the tears that come, the need to give the worry, the wisdom one may see in an open book, the beauty one may conjure from a printed page—each with one humble American dollar, it is small wonder that the intelligent man should ask for more light before he executes his trust and parts with that which Providence has lent to him. So long as there are people in the world who forget that their talents are only evidences of their obligations to others—so long as the accumulation of wealth for the sake of wealth, and not for the good that wealth can do, remains the chief end of man, as it seems the only way
If we are beginning to understand the truth, the world must be growing better. Indeed we are growing
better. You who have gathered here today assemble in a cause as holy in your time as that which called the knights of the Cross to Jerusalem. The simple rites with which these doors are thrown open, begins a work which should mean to the world more than does the crowning of a king. With you, young men and women of Kansas university, is left the answer to the question: Shall this ceremony be consecrate to God, or shall it be an empty show—on a pagan holiday. Your work here, your lives when you shall leave these walls, shall prove the folly or the wisdom of your pilgrimage after knowledge. You should work, not because the night is coming, faith—the evidence of a day that is coming. Faith—the evidence of things not seen! Faith—the substance of hopes for. What a strange order, what a beautiful order shall prevail in the day that shall be, when the mill of education has taken greed from the human heart, when men shall toil for the good they can do with the rewards of their labor. They shall master the science of getting only that they may practice the art of giving.
The free school, the free library, the free hospital—all monuments to softening hearts, signs of good will among men—they are but shadows of coming events. Perhaps, if we who are here this morning live well and nobly, in the sunset of our day, we may tip-toe and peer through the radiant clouds and catch some hint of the castles of tomorrow. Then we may exclaim with Browning's Friar:
Oh, oh!
I makes me mad, and what men shall do.
And live in our graves. This world's no blot
for no black; it means intensely, and means
tood. It means is meaning, my meat and drink."
General Athletic Notes.
Tom Hester, who has been the staunch little full back of K. U., for three years, took the afternoon train Wednesday for Harvard, where he expects to enter the law department. He may also pay some attention to athletics, but has not definitely decided in regard to this. Hester had many friends who hoped that he would remain here another season.
Shorty Hamil is running for township trustee of Wakarusa township. He will doudless make a hole in the ranks of his opposition.
A cousin of Kinzie, who played ball on the never defeated team, has entered school and will try for the team. He has played some before
Teas, who was a second eleven man last year, will line up for practice this year with good prospects.
A federal court injunction might possibly stop Walker's talk on football and K. U.'s prospects, but nothing short of this will do it.
There is a rumor around that "Cussin" Smith, of Hiawatha, expects to return this fall.
Jones, who played substitute on K. U. last year, enters Kansas City University Medical this fall, and will play with that team.
It is reported that the president of Missouri university has said that ball at M. S. U. was not a decided success last year. Well, 80-o was a bad ratio; that's a fact. Dale Gear, who had been signed for the season by Cleveland, is now one of Kansas City's regular pitchers. C. A. Burney, last year's football mana-
Manager Reed has been on the Topeka State journal during the summer.
C. A. Burney, last year's football manager,
has a law office in Kansas City, Mo
Changes at Training Quarters.
There will be a number of changes at North college this year. The training table will be conducted there as usual but in addition the men who have a prospect of making the regular team will sleep there as well. More than the usual attention will be shown the men in regard to their diet and rest and there will be strict requirement in regard to habits There will be another cook this year and Manager Reed will be steward of the club. "Doc." Palmer will not be here, his services having been dispensed with. At present the quarters are being thoroughly cleaned and renovated. The table will be started some time next week.
Suits $15. Pants $4.
AT —
O. P. LEONARD,
FINE TAILORING.
735 Mass. st.
Lawrence, Kan.