lugged shamefacedly through the legislature, clinging to the skirts of a magnificent provision for the higher cultivation of the fields. And so, indeed, the university administration does maintain on its own demesnes a little ground room for the humanities just as the game commission preserves among the corn a little refuge for the prairie chickens, as a barely tolerated relic of feudal privileges. But, argue the critics, the immediate determination of the educational character of the State university is by the high schools and the stress of their influence is in precisely the same direction as that of the taxpayers.
This is again to attack the democratic principle and to deny the power of the State university to exercise any high intellectual leadership. If it were in fact and in theory the head of the system of public education, then, one might admit it need not depair of its longest hopes and its most ambitious dreams, despite the indifference of the tax-payers. Actually empowered with their will, entrusted with their educational destiny, it would think for itself and for all its members, bring its subordinate parts into harmony with its great design, set its own high standards of excellence, and see to it that no good securable by private means should be
