States, have not occurred in the history of the University of Texassuch as the propriety of the appointment of lady regents by the governor, or their selection by vote of the people, as joint members, in the interests of coeducation, of the board of regents; the election of all or some members of the board by popular vote; providing for larger boards, as in other States, in order, it is claimed, to prevent cliques, avoid ruts in the management, and get out of difficult situations in university affairs, and in some instances, unfortunately, merely to put such institutions in line with the dominant political element of the State. Independent of such issues, it is not out of place here to suggest, for general information, that new States which have not fully organized their State universities can learn valuable lessons in several important respects, notably as to their endowments and State supervision in the promotion of higher education, by close study of the history of the University of Texas and those of Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and perhaps others, most of which have been elaborately presented in special publications of the Bureau of Education at Washington.

PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS AS POLITICIANS.

There is one thing of which the writer, with all his friendship and interest in the university, feels justified in expressing his disapproval. That is the part taken by students, and in some instances by professors, in politics; and this for the reason that the university is not a partisan but a strictly nonpartisan institution. For the same reason, as it is nonsectarian, no special privilege or partiality for any church should be countenanced, but all be regarded with equal favor in every movement affecting the social organizations connected with it. It is true that students old enough to vote are at liberty to form political clubs, but that does not make it wise for them to do so; and as for students who are minors, they certainly should take no part in club meetings, political conventions, and elections and public demonstrations simply because, if Democrats in their sentiments, the Democratic party, as happens to be the case in Texas, is in the ascendency. The university belongs to the State, to the whole people, and not to any political party, and siding with any party naturally provokes dissatisfaction from all other political organizations. It is idle to argue that such action has its precedents in other universities, for precedents can be wrong and not justify such "new departures" in university affairs.

EDUCATIONAL EXPANSION.

One trouble, perhaps, in educational work has been that up to recent years the South, on account of its slower educational development,

has not been so productive of great educators as the North, nor has it been able to keep up with the North in matters of university extension, or such novel schemes of educational expansion as the recent one of the "Cosmopolitan University," inaugurated by Mr. John Brisben Walker, of the Cosmopolitan Magazine. The authorities of the Texas University, however, are awakening to the more important educational revelations of the day, and, among other measures, propose, in accordance with General Wheeler's suggestion, to expand its educational advantages to Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and eventually perhaps to the Philippines. The Walker scheme of a comparatively inexpensive education and continued instruction to persons of any age or station in life, without the necessity of attending a university away from home or their places of work or business, has been a success because it supplies a great public desideratum-a cheap education to all classes and conditions of the people. Whatever the University of Texas may do, whether in eccentric or concentric orbits, to meet the more general demands for educational service will best promote its success, and in this way it needs just now a fine technological department for male students and an art and music department for the special benefit of the girl students, such as are provided at many Northern institutions. The University of Texas should be as complete for the State's benefit as a national university should be for the educational demands of the whole country. What Mr. Walker expresses as to the objects and success of his novel enterprise is of appropriate interest here to the friends of the university and to all concerned in the work of university expansion or extension of university work:

The educational work of the Cosmopolitan was undertaken with the intention of demonstrating a deficiency in the educational facilities granted by the State. The idea was this:

We educate the child up to the point when it is just about to begin to think. Then we stop. But it is the education received after the student begins to think that is of the most importance to the State. It is this thoughtful study that makes the good citizen, the good husband or wife, the efficient workman, and the desirable neighbor. It is study after leaving the primary schools and colleges that counts most in the affairs of life, because this class of study is done understandingly and usually with a direct end in view.

Why should the State go forward just to this point and then suddenly drop the student upon his own resources? Why should not every man or woman who desires to improve be provided with needed facilities and so encouraged to rise to a higher plane of usefulness to the State?

Prior to the Cosmopolitan's effort there was a prevalent belief that no such class of persons existed. Legislators argued that there could be no reason for provision being made for a class that was nonexistent.

The best way to combat so generally accepted an error was to demonstrate its falsity practically. The Cosmopolitan University was established for this purpose. The first declaration brought an immediate response from the circle of Cosmopolitan readers. Over 21,000 students made application to enter the Cosmopolitan University

the first year. A little effort would have increased the number of students to 50,000, drawn exclusively from Cosmopolitan readers.

No better demonstration could have been made. We know now that there must be a class aggregating close on to a million people anxious for that education for which to-day the State does not provide. Yet the expense of providing for this class of in-the-home education is insignificant in comparison with the more costly methods of primary education.

