USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 42
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Roberts' hopes had been raised appreciably when, at the June meeting of the Trustees in 1916, Colonel Richard C. Shannon offered to match the gift of the General Education Board. His generous offer was surprising as well as gratify- ing, because just a year earlier, when the European War was in its early stage and the United States seemed unlikely to be drawn into it, Shannon had voiced strong opposition to launching a Colby campaign at that time. But, during the year, he had found that gifts to private philanthropy, instead of being curtailed by war interest, had actually increased. Hence he now not only advised that the campaign proceed, but personally pledged a fourth of the total amount sought.
The Colby Trustees therefore agreed to conditions set by the General Edu- cation Board, that the College must secure pledges amounting to $375,000 be- fore January 1, 1919, and that the same amount must be fully paid by June 1, 1920. When the United States entered the war in 1917, it seemed unlikely that those terms could be fulfilled. The Education Board therefore granted an exten- sion of time. The pledge deadline was extended from January 1, 1919 to July 1, 1920, and the payment deadline from June 1, 1920 to December 1, 1921.
After the armistice the campaign was vigorously revived. At the centennial dinner on June 16, 1920, President Roberts proudly reported that, instead of stopping at $375,000, including Colonel Shannon's gift, payments and pledges, in addition to the General Education Board's $125,000, amounted to $445,000, a total that exceeded the Board's requirement by $70,000. The President further reported that already cash payments amounted to $409,198, leaving less than $36,000 still to be collected on outstanding pledges.
More than 1700 alumni had subscribed to the fund, and non-Colby sub- scribers exceeded a hundred. President Roberts was right when he said, "This endowment campaign has quickened the loyalty of the friends of the College and has made new friends for our cause." In 1921, the College endowment, which
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two years earlier had been scarcely $800,000, stood at $1,442,000. For the first time Colby had become a million dollar college.
The Trustees, recognizing that what was called the Centennial Fund might well have been named the Roberts Endowment Fund, spread upon their records the following tribute to their president.
With full recognition of the valued aid of many friends who have co- operated, the Board realizes that the success of the campaign is largely the personal achievement of President Roberts, and becomes a great, though not the paramount service rendered by him to his Alma Mater. The Board congratulates President Roberts on the success of the great task he set out to perform, a task vital to the continuance and improve- ment of the College. With its gratitude and appreciation it pledges to him a corresponding loyalty in the service of the greater Colby to which success of this campaign now opens the door.
One object of the campaign had been to increase faculty salaries, which re- mained woefully low in comparison with other New England colleges. Through the first ten years of Arthur Roberts' administration, the maximum salary for a full professor was $1800, and Roberts had done well to restore the old maximum of $1800, which had been reduced in President White's time to $1600. So satisfied were the officers of the General Education Board with Colby's vigorous and suc- cessful campaign for half a million dollars that they promised an additional sum of $35,000 to provide salary increases: $15,000 for 1920-21, $12,000 for 1921-22, and $8000 for 1922-23. One reason for the Board's action was the genuine interest shown by the Colby Trustees when, without outside help, in 1919, they increased the maximum salary to $2000. Now, thanks to the General Education Board and the income from the new endowment, the Trustees felt justified in raising salaries in all ranks, from the youngest instructor to the oldest professor. Full professors received the hitherto unprecedented raise of $750, bringing their new maximum to $2750, and no faculty member, even of instructor grade, was paid less than $1800. Modest as those salaries seem when compared with 1960 figures, they were far in advance of the promised but seldom fully paid salaries of Jeremiah Chaplin and Avery Briggs a hundred years earlier.
Thanks to the ability of Arthur Roberts to arouse and hold the loyalty of hundreds of Colby men and women, the College was ready to face its second cen- tury with renewed faith and firm assurance.
CHAPTER XXXI
Beginning The Second Century
T. HE commencement program observing the Centennial had been so out- standing in 1920 that many alumni thought the following commencement would be a sad anti-climax. What those alumni overlooked was that the 1921 graduation had a claim to significance of its own. It was the one hundredth commencement since George Dana Boardman and Ephraim Tripp had been graduated in 1822.
