USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 36
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273
THE MAN FROM CHICAGO
Lest this judgment seem too harsh, let it be recalled that those small col- leges of liberal arts that have achieved and maintained distinction have been col- leges whose faculties have shown a happy blending of teaching and research. Certainly it is the first duty of a faculty member to teach. If he is not a compe- tent teacher, there is no place for him in a small college. But every teacher's classroom work is enlivened and enriched if he can carry on some persistent in- vestigation, however modest, in his chosen field. Colby alumni can rejoice that teaching continued to be sound and good even though the College lost such scholars as Small, Mathews, Rogers, and Butler, but they can lament the fact that with the passing of those men the College lost for some time its reputation as a place of productive scholarship. This is not to cast reflection on the faithful, devoted teachers who succeeded the brilliant scholars. Those successors did just what they were employed to do-teach undergraduate men and women. If the coming to Colby of men like Small and Mathews and Rogers had indeed been accidental, because they too were employed to teach, it is regrettable that along with their faithful, teaching successors accident could not have added two or three with the same talents for productive research. Colby has always needed both kinds of men.
In 1889, a new schedule of recitations went into effect. The old, rigid ad- herence to three classes each day, at 8:00, 11:30, and 4:30, had long ago been encroached upon by classes thrown in at odd hours. That had made the situa- tion so chaotic that, effective in the fall of 1899, a new schedule sought to utilize the whole day. Electives had now become so common that very few persons could be found in any one of the four college classes who took the same subjects. Under the new plan recitations were held by distribution of the various classes in the many different subjects over four periods extending through the mornings of six days a week. Those classes met at 8:00, 9:30, 10:30, and 11:30. The time from 9:00 to 9:20 was reserved for daily chapel. Afternoon classes met at 2:00, 3:00, and 4:00, on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. There were no classes on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.
In 1900, President Butler inaugurated the first formal advisory system. He assigned each student in college to some member of the faculty as advisor. An- nouncing the plan, the President said: "Wherever practicable, the student will be assigned with special reference to the calling which he proposes to follow after graduation. The advisor is expected to discover the qualifications and needs of the students under his charge and to keep himself informed of their intel- lectual, physical and moral welfare. At least one week before examinations in each term the student shall present his proposed electives for the following term to his advisor for approval."
The 1890's saw all over America the rising popularity of the safety bicycle. The original bicycle with its huge front wheel and its tiny wheel behind, was anything but safe. In 1895 the Colby Athletic Association combined with the Waterville Bicycle Club to hold the community's first bicycle meet on the new cinder track at the College. The Echo reported: "It was one of the finest days of the fall, yet only a fair crowd attended. However, more than enough money to pay expenses was taken in, as many of the prizes were contributed by busi- ness firms. Drew Harthorn won the one-mile race, and Ernest Pratt took the honors in the five-mile."
Who do you suppose promoted that bicycle meet? None other than a mem- ber of the faculty, Professor Bayley, geologist and natural historian.
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HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
President Butler had been at the helm for only two years when the Echo published an editorial in praise of Colby's progress under his guidance. But the editorial said nothing about funds for endowment or the prospective chemistry building, or the expanding influence of the Board of Conference, or of any other of a dozen achievements mentioned earlier in this chapter. It throws light on student opinion to observe what the Echo pointed out as worthy of praise.
Every lover of Colby rejoices at the progressive step that she is now taking under the vigorous administration of President Butler. Advance- ment has been made in every department of energy and thought. The football season has been a great success. The prospects for baseball are good, and next spring should see the pennant brought back to its old home. Last year we were forcibly reminded that we were very weak in the art of debate. However our defeat then was our Bull Run, not our Waterloo. Considerable interest is now manifested in debate, and Professor Roberts is requiring attention to it in his rhetoric class. Colby is adequately provided with so-called literary societies, but the rivalry is not sharp enough to arouse the effort needed to make debating champions.3
What started out as praise for the Butler administration thus turned into an attempt to arouse would-be debaters out of their lethargy.
When the Trustees met for their annual meeting in June, 1901, President Butler submitted his resignation. He could resist no longer the persistent urging of President Harper that he return to the University of Chicago. Reporting to the Board on his final year as their president, Nathaniel Butler said:
As I leave this office, my love for the college and my confidence in its future are in no degree diminished. I have good reason to regard this college with love and confidence. My grandfather was one of its Board of Trustees; my father was one of its alumni and trustees; my own college life was spent in its halls, and one of my sons is now among its undergraduates. The intimate relation you have permitted me to sustain with the College during the past six years has a thousand-fold strengthened these peculiar ties. I shall always stand ready to render Colby College my best service.
