In the closing decade of the last century a marked
change in the occupations of college graduates took place,
or rather became almost startlingly apparent. A profession
was no longer the exclusive goal. A new and large area
of occupation had been entered upon under the general
term of business. From the conventional point of view of
354 MY GENERATION
the professions, the colleges were producing the "excess"
graduate.
Comparing the statistics for the first two periods of
fifty years each in the productive energy of Dartmouth
with the thirty years immediately following, which brought
the College to the close of the century, we have this result
— from 1771-1820, graduates entering the professions of
law, ministry, teaching, and medicine, ninety per cent;
from 1821-1870, eighty-six per cent; from 1871 to 1900,
sixty -four per cent. The sharpness of the change is seen
in the further drop in the succeeding decade, the open-
ing decade of the present century, from sixty-four per
cent to fifty-one per cent. The change here noted in re-
spect to Dartmouth was representative of that which was
taking place in all the Eastern colleges, the real signifi-
cance of which was not to be estimated in numbers. The
change meant that the colleges representing a liberal
education were failing to make a responsible connection,
through the lack of a proper intervening training, with
the world of affairs. The interests in that newer world
were quite comparable with those involved in professional
life — banking, corporate administration, and all the prob-
lems incident to the economic development of the coun-
try. It was a confession of the inutility or narrowness of
a liberal education, for the colleges to leave their gradu-
ates in a helpless attitude before their new responsibilities,
or to commit them altogether to the fortune of their per-
sonal initiative. The introduction of so-called "business
courses" into the undergraduate curriculum was evidently
a superficial and confusing treatment of the difficulty.
It was in the attempt to offer some satisfactory solution
of the problem confronting the colleges that the Amos
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 355
Tuck School of Administration and Finance had its origin.
In the specifications attending the gift of the Tuck fund,
provision had been made for the possible uses, in part, of
the income from the fund for "professorships which may
be in the future established in the College proper or in
post-graduate departments, should such be added at any
time to the regular college course." As it had been de-
termined to apply the income of the Tuck fund mainly
to the Department of Economics and kindred depart-
ments, it was now proposed to carry over the instruction
in these departments into advanced courses which should
constitute the basis of a graduate school. I was authorized
by the Trustees to put this proposed action before Mr.
Tuck, to ascertain if it would accord with his understand-
ing of the uses of the Fund. This I did in a letter under
date of December 1, 1899, enclosing a memorandum out-
lining the aim and methods of the proposed school. In
response I received the cablegram — "Letter received.
Fully approve proposed action in all points"; and later by
letter the following endorsement of the plan;
The establishment of the Amos Tuck School of Administra-
tion and Finance has my full approval. The statement which
you make of its purpose and scope is clear and convincing. I
believe that it is just in the line of modern educational require-
ments and I shall be glad to see your plan put into effect.
At a meeting of the Trustees, held June 19, 1900, it was
voted, "that the Trustees establish The Amos Tuck
School of Administration and Finance, on the following
outlines, presented by the President ":
Under the terms of the Amos Tuck Endowment Fund, the
gift by Mr. Edward Tuck, of the Class of 1862, of the sum of
356 MY GENERATION
Three Hundred Thousand Dollars as a memorial to his father,
the Hon. Amos Tuck of the Class of 1835, and a Trustee of the
College from 1857 to 1866, especial provision was made for the
"establishment of additional professorships within the College
proper or in graduate departments." In accordance with this
provision of the endowment fund for additional instruction in
undergraduate and graduate courses, and with the approval of
the donor, the Trustees of Dartmouth College hereby create the
Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance.
First. This school is established in the interest of college
graduates who desire to engage in affairs rather than enter the
professions. It is the aim of the school to prepare men in those
fundamental principles which determine the conduct of affairs,
and to give specific instruction in the laws pertaining to prop-
erty, in the management of trusts and investments, in the
problems of taxation and currency, in the methods of corporate
and municipal administration, and in subjects connected with
the civil and consular service. The attempt will be made to
follow the increasing number of college graduates who have in
view administrative or financial careers, with a preparation
equivalent in its purpose to that obtained in the professional or
technical schools. The training of the school is not designed to
take the place of an apprenticeship in any given business, but it
is believed that the same amount of academic training is called
for, under the enlarging demands of business, as for the pro-
fessions or for the productive industries.
Second. The school is open to those who present a Bachelor's
degree and in special cases to those who are able to pass an ex-
amination which will guarantee an equal fitness for the studies
to be pursued. The courses which are now offered cover two
years of graduate study. If a student is able to present courses
taken as advanced electives in the undergraduate curriculum
which are substantially the same as those offered in the first
year, he will be given standing in the second year. Special stu-
dents may be received for the pursuit of particular courses who
will be given certificates for work actually accomplished, but
who will not receive the full certification or degree of the school.
