Each of the four systems or sorts of physical training brought forward for trial during the decade whose middle point was 1830 had been adopted by one or more institutions of college rank. Under Follen’s guidance Harvard students were introduced to the Jahn gymnastics in the spring of 1826 (pp. 235-237), and other outdoor gymnasia of the Hasenheide type were prepared soon afterwards at Yale, Amherst, Williams, Brown (pp. 245-247), and Bowdoin (p. 249). In “A Memorial of the Class of 1827, Dartmouth College,” written by Jonathan Fox Worcester (Second edition, Hanover, N. H., 1867), there is also mention of “the interest awakened, during the latter part of our career, in the subject of physical education; the gymnastic apparatus set up behind the ‘College’ in 1826, by the students themselves ...; the cricket clubs which covered the green the next spring, adding this excellent game to our previous list of modes of exercise....” Manual labor, combined with study, played a large part in many sections of the country, and particularly in new colleges founded while that movement was at its height. Norwich University made military exercises and long marches on foot a regular part of the course, under Captain Partridge, its first president (1835-1843); and Mount Holyoke College, chartered as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, opened in 1837 with both domestic work and “calisthenics” included in its plan. The latter was more properly dancing steps, accompanied by singing.⁠[239]

In the fifties there were many signs of a reviving interest in gymnastics as a means of exercise, culminating at the end of the decade in the erection of brick or stone gymnasia at Harvard, Yale, and Amherst colleges, at a cost of approximately $10,000 each. In the “Catalogue of the University of Virginia—Session of 1851-1852” (Richmond, 1852), following the list of “Faculty, Instructors and Officers” and the name of the “University Hotelkeeper,” is the note: “Gymnastics are taught under the authority of the Faculty, by Mr. J. E. D’Alfonce.”⁠[240] The Board of Visitors reported in 1852 that they “have read with pleasure that J. E. D’Alfonce proposes to give instruction in that subject (gymnastics), and hereby renew the permission formally given for a site on the University grounds for a gymnasium, and are disposed to offer proper facilities....” John S. Patton, in Chapter XXII of his “Jefferson, Cabell and the University of Virginia” (New York and Washington, The Neale Publishing Co., 1906), says that “the gymnasium authorized by the Visitors was erected on the site of the present Academic Building, and on the banks of the little stream nearby was built a house for Russian baths. Both enterprises were directed by D’Alfonce, but fell into disuse during the Civil War, when the buildings were destroyed. As a teacher the Frenchman is said to have been unusually successful....”

The note regarding D’Alfonce appears again in the same place in the catalogues issued by the University in 1853 and 1854, and in those from 1855 to 1860 inclusive his name is listed under “Faculty, Instructors and Officers.” Professor William M. Thornton contributes the following picture: “A pretty sight might have been seen from the foot of the Lawn. As the visitor reached the apex of the triangle his eye would have rested on a great, circular framed building in the midst of the field below. Near it would have been seen a company of two or three hundred students, all in an easy uniform of blue blouse and grey trousers, drawn up in rank and file. At their head stood a lively Frenchman, an ex-soldier, issuing the word of command. And under his orders this regiment of college boys would go through a series of complex exercises, marching and countermarching, ... all out in the open air.... Or, entering the building at an earlier hour, he would have found these same boys turning upon bars, swinging upon ropes, brandishing broadswords or foils, dumb-bells and clubs. And then, as the sun descended and before the great bell of the Rotunda rang out its evening summons, he would have heard the Frenchman, in his splendid baritone, raise the chant of the Marseillaise, or some other martial strain, and all the boys would join in, and the great chorus of manly voices would rise ... upon the ... air. The soldierly Frenchman was D’Alfonce....”⁠[241]

Frederick Chase, writing on “the beginnings of athletics at Dartmouth,”⁠[242] says that “gymnastics were introduced in a small way by the erection, in 1852, by the enthusiasts, in the ravine east of the observatory, of a frame popularly called the gallows, by some the ‘Freshman’s Gallows....’ The apparatus consisted of nothing but two suspended ropes with rings, and a horizontal bar (it is referred to elsewhere as ‘two posts and a rude horizontal rail’).... It was a feature of that spot until superseded by Mr. Bissell’s Gymnasium building, with its wealth of apparatus, in 1867.”

Allan Marquand, in “The Princeton Book,”⁠[243] recites that “in the year 1856-1857 Robert Tarleton and Hugh L. Cole, of the class of 1859, resolved that Princeton should have a gymnasium. When a sufficient sum of money had been raised, a single-boarded structure was erected, and painted with the inevitable red, that it might resist the storms of heaven as its founders had resisted the objections of an unpropitious Faculty. All winter long, in this stoveless shanty, with the winds sweeping through from one end to the other, might have been seen a few enthusiastic gymnasts, at work on parallel bars, springboard, trapeze, and ladder, or swinging upon the rings and shaking the rafters in their efforts to touch the beam.... In the year 1864 the building was sadly in need of repair. Through an effort made by the class of 1866 sufficient money was raised to supply it with a stove and a new set of apparatus. Thus renovated, it answered the purpose of a gymnasium, until one night, during the summer vacation of 1865, a report was circulated that a tramp sick with the yellow fever was sleeping there. The next day the building was reduced to ashes by the frightened people of the town.”

