Present Head of Stanford University Had
a Hard Row to Hoe in Order to
Get an Education.
David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University and the leading
authority on fishes in the United States, was a farm boy from Gainsville,
New York, when he joined the first class that entered Cornell University.
He had little money, but he got along comfortably by waiting on table,
husking corn, taking care of lawns, digging ditches and tutoring. It was
the proper way to work through college, for he says: "A young man is not
worth educating who cannot work through college that way."
He became an instructor in botany while still a junior, and he did so well
that he attracted the attention of Andrew D. White, president of the
university, who encouraged him and aided him in his work. The rounding of
Jordan's education was completed by Louis Agassiz, with whom he studied
three months in a shed on Penikese Island in Buzzard's Bay.
A Student of Fishes.
Jordan's attention was early drawn to the study of fishes, and the general
ignorance concerning them determined him to make them his special line of
work. As a source of food supply, fish stands close to meat, and millions
of people depend on the fish supply rather than on meat. Yet concerning
the habits, breeding, and geographical distribution of fish, there was
little known. In studying his chosen subject Jordan has traveled more than
two hundred thousand miles, and to-day he is the accepted authority on
fish. Much of the important work accomplished by the United States Fish
Commission, of which he has been a member since 1877, has been due to his
initiative.
The value of American fisheries averages fifty million dollars annually,
but for a long time the business was carried on in a haphazard fashion,
and few naturalists thought it worth while to devote any considerable
amount of attention to the study of fishes. Jordan did as much to change
that state of affairs as any other man.
The breeding of food fish, now extensively carried on by the United States
Government, is largely the result of his advice, and he has greatly
increased the efficiency of the fishers by placing at their disposal new
knowledge concerning the habits and migrations of food fish.
Selecting His Aids.
His work in connection with the fisheries was only part of what he has
managed to crowd into a busy life. As professor of zoology at Indiana
University he stimulated his pupils to a thorough study of their subject,
and his influence in this department was felt even outside the university.
It was while he was in Indiana that he was called to the presidency of
Leland Stanford University. His first work was to bring together a
faculty.
A big trunk full of applications for positions was turned over to him, and
he was told he could do what he liked with them. He never opened the
trunk. He knew the men he wanted for the various positions, and he drew
them from Cornell and Indiana. To this day Jordan does not know even the
names of the applicants.
The students who come under the influence of Dr. Jordan do not have a life
of scholastic ease and idleness. Their president has said, "The problem of
life is not to make life easier, but to make men stronger."
He accepted the presidency of Stanford University with the distinct
understanding that he was to do nothing that it was possible to hire
another man to do. As a result he has had a free hand, and has devoted
himself to the larger affairs of the university's development. The result
is that Stanford in a short time has been able to push well to the front
as a solid and progressive place of learning.
Dr. Jordan is straightforward in his methods and utterances.
"You can't fasten a five-thousand-dollar education on a fifty-cent boy,"
he said, and that dictum has been his guide in conducting the university.