USA > Connecticut > History of Connecticut, Volume II > Part 36
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102. Then, in an effort to achieve the last bit of political advantage, the Republicans passed a bill for redistricting the Senate which in turn was defeated in the Democratic controlled Senate. The parties then turned to what has become so characteristic of any proposal for reorganization that there might be justification in concluding that what followed was the primary objective of any such proposal-to permit each party to accuse the other of being responsible for the failure of the legislation.3
The Loyalty Oath Issue
In one respect the 1951 Assembly was at least as notable for what it did not do as for what it did. The Governor in his inaugural address had held out the dread fear of Communism. He charged that there were 1000 card-carrying Communists in the state in addition to a considerable num- ber of fellow travelers. Although the Governor admitted that he was "not in a position to say that any state employee is subversive," he conferred with the FBI and the State Police on the subject. It was reported on May 4 that plans were afoot to rout the reds out of government, and it was suggested that a loyalty oath might be required. The special objects of the Governor's concern were those so-called sensitive areas closely allied with the well-being of the public. If a law requiring a special oath of state employees were enacted, it was suggested that it might be extended to cover employees of towns and local governments. It seems ironic indeed that the issue which was to be so effective in the 1952 Presidential campaign, in which the Governor was to play so important a part, failed to incite the Connecticut legislators into frenzied action. In contrast to the general climate, calmness prevailed, and it was judged that no greater loyalty could be required than that of sworn allegiance to the Constitution.4
The Political Balance
The Governor's prestige as a political leader shrank even lower when he was forced to accept the Democrats version of the budget. The Re- publicans had campaigned on economy and the Governor had spoken at some length about austerity. Yet he asked for $242,000,000 to operate the state exclusive of the highway fund. The party which does not bear the responsibility for running the affairs of the state is always the most vocal
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about saving money. Now it was the Democrats turn to express surprise at what they described as the highest budget in history. "With careful study," John Bailey "was sure that millions could be saved." The stage was set for a bitter fight when the Republican members of the Appropria- tion Committee introduced, apparently without the knowledge of the Democrats, their version of the budget. Despite repeated talk of economy, it was only slightly less than that recommended by the Governor. The Democrats countered with a recommendation calling for expenditures of $214,000,000. The Governor sought to gain support for his program by charging that the cuts affected most the unfortunate of the state, partic- ularly the aged and the mentally ill. There was little hope. It was an- nounced two days before adjournment that the Republicans were accept- ing the Democrats' budget. Most Republicans expressed the view that the budget would result in a deficit, but judged this preferable to a special session which they regarded as inevitable if they did not acquiesce. This circumstance was not avoided, however, because of an apparent over- sight which resulted in the failure to grant authorization for the extension of Civil Defense.5
Doom was forecast for the Republican Party by Jack Zaiman in a series of articles in the Hartford Courant in June, 1951. "The Republicans have been operating in this state," he wrote, "on the theory that this is a Republican state and always will be. . .. But this is not true. The only thing that is safe from now on is the Republican House." He added that if it were not for Fairfield County, the state would already be Demo- cratic. He roundly scored the GOP for its ineffectual efforts, particularly in the last session. In extending the sales tax, he charged, it became identified as the party of high taxes. It followed Democratic leadership in approving the sale of oleomargarine and natural gas and in increasing the limitation on bond issues for the construction of rental housing from 65 to 115 million dollars. The Democrats, he believed, had completely taken the play from the Republicans who had failed to convince labor that the Republican Party offered support. Injury had been added by the failure of the Governor's office to extend the proper courtesies to labor leaders. Mr. Zaiman directed his most pointed barbs at the Governor's aloofness from politics. "Completely disregarded," he said, "was the basic and fundamental fact that the Connecticut legislature and every other
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legislature is governed by politicians." The idea was growing that the Governor "must be concerned with the welfare of the Republican Party and not solely with the welfare of John Lodge." On the other hand, Zaiman did not need to instruct John Bailey in the arts of politics. To Bailey these were as natural as life. He had grown up in politics in Hartford; and during the five years he had been state Chairman, the Democratic Party had made its greatest strides in history.6