Since 1909 the pattern of the Colby commencement had been firmly fixed. It began on Saturday evening with the Junior Exhibition. On Sunday morning came the Baccalaureate Sermon, followed in the evening by a sermon before the Christian Associations. Monday was known as Junior Class Day, and in the evening was held the President's Reception. Tuesday was Senior Class Day with morning exercises at the Baptist Church, continued in the afternoon in an outdoor program on the campus. At noon were held the Alumni and Alumnae luncheons, entirely separate functions. In the evening the guests listened to the Phi Beta Kappa Oration. Wednesday was graduation day, with two men and one woman selected from the class as speakers. The program was held at the Baptist Church, to which the academic procession, led by a brass band, marched from the campus. Behind the band came a cordon of police, followed by the President escorting the Governor of the State, and the Chairman of the Trustees escorting the most promi- nent person to receive an honorary degree. Behind the other trustees and re- cipients of honors came the faculty in order of rank, then the graduating class, and last the alumni by classes. After the exercises the long line marched back to the campus for the Commencement Dinner in the gymnasium. The five-day program ended with a band concert on the campus, Wednesday afternoon.
When Roberts approved of certain changes in the commencement program urged by the Class of 1921, little did he realize that Colby's one hundredth class would become one of the most famous for its continued loyalty to the College. For many years that class has stood either first or second in its contribution to the Alumni Fund. No other class has had so many members on the Board of Trustees. Besides Chairmen Neil Leonard and Reginald Sturtevant, board mem- bers from the Class of 1921 have been Raymond Spinney and Ray Holt.
The Class of 1921 insisted that their graduation be held at the City Opera House, as had the exercises of 1920, since the Baptist Church was no longer large enough to hold those who wished to attend. In its recognition of social activities, the College had traveled far since diplomas had been handed to George Dana Boardman and Ephraim Tripp in 1822, although it was not until the one hun- dredth graduating class in 1921 that the Senior Hop was at last recognized as officially a part of Commencement.
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The choice of anniversary speaker was especially happy. Little did the popular alumnus who gave that address dream that only eight years later he would himself be President of the College. To that one hundredth graduating class Franklin W. Johnson spoke on "Aims of Education in a Democracy."
Some of the older members of the faculty must have cringed when they heard Johnson say that there is no such thing as transfer of abilities, that studying Latin or mathematics does not train the mind, but only sharpens certain limited mental qualities. "We must," said Johnson, "have a college curriculum based on the sound psychological concept of limited transfer of abilities."
The 1921 commencement was doubly significant as an anniversary; it marked not only the one hundredth graduation, but also the fiftieth year since the ad- mission of women into the College. On Tuesday afternoon the girls gave a production of As You Like It on the lower campus, under the direction of Miss Exerene Flood. At anniversary exercises that evening in the Baptist Church, Colby's first woman graduate, Mary Low Carver, 1875, gave an historical ad- dress. Louise Coburn, 1877, read an original poem. The principal address, on "The Duties and Responsibilities of College Women," was given by a distinguished woman teacher, Professor Romiett Stevens of Teachers College, Columbia Uni- versity.
One of the happy events of each Colby commencement during the Roberts years was the annual award of prizes. In 1921 there was a new prize, given in memory of Albion Woodbury Small for the best essay on a subject in economics or sociology. That prize was first awarded to a man who, next to Franklin John- son, was to play the leading part in establishing the new college plant on May- flower Hill. On that Commencement Day in 1921 Galen Eustis was only a Colby sophomore, but even then he showed his ability by winning the Albion Woodbury Small prize with his essay on "Americanization of the Foreign-born in Maine."
Scarcely had 1921 graduated before the alumni agitated for further changes in commencement. Rex Dodge, 1906, led a movement for the 'Dix Plan' of class reunions, whereby instead of meetings at five year intervals each class would hold reunion with certain other classes with which it had been in college. The plan was tried for three years, then abandoned as not in accord with alumni wishes.