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 357
Third. The courses of study pursued within the school shall
be chiefly those which lie within the departments of Modern
History, Economics, Sociology, Political Science and Law, to-
gether with the departments of modern languages. In all cases
the work of the school shall represent advanced courses in these
departments. In the first year the courses shall be largely the-
oretical; in the second year they shall represent the application
of theory to particular forms of business so far as practicable.
Fourth. The work of the school shall be carried on by in-
structors in Dartmouth College within the departments above
named, with the assistance of special instructors or lecturers on
definite topics which may be prescribed. In so far as instructors
in the academic department of the College take part in the in-
struction of the school it shall be without extra compensation.
[This specification was later amended to provide in large degree
for separate instructors in the school.]
Fifth. Tuition for the school shall be the same as for the col-
lege, but scholarships given for students in the College shall not
be available for students in the school, except for those who may
be enrolled during the first year both in the College and in the
school.
The school having been organized and preparations
made for instruction the following year, Mr. Tuck supple-
mented his original gift by the transfer of securities for the
erection of a suitable building for the school. Under date
of August 29, 1901, he wrote:
I am now sending you certificates for Five Hundred shares, pre-
ferred stock of the Great Northern Railway Company of Minne-
sota, registered in the name of "The Trustees of Dartmouth
College," to be added to the "Amos Tuck Endowment Fund."
The purpose of this donation is to supply the necessary means
for erecting, equipping and maintaining a building suited to the
uses of the Tuck School of Administration and Finance, and
incidentally for the accommodation of such other kindred de-
partments of the College as the Trustees may deem wise and
appropriate.
358 MY GENERATION
To the correspondence of Mr. Tuck regarding the es-
tabhshment of the school should be added his statement
of the ethical purpose which should inspire alike instruc-
tors and graduates. This statement is inscribed on a
tablet placed midway on the double stairway opposite
the entrance to the building:
In the conduct of the school to which you have done my
father's memory the honor of attaching his name, I trust that
certain elementary but vital principles, on which he greatly
dwelt in his advice to young men, whether entering upon a pro-
fessional or business career, may not be lost sight of in the
variety of technical subjects of which the regular curriculum is
composed. Briefly, these principles or maxims are: absolute de-
votion to the career which one selects, and to the interests of
one's superiors or employers; the desire and determination to
do more rather than less than one's required duties; perfect
accuracy and promptness in all undertakings, and absence from
one's vocabulary of the word "forget"; never to vary a hair's
breadth from the truth nor from the path of strictest honesty
and honor, with perfect confidence in the wisdom of doing right
as the surest means of achieving success. To the maxim that
honesty is the best policy should be added another: that altruism
is the highest and best form of egoism as a principle of conduct
to be followed by those who strive for success and happiness in
public or business relations as well as in those of private life.
In establishing the Tuck School as a school of advanced
instruction, the College took a step in the exercise of the
creative function of liberal education. Once before it had
moved, though not so directly upon its own initiative, in
the same direction. When General Sylvanus Thayer, a
graduate of the class of 1807, known at West Point as
the "Father of the Military Academy," sought for some
definite way of advancing Civil Engineering to the grade
of the professions, he turned to his Alma Mater for aid.
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 359
What he wanted to secure was the breadth and stimulus
of a Hberal education in the furtherance of his purpose.
At his request the College became the "trustee" of the
fund which he had set apart for the endowment of a grad-
uate school. The virtual control of the school was to rest
with a Board of Overseers, first to be appointed by him-
self and then to be self-perpetuating, the President of the
College to be president of the Board. This was in 1874.
The Trustees of the College assented to the arrangement,
which proved to be highly advantageous to both parties.
In 1908, the Trustees recognized the School as consti-
tuting "in fact and substance a post-graduate course or
department of the College."
The success of the Thayer School in helping to carry
out the aim of its founder was in mind when the thought
of a school of like aims in the sphere of Finance began to
take shape. There were, however, two causes which gave
a certain immediacy to the establishment of the Tuck
School — first the urgency of the situation, and second
the willing response of Mr. Tuck to the proposal. These
two causes were the justification, the ample justification,
for the prompt exercise of what I have termed the creative
function of liberal education.
But the broad educational reason for such an invasion
of the business world as that carried out through the Tuck
School, lay in the fact that the higher education was work-
ing very unequally in that unclassified region. The tech-
nical schools were at work for a definite purpose. Their
training created a habit of mind of great value: but there
was need of another habit of mind which might work with
equal definiteness. If there were occupations of high grade
which required the rigidly scientific habit, there were other
360 MY GENERATION
occupations which required the habit of analysis, com-
parison, and coordination. This was the habit requisite to
large success in the economic field. It was by distinction
the habit sought to be produced by a liberal education.
