Needless to say, Clark University had been for a generation a cause of indignation to the town of Worcester, which is the largest manufacturing center in New England, and next to Pittsburgh the most notorious “kept city” and “open shop” town in America. Clark regarded Worcester as the Mammon of Unrighteousness, while Worcester regarded Clark as a nest of atheism, infidelity, and Bolshevism. An American university with no stadium, no gymnasium, and no chapel, no “eleven” and no “nine,” no rowing crew and no “petting-parties”! Obviously, no gentleman would send his son to such a place; it would be left for “muckers” and Bolsheviks. One of the trustees expressed his opinion of the matter to a student with whom I talked: “The college would fare better if it turned out a winning football team than if it had eleven of the most famous scientists in the country. That’s what the public wants, and that’s the way to get the money.”
When President Hall resigned, the plutocracy of Worcester perceived that their chance had come. They arranged for the president of Clark College to resign at the same time, and they cast about for some man of their own type to take charge of both institutions. The selection was made by Mr. Thurber, business manager of Ginn & Company; and again I don’t know whether I should describe it as “honest” or “dishonest” graft. One of the principal “lines” of Ginn & Company is the Frye-Atwood elementary school geographies, which are handsomely illustrated, and have been sold to the extent of over half a million copies to school boards throughout the United States. The author of these books was a professor of geography, first at the University of Chicago, then at Harvard. It occurred to Mr. Thurber what an admirable thing it would be, if, instead of advertising these geographies as written by a professor at Harvard, he could advertise them as written by the president of Clark University! Also if he could use Clark University as a place for tea-parties to entertain visiting delegations of school superintendents and teachers desirous of meeting the distinguished author of Ginn & Company’s leading “line”!
Of course I don’t mean literally “tea-parties”; in the educational world these publicity enterprises proceed under the decorous title of Summer Schools. Elaborate advertising campaigns are undertaken, the praises of this or that particular “line” are seductively set forth, and the schoolmarms flock from all over the United States—likewise the principals and the high-up superintendents—and they meet the distinguished authors of school books, and listen to their patriotic eloquence, and go home singing the wonders of the various “lines.” Then when the new orders are placed for text-books, the enterprising salesmen are on hand to get the business.
Mr. Thurber announced that he had a new president for Clark College and Clark University; he announced it at the commencement dinner, and there was consternation on the faces of everybody present, because nobody had ever heard of Wallace Walter Atwood, professor of physiography at Harvard University, and author of “The Mineral Resources of Southwestern Alaska,” and “The Glaciation of the Uinta and Wasatch Mountains.” I am told that one of Professor Atwood’s colleagues at Harvard, hearing the news, remarked: “I suppose Clark thinks it is getting a geographer and an educator; Clark will find it has neither.” And Clark did! President Atwood may be a well-informed man in his narrow specialty; certainly he fulfils the ideal of the interlocking trustees, in that he is a hundred percent pious and a hundred percent patriotic and a hundred percent plutocratic. But when it comes to the administration of a university, and to broad questions of public welfare—I have cast about and tested all the terms in my vocabulary, but I have been unable to find any one word to describe the ignorant crudity and childish absurdity of this former Harvard physiographer.
He announced at the very beginning that he had no interest in being the president of a poor man’s university; he was going to start a “drive” for funds, and make Clark a normal and respectable place. In an address to the students he set forth the advantages of a technical education, using the standard phrases of the “go-getters”: “As an expert witness you can sometimes get as much as a hundred dollars a day.” This to a group of men whose chief pride was that they had a real understanding of the intellectual life! One student came to him to ask for time to pay his tuition fee. “Why do you come here if you can’t pay what you owe?” asked the president, sharply. On the other hand, to a famous athlete, member of a wealthy family, who had found it impossible to pass his examinations, he said: “Don’t worry too much about that; we all get by in the end; it took me five years to get through myself.”
At the formal inauguration ceremony President Atwood announced—doubtless with a sly wink at Mr. Thurber on the platform—that he was going to make Clark University the great center of American geographic and physiographic education. Now I have no desire to deny the importance of these subjects; they are interesting specialties and have their place; but when some one sets out to raise them into major sciences, we may be sure that we are dealing with a buncombe artist, and may look with certainty for commercial motives. In the Clark University bulletin we find the commercial ideal set forth in the plainest possible language: “Many of the universities and colleges of this country are now calling for trained geographers. Commissioners of education, normal schools, and high schools are looking for men or women who can serve as supervisors or as special teachers of geography. The large financial houses are endeavoring to train men in commercial geography in their own schools. The departments of the government are now using trained geographers, and the Civil Service Commission has recently recognized the profession of geography”—etc., etc.
Under President Atwood’s regime the graduate work in mathematics and biology has ceased. The two best psychologists are gone, and the department has declined to nothing. The department of chemistry is undermanned and woefully deficient in equipment. History and the social sciences are even worse off, and no adequate work in government is offered, in spite of the fact that the will of the founder specifies the preparing of useful citizens as the first task of the university. Instead of that—we have geography! There is an independent “Graduate School of Geography,” free from faculty control and headed by President Atwood himself, with a professor of meteorology and climatology, and a lecturer in anthropogeography—delicious mouthful for schoolmarms to take home to Main Street!—also four other professors and lecturers, and four more listed as “offering closely related work.” There are twenty-one courses in this Graduate School, and a “special series” of six lectures, besides a program of anti-Bolshevik propaganda, described as a “Conference on Russian Affairs,” with five lecturers, including Mr. A. J. Sack, ex-chief of Ambassador Bakmetieff’s lie-factory! In addition to this, there is the Summer School, with only one course in psychology, and only two in education, and only two in social science—but with twelve in geography! And worse yet, there is to be a “Correspondence School,” with endless courses in the Frye-Atwood geographies, for rural school and grade teachers, with the horrified and agonized faculty of the university compelled to give university credits for this commercial work!
Men who can thus turn culture into cash are seldom permitted to hide their light under a bushel in capitalist society. President Atwood has also become editor of a magazine; or rather director of the “Institute of International Information,” a contrivance for getting subscriptions to a magazine called “Our World.” In its pages you may find a picture of our worthy physiographer in full academic regalia, holding one of his geography books, decorated with ribbons, clasped in his hands. For four dollars you may join this “Institution,” and get the magazine for a year, and “have the privilege of asking any question of international significance, etc.” The funniest thing about the proposition is that our pious and super-respectable president of a reformed atheist university is here working hand in hand with and advertised alongside of Mr. Arthur Bullard. Surely President Atwood does not know who this terrible creature Bullard is—an international revolutionary conspirator who, concealing himself under the alias of “Albert Edwards,” endeavored to undermine American institutions by a Socialist novel called “Comrade Yetta,” and a most shocking “free love” novel, “A Man’s World!”
CHAPTER LXI
A LEAP INTO THE LIMELIGHT
The program of converting Clark University into an advertising department of Ginn & Company proceeded merrily so far as concerned Ginn & Company; but it caused great distress to the faculty of the university, which held a series of meetings and prepared a memorandum to the board of trustees, in which they bitterly denounced the new policy. Also there were signs of revolt among the students; even the Rotary clubs and other business organizations of Worcester began to tire of a diet of geography, fried, boiled and hashed for three meals a day. I have not been admitted to the inside of President Atwood’s psychology, but some of his professors suspect that he began to realize that something desperate must be done, and resorted to the favorite device of George M. Cohan, who, whenever one of his plays began to lag, would come dancing out on the stage with an American flag.