As the Democrats proceeded to build an aggressive political machine, the Republicans became involved in a bitter intra-party conflict which ultimately all but wrecked the Republican Party. The city of Hartford had contributed significantly to the Democratic state victory in 1948, and the Democratic plurality in the city was almost enough to reelect Bowles in 1950. The poor showing of the Citizen's Charter Committee in the municipal election of 1951 was the signal for the Democrats to attempt to strengthen the city's Democratic machine in the hope that Hartford would continue to accord the Democrats a 25,000 plurality in state and national elections.7 There was precipitated an internecine fight within the Republican party which shook it to its very foundations. The object of the attack was a politician's politician, a jovial Irishman who exacted and extended strong loyalties, the Republican National Committee man William H. Brennan. The patronage dealing of this old line politician was distasteful to the Governor reared in the tradition of Boston Puri- tanism. With the assistance of Meade Alcorn, or, perhaps at his urging, an attack was begun on Brennan which flared into open conflict. He had supported Lodge, reluctantly perhaps, for Congress. Now, Brennan claimed, Lodge had forgotten who had started him in politics. The Gov- ernor brought all the forces of his office, and it would seem quite likely forces from without the state, to bear on the ouster of Brennan. Brennan was deposed and was replaced by former Governor Shannon, who resigned in a short while and was replaced by one of the architects of the plan, Meade Alcorn. The fight had national significance. Brennan was an avowed Taft supporter. Lodge and Alcorn on the other hand, jumped on the Eisenhower band wagon early. Their success in ousting Brennan cleared the way for them to deliver the Connecticut delegation to Eisen- hower at the Republican National convention. From the date of the Brennan ouster, there were wide differences on party policy and pro-
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grams, and agreements thereafter were more those of expediency than of principle.8
The Eisenhower sweep in 1952 enabled the Republicans to regain control of the Senate and thereby control of both houses of the State Legislature, but in this victory there were portents of future challenges to continued Republican control. For the first time, as a result of a constitu- tional amendment extending the term of the Governor to four years, there was not a gubernatorial election which ran concurrently with the Presidential contest. The effect of the national election on the election of state officers was thereby removed, but in turn the presidential campaign exerted a greater effect than before on the choice of the members of the General Assembly. In a contest in which Eisenhower secured a plurality of 129,362, the Republicans were successful in electing 22 of the 36 state Senators. It was of more significance that only four of these, one each from New Haven, Bridgeport, Waterbury, and New London, were from the larger cities. The importance of Hartford in state elections was em- phasized by the fact that the only Democratic victor in the contests for congressional seats was Thomas Dodd who won the first district by virtue of 28,000 plurality in Hartford. The man who emerged from the election earmarked for bigger things was Abraham Ribicoff. He had not been counted among the party leaders as late as February, 1951, but the death of Senator McMahon gave him the opportunity to run for the Senate and to establish himself as a vote-getter on a statewide basis. He did not fail. Not only was Bush's plurality held to 28,960, but Ribicoff won his home county, Hartford, by a slightly greater plurality than Bush secured in Fairfield County, and even in losing the other counties Ribicoff demon- strated unmistakable voter strength. Of equal importance, perhaps, inso- far as the Democratic party was concerned was that Ribicoff's plurality in Hartford County was 48,098 while that of Thomas Dodd in the same election was 23,540. Since they controlled both houses of the legislature the Republicans had the opportunity in the forthcoming Assembly to enact a legislative program which would appeal to the people and modify the future course of politics in the state.9
The Expressways
The 1953 Assembly might well be remembered as the one which
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built expressways. In the post-war era emphasis was placed on relieving the congestion of heavily traveled roads and on the improvement of state highways in the urban communities. The most important of these were the completion of the Wilbur Cross Parkway and the completion of the tunnel through West Rock to connect the Wilbur Cross with the Merritt Parkway. Other expressways were added and included the Derby-Shelton, the East Hartford-Glastonbury, and the Hartford- Springfield. Improvements in urban areas included widening approaches to towns as Route 6A into Waterbury, and constructing routes to by-pass towns as the Route 9 By-pass in Middletown.
The Connecticut Turnpike was the special concern of the 1953 Assembly and the most dramatic of the efforts to provide highways for an ever increasing, motor-conscious population. The congestion on the Old Post Road had been relieved with the opening of the Merritt Park- way in 1938, but by 1952 traffic had again increased to the point where it equalled or exceeded the previous congestion. The state had been aware of this possibility, and in 1943 had authorized the Highway Com- mission to lay out and construct a highway in the vicinity of Route 1 from the New York state line to the Housatonic River. Authorization for the expenditures of funds for the highway, however, were withdrawn in 1945, and in 1947 the authority for planning was repealed. During the next four years numerous studies, including origin and destination sur- veys, were made by the Highway Department and by the cities and towns along the shore. The 1951 legislature authorized the Highway Commissioner "to plan, layout, and construct a highway in Fairfield county between the Connecticut-New York state line and the Housatonic River to relieve the congestion on Route One."
From the many studies which were made two alternate routes were advanced. One a shore route which followed in general Route One and the other an inland highway lying about eight miles north and parallel to Route One. In the effort to resolve the site issue, it was assumed that east-west traffic would approach 100,000 each day by 1970. It was recom- mended that there be built an all-purpose six-lane highway from New York to West Haven which would be of maximum benefit to the shore towns and at the same time maintain contact with the large industrial centers. The 1953 General Assembly authorized a bond issue of approxi-
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mately 400 million dollars for the construction of what was initially called the Greenwich-Killingly Expressway. This 129-mile inland route was to follow the shore line from the New York boundary to the vicinity of Flanders and to extend northeasterly to Killingly.