And a further demand of the economic field was for mind
trained in the consideration of the human element in the
practical world. Questions of labor were as much a part of
the economic problem as questions of finance. Modern
science had created the industrial world, it had become a
matter of economic concern to humanize it.
I cannot put by this conception of the creative, inform-
ing, humanizing function of a liberal education without
emphasizing the present need of the continuous exercise
in some form of this function, by those who may be assumed
to know its use. There is a habit of mind among the grad-
uates of our colleges, which fosters too much the idea of
the immunity of a liberal education from the distracting
and disintegrating influences of modern thought and life.
I know of but one way to break up this habit, namely,
for the colleges to follow their graduates with the stim-
ulus of the education of which they may be made more
appreciative than they were in their undergraduate days;
to go in and out among them with the liberating and lib-
eralizing idea which they may never have really under-
stood; to make them feel, it may be, through their own
belated experiences the vital and far-reaching influence
of the liberal education, if it be given the freedom of the
modern world. With this view of present educational ne-
cessities, I read with great interest the recent announce-
ment of President Hopkins of the founding of two ample
lectureships for the special object of stimulating the
intellectual life of the alumni, through the perpetuation
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 361
of the original impulse which sent them to college, act-
ing now in a vastly wider environment. I quote the an-
nouncement from the report in the "Dartmouth Alumni
Magazine" of the exercises at the dinner following the
Commencement of 1917:
I have the privilege of announcing another gift to the College
from one of its most loyal alumni, in the establishment of two
lectureships of major import, designed primarily for the alumni
of Dartmouth College, and open to students of the College or
friends who' may wish to utilize the advantages of the scheme
as proposed. This is made possible through the generosity of Mr.
Henry L. Moore, one of the trustees of the College, and a grad-
uate of the class of '77 now celebrating its fortieth anniversary.
The lectureships will be known as " The Dartmouth Alumni
Lectureships on the Guernsey Center Moore Foundation," and
they are established in loving remembrance of Mr. Moore's son,
a member of the class of 1904, whose sad death occurred early
in his course.
This gift is an extension on Mr. Moore's part of the principle to
which he committed himself more than ten years ago, in accord-
ance with the advice of President Tucker, that great good could
be done the College by the donating of such funds as Mr. Moore
found himself able to give the College for the purpose of its cul-
tural advantage. In accordance with this desire on the part of
the donor, the frequent gifts to the College from him have been
applied to the development of the work in Fine Arts. It is a
logical and profitable extension of such an interest that now
makes available for alumni and friends of the College a cultural
opportunity to sit under leaders of the world's thought, who
may be secured to speak on various themes with which the pur-
poses of the College concern themselves. The tentative plan is
something like this, — that the lectures shall be given annually
by two men of the highest distinction in their respective fields.
They will occur daily, five days in the week, for two weeks, — a
total of ten lectures from each man. It is expected that this will
be an opportunity eagerly seized upon by men as they come to
362 MY GENERATION
understand in regard to it, and working to greater and greater
advantage of the alumni of the College in eliminating the present
anomalous condition, in which the College makes no attempt
whatsoever to perpetuate its cultural influence on its graduates
after the date upon which they receive their diplomas.
Some colleges, placed within large cities, do extension work
in their own communities; and others, administered under
state auspices, render large service to their state constituencies.
Mr. Moore's plan, however, projects an extension work for the
benefit of college graduates, and men whose interests lead them
into these groups. The proposal is based on the argument that,
if the College has conviction that its influence is worth seeking
at the expense of four vital years in the formative period of a
man's life, the College ought to offer some method of giving
access to this influence to its graduates in their subsequent years.
Moreover, the growing practice of retiring men from active
work at ages from sixty-five to seventy, and the not infrequent
tragedy of the man who has no resources for interesting himself
outside the routine of which he has been relieved, make it seem
that the College has no less an opportunity to be of service to
its men in their old age than in their youth, if only it can es-
tablish the procedure by which it can periodically throughout
their lives give them opportunity to replenish their intellectual
reserves.
Mr. Moore's assurance to the trustees has been that he would
be glad to make the income of $100,000 available to the College
for a period of years, for the support of this plan; and if the plan
should prove to have the advantage that it is expected to have,
that he would then transfer the principal to the College, thus
insuring permanency to the project.
VI
Professional and Public Relations during the Presidency
The college presidency is an anomaly among the pro-
fessions. In and of itself it has no professional standing.