The Board of Trustees of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at a meeting held July 2, 1857, adopted the following resolution, presented by William M. Corry, one of their number: “Resolved, that the Committee on Finance be instructed to report an appropriation of two hundred dollars for the construction of a plain and substantial gymnastic apparatus for the use of the students of the University.” J. C. Christin, M.D., a Cincinnati German who was Professor of the German and French Languages and Literatures at Miami University from 1856 to 1860, was made manager of the project, and thus outlined its history in a report to the Board of Trustees under date of July 4, 1859: “When in the fall of 1857 the gymnastic apparatus purchased by your committee was offered to the use of the students, a number of them organized themselves at once into a society called the Miami Gymnastic Association, engaged Mr. F. H. Roemler (a German) of Cincinnati as teacher at a salary of $40 a month, and rented a building (a little west of the campus) for their gymnasium at a cost of $60 a year.⁠[244] During that entire first year the classes practised regularly three times a week, and with what success you have seen at our festival, where the young gymnasts of M. U. carried off the first honors of the day over their competitors, delegates from several of the old Turners’ societies. But to bring about this happy result we were obliged to complete our gymnasium by purchasing about $300 worth more of apparatus. This the Association did, encouraged as they were by a generous donation of $150 from the citizens of Oxford and other friends, and believing that they could pay their debt soon by the aid of friends and the proceeds of some exhibitions. At the beginning of the fall session of 1858 the society was reorganized, and Mr. Roemler again engaged as teacher at a salary of $480; but as the number of members during these two sessions was on an average only about 75 (out of 220 students) they were, for want of funds, obliged to rescind the contract with their teacher at the end of March last, whereupon Mr. Roemler went to Dayton.... After his departure the number of students at the exercises of the gymnasium, which under their faithful teacher’s direction had always been from 60 to 80, dwindled down in a few weeks to about a dozen, and today the gymnasium is closed altogether, for want of interest in the students and citizens to continue their exercises without a teacher.”

The annual catalogue of Miami University issued in May of 1859, apparently oblivious of the sudden collapse of the plan, announces that “An extensive Gymnastic Apparatus has been erected in the College Campus, and an expert Teacher instructs the students in all the branches of Gymnastics under the direction of Professor Christin, M.D.” The “festival” to which the latter refers took place June 29, 1858,⁠[245] on the day before Commencement. Apparatus had been set up on the campus between the Main Building and the South Dormitory, and “thousands of spectators of both sexes came.” A report published in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette of July 2, 1858, states that about twenty-five representatives of the Hamilton Turnverein and other delegates from the Cincinnati Turngemeinde and Young Men’s Gymnastic Association were present. The program opened at 2 P.M. with a song by the Hamilton Turners. William M. Corry then addressed the audience on the subject of physical education, and the gymnastic exercises followed, continuing until late in the afternoon. The eight young men to whom the judges awarded prizes, four of them members of the Miami Gymnastic Association, “were each crowned with a wreath of evergreen in the presence of the multitude.”⁠[246]

In the Williams College catalogue for 1851-1852, published in the former year, it is stated that “A well furnished Gymnasium, with which are connected facilities for bathing, is now provided.” The same sentence is repeated in catalogues for 1852-1853 and 1853-1854, but modified in those for 1854-1855 and the three years following to read: “For their physical training a well furnished Gymnasium, with which are connected facilities for bathing, is owned and controlled by the students.” The catalogue for 1858-1859, issued in 1858, announces that “a new stone Gymnasium, to be owned and controlled by the students, is about to be erected, with which will be connected facilities for bathing;” and in the next year we are told that “a convenient Gymnasium, owned and controlled by the students, has just been erected.”

President James Walker of Harvard University, in his annual report dated December 31, 1858, after remarking that “the need of greater facilities for exercise suited to our climate, and for the physical education of students, has long been felt, and is felt more and more,” announced that “a friend of the College, whose name is not divulged, has given $8000 to be expended in the erection and equipment of a Gymnasium, for the use of ‘all undergraduates and officers of the College, and such other persons as the College Faculty may permit’....” The next December he reported that “a suitable building has been erected during the past year, with all the necessary apparatus, accommodations, and means of instruction. Almost all the students, both undergraduates and members of the professional schools (there were then 431 undergraduates, and the total enrollment was 839), have begun to avail themselves of the advantages thus supplied, each one paying a small fee (two dollars a term) in order to defray the current expenses of the establishment.” The Treasurer’s Statement dated December 1, 1859, noted that “the want of a Gymnasium has been supplied by the presentation of $8000, through Rev. Dr. Huntington, by a gentleman who declines to be known except as a ‘Graduate’ of the College.⁠[247] The building has been erected and furnished, at a cost of $9488.05.” Further details are supplied by The Harvard Magazine for October, 1859 (VI: 38): “The spot selected for the building was the little Delta at the junction of Cambridge Street and Broadway. The ground was broken March 23, 1859. The building is in the Italian style, and was erected under the direction of Mr. E. C. Cabot, architect, Boston.... The Gymnasium was opened for use on Wednesday, September 14. Meanwhile, most fortunately, the services of Professor (!) A. Molineaux Hewlett had been secured. He came with an experience in gymnastic training of fourteen years, the last five of which had been devoted most acceptably to the citizens of Worcester....”

