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VII
OATE DUE
What Makes a College?
A HISTORY OF BRYN MAWR
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK CHICAGO
DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO
LONDON MANILA
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
OF CANADA, LIMITED
TOHONTO
What Makes a College?
A HISTORY OF BRYN MAWR
by
Cornelia Meigs
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, New York, 1956
CORNELIA L. MEIGS 1956
Published simultaneously in Canada
All rights reserved no part of this book may
be reproduced in any form without permis-
sion in writing from the publisher, except
by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief
passages in connection with a review written
for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.
Printed in the United States of America
FIRST PRINTING
Library of Congress catalog card number: 56-7323
To
CHARLES J. RHOADS
great and beloved
Trustee of Bryn Ma*wr College
from z$oj,
President of her Trustees
and
Chairman of her Board of Directors
1936 to 1956
CONTENTS
Part One: Joseph Wright Taylor
and James E. Rhoads i
i THE EMERGING QUESTION 2
ii A QUAKER CONCERN 6
in "THE TERM ... Is PERPETUAL" 23
iv "AN OPENING" 34
v "To UNDERTAKE THE RULE OF OUR AFFAIRS" 47
Part TIVO: Martha Carey Thomas 65
vi "A PASSION FOR EXCELLENCE" 66
vii "SEMPER PARATUS" 83
viii "THIS GREATEST OF ALL EXPERIMENTS" 97
ix "THE ENDURING ELEMENTS" 109
Vlll CONTENT'
Part Three: Marion Edwards Park 121
x "THE ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL BODY
OF SCHOLARS" 122
xi ONE STONE UPON ANOTHER i3<!
XH "WHEN IT SHALL APPEAR THAT WE ARE
GOOD STEWARDS" 14$
xin "INTO A FUTURE IN WHICH You MUST
LIVE . . ." 164
Part Four: Katharine Elizabeth Me Bride 175
xiv "PERIL DOES NOT UNDERMINE THEM" i8c
xv "A DIFFERENT KIND OF OPPORTUNITY" 195
xvi "A WAY WILL BE FOUND" 208
xvn "THE TIME Is SWIFT AND WILL BE GONE" 222
xvin "ANCIENT OF DAYS" 238
xix CONCLUSION 253
TABULATION OF DATES 265
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2 67
NOTES 2 6c
BIBLIOGRAPHY 271
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
Joseph Wright Taylor, M.D., Founder of Bryn Mawr College facing 86
James E. Rhoads, M.D., First President of Bryn Mawr
College, 1885-1894 86
M. Carey Thomas, Second President of Bryn Mawr
College, 1894-1922 87
The first class with the faculty, photographed on the
steps of Taylor Hall, 1886 118
Panorama of Campus with Rhoads Hall in foreground 119
A Class in the Cloisters of the M. Carey Thomas Library, 1953 119
Cornelia Otis Skinner as Queen Elizabeth on May Day, 1932 150
May Day at Bryn Mawr College, 1944 150
Class songs on May Day, 1951 151
A group of student carolers 151
Marion Edwards Park, Third President of Bryn Mawr
College, 1922-1942 182
Katharine Elizabeth McBride, Fourth President of Bryn
Mawr College, 1942- 182
Charles J. Rhoads, Trustee of the College from 1907,
President of the Trustees and Chairman of the
Board of Directors from 1936 to 1956 183
PART ONE
Joseph Wright Taylor
FOUNDER IN 1877
and
James E. Rhoads
PRESIDENT 1884-1894
Chapter I
THE EMERGING QUESTION
In the last third of the nineteenth century, great matters were stir-
ring in the world of education. Fifty years from Napoleon in the
past, fifty years from Hitler in the future, found the English-
speaking peoples widening their scope in the advance of thought
and applied knowledge. Charles Darwin, and the bitter controversy
he had aroused, had forced men to think for themselves more than
they ever had before, and to decide who and what they were. In the
face of rising industrialism there had grown up slowly a social con-
sciousness and a sense that vast economic changes took place by in-
evitable law and not by chance. Archaeological discoveries and the
translation of ancient documents had brought a thinking public face
to face with the far past; stirring national events gave men a sense
of the historic importance of the present. The two countries on op-
posite sides of the Atlantic were sometimes friends and sometimes
less than that, but they had reached the point of sharing freely In
each other's knowledge.
In America that stretch of time which in England had been so
secure from outside pressure had been harshly broken by the soul-
searching experience of civil war. It had been necessary to examine
and clarify the truths concerning social justice, of political and eco-
nomic equilibrium when a deeply stirred country faced the possi-
bility of the destruction of the Union. And at such a time American
enterprise and inventiveness had come steadily forward along the
roads of scientific advance, stimulated thereto by the needs and the
rich resources of a growing country.
All of this is the merest mention of that myriad of new ideas
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 3
and new attainments which came knocking at the doors of those in-
stitutions of learning behind which the study of the classics and of
the ancient philosophies still stood so strongly entrenched. It was not
easy to give up allegiance to the old subjects of gentlemanly study,
to forswear faithfulness to a method of teaching prescribed and un-
varied for generations. Among the older and privately endowed col-
leges, resistance tended to be forbiddingly strong. The growing
number of state universities with no previous experience and with
responsibility to a wide public were visibly waiting for leadership.
The question of higher education for women was, in particular, be-
ing debated with vigor and often with acrimony. Did women have a
right to demand entrance to the educational institutions set up for
men? That was one query. The second was: Did they, given that
right, have the capacity to make full use of it? For many people it
was simple and easy to say no to both counts.
With all this it would have been easy enough for the whole sys-
tem of higher education in America to fall into profitless controversy
and chaotic experiment, losing for decades what we now see to have
been priceless time. If development was to go forward without vio-
lent interruption, this was the crucial moment, although no one
knew it. Only vaguely was it possible to foresee that the long stretch
of peaceful living, the longest period in modern history free from
general European wars, was to merge swiftly into the nearly fifty
years of conflict which even yet is not at an end. There was soon
to begin a struggle in which the utmost of trained knowledge, of
scientific discovery and research must be brought to bear as an es-
sential part of national strength, and when scholarship was to add
to its former responsibilities strange new duties.
It has been one of our great national adventures, that achieve-
ment by which the tough, bristling new was plowed into the smooth-
worn surface of the old to make a new American education, seed-
bed of a new intellectual life. Those who brought it about bear
witness to the power of dedicated and wholehearted labor; they
toiled with indefatigable spirit, with penetrating vision and, here
and there, with inspired genius, and they attained their end. The
whole story of that effort, told in detail, would be a vast document;
the greatness of the achievement may, perhaps, be more strikingly
evident in single narratives like the biography of Charles William
4 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
Eliot, young and crusading President of Harvard, or in the scat-
tered reminiscences of Daniel Coit Gilman of the Johns Hopkins
University, and in the individual and obscure stories of the hope
and perseverance of various others. And one finds contained, with
singular compactness, the sum and substance of that time of prog-
ress in the records of Bryn Mawr College, founded in the moment of
full burgeoning of educational change. In the study of the record of
the different persons who figured largely in her history, out of cas-
ual recollections, spoken or in letters, out of memoranda and re-
ports and minutes of meetings, and out of personal experience, one
sifts the evidence of obstacles stoutly surmounted, of inevitable er-
rors made and retrieved, of hard-won attainments, typical not of
one college but of many. It is the account of all those ideas and
experiences which went forward together in that trenchant time.
In process of review of all these events and problems, a single
question inevitably emerges which attaches itself not to one institu-
tion but to them all. How often do we, as a general public, ask
ourselves what actually goes into the making of a college or a uni-
versity? What are the basic factors in its brilliant or competent suc-
cess, its mediocre achievement or its occasional failure? Opinions
may vary, but an answer to the question should be sought and
sought again until a final conclusion is clearly apparent. Such an-
swer is only to be found by thorough study of the institutions them-
selves, of their trials and mistakes, of their triumphs which have
been very great and their vicissitudes which have been very many.
Some of the great universities, a few of the smaller colleges have
put down their stories, and in the accounts of both great and small
lies matter for searching reflection. As one more item to add to the
accumulating material for study, there is here set forth the record
of Bryn Mawr, a small college for women, near Philadelphia. It has
its own adventurous story, founded late in the last century, assum-
ing at once large responsibilities, passing through numberless dif-
ficulties, steadily moving into its own place in the full design of
American education.
To those for whom Bryn Mawr is a matter of affection and
personal loyalty, of recollection and intimate experience, the nar-
rative of her accomplishment has value and interest. But beyond
that is a larger matter, the question which must be fully faced when
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 5
the account is completed and the evidence is all in. It is urged
upon all readers who follow such a narrative to seek their own
opinions, to come to some decision because for the good of our
future education every thinking person should come to such deci-
sion as to what made his own college, or Jtier own, and what shall
make the one which is to oversee our children's setting out on the
difficult road of life.
Chapter II
A QUAKER CONCERN
The difficulties and the progress of the history of a college are dif-
ficult to recapture because, for the most part, the determining con-
tributions are human and personal, with the elements of final suc-
cess rising almost always out of the human factor. Founder, Trustees,
Presidents, student bodies in their successive generations, scholars
and gifted teachers, generous donors all these persons, save one,
shift and disappear in the shortness of human life and in college
generations. All but one are renewed in other forms and other fig-
ures as the college seeks out and finds her own.
Of all these, the founder alone is never duplicated. His is the
single honor of having had the first vision and of having given it
life and impetus. His reward is not in a contimial and grateful
recollection by posterity; of this he neither expects nor receives any
great amount. It is in the thought that possibly, in the later and
wider accomplishment which is far beyond his foreseeing, there shall
be some grain and substance of himself and his idea.
The first conception of Bryn Mawr College grew up in the
mind of Joseph Wright Taylor, a Quaker gentleman of unusual
charm and lovableness, a doctor of medicine, a man of unosten-
tatiously increasing wealth and of steadily growing human capacity.
He lived a conventional life, in which that very conventionality was
a cloak, as it can be an impenetrable cloak, for a quick and almost
painful response to a sense of duty and for inner thoughts of deep
and passionate concern. His will, establishing a college for the
higher education of young women, was a surprise to many, even
among his friends and associates in the Society of Friends. But its
6
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 7
making was not the sudden decision of a man growing old and hav-
ing to determine quickly where those possessions should go which
he could not take with him. We know now, better than his con-
temporaries did, that he came to his conclusions slowly and after
long and earnest consultation with a handful of greatly trusted
friends. We can picture him as turning over his plans within his
mind, thinking of them as he splashed along muddy roads on his
country errands, as adding this detail and that as chance suggestions
fell in his way, particularly as meditating on them and dedicating
them to their highest purpose in the living silence of the Quaker
Meeting.
Into them went the whole of his warm nature, his love of coun-
try living, his admiration and affection for his able and remark-
able sister, his interest in young people, though he never married
and so had no direct descendants of his own. Into them also went
his careful efficiency in business matters, his deep sense of the hap-
piness contained in good family life, his quick answer to the stim-
ulus of intellectual companionship, his slowly growing knowledge
and interest concerning the whole subject of contemporary educa-
tion. To these was added a quiet and thoughtful, but none the less
powerful, spirit of rebellion against a certain imprisoning narrow-
ness which was the threat and sometimes the pitfall of the very be-
liefs which he cherished so deeply. His plan, above all, rose out of
his sincere conviction that Quaker principles and Quaker discipline
had something to give to all humanity, not in the way of dogma,
but in the way of shedding light upon life itself.
Joseph Wright Taylor was born on March i, 1810, in a farm-
house near Imlaystown, Upper Freehold Township, Monmouth
County, New Jersey. He came at the end of a large family, having
five older brothers and one sister. His father, the seventh Edward
Taylor in a direct line to live in the Quaker settlements of New
Jersey, was a doctor. Although the elder Dr. Taylor had come into
the Society of Friends "by conviction and not by birthright," he
was an earnestly believing member of the Society, while his wife,
Sarah Merritt Taylor, belonged to the Quakers by long descent as
well as by her own devotion.
The Taylor family made an affectionate and happy household,
deeply united in spite of the fact that they were a group, parents
8 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
and sons and daughter, o strong individualists. The boys admired
and cherished their only sister, Hannah, a girl of excellent mind
and vivid character. Descendants of the family say that the fact that
she never married was due to her having been too much surrounded
by earnest but proprietary brotherly affection.
The Society of Friends as a body had long been specially con-
cerned with certain reforms, the doing away with slavery, the im-
proving of conditions in prisons, the just treatment of the Indians
and the care of the insane. In 1813 an institution, the Friends Asy-
lum, for mental cases was established at Frankford, just north of
Philadelphia. Sarah Taylor, even while her children were very
young, felt it her husband's duty and hers to take over the manag-
ing of this institution. This Edward Taylor refused to do until his
youngest son, Joseph, was thirteen, old enough to go to boarding
school and beyond the age of being too deeply affected by the
shadow of such an environment. The Taylor parents had practical
views as to their sons' training to maintain themselves in the world;
the eldest son, Abraham, had been apprenticed as a carpenter;
James in time set up a school, and Joseph, when he finished his
course at David Griscom's boarding school, was started at learning
the apothecary's trade in a drugstore in Philadelphia. This was a
useful but still incomplete preparation for the larger project upon
which he entered next as he went on to study medicine.
He "read," as young lawyers used also to read, in the office of
a man established in his profession, and when he was seventeen he
began his two years of study at the Medical School of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania. This course was interrupted by a severe
illness, rheumatic fever, followed by heart complications, treated
with bleeding and blistering as was the practice of the day. The ef-
fects of this sickness followed him through his whole life. In spite
of it, however, he continued his medical studies, and by industry
and intelligence and a little skillful concealment he managed to
violate the rule that a diploma was not granted to any man who
was not twenty-one. He succeeded in graduating as a doctor when
he was barely twenty, and settled into practice at Germantown, not
far from his own family. But notwithstanding his gaiety of spirit,
and his ability to make friends, he did not go forward happily.
Society was conservative, and the young doctor with new methods
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 9
was not so welcome in the old and settled families of Philadelphia
and its neighborhood as was the old one. Joseph felt that patients
were unreasonably slow in coming, and he was disappointed and
impatient. It may have been that with the small amount of formal
training which he had received, this man of medicine, aged twenty,
felt himself a trifle insecure.
Because a meager and limited professional life seemed to him an
appalling prospect, he determined to seek better things that would
give a wider view. Ships owned by friends of his family were con-
stantly clearing from the port of Philadelphia for far voyages, so
that he found it easy enough to obtain, in this first year of his be-
ing admitted to practice, a position as ship's surgeon on a vessel
bound for Calcutta. Instead of being paid a salary, he was entitled
to cargo space in the ship and he took with him a thousand dollars
to invest in wares of the East. This he did to such good purpose
that, on getting home, he found himself in possession of a most
satisfactory profit. He had widened his life more effectually than he
had undertaken to do, for he had made excursion into the field of
business and discovered that it was congenial and that there, per-
haps, lay his best abilities. Some source of his dissatisfaction, ap-
parently, lay in his being in the wrong occupation.
In the iSsjo's the West, with its wide and stirring opportunities,
was beginning to tempt young men of enterprise. Abraham Taylor,
his older brother, was the first to feel the impulse to try life on a
more adventurous scale. He was the most serious member of the
family, determinedly practical where Joseph was lighter-minded and
full of vision. Abraham had gone to Cincinnati ten years earlier,
traveling out in a Conestoga wagon, had set up a tanning business
and had long put up with an uncongenial but able partner for the
sake of getting established. By this time he had begun to prosper
and also to feel a desire for the more agreeable company of his
younger brothers James and Joseph. James was no more contented
with his school than Joseph was with his medical practice, to which
he had returned after the voyage to India. Both eagerly embraced
Abraham's invitation to come out and join him in business, and
to Cincinnati they traveled forthwith, by train and canal boat, by
inclined plane over the mountains, and by river packet down the
Ohio to arrive in March of 1835.
10
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
It was no part of Abraham's intention to coddle his brothers;
we find them writing home that James is employed in putting car-
riages together and Joseph at grinding tanbark. But it soon became
Joseph's part to travel through Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, buy-
ing hides to be sent back to the tannery. His cheerfulness, his pleas-
ant manners and his quick business sense made him a most success-
ful emissary, so that before long he became a partner in the com-
pany. The three brothers lived together in a bachelor household
until presently, when James married, their sister Hannah came West
to keep house for the remaining two.
It is a custom of the Quakers, for those who feel they have the
mission, to make journeys of visitation from Meeting to Meeting,
from country to country. Philadelphia saw many of such travelers;
even Cincinnati had its share. Some of the visitors came from Eng-
land, some from the tiny groups of scattered Friends gathered here
and there in the even deeper West, from Indiana and Iowa. "There
were noble men among them," Abraham's son has said of the visi-
tors from the pioneer communities. For Joseph there was a stimulus
and a warming of the heart when the educated, the intellectual and
inspiring Friends from England came their way. That widening of
life which began for him with the trip to India, which had been ex-
tended in the crude newness of a growing Western town, was now
carried further still by these men who represented a school of
thought older and more mellow than even that of the neighborhood
of Philadelphia and of Burlington which he still thought of as home.
He longed to become more closely acquainted with what these Eng-
lishmen stood for. The guests, on departure, urged him to return
the visit, to come some day to see England for himself.
It was not, however, until he had been fifteen years a member
of the firm of A. Taylor and Company that the long-desired op-
portunity and the direct occasion arose. He had begun to have se-
rious trouble with his eyes, so that he was barred almost entirely
from reading and writing. Consultation with a Philadelphia doc-
tor brought the advice to try a complete rest and a sea voyage.
Joseph had prospered enough in the fifteen years to feel that he
could afford it; he was eager for travel and felt the deeper impulse
to make one of the journeys of friendship that the Quakers so cher-
ished. Abraham rather looked askance upon what he thought was
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? II
irresponsible vacationing, but Joseph persevered. In April of 1849
he boarded the sailing ship which, allowing the best part of a month
for the voyage, would take him to England in time for the English
Friends' Yearly Meeting. It was always hard for him to say good-
bye to his well loved family, yet he was glad indeed to have respite
from business.
