our colleges and universities will find it hard to believe that the old academic ideals and traditions of well supported institutions, their scientific honesty and earnest devotion to broad public service, are to be cheaply bought by gifts of half a million or more from the _nouveau riche_. There is such a thing as loyalty to the small gifts often made with the highest motives and the greatest sacrifices by generations long since dead. Few institutions desire to disregard this sentiment, and no institution can disregard it with impunity. Finally there are the great state institutions of the country, maintained almost wholly by taxation and hence free from any corrupting influence that large endowments might exercise. There can be no doubt that the possession of these two fundamentally different kinds of economic support is a great safeguard to the independence of university instruction in the United States. No country is more blatant in asserting its _Lehrfreiheit_ than Germany, but there the exclusive reliance of universities upon state support, coupled with the tremendous strength of government, makes necessary very considerable modification of the Teutonic boast of absolute academic freedom. To be sure state institutions in the United States have been charged at times with similar subservience to legislatures and political leaders. Whatever perversion of this sort may have occurred it was at least not turned to the advantage of corporate misdoing. Indeed it probably had a directly opposite and strongly demagogic trend. Fortunately our state universities are becoming so powerful, so well fortified by high and honest traditions, so beloved by great and rapidly growing bodies of influential alumni that the days of their dependence upon political favour are well nigh over. It is now beyond all doubt that they are destined to a career of immense usefulness to our democracy, and it seems highly probable that they will overtake, if they do not ultimately excel, the great endowed institutions of the country. If the latter should ever show themselves subject to the influence of predatory wealth the development of well supported public universities should supply the necessary corrective. At the present time, however, a strong presumption of the general devotion of both classes of institutions to the public welfare is afforded by the fact that no recognisable distinction exists between the general doctrines of economics, political, and social science as taught in endowed schools on the one hand and in state schools on the other.