Vera Cruz erected a dam on the Rio Blanco in order to utilize a volume of water which, under a suitable elevation, produces 1,500 horsepower, consumed in the spinning and weaving factory of Santa Rosa, inaugurated in May of the present year. The Industrial Company of Orizaba constructed another dam on the Tlilapam River with a race of 1,700 meters in length, conveying the water to 4 turbines connected with dynamos, with a head sufficient to develop 2,250 horsepower. The electrical energy thus generated is transmitted along overhead wires to the cotton factory of the Rio Blanco. The San Ildefonso Company has completed all of its waterworks on the Monte Alto River, including an aggregate of 25 kilometers of races, with dams, sluices, and other engineering works of importance. Along the Tlalnepantla River 25 more kilometers of races are nearing completion. The ensemble of these works, with their respective electric plants, will produce an effective energy of 5,500 horsepower, which will be transmitted to this capital, for which purpose the line of posts for the transmitting cable has been completed, and work is in progress upon the receiving station. The above does not include the power that is already utilized in the San Ildefonso woolen factory. In the district of Atlixco, State of Puebla, another company has erected waterworks sufficient to produce 1,125 horsepower, to be utilized in a new spinning and weaving factory. Still another company has completed works on the Cuautitlan River of sufficient magnitude to produce 810 horsepower. The concerns that have been mentioned have obtained concessions from the Federal Government under the new legislation governing water rights. Other similar undertakings of minor importance and without any special concession are being established at different points of the Republic. The development of the manufacturing industry is also proved by the increasing value of the exportation of manufactured products, amounting in the last fiscal year to more than $2,600,000, showing an increase of more than $700,000 over the preceding year. A considerable increase is also observed in the importation of machinery, copper wire, iron, steel, and coal. A corporation has recently been organized in Europe, composed of firms of high standing at Paris, Berlin, and Geneva, to undertake industrial enterprises in the Republic. RAILROADS. Since last April the railroad system has increased by 210 kilometers. Tho largest contributions to this increase are the Central's, 37 kilometers, on the branch from Yurecuara to Ario; the Xico and San Rafael Railroad's, 51 kilometers, and the International's, 21 kilometers, approximately, on its Guanacevi branch. The Mexico, Cuernavaca, and Pacific Railroad has been extended to the Mexcala River, and the road from Juile to San Juan Evangelista has been completed. The railroad system now aggregates 13,369 kilometers, including 193 kilometers of private branches connecting with the lines subject to federal jurisdiction, and 432 kilometers of tramways belonging to the States. On April 29 last the general railway law was promulgated under the authorization granted to the Executive by the law of December 17, 1898. ROADS AND BRIDGES. The Texapan bridge in the State of Oaxaca has been completed, and thus the road from Chilchotla to San Antonio, a station on the Mexican Southern Railroad, has been completed. The contractor has also completed the Jayamita bridge spanning the Ameca River in Jalisco. XXIII.-THE COMMITTEE ON THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY PROJECT.1 On November 2 and 3 an important meeting of the National Educational Association's committee to make a thorough inquiry into the plan for a national university was held at Washington. This committee, it will be remembered, was authorized by the National Council of Education in July, 1898, and a report from it is hoped for in July, 1900. Twelve of the 15 members of the committee were present at the meeting recently held, namely: Presidents Harper, of Chicago University (chairman); Eliot, of Harvard; Schurman, of Cornell; Draper, of Illinois; Alderman, of North Carolina, and Wilson, of Washington and Lee; Librarian Canfield, of Columbia University; Dr. J. L. M. Curry, of Washington; Superintendents Maxwell, of New York; Soldan, of St. Louis, and Dougherty, of Peoria, and Professor Butler, of Columbia University. President Angell, of Michigan, and Professor Moses, of California, were unavoidably absent from the meeting, as was Professor James, of Chicago University, who is in Europe. The committee devoted its first session to listening to the reports on topics previously assigned to some of its members for investigation. The first of these was the careful paper on the constitutionality of a national university by Professor James, which appears in full in this issue of the Review. Then followed short papers on the history of past efforts to establish a national university, by Mr. Canfield; on the bill now being urged upon the Congress by the so-called committee of one hundred, by Professor Butler; on the funds and bequests supposed to be available for a national university, by Professor Butler; on the action taken by the presidents of the land-grant colleges in asking the Government to extend to their students certain facilities at Washington, by President Harper; on existing educational institutions and agencies in Washington, by President Eliot; on the collections and establishments of the Government available for higher instruction and research, by President Eliot; and on the probable attitude of existing universities toward the proposal to establish a national university at Washington, by President Angell. These reports placed before the committee in concise yet comprehensive form the information necessary to take up intelligently the main question before them. The committee had full and free discussion of the pending scheme and of some more acceptable and practicable method than it appeared to afford of utilizing the resources of the Government at Washington in aid of the higher education of the country. The committee finally agreed unanimously upon the following five propositions, much time and care having been devoted to the formulation of the fourth one: 1. It has been, and is, one of the recognized functions of the Federal Government to encourage and aid, but not to control, the educational instrumentalities of the country. 