Joseph Taylor was a devoted member of the Society of Friends
in the truest and fullest sense of the word, a Quaker to his very
heart. To understand him, to understand his work and what he has
achieved, this must be made abundantly clear. His brothers may
have been as deeply believing, but for Joseph his religious faith was
the light of his life, the consideration which had first priority in all
that he thought and did. His friendship with members of his Society
was combined with his warm natural affection and a sense of spirit-
ual brotherhood which gave such connection a doubled force and
constancy. People who knew him have spoken of seeing the tears
roll down his cheeks from the depth of his feeling as he sat in the
Meeting. He did not speak, except on rare occasions; he was not one
of the "recognized ministers/* Very humbly, and with complete
naturalness, he gave the whole of his mind and spirit to his approach
to God. Now, as he set forth to England, he carried letters from
Stephen Grellet, most prominent of American Quakers, introducing
him to various men of the company of the Friends in England,
among them William and Josiah Forster and John Hodgkin with
whom Joseph was to have much to do as later years went by.
His diary and his letters give a record of overflowing happiness,
of his pleasure in the beauty of what he saw, in the quaintness and
the richness of an older history than he had ever conceived of.
Above all they show his delight in the extending circle of his new
acquaintance. All his own tastes and turns of personality are re-
flected in his appreciation of gracious living, of broad, comfortable
houses, of neat small fields promising abundance, of clean rosy
children, of fine horses from those in the Queen's stables downward.
But at this time England and the Continent were on tiptoe in the
expectation of war, with such trouble brewing between Germany
and Austria as threatened a conflict which would spread everywhere,
as the Napoleonic wars had done. In Joseph's letters he laments
with sincere distress the constant presence of soldiers, the waste and
12 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
unnatural living for men who could be so useful in other walks of
life. He attended a peace conference in Paris and caught a glimpse
of how the Emperor Napoleon III was supporting his uneasy
throne by a great display of magnificence and of the trappings of
military glory. All the imperial showmanship was the merest folly to
Joseph.
He returned home just before Christmas; he had been gone
eight months. Considering that two of these had been taken up by
the crossings of the Atlantic, the time for travel had not been un-
duly long. But his brother Abraham considered it a very lengthy
period to be away from business. Because Abraham had married
Elizabeth Shoemaker of Philadelphia in the year before Joseph's de-
parture, there was now due a complete change in household ar-
rangement. Joseph and Hannah took a house in the country at
Price's Hill, for Cincinnati was growing and town living had never
suited either of them. His partnership in the tanning business had
brought him substantial dividends, which he had allowed to accumu-
late, and had invested them with a rather rare and careful sagacity.
He had achieved, therefore, a comfortable competence and began
to feel that perhaps he could allow himself a certain relief from the
pressure of day-to-day activities in the counting-house. He had
worked faithfully and intelligently at his share of the company's
business, but it was true that things of the mind and spirit inter-
ested him far more.
His brother Abraham, observing all these facts and strong in
the knowledge that, as head of the firm, he was a man whose word
was law, suggested firmly that Joseph resign. It was a wise idea, as
well as an authoritative one, and Joseph embraced it willingly. He
still spent part of every morning at his office, and the rest of the
time went about those varied duties and errands of country living
which can take, pleasantly, so very much time. By the end of a year
it occurred to Joseph and Hannah that there was really no urgent
reason for their remaining longer in Cincinnati and that they might
return to the neighborhood of Philadelphia. After a good deal of
careful consideration, he decided to settle at Burlington, New
Jersey.
It is to be remembered that Burlington was the first Quaker
settlement in America in which William Penn had interest, and that
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? lg
its success gave encouragement for the later founding of Philadel-
phia. The Burlington Meeting was an important one. Stephen Grel-
let and other distinguished Friends lived nearby, as well as families
that had been associated with Joseph's parents and with his child-
hood. Two of his brothers already lived not far away. Joseph
bought a place called Woodlands, two miles out of the town, and
there he and Hannah settled very happily. In time Abraham retired
and built a house close to them, as did James later. Abraham's son,
Charles Shoemaker Taylor, who was devoted to his Uncle Joseph,
later established himself on a farm close at hand. "The Hill," as
their little neighborhood came to be called, was now a Taylor
stronghold. Thus twenty years passed over them all.
To Quakers family life is one of the foremost factors in any
scheme of living. Because at that time Friends denied themselves
even more of "the world's pleasures" than they do now, and because
they took no part in theater-going, dancing, card-playing or even
reading novels, there had to be some outlet for sociable impulses,
good spirits and pleasure in warmhearted companionship. First Day
was the great occasion for family dinners and family visiting. There
was always good talk wherein opinions could sharpen themselves on
opposite opinions; there were independence of ideas and commu-
nity of interest; there was constructive argument, all part of a prof-
itable mental give-and-take within a household and within a clan.
The Taylor houses became famous among neighbors and friends;
there could always be found good company and lively minds; there
were entertained the prominent visitors from abroad. What was
most important of all, there were discussed and developed the basic
ideas and enterprises of Quaker thinking.
For every person of Joseph Taylor's generation, just as it has
been true for every adult of our own mid-century period, there had
been certain years of life altered or distressed or blighted by the
inescapable contact of war. But now it could be hoped that a new
generation was arising that would have no memory, even, of march-
ing men, of newspapers shouting tidings of battles, of houses in-
vaded by the single messages of personal disaster. For these young
people it seemed possible to hope that they could round out their
lives in peace and security, that the world would be wide for them
and that they would have opportunity for adventures of the mind
H
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
and spirit which could alter history as fully as ever did trampling
armies or rumbling cannon. They should have the most that could
be given them, to make up for what the earlier generations had lost.
And first of all they should have education, have it freely and of
the very best. Such was the feeling everywhere, with education un-
der sharp and constructive scrutiny. In the midst of the rising tide
of interest and questions, the Society of Friends had their own spe-
cial concern and their own peculiar problems.
Earlier in the century the Quakers, in discussion both in Amer-
ica and in England, were arriving at a disquieting conclusion con-
cerning themselves. Although they had preserved fully the integrity
of their faith and their faithfulness to their discipline, the Society,
surprisingly and undeniably, was growing smaller in numbers. The
practice of expelling members who "married out of the Meeting"
was proving itself most costly. Their own educational institutions
were limited in number and old-fashioned in methods. Their young
people were seeking education elsewhere and came under influences
of such different quality and teaching of such different content that
they often ended by never returning to their birthright beliefs. And
deeper still was the knowledge that a small society, concentrating
on depth of ideas and principles, ran grave risk of engendering
narrowness of thought.
The real shock was administered by the advent of the Hicksite
schism in 1827, occurring in Philadelphia and later spreading to
other American Meetings, the first separation which had ever come
about in the Society of Friends. "A pretty pass we Christians have
come to," Joseph Taylor's father had observed when it became plain
that the breach was not to be healed. It had been a Quaker tenet
that harmony in any association could always be found, not by tak-
ing count of conflicting votes, but by bringing to bear the power of
untiring good sense and reasoning and by a thorough survey of all
possible points of agreement. Members discussing everywhere the
cure of all these disquieting conditions began more and more to
turn their minds to an examination of the lacks and opportunities
of their system of educating their young people. A series of articles
in the Quaker journal, The Friend, appearing early in 1830 and
signed "Ascham," brought the whole challenging question into sud-
den focus.
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 15
"We have not kept pace with the forward progress of knowl-
edge," the author (never identified) declared boldly. "We have al-
lowed ourselves to be so much a peculiar people. . . . The result,"
he explained, was that "our young members do not fully under-
stand our principles, our school system is not systematic or complete,
we ourselves are deeply critical of it."
The five articles, each of only a page in length, had curiously
awakening power. The first visible result of the movement which
followed was the establishing of Haverford College, in 1833,
founded by a group of hopeful and loyal members of the Orthodox
group of Friends. Its students were to be drawn for the most part
from among Quaker families, and were to follow the most rigid
specifications of conduct. The College had its severe trials, coura-
geously surmounted; in 1845 it was even obliged to close tempo-
rarily for lack of funds, but the undertaking was far from being
abandoned. With a Board of Managers who had acquired hard ex-
perience, with plans more thoroughly matured, it opened its doors
again in 1848. Six years later, and three after Joseph Taylor had
moved to Burlington and assumed his place in the Quaker com-
munity, he became a member of the Haverford Board of Managers
in 1854, and served in his place there for the remainder of his life.
They were fertile years which were to have far-scattered fruits
for later generations. Dr. Taylor worked steadily and conscien-
tiously, saying little, carrying out to the last letter of faithfulness
his responsibilities on the policy-making Board and its committees.
He came into constant association and formed warm friendships
with a group of quite extraordinary men. Study of his duties, of
immediate educational need within his own circle of Friends, of the
dramatic unfolding of the intellectual possibilities of his time, all
led his thoughts in a certain direction. That infinite kindliness which
is so visible on his face in his surviving portraits, that invincible
sense of justice, less easy for a casual glance to read, were both
working to turn his thoughts into final intention.
"The advantages of a college education which are so freely of-
fered to young men," as he spoke of them later, were plainly being
withheld from young women. It was time for someone, for some
wiser and generous hand to repair the error.
Dr. Taylor could see, where others were strangely blind, that
i6
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
the education of women within the Quaker sect was a matter of
great importance. The general idea of making more efficient wives
and mothers was far from being all of the purpose which was shap-
ing in his mind. With it was a real concern for women's whole op-
portunity in the scheme of Quaker living. Family life, as has been
said, was one of its great factors. The women must be sensible and
able, but besides they must be capable of stimulating and interest-
ing intellectual companionship; they should be equal to taking part
in the thought and discussion of the vital things with which Friends
were constantly occupied. Some, like his sister Hannah, like the
interesting and gifted woman who was the wife of his Baltimore
friend James Carey Thomas, could hold their own from pure native
ability; but, among many, minds could well be quickened by an
opportunity of mental training. Among the Quakers it was a point
of special pride that women had always been given freely the right
of leadership, of being "recognized as ministers." Where was the
preparation for opportunity of such importance?
Moreover, if education in general were to be advanced as fully
as was needed, if the primary and secondary schools were to grow
to their proper stature, Dr. Taylor saw clearly that the teachers
must come from among the women of the country, rather than the
ranks of men, thinned now by the Civil War and by widening com-
mercial opportunities as the country's prosperity got once more into
running order. Once again a few could teach by native gifts, but
most must have expert instruction. And at the very base of his
whole intent was the desire to broaden life for others, as his own
had been broadened through chance circumstances and his own
capabilities. He went forward slowly with his deep consideration,
his plans, his final determination. Early in 1876 he had already be-
gun to discuss it tentatively with his friend and associate on the
Haverford Board, Francis T. King.
Momentous things were beginning to come to pass in the wider
educational world with which he was now in close communication.
The Hicksite Quakers had founded their own college, Swarthmore,
in 1864. Cornell University had opened in 1868, designed by the
hopeful founder as a place "where any person might find instruction
in any study." This generous plan was scarcely possible of fulfill-
ment, but the concept of an institution which would offer an in>
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 1^
mensely wider field of learning was a bold one. The matter of
women's education was more than ever a subject of anxious con-
sideration in many quarters. Vassar was eleven years old, Wellesley
and Smith only one; Mount Holyoke was still a seminary. Four
years before, Cornell, having received a gift for that special pur-
pose, made room for women. The Western universities were begin-
ning to receive women, but their attendance was still sparse.
Among the men's colleges, changes were at last under way.
Harvard, in 1869, had taken the bold step of electing a layman to
be its head, when the strong tradition for ministerial presidents was
still prevalent. And this was a very young man for the office, Charles
William Eliot, aged thirty-five. His reforms and changes were the
talk of the educational world, the inspiration of some, the despair
of others. A newly enlarged curriculum, a complete freedom of elec-
tion of courses, a building up of the professional schools, Medical,
Divinity, and Scientific, which gave Harvard the true right to call
itself a university, all these had come forward during those years
that Joseph Taylor sat in his place of responsibility on Haverford's
Board of Managers. But most striking of all, and most far-reaching
in its results, was the opening, in 1876, of the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity.
The undertaking had been set on foot by the bequest of the
founder, also a member of the Society of Friends, with what was
then considered to be the stupendous sum of three and a half mil-
lion. What was more, the gift had practically no stipulations or
limitations attached to it, save that a university was to be estab-
lished and, later, to be affiliated, through a Medical School, with a
great hospital for which an additional three and a half million were
provided. The Trustees whom Johns Hopkins appointed before his
death were men whom he knew well and in whom he had such con-
fidence that he left in their hands full authority to follow whatever
way seemed best. These Trustees offered almost as free a hand to
the President of their choice, Daniel Coit Gilman, and gave full
agreement to the plan which he proposed.
This was the establishing of a university in the truest sense of
the word, devoted primarily to graduate study and research, with a
Faculty chosen from the very top rank of scholars and to be drawn
from any available quarter of the scholarly world. In short, the new
i8
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
university was to be devoted fully to the advancement of learning,
not merely to the passing on to a younger generation the sum of
learning already accumulated.
Other institutions and, within them, individual workers were
pushing on as best they could toward this expansion of human
knowledge, but this public avowal of purpose and the dedication
of the great resources of a powerful foundation had, and continues
to have, a telling effect, direct and indirect, which runs through the
whole fabric of subsequent American history. Nor is it merely in-
tellectual history which offers the record; it is the whole aspect of
living which shows the effect of this stimulus to further research and
further exploration of the fields of learning. The immense expan-
sion of human knowledge of which the twentieth century has seen
only its first fifty years, the discoveries in medicine, the extension
and development of individual sciences, the new fields of explora-
tion in archaeology, the new methods and revelations in the study
of literary history, the establishment of further departments and op-
portunities for research in which American colleges had been lack-
ing, the setting up of further great foundations all this began to
come pouring out as the doors opened at that moment in response
to the understanding that here was a great and waiting chance.
What is vital in this particular study is the fact that the same men
who sat on die Board of Trustees named by Johns Hopkins, in par-
ticular Francis T. King and James Carey Thomas, were colleagues
and close associates of Dr. Taylor at Haverford.
By February of 1877, Joseph Taylor had made his will, pre-
senting in rough outline the plan of the College which he hoped to
establish. At the end of that year he attended an educational con-
ference in Baltimore, called by Francis T. King and James Carey
Thomas, which was for discussion of the responsibility of the So-
ciety of Friends in the whole subject of education, to ask themselves
whether, as the unknown Ascham in the Friend had asked almost
fifty years ago, "'Have we kept pace with the progress of the age?"
Just how fully they had arrived at the needs of the age can be
guessed by the fact that the matter of women's education was never
mentioned. Daniel Gilman made an address on the real functions
of colleges and universities. Joseph Taylor was present, but it is
not recorded that he took any part in the discussion. His chosen
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? ig
subject was one at which the conference never arrived. But he car-
ried home much food for thought, and returned to Baltimore more
than once in the next year to consult with Gilman, to go home with
James Carey Thomas to the comfortable hospitality of their delight-
ful household, where he felt at ease and could talk freely of what so
occupied his mind.
On one of these visits he found the eldest daughter, Martha
Carey, at home for the Christmas vacation of her senior year at Cor-
nell. She was to take her A.B. there in June and was already in-
troducing her rather reluctant father to the idea of her going to
Germany for graduate study. No American college could offer such
a thing to a woman. Joseph Taylor discussed with her the idea that
women students should not be taught exclusively by men, and that
posts of importance in academic life should be open to women
scholars who had won distinction. Carey Thomas, who, at Cornell,
had seen no feminine employees of the university other than char-
women, declared that she did not believe women would be allowed
to teach anywhere except within women's colleges, not even at co-
educational universities. Her answer gave Dr. Taylor even more
food for thought as he returned home.
All these problems were inspiring and stimulating, but they
gave rise also to great anxieties. From the very depth of his earnest-
ness there arose moments of panic for fear all would not turn out
as he so fervently hoped. Because of his own devotion to his re-
ligious beliefs, the development of the religious side of the stu-
dents' lives was of vital importance to him. What if, in the sweep
of enthusiasm and new development, that object were lost sight of?
What if, when young women of the Society of Friends were brought
into close association with those of a different world, there should
come to be an exchange of frivolous ideas, "of unsuitable reading,
a competition in extravagance of dress and adornment"? Tor-
mented by the thought of such possibilities, of harm rather than
good as resulting from his efforts, he would hurry to his desk to
write a letter addressed to his Trustees, for them to consider after
he was gone.
"That these evils [extravagance and display] may be carefully
guarded against, I urge upon you the propriety of requiring all
dresses of the students to be of simple and unshowy appearance.
20 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
... At the same time make it a study to embrace every opportu-
nity to promote health, exercise in the open air. ... By every right
means try to impose the cultivation of a very high degree of re-
finement of heart, mind and manners . . . which should be the
Christian's adorning. . . . May Grace, Mercy and Peace be the re-
ward of all who shall labor in this work is the prayer of your friend,
J. W. Taylor." Yet what he was here laying upon his Trustees
were requests and suggestions, not unchangeable obligations.
Curriculum, Faculty and students were all in the nebulous fu-
ture, but it was time now to make a beginning. After much thought
and discussion of the site of the College with Francis King, a place
had been chosen at the edge of the village of Bryn Mawr, a mile
west of Haverford. An architect was engaged, Addison Hutton, and
the first buildings, one for administration and classes, one for resi-
dence, were slowly taking form on the ridge of the hill. There was
here a wide sweep of that country landscape which had always
meant so much to Joseph Taylor.
No one labored over plans and the actual building of the new
College more constantly and valiantly than did its founder. He
made trips to inspect the buildings of Mount Holyoke, Smith and
Wellesley; Francis King, Dr. James Thomas and Addison Hutton
went with him. President Seelye, of Smith, reported briskly and
practically that Vassar and Wellesley had made the mistake of omit-
ting closets in their plans and "Young ladies were not satisfied with
wardrobes." Unfortunately, this sound advice came too late to save
the plan of the first residence building, and closetless Merion re-
mained for more than fifty years.
