LAW SCHOOL REQUIRES MILLION DOLLAR FUND

A campaign has been launched for a million-dollar endowment fund for the Law School. Funds are needed for the library, scholarships, lecture rooms, teaching and research professorships, loan purposes, and to enable the School to carry on its publication work. The progress and growth of the law, the great annual output of administrative decisions and the general expansion of all sorts of legal literature will call for large expenditures if the School is to maintain its up-to-date library.

An increase in the tuition is not the remedy for the increased expenses and needs of the Law School, for at present the cost of legal instruction, especially to students from the South and West, is as high as should be.

The appeal of the committee is as follows:

"To the Graduates of the Harvard Law School;

"The situation of the Law School is precarious. This is not from any weakness in the school or its faculty. The difficulty is due to lack of money. It was Dean Thayer's intention had he lived to appeal to the graduates to provide for this need. The school was financially prosperous for many years and accumulated a surplus of about $400,000, which was used about 1906 to build Langdell Hall, as the Corporation could not give any assistance. The school has lost the interest on this large sum of money and increased its outgo by the additional charges for the maintenance of the new buildings.

"The teaching force is seriously overworked. In 1899-1900 there were 36 students to a teacher. In 1915-16 there were 61. Owing to increase of students, even with the higher standards set, there are today 72 students to each teacher, while in the College the ratio is 18 to one and in the Medical School five to one. These figures show the need of a large endowment to provide more teachers. That the officers of the school should carry burdens sufficient, as in Dean Thayer's case, to cause a complete breakdown, should not be expected, by the profession and by the alumni. for whose benefit the school exists.

"Comparatively few graduates of the school know, or can have any adequate idea of, the present work of the school and its needs. The school needs an endowment of at least one million dollars.

"The present tuition fee of $150 cannot be raised, because it would mean the loss of students who should be encouraged to come, able men from distant parts of the country who want to come, and whose attendance makes the school a national school, but who cannot assume additional expense for tuition fees. The loss of such men would necessarily mean a weakening of the school.

Necessity for Appeal.

"The reasons for this appeal, which are more fully stated in Dean Pound's report, may be summarized as follows:

"1. The expense of operating the physical plant of the school goes up steadily with the general rise in prices and wages; while

"2. The amount expended for teaching remains stationary;

"3. The amount expended for the library goes down steadily. The physical plant necessary to care for the increased number of students has been built and is kept going at the expense of the teaching force and of the library, at the expense, therefore, of the students and of the profession for which they are being trained;

"4. New subjects, the importance of which in the law grows from day to day, must be studied and taught with thoroughness. The Dean's report demonstrates this in a most interesting manner.

"5. The development of graduate and of research work must continue, and the results of such work must be presented for the use of the profession throughout the world.

"6. Langdell Hall should be completed as soon as the second-year courses are divided, and the point has already been reached where it would substantially improve the instruction so to do.

"7. As the number of students has become greater, the number of teachers has become less. The school is now giving exactly twice as much instruction as it gave 25 years ago, while a faculty only twice as large teaches three times as many students.

No Endowment For 100 Years.

"For 100 years the school has gone on with no general endowment fund. The gifts it has received, which have not been many, have been for special purposes. One of $150,000 was to build Austin Hall; others to endow professorships, the income from some of which has been insufficient to pay proper salaries, and the deficit has been made up from the general income of the school.

"The Medical School with 232 students has endowment funds of $3,632,000. The Law School with 856 students has special funds of only $734,000.

"Every graduate owes a debt to the school. Most of them can pay this debt, many of them can do very much more, all can do something. Is it too much to hope that this