The University does much for the locality, not alone in training boys who become skilled men, but also in training girls who become. the women of the community. The influence of the university is felt by the locality in many ways, not alone through her technical men, but through her professional and business men, -an influence that is greater than is realized by many of our people. These are the men who have to do with our health, who govern and direct the public improvements, who plan and superintend the waterworks, the lighting and heating plants, the transportation facilities, the public playgrounds, parks, streets and the manifold municipal activities in which every up-to-date city is engaged. The locality depends upon the chemist and bacteriologist to tell its people of the purity of the water and its possible pollution, to furnish us with examination of the foods we consume and the milk and beverages that we drink, to give us reports of the fertility and condition. of the soil and the best methods of destroying noxious growths and insects. To the engineer in the various ramifications of his profession as municipal, hydraulic, sanitary, bridge, railroad, mechanical and electrical engineer is the locality indebted not only for the rapid strides in human progress that have been made in the last twenty-five years, but for the multitudinous trifles of comfort and luxury which affect the well being and happiness of each and every member of a locality. The university confers benefits upon the locality through the medium of her graduates and also through her professors, who are in almost daily consultation with, and who are advising the officials of municipalities in the solution of the many problems of civic life. Thus the university with her laboratories, open to the public generally for the testing of waters, soils and materials for construction, and offering advice based on the results of such examination, becomes a direct factor in the progress of every municipality and locality. ADDRESS THE HONORABLE JAMES HAMILTON LEWIS I come to bring you the felicitations and encouragement of the most representative American city of the world-Imperial Chicago. Yet in my song of gladness I sound a note of sadness. The great city is the graveyard of literary learning. The refinement of letters is lost in the heaps and debris of the mill and the factory. The song of beauty is smothered in the shriek of the whistle. and the clang of the bells. The speeding racer upon the trade track is wrapt and absorbed in the push and shove for place as he plunges to the wire for the prize of gold. His is the glory of wealth and the grandeur of material achievement. To him there is no beauty in the crown of laurels, no victory in the wreath of bay. He forgets where it was "Ilissus rolled his whispering streams," or from where "Parnassus fount ran the fluids of perfect life." His is the magnificence of the constructor who builds with the hands. He leaves to the dreamer the castle built with the beauty of a thought and polished in the perfume of an ecstasy. Still, the city and the college are wedded in the bond of mutual dependence-one and inseparable. The genius which uplifts from the earth to the clouds the steepled wonders of architecture was born in the breath of the educated life. The master of the mysteries of manufacture brewed his secrets from the alchemy of the college laboratory. The financier, whose manipulations of the money changes bewilder the mind and startle the body into revolutions and rebellion, wooed his magic art. from the winding college labyrinth. The profound man of civic accomplishment and material development borrowed his guide of action and chart of achievement from the scrolls of learning and the parchment of college records. He may have been unconscious of the mother of his attributes, but was no less indebted to education as the source and birthplace of his profound creations. It has become something of a popular theme to indulge the expression that a college education is no longer necessary to a business man's welfare, nor an advantage to the man of affairs who destines the course of great cities. Lately two eminent projectors of the success of the material world have enunciated these views. One, a distinguished and successful manufacturer in the city of Chicago, has written a book to prove that an education is not necessary to a manufacturer's success; the other, a famous iron master, who has built an armor plate for our national navy, has repeated this doctrine in public address. Let it be understood this is not new. As we contemplate these views, it is of passing interest to recall that Seneca has occasion to tell us something of two characters, the same who have lately been brought to our attention by the author of Quo Vadis,-Seneca gives us the dialogue between Petronius and Vicinius. Note it. Petronius says: "There goes (referring to one who has lived in the world of letters) a scholar. He has been to the colleges in Greece and has not land enough to bury himself. College education, I say, is a great disadvantage to business. Behold me! There is not a bird which, flying all day, can go beyond the lands which I own from this point. Ah, I say, land for me; learning for him." It appears to me as an expression of folly for one to claim that success in any form of scientific achievement or material development is not necessarily aided, if not born, from education. As well might one who dips water from a vessel near by, to put into a boiler for the purpose of generating steam, announce that it was unnecessary to know anything concerning the manner of drawing water, unconscious in such statement that if there had not been those before him who had drawn the water, he would not have it to convert into steam and power. So, too, had there not been the forerunners with knowledge and science to present the material or the thought to the practical man for its adoption and use, he would not have so moulded or shaped it so as to have produced its material results or financial reward. There is nothing of today that is not of the yesterday in some form or shape. Patrick Henry stated the truth when saying "We have no lamp to guide our feet but history; we can only judge the future by the past." So, too, the man who accomplishes today, does so by some of the fruits of yesterday, though he may be unconscious that these have been produced from academic science. and college culture. It is a display of indifference to all that goes to establish high moral standards and secure safe thought in the world of affairs for one to assert that any great form of success can be attained without the refinements of learning. The city must turn to the college as the fount from which it must drink the inspiration of thought or influence. It is the school of higher education that in this day is more needed than at any time in the history of our Republic. Indeed, if there were nothing else to be taught, the municipalities and the crowded thoroughfares of commerce might learn once again the early creeds which did so