More successful was the agitation for a weekend commencement. Its ardent promoter was Percy Williams, 1897, and in 1926 the Colby Alumnus took up the cause. The result was the establishment of a program which began on Fri- day and closed on Monday. For many years the opening event was the Presi- dent's Reception on Friday evening and the closing event was the Commence- ment Dinner at noon on Monday; but after the move to Mayflower Hill the re- ception was changed to a greeting of the parents of graduates on Sunday after- noon, and the official program began with the Senior Dance on Friday evening. The Commencement Dinner was held on Sunday, following the Baccalaureate Sermon, and all came to a close with the graduation exercises on Monday morning.
As for the date of commencement, there has been a tendency since 1920 to hold it earlier and earlier. In 1921 the Trustees voted that, beginning in 1922, Commencement should be held on the Wednesday nearest the twentieth of June. That made the range of dates from June 17 to June 23. When the weekend commencement was established, the graduation date became the third Monday in June. When it became possible to hold commencements on Mayflower Hill, the date was fixed at the first June Monday with two digits, making the range from June 10 to 16. When it was later discovered that this plan brought the Colby
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Commencement out of line with other Maine colleges in certain years, the range was again altered to June 6 to 12.
As the second Colby century got under way, enrollment increased rapidly. World War I had made deep inroads into the registration. Of the 198 men in college in the three under classes in April 1917, only 104 were enrolled in June, 1918. The entire college enrollment dropped from 422 to 349, although the women were little affected.
Immediately after the war, a new spurt began. The fall of 1920 saw 250 men and 209 women in attendance, a total registration exceeding by 37 the top enrollment of 1916-17. In September, 1922, the total figure for the first time exceeded 500, and only a year later it had increased twenty percent to surpass 600. In the fall of 1924 there were 373 men and 236 women; in 1925 the total mounted to 650, and in Roberts' last year, 1926-27, it reached 680.
The fear expressed when Roberts became President, that Colby no longer appealed to young men, had been completely dispelled. Men entering the college as freshmen were 114 in 1922, 119 in 1923, 139 in 1924, 150 in 1925, 141 in 1926. In that last year 47% of the entering men lived in Maine, as did 79% of the women. As had been the case throughout Colby's first hundred years, students from Maine continued to predominate during the first decade of its second century. Of the 459 students enrolled in 1920, 355 came from the local state. Only four other states were represented by more than five students: Massachusetts with 60, New Hampshire with 26, New York with 19, and Connecti- cut with 13. There were only three foreign students, two from China and one from Korea. In 1922, Maine students numbered 341, representing fourteen of Maine's sixteen counties. Next to Kennebec, Aroostook sent the largest delega- tion. Of the 679 students who were enrolled in 1927, the amazing total of 425 were residents of Maine. Only 51 of the 204 women then in college came from outside the state. Maine boys still accounted for more than half of the male en- rollment, 221 of 424.
Faculty numbers grew as student enrollment increased. The teaching staff, totaling 28 in 1921, had swelled to 35 in 1926. Substantial as was this increase, additions to the faculty did not keep pace with rising student numbers. In 1921-22 the faculty-student ratio had been 1 to 17; in 1926-27 it had risen to 1 to 19. The leading American colleges had by that time established ratios not higher than 1 to 14, and they were striving for a proportion of 1 to 10.
It was during this period that Colby received a number of Chinese stu- dents, largely through the influence of Arthur Robinson, 1906, teacher in a mis- sion school in China. In 1923 he sent to Colby two young men from Tientsin, one of whom died after only a few weeks in Waterville. Far from his native land, the remains of Li Fu Chi lie in the college lot in Pine Grove Cemetery. His companion, Li Su, made the remarkable achievement of completing all gradua- tion requirements in a single year, receiving the Colby degree in 1924. He be- came a prominent banker and importer in China. In 1956 he spent several months in Waterville during a prolonged visit to the United States. He pre- sented to the College several ornamental lanterns which now hang in the upper lobby of Roberts Union, and he placed on loan with the Colby Art Department a collection of Chinese pottery, which with a group of fellow bankers he had been able to remove from China before the Communist domination.
The years immediately following 1920 saw significant changes in curriculum and graduation requirements. The Class of 1922 was the first class to have sub-
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ject majors. But it was the introduction of Business Administration that was the most spectacular curriculum advance.