Dr. Taylor came every day from Burlington to oversee the
progress of the work. He would ride from Woodlands to Burlington,
leave his horse with a friend, take a train to Camden, hurry to the
ferry landing to cross the Delaware, hurry up the other bank to
get a streetcar across Philadelphia, and hurry for the train to Bryn
Mawr. All day, in hot sun or cold or wind, he would go over plans,
answer innumerable questions, make endless decisions. Ground had
been broken on August 4th, 1879, f r Taylor Hall, the administra-
tion building which he had reluctantly consented to have named
for him. The residence hall had followed. It had gone by a variety
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 21
of titles; one of the contractors finally dubbed it, practically, "the
female Cottage."
Joseph Taylor saw the foundations laid and the walls begin to
show their outline. He had actually planned to leave his beloved
Woodlands and move to an estate near Bryn Mawr, Fox Fields,
which he had purchased so that he could be nearer at hand. But he
was never to live there, never to see the setting of the "eight cut
blue stone brackets/* the largest single item of expense, which were
to be the crowning glory of Taylor Tower.
For some weeks, in the midst of his labors, he had been aware
of a persistent pain in his chest and left arm. Being a doctor, and
having had none too good a heart ever since the rheumatic fever of
his youth, he had little doubt as to what it meant. He went on with
his work, however, through 1879. His architect had gone abroad,
and progress would be slackened if attention were relaxed. "I have
got old fast," he said in a letter to his nephew, Charles Shoemaker
Taylor. "I must be content to be old and slow for so it will be
for the short remainder to fill out the life of a man." Autumn
came, but it was an open winter and work went on into January,
with Joseph Taylor sparing himself nothing. Final illness came
upon him on a cold day when he had driven several miles to the
Meeting at Burlington. Three days later he died, on January 18,
1880, at the age of seventy.
It remains only, for his personal record, to take that close view
of him which makes recollection possible and complete. His family,
even those of the generation which never saw him, speak of him
with warm affection as being the best and wisest uncle with whom a
troop of nieces and nephews was ever blessed. He went to see them
at their schools; he took the most lively interest in all their prob-
lems. He traveled West with a fatally ill nephew on the forlorn
quest of recovery of health for him. When his Quaker friend from
England, John Hodgkin, found himself weary and ailing after a
long series of visits to scattered Meetings, Joseph Taylor, who had al-
ready accompanied him on his American travels, returned to Eng-
land with him to make the journey lighter. The nephews and nieces
grew up; the great-nephews and great-nieces multiplied and had
from him the same unfailing affection and generosity.
22 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
He often made jokes about his bachelor state; he enjoyed the
society of ladies; it was a continued mystery why he never married.
William Thurston, who was his financial adviser and one of his
Trustees, had an attractive sister-in-law, who was Joseph Taylor's
close friend for thirty years, and who remained unmarried all her
life. There was much speculation on the part of his family as to why
he did not marry her; speculation cannot presume to hazard an
answer.
All of his contemporaries spoke of him as having the greatest
delight in neatness and as showing that fastidiousness in matters of
dress to which Quaker plainness is no bar. Friends spoke of his
slim, active figure, his searching blue eyes. His portrait, presented
to the College by his niece, was made from a photograph and so
fails to give him direct. But nothing can really hide the quality of
the man there shown, sedately handsome, with cheekbones just
prominent enough to give character to his face, with ruddy skin and
humorous eyes and that look of kindliness which, with all its impli-
cations, should be the tangible detail of our everlasting recollection.
Chapter III
"THE TERM . . . IS PERPETUAL"
On a certain day in May, 1880, a group of serious-faced men sat in
a Philadelphia office, round a table spread with papers. Friendship
had brought them there, the tested, adult friendship for one whom
they had long known, respected and admired. Their lives were al-
ready full of innumerable interests and duties, but they were about
to meet, with no reluctance, certain heavier responsibilities, heavier
because less familiar, duties such as they had not undertaken here-
tofore. It is a tribute to Joseph Taylor that all of them had such
deep regard for him that they faced, wholeheartedly and willingly,
the laborious task which he had put into their hands. There ran
through the whole group, as a fiber of the same quality as the Found-
er's, integrity, good sense, generosity, Quaker belief and devotion
to duty. A part of the papers on the table was made up of the
voluminous pages of Joseph Taylor's will. Of the friends whom he
had designated as his Trustees, not one had declined to serve.
He had stipulated that Francis T. King, of Baltimore, should
be President of his Board. A successful merchant and banker, Fran-
cis King had given of his time and his remarkable ability to many
public interests, to reconstruction after the Civil War, to the ad-
vancement of freed slaves, in particular to the affairs of Haverford
College and the Johns Hopkins University. We have a glimpse of
him in Helen Thomas Flexner's reminiscences, A Quaker Childhood,
this serious and thoughtful cousin of her father's, coming to Meeting
it their house in Blue Ridge Summit in his "plain coat," loved by
all the family, not too busy to have deep and affectionate interest
24 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
in the affairs of its younger members, father of a vivid and intelli-
gent daughter just grown up, for wfiose ideas and opinions he had
respectful regard. He had been a member of Haverford College's
second class. A leading spirit among the Board of Managers of his
own College, he had also helped to formulate the earlier policies of
the Johns Hopkins University. He had been given the very impor-
tant and responsible task of overseeing the building of the 12,500,-
ooo hospital which was to complete the Johns Hopkins bequest. In
spite of all his responsibilities he had found time for endless con-
sultation with Joseph Taylor over the plans for the new College;
he had sought out people who could give further advice; he had
helped in looking for building sites, and sat in consultation over
the architect's plans.
Near him at the table sat his cousin, James Carey Thomas, a
wise and generous doctor, overworked even within his own profes-
sion, and doubly so outside it. He was full of zeal for the promo-
tion of religious thought, of Quakerism in particular, and in the
duty of Friends to advance education. It is to be remembered that
these two had called the conference in Baltimore in 1877 which was
to have such sustaining influence on the ideas of Joseph Taylor.
Helen Thomas Flexner has said that he and Francis King had to be
converted by their daughters to the idea of higher education for
women. Once convinced, they both went forward without either
doubt or hesitation.
At that time James Thomas was regarding with somewhat du-
bious approval the determined pursuit of a higher degree by his
eldest daughter, Martha Carey Thomas. No American institution
would give a Ph.D. to a woman, so that she had gone further to
seek one, a quest which had led her through Germany and Switzer-
land. A strong countercurrent to his conservatism was the influence
of his gifted wife, Mary Whitall Thomas, for whom intuition took
the place of the long reasoning necessary for others. Her torrent of
enthusiasm for religious work, for women's advancement, for the
happiness of her husband and children flowed abundantly through
the whole of the Thomas family life. There was no doubt in the
world, in her mind, that her daughter Carey was wholly right.
Further round the table sat Mary Thomas's brother, James
Whitall, a man of devotion and wise discernment, who did not
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 25
thrust himself forward, but could give, when needed, the wisest and
soundest of advice.
Another cousin sat with them, David Scull, Jr., spare, dark,
lean-faced, full of caution, conservatism and brilliant executive
ability combined with a penetrating and vivid love of beauty. He
was the strictest and most carefully conforming Quaker of them all,
and many times saw with pain certain steps taken to carry the Col-
lege forward with its times, saw and suffered but made no resistance
or complaint. Of all those among the first group of Trustees, his
was among the longest and certainly was the most laborious service.
He assisted in the oversight of the building of Taylor and Merion
halls and, as Chairman of the Buildings and Grounds Committee,
acted for the Trustees in the erecting of Radnor, Denbigh, Dalton,
Pembroke, the Library and Rockefeller, with all the subsidiary
buildings that went up in that long period.
Francis R. Cope was the eldest member of the Board. Later his
younger relative, Walter Cope, was to bring his genius as an archi-
tect to the service of the College and its great enrichment. The
young man's progressive designs, unique for that time, were to have
the loyal, though often anxious, support of David Scull.
James E. Rhoads sat beyond Francis Cope, a man with a long,
intelligent face and infinitely kind blue eyes, a big man with the
courageous look of one who has borne pain and illness but has never
let such matters limit his activities for good. A doctor of medicine
who had been obliged to give up his wide practice because of ill
health, he was devoting almost equal energy to philanthropies such
as furthering the cause of the Indians, the education of Negroes
and many other projects, large and small. One of the important
and prosperous girls' schools in the town of Bryn Mawr was made
possible by a loan from James Rhoads when it had no other back-
ers. He was a man of extraordinarily wide vision and of faith in
human powers. At this time he was editor of the Friends' Review,
a magazine reflecting the more liberal ideas of the Orthodox
Friends. A few people looked askance upon his tolerant and pro-
gressive principles, and he was never "recognized as a minister" in
his own Meeting. He had long been a member of Haverford's Board
of Managers. Above all he was the intimate and highly regarded
friend of Joseph Taylor and, perhaps more than any other man,
26 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
understood most fully what it was that the Founder of Bryn Mawr
wanted to accomplish.
Charles Shoemaker Taylor, son of Abraham and nephew of
Joseph, was the youngest member present. He was much like his
uncle, less like his somewhat austere father, who had thought Joseph
a trifle light-minded in his attitude toward business. Charles was
eagerly generous and affectionate, had loved his uncle, was devoted
to Joseph's farseeing project, and was ever ready to bring his legal
skill to the service of the College.
Because of the intimate relation of these men to the early Bryn
Mawr, one of them becoming President himself, the record of those,
thus enumerated, is clearer and more direct, and the debt which the
College owes them is definitely visible. Of the others, Albert K.
Smiley, head of a Quaker School in Providence; John B. Garrett,
first Treasurer of the Board; Philip C. Garrett, its President after
the death of Francis T. King; Charles Hartshorne, Samuel Morris
and William R. Thurston, the College knows less, although not one
of them ever stinted his labor for her. Concerning Trustees or Gov-
ernors or Overseers of any educational institution, all too little is
put on record, all too little acknowledged of what immense part
they play in the life and growth and forward progress which de-
pends so greatly on their gifts for finance and for organization, on
their caution and their courage, on their understanding judgment.
By Joseph Taylor's will his Trustees were always to be chosen
from among the Orthodox branch of the Society of Friends; they
were to be a self-perpetuating body, selecting successors as vacancies
occurred. In a singularly successful way, almost unbelievably so,
they have been self-perpetuating, maintaining the quality and kind
of their ability and generosity, as generation followed generation
with mounting years of their untiring aid. As will be seen later, the
Board of Trustees was enlarged by the addition of Directors. Only
by reading a full list of those who have thus held office is it possible
to see what distinguished men and women have given their time
and effort to the College, and how long and devoted have been
many of the terms of service. Yet it never can be fully known how
often they have stood in the breach when the College was faced with
seemingly insurmountable difficulties, how they have given support
to courageous plans which seemed almost impossible to carry out.
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 27
They have not wanted and do not look for public recognition of
all that they have done and given in the fullest sense; the real mat-
ter of regret is that we, in our time, can only read between the lines
of the record and wish that we knew more of them.
The main purpose of this May meeting was to draw up a char-
ter which, when confirmed by the State of Pennsylvania, would give
them authority to carry on the College. It is a simple and direct
one, admirably summarizing the terms of the Founder's will, and
containing the statement at the end, "The term of this Charter is
perpetual." No one seemed to doubt that there would forever be
available persons, able, suitable and devoted, ready to turn their
hands to the necessary labors. Human nature being, as it is, rich
and continuingly generous, it seems that such qualities will always
be in full supply.
In their close examination of Joseph Taylor's will, his Trustees
found themselves puzzled by certain items. Their successors have
been puzzled in their turn, for the will was, in fact, written by a
man who was in two minds. It was very lengthy; the items which
dealt with the College began in paragraph forty. Before that it
was the ordinary will of a generous and loving member of a large
family, with bequests to his sister, to his nephews and nieces, to his
great-nephews and great-nieces, to his faithful employees. "The
widow of my former stableman" was remembered; he had set up a
fund for "giving fuel to the poor in the more inclement seasons of
the year"; a certain building was to be open to religious meetings
"without regard to sects, except that they shall be orthodox." In the
later and, to us, the vital portion of the will, his main purpose was
unfalteringly clear, for he never wavered in his intention to give
young women a liberalizing education, one that would enlarge their
lives and make them more responsive members of society. And,
in the process, he wanted them to have the very best that could be
given them. Just how this was to be brought about he did not feel
himself qualified to determine. He had earnestly sought advice, and
it had come to him of two distinct kinds.
His consultations with Francis T. King and James Carey
Thomas had been frequent, but had not settled him in any final
plan of action. That the policy, left in their hands to determine,
would greatly resemble that of the Johns Hopkins University he was
28 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
well aware. But when, on the other hand, very much on the other
hand, he had sought the advice of President Chase, of Haverford,
he received counsel of a very different stamp. Later, Thomas Chase
wrote to James Rhoads much of what, in substance, he had enjoined
on Dr. Taylor and how, rather to his own surprise, he found that
a great deal of his letter of advice had been incorporated, word
for word, in Joseph Taylor's will. That it would be a small college
was self-evident; its beginning at least was bound to be so. That it
should be rigidly selective and strictly sectarian was not in keeping
with the ideas discussed with Joseph Taylor's other advisers. The
often quoted phrase, a college "for the advanced education and
care of young women and girls of the higher and more refined
classes of Society," originated with Thomas Chase and not with Jo-
seph Taylor. So also did the provision that the students should be
taught "the doctrines of the New Testament as accepted by Friends
and taught by Fox, Penn, and Barclay." Thomas Chase commented,
*'I had a vision of Hicksites, Progressives, Primitives . . . claiming
in future days the control of Taylor College." He himself thought,
but was not quite certain, that it was he who recommended that
the Trustees should always be Orthodox Friends "in a close corpo-
ration." The Christian life of the students was to be constantly cared
for and guarded; they were to be surrounded always by sustaining
religious influence. Those were to be admitted who were of other
sects and churches, but they must agree from the beginning that
they were to be instructed according to Quaker principles.
Joseph Taylor was certain, from his own experience, that the
religiously enlightened life was the happiest one. How to ensure it
for those whom he hoped so greatly to benefit was his vital concern.
In attempting to set forth instructions for that purpose he was fac-
ing the problem which runs through the whole history of Bryn
Mawr College, as it does through that of any college: how its re-
ligious life is best to be cherished and advanced. It is a question
which, once answered, has to be restudied again and yet again, as
times change and the attitude of young people alters with them. It
was a problem which Joseph Taylor could not fully solve but left
to those who came later.
With Francis King and James Thomas, Dr. Taylor wished to
throw open the doors of enlarged ideas and sustaining knowledge to
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 2g
all the young people able to partake of them. But, with Thomas
Chase, he thought that the results could be achieved by strict and
"guarded" instruction, molded by sectarianism. Yet he was really
laying an impossible task upon his Trustees. Fortunately, his will
had a saving grace in the instruction, "Should it be impracticable to
carry out any part of the above provisions literally, my Executors
and Trustees are to use their discretion."
It was a group of men very conscious of the greatness of their
undertaking and its difficulties who pushed back their chairs and got
up when the meeting came to an end. They had selected a Treas-
urer, John Garrett; a Secretary, David Scull; and had made James
Rhoads Vice President of the Board. It was understood that they
would go forward at once with the building program which Joseph
Taylor had begun, and, so that they might use income from the es-
tate for construction, they would give themselves five years for prep-
aration, with the date for opening the College put in the autumn of
1885. They would presently have to appoint a President, choose a
Faculty and set up a policy for courses of study, but that time was
not quite yet.
Records have failed to reveal conclusively at just what point it
was decided that Bryn Mawr, unlike any other women's college al-
ready in existence, was to have a department for graduate study.
Carey Thomas said thirty years later, "A college without graduate
students . . . never occurred to us/' This, it was concluded, was
the ablest and fullest method of carrying out what the Founder
wanted in his plea for "teachers of the highest type" who were to
come to the rescue of other colleges and schools so badly in need
of highly trained women. It is possible that Dr. Taylor had discussed
this specific matter with Francis King and James Thomas, and that
these two and James Rhoads knew that it was his direct wish. The
fact that he had thought of establishing his College in Baltimore as
a close adjunct to Johns Hopkins University makes such an idea
seem possible. Or did these two men who were so close to the
knowledge and the principles of the graduate school of Johns Hop-
kins pursue the intention on their own part and bring the others
to agree with them? It made the requirements for selecting a Fac-
ulty far more stringent; it offered a much heavier drain on the
endowment than would any more ordinary arrangement. Other col-
o WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
leges had been founded with a preparatory department, and had
found them a drag and a difficulty from the beginning. Bryn Mawr
looked in the other direction, began with a graduate department
and went forward from there. But the decision was to involve them
In grave problems.
The construction begun and so affectionately supervised by
Joseph Taylor went steadily onward. The buildings went up; other
adjoining tracts of land were purchased as they came into the
market. James Rhoads, with David Scull as his assistant, carried the
burden of making contracts, discovering errors, arriving at difficult
conclusions. It was found that the site of Cottage Number One,
later to be named Merion Hall, was impractical, and the building
had to be begun all over again. There were to be a gymnasium
and an "economic building," which did not mean what one would
think, for it housed the pumps, the laundry and other utilities. A
little later this last structure was to burn to ashes on a still sum-
mer night, for since it held all the fire-fighting apparatus, as well as
the pumps, there was no way of saving it. Water supply was inad-
equate and, for the first years, a constant vexation. There was to
be a house for the President, across the road from the originally
purchased tract.
For nearly every educational institution founded toward the
end of the nineteenth century, the campus is disfigured by one or
more buildings designed in the regrettable taste of that period.
