244
��Gifts to Colleges and Universities.
��[April,
��Harvard, bears the name of its found- er. Henry W. Sage and Ezra Cornell contributed more .than a million to the endowment of Cornell University. The gifts of Amasa Stone to the Adelbert University at Cleveland aggregate more than half a million. Since 1864, Ario Pardee has given to Lafayette College more than five hundred thousand dol- lars ; and the donations of John C. Green to Princeton aggregate toward a million of dollars. Alexander Agassiz, worthy son of a worthy father, has donated more than a quarter of a mill- ion of dollars to the equipment of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and Anatomy which his father founded. Joseph E. Sheffield endowed the scien- tific school at New Haven which bears his name. The late Nathaniel Thayer, of Boston, contributed about two hun- dred and fifty thousand dollars to Har- vard. Among various institutions in the West, South, and North, Mrs. Vale- ria G. Stone, of Maiden, Massachusetts, has, within the last five years, distributed more than a million of dollars. George Peabody's benevolences amount to eight millions of dollars, about one fourth of which forms the Southern Educational Fund, and about one eighth endowed the Peabody Institute at Baltimore. John F. Slater gave a million of dollars to the cause of Southern education. The amounts contributed to. college and university education in the last ten years mav be thus summarized : *
1872 $6,282,461
1873 8,238,141
1874 1,845054
1875 2,703,650
1876 2,743,348
1877 1,273,991
1878 1,389,633
- Compiled from various Reports of the United States
Commissioner of Education.
��1879 $3,878,648
1880 2,666,571
1881 4,601,069
In the nineteen years since the close of the war, many institutions have been founded with munificent endowments, as Johns Hopkins, Smith at Northamp- ton, Wellesley ; and many more institu- tions have vastly increased their re- sources. Harvard's property has per- haps tripled in amount ; Princeton's income, under the presidency of Dr. McCosh, has greatly enlarged ; Yale's revenue has also received large addi- tions. Colleges in every State have been the recipients of munificent gifts.
Notwithstanding, however, these be- nevolences, most colleges are in a con- stant state of poverty. Indeed, it may be said that every college ought to be poor ; that is, it ought to have needs far outrunning its immediate means of supplying them. Harvard is frequently making applications for funds, which appear to be needed quite as much in Cambridge, as in the new college of a new town of a new State. At the present time, colleges stand in peculiar need of gifts for general purposes of administra- tion. Funds are frequently given for a special object, as the foundation of a professorship. But the amount may be inadequate. It is not expedient to dechne the gift. Properly to endow the new chair, therefore, revenue must be drawn from the general funds, which thus suffer diminution. Donltions are of the greatest advantage to a college, which are free from conditions relative to their use.
The demand of institutions of learn- ing for endowment receives special emphasis at the present by the decreas- ing rate of interest. It is difficult, every college treasurer knows well, so to invest funds with safety as to cause them to
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