TUCKER ALUMNI SCHOLARSHIP AND INSTRUCTION FUND

THE following letter written from Nantucket, May 26, 1907, in response to a letter, written for the committee on the alumni scholarship and instruction fund, by Mr. Hilton, bears its own explanation. The success of this project the first year bears large promise for the future, and the committee is greatly gratified at the President's permission to honor the fund with his name MY DEAR MR. HILTON:

I am very much gratified and honored by the suggestion of your letter of May 22 that the Alumni Scholarship and Instruction Fund, initiated by you and now being carried into effect by the committee of which you are chairman, should be known as the" Tucker Fund". I can think of no one thing connected with the College with which I should be so much pleased to have my . name identified as with this fund lam thoroughly committed to the principle for which it stands, and I am specially interested in the specific objects which it aims to secure. It stands, as it seems to me, for the principle that self-respecting independence is as becoming and as honorable to an institution as it is to an individual. The future of Dartmouth depends chiefly, I believe, upon the active, steadfast, and tangible support of her alumni, and the scheme which you have put into operation is a simple but very "efficient means of organizing their abounding sentiment into substantial support. The scheme is peculiarly adapted to our constituency, among whom many are willing and eager to do something regularly, while few only are able to make single large gifts or great bequests. It is also singularly in harmony with our traditions of selfreliance, and illustrates one of the most appropriate and unquestionable of present methods of raising money for educational purposes.

The intrinsic worth of the objects which the fund seeks to gain, as well as their practical necessity, must appeal to everyone. The increase of funds for scholarship aid has by no means kept pace with the increase of students, although it is to be said that' the proportion of students able to meet the ordinary college expenses has increased. The scholarship fund now makes an annual draft on the general fund of about seven thousand dollars. An annual subscription of ten thousand dollars would relieve this demand, and allow a margin for a much needed loan fund. The further object of supplementing the funds available for instruction, whether for the employment of more instructors, or for addition to the salaries of professors, or for the establishment of a separate college pension fund, will commend itself, in the highest degree, to all who wish to see the intellectual standards of the College maintained and advanced.

I understand that the fund for this, the first year of solicitation, will reach five thousand dollars, all of which goes over for use another year—a sum in excess of the amount raised the first year at Yale where the plan originated, and where it. has now become so great and vital an asset of the college. I see no reason why the annual sum available from this source should not reach, within twenty years, forty thousand dollars, partly from the annual subscription and partly from interest on such portion of the annual subscription as the committee in charge of the fund may set apart for a permanent endowment. The equivalent to an income from the investment of a millon dollars, representing at the same time the loyalty and devotion of living graduates, would be at once a financial and a moral guarantee of the future of the College. The chief asset of Dartmouth, as we all can see,

greater and more secure even than its endowment, is its history. We have learned how to capitalize the founding and the re-founding of the College, embodying, as such events do, the faith, and constancy, and sacrifice of the generation in which they took place. Let us now learn how to put the right valuation upon these same qualities in our own generation, as they may be directed toward the enlarging service for which the College stands. I believe that the financial policy of such a college as Dartmouth consists first of all in capitalizing the interest, perhaps I should better say the indebtedness of its alumni.

If I can at the present juncture be instrumental to any degree, in establishing and furthering this means of financial strength and security in the maintenance and development of the College through my present identification with the fund which your committee has set in operation, I shall count such a relation a great satisfaction and honor.

I am

Most sincerely yours,