Much had indeed been accomplished for Colby in those short six years. The misnomer of university had been replaced by the proper designation of college. A fine new chemistry building had been built. Steam heat, electric lighting and modern plumbing had been installed in the dormitories. A competent, trained dean now headed the Women's Division, and a new dormitory for women was in sight. The College finances, slowly recovering from the Panic of 1893, were much improved. Enrollment had increased slowly, but steadily. The future was by no means dim. Significant advancement had been made at Colby College by the man from Chicago.
CHAPTER XXVII
Unlucky President
C HARLES LINCOLN WHITE, the twelfth president of Colby College, was dogged at every step of his seven years' administration by ill fortune. Because he was followed by one of Colby's greatest presidents, Arthur J. Roberts, later generations came to look upon White as an inept and unsuccessful executive. That indictment is unfair. The man did indeed make serious mistakes, as many executives have done. He did have bitter enemies, some of them within the official fold, but other college presidents have not been without relentless foes. His administration by no means lacked constructive accomplishments. Most of the problems he faced were not of his making, but inherited from situations built up over many years. The most valid judgment that can be made of Charles Lin- coln White as President of Colby College is that he did not carefully investigate the situation before he accepted the office and measure the task against his own tastes, convictions, and abilities. Let us take a look at the boiling cauldron into which this man plunged when he came to Waterville in 1901.
Colby's former President, Beniah Whitman, was chiefly responsible for the selection of Charles Lincoln White to succeed Nathaniel Butler. Whitman and White had been classmates at Brown. Graduating in 1887, White had imme- diately gone to Newton, where he received his B. D. degree in 1890. He had enjoyed several successful pastorates, and at the time of his election as Colby president he was General Secretary of the New Hampshire Baptist Convention, residing at Hampton Falls. Whitman's report on White's success in administering the affairs of the New Hampshire Convention, abetted by pressure from a con- servative Baptist constituency, who wanted a man with less liberal religious views than those of Nathaniel Butler, caused the Colby Trustees to overlook White's lack of educational experience. The strong presidents who had pre- ceded him-Pepper, Small, and Butler-had all enjoyed rich experience as teach- ers or college administrators. That was Charles White's first stroke of ill fortune that his selection by the Colby Trustees thrust him into a situation for which his previous experience had not prepared him.
It was bad luck indeed that the new President, taking office in September, 1901, knew almost nothing about Colby College until he actually occupied the presidential chair. But he was an intelligent, energetic, sincere, devoted man, and he learned fast.
The first problem that confronted him was enough to have made a lesser man give up at once and speed back to Hampton Falls. That problem was a financial situation that even the Trustees considered desperate. In his first re- port to the Board, in June, 1902, President White said:
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When I was elected to this office, I very little realized the magnitude of the task I had undertaken. I went to Waterville almost a perfect stranger to the institution and having met but a few of the professors. It may seem to you that I have very early arrived at some important conclusions, and that the suggestions which I shall outline to you today are the result of too brief observation, but I believe my mind is fully satisfied with reference to each statement I shall make.
At the very meeting in June, 1901, when the Trustees had elected White, they had taken drastic action to reduce expenses, and well they might. Gradual loss of endowment funds had persisted for more than twenty years. Part of the loss had been caused by annual deficits in operating costs, part by unfortunate investments. As a result, the income from invested funds, when the new presi- dent took office, was actually less than it had been ten years earlier, in spite of substantial additions to capital endowment. The Trustees therefore presented their new president with an immediate shock to morale. They reduced faculty salaries. Full professors, who had for several years been paid $1800, were cut to $1600, and President White himself was paid $700 less than his predecessor, $2800 instead of $3500.
In praise of Colby's loyal faculty, it must be reported that they took the bad news of salary reductions rather well, but it certainly gave them little con- fidence in the future of the college, especially when the new executive showed them that he would not authorize any expense that could possibly be avoided.
Common sense dictated that many purchases could be made at wholesale with considerable saving, and President White tried to introduce that policy. The result was an uprising of Waterville merchants, who freely admitted they could not meet the wholesale prices, but claimed vested interest in the college business through long precedent. The result was a compromise, but White's popularity in the community was unjustly lowered.
To show that they were truly concerned, the Trustees had voted to sub- scribe from their own pockets one thousand dollars toward current expenses in 1901-02. The Finance Committee reported that total College funds were ac- tually $17,000 less than they had been a year previous. In spite of added gifts of $21,000, more than $52,000 had been charged off as valueless, and over $2000 had been paid as above-par premiums on new investments. The Com- mittee on Investments, headed by Dudley P. Bailey, reported:
The total losses on our securities the past year have amounted to $52,026.68, of which $51,021.65 represents the losses on the Invest- ment Trust Company in the final liquidation. There are some other questionable investments still on our books, and it is morally certain that some further losses will result, but it is believed that the worst is over. We believe our investments are getting on a sound footing, and that most of the questionable securities have been weeded out. The par value of the various funds held by the College on May 1, 1901, was $429,299, compared with $260,551 on May 1, 1900.