2. No one of the bills heretofore brought before Congress to provide for the incorporation of a national university at Washington commends itself to this committee as a practicable measure. 3. The Government is not called upon to maintain at the capital a university in the ordinary sense of that term. 4. That a subcommittee be requested to prepare for consideration by the full committee a detailed plan by which students who have taken a baccalaureate degree, or who have had an equivalent training, may have full and systematic advantage of the opportunities for advanced instruction and research which are now or may hereafter be afforded by the Government; such a plan to include the cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution of the universities willing to accept a share of the responsibility incident thereto. It is understood that the financial administration of this plan should be such 1 From the Educational Review, December, 1899. that, whether or not Government aid be given, there shall be no discouragement of private gifts or bequests. It is understood that the scope of this plan should be indicated by the governmental collections and establishments which are. now available, or as they may hereafter be increased or developed by the Government for its own purposes. 5. The Government, through the State Department, might wisely maintain in Washington a school for consuls, analogous to West Point and Annapolis, and, like those schools, leading to a life career in the Government service. The subcommittee appointed under the fourth proposition consists of President Harper, Dr. Curry, and Professor Butler. A full report is expected from this subcommittee in February, as the full committee adjourned to meet in Chicago at the time of the meeting of the Department of Superintendence. The fifth proposition, relating to a school for consuls, was referred to a subcommittee consisting of Presidents Wilson and Schurman and Dr. Canfield, who will also report in February. It will be noticed that the action of the committee looks toward the fullest possible development and utilization of the educational resources of the Government at Washington, but in a manner which will involve the cooperation and support of existing institutions and agencies rather than the erection of a statutory university organized along the familiar university lines, and duplicating, at unnecessary expense, work already in progress in different States throughout the country. That a workable and helpful plan will be developed by the committee along these lines we confidently believe. Such a plan, by avoiding the difficulties and dangers of the scheme for a statutory university, while accomplishing all that is good or useful in that scheme, ought to obtain widespread, if not unanimous, support. XXIV. THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY.' The chairman of the committee to investigate the project for a national university has requested me to prepare a memorandum upon the constitutional aspects of the plan for a national university to be founded and supported by the Federal Government in the city of Washington. It is fitting that the question of the constitutionality of such an enterprise should be taken up and discussed first of all, for if upon examination it is the opinion of this committee that such a scheme would be unconstitutional our work would be very simple and limited to the formulation of one of two propositions. We should either recommend to the national council that, inasmuch as the Federal Government has received no authority to establish and maintain a national university, the national council should not lend its support to an attempt to carry out the undertaking, or, in case we become further convinced that such an institution would be desirable, our recommendation would be to the effect that the national council should assist in securing such an amendment to the Constitution as would enable the Federal Government to carry through the enterprise. Probably the best way to present the subject to this committee is to give a brief account of the history of this project so far as it has involved the discussion of constitutional questions. All parties in the United States agree that the Federal Government is one of limited and delegated powers; that it is in no sense a depository of residual authority, and that it can have no power to establish and maintain a national university unless this power is given to it in the Constitution of the United States. All parties agree that the burden of proof that the pro A report by Edmund J. James, of the University of Chicago, submitted at Washington, November 2, 1899, to the committee to investigate the project for a national university, appointed by the council of education, National Educational Association. posed measure is constitutional rests upon the party urging the Federal Government to adopt it. We can not accept the view, therefore, that such action would be constitutional unless we become convinced that the authority to take it is vested in the Federal Government by the Constitution of the United States. It is plain that no such authority is vested in express terms, as there is no mention made in the body of the Constitution of the subject of a national university, nor indeed of education at all, either elementary, secondary, or higher. If this power has been vested in the Federal Government by the Constitution, it must therefore be by virtue of some implication contained in the powers which are expressly granted, or because it constitutes an essential or necessary part of some authority which is specifically enumerated, or because it is necessarily bound up in the very idea of a government such as that organized under the Constitution. It must be, to use technical language, either an implied, a resulting, or an implicit power. Under which of these heads such an authority may be placed, if we shall find it to be actually conferred, will appear perhaps most plainly, as suggested above, from an examination of the history of the constitutional discussions relating to this subject. There