Word: uselessness
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Dates: during 1900-1909
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...originally founded on a false analogy, has become less and less adapted to present functions." "Secondly," says President Eliot, "city business being now much more elaborate, extensive, and complicated than it was originally, inexperienced, frequently changing executive bodies, such as subcommittees of city legislative bodies, have become worse than useless; because the real business can only be done by experts." "Thirdly, the old idea of local representation and local government is inapplicable to modern cities...
...Corporation really believes that it made a mistake a year ago in adopting the recommendations, it is admitting a most deplorable blunder; by returning to the old policy it becomes responsible for another of those useless vacillations for which we are becoming so famous...
...attempted corrections of such an evil would mean that the innocent must suffer with the guilty; but it would be better to subject the thoughtful to a useless supervision than to permit the rest to drift through College as fancy dictates. Freshmen, whose ignorance is presupposed, are assigned to advisers, who are busy men and seldom give the kind of assistance that helps a man to make a judicious choice his Sophomore year. Frequently the adviser does no more than sign the card and leave the Freshman to his fate. During the second year there is absolutely no provision...
...withheld. A great effort was made last autumn to get conclusive evidence, and there is a considerable list of men concerning whose guilt there is not the slightest doubt. If these are not published, the time and labor spent in making up the list will have been worse than useless. If published, not only will a well-deserved punishment be inflicted, but men who contemplate future traffic in tickets will be summarily brought to their senses...
...communication suggests, we have done with theory and try. We cannot see the profit derived from placing ourselves in a position that will be bound to handicap us enormously and send our teams into contests with small hope of victory. We shall have simply crippled ourselves by a useless theoretical experiment...