Bryn Mawr was exposed to the most pronounced phase of it, but
fortunately escaped the very worst. Taylor Hall will always be
tolerantly and affectionately derided, but in it Quaker simplicity
had repudiated much of the Victorian flamboyance which threat-
ened it. To Addison Hutton, a Quaker himself and the architect
selected by Joseph Taylor, Francis King wrote: "Elevations for the
buildings . . . will be in keeping with our profession, with the life
of the donor, with the object of the foundation. I would like to see
in the group of buildings a perfect expression of these three com-
bined/* It was no easy assignment and, to modern eyes, rather im-
perfectly carried out. Actually, the exterior of Taylor bears a family
resemblance to the Baltimore Quaker Meeting House where Fran-
cis King and Dr. Thomas held their educational conference. The
tower was added as a special academic touch. The plan for its in-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 31
terior was taken almost unchanged from that o the original ad-
ministration building at Smith. An excellent plan it has proved to
be; the place was, for the time being, commodious, fully lighted a
fact rather rare in buildings of that period and well suited to its
purpose and adaptable as that purpose changed. Until 1906 it
housed the library, the auditorium, the graduate seminaries and,
for the first few years, the science laboratories as well as the class-
rooms. Along its upper hall has always been the suite of offices for
the President and the President's assistants.
It was coming to be time, by 1883, to discuss who that Pres-
ident was to be. James Rhoads and James Carey Thomas were be-
ing talked of as the most appropriate for the choice. Then, in the
autumn of that year, James Rhoads received an unexpected letter.
The writer was Martha Carey Thomas, daughter of his colleague, a
young person a very young person she seemed to him whom they
all knew of as having gone abroad, three years ago, to seek ad-
vanced studies. A sentence on the first page could not fail to catch
his full attention at once. "I felt that I might, without presump-
tion, and in case no one better fit should be found, offer myself as
a candidate for the presidency of Bryn Mawr."
It was, and is, an extraordinary letter, written by one who was
already an extraordinary person. The text of it was a collaboration,
for its rough draft is preserved in the handwriting of Mary Gwinn,
Carey Thomas's friend from Baltimore who was her companion in
the expedition for study in Germany. Scrawled notes on the mar-
gin show, however, in whom the combined effort had its real source.
"Dear Friend," it began, the customary opening of a letter
from one Quaker to another, "My old desire to see an excellent
woman's college in America has made the management of Bryn
Mawr from the time of its first endowment a matter of great in-
terest to me. It is now three years and a half since I came abroad.
. . . When last ninth month I was more successful in my examina-
tion than I had before thought possible and received the rarely
awarded degree of Doctor of Philosophy summa cum laude, I
felt . . ."
The rather astounding proposal from a person of "almost
twenty-seven" was far from being the whole thesis of the letter.
". . . Without further reference to any possible presidentship
g2 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
of mine, I should be glad if thou wouldst permit me, simply as a
woman much interested in Bryn Mawr, to speak to thee of what I
desire for it, and to make a few suggestions of which none, perhaps,
may be at all new to thee." The plans she sets forth are carefully
laid and founded on fully explained reasons. "I am anxious that
Bryn Mawr should open with a full number of competent profes-
sors and with as high a standard as it may intend to reach or main-
tain."
Of fellowships she makes great point, for they represent the
very heart of what she wishes to say. She wished Bryn Mawr to be
no competitor among other colleges, "to go a-begging" for students.
Those who came were to have, all of them, the very highest quality
of instruction, while those of special gifts and desires were to find
available what they could get nowhere else in America, the op-
portunity "to pursue advanced studies among women." Fellows,
supported by grants from the College, and selected from the grad-
uates of other colleges, later to come from Bryn Mawr itself, were
to be the principal material for this higher training. In this connec-
tion the letter voices one of her firmest principles, long stressed in
her later administration of the College, that the "solid and scientific
instruction" which was the preparation for graduate study was the
only proper discipline for those seeking a "briefer and more general
education." Joseph Taylor's stipulation that Bryn Mawr was to have
as one of its principal objects the training of "teachers of a high
order" was to be carefully cherished in her system.
She was quite familiar with the terms of Joseph Taylor's will
and has immediately this to say about his behests concerning Quak-
erism: "In the first choice of professors the utmost stress shall be
laid on their excellence in their own departments. That of two men
equally good, a Friend would be preferred is a matter of course,
but if Bryn Mawr begin by appointing, because they were Friends,
men inferior to the professors that could otherwise be obtained, it
will hurt and not benefit the cause of education in the Society of
Friends, it will make the average of education in it at least no
higher than elsewhere."
Study of her letter in our own day shows it to be something of
the same importance as Dr. Taylor's will and certainly as reveal-
ing. Nor was it written by a person between two minds. There can
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 33
be no doubt that James Rhoads and the other Trustees read it
again and again, and that they saw many of their already formi-
dable problems reflected in it, saw also the boldness and good sense
that was meeting and reckoning with such difficulties. Time was
passing; the work of preparation would be greatly furthered by ap-
pointment of the necessary administrative officers; a choice must
soon be made. Carey Thomas had returned to America not long
after the letter had been written. What immediate answer James
Rhoads returned to her is not recorded; certainly the question of
appointment was open still for a number of months. Those who
did not know her well had time to take measure of her; those
who were intimately connected with her, James Carey Thomas,
Francis King, James Whitall who had encouraged her to make
her application to Dr. Rhoads and David Scull took measure of
themselves. In March of 1884 it was the task of James Rhoads to
write to her that the Board of Trustees had selected him as Presi-
dent and that she was to be his assistant with the title Dean of the
Faculty. Her reply could hardly be bettered.
"I received thy cordial letter announcing to me the decision of
the Bryn Mawr Trustees. In the talks we have hitherto had I have
felt that the true welfare of the college was a subject that lay near-
est to both our thoughts and I feel that in the future it will be
constant pleasure to be able to work with thee in promoting its
success."
Chapter IV
"AN OPENING"
If the new President and Dean of Bryn Mawr were to see the Col-
lege open on the appointed date, they could not afford to let any
grass grow under their feet. Hannah Whitall Smith, Carey Thom-
as's famous aunt, whose books of religious discussion and experi-
ence were read by a wide public, used to speak of any special op-
portunity or inspiration for devoted work as an "Opening** in a
very special sense. For these two officers of the new College, the be-
ginning of Bryn Mawr made just such an opportunity. Unlike as
they were in age, in approach to difficult questions and in tempera-
ment, they were united in their industry and enthusiasm. One differ-
ence was a fortunate one; Dr. Rhoads, whose health had been so
limited that he had been obliged to give up what seemed to be his
life work, had now someone of unbounded energy to hold up his
hands.
James Rhoads, thirty years older than Carey Thomas, had been
born on January 21, 1828, in Marple Township, Delaware County,
Pennsylvania, on a farm which an ancestor had bought from Wil-
liam Penn in 1699. Farming and business had occupied his sturdy
and able family for eight generations, for to the raising of crops in
the rich Pennsylvania soil they had added first the tanning of hides,
later the processing of leather for commercial belting. J. E. Rhoads
and Sons was established as a business which has remained in con-
tinuous activity as a partnership for two hundred and fifty years.
Young James was sent to Westtown, the coeducational Quaker
boarding school, and went on to study medicine in the office of
his uncle, Dr. Charles Evans. He taught briefly in a Philadelphia
34
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 35
Friends' school before he became an Interne at the Pennsylvania
Hospital, and was ready to enter on practice at the age of twenty-
three as contrasted with Joseph Taylor's bare twenty.
Unlike Joseph Taylor, moreover, he entered rather easily into
an established practice, taking over that of a Germantown physi-
cian who had recently died. James Rhoads's own ability and en-
thusiasm for his work extended his circle of patients far beyond
what any single doctor with horse-and-chaise transportation should
have tried to cover. Handsome, competent and zealous to do good,
he brought to his profession skillful care for ailing bodies and, be-
sides this, unobtrusive and untiring interest in the true welfare of
those who came to him. He would see fifty patients in a day and
never fail to give and to say something of benefit for each. His
character had a radiant quality to which those who knew him gave
unforgetting testimony.
Only his rather unusual gift for system and organization made
such a practice in any way possible. But as time went on and ten
years of arduous service passed, he began to be troubled in an un-
expected quarter. He believed that he was making an undue
amount of money out of the relief of human suffering, and that
an income of $4,000 a year under such circumstances was unjusti-
fied. The Civil War was in progress, and every conscientious citi-
zen was asking himself what his place and duty were in the face of
his country's need. James Rhoads's hesitations and doubts as to
where his responsibility lay were cut short by an arbitrary event;
he woke up one morning to find himself paralyzed.
There seemed to be hope that an originally vigorous constitu-
tion could throw off the effects even of this calamity, and in time
that proved to be possible. A long rest and a trip to Europe were
the first expedients tried, giving him time to find fulfillment for
his deep love of reading and for things of the intellect, as well as
to exercise his taste for writing. When he returned home the Civil
War was over. It was all too evident that he could not practice
medicine again, but there was everywhere work to which to set his
hand. The vast problem of reconstruction in the South, the ques-
tion of what was to be done for the immense number of slaves set
free in an economic world which had no place ready for them, was
a matter of large interest to the Quakers and, among them, to
$6 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
James Rhoads. He became the organizer and chairman of various
societies for the education and employment of freedmen; he took
vigorous part in the founding of Hampton Institute in Virginia;
he made every effort by speaking and writing to instruct public
opinion as to the duty of the whole United States to those helpless
products of so profound a change in the American economy.
Quakers also had for some time held a brief for the better
treatment of the American Indians, neglected everywhere by a care-
less Government. President Grant, seeing how this interest was an
asset to the country, established the custom of putting Quakers in
charge of Indian affairs. James Rhoads was President of the Indian
Rights Association and long held office in other, similar, organiza-
tions. All this was a stern schedule of activities for a recovering in-
valid, but he was an invalid who prospered with work and who was
rapidly improving in health. Finally, as a tribute to his intellectual
and literary ability, he was asked to be editor of the Friends' Re-
view. In this office he had acted for six years with great success and
had, apparently, found the niche of usefulness in which he was to
pass the rest of his working life.
His deep interest in all the affairs of the Society of Friends
made a large factor in any scheme of life which, with returning
health, he was now setting up. He made several visits to the South
to help in starting new schools for the Negroes; he visited Indian
Territory (now Oklahoma) as a companion to Thomas Wistar.
They attended Indian council meetings and visited many ' 'Indian
agents," many of whom were Friends. He made, in addition, jour-
neys of visitation to small and distant Meetings. Moreover, his
services as a member of Haverford College's Board of Managers
made unending charges on his time and effort. It was here that his
path and that of Joseph Taylor came together, with the ideas and
desires of both of them running in similar courses.
James Rhoads's kindly tolerance, his good sense and gift for
looking into people's minds and hearts were all servants of his very
real religious dedication. He "could not bear an atheist," but for all
established faiths he had deep understanding and respect. Rufus
Jones, as a small boy in the tiny Quaker community of South China,
Maine, formed an imperishable memory of him and the moment of
their first meeting, when James Rhoads had come that long dis-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 37
tance on a Quaker visitation. He put his hand on the boy's head
and, with startling unexpectedness, made the declaration: "In the
midst of a perverse and crooked generation he will shine as a light
in the world," "At that time," so Rufus Jones commented later,
"nothing seemed more unlikely." ;
Having accepted the Presidency o Bryn Mawr College, Dr.
Rhoads at once hastened to Baltimore and there held consultations
with his friends and his new assistant. There is a definiteness and
graphic power in plans drawn up and written down under James
Carey Thomas's eye that seems easy to recognize. Carey Thomas
had a notebook already full of questions and answers concerning
the major problems, with tentative schedules of curriculum and
with suggestions of policy concerning appointment of professors.
The Johns Hopkins University was, in time, to offer many candi-
dates; its professors and heads of departments were to give con-
structive and interested advice concerning many more. Already
Carey Thomas had had an interview with President Oilman, and
had recorded his advice in her notebook: "Appoint no professors
without reference to their usefulness ten or fifteen years hence.
When once established, it is impossible to get rid of them," was
one of his urgings, with the warning also that "Geniuses are not
desirable for students," since in his eyes they did not make good
day-to-day teachers. If Bryn Mawr was to go forward with the plan
of fellowships and a strong graduate school, as seemed to be the
intention of all now concerned with the College, he insisted that it
must be remembered that professors might be apt to "yield to the
fascination of postgraduate work and look down upon the teaching
of undergraduates."
Dr. Rhoads had made out a tentative schedule of organization,
which provided for a department of psychology combined with eth-
ics, logic, and Christian evidences, another of Greek and Latin, oth-
ers of English literature and German, of French language and
literature, of mathematics, of history and political science, of chem-
istry and physics, of geology, botany and zoology (one course each
year). Further it was desirable that there should be instruction in
physiology, hygiene and biology, and some lectures in art. Stern fac-
ing of practical conditions, however, cut this plan very drastically.
There was to be no deviation from the policy that all teaching
g8 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
should be done at the highest possible level, that every department
must be in the hands of a specialist and that it would be better to
limit the number of branches and perfect them, one at a time,
than to try to cover too much ground at once. In making appoint-
ments there was to be free use of young and promising candidates.
It was true that almost nowhere could be found anyone, at any
level in the profession, who had experience in teaching women.
It was arranged that Carey Thomas was to make a tour of in-
spection of the other women's colleges, to bring back specific in-
formation and, so James Rhoads must have wisely seen, to add to
her own knowledge of American schools, of which she so far knew
but little. Vassar had been, by this time, in operation for twenty
years, Wellesley and Smith for ten. Mount Holyoke was in the status
of a seminary; Harvard Annex was no more than "a few rooms in a
private house, whither the Harvard professors came to repeat the
lectures they have delivered to the Harvard students." Carey
Thomas brought back much practical information about house-
keeping, about the size of lecture platforms and the finish of floors,
about the qualities and duties of the ladies-in-charge in the separate
houses. She learned some important financial truths: that income
from board and from tuition must be kept separate, that rooms
should vary in price to suit parental purses of different capacity
and that income from endowment must be applied only to tuition.
There was useful matter to be found out in these material de-
tails, she declared in her report of the journey, "but their scho-
lastic organization is much more remotely interesting." She added
further, "The conditions of female education have changed since
their opening, and they themselves feel this." She was not fully
aware that this was what happened to every college and that Bryn
Mawr, too, would have to face changes when the conditions of
female education altered with time. Again and again she was
warned against the dragging incubus of a preparatory department,
but she was quite willing to have nothing to do with such a project
as part of the College. Moreover, she and her two closest friends,
Mary Gwinn and Mary Garrett, had united to set up the Bryn
Mawr School in Baltimore, which was designed not only to pre-
pare students for the new College but to serve as a model for other
preparatory schools to follow.
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 39
In the summer correspondence between James Rhoads and
Carey Thomas one gets some idea of the questions and answers
that went back and forth between them. Matters of buildings were
so far entirely in his hands, except for the making over of the little
cottage already on the grounds which was to be the Deanery. Ar-
rangements for housekeeping they consulted over together, those of
finance only partially. The question of appointments and of cur-
riculum they discussed as equals, though final judgment lay in the
hands of President Rhoads with confirmation by the Board of
Trustees. Carey Thomas was their talent scout, their general di-
rectory of scholars, their preliminary inspector of candidates. Even
on her first tour she kept careful notes on different teachers and
professors, most of whom she found wanting. "He is a nice man
but a wretched teacher," she said of one. "His Logic recitation a
farce," she noted of another. "No degree, pretentious, disagree-
able." "Latin class well drilled, nothing further," described still an-
other, and of a Miss Emily Gregory at Wellesley, "Very able woman,
admirably adapted for our purpose."
Her report of her findings was read and digested; decisions
were made; the bulking major problems were brought under con-
trol along with the swarms of minutiae. Buildings were furnished
and organized; courses of study were laid down. One by one the
necessary appointments were made. Carey Thomas made it her busi-
ness to be widely informed concerning possible candidates, but she
and James Rhoads occasionally differed in opinion over them. She
was apt to stress scholarship at the cost of personality; he was more
careful in looking for the right temperament to fit harmoniously
into the new and untried organization. "As a man of moderate
mental force," he observed of one applicant, "I should expect him
capable of fairly thorough scholarship in a limited sphere." Of
someone else he pronounced flatly, "He will make us a stepping-
stone, with no sincere interest in his work."
On one special point they differed widely, but he was not to be
moved. "We are justified in making no other announcement than
that the College is founded on a Christian basis, and then solicit
applications for Fellowships. This would make our position can-
did, just and unimpeachable."
She would not have stressed the point so directly, but she did
4Q WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
not demur. Everyone who knew her Intimately spoke later of her
capacity for warm affection, and this warmth of regard she had
bestowed freely upon James Rhoads. His occasional very temper-
ate admonitions were received with respect and a tempering of her
own more vigorous impulse.
"I doubt whether a young college just starting out is called
upon to pass judgment on the Universities of America/' he wrote
her, early in 1885, concerning some public statement which she
wished to make. "Is it wise to provoke the smile or the irritation
with which Cornell or Harvard or Michigan University may re-
ceive the announcement of such an opinion?"
No one can know how many errors of precipitate enthusiasm
he saved her from, or how much he taught her. Nor can anyone
know how great a burden of difficult work she lifted from his
shoulders in her vigorous willingness to do her full share. In mate-
rial matters he often advised her of the need of caution and less
earnest progress, but never because they did not see eye to eye as
to the future of the College. Where Joseph Taylor was uncertain,
desiring both that it should be small and concentrated, and wide in
its vision and possibilities, James Rhoads never hesitated in his own
belief. "We are taxing our funds too heavily, leaving no margin
for expansion," he wrote to Carey Thomas in that anxious contem-
plation of the finances of the future which is one of the large tasks
of college presidents. "Our resources will be inadequate to con-
tinue the college on the scale upon which we have begun, except
that we receive additional funds soon. But expansion is both ad-
visable and inevitable." He fixed his attention upon the additional
funds and not upon the inadequate resources. "Perhaps when it
shall appear that we are good stewards of what we have, more will
come." In his eyes a good steward was a bold one.
Concerning scholastic matters he was quite capable of taking a
firm stand. Charlotte Angus Scott, Doctor of Science from the Uni-
versity of London, one of the truly distinguished scholars to be
appointed early, was a bright and particular star of Carey Thomas's
discovery. But James Rhoads said firmly that her entrance examina-
tions were too hard and that, on the other hand, her elementary
mathematical course fell below the level maintained by Johns Hop-
kins. He insisted also that at the beginning the science courses must
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 41
afford some recitations, "since those young students who are inept
at taking notes will be lost."
