Correspondence (incoming) - D-E

May 24, 1887 Hon Leland Stanford United States Senate Sir: I am very desirous to make some sort of financial showing of your munificent gift for the Leland Stanford Junior University, in California, in the benefactious table of my annual report for 1885-86. Will you do me the favor to name the approximate value of the property given, and thereby greatly oblige Yours respectfully, [N.?]H.R. [Dannon?] Commissioner

[?] "go to college." The only requirement for admission is that the candidate shall be 18 yrs old and even this may be evaded by a merely nominal examination in primary branches of study. The result is that [these?] schools are held in [slight?] esteem at home and an unknown abroad except as geographical facts, ranking possibly with "Kameroon" in importance but not in interest. Their numbers are indeed imposing but their significance, alas, reminds one of the wildcat "Normal schools" of Indiana. Scotland seems not to have learned more is required to make a University than piles of stone and crowds of half-baked students. In the English Universities of Oxford and Cambridge the case is somewhat better, but not what it should be. These schools like all

University of [Holle-Vittenberg?] [Holle?] a/s Prussia, Nov. 29, 1885

Senator Stanford, My Dear Sir, - It can hardly be a surprise to you that the friends of Education at home and abroad should feel [impelled?] to send their congratulations at the inauguration of so noble a work for the advancement of culture and science as you have projected for California and the U.S. That [an?] institution of the magnitude designed can not be restricted in its beneficient influences within state-lines, however long, is a matter of course. As an American in a German University I heartily rejoice that at last means are provided for obtaining at home what can now only be obtained away from home. Johns Hopkins is the only Am. Univ. which has been able through management and money to offer any thing like the advantages of a

German University, but her resources are but a fourth of what you [propose?] to place at the disposal of the Univ. of California. Hitherto our Am. higher schools have had to tread in restricted and mechanical parts. Their professors have been tied down to the detail and drudgery of classroom work to such an extent that neither [time?], strength, nor inclination were left for original research. In Germany the case is different. Each professor is put upon a specialty which he is expected to extend. He comes before his classes with the most complete mastery of his subject, and alive with an investigation which reaches into new fields. It is this plan which produced in rapid succession the great systems of philosophy which arose during the first half of the present [century?], and which is now making Germany the center of the [educatorial?] world in Science, in Medicine, in Philology, philosophy and Theology. Now for the first time in Am. history has there been the possibility of creating a Univ. able to compete with [there?] old and richly supported Universities of Germany. For [instance?], in the small Univ. of [Jena?] where I spent the year of '83-4, there are over [100?] professors to 600 students. The same proportion holds for the great universities of Berlin and Leipzig. Quite otherwise, however, is the case in the English and Scotch Universities, which I visited this Summer. In Edinburg and Glasgow, for instance, they have splendid buildings, great hordes of alleged students but only small faculties. For the sake of the [fees?] they throw the doors wide open and receive every country

schools of Great Britain are run by the most rigid rules of mechanics. A student never has a chance to do a stroke of work on his own account, but is coached and examined to death. A German student learns to be a [man?] and to work as a man while yet in the Univ., whereas the English student is always a school boy. He is always cramming for examination. To get the degree of B.A. there are four great examinations which he must pass and twelve which he may pass. The written part of the last of these lasts for six [mortal?] days. This constant [grind?] for examination crushes out all [elasticity?] and originality of mind, and reduces a god-like intellect to a memorizing machine. The American people are most sincerely to be congratulated, that at last a man has appeared with

a soul and a pocket-book large enough to make it possible to establish in the U.S. a school great in all the essentials of greatness; viz., a faculty not composed of a few drill masters but of a large body of advancers of knowledge, and a body of students not degraded by low requirements of admission or by mechanical [work?] but elevated and inspired by free opportunity to use the powers which heaven has given them under the leadership of men already celebrated for learning, but more celebrated in that they are still learners. As a well wisher of the cause which you have espoused, allow me again to congratulate you on the inauguration of the great enterprise, and to hope that [ages?] hence a grateful posterity will regard with pride the Institution you are now rearing. Very truly yours, Charles De[Garmo?] Student of Philos and Pedagogies