Roscoe Conkling Bruce--Harvard College Class Oration (1902)

8/2/2019 Roscoe Conkling Bruce--Harvard College Class Oration (1902)

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-)(^ Harvard College

L>l3,ssOration

ByRoscoe Conkling Bruce

Delivered for the Class of 1902 inSanders Theatie. June 20, 1902

.. . * * * '

Speech Publishing CompanyWashington. D. C.


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THE LIBRARY OFCONGRESS,Two Coptfca RecsivedSE:^ 6 1902

COPVRIQMT ENTITY

Cl,A.sS ^XXa No.COPY 3.

Copyright 1902BY George R. Gray


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Class rationRoscoE CoNKi^iNG Brucel\ yi R. Marshal, Ladies and Gentle-^^^ MEN,Fellow ClassmatesTo-daywe stand upon the threshold of a new world.Upon the world we leave we look with grat-itude ; it has taught us ** to dream no dreams,to tell no lies, but to go our way, wherever itmay lead, with our eyes open and our headserect.'' Upon the new world we look withsome misgiving and yet, we know, its im-perfections are its glory. The new worlddiffers from the old, but in the new world asin the old we shall be Harvard men; our livesshall possess integrity. We go to make ourspecial parts of the new world contain theideal of the old.The university ideal is carved upon our

gates ** After God had carried us safe toNew England, and Wee had builded our


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houses, provided necessaries for our livli-hood, reard convenient places for God'sworship, and settled the Civill GovernmentOne of the next things Wee longed for, andlooked after was to advance learning and per-petuate it to posterity : dreading to leave anilliterate Ministery to the churches, when ourpresent Ministers shall lie in the Dust/'Those words define the Veritas that in 1643was inscribed upon the college seal and adopt-ed as the college motto. The perpetuity oftruth, the enlargement of truth, the diffusionof truth among the people,for these pur-poses has there so long existed at Cambridgea Society of Scholars.Guiding intelligence is the special gift of

the university to the nation's life. Univer-sity men form a large and important part ofthe intelligence that in industry, politics, art,religion, shapes social opinion and directssocial action. And, in these responsibilitieswe, my classmates, are to share. Men ofexceptional opportunity, we are bound by


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august traditions to render exceptional ser-vice to the things in American life that tendtoward perpetuity, enlargement, diffusion oftruth. It is fitting, therefore, that I speak toyou of the most manageable social appliancefor these purposes, I mean popular educa-tion.

This deserves your interest because it min-isters to perpetuity of truth. The organizedteaching of school and college, completingand reenforcing the unorganized teaching ofenvironment, mainly accounts on the spiritualside for the web and tissue of civilized living.The great university with richly stocked libra-ries, and the little red schoolhouse with blue-back spelling books endow the present withthe experience of the past. The elementaryschool perpetuates elementary knowledge oflanguage and history and art and science.Now, our impressive civilization rests uponeconomic efficiency. The school for all thechildren of all the people should transmit aknowledge of all our fundamental interests


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from sawing wood to reading Scripture!Advanced knowledge is rendered permanentby secondary schools and higher institut-ions. By giving the exceptional man anexceptional education, they give the nationguiding intelligence. If our popular leadersare men of fragmentary education, they willland the people in many a ditch. The trainedleader is able to induce the present to recruitits scouts from the past. Taught the lessonsof the past, fitted to grapple with principlesand to make plain the emptiness of sham,our leaders should be rendered responsive tosound ideals. From these secondary andhigher institutions come the teachers of ourschools and colleges. The need of teacherswho have been taught, is keenly felt through-out our educational endeavor, from backwoodsschool to university. Higher institutions giveus professional men. '*The real inventionsand motive powers which impel society for-ward and upward," says President Eliot,** spring from those bodies of well-trained.


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alert and progressive men known as the pro-fessions. They give effect to the discoveriesand imaginings of genius. All the large busi-nesses and new enterprises depend for theirsuccess on the advise and cooperation of theprofessions. 'And so, my classmates, by contributing to

the excellence of popular education, we maycontribute importantly to perpetuity of truth.Institutions whose high office is to give thealready gifted advanced knowledge, profess-ional insight guiding intelligence, we, ascollege men, shall not willingly let die. Weshall be able to offer the common school atleast intelligent criticism and, if need be, intell-igent defence. In 1899-1900, $213,000,000were spent for our common school system,the value of public school property was$539,000,000, our school population was22,000,000. That this large school expendi-ture be wisely directed, that this great publicproperty be well administered, that this armyof young people be led to useful victories


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these things are vital to the maintenance' ofthe American type and quality of civilization.