The establishment of entrance requirements, the formation of
a curriculum, the determination of how much freedom of choice
in courses was to be allowed to the students were all knotty ques-
tions for this untried Administration and Board of Trustees to
answer. Education in general had not yet established any accepted
solution of the problems. Other colleges were coming reluctantly
to the realization that too rigid a system of required work could be
a stumbling block to education; at Harvard President Eliot had
shocked many when he introduced his complete freedom of selec-
tion. Johns Hopkins University had taken a modified course and
offered allied subjects which could be chosen in combination but
not taken alone. Bryn Mawr followed this method and arranged a
system of her own, for subjects to be specialized in by pairs, history
with political science, Greek with Latin, English with any other
language, ancient or modern. At least half the student's work must
be in required courses, and there must be offered toward the degree
English, philosophy, one of the sciences, Greek, Latin and a knowl-
edge of two modern languages.
The small size of the College, where there were facilities only
for a limited number, indicated that entrance requirements should
be made exacting. In the first circular of information sent out by
the Trustees in 1883, it was rather vaguely suggested that there
might be possible acceptance on certificate from especially priv-
ileged schools or teachers. It was probably Carey Thomas who made
short work of that suggestion before the second circular was issued
in 1884. Throughout her whole connection with the College she
often referred to such a policy as being, in her opinion, an utterly
untenable concession to expediency. Thus Bryn Mawr took a mid-
dle way in the matter of election of studies, and a conservative
stand upon entrance requirements. But in the list of courses of-
fered one reads at once that here was a new institution, launching
out into the swirling educational current of the later nineteenth
century with all its unknown possibilities. The first courses in the
survey of English literature, science courses for freshmen, instead of
for advanced students only these were rare or were complete in-
novations. Economics, politics and history were almost unknown as
42 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
college subjects, especially in colleges for women; but these were
offered here, even though all in one department with a single in-
structor, who was, however, Woodrow Wilson.
The summer o 1885 drew to a close, and plans and arrange-
ments had fallen more or less into proper line. The buildings were
finished, Taylor housing the library, the chapel, the classrooms and
Administration offices. The Cottage, now Merion, was ready for
the first class, and also the gymnasium. Bryn Mawr, under the aus-
pices of two doctors of medicine, was to have a fully up-to-date
attitude toward the care of the students' health. There was a house
for the President, Cartref, which was to have a multitude of uses
later; there were the three small buildings remodeled, one for the
Dean, two for the shelter of Faculty. The Deanery was to have a
brilliant future and many metamorphoses; of the other two, one
was already named the Greenery, whereupon the other was
promptly dubbed the In Betweenery. The two were in time to come
together later to form Yarrow East and West and still continue to
be quarters for Faculty. Relics of the active farming which had once
occupied the site of the College were everywhere. The farmer's
house became the cottage for the superintendent; the stables and
sheds were made into shops and storehouses. Later a little physics
laboratory was built adjacent to them, indistinguishable in design
from the other sheds. Old roads which had once been thoroughfares
became shrub-lined walks or green pathways edged with trees. Big
fruit trees survived for long; the very last of them, a huge cherry
tree, still lives, at this writing, in the garden of the Deanery.
The list of the Faculty had been completed, after much corre-
spondence, discussion, weighing of doubts and high expectations.
There must have been as much of it on the part of the recipients of
the appointments as of those who offered them. Who knew exactly
what to make of a new College, avowedly dedicated to a new ap-
proach to women's education, which was a new and somewhat
unaccountable thing in itself? Would a young scholar casting in his
lot with it rise with its prestige or fall with its own failure to live up
to its intentions? "I should of course prefer to teach young men,"
Woodrow Wilson wrote to a friend, "and if I find that teaching at
Bryn Mawr stands in the way of my teaching afterward in some
men's college, I shall, of course, withdraw." He had taken pains to
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 43
ascertain that "I would not be under a woman, so far as I can learn,
but my own master, under Dr. Rhoads."
It was one of the things that drew the Faculty in spite of any
doubts. They were to be independent in teaching; of that both James
Rhoads and Carey Thomas had fully assured them. Most of them
were to be heads of the newly organized departments. And further,
they were to have at once the opportunity for which many profes-
sors waited for years: they were to teach graduate students; they
were to build advanced courses out of their own research. That
research, the furthering of their own knowledge and the world's
scholarship, was to be respected and provided for. Not many were
invited; practically none declined.
So far the resources of the College could afford fellowships in
only five departments; the others must wait. The five fellows had
been selected with as much care as had been the Faculty. They were
to be the nucleus of the graduate school, the first in an American
women's college and for some years the only one.
A group of thirty-six young women had survived the entrance
examinations and were enrolled as the undergraduate Class of 1889.
Just what that fact stood for is hard to estimate now, no matter how
we exercise sympathetic imagination. For their parents it meant
unaccustomed budgets strained, since there had been no years-long
taking-for-granted that there would be education for the girls of the
family as well as for the boys; it meant wonder as to what exposure
to life away from home would bring about; it meant happy fulfill-
ment in one generation of what had been vainly desired in an
earlier one. For the girls themselves it meant hopes and ambitions
determinedly pursued, prejudices and obstacles overcome; it meant
turning a deaf ear to the innumerable warnings that four years
spent in institutional life would be a death blow to matrimonial
prospects.
Consciously or unconsciously, every one of the students who
came later has owed a debt to those who entered first. Here was
a truly great experiment in American education, the proving of how
far women's minds could go, once the limits of opportunity were
removed. The College was embarking on an arduous and appar-
ently doubtful venture; it was to face delays and distresses, but
there is only one thing which could have made it really fail. If
44
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
there had not been at hand, and at once, the appropriate and fully
worthy material, those who had the final intention most deeply at
heart, it could not have gone on to fulfill the real hopes of its
Founder, and one more seminary for limited and mediocre teaching
would have come into being. That was not what Joseph Taylor
intended, nor his Trustees, nor most of all James Rhoads and
Carey Thomas.
The trains were crowded on that stormy day of September 23,
1885; arriving visitors overflowed into the classrooms adjoining the
chapel, crowded the stairs and corridors; ushers were besieged and
harried, then as always afterward. In the front seats sat the first
class and the fellows; on the platform were the Faculty, the Trustees,
the officers of the College, and the speakers. James Carey Thomas
could look across at his handsome daughter and feel the emotion
which is one of the highest that life offers, justifiable parental pride.
She was impressive in her academic dress, the blue-faced doctor's
gown so becoming to her high coloring, with the splendid hood of
the University of Zurich which symbolized all she had labored so
hard to win. Those labors had done much to prove to him and to
others how important was the cause of women's education. He could
see, among the grave faces of th first class, those of two other
daughters, his young daughter-in-law-to-be and his niece. Beyond,
among the spectators, sat his wife, radiant with joy over the success
and promise of this occasion.
Because Francis "King was ill, Philip Garrett presided. After
the Bible reading a passage which Joseph Taylor might well have
chosen and after James Carey Thomas's prayer there followed a
silence of that same sort which had so many times furthered the
planning and the vision of what was coming into being today; after
all this, James Rhoads was introduced and came forward to make
his inaugural statement to the guests, to the Faculty, to the new
class.
The plan which Joseph Taylor had set on foot, he said, was so
far-reaching that no single foundation could or should be able to
accomplish the whole of it. With one exception this was the largest
bequest ever so far given to women's education, but it was only a
beginning. Needed were men and women "of one mind with Joseph
Taylor," who shared his conviction and his concern, to make it
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 45
possible for the College to fulfill its highest purpose. He addressed
himself to the Faculty. "I give you joy of your high calling," he said,
but added a warning and they were all young enough to need it
concerning that "rough contact with the barriers which limit hu-
man endeavour" which they were bound to encounter. To the stu-
dents he offered, as was like him, a warm and kindly welcome into a
new life, making clear, without unduly enlarging upon it, that in
their hands lay Bryn Mawr's real future.
There sat on the platform, among the Faculty, a future Presi-
dent of the United States. There sat among the students the future
winners of high honors for inspiring labor in many fields. The
thoughts of many were turned forward that day, but in such a new
enterprise who could tell what was to come? James Russell Lowell,
the final speaker, had finished his address; the audience was moving
out in the sedate disorder of crowded aisles and politely jostling
shoulders. The girls in the front rows stood up stiff with long sitting
through the talk which had been, so much of it, of and to and for
them. They were aware, though not too fully, that the keystone of
an arch had been set in place, that in the knowledge and power
and wisdom expressed in those speeches, and partaken of by an
absorbed audience, they had heard the keynote addresses of a great
undertaking.
Later, the whole College, Administration, Faculty, staff and stu-
dent body were triumphantly photographed on the steps of Taylor.
President Rhoads and Miss Hetty Stokes, lady-in-charge of Merion
Hall, are the only ones who look enough older than the students to
be recognizable as those holding the larger responsibility. The
gymnasium instructress, the librarian, and Charlotte Angus Scott
look about the same age as the students, Professor Scott, young as
only a handful of people remember her now, her face already gen-
erous and rugged with a sturdy handsomeness that grew more firm
and rugged as the years went over her head, leaving her great
powers unimpaired. Carey Thomas has put on a grim expression to
suit the occasion, which does not make her look older, as she doubt-
less hoped that it would. Only the men of the Faculty are clearly
distinguishable as to their position, though the effect of Woodrow
Wilson's long jaw, the boon of caricaturists later, was diminished by
an abundant youthful mustache. Paul Shorey, buttoned up to the
46 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
very chin in his best coat, looks out on his new academic world
with that genial affection which was to win and inspire every
student who worked with him. Edmund Wilson, destined to become
a very great figure in his field of biology, and Edward Keiser, of the
Department of Chemistry, have the look of bearing the whole world
of science on their shoulders, while the red-haired Edward Wash-
burn Hopkins seems not in the least weighted down by the burden
of his Department of Greek, Sanskrit and Comparative Philology.
Shorey and Woodrow Wilson, one in Greek and Latin, the other
in history and political science, were, academically speaking, the
youngest and were associates; the other four were associate profes-
sors, with Carey Thomas alone a full professor in English and
philology.
The girls, with their high-piled hair, their many buttoned
basques and the voluminous skirts which must have strained the
capacity of the Merion wardrobes, would have gladdened Joseph
Taylor's heart by the look of serious intelligence which every one of
them wears. Some had waited for years for this opportunity; all were
fully conscious of how unusual was the chance which had come to
them; to all it had been made plain that a rugged, rather than easy,
road of learning was before them. All were determined to stay the
course. At their class meeting the undergraduates had pledged them-
selves to work to their very utmost, to regulate their behavior
rigorously, to wear their caps and gowns and to carry themselves
in all ways with the academic dignity which a present and a future
educational world would look to find in them.
Chapter V
"TO UNDERTAKE
THE RULE OF OUR AFFAIRS"
Getting a college fully under way, launching a project whose
avowed term is perpetual, calls for an infinite amount of organiza-
tion and adjustment. One can easily say that James Rhoads's whole
administration, his headship of the College in action for ten years,
was all of it the real launching of Bryn Mawr. He was constantly
tired and overworked; it was inevitable that he should be. But he
was also justifiably content. Difficulties there were in abundance,
and disappointments; but there was always a slow movement and
he was content that it should be slow from small details to greater
attainments, steady progress toward realizing that wider vision of
what the College could be, which was always present in his mind.
The actual buildings of the College must be completed, a process
that would obviously take years, always bedeviled by such details
as that the flues of Taylor did not draw when the wind was north-
northwest, that there must be a shelf behind the kitchen stove in
Denbigh, that the chimney of the gymnasium had fallen down. And
beyond that he had the further responsibilities, which he took even
more conscientiously and seriously, the affairs of the students who
were to inhabit his buildings and of the Faculty who were to teach
them and to be taught. He was practically the only older person in
a community of youth; everyone in that community had much to
learn, James Rhoads perhaps the most of all, since he was the last
resort for appeal and decision. His varied life, his earlier disap-
pointments had taught him how to learn, and, perhaps through
47
48 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
his Quaker training, he knew well when to speak and when to be
silent.
In the latter days o June, 1888, the President and young Pro-
fessor Woodrow Wilson sat in earnest colloquy in an interview that
was bringing out to the full the characteristics of both men. Wilson
had been the only member of the Faculty appointed without a
Ph.D., the brilliance of his work at Johns Hopkins and the worth
of his first book having convinced Bryn Mawr that he was of great
promise. He had acquired his degree now, had taught successfully
for three years and had recently accepted promotion and a con-
tract to remain three years longer. Now he had announced that he
had an advantageous offer and that he was leaving. One of the
conditions of his acceptance of promotion had been the appoint-
ment of an assistant "as soon as it was practicable." In the eyes of
the Trustees the practicable moment had not arrived; in the eyes of
Wilson this omission had rendered his contract void. He was com-
pletely courteous and completely immovable.
Dr. Rhoads, who liked him exceedingly, who had enjoyed his
evening visits at the President's House, where the whole family had
learned to take delight in his charm and his wit, was listening with
outward calm and inward dismay. Was it not somewhat out of
order, he urged on Wilson, to leave the College so late in the
season, with the academic year ended, and a person to take charge
of a department that included history, economics and politics still
to be found? Wilson returned that in his judgment there was ample
time to find someone else. The meeting ended with no yielding on
Woodrow Wilson's part, only in a cessation of protest on that of
James Rhoads. There may have been in the room, that day, some
faint awareness in both men of how great a destiny was before one
of them.
The Trustees would have held the young man to his bond, but
President Rhoads urged that they should let him go. It would be
impossible for them to equal the offer which he had received
elsewhere, the President declared, and "he will be dissatisfied if
retained under any conditions. We had better state that we release
him from his contract, acknowledging his ability and success as a
teacher and our personal regard." Carey Thomas was absent from
the College when this matter was settled; the report of it is in a
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 49
letter written to her by James Rhoads. Straws in the wind indicate
that she was indignant with Woodrow Wilson for long years after,
but was reconciled when he was championing the League of Na-
tions, a cause which had her wholehearted support. At one time or
another, she invited every successive President of the United States
to speak at a Bryn Mawr Commencement with one exception.
President Taft was the only one able to accept; President Wilson
the only one who never had opportunity to decline.
Wilson was the first to go, but it soon became all too evident
that this brilliant early Faculty could not be kept together. The
very excellence of the first selection made it inevitable that Bryn
Mawr, with its limited finances, could not hold such scholars long.
Professor Jean Jacques Sturzinger, head of the Department of Ro-
mance Languages, was a Swiss who had come from Zurich in
answer to Carey Thomas's letters to her former instructors asking for
a candidate for the new College. He returned to Europe in 1890,
the same year that Edmund Wilson went to Columbia. Paul Shorey,
who could announce lectures in Latin and draw together a good-
sized class, and who had added a course in the history of modern
philosophy because he thought the College needed it, became too
prominent a scholar for Bryn Mawr to hold and was lost to its
Faculty in 1891; Edward Washburn Hopkins went to Yale in 1894,
and Edward Keiser to Washington University in 1898. Only Char-
lotte Angus Scott resisted all offers and allurements and remained at
Bryn Mawr until she retired in 1923, a year after Carey Thomas.
But brief as was the stay of each of these men, their remarkable
promise and their specialized training had set a pattern for the
College, which acquired the reputation of offering to young scholars
wide opportunity for special teaching and for their own research.
If Bryn Mawr had no high salaries to offer, she had something else.
Woodrow Wilson was followed by Franklin Giddings in politics and
later by Charles McLean Andrews in history; Edmund Wilson's
place was taken by another man who became equally great as a
biological scholar, Thomas Hunt Morgan; Edward Keiser gave place
to Elmer Kohler, whom James Rhoads recognized instantly as a
man of extraordinary powers in the field of chemistry.
The scientific side of the College was its President's most par-
ticular pride, and the unusually excellent appointments in its de-
50 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
partments were the fruit of his direct effort. Botany had to be given
up after the first few years, since there were not sufficient funds, but
he saw plans set on foot for the addition of geology to the cur-
riculum and for the acquisition by that department of Florence
Bascom. In the end, other institutions learned to look to Bryn
Mawr for young scholars with a future. To have been discovered
by Carey Thomas's searching eye, to have passed James Rhoads's
appraising scrutiny, was a recommendation in itself. Johns Hopkins
University continued to take a vital interest in the new college, to
suggest young graduates of their own departments, to give advice
concerning older and more established candidates.
The President was always accessible for confidential discussion
to his Dean, his Faculty and his students. This continued even as
his duties multiplied, as one class became four, as, with the death
of Francis King at the end of 1890, he became President of the
Board of Trustees. With the breakdown of some of the first arrange-
ments in the Department of Philosophy, he took up the lectures on
Christian ethics, which he carried even beyond the term of his
Presidency. Basically they reflected Quaker belief, but actually they
shed broad light on those problems of spiritual thought which
he knew to be frequent in the minds of young persons coming into
early and questioning maturity. In a lifelong devotion to re-
ligious thinking he had found many of the answers, but he had
learned enough also to know that there must be no pressure and no
compulsion, no intrusion upon those private thoughts and specula-
tions to which young people have an inherent right. He held daily
chapel exercises at a quarter of nine in the morning, at which
attendance was not compulsory. He conducted a Wednesday night
Meeting on the Quaker plan, but he resolutely set his face against
there being a regular First Day Meeting set up at the College, since
this, he was certain, was not the place for it. The Wednesday night
Meeting was long continued by the students themselves, after James
Rhoads's part in them came to an end.
He had a careful conscience about social observances; he car-
ried out an ordered schedule of receptions in his comfortable, com-
modious house, for Faculty and students. When there was any mem-
ber of the College who had connection with a friend or family
already known to him, he made a point of seeking her out. Marion
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
5 1
Park, an entering freshman in the autumn of 1894, had just moved
into Pembroke East, which was ready somewhat late for occupancy.