Whoever occupies it must furnish his own professional
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 363
guarantees. The multiplicity of academic degrees with
which the average college president is invested has in
this respect no significance. Academic degrees are of three
kinds — the earned degree which defines one professionally;
the honorary degree bestowed presumably for professional
excellence, most happily bestowed when it is a reward for
excellence without the aid of academic training and the
complimentary degree of which college presidents are
made the unhappy recipients as the representatives of
their respective colleges. The custom of the past one or
two decades of making the inauguration of a college pres-
ident the occasion for conferring degrees upon all within
the reach of the particular academic fellowship, so far as
time allows, has ceased to be significant or impressive. It
is a custom which as "honored in the breach" confers
honor upon the college that exercises a becoming self-re-
straint.
It is, of course, an infelicity that there is no authorized
academic approach to a college presidency, not even
through the faculty. Neither teaching nor research can
give the requisite training for administration. There are
indications of the growing recognition of the normal path
to administrative responsibility through some form of
direct administrative training. Examples of the tendency
are to be seen in the recent election of Secretary Hopkins,
though after a short period of executive service elsewhere,
to the presidency of Dartmouth, and of Dean Sills to the
presidency of Bowdoin. Doubtless in due time a college
presidency will evolve or acquire its own professional
standing. Meanwhile the distinguishing feature of a college
presidency in the place allotted to it by courtesy among the
professions is the ground it covers. No profession has the
364 MY GENERATION
same variety of semi-public duties assigned to it or ex-
pected of it. The public expectation is not infrequently
embarrassing as it finds expression in the neatly turned
compliment. In introducing me, soon after my advent at
Dartmouth, as a speaker at the dedication of the new state
library building of New Hampshire, the presiding officer
made use very graciously of the epigram of Macaulay on
Sir William Temple. "I think," he said, "that I may adopt
the words of the brilliant essayist and historian in intro-
ducing to you Dr. Tucker, President of Dartmouth — 'a
man of the world among men of letters, and a man of
letters among men of the world.'" However much I might
have been disposed to disclaim the right to a place in the
historic succession to this epigram, I could not deny its
pertinence as expressing the public estimate of the sup-
posed fitness for the position I had assumed.
When one's professional career is broken in upon mid-
way, through a sudden change in work, it is inevitable that
some unfinished tasks or unfulfilled engagements must be
carried over into the new work. The sudden change from
Andover to Dartmouth found me under certain obligations
of which I could not at once divest myself. I have referred
to the fact that I had been obliged to ask for a year's de-
ferment of my engagement at the Lowell Institute. The
deferred date was reached in the winter of my first year
at Dartmouth. The engagement was for eight lectures at
Huntington Hall on Monday and Thursday evenings of
successive weeks. As I had been unable to make full
preparation in advance, especially in the writing of the
lectures, I found it necessary to absent myself from the
college for a month, taking up my quarters at the Parker
House, where I had become much at home, and devoting
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THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 365
myself with little time for anything else to the continuous
and strenuous work before me. I need hardly say that it
was of absorbing interest. The subject which Mr. Lowell
had chosen — "The Influence of Religion To-day" — I
construed to mean the power of religion to make its in-
fluence felt at a time marked by the partial suspension of
its authority. The lectures were fully reported in the daily
papers. The Boston correspondent of the "Outlook,"
Julius H. Ward, on the staff of the "Herald," gave the
following summary of the course, leading into a discussion
of the treatment of the several topics :
The aim of President Tucker in these lectures has been not to
discuss organized religion and ecclesiasticism, but to recognize
the religious spirit wherever it exists, and to show by significant
illustrations in what direction religious thought is moving and
working in our o^m time. It has been notable, as these lectures
have proceeded, how skillfully Dr. Tucker has unloaded the-
ological baggage and got down to the real point of things. He
escaped at once from the environment of formal religion by
taking a certain point of view. This will be perhaps best seen
by a summary of the titles of the lectures in succession. The first
was on the direction of spiritual influence to-day; the second
was on religion as it expresses itself through the " enthusiasm
for humanity"; the third took up religion as the reformer of
theology, passing beyond its organized forms; the fourth traced
the development and bearings of agnosticism; the fifth traced
the growth and the bearings of secularism; the sixth took up the
present significance of religious toleration; the seventh treated
the reciprocity of religions, and showed the mutual influence of
the diverse minds and races now coming into religious contact;
and the eighth treated of religious unity as waiting the coming
of the full conception of the kingdom of God.
The preparation and delivery of these lectures, though
as I have said a very strenuous piece of work, was to me
366 MY GENERATION
an intellectual stimulus and refreshment, and not without
a certain ad\'antage to the College, in relating it more
directly as an institution to the intellectual life of Boston.
As the "Advertiser" remarked — "Dartmouth has long
been prominent in Boston through her graduates ; now for
the first time it is beginning to be felt through the distinct