Education: Dr. Burton

There are few professions in which men can die young and be said to have left careers. In politics, for example, there are 1,000 Henry Cabot Lodges and Uncle Joe Cannons, etc., for one Alexander Hamilton. It is the same in Business, in Medicine, in Law, in Education. From time to time we have our Charles W. Eliots, but how seldom do we have our Marion LeRoy Burtons?

Dr. Burton died last week, only a little over 50, leaving an enviable record as the President of one college and two Universities, all of first-rate importance. In 1874, he was born on a farm at Brooklyn, Iowa. His youth was spent in Minneapolis, and he was obliged to go to work when he had got through his first year of high school. At 19, he resumed his schooling. He was 22 when he entered Carleton College and almost 26 when he was graduated. At 29, he entered the Yale Divinity School. In three years, he took his Bachelor of Divinity degree, in another year, his Doctorate of Philosophy. So he was almost 33 when his education was completed.

He was hardly a year at Yale, teaching as assistant professor of Systematic Theology, when Smith College offered him its presidency. His career at Smith lasted for seven years. It brought into play the powers which had been already manifest and were yet to be more manifest—an extremely good mind, an uncommon amount of energy, tact and administrative ability joined to a sense of scholarship.

In 1917, after a memorable farewell dinner at which Lieutenant-Governor Calvin Coolidge presided, Dr. Burton became President of the University of Minnesota. He was there three years, whence he went to the University of Michigan and it was from there that his old friend Calvin Coolidge called him one day last June to deliver a nominating speech on his behalf at the Cleveland Convention of the Republican Party. It was Dr. Burton's only excursion into politics, although he had a definite bent in that direction. That speech brought Dr. Burton no mean amount of fame at the time.

A year of teaching, a year of preaching, a year of travel, seven years at Smith, three years at Minnesota, five years at Michigan—then death. So quickly closed a brief and brilliant career of less than 20 years.