Word was brought to her room that Dr. Rhoads was downstairs and
wanted to see her. Hastily reviewing all the things she might have
done even in that short time to merit either reprimand or immedi-
ate expulsion from the College, she went trembling downstairs to
find that Dr. Rhoads had come with formal care to call upon her
because he had known her grandfather. It is a pleasure to think of
the meeting between these two, both Presidents of Bryn Mawr, he
of the past, she of the future. He, in his tall, mature dignity, she, in
her shy inexperience, had between them much in common, a hum-
ble and undemanding devotion to duty wherever it would lead, a
generous going out to meet the individual qualities and needs of
other people, a greatness of mind which, in its view of itself, saw no
greatness at all.
The multitude of James Rhoads's responsibilities kept him
over-busy, but he made great effort to see that, so far as possible,
the same was not to be true of those who worked under him.
Eyewitnesses still relate how often young Dean Thomas could be
seen rushing into the President's office, her face dark with anxiety
and distress over some formidable problem or emergency, to come
out a few minutes later, all peaceful smiles after receiving his ad-
vice and reassurance. He saw, early, that her combined labors as
Dean and member of the Faculty took too much of her time and
strength, and set about to remedy it. Students came in large num-
bers to consult her over their courses; the little Deanery with its
five rooms would not hold them and give her any peace or privacy,
he decided. To the Deanery were added a room for her study and a
smaller one for records. It was agreed that she must have a secre-
tary; the account of how she enrolled the first one being too typical
of Carey Thomas to be lost to history.
Abby Kirk, a small, spirited and very able young person, had
taken the entrance examinations with little hope of being able to
go further. Dean Thomas met her in the corridor of Taylor and
congratulated her on her success, adding that they would look for-
ward to her being a member of the Class of 1892. But Abby Kirk
was obliged to reply, "I cannot come, Miss Thomas; I cannot afford
it."
52 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
Dean Thomas was sure that something could be done; there
must be some work that Miss Kirk could do to earn her way. "Can
you take dictation?" she asked.
"No, Miss Thomas," Abby Kirk admitted miserably.
"Can you use a typewriter?"
"No, Miss Thomas."
"Can you spell, Miss Kirk?"
"No, Miss Thomas."
"Then come next year and be my secretary," Carey Thomas
pronounced; and the President's report duly declared that "Abby
Kirk, daughter of the author of Charles the Bold, is to be admitted
as a student at a reduction of $180, to give a portion of time to
assisting the Dean and to be under training as a secretary." Evi-
dently the lack of spelling was something that training could be
expected to eradicate.
In June of 1888 the first degrees were granted, two of them.
They were presented with ceremony in the presence of the Trustees,
the Administration, the Faculty and the student body. Mary Patter-
son had entered with an accumulation of credits from another col-
lege and was now pronounced ready to receive her A.B. And Mary
Gwinn, that friend of Carey Thomas's who had shared her studies
abroad, had been persuaded now to more serious ends and to make
herself eligible for a place at Bryn Mawr. As she stood up, a slim
figure in trailing silks, as the new yellow-and-white lined hood
faced with blue went over her black curly hair, the first Ph.D. was
granted in an American women's college, that same College whose
future she and Carey Thomas had discussed so remotely in Zurich
and Paris five years before. Mary Gwinn had come to live with
Carey Thomas in the Deanery; she was now appointed associate in
the English Department, although she stipulated that her contract
should state that "should the Dean's connection with the College
come to an end, hers would also." She was to become an almost
legendary figure in the eyes of the students, seldom seen outside
the lecture room, greatly discussed, vanishing suddenly when she
made the precipitate marriage of which Carey Thomas so vehe-
mently disapproved.
In the next year the first full class was graduated with cere-
mony and rejoicing. Twenty-four had stayed the course and re-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 53
celved the congratulations and thanks of the President for giving
Bryn Mawr such faithful support in carrying out the first steps of her
great undertaking. A fellowship for graduate study abroad had
been offered the College; it was won by Emily Balch, who was after-
wards, as we shall see, to receive the honor of the Nobel Prize in
1946. Alice Gould was so close a second in the record for the
European fellowship that her class could not bear to see her miss
the same opportunity, and among themselves and their families
they raised sufficient funds for a second award to her. She in her
turn was to be decorated by the Spanish Government for her nota-
ble researches on the voyages of Columbus. A friend and neighbor
of the College, Mr. George W. Childs, had offered an annual prize
of a gold watch for the best scholar in English. How pleasant it is
to record that its recipient was Abby Kirk! James Rhoads's conclu-
sion to his annual report that year reflects one of his most con-
tinuous concerns regarding his students. "All left in their best
state of health, except for some temporary fatigue which soon
passed away." One more argument against women's education had
been thoroughly disproved.
Although James Rhoads had the welfare of each student so
thoroughly at heart, although he was always open to their confi-
dences and their requests for advice, there was one matter concern-
ing them in which he absolutely refused to take part. He firmly
insisted that questions of College discipline, where it had to do with
the personal behavior of the students, were not within his province.
Young women were not to be disciplined by a man; the intimate
private reasons which could lie at the bottom of their conduct were
only to be dealt with by another woman. Far less than he, should
the Faculty sit in judgment on the doings of the students, young
and unmarried as most of his professors were. Certainly there was
plenty of consultation between him and the Dean, but the real ad-
ministration of matters concerning conduct was in the hands of
Carey Thomas. She was, officially, Dean of the Faculty, but her
duties lay just as much in what had to do with the students.
In the beginning, the matter of discipline took care of itself. A
student body of little over forty members, living in one building,
under the eye of the very acceptable and sagacious lady-in-charge
in the person of Miss Hetty Stokes, all very conscious of their
54 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
responsibility in a new experiment, did not present many prob-
lems. They were fresh from homes where a code of decorous be-
havior was insisted upon. So many of them were Quakers that
there was no large group who pined for greater gaiety than the
campus afforded. Miss Stokes was a sociably inclined person, and at
first held a series of receptions, a form of entertainment upon
which Quakers looked favorably. She invited the young members of
the Faculty, who accepted and came, to the great pleasure of all
concerned. But here Carey Thomas exerted her authority. That
policy of "no social engagements with the Faculty/* which she man-
aged to maintain so long, was well to the fore at once. It would
lower the standard of Bryn Mawr before the watching world, she
declared, if in a women's college there could be any chance of
favoritism shown or suspected because of personal preference. The
students accepted the decree with reservations as to its necessity,
but they too were jealous for the standard of Bryn Mawr and had
pledged themselves to uphold it.
We do not always remember that Bryn Mawr was, practically
speaking, the first college in America to commit itself to the un-
proved venture of student self-government, so rapidly has the sys-
tem passed to men's colleges as well as women's, and ultimately
and logically has become the general practice. And we do not, many
of us, know that a working system of self-government at Bryn Mawr,
and thereafter throughout American education, was in fact founded
by one of the students, Susan Walker to be Susan Fitzgerald in
the Class of 1893.
As a second class followed the first, and to them were added the
third and fourth, as Radnor opened and then Denbigh, considera-
tions of conduct had become more complicated. In June, just be-
fore the Commencement of the Class of 1891, Dean Thomas as-
sembled all those who were to be in college in the next year and
made a shattering announcement. There had begun to be such
widespread infringement of what had been taken as an accepted,
but unwritten, order of behavior that it was plainly necessary to
make some change. Hereafter, there would be a meeting of the
College at the opening of the academic year, and notice would be
given of what definite requirements and restrictions of conduct
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 55
were necessary, in the opinion o the Administration, to be pre-
scribed and enforced.
There was no invitation for questions or discussion, but the
meeting broke up in a babble of protesting comment as the girls
went back to their halls. The more thoughtful among them had
certainly noticed an overstepping of bounds in the last year, tend-
encies which they had been trying to ignore, but which now had to
be admitted. Yet was that enough to warrant their losing what they
realized now had been a most valuable privilege, virtually the op-
portunity to regulate their own conduct? But Commencement was
close at hand, and further talk was lost in preparations for going
home.
One of the juniors, Susan Walker, had, however, taken the mat-
ter so deeply to heart that she made opportunity to talk of the new
order with the Dean. Was it not possible, she asked, for the students
to assume permanent responsibility for their own behavior, to take
over the regulation of their affairs officially, undertaking to carry
out those rules which so far public opinion had formed and had
accepted? To her relief, Carey Thomas listened with interest and
sympathy. It was quite true that young women of their age were
perfectly capable of ensuring proper behavior, she agreed; they
would have her complete confidence if they set up some system of
ordering and regulating their own affairs.
During the summer Susan Walker sent a circular letter to all
of her class and to others, asking what they would think of assum-
ing self-government at Bryn Mawr. They had always felt themselves
capable and desirous of regulating their own conduct, she said,
"and it would be extremely humiliating to admit that now, after
six years' trial, we are forced to give up the attempt and content
ourselves with being ruled by an outside power." Unless they acted
at once, some other system of "rules, penalties and monitors watch-
ing and reporting our actions 1 ' would come into force and remain.
She had suggested to the Dean that they be given six months' trial,
but Miss Thomas had replied at once that they could have all the
time that they needed. If we should "undertake the rule of our
affairs . . ." said Susan Walker's letter, "we must set to work at
once with energy."
56 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
They did. As soon as College opened in the autumn, discussion
became rife. Susan Walker had found that, next to Miss Thomas's,
the most enthusiastic and constructive response had come from
Anne Emery (later Anne Allinson) of the Class of 1892, whose en-
terprise and graphic vision were aware, at once, of just what sort
of organization was needed to put real force into the plan. The
idea spread and clarified as it moved from person to person, grow-
ing up by means of those long, interesting discussions, sometimes
inconclusive, sometimes startlingly significant, which are everywhere
such vital factors in college life. Doubts were expressed and dif-
ficulties foreseen; it was obvious that indifference and inertia might
be the ruin of the plan after the first impetus was spent. General
meetings were held for presenting the subject to the whole College
body.
"Will the President define what is meant by noise?" was a bitter
question asked at one of them. Anne Emery, presiding, defined it
quickly as "Noise is what disturbs other people." It was not, so
it seemed when really examined, an inalienable right of students
to make it in the midst of a busy community. There was already in
existence an Undergraduate Association to represent the students
as a whole, as the class organizations represented them in sections.
At first it was thought that this body could take over the duties of
self-government, but it was soon clear that the responsibilities were
so large that a separate Board and a separate organization must
assume them.
The continued encouragement of Carey Thomas and the wis-
dom of her advice gave them the confidence and spirit to go for-
ward. In those days she had opportunity for far more individual
consultation with the students, and often talk lasted very late in the
little Deanery, with the session closed by her walking home with
them across the campus to their halls, with talk continuing busily
all the way. Details of the Bryn Mawr Students' Association for Self-
Government were finally settled, providing for a President, an Ex-
ecutive Board and, by later arrangement, an Advisory Board as
well. These could deal with all smaller matters, and were to consult
with the Dean and the President and to make recommendations to
them whenever drastic action was needed. Action must be through
the Administration, since there lay the legal responsibility in case
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 57
there was recrimination or even legal action to protest the penalty.
In January of 1892 the Charter of the new Association was made
official by acceptance by the Administration and the Board of
Trustees.
Somehow the new system managed to retain the advantages of
that first pleasantly simple state of affairs when the students did
directly regulate their own affairs. It appeared to come about very
easily and naturally, yet in fact it was an immense step, the
substitution of a democratic order for the old method of strict
regulations which had so long been taken for granted as belonging
to the rule of colleges. It was a democratic advance that was bound
to come, but perhaps came into being more easily and proved
itself as a working success more promptly in a new and small Col-
lege for young women earnestly bound to make the most of what
was a long-desired opportunity of education.
There can be no doubt that the system of self-government lays,
very heavy burdens of responsibility on the shoulders of very young
people, who take their duties deeply to heart, yet who understand
their fellows more fully than any older person could, and who real-
ize intensively how devastating can be the occasional sentences of
recommended suspension or expulsion. On the other hand it is ap-
propriate that it is they who deal with the code of behavior which is
a constantly changing one, since young minds and young judgment
are ready to move forward when the time comes for change. Some
of the early interdictions look unnecessary and even absurd to us.
now.
Not going off the campus after dark in parties of less than
three was a rule stringently enforced, but an ill lighted and mea-
gerly policed neighborhood made such a precaution eminently nec-
essary. The receiving of men in a student's study called for various-
degrees of chaperonage, depending on the degree of relationship,
whether brother, cousin, father or great-uncle. The question of the
serving of anything of alcoholic content fell into endless complica-
tions, reaching finally the "Interpretation: Students may not drink
wine together except in the single case of two roommates." Smoking
was for long a rarely encountered offense, and automobiles and the
comet tail of difficulties in their wake had not yet appeared. But a&
late as 1912, during a presidential campaign, one student led an-
58 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
other one made up as a donkey across the campus and aroused
complaints because the donkey did not have a skirt. And in a some-
what later day, an amateur flyer, in love with a freshman, showed
his devotion by the rather singular device of circling Taylor Tower.
With him, even, Self-Government had to deal.
Academic matters and possible offenses concerning them were
still the domain of the College Administration and the Faculty,
and on one question arising on the borderland between the two
Carey Thomas took a firm stand. A complete honor system, with
examinations held without supervising proctors, she would not ac-
cept. Such a thing would threaten the validity of the examinations,
.she was certain, and would lower the standard of the College which
she was so resolutely bound to protect. She was wise enough to
agree to other changes as they came, although she did not always
receive them happily and was sometimes sharply insistent on some
recommendations of her own. James Rhoads had kept consistently
aloof from direct connection with this whole matter of self-govern-
ment; but we can well see his hand in the wisdom and tolerance
of some of the terms of the charter and, in its wholehearted ac-
ceptance, the hands also of those kindly men who sat upon the
Board, fathers and grandfathers with faith in a young generation.
The building plans had meanwhile gone steadily forward, and
continued to do so. Joseph Taylor, so the Trustees knew, had
planned the gymnasium, four dormitory buildings, the Academic
Building and a science hall. Radnor followed Merion, with a less
.austere architecture and a warmer color of stone. Those in whose
hands lay not only the rightful conduct of the College, but also its
permanent and ultimate beauty, were feeling for a new and endur-
Ingly satisfactory style with which to complete the plan. Very early
the Trustees had adopted the idea of a quadrangle of buildings
with Taylor in the center. They felt that they could go on with
free minds, for, with the increase in value of some of the properties
left by Dr. Taylor and the ending of some annuities which were
charges on his estate, the original endowment amounted again to a
million dollars.
With the entrance of Walter Cope on the scene, a final and
historic change came about. He was a young architect then, a
Friend, relative of Francis Cope on the first Board, and of Julia
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 59
Cope in the first class. His firm, Cope and Stewardson, were to
carry the College through a great period of building; they were to
evolve a new adaptation of an old order, at first spoken of as
Jacobean Gothic but later discussed in architectural circles as Col-
legiate Gothic. It was to alter the skyline of Bryn Mawr, Prince-
ton, the University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St.
Louis, and many similar institutions. Radnor was Cope's first rather
cautious experiment; later, with Denbigh, he achieved such bold
success as attracted attention everywhere. Carey Thomas and Fran-
cis King worked long over the interior plans. She had been obliged
to abandon her conviction that every student should have a bed-
room and a study; each building, as it proved, could contain only
a very few such suites. Francis King was drawing to the end of his
days; this was his last work for the College. Out of his experience
in the building of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he had evolved a
more economical scheme for Denbigh, when the first cost seemed
prohibitive. The work went very slowly.
"The Hall creeps up," James Rhoads wrote wearily to Carey
Thomas in July of 1890, but made no further comment. It was
ready for occupancy in January of 1891; Francis King never saw it
complete. The cost was $20,000 more than Radnor, and left the
Trustees with some rather serious food for thought.
But scarcely were the bills paid and the students settled before
James Rhoads brought up the proposal for a science building. This
too was an undertaking to which Joseph Taylor's wish had given
authority. At least a third of the necessary cost had been raised by
subscription, thanks to the efforts of all concerned, including Carey
Thomas. She herself was fresh from a triumph of boldness and
strategy in helping secure the funds needed for getting the Johns
Hopkins Medical School under way after long delay. The great gift
was from Mary Garrett, Carey Thomas's lifelong friend, and was,
offered on condition that women should be admitted there as freely
as men, and that the medical instruction should be fully at the
graduate level.
"Thee never did a better week's work in thy life . . ." Fran-
cis King wrote to Carey Thomas. "The work must be pushed to a
finish. I pray it may be done in my day and I may see the opening
day of the Medical School." His wish was not fully granted, al-
6 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
though he saw the Medical School assured at the very end of his
laborious and generous life.
Dalton Hall was so named because it was considered that the
Welsh county names should be reserved for the dormitories. Be-
sides, as David Scull pointed out practically, Pembroke and Mon-
mouth were the only two left now which were not extremely dif-
ficult of pronunciation and spelling, with perhaps Cardigan as a
possible but scarcely appropriate choice. Since James Rhoads's spe-
cial interest was in advancing the sciences in the College, the proj-
ect of building a hall to house the laboratories, classrooms and col-
lections was very close to his heart. The progress was again slow,
and at the opening of the academic year the physics laboratory had
to be set up in the laundry, and its classroom in the basement of
Merion "under the drawing room." The biological specimens had
to remain in "the small room in the cellar of Taylor which has
been emptied of coal" Professor Francis Osborne, of the Engineer-
ing Department at Cornell, had made the plans with the collabora-
tion of Cope and Stewardson as to the outer design. Dalton was
opened with ceremonies in March of 1893. The laboratories and
classrooms were withdrawn from Taylor, where the library stretched
its cramped elbows and moved into new space. There was already
talk in the Trustees' meetings of another dormitory, so fast was the
College growing. The new building would be called Pembroke. By
the great efforts of James Rhoads and Carey Thomas the Trustees
were persuaded to make it a double hall, with dining room and
kitchen between, this to take the place of the central dining hall
which had also been part of Joseph Taylor's scheme. It was Cope
and Stewardson's most ambitious design; it was James Rhoads's last
measure. The Trustees hesitated, but he and Carey Thomas urged
them forward.