In “The Harvard Book” (Cambridge, 1875) Thomas Wentworth Higginson describes the gymnasium as “of brick, octagonal in form, 74 feet in diameter and 40 feet high. It includes as great a variety of apparatus as is compatible with the size of the building; there are also two bowling alleys, and there are dressing-rooms, but no bath-rooms.... The first teacher of gymnastics in Harvard College was Abram Molineaux Hewlett. He was a professional teacher of boxing, and had established a gymnasium of his own in Worcester, Mass., where he was highly esteemed. He was a mulatto, of very fine physique, and of reputable and estimable character. He was, moreover, a fair gymnast and a remarkably good teacher of boxing. In the first years of his term of service there was a good deal of activity in the Gymnasium, and regular class-exercises went on. After a few years the interest fell off in some degree, or concentrated itself chiefly on the rowing-weights. Mr. Hewlett died December 6, 1871, and ... Mr. Frederic William Lister was appointed in 1872.” Hewlett’s name does not appear in the list of “Officers of Instruction and Government” in the Harvard catalogues, but from 1867 to 1871 he is mentioned with the title “Instructor and Curator” in a brief statement regarding the “College Gymnasium.”

At Yale College a gymnasium was erected in 1859, on Library Street near the corner of High, behind the college grounds proper, and “dedicated on Monday evening, January 30th” of the following year.⁠[248] It was a plain brick structure 100 by 50 feet, with a main hall 25 feet high to the crossbeams, and large gable windows. Across the front (south) end of the hall stretched a gallery 25 feet deep, in which were dressing closets and a room or rooms for an instructor or janitor. A basement story, about 10 feet high, contained bath-rooms and bowling alleys. The total cost was something over $11,000, of which $10,000 was appropriated by the Corporation and George Merriam of Springfield, Mass., contributed $500 of the balance. Yale catalogues from 1860 on through the decade state that for the privileges of the gymnasium, “including instruction, the sum of $4 a year will be charged to each academical student.” Catalogues of 1867 and later years add that “those who use the bathing-rooms connected with the Gymnasium pay a small fee for tickets.” Lyman B. Bunnell, B.A., is listed as Instructor in Gymnastics in 1860 and 1861, and Follansbee G. Welch⁠[249] during the years 1867-72.⁠[250]

The fourth president of Amherst College, Rev. William Augustus Stearns,⁠[251] in his inaugural address (November 22, 1854) and his annual reports to the trustees urged impressively, again and again, the adoption of measures designed to protect the health of students. “Physical education is not the leading business of college life,” he said in 1854, “though were I able ... to plan an educational system anew, I would seriously consider the expediency of introducing regular drills in gymnastic and calisthenic exercises.” And in 1859 he states his belief that “if a moderate amount of physical exercise could be secured to every student daily, I have a deep conviction ... that not only would lives and health be preserved, but animation and cheerfulness, and a higher order of efficient study and intellectual life would be secured.” At their meeting in August of 1859 the trustees took steps to carry out at once the president’s wishes. Work on the new building was begun in the fall of that year, and the next summer “Barrett Gymnasium” was completed.⁠[252] The name commemorates a liberal donor, Dr. Benjamin Barrett, of Northampton, who had been a near neighbor of the Round Hill School throughout its entire life history. August 6, 1860, following still the lead of the president, the trustees voted to establish a department of hygiene and physical education, the head of which should be a thoroughly educated physician, and the equal of any other member of the college faculty. “It is distinctly understood that the health of the students shall at all times be an object of his special watch, care, and counsel.” John Worthington Hooker (1833-1863), a graduate of Yale College and Medical School (1854 and 1857), was appointed to the position at once; but failing health led to his resignation within a year, and by the action of the trustees on August 8, 1861, Dr. Edward Hitchcock⁠[253] was called from Williston Seminary to take the place thus left vacant. His connection with the department continued without interruption for only a few months less than fifty years, until his death on February 16, 1911.

His own attitude toward physical training, and a foreshadowing of what he was soon to undertake, will be found in the course of nine pages of “Remarks upon Muscular Development” in an “Elementary Anatomy and Physiology, for Colleges, Academies, and other Schools,” which Dr. Hitchcock had just published (New York, 1860) in conjunction with his father. An article which he prepared in 1878 for the Tenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Health sums up as follows the essential features of the “Amherst plan” as it had been worked out under his direction: “This department was not created, nor has it been developed, for the purpose of extraordinary attention to the muscular system. Its sole object has been to keep the bodily health up to the normal standard, so that the mind may accomplish the most work, and to preserve the bodily powers in full activity for both the daily duties of college and the promised labor of a long life.... At the same time, it has been equally desired, that the so-called exercises of this department should be mentally as well as physically enjoyed by the students, and not be made a tedious, mechanical, or heavy drill.... An essential feature of it is, that each student with his class by itself, at a stated hour on four days of the week, appears at the gymnasium, and performs his part in systematic and methodical exercises timed to music. Each class has its own organization of officers and men.... The exercises are commonly known as those of light gymnastics, which consist of various bodily movements accompanied and guided by music; the larger part of them with a wooden dumb-bell in each hand....⁠[254] Especially during the colder season of the year, running is practised by the class on the floor of the gymnasium. A few marching movements are also undertaken by the classes. This amount of exercise is required of every student who is sound of limb.” In the fall of 1861 Dr. Hitchcock began to note in the case of each freshman the age, weight, height, girths of chest, arm, and forearm, and strength of upper arms (pull-up), repeating the examination afterwards at the end of each year of the course. Other measurements were added from time to time, and about twenty years later the list was considerably extended. The tabulated results appear in the Anthropometric Manual published in 1887, and in the revised editions of 1889, 1893, and 1900.⁠[255]