The instigator of that movement was a prominent trustee, the Winthrop manufacturer, Herbert E. Wadsworth, 1892, who was later to endow a professor- ship in the new department. At the spring meeting of the Trustees in 1923, Wadsworth proposed that the College establish a course in Business Administra- tion. He intended it to be actually a separated School of Business, with distinct curriculum. To investigate the proposal, President Roberts, Wadsworth, and Charles Gurney constituted a committee. In June, 1923, they reported.
We believe the needs of commerce and industry can be most efficiently met by men and women especially trained to meet the subjects neces- sarily arising in the conduct of modern commercial enterprises. We be- lieve that Colby College, by immediately offering a course in Business Administration, will be meeting a requirement of a constantly grow- ing class of students, and at the same time will put itself in the front rank of those whose curriculum expresses the changing conditions along educational lines.
We believe, however, that the work of the first year should be devoted to fundamental requirements of a college education, such as English, American History, Political Economy, Geography, Foreign Languages, and Mathematics, with special stress upon arithmetic and some elements of accounting. With no thought that this enumeration is exhaustive, we suggest the following subjects in the Business Administration course: Commercial Law, Foreign Exchange, Salesmanship, Transportation, In- surance, Corporation Law, Money and Banking, Advertising, Immigra- tion, Manufacturing, Statistics, Investments, Industrial Relations, Public Service, Marketing, Taxation, Foreign and Domestic Trade.
We are not prepared to suggest at this time the wisdom of allowing the senior year to be utilized by the student in work out of college in some business venture, for which he shall be entitled to certain credit upon the submission of a report of his endeavors and the presentation of a thesis as preliminary to an appropriate degree. We recommend the immediate employment of a competent man to direct the department. We emphasize that the hour of opportunity is now before us. This course is constantly gaining strength in other institutions, and if we defer action, Colby will suffer by the delay while other colleges make notable advance.
On June 19, 1923, the Trustees voted to establish a Department of Business Administration and appropriated $3000 for the purpose. Contrary to Mr. Wads- worth's original plan, they voted not to establish a separate school, but to set up simply a new department in the college. The business students would have to meet the same entrance requirements and the same general graduation requirements as all other students, and the only real change was that students would now have an opportunity to elect Business Administration as a major field, just as they were already free to major in English or History or Chemistry or any other conventional subject.
At the spring meeting in 1924, Mr. Wadsworth reported that George Auf- finger, Jr., had been appointed head of the new department and would begin the program in the fall of 1924 with the following courses: Elementary and Ad- vanced Accounting, Corporation Finance, Business Law, and Statistics. Auf-
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finger had graduated from Oberlin College in 1919, had been a graduate student at Leland Stanford in 1919-20, and had received the M.B.A. degree from Har- vard in 1922. During the ten years preceding his coming to Colby, he had been employed by the Washburn Crosby Company of Minneapolis.
Such was the beginning of one of Colby's most important departments, a department to which there came as Auffinger's successor a young Colby graduate who became one of her most efficient and most noted teachers and adminis- trators, Arthur Galen Eustis of the Class of 1923. Returning to the College in 1924 as Instructor in Economics, he had earned the M.B.A. degree at Harvard during a year's leave of absence in 1925-26, and had then rejoined the Colby faculty as Instructor in Business Administration.
In the early 1920's, thanks to the dynamic leadership of Professor Libby, Colby attained nation-wide reputation in debating. After several years of coach- ing successful teams and organizing an active Debating Society, Professor Libby secured for Colby a chapter of the national forensic society of Pi Kappa Delta. Although plenty of interested persons told him such a project was not feasible, Libby arranged to have four Colby students attend the national convention of Pi Kappa Delta at Indianola, Iowa, in 1922. Assisting the College in financing the trip were the Waterville Rotary Club, the Waterville Forum Club, and the Waterville-Winslow Chamber of Commerce. Shortly before the event, Libby had published a popular spelling book, and he generously devoted the proceeds of its sale to the debating trip.