Popular education contributes not only toperpetuity but also to enlargement of truth.Harvard University is the resort of specialists'*each prepared," as the President says, '*topush forward a little the present limits ofknowledge ; each expecting to clear up sometangle or bog on the frontier, or to pierce withhis own little search-light, if only by a hand'sbreadth, the mysterious gloom which sur-rounds on every side the area of ascertainedtruth." The enlargements of truth whichissue from accumulated researches of obscure,laborious specialists largely determine mater-ial and intellectual progress. Who can esti-mate how much the prolonged series ofinvestigations which made possible a Pasteurhas enchanced human well-being? The un-iversity develops the specialist, sustains hisresearches, and thus promotes enlargementof truth, and extends the area of enlightenedsocial action. Inventive genius, which has


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so incalculably enriched the man with the hoeand the man at the spindle, is, of course, nomonopoly of university men. But the secretexcellencies of ingenuity, as Milton wouldsay, may b^ fetched out most surely byappropriate education of all the children ofall the people. ''There is no extravagance,"says a distinguished living economist, * 'thereis no extravagance more prejudicial to thegrowth of national wealth, than that waste-ful negligence which allows genius whichhappens to be born of lowly parentage toexpend itself in lowly work."

In short, for our civilization to attain theutmost progress, brains must not be wasted.For the sake of enlargement of truth, we, asHarvard men, shall support any practicablemeasure for extending to the competent themeans of development. Capacity for re-search or for invention is no less capacitybecause found in a New York tenement house,in the mountains of Kentucky, or in the cabinof a Mississippi cotton plantation.


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Popular education, I have said, rescuesfrom darkness exceptional men,a fact im-portant to perpetuity, enlargement and diffus-ion of truth. Diffusion of truth among allthe people is, moreover, a fundamental dutyof democracy. To China the fact that themasses of the people obscurely vegetate is acircumstance of bland indifference ; that, wehear, is what Chinese masses are for! Inour American commonwealth where is theplace for vegetating masses? Is it Massachu-setts, or is it Georgia?

But, in America as everywhere else, theoryand practice are not one. The nation doesnot sufficiently provide technical training.Of the 16,000,000 American citizens betweenthe ages of fifteen and twenty-four less thanone third of one percent are receiving instruct-ion in the arts and sciences which bear directlyupon their occupations. By extensions ofthe industrial education, we may reasonablyexpect to aid importantly the work of reclaim-ing the submerged tenth in our great cities.


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lessening the drain from our farms by trans-forming drudgery into intelligent labor, inspirit-ing the mountain whites of the South, adjust-ing the Negro to a mercilessly competitivecivilization, increasing the efficiency andhappiness of American working men andworking women, giving rich and poor awholesome respect for work and workers,furnishing the Republic citizens of resource.Now, the facilities of secondary and highereducation are tending to become tolerablyadequate for the white population; but theproportion of colored persons enjoying suchfacilities, seriously less to-day than it wastwenty years ago, is pathetically small. Thewhite South and the black South are in inter-est fundamentally one ; the North and Southare one. To uplift the prostrate black Southis to uplift the whole South, and to uplift theSouth is to uplift the nation. To equip theblack South with guiding intelligence is,therefore, a national obligation.

Although the common school system has


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been strengthened each year, even the NorthAtlantic and the Western States now spendfor the education of each person of schoolage for a whole year only fourteen dollarsbut the child, black or white, poor or rich, inthese states receives much more than threetimes what the white child in the Southreceives, and much more than six timeswhat the colored child in the South receives IIn the faith that a chance to learn is the divineright of brains; that it is wiser to fill theschoolhouse than the jail; that there is nobulwark of defense, against foes without orfoes within, half so strong as a thinking andresourceful people; that democratic institu-tions are strong when the average citizen isstrong, weak when he is weak,in this faithour forefathers entrenched the common schoolupon the principle that all the property of thestate shall educate all the children of all thepeople.

I should be unfaithful to the facts, to mytraditions, and to this occasion did I not say


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one word more of the weakest point in Ameri-can education, the provision for Americans ofAfrican descent. This building is a memorialto the Harvard men who served in the CivilWar fighting for freedom and truth. OurSociety of Scholars reveres the memory ofits heroes and cherishes their achievements.The men whose names are written upon thetablets of this hall fought to save theUnion and to free the slave. The Union ishappily secure; in the war against Spain,white men of the North and white men ofthe South and sons of freedmen North andSouth, marched to victory side by side underthe same flag with a common devotion. TheUnion is happily secure; but despite eagerambitions and demonstrated capacities, thesons of the freedmen, through no fault oftheir own, are, in the higher sense, not yetfree. There upon the Southern plantation isan American black, bound hand and foot byignorance and unthrift; slave to the untutoredimpulse of the present, he is also slave to the


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accumulated impulses of his past; being slaveto an unillumined self, he is slave to a mercilessmaster. For slavery of this type the Eman-cipation Proclamation is written in one wordupon the university seal ; it was spoken cen-turies ago by the Teacher of teachers, * *Andye shall know the truth and the truth shallmake you free."

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SEP.. 13 1902


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Roscoe Conkling Bruce--Harvard College Class Oration (1902)