This transformation is naturally affecting college mathematics most profoundly. The tedious work of building foundations in college mathematics is becoming more imperative. The use of the rock drill is forcing itself more and more on the college teacher accustomed to use only hammer and saw. As we are just entering upon this situation, it is too early to prophesy anything in regard to its permanency, but it seems likely that the secondary teachers will no more assume a yoke which some of the college teachers would so gladly have them bear and which they bore a long time with a view to serving the interests of the latter teachers.
As many of the textbooks used by secondary teachers are written by college men, and as the success of these teachers is often gauged by the success of their students who happen to go to college, it is easily seen that there is a serious temptation on the part of the secondary teacher to look at his work through the eyes of the college teacher. The recent organizations which bring together the college and the secondary teachers have already exerted a very wholesome influence and have tended to exhibit the fact that the success of the college teacher of mathematics is very intimately connected with that of the teachers of secondary mathematics.
While it is difficult to determine the most important single event in the history of college teaching in America, there are few events in this history which seem to deserve such a distinction more than the organization of the Mathematical Association of America which was effected in December, 1915. This association aims especially to promote the interests of mathematics in the collegiate field and it publishes a journal entitled _The American Mathematical Monthly_, containing many expository articles of special interest to teachers. It also holds regular meetings and has organized various sections so as to enable its members to attend meetings without incurring the expense of long trips. Its first four presidents were E. R. Hedrick, Florian Cajori, E. V. Huntington, and H. E. Slaught.
An event which has perhaps affected the very vitals of mathematical teaching in America still more is the founding of the American Mathematical Society in 1888, called the New York Mathematical Society until 1894. Through its _Bulletin_ and _Transactions_, as well as through its meetings and colloquia lectures, this society has stood for inspiration and deep mathematical interest without which college teaching will degenerate into an art. During the first thirty years of its history it has had as presidents the following: J. H. Van Amringe, Emory McClintock, G. W. Hill, Simon Newcomb, R. S. Woodward, E. H. Moore, T. S. Fiske, W. F. Osgood, H. S. White, Maxime Böcher, H. B. Fine, E. B. Van Vleck, E. W. Brown, L. E. Dickson, and Frank Morley.