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Luck was with him. In 1881 he was invited to lecture on psychology at the Johns Hopkins University, toward which all ambitious young professors were looking wistfully. He was then asked to teach a half year after which he was appointed full professor for five years at a salary then very generous. The seven fat years—for he remained until 1888—had begun. The great Gilman was president of the university, Gildersleeve taught Greek and Rowland taught physics; Simon Newcomb, astronomy; Spencer, Huxley, Kelvin, Matthew Arnold, James Bryce, Freeman the historian, James Russell Lowell, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and William James were visitors and, for the most part, lecturers. Among Dr. Hall’s pupils were John Dewey, J. McKeen Cattell, Joseph Jastrow, James H. Hyslop and one young man who took a long Sunday afternoon walk with the professor “in which he debated with me the question of majoring in psychology, although I felt that his mind was already made up not to do so, for his previous studies and his Southern instincts and family traditions already inclined him too strongly toward the historical and political field.” This was Woodrow Wilson. “Had he chosen psychology,” comments Dr. Hall, “he might never have been President; but, on the other hand, if he had, he might have learned to do better teamwork and have been more ready to compromise and concede.”
When he was just forty-two Dr. Hall’s lean years began—lean in the sense that he gave up highly congenial work and surroundings and a maximum salary which was offered him to embark on a new and untried enterprise, in which he was to endure a degree of distress and anxiety and an amount of difficulty and odium hard to describe. The history of his relations with Clark University, first publicly told in Chapter VII of his Life and Confessions of a Psychologist, is likely without a parallel. Certainly it throws more light on human nature than any psychologist could hope to do by a lifetime of experiment and reasoning. Briefly, this was what happened:
Jonas Gilman Clark (1815-1900), a successful wagonmaker, had made a fortune in California in 1849 by selling mining implements. He was one of the active Vigilantes and a friend of Leland Stanford. After attaining importance in San Francisco he moved to New York and increased his wealth by dealing in real estate; but with the passage of years he returned to his native county in Massachusetts. The example of Leland Stanford, his own childlessness, and a desire to do something for his native county led him to resolve to found Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Dr. Hall was asked to be president and accepted the post.
Mr. Clark immediately gave a building and grounds and his note for $600,000 for the university, with a note of $100,000 for a library. This, a total value of something like $1,000,000, was the largest single gift that had ever been made to education in New England. The outlook was of unprecedented brilliance, for Mr. Clark’s expressed intention was to leave all his wealth to the institution, and his fortune was variously estimated at from $8,000,000 to $18,000,000 or even $20,000,000. The founder readily agreed to Dr. Hall’s suggestion that he, Dr. Hall, spend a year abroad studying the universities of the world.
Surely no one has ever had an opportunity equalling the year which followed. Dr. Hall omitted to visit no university of importance in Europe. The mere recital of the places he saw is impressive enough; when the imagination tries to take in the educational panorama unrolled before his eyes the task becomes impossible. One small cloud darkened the horizon. Mr. Clark had instructed him to bring to this side several of the best German professors. Dr. Hall was put in a painful situation by engaging Von Holst of Freiburg and then having his act disowned. He did not suspect that it was to be only the first of a series of bitter and terrible disappointments.
Clark was opened as a university for graduate students only with few pupils but high hopes and splendid prospects on 2 October 1889. A few simple figures, as Dr. Hall remarks, give the key to the near-tragedy that followed. “During the first year we spent for salaries and equipment, $135,000; the second year, Mr. Clark contributed $50,000 above the income of the $600,000 that had actually been transferred to the board of trustees, making a total income of $92,000; the third year, he gave $26,000, making it $68,000; the fourth year, $12,000, making it $54,000; and the fifth and subsequent years of his life he gave nothing, so that the whole institution subsisted upon the income of its funds, namely, the $600,000 for the University and $100,000 for the library.” What was wrong?