When both Pembroke East and the academic year were well
under way, President Rhoads gave notice to the Trustees that he
wished to resign. He was sixty-five years old; he was ailing and
weary. Within himself he probably realized that the College might
some day be left suddenly without a head. Moreover, he was quite
convinced that Carey Thomas, as he now knew her, with her great
possibilities, her sometimes overhasty decisions, her wide ambition
for the College which matched his vision of what it could be with
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 6l
all this he was sure that she was the proper person to carry on his
work. But the Trustees were not ready to agree with him. They
asked him to reconsider, and he, seeing that his cherished plan for a
successor could not be easily attained, consented to remain through
the next academic year.
It was a year fraught with discussion and misgiving on the part
of some of the Trustees, with clear-sighted determination on the
part of others. Carey Thomas had won the admiration of all of
them, but, they questioned, what would she be without James
Rhoads to steady her with advice, without Francis King for whose
wisdom she had such great regard, ultimately without her father and
her uncle, who were growing old? What they feared most was not
the fact that her ambitions for the College might well ride rough-
shod over their caution, but that she might ignore more and more
the terms of Joseph Taylor's will concerning the Quakerism of the
College. Although she was a birthright member of the Society of
Friends, and although they knew her to have been brought up in
stanch Christian principles, her full observance of Quaker ideas
was much to be doubted.
Into this perplexing situation was suddenly injected a new
and surprising element. Carey Thomas's great friend in Baltimore
was Mary Garrett with whom, as has been said, she had shared the
campaign for raising funds to establish the Johns Hopkins Medical
School. Mary Garrett's father, former President of the Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad the source in turn of the Johns Hopkins millions
had left his daughter well off and had further endowed her with a
shrewd and practical business sense which she had learned how to
employ in her generous philanthropic purposes. She now wrote to
the Trustees, in March of 1893, stating the matter with careful tact,
that she had for some time intended to support Bryn Mawr College
with an annual contribution of $10,000, but, since her interest in the
College lay largely in her friend's connection with it, the contribu-
tion would be contingent on Carey Thomas's being offered the
Presidency. She added that she was writing "without consultation
with Miss Thomas."
The effect of the letter was great, but not just what was to be
expected. The Trustees had reason to think that if they had some
dread of being dominated by a strong-willed young woman, might
$2 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
they not find her even more high-handed if she had this financial
support to back her proposals? They hesitated again, and Carey
Thomas found it more and more difficult to maintain the patience
and lack of protest which her supporters on the Board so earnestly
advised.
James Carey Thomas had a curious and admirable faculty for
putting his duty and his loyalty to the College in a conscientiously
different category from his family affection. His wise counsel to
his daughter could often be a mixture of his knowing her so inti-
mately and his also knowing the situation under discussion through
his being a Trustee. He and James Rhoads had often discussed
together her qualifications for the Presidency, these two who knew
her best, and they had recognized that here were not only gifts of
an uncommon sort, but that hers was real genius for the special
work that lay so plainly before her, a fact which was to be quite
clear to the world in time.
Led, therefore, by his clear sense of justice and of what was
truly advisable for the College, James Thomas put aside any false
hesitation, knew that among such close and honest friends he would
not be misunderstood, and sent a circular letter to the Trustees
stating the reasons why he intended to vote for his daughter. Her
previous accomplishments, her proved ability in the selection of
candidates, and for administration, her successful contact with the
students, all gave her the right to be favorably considered for the
Presidency. His parting, Parthian shot was the statement, "If she
were a man you would appoint her without hesitation." The Trus-
tees were honest-minded enough to realize that blunt truth, and in
August of 1894 they elected her by a majority of one. Immediately
after, one of the oldest members of -the Board resigned. It was
probably not so much in protest, but in sheer inability to face the
rugged road over which she might be about to take them. The
others looked upon the prospect, first with bare equanimity, and
finally with abundant satisfaction.
It is typical of James Rhoads that he readily continued as a
member of the Faculty under the jurisdiction of someone who had
been his subordinate. He was made President Emeritus and Profes-
,sor of Ethics; he was still available to the students; he was still
happy in his work. On January 2nd of 1895 he walked one day,
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 63
after a heavy snowstorm, the quarter-mile from his house to the
Bryn Mawr Station to take a train for town. Walking in the snow
is known to be a strain on the heart, but even he who was a doctor
had no special reason to feel that it was immediately dangerous
for him. He sat down on a bench inside the station to wait for the
train. The stationmaster, an old friend, as was anyone who had
association with him, noted his presence through his window. But
the train came in and went out again, and James Rhoads sat on in
his place. The man came out to investigate and found that Dr.
Rhoads was dead.
His life had ended within a few days of its being fifteen years
since the death of Joseph Taylor. Those fifteen years had been whole-
heartedly devoted to furthering that idea which Joseph Taylor had
seen so clearly and which James Rhoads had seen more clearly still
and in larger measure. During his term in office he had done more
than open the College and set its machinery in full motion. Bryn
Mawr had become an entity in itself, a combining of the human
elements that entered into its being, Trustees, Administration, Fac-
ulty, undergraduate and graduate students. It could be guided and
influenced and molded by individual hands, but in itself it had now
a life and being of its own.
PART TWO
Martha Carey Thomas
PRESIDENT 1894-1922
A.B. Cornell University, 1877
Ph.D. University of Zurich, 1882
Chapter VI
"A PASSION FOR EXCELLENCE"
When Carey Thomas she always signed her official letters as
M. Carey Thomas entered upon the Presidency of Bryn Mawr
in the autumn of 1894, she and James Rhoads must have each
drawn a long breath of respective relief. His was not only because
he had laid down a heavy burden of labor, and hers was not merely
for the fulfillment of an ambition now more than ten years old.
There was something more. Between them, and in the Quaker way
without open contention, they had won a significant victory, and
had passed a milestone which was perhaps one of the most impor-
tant in the progress of the College. Years later, Carey Thomas, in a
President's Report, declared that at that meeting of November 17,
1893, the College became something quite other than it had been at
the beginning, or what a number of the Trustees thought it was to
be, and had entered on the way of its true usefulness.
When the Board realized that a change of administration was
actually before them, when James Rhoads's closest friends knew
truly that he had given all that he had to Bryn Mawr, there was an
instinctive gathering together of forces, a laying down of lines of
demarcation, a clarifying of things in the face of a new order. In
November of 1893 there had been a series of meetings which were
not solely for the discussion of who the new President should be.
The year before, the Trustees could not make a choice and were
obliged to beg President Rhoads to remain in his place for a time
longer "for the sake of harmony/' The meetings now were to re-
study Joseph Taylor's will in great detail and to settle, once for all
66
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 67
as they hoped, what this instrument of his wishes really intended.
So complicated do questions become which have to do both with
financial and with religious matters.
It was disclosed by the Treasurer, to everyone's consternation,
that with the bills paid for Pembroke Hall, the residue of the
estate of Dr. Taylor had shrunk to $350,000, instead of the original
million which had seemed enough for anything. The buildings were
a magnificent possession, already beginning to call public atten-
tion to the new College, but the funds for operating looked appall-
ingly small. A resolution was offered that it be "the fixed determi-
nation of the Trustees that the growth of the College should cease
with the completion of Pembroke Hall for residents." Certain mem-
bers of the Board offered the opinion that Dr. Taylor had intended
an establishment on the level of Westtown, the coeducational
Quaker boarding school of very just renown, but nowhere near to
the caliber of a college; some thought he meant it to be nearer the
pattern of Haverford, possibly not aspiring to be so good.
Hard as it was for Carey Thomas to hear such words, it was
necessary that they be spoken, that this view of the College as a
small Quaker seminary should be aired and tested. It was doubtless
in the minds of certain Trustees, who had seen no other experiment
tried, that this represented the utmost that was practical in Quaker
education for women. But the weight of Dr. Rhoads's careful wis-
dom brought them to a wider view; the phrase "fixed determina-
tion" was softened to "the opinion" and finally voted down al-
together, with the resolution standing that no further buildings and
therefore no further growth should be authorized unless funds to
support them were obtained from outside sources. Notice was thus
being given to the new President, whoever he or she might be, that
there were certain limits within which future operations were to be
contained. It was firmly voted that all gifts should be declined
which were offered "upon terms inconsistent with the purpose of
the Founder" and gifts "of a temporary nature" were to be used
only for temporary, and not for fundamental, expenses. This, very
plainly, was a safeguard against any unwarranted use of the Mary
Garrett contribution which was based on the contingency of Carey
Thomas's being President. Practically, therefore, the College would
be allowed to grow materially, as these two of the Administration
68 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
so greatly hoped it would. But were there to be rigid limits imposed
in other ways?
Another side of the problem of the will was brought forward
as the Trustees were bidden to examine that clause which declared
the Founder's wish that it should be the College's "endeavor to
instill into the minds and hearts of the students, the doctrines of the
New Testament as accepted by Friends and taught by Fox, Penn
. . . and Braithwaite, and which I believe to be the same in sub-
stance as taught by early Christians/* There was cause for deep and
troubled discussion here. Must all the teachers be of Quaker faith?
Was it meant that they should be required to instill such doctrine
directly and continuously along with their other teaching? Here
again James Rhoads's sensible liberalism came to the rescue. "Mem-
bers of the [Orthodox] Society of Friends cannot be found in
sufficient numbers to equip a college of the standing required by
Dr. Taylor," he offered as his opinion, and was joined by various
others in the belief that this stipulation "cannot be complied with
literally."
Thus Bryn Mawr had come early to a point of difficulty which
so many of the older colleges and universities have been obliged
to face since. As has been noted by students of educational history,
all such institutions "tend to outgrow their denominationalism."
While each college struggles with the question of responsibility to
the original founders, and settles the matter in its own way, it is
plain that the whole problem is actually an inevitable one. True
education, with its wider contacts, moves steadily away from the
sectarian belief which is so often the inspiration which has led to a
college's foundation. It was for this reason that these Quaker
gentlemen had arrived so soon at the facing of this question with
which each was now striving according to his own conscience. It
was agreed among them that "the professors who were not Friends
. . . would intuitively recoil from the obligation to teach denomi-
national truths to classes of students, and the students . . . would
sometimes resent such attempts at proselytism." But there was also
a resolution that in the appointing of professors, preference be
given to candidates who were Friends or in sympathy with the
beliefs of Friends "even if other applicants are somewhat superior
in scholarship." Various suggestions followed as to some changes in
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 69
courses, to include more biblical study and to emphasize the Quaker
quality of the Founder's plan.
With these matters settled and clarified, the Board of Trustees
of Bryn Mawr College proceeded to the election which duly pro-
nounced their choice to fall upon Martha Carey Thomas. And,
without there being any very general awareness of it, on that same
day the College passed into its new phase, still carrying forward
this recurrent question of religious matters, but freed forever from
the narrowing conception of a small Quaker seminary which was
limited by the support of a single bequest and the literal interpre-
tation of a single document.
To all those students and members of the Faculty who were
associated with Carey Thomas during the nearly forty years of her
connection with Bryn Mawr, she is such an unforgettable personality
that it is difficult to remember that there are some people who
need to be told about her. The stocky, vigorous figure, the heavy
coil of reddish hair, the high-colored handsomeness, the modula-
tions of a voice which always put emphasis on the important word,
all these can never pass or grow dim in anyone's recollection. It is
sufficient to say of her earlier life that she was born in 1857 ^ e ldest
daughter in the family of James Carey Thomas and Mary Whitall
Thomas, members of the Quaker community of Baltimore which
was so closely affiliated with that of Philadelphia. Having very early
developed a determined interest in higher education, she persuaded
her family to send her, first, to the Rowland Institute near Ithaca,
New York. Later, and after some hesitation on the part of her
father, she got permission to go on to Cornell, where she did
enough work for her A.B. degree in two years. But this did not
suffice. In pursuit of a higher degree she applied first to Johns
Hopkins, where she was refused admission as a regular graduate
student, and then went abroad to continue her quest in Germany
and Switzerland.
One of the most carefully cherished among the letters she kept
is the one marked in her own writing, "Letter from Gottingen
refusing me my Ph.D. degree. May 1882." She had already studied
three years at Leipzig, and only after she had found that no woman
could take a degree there had she applied to Gottingen. Being
refused again, but with her thesis nearly finished, she betook herself
70 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
to Switzerland and Zurich where, in November of 1882, she took
her written and oral examinations and was granted a Ph.D. degree,
summa cum laude, a completely unheard-of achievement for a
woman. Her subject was English and German philology, which had
at that time two schools of thought and instruction, into the more
modern of which she was at once drawn. She seemed somewhat
bewildered by her success, but felt that the best of it was that it was
a victory for women's education.
The letter which she wrote to Dr. Rhoads so soon after shows
that, in the fullness of her inexperience, she believed that an
academic degree was sufficient qualification for the Presidency of
Bryn Mawr, and that practice in administrative matters was not
necessary. And now, when she finally came into the office which she
knew that she could fill effectually, ten years of training under wise
and affectionate guidance had greatly enhanced her fitness for her
new position. They had been also ten years of teaching and of close
and happy relations with the students over whose affairs she pre-
sided as Dean. When she undertook the Presidency of Bryn Mawr
she was thirty-six, and already, for most of a year, had carried the
responsibilities of the College during James Rhoads's illness in his
last months of office. One can conjecture a little what plans were in
her mind, when authority was actually in her hands, some of the
projects determinedly complete, some seen only as desirable goals
toward which the way was far from plain, some merely nebulous
ideas which were to grow later into bold experiments.
The brilliance of her mind was like that of very few others. All
her life she was to see the end of an undertaking far more vividly
than its intermediate means of accomplishment. Few people have
ever been capable of becoming so instantly aware of the assured
rightness of a final intention, once she had conceived it. She had
not simply impatience, but total disregard for obstacles which stood
in her way. Ways and means were for her minor matters: with her
purpose immovably fixed she would review rapidly and often un-
reasonably one device after another which might bring the desired
end, sometimes clutching at the veriest straws if they seemed to
drift in the direction of fulfillment.
Of natural patience she had scarcely any, but o shrewd good
sense she had a generous amount. When she knew it was absolutely
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 71
necessary to wait, she could do so, but when the moment for action
came, act she did with almost terrifying promptness. The boldness
of her conceptions was often the despair of the Trustees; the bril-
liant foresight and ultimate success of them were their pride. Some
of those men who were charged with what actually was the final
responsibility of the College were alarmed or outraged or dismayed
by her proposals; some fell by the wayside. But there was always a
group of them who saw her greatness and were willing to move
mountains to make it possible to attain her ends.
What lay at the heart of her real strength was the fact that,
while she had such unbounded ambition for the College, for women's
education in general and in itself, for the position of women in the
modern world, she was completely free from self-seeking, from any
sense or desire of personal aggrandizement. Humility she did not
have, for it was not by its means that she could bring her aims
about; but personal vanity she did not have either, or jealousy for
her position and extending fame, unless to attack them was to
attack the good name of Bryn Mawr.
It has been said in criticism of her that she put scholarship
behind her and turned completely to material matters as time and
the preoccupation of her office went forward. She pursued no re-
search in her chosen field, but what person overwhelmed with ad-
ministrative duties can have much hope of doing so? She was still
head of the English Department for some years, with her active
connection with it growing more and more nominal as she became
engulfed in other matters. Her greatest gift to the world of scholar-
ship was something different. She had, and never lost, a glowing
sense of the beauty, the mystery and the splendor of the intellec-
tual life, and that sense she had the singular power of conveying to
others. Her many formal addresses reflected it, for she was an able
speaker, always sound in the knowledge of her subject, sometimes
startling though never spectacular, certainly never dull. The power
of her own enthusiasm was too great for that. But it was her brief
and incisive talks in daily morning chapel which held, to the full,
her remarkable qualities. She could range at random over every
phase of the world about her which she found so interesting: sculp-
ture, the daily bath, "breeding for intelligence/' travel with a
description of the bells of Amalfi all ringing on the day of her ar-
72 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
rival there because her traveling companion, Helen Taft, was
daughter of a former head of a sovereign State. The fine warmth of
her voice gave special beauty and dignity to the Bible readings, but
her talks were uniformly of the intellectual, not the spiritual, life.
Yet for her the intellectual life was an exalted end to be pursued
with all the strength that the spirit possessed.
She could speak to the freshmen on the morning after Lantern
Night and make them see Siegfried forging the sword. On another
morning, which could well have been fraught with despair, she
could gesture toward the window and beyond it to the ruins of
Denbigh, burned to the walls the night before; she could speak of
its greater upbuilding in such terms that her audience cheered
her. Once when illustrating some point on liberal thinking which
she wished to make clear she spoke quite casually of her dreadful
accident when she was a child, when her skirts caught fire and she
was burned almost to the point of death, leaving her the lameness
which always seemed the most insignificant detail of her energetic
life. What had impressed her most, she said, was hearing some
members of her parents' circle of friends inquiring of her mother,
"Mary, what sin can thee or James have committed that thee should
be visited by this misfortune to thy child?" Small as she was,
everything within her rose in revolt, in defense of her parents,
against such a thought. This was the narrowness, not of a single
sect, but that to which human nature anywhere can be subject.
Yet one can see in that recoil some at least of her reasons for leav-
ing behind her the strict letter of Quakerism, and seeking for herself
and for others a wider life, just as in their own way Joseph Taylor
had done, and James Rhoads. It is necessary thus to attempt to
understand what she was, to make sure of doing justice to what
she did. It was Rufus Jones, who had worked with her on the
Board of Trustees for thirty years, who offered her tribute after
she was gone by speaking of her in the perfect phrase, "She had a
passion for excellence." *
Through all the years of her Presidency she had a central and
often repeated statement of intention "to raise the standard of the
College." It was not enough to set the pattern and hold it; there
must be steady advance along every line, through the oral language
examinations, through the "merit law" by which a student must
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 73
maintain a certain level of good work, through the constant sur-
vey of the quality of teaching.