much to build our nation in honor and hold it to the anchorage of truth and justice. When from the halls of our national legislation there comes the evidence of public pollution, when United States senators sell their high offices for gain, pervert their public place for private fortune, repudiate and betray the trust reposed in them, that they may serve those who steal the substance of the poor and profit by the destruction of honor in a word, when men in high places unblushingly confess the open appropriation to themselves of the trust funds placed in their hands for the preservation of helpless widows and homeless children, and boast with the air of bravado and indifference of having consummated the scheme of debauching the public ballot, purchasing legislatures and juggling the judiciary of the nation, to the sole object and end of enhancing private fortune, that such may be expended to accommodate their vulgar practices and gross indulgences and to pay for Bacchanalian revels for the social degenerates who occupy official positions and whose highest aspiration is to ape the fool who performed at the feast of Belshazzar,-surely the school, the college and university could at least tender to the great cities and their clustering "corners" of finance and trade that lesson taught once from a mother's knee, bringing forth the law which came from Sinai saying, "Thou shalt not steal," or that other precept proclaimed by the Apostle of Peace from the mount-"Love thy neighbor as thyself." These two laws can at least be once again tendered by the university as the mother of learning, the monument of truth and the guide to justice. The city, therefore, may turn again to the groves of the university ground to catch the spirit of truth and to the crypts of the university walls for the book of knowledge. From these she may drink deep, to the end that justice may be justified of her children, and that honor and truth may still remain the dearest heritage man can transmit to the children. It is to the fulfillment of this dream that Chicago brings her hopes, her wishes and her congratulations to you upon this auspicious day. We are told that in the time of Hadrian, a tyrant emperor of Rome, he condemned to death an old man for the offense of criticising the corrupt state of the empire. The old man was sentenced to starve to death. He was imprisoned in a close cell, with none permitted to see him but the watching guard and his daughter. It was observed that the hapless prisoner survived and did not perish. The incident attracted attention, as no food had been allowed to the cell. Upon investigation it was detected that the daughter, who had lately been a mother, was feeding her famished father from the springs of her maternal bosom. The incident could well have touched the emperor and justify the pardon that followed. So, too, might we apply the illustration that if the Republic has become decrepit in honor, is famishing in its patriotism, surely we may take lesson from the classic incident as given us by the historian and perpetuated in canvas by the painter, and turning to the university point to her as the daughter of the state from whose exuberant bosom our government may still draw the fluid of patriotism and honor, and survive, to the happiness of her people and the perpetual glory of the Republic. ADDRESS THE HONORABLE LAWRENCE Y. SHERMAN Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois, Springfield The common school system of this State has been elaborated, and has kept pace with the growth of Illinois. It began under very humble circumstances. It has developed until it is entirely worthy of such a State. I presume, from the standpoint of those who are charged with legislative duties, we naturally look at the question of taxation. are interested more in furnishing the funds to support the State school system, because we are primarily charged with the levy and collection of that tax. We are expected to furnish the means, and if the tax rate should become too high, we are expected to furnish an explanation. The taxing question is a sensitive one among all English-speaking people. Those who are charged with the taxing powers are more susceptible to criticism and fear that criticism more upon that than upon any other question. The taxpayer is more disposed to carry his grievance to the polls or to the point of revolution among Englishspeaking races, and even among those of Germanic or north of Europe origin, upon this than upon any other question. We consequently, either through ignorance, or by the development and application of common law principles to our own form of government on this continent, and especially in the United States, have become sensitive on this question, along with those who helped frame the government we are enjoying today, but laid the foundation upon which these principles were subsequently developed. So Illinois has regard to her taxable property. It begins with the local taxation in the humblest form of the school system. It begins in the district school, that is the lowest form of corporate life with the fewest powers of any taxing body in this State. Beginning here it develops until it reaches the form of municipal life. It reaches the graded school, then the normal school, then the university. Beginning with the broad base of the common school system it ends with this University, that is established by the power of the State and maintained in large part by public taxation. All that has been given by the national government, while it is sufficient to found, is insufficient to maintain. The school system of this State is administered by public agencies. There are in those agencies not only institutions. but there are laws, and the laws must be administered by human beings, and we must take them as we find them. At Springfield in the levying of taxes and in the expenditure of public funds, it is entirely too much to expect that any reformation will begin after a representative of the Legislature lands in his seat, if I may be allowed to use that colloquial phrase. He is not merely a product of heredity and environment; he is more than that, as this may be applied generally to men in public affairs and responsible places. A member of the Legislature is a product of a situation that knows no heredity, knows no environment. He is certainly a mixture of the strangest elements that the sun in our solar system ever shone upon. It is non-racial; it is political, in all that politics implies among English-speaking people, from the days of the organization of the English Parliament down to the Illinois Legislature. It is political in the strict sense of the word. And among the political elements of Illinois there must always be considered the race question, especially in Chicago. There we find representatives of all the great and best races of the old world to a greater extent than in any other city on the American continent. There is scarcely a great race whose forebears reach back to the early history of the world, that has not sent liberally of its people to the |