and young women are here at work in the higher walks of educa
tion! There are, of course, in addition to these, the millions of
students of our high schools and our many academies and techni
cal schools. In the woman's colleges alone there were 2,114
instructors and 22,949 students. Adding these to the students in
the 451 colleges, we have a grand total of 163,002.
The property of these colleges, in their buildings, libraries,
laboratories, museums, etc., was $109,078,100, nearly $ I 0,000, -
000. That was in 1892. I know of one institution that has
received nearly five millions since that time. There is probably
to-day belonging to these colleges $120,000,000. Aside from this
property of which I have spoken, they had funds out at interest
to support them amounting to $94,500,759 (now over $1 . 00,000,-
000); making a grand total of $203,378,858 of property invested
for their use and support.
If we assume that one-tenth of the college students graduate
each year, we shall have 7,700 men and women marching forth
to join the educated ranks of liberally educated people every
summer. I think that one-tenth is too small. The graduating
classes have to suffer, of course, from those that drop out from
sickness or failure in the earlier years of the course. Counting
one-sixth as graduates, the number would be over 12,000 a year.
This may seem a magnificent re-inforcement of the educated
classes, and one may ask what are they all going to do; but if we
take account of the 65,000,000 of our population, it is less than
one graduate for five thousand people—one graduate to take
the place of the falling, and to recruit the ranks of educated
men, teachers, preachers, lawyers, law-makers, physicians,
engineers and others that are doing the great scientific and educa
tional work of the world. It is too few. We ought to have
ten times as many for the good of the country. ,
Now to the history of this class of institutions. This splendid
array of colleges and universities is the gift of Christianity.
Mainly, the actual donations of Christian men and women. Four
teen out of every fifteen of them are to-day sustained by Christian
denominations, and, of those that were started as Christian
,schools but now hold the position of Harvard and Yale as State
universities, they were at the beginning the gifts of Christian
men. And our true State universities also owe their existence
mainly to the Christian sentiment of statesmen in our National
and State Legislatures. I chanced to know (I shall quote from
The Free Lance
[ MARCH,