The exhiliration felt by the personnel of the highway department showed through the drab and repressed official reports of the Depart- ment as progress was recorded on "the biggest unit in history" with "a greater number of problems and variety of problems than any previous undertaking of this kind." To complete the project within the four years allowed, the Highway Department was to a great extent transformed from an operating to a supervisory agency as architects, design consul- tants, and 27 contracting engineering firms were retained to speed the work. Construction was delayed somewhat by difficulties in acquiring title to land, and by the steel strike of 1956 and the cement strike of 1957, but turnpike facilities were available from Killingly to Greenwich on January 2, 1958. As a result of strong pressure from the residents of the eastern part of the state, the 1957 assembly authorized the expan- sion of the turnpike in that section to a four-lane divided highway and this work was completed by 1959.
The story of the turnpike can be told in tons of steel and concrete, in millions of dollars, in the 4,252 pieces of property acquired for right of way, in the anguish of homesteaders, in the profits of speculators, or in the contributions of contractors to political parties. To the engineer it was a dream offering technical accomplishment. To Connecticut it was a dream offering possible industrial development for the depressed East- ern section of the state. It illustrates the extraordinary effort presently required to maintain a highway system commensurate with the demands of an ever increasing and mobile population and the needs of a continu- ally developing industrial community.10 It was the beginning of an extensive highway construction program which was to be undertaken in the state.
Public Higher Education
"Well up on the list" of the issues to be considered by the 1953 Legislature was that of centralizing the administration of the state insti-
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tuitions of higher education. The state teachers' colleges had since their establishment been governed by the State Board of Education which was also concerned with public elementary and secondary education. The state university, on the other hand, was governed by a board of regents. The idea of centralization was not new. Unification had been suggested by the Commission on State Government Organization in 1950, the need for a more complete system of education was recognized in the 1951 report of the Commissioner of Education, and, the administrative struc- ture of higher education was on the agenda of the conference of Gov- ernors in 1952. The most articulate expression of the suggestion, however, as it pertained to Connecticut, came from Albert N. Jorgensen, President of the University of Connecticut. There is no doubt that he believed in a single board of control for all state institutions of higher education, and, in a limitation upon the development of the teachers' colleges. "Any expansion of these colleges ... will inevitably result in a disservice to the citizens of the state," he wrote in 1948. "The fact that public higher education is controlled through two completely indepedent boards means there is no legal procedure for the coordination of the programs of the various institutions." In words that Yankee legislators understood best, he argued that "because of their separate boards of control, the state institutions of higher education compete among themselves for support- ing funds." The real impetus for the idea, however, was to be found in the history of public higher education in the state.11
The unhappy fact was the State of Connecticut had neglected pub- lic higher education. The impetus for the expansion of the Agricultural College had come primarily from Federal legislation, which provided funds for expansion in the fields of agriculture and home economics. With the appointment of Albert N. Jorgensen as President in 1935 the college was destined to assume the status of a university. Yankee pru- dence prevailed, however. Approximately six thousand graduates of Con- necticut high schools continued to go out of the state for their higher education and hundreds of other qualified Connecticut youth were de- nied any opportunity for post-secondary school training. The President of the University reported that before the war Connecticut ranked forty- fourth in the percentage of high school graduates going to college, both in and out of the state and in both public and private institutions.
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Jorgensen assumed the task of educating the Connecticut public to the responsibility for providing higher education for all qualified Connecti- cut youth. The name of the school was changed to the University of Connecticut, effective July 1, 1939. The enrollment at Storrs, before the war, however, remained at approximately 2,000.