It was several years later when the Board awoke to the fact that better bookkeeping demanded that the securities be listed at market, rather than at par value.
When at last, in 1906, the Trustees decided to appoint a special committee to study the whole history of their endowment funds, it became fully apparent that President White had inherited a very difficult situation that had been ac-
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cumulating ever since the time of President Champlin. None of the presidents between Champlin and White was solely responsible, but all shared the responsi- bility in some degree. Year after year, expenses exceeded income, and the only way to pay the bills had been to dip into capital. This is what the special com- mittee reported in 1906:
A duty confronting the Board is to determine accurately and keep in- violate the permanent fund, no part of which can be lawfully used in paying current expenses. Much time has been spent by your committee in going over the books, records, and reports, but the data accessible prior to the first printed report in 1880 are fragmentary. Only pro- longed and expensive examination of the books by an expert would suffice to secure complete and accurate information. The best we can now do is to present as near an approximation to the facts as we can furnish.
Beginning with Gardner Colby's original gift of $50,000, the College has received to date, in permanent funds, $510,456. To meet that liability the college holds today only $405,830, which is a deceptive figure, because our stocks and bonds are carried on the books at par value.
Although the report went on to imply that the difference of $105,000 was represented by new buildings, repairs and improvements, that was not the whole story, as the committee would have known had they remembered the report of the Standing Committee on Finance made five years earlier, in 1901. That earlier report had said:
There has been a reduction in the value of our invested funds of $79,000 during the past ten years. But there has been spent, as well, more than $5,000 of actual return on the wild lands above the amount which they were carried on our books and $63,000 received during the ten years in gifts. That makes a total decrease of $147,000 in a single decade.
In explanation of this loss, we are told there has been a total of $57,000 in annual current deficits; that $10,000 was spent to purchase the Presi- dent's House; $35,000 in erecting the Chemistry Building; and $3500 in renovating South College. Those items amount to $103,500. That leaves $43,500 of the shrinkage unaccounted for, and no attempt is made to give us any information as to what has become of it.
In June, 1900, the Trustees had authorized, for the ensuing year, expendi- tures of $38,400. So bad did they consider the situation in June, 1901, that they reduced that amount by $6300 for 1901-2, and ordered President White to operate by stringent restriction to the new figure of $32,100. How any president could accomplish that unwelcome task without incurring some unpopularity, not even an observer with the advantage of half a century's perspective can safely deter- mine. But to that unsavory task President White bent his mind and his energy.
At the winter meeting of the Board, when he had been in office only a few months, White made his first definite proposals to cut expenses. He saw a chance to save several hundred dollars by replacing retired Professor Foster with a cheaper man to teach Greek. He would cut out the hundred dollars ap- propriated to supply Professor Elder with a student assistant. He would stop
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HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
paying anyone to run the boarding department in the Women's Division, and hand that job over to someone already on the staff, as an additional job. He would stop letting students run up unpaid term bills term after term, and would require notes at four per cent interest for such bills, all to be paid before the student could have his diploma. He also said that although he knew the loss of Professor Bayley would be keenly felt, at least four hundred dollars could be saved if the College released him; and if Professor Hall could be retired, con- siderable money would be saved.
President White had been at Colby so short a time that he could scarcely have anticipated the hornet's nest that would be stirred by some of his proposals. Both Hall and Bayley had staunch friends who were not ready to remain silent while their favorite professors received such cavalier treatment.
When, at a special meeting in January, 1902, the Trustees accepted Presi- dent White's suggestion that Professor Hall be released, a storm of protest arose. The Board voted "that the secretary notify Professor Hall that his services as librarian will not be required after the end of the academic year." Only 62 years old, Professor Hall had by no means reached the normal time of retirement, although he had indeed been a member of the Colby faculty for 36 years. He was known far beyond the confines of the college as one of the nation's leading librarians. He had written a history of Higher Education in Maine, had edited the General Catalogue, with its comprehensive alumni data, and he knew more Colby graduates personally than did anyone else connected with the college. He had been almost solely responsible for Col. Shannon's gift of the physics build- ing, and he had raised many thousands of dollars by diligent solicitation of small subscriptions during a third of a century.
Only pessimism that approached despair could have persuaded the Board to release this man. But he no longer taught his former classes in French and German, devoting his full time now to the library. Couldn't the work be done by some one much less expensive? Of course it could not-not the work of that European-trained, scholarly librarian, Edward W. Hall. But the competent investigator, a builder of distinguished library collections, was not the concept of a college librarian held by the Colby Trustees at that time. Not all of them would have agreed with Sinclair Lewis' later comment in Main Street that the first duty of a librarian is "to preserve the books," but they did feel that about all he had to do was to sit behind a desk and dispense the books or accept their return. Their vote was meant as no personal reflection on Professor Hall, but only reflected their mistaken conviction that he had become an expensive luxury.
