These political features in the board of regents materially affected the faculty. For instance, if there were among the professors one who illustrated his lectures or class-room work by examples of the justice and reasonableness of free trade, he acted advisedly for his tenure if he lapsed into silence when the Republicans were in power. But if, on the other hand, he advocated protection instead of free trade, while the Democrats held State offices--which happened only by unusual fate--it was prudent for the professor to hold his tongue. Upon every question of the day, and even in presenting conditions of life in ancient days, as, for instance, in Greece, the faculty were restrained, or at least threats were rendered. The petty politics of an agricultural democracy acted upon academic life in precisely the same way that autocracy and clericalism in Germany have affected its university faculties. In Hesperus professors have been dismissed without any excuse, apparent reason, or apology, because of a change of administration at the State capital and a hungry party’s coming into power. In various callings, or lines of life, the individual may be, nay, often is, wantonly sacrificed, but surely one of the saddest results of political shystering is the cheapening of the professor’s chair, and rendering that insecure for the permanence of which active life and its plums have been yielded. Hinging immediately upon the political machine are the rights of and recognition of women in university government and pedagogic work. The fact that two or three women were the strenuous initiators of the institution has been forgotten, and no longer is there faith that “The woman’s cause is man’s; they rise or sink Together.” With all its coeducation, Hesperus has not yet evolved--as have New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin--to women regents or trustees. The people have not yet awakened to the justice of demanding that, in a State institution open to young women as well as to young men, women as well as men shall be in its government and direction.