UNATTACHED FUND BEST SAYS HAMLEN

"The Harvard Fund is sure to succeed." So said J. R. Hamlen '04, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Fund Council, when interviewed on the progress of the Fund yesterday. "The early returns to the Fund," he said, fare very encouraging. Up to the present, the average contribution has been rather higher than we expected; on the other hand, the number of men who have contributed has been somewhat lower.

"Our first administrative year will end on the coming June 30. What the Fund needs before that time is a large increase of relatively small subscribers. No man should be prevented from giving because he feels that he can spare only a small sum. One dollar from a man who can afford no more is just as welcome as $100 from a man who can afford that. The first principle of the Harvard Fund is that all Harvard alumni shall have a share in it."

Independent Praises Foundation

Bearing out and supplementing Mr. Hamlen's statement, comes a leading editorial in the Independent for May 1, entitled "Universities and Givers." "An interesting and significant step," says the editorial, "has recently been taken at Harvard. The graduates and governing authorities of the university have established what is to be known as the Harvard Fund--to be raised annually among the alumni by voluntary contributions and paid into the treasury of the university without restriction as to its use and with entire freedom on the part of the Harvard Corporation to use as it may determine.

"It is planned to employ this annual sum in the immediate future principally to improve teaching salaries all along the line, and also to help pay for the costly but valuable tutorial system, which will probably go down in Harvard history as the most important contribution to American education made by President Lowell's administration. But nobody knows how long it will be necessary to add to teachers' salaries or how long it will take to develop the tutorial system.

"This draws attention to the curious predicament in which almost every American privately endowed institution of learning finds itself. They all are constantly receiving gifts. Many of them receive large gifts--and in large numbers. Yet almost every one of these institutions is chronically poor, mainly because of the pathetic yet wholly natural desire of philanthropic man for two things: praise and immortality.

"Suppose, for example, that John Cadwallader Grimshaw, having accumulated wealth and feeling a surge of generosity, decides to do something for his university. He has, let us say, half a million dollars to bestow. Does he present his half million to his Alma Mater without strings, to be used as the authorities now and in the future may determine? Probably not; for instinctively he feels that his money will lose its identity. It will be just another gift. Very humanly, he wants to set up something separate and visible, something which may be seen of men in the years to come and which will carry his name down to posterity.

"So he gives the John Cadwallader Grimshaw Dormitory or the Grimshaw Laboratory; or he establishes the Grimshaw Scholarships; or perhaps, being interested in some special branch of study, he establishes the Grimshaw Research Fund, hoping that he may thus make possible some discovery which will be connected, however vaguely, with his name. Possibly, he attaches to the gift, not his own name, but his father's or his wife's or his son's, setting up a memorial to someone other than himself. But the principle is the same in each case: the desire for praise and immortality--if only a vicarious immortality--play their part in determining the nature of the gift.

"Now let us see what effect Mr. Grimshaw's generosity has upon the financial situation of his university. His gift is welcome; make no doubt of that. But does it enable the university to accomplish more adequately the work to which it is already committed? Only too often it extends the work of the university without strengthening it at the center, or adds money to some fund which is relatively ample. Sometimes the situation is even worse than that: many a university has been presented with a proud building, yet has not received adequate funds for upkeep, with the result that financially the institution is almost worse off afterwards than if it had received no building at all.

"And what of professors' salaries, of the expense of giving regular instruction to the steadily increasing student body? Mr. Grimshaw's gift of a building or a scholarship fund or a research fund does not add a cent for these purposes. The situation of the university treasurer thus often approaches that of a man with an automobile whose engine constantly calls for repairs, but who is overwhelmed with Christmas presents of spare tires, wire wheels, speedometers, and fancy headlights. All these presents are delightful, but they do not help the car to climb hills! Or it reminds one of the situation of the dean of a cathedral who receives plenty of money for memorial chapels and stained-glass windows, but is hard put to it to build the nave to shelter the crowds which will come to worship. Not infrequently the most generous gift merely complicates the problem of how to keep the institution running.

"That is the problem which the Harvard Fund is designed to meet so far as Harvard is concerned. With all its millions even with the Endowment Fund raised five years ago Harvard is short of funds to pay its professors as they deserve to be paid and to give its undergraduates that direct individual instruction which is the glory of the small college and the dispair of most large ones;