As a matter of record the following data regarding other college gymnasia erected or equipped during the sixties and seventies deserve a place here. At Bowdoin College in 1860 or soon afterwards a gymnasium was fitted up in what had been a dining hall. Before the middle of the next decade it was removed to unfinished Memorial Hall, and in 1882 to the lower floor of Winthrop Hall. William Colyer Dole was “Director of the Gymnasium” 1863-1869, and Dudley Allen Sargent 1869-1875. Men students in Oberlin College organized a Gymnasium Association in 1860 and erected a one-story wooden structure about 75 by 25 feet, opened March 30, 1861. Samuel Putnam, member of the Worcester, Mass., Gymnastic Club and highly recommended by Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was secured as instructor of the classes which were at once organized, but left within a month to join the Massachusetts troops at Washington. Another wooden building of similar size, and again the result of student effort, was opened in October of 1873, the earlier one having been removed in 1867. At Wesleyan University a one-story wooden structure with one room 70 by 40 feet was built and equipped in 1863-1864 at a cost of $5000. A large room in Goodrich Hall, erected at Williams College in 1864, was fitted up with gymnastic apparatus, and there was a bowling-alley on the lowest floor. A wooden gymnasium built in 1881 was blown down in 1883. Charles Russell Treat served as Professor of Physiology, Vocal and Physical Culture 1866-1869, Henry Wilson Smith (A.B., ’69) as Instructor in Physical Training 1870-1874, and Luther Dana Woodbridge (A.B., ’72) in the same position 1874-1876. A gymnasium hall 80 by 30 feet and 19 feet high was ready for use at Mt. Holyoke Seminary in the summer of 1865. After 1862 the Dio Lewis gymnastics had replaced the earlier “calisthenics” there. Vassar’s gymnasium (80 by 30 feet) and riding school was occupied at the opening of the second college year, in the fall of 1866. Here, too, the Dio Lewis exercises were employed. In March of 1867 a two-story gymnasium of brick with stone trimmings was opened at Dartmouth College, to which George H. Bissell gave nearly $24,000 for the purpose. The architect was Joseph R. Richards of Boston. F. G. Welch was Instructor in Gymnastics 1867-1868, Charles Franklin Emerson (A.B., ’68) 1868-1871, Devinel French Thompson (B.S., ’69) 1871-1872, Solon Rodney Towne (A.B., ’72) 1872-1875, and Thomas Wilson Dorr Worthen (A.B., ’72) 1875-1893. “In the spring of 1869 and during the greater part of the year 1869-1870 the students (of Brown University) had the use of a private gymnasium on Canal Street, the college bearing half the expense” (Bronson 1914, p. 377). Princeton’s gymnasium, the gift of Robert Bonner and Henry G. Marquand, was a two-story structure of gray stone, planned by George B. Post of New York, and with the ground on which it stood cost $38,000. The main hall was 80 by 50 feet. George Goldie⁠[256] was Superintendent of the Gymnasium 1869 (it was opened January 13, 1870)-1885. The annual report of the Board of Regents for the year ending September 30, 1870, records that at the University of Wisconsin “a building for drill and gymnastic exercises has just been completed at a cost of about $4000.... The main building is 100 by 30 feet,” with a wing containing an armory. Before 1870 Washington University (St. Louis) had provided for its students a one-story gymnasium with a main hall 70 by 50 feet, at a cost of $7000. Other institutions known to have made similar provision were Pennsylvania College, at Gettysburg (1870, wood, $3000), Beloit (1874, wood, $5000), University of California (1878, wood, $12,000), and Vanderbilt University (1879, brick, $22,000).⁠[257]

The three decades which witnessed the gradual revival of interest in gymnastics in the colleges were not without other signs of a growing desire for some sort of physical activity suited to the conditions and needs of the undergraduate world. The Civil War brought inevitably to the front the idea of a trained citizen soldiery which had animated Captain Partridge’s endeavors forty years before, and the beginnings of athletic sports in the colleges go back to the period immediately preceding and following the death-grapple between North and South.

