agriculture taught at the State College will be duly mingled with populism, and whatever benefit that can confer on the community at large will be duly reaped. That some benefit is expected may be inferred from a report made by the board after they had secured a new professor of political economy, in which they expressed themselves as follows: "It is not a lack of industry or unfavorable methods of farming, or the unfavorableness of the climate which have caused the widespread and ever-increasing poverty among the agricultural and laboring classes. The unremitting toil of the farmer, in which sons and daughters take part, even during childhood, has indeed yielded him large quantities of grain, great numbers of cattle, hogs, horses, and other domestic animals. He has produced enough of the useful and necessary things of life that, with fair, equitable exchange, would bring prosperity in place of poverty, comfort in place of humiliating drudgery, and content and patriotism in place of unrest and dissatisfaction." The trouble, then, is not that the farmer has not plenty of grain and animals, but that he can not exchange them on the terms he would wish for other things. Who are the people that are holding on to the other things, demanding such prices for them that trade is either impossible or very one-sided? Is it the cotton manufacturer, or the boot and shoe manufacturer, or the cabinetmaker, or the manufacturer of plows and other farm implements? We do not think any of these would acknowledge the impeachment, for if there is anything they are anxious to do it is to sell, and the prices they ask were never so low as they are to-day. We should like very much to know what remedy Professor Will would suggest in the premises. Is it not the fact that what to-day is considered poverty would a couple of generations ago have been considered comfort? Upon another page of the Journal of Sociology, in an article by the editor, Prof. Albion W. Small, we read that "the toiling millions can buy with their wages more comforts than they ever could before," but that "the individual laboring man is haunted by the thought that he may any day lose his job." Well, that is where the farmer has an advantage; he is not in danger of losing his job, and, according to Professor Small, he can get more for his money than he ever could before. He may get less for his grain than formerly; but, on the other hand, he has much less labor both in producing it and in bringing it to market.
We do not propose, however, to discuss questions of political economy in these columns. The question which seems to us full of grave interest is, how far the party control of college teaching is destined to proceed. The trouble, of course, is not entirely new. In protectionist states there is but little "liberty of prophesying" for free-trade professors; but the case is more serious where parties, in the interest of their own supremacy, begin to impose the teaching of doctrines that touch the deepest foundations of society. All political control, however, in such matters is bad. The only way to have great teachers is to seek out men who have profoundly studied their several subjects, and whose disinterestedness in expounding them is beyond question. Such men may commit errors, but they will give inspiration and will so educate the judgment of their pupils as to make them incline to sound and reasonable views. He who is teaching by prescription will never each with conviction. Truth does not need to be prescribed; it prescribes itself if it gets the chance. The greatest enemy of truth is organ-