What should be the outcome of all this?

It is clearly the duty of the National Government to provide a great central university, presided over by the ablest educational minds, to which the students seeking knowledge, but scattered throughout the land in places where the local educational facilities are insufficient or inapplicable to their cases, may turn for guidance and to which they may submit their difficulties.

The Cosmopolitan has undertaken to provide for these for a time, but its means do not permit it to take care of a twentieth part of those who would avail themselves of the help of a national correspondence university.

These ideas are supported not only by the facts demonstrated, but by many of the leading educators of the country; and the time is now for carrying them into execution. It has accordingly been determined to have presented in Congress this winter a bill which will provide for the organization of a national university and its proper maintenance. It shall be under national control, but its government shall be by a board of trustees, nominated one by each of the great universities, free from personal interest and entirely removed from politics. The friends of education in the press, in Congress, among the great universities, and among. the people are asked to give their earnest cooperation.

Dr. Winston points the facts strongly as to the slow development of higher education in Texas in a recent address at Nashville, in which he said:

It can not be denied that the Southern States have failed to make adequate contribution to the literary and scientific wealth of the world. This failure was due, not to lack of individual power or character, but rather to the environment of slavery, and to the false theory that government is intended solely to restrain wrong doing and [not] for the active help of right doing. This environment and this theory for two hundred years prevented public schools and retarded the development of the Southern States in manufactures, in commerce, in agriculture, and especially in literary, scientific, and artistic culture.

The South, freed from the fetters of slavery, is leaping forward with amazing rapidity. The commercial and industrial activity of this generation surpasses that of the hundred years preceding. But the old theory of government remains to hinder public progress and obstruct every improvement.

Education is a public and an economic necessity. The struggle between the North and the South was at bottom economic. It was a contest between educated labor and labor uneducated. The same struggle is going on to-day and will go on forever. The State that lets her children grow up uneducated or half educated, that fails to sharpen their intellects, inspire their souls, develop their consciences, strengthen their bodies, and train their hands, condemns them in this age of universal and ceaseless competition to lives of poorly-paid labor and social unhappiness. There is need of the best culture that can be provided, extending from the kindergarten to the university, and free to all the youth of every community. There is nothing socialistic in this theory. It is based upon the common sense and the progressive spirit of the American people.

COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY RELATIONS.

The Agricultural and Mechanical College, though claimed to be "the technical branch" of the university, has its separate board of managers, acting entirely independently of the university regents, and publishes its own catalogues of students, whose names never appear upon the university registers. This and other anomalous conditions in the government of the two institutions induced Governor Roberts, in a message to the forty-seventh legislature in 1882, to suggest dispensing with separate boards and enlarging the number of regents, so as to incorporate the college directors and the regents together in one body.

There is no use for two boards. A positive disadvantage might often result from a want of harmony between them. With a common control by the board of regents over all of the branches, and provision of ample means to support them all and build them up gradually together according to the relative importance of each one, no strife for the advancement of one to the prejudice of the other would be allowed to exist, and each could have its due share of promotion according to the means at command and as would best forward the interests of the country.

The regents themselves strongly presented this anomaly as to the two institutions by stating that while the college at Bryan is entitled to say that it is the technical branch of the university at Austin, the university at Austin is not entitled to say that it has a technical branch at Bryan. They add:

If the college at Bryan is a branch of the university, the university certainly has a branch at Bryan, and the regents, as the governing body of the university, should control and regulate this branch. An independent board as the governing body of a dependent branch is a contradiction in terms-an absurdity and element of mischief.

On the other hand, the college directors contended that

The matter involved is a mere question of administration and not of art. If the college can be more successfully operated by a board responsible directly to the legislature, and more representative of its interests, then a mere question of appropriation of funds should not be allowed to interfere with its success. As now, both boards can biennially present their estimates to the legislature, and with a full knowledge of both wants and resources the legislature will appropriate from the university fund the amount to which this college may be justly entitled.

ELECTION OF A UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT.

No action resulted from Governor Roberts's recommendation as to separate boards of management, and it remains that the college authorities, as well as the legislature, seem indisposed to make any change in the college and university relations. Singularly enough, too, the regents as a body had never, up to the time of the governor's recommendation, met at the college; nor have they since, till in December, 1896, and then only in response to the invitation of the college