The momentous Land-Grant Act of 1862, introduced by Justin S. Morrill of Vermont, passed by both houses of Congress in June and signed by President Lincoln July 2, allotted to each state a quantity of public land equal to 30,000 acres for each senator or representative in Congress, the proceeds from the sale of these lands to be used for “the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college, where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in such manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.” The clause relating to military instruction “was not in the original bill, but was introduced ... because the advantage of the South over the North at the beginning of the war was attributed to the numerous military schools there, and it was thought that at least one college in each state should teach military subjects.”⁠[258] In accordance with this Act nineteen states, among them Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, and New Hampshire, have organized independent colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts; in twenty-one others the college of agriculture is a part of the state university, as in California, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin; and in a few cases all or a part of the income goes to a privately endowed institution, like Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, and Rutgers College. Army officers are detailed to serve as instructors in military science and tactics, and in 1915-1916 the number of young men who received such instruction under the Act of 1862 was 33,445.⁠[259]

Rowing was the first sport to gain a foothold in American colleges. The earliest organizations were the boat clubs formed at Yale in 1843 and at Harvard in 1844. Crews from the two colleges met for a race on Lake Winnipiseogee, August 3, 1852. The next year the Yale Navy was organized, University of Pennsylvania students formed a university barge club in 1854, 1856 marks the beginnings of rowing at Dartmouth, Brown’s first crew was the one of 1857, and on May 26, 1858, Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Trinity organized the College Union Regatta, the first races occurring July 26, 1859, and the second July 24, 1860, both at Worcester, Massachusetts. The outbreak of the Civil War interrupted the series of regattas, and after its close the crews of Harvard and Yale were the only ones to renew the annual contests. But the Harvard-Oxford race over the Putney-Mortlake course August 27, 1869, attracted the attention of other colleges to the sport, and interest in rowing culminated in the years 1870-1876. Amherst, Princeton, Cornell, and the Massachusetts Agricultural College formed boat clubs in 1870, and Trinity became active again. In the spring of 1871 representatives of Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, and Harvard organized the Rowing Association of American Colleges, and in July of this and the five succeeding years this body held regattas, on the Connecticut River at Springfield for three years, and afterwards at Saratoga Lake. Thirteen colleges sent crews to the great regatta of 1875. The list of those who competed at one or more of the races during this period includes Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Hamilton, Harvard, Massachusetts Agricultural College, Princeton, Trinity, Union, Wesleyan, Williams, and Yale. Rutgers and the College of the City of New York had also sought admission to the Association, and at the University of Pennsylvania a boat club was organized in 1872.

College baseball had its beginning in the years 1858-1860, with the appearance of teams at Amherst, Princeton, Williams, and Yale. The first intercollegiate game seems to have been that between Amherst and Williams representatives at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, July 1, 1859. During the course of the Civil War the game was introduced at Harvard and Brown, and Bowdoin had a nine as early as 1864. In the years immediately following the war interest in the game became general and intense over the entire United States, and clubs were formed everywhere, in the colleges and outside of them.

Intramural football, in a primitive form, was all that existed in American colleges up to 1869. Traces of it are found at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Rutgers, Brown, and Amherst. The first intercollegiate football game in this country was played by Princeton and Rutgers teams at New Brunswick, New Jersey, November 6, 1869, and by 1876 the present form of game was definitely established.

The general practice of track and field athletics can be traced back to three influences—the example of students at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the “Caledonian Games” of Scotch immigrants organized into clubs for the purpose of keeping up interest in their native language and customs, and the contests arranged as appendages of the rowing events at Saratoga in 1874, 1875, and 1876. A letter from George Rives, a graduate of Columbia University who was present at the annual meets of the two English universities in 1868, led to the formation of an athletic association at Columbia, and to its first meet, in June of 1869. The first of the Caledonian Clubs was organized in Boston March 19, 1853, and its earliest games were held later in the same year. The New York Caledonian Club dates from 1856, and its first meet was on St. George’s Cricket Grounds, Hoboken, in October of 1857. Similar clubs were formed in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Montreal, and other cities. The annual games of these organizations were especially popular in the ten or fifteen years following the Civil War, and they may be considered the precursors of our modern amateur athletic clubs. George Goldie, long a member of the New York Caledonian Club, at one time director of its gymnasium, and twice a winner of the championship medal at national Caledonian meets, was director of the Princeton gymnasium from 1869 to 1885, and under the inspiration of his presence the Princeton Athletic Club was organized in the spring of 1873. The club had its first field day on June 21 of that year. Yale students held a field meet May 4, 1872. In the fall of 1873 the University of Pennsylvania Athletic Association was formed, and the Harvard Athletic Association a year later. Among the colleges which competed in five events at Saratoga in 1874 were Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Wesleyan, Williams, and Yale. Amherst, University of Pennsylvania, and Union were added in 1875, and Dartmouth in 1876. Although an intercollegiate athletic association was organized in this last year (1876), the present widespread interest in track and field athletics was not reached until the following decade. Nineteen colleges were represented at the Mott Haven (New York) games in 1886. The New York State Intercollegiate Athletic Association, made up of seven colleges, was already in existence (1885), and delegates from seven other colleges formed the New England Intercollegiate Athletic Association on November 23, 1886.⁠[260]

Twenty years after the octagonal gymnasium on Cambridge Street and Broadway was opened to students in Harvard University a structure ten times as costly, the gift of Augustus Hemenway, Harvard 1875, to his alma mater, was nearing completion at the corner of Cambridge Street and Holmes Place, facing the College Yard. The selection and arrangement of apparatus and the details of system and method were left to the newly appointed director, Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent, a man whose stimulating and molding influence upon physical training in American colleges in the next few decades was to be more potent and more widely felt than any other that can be named. His interest in gymnastics reached back to boyhood days, and during ten years of experience as a teacher in that field he had evolved certain unique plans of equipment and administration which were now to be carried out under most favorable conditions.

