Jane Lathrop Stanford Papers

New York, March 2nd, 1905.

Prest. Jordan,

Stanford University.

Mrs. Stanford's heroic and unswerving loyalty to a single high purpose has brought her life the crown of noblest service to mankind.

Benj. Ide Wheeler.

best be done away with by the free coinage of silver. He did not endorse Bryan, except as a means to this end, namely, the doing away with the increasing price of gold. All that he said was true, so far as I know, but I and all his other colleagues believed that the crash which would follow a sudden change was more dangerous than the evil itself. What Dr. Ross did was actuated not by partisanship for he has never been a Democrat, but by a sense of duty. He ceased when he saw that the public could not separate him from the chair he held -- when he realized that his words compromised his colleagues and the University. Since that time he has not uttered a word in public that could be considered as partisan, and the silver question has been settled for a long time to come by the unexpected growth of gold mining.

But even in this matter he never stepped outside of the recognized rights of a professor. Many eastern professors spoke in that campaign on the side of gold. Some, President Seth Low, have been prominent as political leaders. President Wheeler, as professor at Cornell, was a member of the Democratic District Committee, without criticism, and he was afterwards one of the leaders in the Gold Democrat movement which elected President McKinley.

The real work of a professor is to be judged not by a few chance speeches but by the things on which he spends his time, by his class work and his publications. Dr. Ross is the author