As was to be expected the technical training of the professional staff of the Engineering College and the resources of the laboratories were employed extensively by the Government. This was particularly true of the Department of Marine Engineering, where Professor H.C. Sadler studied the important problem of standardized types of ships, until he became Head of the Bureau of Design with the Shipping Board, when his work in the Naval Tank was carried on by Professor E.M. Bragg.
It cannot be claimed of course that this record in scientific inquiry and advanced scholarship will equal what has been done in certain other universities, whose riper traditions and great endowments have enabled them to carry on special investigations, establish research professorships and support publications, which have thus far proved impossible for a state institution, whose first obligation rests in its relations with the people of the commonwealth. Nevertheless Michigan has been happy in this, as in so many other respects. The liberality and sympathetic understanding of the public opinion upon which the success of the University rests fundamentally, have enabled it to develop scholarly ideals and a recognition of true scholarship which have given Michigan a high rank among American universities.
This fortunate and early recognition of the highest mission of the University was made possible only through co-operation on the part of the Regents, who, as the governing body, have been able on the one side to encourage scholarly ideals in spite of the occasional lack of appreciation of the University's aims on the part of some individual members of the Board, and, on the other, to secure and preserve the University's freedom, threatened by the efforts of the State Legislature to interfere with its affairs. This relationship of the Regents to the maintenance of the University, and to the State, has had a very important effect upon the development of higher learning and research and may therefore properly be outlined at some length in this place.
The University has been truly fortunate for the most part in the men who have composed the governing body. There have been times, it is true, when relations between the Regents and the Faculties have been far from ideal, but it is no less true that the history of the past eighty years will show a remarkable spirit of co-operation and harmony between the two bodies. Otherwise the University could not have become what it is. While the Regents for the most part have not been men primarily interested, or trained, in educational matters, they have taken their duties seriously and have been unselfish in their service for the institution, with no reward for their labors save the honor inherent in their office. They have sought earnestly to understand the problems before them, and, in whatever measures they took, to keep always before them the welfare of the University as a whole. With the ever increasing numbers enrolling as students and the consequent well-nigh irresistible pressure for elementary and the so-called "practical" courses, they have been strong enough and wise enough, and sufficiently sympathetic with the scholarly preoccupations of the leaders of the constantly growing Faculties, to maintain and encourage the higher aims of the University as a center of learning. It is true that the Board is sometimes criticized for taking upon itself functions which might with propriety rest with the Faculties and their administrative officers, but there is at least a legal justification for this in the legislative provisions upon which the powers of the Board of Regents rest. Thus in the Act of March 18, 1837, the Regents are empowered to "enact laws for the government of the University," and to appoint the professors and tutors and fix their salaries. The number of professorships was specified and fixed at thirteen; though it was provided in the first organization that;