It was no pleasure junket that took four Colby students to Iowa in the spring of 1922. Besides the serious business of the convention, a schedule of eight debates on the route to and from Iowa had been arranged by Professor Libby. Of the eight debates, one was conducted without formal decision. Of the re- maining seven, Colby won five, losing only to the University of Notre Dame and to Berea College. The colleges whose debating teams lost to Colby were Western Reserve University, Cleveland; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Hedding at Galesburg, Il- linois; Simpson at Indianola, Iowa; University of Colorado at the convention; and William and Mary, Virginia.
The young men who so ably represented Colby were Leonard Mayo, Clyde Russell, and George Wolstenholme, all of the Class of 1922, and Forrest Royal, 1923. On their way home they were entertained in Washington by Colby Alumni and were received at the White House by President Harding. When their train pulled into Waterville, those journeying debaters and their popular professor were met by the entire student body with band and torchlights, followed by a big bon- fire on the athletic field. Their trip had covered 4575 miles in twenty states. For the first time they had made Colby well known outside New England.
After World War I the movement for summer schools, already well under way during the second decade of the century, gained momentum. Professor Libby and Trustee William Crawford urged the establishment of a summer school at Colby. At that time there was no thought of a program appealing to adults in general, or a program of the institute or workshop type, such as was later established at Mayflower Hill. In 1921, Libby and Crawford envisaged merely a summer school for teachers. Could such a school compete successfully with those already being conducted annually at Bates and the University of Maine? The Colby promoters believed that it could.
When nearly ten years had elapsed and no Colby summer school had been started, the Colby Alumnus, which had strongly supported the proposal from its start, showed its annoyance and frustration in an editorial.
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Last year the Alumnus urged in season and out of season the importance of establishing a Colby Summer School. The special committee has done all it possibly can do, and has so reported to the Trustees. What the Board expects the committee still to do is not clear. Certain in- dividuals have insisted that it would be well to know in advance just how many persons would attend such a school, but obviously it is not possible to ascertain that information. Enrollment in summer schools is determined largely by the courses offered and the reputation of the teaching staff. It is impossible to announce a curriculum until a teach- ing staff has been selected, and it is impossible to engage a teaching staff until the Trustees have voted to establish the school. It is doubtful if the committee can submit anything further to the Trustees at their June meeting. In that case, the committee may well be discharged and the project abandoned. The Alumnus desires to point out, however, that if the summer school idea is abandoned, those responsible must not hide behind specious reasoning. The Alumnus believes that a grave mistake is being made in not taking advantage of the present situation in Maine to establish a summer school at Colby.1
That Alumnus editorial was actually the swan song of the proposal. Al- though at their meeting in April, 1923, the Trustees voted that "the matter of summer school be deferred until the June meeting, when more detailed informa- tion may be before the Board," the voluminous records of the June meeting con- tain no mention whatever of this subject.
The failure to make a favorable decision may not have been unwise. In retrospect it is easy to see that a third collegiate summer school in Maine would have encountered serious difficulty. Within a few years Bates abandoned its summer session as unprofitable; the state normal schools became degree-granting teachers' colleges with prominent summer sessions; and by 1930 the worst finan- cial depression the country had ever known forced many a prospective attendant to forget all about summer school. The present marked success of summer ses- sions at Mayflower Hill proves that the Colby plant can be used effectively the year around, not by the conventional, highly competitive summer school, but by specialized summer programs of wide variety.
During the last years of the Roberts Administration, substantial improve- ments were made to the physical plant and others were definitely planned. Recita- tion Hall was completely renovated and a commodious steel vault was placed in the Treasurer's office in that building. The dingy old chapel was brightened and beautifully restored. The smoke gray walls were changed to a warm buff. The panels of the beamed ceiling were painted white. Attractive new fixtures pro- vided soft, pleasing light. The wheezy old organ disappeared, to be replaced by a grand piano. Across the front of the platform appeared a low rail with carved posts, and thirty armed chairs provided seating for the faculty. On each side of the window behind the pulpit was a handsome flag-case, one for the American, the other for the college flag; and the window itself was draped in Colby gray. Directly behind the pulpit was a beautiful new chair for the President, with its plate bearing the following inscription: "The gift to Colby College, Arthur J. Roberts President, from Leslie C. Cornish, Class of '75 and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, at the Rededication of the Chapel, Friday, November 14, 1924, in the Evening before the November Meeting of the Trustees."
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