Correspondence (incoming) - I-K

San Francisco June 15th 85 Senator Leland Stanford Sir, In [pursuance?] of your [kind?] intimation I took occassion to call on you at the Railroad Office last week. Your great business [prevented?] my seeing you; and [my?] engagements also forbid repeated attempts to see you in person. I have therefore thought that it were perhaps best to put my thoughts in writing, with all possible brevity, leaving it to you to determine if further explanation and interview [may?] be necessary or [desirable?]. You will pardon this freedom. Perhaps after all my suggestions have already occured to you. I do not flatter myself that that they are very extraordinary or for reaching; but you will realize better than I can. Have seen all that you have said about your new Institute, the [enabling?] Bill, and think I understand the very practical thing you desire to establish. My study of such matters has been, and my experience in educational Institutions and purposes is

[?] to [?] me to offer the following cautions: Your purpose, if I understand it alright, is to secure a practical and useful education to a large number of the children of those who are not well able to [defray?] the cost for themselves. Many such Institutions have been founded in the past, in England and elsewhere, an almost all have in the end been [perverted?] to other ends and uses. If you will refer to some of the proceedings of Lord [Brougham?] when he became Chancellor of England, you will find how [insidiously?] these mutations were accomplished.

1st The Board of Trustees are respectable and wealthy of course, and begin at once, and openly, to admit the children of their own class, and no others, but this becomes a high school for the wealthy. This must be foreseen and forbidden by the most stubborn [rules?] and laws, defining who shall, and who shall not, and in what proportions, be beneficiaries.

2nd The same [end?] is affected in another

[form?] when this is made impossible. The [style?], surroundings and incidental expenses are made such as to exclude the poor; and by a gradual process of [dimunation?], secure the entire benefit to the children of the rich. This should be carefully guarded against, by careful and irremovable regulations.

3rd The curriculum is continually [derated?], into the region of [ornament?], and out of the sphere of [helpfulness?], till those who have their fortunes to seek no longer find the Institute a stepping-stone to that end, and leave it to the sons and daughters of wealth. The Faculty, unless [restrained?] by positive law has a strong tendency in this direction, because it tends to magnify them, and to confine their attentions to the children of fortune.

4th Religion is a stumbling-block in the way of all educational foundations. It must be wholly secular, or sectarian. No! It should be neither. To be declared either, is to open in a state of warfare, in which contending elements will forever

[?] for the [?] [other?] [eventually?] [carry all hope?] [?] recognition of God, wise, good, and smiling His approval of all that is good and noble and useful, would perhaps [disarm?] the Sectarian, and place the advocate of Secularism at his case. This much of Religion can be proven, is acceptable to all, and bids fair to flourish to the end of time. It would be a positivism which would hold both [?] at arms length.

5th Your leading purpose appears to be to afford a practical and useful education to those who must work out their own fortunes by public or private usefulness. A school for mena nd women who must do service to live and acquire. To this end many of the studies of our Colleges and Universities are wholly superfluous. They are to make [Savans?], Philosophers, Poets, Authors, Gentlemen, Diplomats, and Linguists, [?] of fame. No one knows better than you that these studies are not necessary to an

eminently practical and useful life. Your students should even avoid these [devoted?] flights of fancy, and confine themselves, "To things [averred?] and known, And daily, [hourly?] [seen?]." To be qualified to be a County Surveyor, Clerk, Bookkeeper, Treasurer, Banker, Merchant, or Intelligent Farmer is all sufficient. To the effort to teach the extraordinary, "the [abstruse?], and things removed from common use" may be attributed the failure to amke useful characters, and the filling of society with failures, the [effete?], incompetent, [cranky?] and visionary, if not the swindler and the thief. Be useful first; and let ornament and superexcellence come where the soil is rich, and the [new?] spring spontaneous. To attempt to train the common mind to all the achievements of Newton, Euclid, [Cuvier?] and Spencer, is to overwhelm the weak, and to waste our money and time on natural dullness.