One of the most satisfactory and stimulating
pieces of good fortune that has come to me is the evidence that so
many busy people are willing to turn aside from their work in pressing
fields of labour and to give their best thoughts and energies without
compensation to the work of human uplift. Doctors, clergymen, lawyers,
as well as many high-grade men of affairs, are devoting their best and
most unselfish efforts to some of the plans that we are all trying to
work out.

Take, as one example of many similar cases, Mr. Robert C. Ogden, who
for years, while devoting himself to an exacting business, still found
time, supported by wonderful enthusiasm, to give force by his own
personality to work done in difficult parts of the educational world,
particularly to improving the common school system of the South. His
efforts have been wisely directed along fundamental lines which must
produce results through the years to come.

Fortunately my children have been as earnest as I, and much more
diligent, in carefully and intelligently carrying out the work already
begun, and agree with me that at least the same energy and thought
should be expended in the proper and effective use of money when
acquired as was exerted in the earning of it.

The General Education Board has made, or is making, a careful study
of the location, aims, work, resources, administration, and
educational value, present and prospective, of the institutions of
higher learning in the United States. The board makes its
contributions, averaging something like two million dollars a year, on
the most careful comparative study of needs and opportunities
throughout the country. Its records are open to all. Many benefactors
of education are availing themselves of these disinterested inquiries,
and it is hoped that more will do so.

A large number of individuals are contributing to the support of
educational institutions in our country. To help an inefficient,
ill-located, unnecessary school is a waste. I am told by those who
have given most careful study to this problem that it is highly
probable that enough money has been squandered on unwise educational
projects to have built up a national system of higher education
adequate to our needs if the money had been properly directed to that
end. Many of the good people who bestow their beneficence on education
may well give more thought to investigating the character of the
enterprises that they are importuned to hel