Our College and the Tariff.

The London Quarterly Review says in a recent number: "All the professors of universities in America save one, Pennsylvania, teach free trade; but the people are protectionists in spite of their doctrinaires." The New York Mail and Express says, in comment, that although Pennsylvania is not the only protectionist college (for the University of Minnesota also teaches protection) yet it must be admitted that the economic teaching in most of our colleges is a reflection of English thought and methods. This is shown by the fact that the text books used are those of Adam Smith and Malthus, Mill and Jevons, even American works like those of Perry and Sumner following in the line of foreign teaching. As the result, the great majority of college students are free traders at their graduation. After leaving college, however, they see the actual condition of trade and the perplexing questions growing out of the selfish rivalry of grasping nations to monopolize commerce, which the college professors did not. The result of experience is to make the free trader a staunch protectionist at forty.

"It is an anomaly that our colleges should teach a system which is directly opposed to the settled tariff policy adopted by our country almost from its foundation, and which intelligent men are soon forced to abandon. "This radical divergence between university training and the wise national policy which is overwhelmningly supported by the people (for very few Democrats are willing to be called free traders), is greatly to be deplored. The colleges cannot educate the mass of Americans to their doctrines, but they will alienate the university from the practical, thinking heart of the people, and displace it from the esteem and confidence in which it ought to be held by all Ultimately we believe the 'theory" will conform to the 'condition.' American colleges must be entirely American. There must be a harmony between college teaching and the sober purposes and practical sense of the people."