Meanwhile the teacher preparatory institutions lagged behind the standards set by areas outside New England. It was not until 1933 that the Normal School at New Britain was established as a Teachers College with authority to grant the B.S. degree in education. There, without in- creased appropriations for the new services, with stolid determination and enduring patience Herbert D. Welte introduced those changes which were to raise the college to a position of creditability among teachers colleges. Meanwhile the other teacher instutions were in constant danger of being eliminated. A normal school had been established at Willimantic in 1889, at New Haven in 1893, and in Danbury in 1905. The legislature in 1933 passed over the recommendation of the State Board of Finance and Control that the State Board of Education look to the establishment of one strong teacher training institution. When in 1939 Governor Bald- win made a similar proposal, friends of the institutions, all of which since 1937 had been designated teachers' colleges, made spirited protests, fear- ing the continuation of all the institutions, but on the customary sub- sistence budget. At the beginning of the war there remained four strug- gling institutions, the interest in which, except when their very existence was threatened hardly extended beyond those who were immediately concerned.12
In the post-war years the State of Connecticut came to recognize its responsibility for providing opportunities for higher education for the youth of the State. Most important in the realization of this necessity was the returning veteran, who tended to view higher education as a right rather than as a privilege, and the GI Bill which made it financially pos- sible for many who previously had been denied the opportunity. In the mid-fifties, when the number of veterans decreased, the increases in population was reflected in the applications for college entrance. As out- of-state institutions became crowded, graduates of secondary schools found it increasingly difficult to gain admission, and citizens looked to the State to provide opportunities for their children. Then, too, the State
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had been forced to abandon its pay-as-you-go policy in the financing of capital projects, and thereby was more willing to issue bonds for the con- struction of educational facilities. Albert N. Jorgensen educated the pub- lic to needs and cajoled the legislators for funds for the University. The Presidents of the four teachers' colleges, however, were discouraged from any direct communication with the Governor or the Legislature by the Commissioners of Education who were abyssmally ineffective in stating the case for the teacher preparatory institutions. In the total responsi- bilities of the State Department of Education it would appear as if the colleges were considered comparatively unimportant. In the more than 130 pages devoted to the Reports of the Commissioner and the Board of Education from 1947 to 1953 only five per cent can be identified as per- taining specifically to the colleges, a percentage incidentally which re- mained relatively unchanged for the rest of the decade. It was Albert N. Jorgensen, then, who more than any other was responsible for determin- ing Connecticut's attitude toward public higher education. While effec- tively presenting the needs of the University, he presented a bold educa- tional philosophy which included, among others, the idea that students at a state supported institution could not be expected to finance the educa- tional program or the educational buildings of the State and the concept that "State funds should be appropriated, as a matter of principle, only to institutions that are under State control." He believed, too, that "the State should define with clarity and precision the functions of the insti- tutions which benefit from State appropriations." 13
The bill to unite the establishments of higher education in the State would have brought "the most sweeping reform in education in the his- tory of the State." The bill to create a Board of Regents would, in effect, have eliminated the State Board of Education and the Board of Regents of the University of Connecticut and would have transferred the training of secondary teachers from the Teachers College of Connecticut to the University of Connecticut. The plan was so bitterly opposed by the friends of the teachers' colleges as to force a second public hearing, and Jorgensen was so specifically identified as the architect of the plan that he found it necessary to appear at the second hearing to deny the charge. The proposal, however, included many features advocated earlier by the President of the University. He had been one of a committee in 1939
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which recommended the transfer of secondary education, and in 1948 he had asked for the coordination of all of the programs of state institutions. Even so it is not clear that in accordance with his proposal the identity of the teachers' colleges would have been obliterated, though the colleges' own anamolous positions within the State Department of Education pro- vided a basis for such fears. Jorgensen had written in 1948 that "democ- racy cannot afford to allow decisions as to educational offerings . . . to become stereotyped, nor to allow them to become the monopolistic pre- rogative of any particular group or agency." "Any form of centralization," he wrote, "which takes the center of gravity outside an institution is bad for all higher education in the State. .. . " It was then his announced hope to bring about "coordination without violating the principle of self- determination." Although it is not to be presumed that this is the last he had to say on the reorganization of higher education, it is correct to state that this proposal was not again suggested in one of his published re- ports. Ideas, once suggested, die slowly in Connecticut's legislature, and the recognition of the need for doing something about higher education in the state had persisted for twenty years. With Lodge's penchant for ignoring the heads of his departments, particularly when reenforced by the recommendations of the Governor's Conference, it is entirely possible that the idea was never checked with the President of the University. Whatever the merits of the plan, it was apparent that Lodge, like Bald- win, had aroused a political hornet's nest which might continue to swarm until election day. A method had to be found to enable the Governor to retreat gracefully from a program which he had recommended. As mentioned, a second hearing was held. Then it was apparently agreed that the bill would be passed in the Republican House with the tacit understanding that it would be killed in the Senate. It was. Only three Senators, two Republicans and one Democrat, voted for the bill. The proposal and its defeat perhaps was not without its effect on public higher education. It brought more forcefully to the attention of the pub- lic and imprinted upon the consciousness of the legislators the needs of the colleges at a time when the state was having to expand its facilities for higher education. Authorization was granted in 1955 to begin a graduate program in education at the teachers' colleges, and in 1959 the "teachers" was dropped from their respective names to signify the author-
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ization to grant a Bachelor of Arts degree. The University meanwhile continued to add new schools, expand its graduate program, and to pro- mote scholarly research. Meanwhile, the form, if not the substance, of cooperation between state institutions of higher learning was achieved by the creation of a Liaison Committee in 1955. The coordination of the serv- ices of the institutions of higher learning remained unresolved. Governor Ribicoff in 1960 gave faint utterances about a Department of Higher Education, utterances which leaders of both parties appeared in 1961 to act as if it had never been uttered.14
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