When the Board met in annual session six months later, they were dis- turbed by grumblings from the alumni and by the fact that their Library Com- mittee had come to no solution of the problem.
The committee reported that they had found no one whom they could recom- mend as a permanent librarian, and as a temporary expedient they proposed that Professor Roberts take charge of the library and receive $200 for the extra service; that Mr. Moore work in the library a part of each day, for which he should be paid $300; and that a student be selected to be in the library when neither Roberts nor Moore could be present. Estimating the cost for the stu- dent at $200, the committee pointed out that the total cost of $700 would be quite a saving from Professor Hall's salary of $1600.
So great was the pressure for Dr. Hall's retention that the President took no action during 1902-3, leaving Hall in the office of librarian, but at what salary the records do not make clear. Even when the Board met in June, 1903,
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Hall's name did not appear on the list of professors to whom salaries were voted. The record said, "Placed at the President's disposal for the library, $1000." But a year later it was all settled. With his usual generosity Professor Hall agreed to accept a salary of $1200, and the college, which had officially been without a librarian for two years, now elected Edward W. Hall to that office. Because it had been President White who had made the first written proposal to release Hall, White became the target for the vigorous alumni protest, although he had un- doubtedly been only the spokesman for an earnest group of trustees, determined to secure a balanced budget.
The case of Professor Bayley was different. He was not a Colby alumnus. He had been on the faculty only fourteen years, contrasted with Hall's thirty-six. Although well liked by many alumni, his proposed release caused no wave of resentment among them. It was the student body that rose valiantly to his defense. Learning that the Trustees were considering such action, the students sent a petition signed by every man in the Men's Division, calling for Bayley's retention.
William S. Bayley had been brought to Colby as Professor of Geology and Mineralogy by President Pepper in 1888. A native of Baltimore, Bayley had received his bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins in 1883 and his Ph. D. in 1886. He came to Colby, his first full-time teaching position, after a year in the Lake Superior region with the U. S. Geological Survey. He was also an associate editor of The American Naturalist. He proved at once to be worthy of the company of such other scholars as Rogers, Small, Butler, and Mathews. Although new to Maine, within ten years he had produced a catalogue of the Maine Geological Collection and had persuaded the Legislature to place that collection at Colby. He published a brief history of Maine's only previous geo- logical surveys. In succeeding years, he wrote a Guide to the Study of Non- metallic Mineral Products, a study of the Crystal Falls Iron District of Michigan, and a textbook in Elementary Crystallography. That his interest extended be- yond geology is shown by his publication of Synopsis of Outline Lectures on Classification of Animals.
Professor Bayley was one of the first members of the Colby faculty to show active interest in student affairs, especially in their organized extra-curricular activities. They elected him Treasurer of the Athletic Association, which he had succeeded in organizing out of the several different organizations each in charge of a different sport. So strongly did he defend the student viewpoint at faculty meetings that he won a reputation as "devil's advocate." He often voted against some disciplinary action demanded by his colleagues.
It was, however, Bayley's repeated refusal to increase his teaching load that caused his clash with administration. Before President White's time it had been suggested that Bayley assist the ailing Professor Elder with the classes in chemistry, but Bayley would have none of it. In 1901 the Examining Committee reported: "Professor Bayley is an investigator rather than a teacher, and your committee doubt if the College is able to maintain such a professor. The Committee there- fore suggest the employment of a new man at his salary or the merging of the department with some other." The Board then voted that the whole matter be referred to the Committee on Professorships with power, but with the provision that not more than $2600 should be expended for the employment of all teachers in chemistry and geology. The committee decided to retain Bayley at a salary of $1200.
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A year later the Trustees voted to transfer $400 from the salary of Pro- fessor Elder and apply the amount to that of Professor Bayley. Since both pro- fessors had ardent supporters among their colleagues, that action did not improve the intra-faculty relationship. It had become clear that Elder's health would not permit him to carry his previous heavy and unreasonable teaching load. Both his teaching hours and his number of students had been reduced. Now to com- pensate for a reduced load, the Trustees transferred part of Elder's salary to a man who had enjoyed a light teaching load for several years, and a man whose release the President recommended rather than give him an increase in salary.
Someone was evidently persistent in regard to this department, for in January, 1905, the Trustees voted "that the Department of Geology and Mineralogy be abolished and that instruction in those subjects be placed under the Department of Chemistry, and that the Committee on Professorship be instructed to secure an instructor in chemistry who can assist in that subject and also give the courses now given in geology and mineralogy, the salary not to exceed $800." The Board further voted to notify Professor Bayley of this action and express their regret that it had become necessary. There the controversy ended. Bayley left Colby.
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