cultivate thorough habits of investigation and independent judicial habits of mind in the discussion of political matters, that whatever question arises young men who have come from the universities will feel in conscience bound not to accept the theories and opinions of others, but carefully to investigate for themselves. The issue of today will be dead when our younger students become voters. They need power and judicial capacity, not specific opinions. What matters it, in the long run, so far as the existence of the country is concerned, whether we have a free trade policy or a protective policy? It is but a matter of dollars and cents; it is but a matter, more or less, of the distribution of wealth in the country. But the question whether our citizens are to be thoughtful and unprejudiced in their opinions, affects vitally the form and spirit of our government. There can be no question that many of the professors in our universities are themselves chiefly responsible for the wrong attitude of the public on this question of the influence of universities upon public opinion. They have themselves, by their bigoted habit of mind and their desire to indoctrinate the youths with what they believe to be correct opinions, encouraged the public belief that the universities were places for the propagation of specific doctrines. Public questions ought to be discussed freely, of course; but students ought to be trained to think for themselves, not to accept ready made the opinions of their professors.
The second great organ as well as guide of public opinion is the press. I have already intimated that our press is not independent; that it is not an influence that always tends toward good in the shaping of public opinion. Almost without exception, as has been said, our editors feel called upon to present questions of public interest from a partisan standpoint, giving facts and arguments on one side, suppressing facts and arguments on the other, instead of furnishing material on both sides by which the people will be encouraged to think out independently the issue of the day. Perhaps no other one influence is so much needed in our political life today as is a press that is truly independent—not one that, cutting loose from the two or three lead-