He was descended from New England ancestry, the son of a ship carpenter and sparmaker in Belfast, Maine, on the west side of Penobscot Bay, and was born there on September 28, 1849. The harbor and the bay furnished abundant opportunity for youthful activity and enterprise, and the early death of his father made it necessary to give much of the time outside of school hours and in the long vacations to varied forms of manual labor on land and sea, under the direction of an uncle. Meanwhile he had joined with other high school boys in putting up a horizontal bar and some other apparatus on the school grounds and starting a gymnastic club. Reports of exhibitions given at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, sixty miles away to the southwest, added to their zeal, and constant practice brought such a degree of skill that they ventured to give similar public exhibitions of their own, first in the town-hall at home, and later in some of the neighboring towns.

An invitation to become director of the gymnasium at Bowdoin College, in the fall of 1869, opened the way to further study for the young expert and started him on a career which was followed thenceforth without interruption. Two years later he was ready to enter the college as a freshman, retaining still the position to which he had been originally appointed, and now the authorities required all students to attend regular class exercises in the gymnasium for a half-hour daily during most of the fall and winter terms, i.e., when they were not occupied with military drill. During his sophomore year Sargent spent three months at Yale College, introducing there the same plan of work, and he continued to divide his time between the two institutions until his graduation from Bowdoin (A.B.) in 1875. The fall of that year found him instructor in gymnastics in Yale College and a student in the Yale Medical School, and from the latter he obtained the degree of M.D. in January of 1878.

The next move was to New York City, where for a year he conducted a private gymnasium on the site afterwards occupied by the Madison Square Theatre Company. “I elaborated my old system of measurements,” he says, referring to this period, “and had the first patterns of my long-contemplated developing appliances constructed. These consist of what are familiarly known as chest-weights, chest-expanders and developers, quarter-circles, leg-machines, finger-machines, etc., to the number of forty different pieces....⁠[261] The attempt was made to ascertain the strength and physical condition of the individual by dynamometers, and other testing and measuring appliances, and then to adapt the apparatus by means of pulleys, levers, adjustable weights, etc., to the strength or weakness of the person as determined by the physical examination.”

Meanwhile the Hemenway Gymnasium was nearing completion, and the attention of the Harvard authorities, in search of a man able to insure the best use of such splendid facilities for physical training, was turned to Dr. Sargent by alumni living in New York, and especially by William Blaikie (1843-1904), whose “How to Get Strong and How to Stay So” had just been published (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1879). In the chapter on “What a Gymnasium Might Be and Do” he sets forth Harvard’s opportunity in language that now sounds prophetic, and here and elsewhere in the book makes repeated mention of Dr. Sargent’s work at Bowdoin and Yale and of the new apparatus which he was then introducing. On September 22, 1879, the Corporation appointed him assistant professor of physical training and director of the Hemenway Gymnasium.⁠[262] His first task was to determine the equipment and to superintend its construction and installation, and the building, therefore, was not ready for use until the following January. In the Harvard Register a month later he explains that the older gymnasia were “filled with crude appliances that have been handed down in stereotyped forms for several centuries (!). To use this apparatus with benefit, it is necessary for one to have more strength at the outset than the average man possesses.... When it is considered that only one man out of five can raise his own weight with ease, the need of introductory apparatus to prepare one for the beneficial use of the heavy appliances becomes quite apparent. It was the realization of this need that led to the invention of the numerous contrivances that have been introduced into the Hemenway Gymnasium; the desire to strengthen certain muscles, in order to accomplish particular feats on the higher apparatus, was the original motive.... The results which followed were so satisfactory that the same appliances were afterwards used as a means of attaining a harmonious development. For this last-named purpose each machine has its own use. Each is designed to bring into action one or more sets of muscles, and all can be adjusted to the capacity of a child or of an athlete....”

According to the university catalogue published in 1880, “The attendance is voluntary, and the system adopted is one designed to meet the special wants of each individual. Realizing the great diversity in age, size, and strength, as well as in health, of the students who attend the University, the Director makes no attempt to group them into classes which pursue the same course of exercises. Upon entering the University, each student is entitled to an examination by the Director, in which his physical proportions are measured, his strength tested, his heart and lungs examined, and information is solicited concerning his general health and inherited tendencies. From the data thus procured, a special order of appropriate exercises is made out for each student, with specifications of the movements and apparatus which he may best use. After working on this prescription for three to six months, the student is entitled to another examination, by which the results of his work are ascertained, and the Director (is) enabled to make a further prescription for his individual case.”⁠[263]

A “Handbook of Developing Exercises” was printed in 1882, and a revised and enlarged edition, with illustrations, in 1889. The skeleton Anthropometric Chart (percentile) described in Scribner’s Magazine for July, 1887 (II: 3-17), had been issued the year before, and in 1893 table charts were ready, “designed to show the distribution of any American community as to physical power and proportions,” and ranging “from ten to twenty-six years of age for either sex, there being one for each age, except that the ages from twenty-two to twenty-six for men, and from eighteen to twenty-six for women are combined.” In this same year the life-size statues of typical American students, man and woman, were exhibited at the World’s Fair in Chicago.

