Foreword for Hiram College by United States Commissioner of Education Earl McGrath
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OCR Page 1 of 5FOREWORD
In 1850, the year in which Hiram College was founded, Henry P.
Tappan, later the distinguished president of the University of Michigan,
remarked that: "We have multiplied colleges so as to place them at
every man's door." Though an exaggeration, this statement dramatically
describes a situation in the middle of the last century when colleges
were feverishly established throughout the land. Primitive and crude
though much of our life may have been & hundred years ago, many of our
countrymen saw that both the religious faiths of their fathers and the
essential features of Western European culture could be perpetuated only
through the establishment of institutions of higher education. This
realization doubtless made some of our forbears excessively zealous in
the founding of new institutions which perforce rested on weak founda-
tions. That this was true is amply shown by the fact that many of these
institutions no longer exist.
But the story of those which have survived is inspiring indeed.
For in a way, the history of the American liberal arts college parallels
the history of our Nation. From early beginnings, often simple and
crude, these institutions have like our Nation passed through many
vicissitudes and hardships. Educators, some of considerable perspicecity,
have from time to time predicted the disappearance of these liberal
institutions. In 1902, for example, Nicholas Murray Butler, the
* By Earl J. McGrath, U. S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security
Agency, Washington, D. C., for the Centennial History of Hiram College,
January 1, 1950.
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