seems to have been a general notion abroad in the country during the period preceding the drafting and adoption of the Federal Constitution that the new Federal authority would establish and maintain a national university at its seat of government. The current literature of the time contains many hints and suggestions to this effect, and there seems to have been a generally felt need at that time of some such central and adequately endowed institution in order to supplement the existing educational facilities of the country. In the constitutional convention itself the project appeared on several different occasions. In Charles Pinckney's draft of the Federal Constitution, submitted to the convention May 29, 1787, a clause was contained in the enumeration of the powers of the new government giving to the Congress the authority" to establish a national university." In James Madison's proposition to confer additional powers upon the Congress, made August 18, 1787, a similar clause was contained.? When the report of the committee on revision came up for discussion on September 14, Madison and Pinckney united in the motion to insert in the amended and revised draft, from which had been dropped their former recommendations, a clause conferring upon the Congress authority to establish a national university.3 Wilson supported the motion. Gouverneur Morris opposed it on the ground that such a clause was unnecessary, since the power proposed was already included in the grant of exclusive jurisdiction over the seat of government. Four States then voted to insert the clause, six voted against such insertion, and one State was divided. The proposition to add this authority to the list of enumerated powers in the Constitution was thus rejected, but there was nothing in the minutes of the convention going to show the grounds upon which this rejection was made. Whether it was because the members of the convention were opposed to conferring such an authority upon the Congress, or because they thought it had been conferred by some other clause, and therefore did not need specific enumeration, does not appear. It is interesting to note, however, that so far as the records of the convention show there was no objection to the principle of the proposition. No one hinted that it was not desirable to vest such a power in the Federal Government or that such an institution was not necessary or expedient. 1 Journal of the Federal Convention, kept by James Madison, edited by E. H. Scott, Chicago, p. 66. 2 Ibid., p. 550. a Ibid., p. 727. The current discussion of the time contains many traces that the view of Gouverneur Morris expressed in the constitutional convention was correct, namely, that the Federal Government had received authority by other clauses than the one proposed to exercise such a function. There seems to have been a sort of general agreement that the new government had the power to establish such an institution if it desired, and there were many who urged the desirability of such an institution upon the attention of Congress and the country. Washington himself, to whom this project was especially dear, and to whom it grew ever more precious as he approached his end, evidently took it for granted that the authority to establish such an institution had been conferred upon the Federal Government by the Constitution. In his second annual message, dated January 8, 1790, Washington declared that there was nothing which better deserved the patronage of Congress than the promotion of science and literature. He adds: Whether this desirable object will best be promoted by affording aids to seminaries of learning or by any other expedients will be well worthy of a place in the deliberations of the Legislature."1 The Senate, in answer to this address, seemed to accept the view that the Federal Government had the function of promoting literature and science, as did the House in its response to the same address. By virtue of the authority conferred upon Washington to set aside certain sites for the needed public buildings in the new District of Columbia, he assigned a site of nearly 20 acres for a national university. And in his message to Congress dated December 7, 1796, he urged in strong terms the establishment of a national university. The Senate, in its response, seems to agree that such a step would be wise. At the same Congress the Federal commissioners appointed to lay out the city of Washington made a report to Congress, in which they urged very strongly the establishment of a national university in the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, in accordance with Washington's proposal. That portion of Washington's annual message referring to this subject and the report of the Federal commissioners upon the same topic were referred to a select committee, of which James Madison was the chairman. This committee made a report on December 21, 1796, to the following effect: Resolved, That it is expedient at present that authority should be given as prayed for by said memorial to proper persons to receive and hold in trust pecuniary donations in aid of the appropriations already made toward the establishment of a university within the District of Columbia."4 It will be seen from this that the Federal commissioners, while in favor of establishing a national university endowed and supported by the National Government, did not feel that it was entirely wise to make such a recommendation, and proposed, therefore, simply that a charter of incorporation be granted to certain trustees to accept gifts or donations from private parties in furtherance of this purpose. It will be noted, also, that this resolution speaks of appropriations already made toward such a university, referring doubtless to the lands set aside by the direction of the President for this purpose. This recommendation of Madison's committee was debated at some length in the House. The friends of the motion urged that they were not asking the approval of the House for a motion looking toward the establishment and maintenance of a national university at Federal expense, but that they were simply 1 Annals of Congress, First Congress, vol. i, p. 933. 2 Ibid., p. 936. Ibid., p. 1052. 4 American State Papers, Miscellaneous, vol. i, No. 91, p. 153. |