Mr. Clark couldn’t or wouldn’t say. He seems to have been a singularly inarticulate individual. Whether he lost heavily in the misfortunes that overtook the British firm of Baring Brothers, or on his own account, remains uncertain. It may be that he had, all along, much less money than was supposed; or it may be that a university cost more than he expected. There was consternation over his dwindling annual gifts and a deeper anxiety over his failure to add to the permanent endowment. Collectively and individually the trustees implored him to say what the university might expect; at least, they would know where they stood; but Mr. Clark remained silent. “He sanctioned every engagement and knew exactly the liabilities we were incurring, and the optimistic view,” says Dr. Hall, “was that he could not possibly bring men here or start departments and then fail to sustain them.” It was too optimistic. Men were let go because there was no money to keep them. After a personal quarrel with a professor, Clark compelled the board to request the man’s resignation, which they did. The founder would smilingly listen to instructors who asked for supplies, refer them to Dr. Hall, and then order Dr. Hall to deny the requests. A personal tragedy at the beginning of this time befell Dr. Hall as he was convalescent from an attack of diphtheria so severe that for weeks he could not speak, but had to write on a slate. He had been sent to the country when, one night, through an accident in a gas fixture, his wife and the younger of his two children, aged six, were smothered to death.
“As the second year drew to a close and the trustees fully realized that Mr. Clark would almost certainly not maintain expenditures on the basis on which they had been begun, and as there was already much discontent in the faculty, their anxiety focused on the future, and I was instructed to do everything possible not to alienate Mr. Clark to such a degree that he would bestow elsewhere the remainder of his fortune, still believed to be very large. To this end I must, with what grace and tact I could, accept the situation; and when asked, as I often was when I was trying to get his wishes carried through with the faculty as a whole or individually, whether it was my will or the founder’s that I was trying to enforce, must give them to understand it was my own and thus shield Mr. Clark. This was most humiliating to my honor and even to my conscience but the situation demanded nothing less, for the entire future of the institution seemed to hang upon this.” The foreseen result was a faculty revolt; a majority of the staff offered their resignations because they had lost confidence in Dr. Hall. The trustees left the affair in Dr. Hall’s hands, but as those hands were tied by the necessity of keeping a close secret the financial situation and by the necessity of “shielding” Clark from censure, he could explain but lamely.
At this point President Harper of the new University of Chicago came to Worcester, secretly engaged a majority of the faculty at double the Clark salaries, and then tried to hire Dr. Hall for a salary larger than he was receiving. Under Dr. Hall’s threat to make the facts public and to appeal to John D. Rockefeller himself—Mr. Rockefeller being Chicago’s backer—Harper receded a little. Dr. Hall managed to salvage a few of his men from the raid. Clark University was now reduced to living on the four per cent. income from its $600,000 and waiting for its founder to die, “when it would be clear to us whether we must close up, live along feebly, or enter upon the realization of our large and high initial hopes by finding that, after all, he had vast means and had not diverted them to other sources.”
Andrew Carnegie promised $100,000 if an equal amount were raised; when only $37,000 could be raised and Mr. Carnegie was told why he dropped the condition and gave his $100,000 outright. Somehow, the next half dozen years were got through. There was a continuous false position for Dr. Hall and continuous and heavy censure to be borne. He had to suppose that the end would justify the means; and the end, when it came, gave him only partial satisfaction. Clark had got to spend a good deal of time in Europe, perhaps as an aid to his disgusting reticence. He was at outs with the trustees, all men of distinction and all sustaining Dr. Hall as well as they could. The founder was also in disagreement with Dr. Hall over a collegiate department, which he wanted and which Dr. Hall—one would think, very naturally, in the acutely trying circumstances—didn’t want. The tenth anniversary of Clark was celebrated with a brave spirit in 1899. It was that darkest hour before the dawn. The perverse Clark died the year following leaving a nasty will with five codicils and expensive litigious possibilities, most of which were realized. In the last of the codicils Clark revoked certain strictures upon Dr. Hall contained in the will itself. However, a collegiate department was provided and university and college came at once into possession of nearly the whole estate, the rest to follow at Mrs. Clark’s death. Dr. Hall, who had been teaching and lecturing and worrying, was free at last from his scapegoat rôle. Four years later he was to publish in two volumes his masterly study of Adolescence; and every few years after that were to see an important book come from his hands. He was in his fifties and at last comparatively free and unhampered. Not only his interest in child study but his wide knowledge of methods of teaching (pedagogy), of psychology and philosophy, of the vast amount of experimental work in hand everywhere and his novel conceptions of the soul’s progress were to bear fruit.