As early as 1881 Dr. Sargent had begun to train teachers, in the “Sanatory Gymnasium” opened in Cambridge that year, primarily to meet the needs of young women studying in the “Harvard Annex,” now known as Radcliffe College. In 1883 accommodations were secured at 20 Church Street, and here during the next two decades more than two hundred and fifty women completed the prescribed two years’ normal course of theory and practice. The commodious new building on Everett Street was ready for use in the school year 1904-1905, and the course, now extended to cover three years, was thrown open to men also. Summer courses in physical training, lasting five weeks and given in Hemenway Gymnasium under the auspices of Harvard University, have been offered since 1887. The annual attendance in the first twenty-five years averaged over one hundred students, of whom nearly one third were men.⁠[264]

The continuous and rapid development of physical education in American colleges and universities which has taken place in recent years may be dated from the opening of the new Hemenway Gymnasium at Harvard University, with Dr. Sargent’s novel equipment and methods, in January of 1880, and the publication of Dr. Hartwell’s report by the Bureau of Education in 1886. First came an era of gymnasium building. In the brief interval between the two events just named the list of institutions includes Smith College (1880, $4000), Lehigh University (1882, $40,000), Cornell University (1882-83, $40,000), Tufts College (1882-83, $10,000), University of Wooster (1882-83, $4200), Johns Hopkins University (1883, $10,000), Amherst College (1883-84, $65,000), Bryn Mawr College (1884, $18,000), Dickinson College (1884, $8000), Lafayette College (1884, $15,000), and University of Minnesota (1884, $34,000). Twenty-five years later 114 institutions reported gymnasia, and in 1920 the number had increased to 209.⁠[265]

Next came the organization of departments of physical education. By 1909 at least 111 institutions were giving regular instruction in gymnastics, and in 1920 such departments existed in 199 colleges and universities. In 187 of them the head of the department had a seat in the faculty, and in 157 the rank of a full professor. It must be recalled in this connection that postgraduate courses like those offered in theology, medicine, law, and general education have not hitherto been available for men and women looking forward to a career in physical education, so that not many candidates have been able to measure up to the standards of general and special preparation which have determined appointment to other college professorships. A course in medicine, which has seemed to many the natural portal of entry to the new profession, cannot be viewed as anything but a makeshift solution of the problem, and until this need is met in some more adequate way it must be difficult for the department of physical education to win and hold a status equal to that of others long established. A national Society of (men) Directors of Physical Education in Colleges was organized in New York City December 31, 1897, and has held annual meetings during the Christmas holidays ever since. A corresponding Association of Directors of Physical Education for Women has been in existence since 1910, but until 1915 it included only the New England colleges.

It early became the practice to prescribe courses in physical education for students as a part of their required work. This was the case at 95 institutions in 1909, and at 180 in 1920. Freshmen were included in the requirement at 157 colleges in the latter year, sophomores at 137, juniors at 44, and seniors at 29. The next step was the giving of positive credit toward graduation for courses in physical education. By 1909, 60 colleges were doing this, and in 1920 there were 139. More recently the department has begun to take over the control and administration of intercollegiate athletics,⁠[266] to develop recreational activities for the entire undergraduate body of students on a large scale, and to offer both theoretical and practical courses of instruction and training open to students who intend themselves to teach the subject later on. These courses are sometimes grouped into a major, like those offered in other departments of the college or university, and may be considered the first step toward regularly organized professional courses for graduate students. The relation of a department of physical education to instruction in hygiene, the care of student health, and the sanitation of the college community varies in different institutions. In some a part or all of the latter functions are entrusted to a separate “students’ health service.”⁠[267]

Perhaps present-day tendencies can be best indicated by printing here in full the report of a special committee appointed in 1919 by the Society of Directors of Physical Education in Colleges to formulate the aims and scope of physical education. It was published in the American Physical Education Review for June, 1920, and adopted by the Society without change at the annual meeting in Chicago, December 30, 1920, as expressing its attitude in general on the various questions involved. After an introductory paragraph the report proceeds as follows:

“Definition. The term physical education is sometimes regarded as identical with the hygiene of childhood and youth. Others would limit it to more or less systematic exercise of the neuromuscular apparatus in order to promote and conserve the perfect functioning of the entire human mechanism, to make it what Huxley called ‘the ready servant of the will,’ and to develop correct motor habits. A usage more in conformity with the present conception of man’s nature as a unit is that which sees in measures insuring bodily health and the right kind and amount of motor activity an avenue of approach through which the whole individual may be influenced for good, in mind and character as well as in body; it employs the word physical to denote the means, and not the end. Probably no one would contend that education in general is identical with hygiene in its broader meaning, which takes account of mental and moral soundness, and there seems no better warrant for making physical education synonymous with hygiene in the narrower sense. Obviously something more than health is in the mind of one who adopts the newer definition proposed above, and improved coördination is not the only goal in sight.

“Aims. 1. If we conceive the perfecting of the individual in his social relations to be of greater importance than more purely personal values we may well begin our list of aims with certain qualities developed by appropriate group activities, particularly games and athletic sports, practised under favorable conditions. It is through these agencies that the child and youth most readily and naturally acquire habits of obedience, subordination, self-sacrifice, coöperation and friendliness, loyalty, capacity for leadership, ability to lose without sulking and win without boasting, a spirit of fair play, and all that is implied in the word sportsmanship.

“2. Other qualities of marked, though indirect, significance to the community are self-confidence and self-control, mental and moral poise, good spirits, alertness, resourcefulness, decision and perseverance, courage, aggressiveness, initiative. These traits, developed by the farm life and varied home activities of an earlier age, must now be insured through other means than those which the average family can itself supply.

“3. Underlying such aims must be the purpose to promote the normal growth and organic development of the individual, conserve his health and provide a fair degree of strength and endurance, and to secure an erect and self-respecting carriage of the body and the neuromuscular control required for prompt and accurate response and graceful and effective movements. Emergencies should be anticipated by training in exercises of which swimming may be taken as a type, and by others which accustom one to bear physical punishment coolly and to defend himself successfully.

“4. But the teacher’s vision should not be bounded by the limits of the school or college or university period. To engender in youth an intelligent and healthful interest that shall lead to lifelong practice of forms of active exercise which favor not only a continued high level of physical efficiency but also mental sanity and stimulating social contact is certainly not the least service he may seek to render.

“Scope. 1. The scope or range of physical education is suggested by what has already been said. Physical examinations intended to reveal the condition and needs of the individual and to allow the application of various tests constitute a necessary introduction and accompaniment. The educational procedure itself involves two related lines of work: (1) an orderly and progressive program of activities designed specifically to develop the qualities listed above, including regular and frequent exercise of the fundamental muscle groups, and suitable employment of corrective exercises in cases of faulty posture and other remediable defects reached through such agencies; and (2) instruction in personal hygiene and public sanitation, and inculcation of health habits, together with advice and suggestions to students confronted by individual health problems. Special courses in school hygiene and in the theory of physical education should be added in normal schools, colleges, and universities, in order that students preparing for the teaching profession may be adequately trained under the most favorable conditions.

“2. Vocational training and industrial occupations supply a certain amount of motor activity for a large part of the population, it is true, but in forms which are in general too one-sided and too much limited to the accessory mechanisms of the hand and fingers to be of serious hygienic value, and too often they are practised under insanitary conditions. The isolated exercises of formal gymnastics, if wisely chosen, are serviceable for corrective purposes, and may be utilized for bringing into play the fundamental muscle groups, and securing erect posture and a good degree of neuromuscular control. They permit a maximum economy of time and space and offer the advantages of skilled supervision, and they may be made to yield a foundation of strength and skill without which interest and success in games are likely to be lacking. Carefully selected and arranged exercises in hanging and climbing and in jumping and vaulting are especially valuable as supplying elementary training in self-confidence, alertness, decision, and courage, in addition to their hygienic and corrective uses and the advanced training in coördination which they furnish. Combat exercises make their unique contribution in the form of capacity for self-defense and ability to take punishment coolly. Folk, esthetic, and athletic dancing have an obvious place with relation to fundamental muscle groups and graceful control of the body as a whole. Group games, which are lacking in corrective value and compare unfavorably with formal exercises as a school of good posture and general coördination, may give excellent results in the way of improved health, and their special field is the development of sturdy character and right ethical standards.

“3. The relative importance to be assigned to the different aims and means of physical education mentioned varies, of course, with the age, sex, environment, and other conditions of life and work. The teaching of hygiene and the health habits emphasized must be related to the grade of intelligence and the special needs and interests of the individual at each stage, from early childhood to full maturity. The activities of the kindergarten and the lower school grades should be directed chiefly toward promotion of normal growth and organic development, by exercise of the fundamental muscle groups, and particularly through the agency of simple games, which also furnish a valuable social training at this period. In the upper grades and the high school training in coördination, with suitable attention to posture, should become a prominent feature. Too often, nowadays, the college or university department of physical education is called upon to adopt measures which would be quite unnecessary with an adequate system in the elementary and secondary schools, and to remedy conditions of malgrowth and maldevelopment which ought never to have been allowed to develop. After the high school period conservation of health and the higher social values would normally become the dominant objectives. Outside the limits of school life, i.e., in dealing with industrial or professional groups, conditions of occupation and environment must determine the aim and content of whatever plan is adopted.

“Relations. 1. Closely associated with the purposes of physical education are other procedures which any complete health program in a school, college, university, or system of schools will include. These are measures intended to secure (1) prompt detection of illness and physical defects, through preliminary and periodic medical inspection and physical examinations, and (2) adequate treatment, by means of hospital, dispensary, or private service; and (3) to provide sanitary safeguards, such as attention to food and water supplies, sewage disposal, light and ventilation, rooming conditions, and the early recognition and isolation of cases of communicable disease. Such measures call for the employment of a practising physician and health officer, whose services might also be utilized in the examinations given by the department of physical education and in the instruction in personal hygiene and public sanitation. For all other purposes mentioned in this report the oversight of a specially trained educator is required.

“2. The influence of a well-organized department of physical education ought to be felt in every phase of school work, through coöperation in attempts to promote mental hygiene and to follow hygienic principles in the choice of methods of instruction and management. Teachers in other departments may be stimulated and helped to maintain themselves in a condition which renders their own work more effective.”