All of these and other efforts were continuously put forward
for the same purpose, although now and again one of them had to
be abandoned. Great as was her enthusiasm for Self-Government,
she never withdrew her refusal to allow a full honor system in
examinations. Members of the Faculty and delegated proctors did
oversee the examinations, but they always made a point of leaving
the room at least once during the period, to show what was their
own attitude in the matter. For a certain harrowed interval, and
in order to save correspondence, it was the usage to post all the
returns from examinations and the marks for courses on a bulletin
board outside the Recording Secretary's office. Miss Thomas, issu-
ing from her door and studying the returns, made the immediate
announcement that the marks were too high. "A certain proportion
in every course should fail," she insisted, and issued instructions to
the professors to that effect. But they were never carried out. To
admit good students to the College, who did their work earnestly,
and then to give them failing marks to preserve a numerical pro-
portion was, in the eyes of the Faculty, too much of an injustice.
In the matter of "the Orals," the formal language examina-
tions, she remained firm and for a long time deaf to the con-
tinued petitions of the students to have them altered. The plea to
abolish them entirely was more because the manner of them was so
severe, than because they were not appreciated as adding to the
value of the College degree. To be ushered, ceremoniously dressed
in cap and gown, into the President's office and in her presence and
that of two other members of the Faculty to translate a solid page
of French or German text in so short a time that there was not
even opportunity to glance through it first, such was an ordeal in-
deed. Carey Thomas thought that young women of the age of col-
lege seniors should have developed sufficient poise to meet such a
test of steadiness of spirit; she doubtless thought of the manner of
giving examinations abroad and wanted her own students to match
these others in prowess. But in such institutions it was not the
head of the college or the university who conducted the examina-
tions. "I do not think you realize just how much your presence
means to them," one professor, Dr. Gonzales Lodge, wrote to her in
74 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
protest as early as 1898. "You are the head of the College and
represent in their eyes all the dignity and augustness of what the
College stands for. . . . The fright and nervousness which is usually
attributed to the examinations themselves is in large measure
due to the fact that they must exhibit themselves before the Presi-
dent > with all that that means. The situation," he was bold enough
to insist, "would be robbed of most of its terrors by the absence of
the one before whom they feel the most shame in exposing their
defects." But in spite of this and many other protests, it was years
before this special form of the language examinations was aban-
doned.
Since it was now settled that Bryn Mawr was to be a larger
college than the first plans had indicated, Carey Thomas went about
her way carefully and consistently, in those early years, to prepare
for its wider functioning, as she and Dr. Rhoads had always looked
forward to its doing. Neither he nor she had ever considered a
college of very large numbers; but it was clear and reasonable
that, as years advanced and the general college population of the
country increased, and as the practice of sending daughters as well
as sons to college widened, an institution like Bryn Mawr, even in
its rather special field, must increase also to keep in step with
natural progress.
In material ways, and with excellent administrative method,
she regulated the machinery of everyday running, setting up work-
shops and a corps of men for repairs, employing engineers for the
heating system instead of depending on the casual and often dis-
astrous attentions of outside service men. Fortified by the income
which Miss Garrett was supplying, she could bring about changes
which, earlier, the necessity of almost pitiful economies firmly for-
bade. Precautions and regulations to prevent fire hazards were in-
troduced, although the gas and the students' oil lamps were still a
source of danger at which one shudders now. It was an overturned
"student lamp" which burned Denbigh down on that cold snowy
night in 1902, bringing out the band of rescuers from Haverford
College, and also drawing emphatic attention to the fact that Bryn
Mawr needed a less hazardous system of heating and lighting.
Cooperation between the Trustees and the new President led
to large achievements, not unattended by argument. Immediately
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 75
after Dr. Rhoads's death, Carey Thomas raised the question of her
being made a Trustee, since, as she said, this was necessary to
support her position in the College and in representing it before
the world. Because James Rhoads was already a Trustee when he
was elected to the Presidency, this matter had never before been an
issue. She showed them a paper, prepared in President Rhoads's time,
making clear that Bryn Mawr was behind the other colleges where,
for the most part, the President was also a member of the govern-
ing body. But she met with firm resistance. Her uncle, James
Whitall, had died in 1896 and her father, James Carey Thomas, in
1897, so that two of her stanch supporters were gone. Her cousin
David Scull was still there, but in this matter even he did not side
with her. Year by year she brought the matter up and always was
refused, until finally, as will be seen, she had a clinching argument,
and they were obliged to give in.
As the turn of the century approached, the College was growing
vigorously in all directions. Taylor Hall was definitely outgrown,
to an uncomfortable degree. More classrooms were needed, as the
students increased in numbers, as the Faculty grew and the courses
multiplied. There was greater need for administrative offices.
Moreover, the books of the library were occupying far too great a
proportion of the space and even with this did not have enough
room. In 1893 there had been opportunity to buy the great classi-
cal library collected by the German scholar Sauppe, and this was
done by means of the generous and ever ready help of Mary
Garrett. Space for it was meager, nor, as anyone could see, should
books of their kind, unique and quite irreplaceable, be housed in
anything but a fireproof building. Taylor, with its wooden stairs
and profusion of golden oak, could not be so called.
As the years went by, the need for a library building had
become more and more evident. But there was the firm deterrent
of the Trustees' resolution that no more buildings could be financed
from Dr. Taylor's estate. John G. Johnson, the College legal ad-
viser, had even pronounced that some former transactions were
technically illegal, and there had to be a hasty redesignation of funds
and real-estate titles connected with the acquisition of Dolgelly
and Llanberis, the two dwelling houses across the road from Pem-
broke which were housing the overflow of students. And as the
76 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
College swung into a continuously lengthening stride, other needs
became insistently evident.
It was not for nothing that Carey Thomas had joined with
Mary Garrett and other Baltimore women to help set in motion
the Johns Hopkins Medical School. For Miss Thomas the word
"beg" had no opprobrious meaning; when one wanted for a good
cause one begged. At the annual meeting of the Trustees in De-
cember of 1899, she asked for authorization to raise money from
outside sources for a library building, and said that she must have a
committee of the Trustees to give her help. They agreed; they
organized; the assistance of the Alumnae was enlisted. "Large beg-
ging committees" were formed among them and among interested
parents and husbands, as Carey Thomas reported. The Pennsylvania
Railroad gave passes to Alumnae traveling to beg. The students
threw themselves into the campaign; there were helping hands every-
where.
The first success was revealed in the announcement that John
D. Rockefeller had agreed to give $250,000 to build a dormitory
and a new power plant for heating and lighting the College, if, in
turn, Bryn Mawr could raise an equal amount for the Library. He
was not yet the Rockefeller Foundation; he was a busy aging man
who had no fault to find with Carey Thomas's somewhat masterful
ways, and who was beginning to show the public that not only
American business but American philanthropy could operate on a
far larger scale than had previously been conceived. It has been
said that President Thomas told him that the new hall would not be
named for him but for a Welsh county, yet this did not deter him.
She did not persevere in that resolution, and the catalogue of Welsh
counties ended with Pembroke. Wide and concerted methods of
raising money were still new; they were certainly new to Bryn
Mawr, but resources and activities were marshaled and ordered and
set on the move by Carey Thomas.
The deadline was to be Commencement Day of 1902. As the
date approached, Carey Thomas still had $60,000 to gather together.
The project had become by now almost unendurably desirable as
the plans of Walter Cope took shape in a block of buildings for
the dormitory which were in such beautiful accord with Pembroke.
The Library began to embody, in its own design, much of the
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 77
stateliness of English university buildings which Carey Thomas had
so long admired. There followed a whirlwind campaign of ac-
celerated effort; the whole momentum of three years came to a
climax in six weeks. President Thomas was the master solicitor and
fund raiser in the midst of all her helpers; begging for her was a
solemn duty. The academic year closed in excited triumph as the
full sum was completed on the very eve of Commencement.
Large as the results of this campaign were, the buildings were
not the only things that came out of it. In 1902, during the last
pressure of desperate fund raising, Carey Thomas pointed out to
the Trustees once again how much her position would be strength-
ened were she actually a Trustee herself. This time they saw the
light at last, and made her a member of the Board. They had ac-
cepted a great innovation in admitting a woman to their midst, but
it was not the only step of the sort which was to confront them.
In 1905 Dr. Taylor's will once more had to be meticulously ex-
amined, especially that passage which specified that the Trustees of
the College must be members of the Orthodox Society of Friends.
It was evidently in the mind of the Founder, and in the thoughts of
others, that a large proportion of the students would be Quakers.
This had been true at first, but after the passage of years that con-
dition no longer existed. The Society of Friends itself did not in-
crease greatly in numbers, so that the average number of families
who had daughters to send and who were able to send them re-
mained more or less the same. Therefore, as the College grew, the
increase came from outside, from among the World's people, as
Quaker parlance put it.
For some time it had troubled the President to see that there
was no provision made for the rather differing interests of these
young women; they were not being represented by elders who were
completely familiar with the state and manner of life from which
they came. It had troubled the Trustees also, but there seemed no
method of making any change, for Joseph Taylor's will once more
presented an impassable obstacle. President Thomas had made a
number of suggestions as to how such an alteration could be made,
once going so far as the idea of taking the Founder's will into court
and having it broken. This her colleagues on the Board would not
permit. John G. Johnson, one of Philadelphia's leading lawyers,
y8 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
whose interest and affection had been enlisted by Joseph Taylor,
was Bryn Mawr's invaluable adviser. He was able, forthright, and
not easily to be moved. He declared at last that the descendants of
Joseph Taylor would have a right to come forward and claim the
estate as theirs should the original legatees fail to fulfill the terms of
the will.
"I do not see my way to any suggestion which will reach the
desired result," he wrote to Carey Thomas, to which she replied, "I
am greatly disappointed in your opinion." But she would not give
up.
In the midst of her perplexity and her occasional hot impa-
tience there now appeared a new possibility. The growing body of
the Alumnae had brought together a steadily increasing group of
able, thoughtful and successful women who had a strong interest in
Bryn Mawr. The Alumnae Association had been formed at once,
after the graduation of the first classes. Their first important
achievement was the raising of sufficient money to have Miss
Thomas sit to the foremost portrait painter of their day, John Singer
Sargent. The result was successful beyond even reasonable expecta-
tion. Sargent has been quoted as saying that it was his best portrait;
it was for the first years so much in demand for loan exhibitions that
the Trustees finally had to agree on refusal of any more such re-
quests. Some persons who knew President Thomas at the height of
her fame have taken exception to the likeness; but what really has
been given us is the young Carey Thomas, the woman not yet fully
tried, with her ideals and ambitions and her sympathy and friend-
liness for the people around her still visible in a face which no one
can call less than beautiful. The picture is a treasure for which the
College owes a great debt to a group of enterprising and discerning
young women, just setting out to do greater and greater things.
During the period of raising money for the Library, the Alum-
nae had shown of what great assistance they could be. In fact it
was made plain that a new chapter opens in the history of a college
when its graduates have achieved sufficient numbers to take active
part in meeting its needs. And the Alumnae themselves, somewhat
in the manner of Carey Thomas, sent to her the suggestion that they
should be represented on the governing board of Bryn Mawr as
a foundation for further usefulness. On the first hearing Carey
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 79
Thomas resisted the idea; it was not what she had had in mind; it
would make a larger body with possibly restrictive views; it would
make more complicated the system into which she had fallen, of
making her own decisions in a multitude of smaller matters and
presenting them to the Board as accomplished and only wanting
their official approval. But on more reflection she saw that here was
the way out of the whole difficulty. She became an earnest advocate
of the plan and renewed her efforts to find the method in which it
could be put into action.
It was John G. Johnson who, having given the matter deep
thought, finally devised the means of solution. As has been said,
Joseph Taylor had specified that the College should be administered
by thirteen Trustees, but the laws of Pennsylvania declared that
educational institutions were to be given into the hands of a "Board
of Directors/' Therefore it had been necessary, as a nominal gesture,
for the Trustees, once a year, to elect themselves Directors to meet
the letter of the law. "There is nothing," John G. Johnson finally
offered as his opinion, "to prevent their naming more Directors
than their own number, nor for these Directors' becoming the
agents of the Trustees in the management of the College/'
Like all reasonable plans for which the need had arisen, this
was simple enough and welcome on all sides. A committee of Alum-
nae, not without some smothered excitement, for even in 1905
Alumnae were most of them young, met in consultation with the
Board of Trustees. "I wish to tell you how well I thought you pre-
sented your case on Friday/' Carey Thomas wrote to Marion Reilly.
. . . When you are interviewing Mr. Johnson do not allow your-
selves to be turned aside. ... I am sure that you will gain more
by asking for the thing you want and refusing to accept anything
else."
There was no question of refusal. The Trustees passed the nec-
essary legislation in December of 1905, and asked the Alumnae to
nominate two members, whom they would then proceed to elect.
Anne Emery Allinson of the Class of 1892 and Elizabeth Kirkbride
of 1896 were chosen. They attended their first meeting early in
1906 "and were given a warm welcome/' The new arrangement had,
in fact, satisfied everybody. To it was very soon added the arrange-
ment for a Director-at-Large, Mary Garrett, who so richly deserved
8O WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
representation in her own right. The working of the new system
went smoothly from the very first. At the high climax of Carey
Thomas's administration at Bryn Mawr, the Alumnae on the Board
were to be of invaluable assistance. And the mere legal fact of
their presence was to help solve one more, and possibly the last, of
those knotty questions which grew out of Joseph Taylor's will. But
that was not until later. While these negotiations were going on, the
building program had been proceeding, not steadily, it has to be
said, for innumerable and unexpected were the interruptions and
anxieties, but reaching a beautiful completion at last.
Building, as everyone knows, is a difficult and complex matter,
far beyond the point of gathering the funds, the plans, the materials
and the personnel. Many times so every person's experience proves
questions will present themselves which seem, at the moment, of
life-and-death importance but which, after the smoke of argument
has cleared away, dwindle to no significance at all. The Treasurer
of the Board of Trustees, who had had difficulty in the past in see-
ing eye to eye with Carey Thomas, mostly because of her rather lib-
eral impulse for spending, at one time insisted that the Library
building was misplaced and should be fifteen feet further from Tay-
lor to give it true dignity of perspective. Does anyone ever notice
now the difference of that fifteen feet, or does any eye, unless it be
a professional one, observe that the front of the building aligns
with the first right-angled projection of Pembroke West? Yet the wor-
ried Treasurer stopped all activities at one time until the matter
could be reconsidered, while letters and cables flew between Bryn
Mawr and England, where Carey Thomas was spending the summer.
David Scull's adept hand smoothed matters over, and the Treasurer
fell into unconvinced silence.
The use of teakwood for the staircase leading to the Reading
Room had been voted down by the Board as too extravagant, but
teakwood it turned out to be, beautiful and blond in its newness,
although one of its vaunted charms was that with time it would grow
richly dark. A breach with the whole Board threatened when it was
discovered that President Thomas had ordered it without consulta-
tion.
"I have a little book for keeping orders authorized by the
Trustees," David Scull told her mildly, emphasizing the fact that this
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? Si
item was not in it. Carey Thomas made herself personally responsi-
ble for that and for various other expenses, until she suddenly
awoke to the fact that she had pledged every resource that she had,
to fulfill her promises. Yet she felt that nothing was really too good
for Bryn Mawr.
The dormitory and the power plant cost more than was ex-
pected, just as all buildings do. The Library lent them money until
it seemed that work on that building must come to an end. Walter
Cope, the architect who had given the College so much, died in the
autumn of 1902; this was the last of his planning which he could
see begin to take shape and in which he could lay some of the stones
with his own hands, as he loved to do. But it was finally decided
to finish the Library with a curtain wall bounding the cloisters,
in place of the projected west wing for which there was not suf-
ficient money. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., came to the handsome sup-
port of his father's gift, and the dormitory opened in 1904, while
the campus was suddenly illumined with electric light. The Library
was ready for use in 1906. President Thomas, speaking from the
platform of Taylor Chapel, declared that the opening of the Library,
not only with its space and facilities for the use of books but with
its offices where professors had proper means for consultation with
students, would begin a new era of teaching at Bryn Mawr. It is
worth while, even now, to stop for a moment in hurrying down a
Library corridor and think how truly she was right.
The Treasurer, Henry Tatnall, resigned after the building pro-
gram was finished at last. He was succeeded by Asa Wing, who held
that difficult office for a benign and indefatigable term which lasted
twenty years. At the end of 1907 David Scull died, he who had
taken part in the supervision of every building since the first stone
was laid. No one who has not read his correspondence with Carey
Thomas can ever conceive of the kindness, the wisdom and the gen-
tle patience with which he carried forward the work shared with
the spirited young cousin of whom he was so proud. In his last let-
ter, written in illness, he spoke of how he longed for "a walk at
Bryn Mawr on a fine October afternoon."
A great proportion of Dr. Taylor's Trustees were gone, but the
group remained a notable one. It had been joined, after the death
of James Carey Thomas, by a young professor of philosophy at
82 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
Haverford, that Rufus Jones of whom James Rhoads had prophesied
large things. For more than fifty years he sat on the Board of Trus-
tees of Bryn Mawr, a great leader in his own Society of Friends and
in the larger world, but always with time to spare for Joseph Tay-
lor's and James Rhoads's College. Next to her father, he was prob-
ably the man who best understood Carey Thomas and gave her the
most of the wisdom and caution that she needed. He was in turn
the recipient of her deep regard, and those who knew her well were
aware of how strong and deep her affections could be. Rufus
Jones was once called by a neighboring clergyman, "A Quaker can-
dle that shed a universal light." It would be good to think that the
same words could be applied to the College which Carey Thomas
and he and those others who believed in it were so earnestly at work
In building.
Chapter VII
"SEMPER PARATUS"
Building with stones and mortar was not the only means by which
President Carey Thomas had planned to enlarge the scope of the
College. As she looked about her, through the early years of the
twentieth century, she saw the graduate idea, so notably advanced
by Johns Hopkins University, spreading from one great institu-
tion to another. So far she and Bryn Mawr were the only women's
college organization which had attempted any such thing. Larger
and older institutions were taking on the name and function of uni-
versities; she had seen Harvard so transformed, and Yale and
Princeton. To develop their ends fully, these older and larger col-
leges had set up or extended their separate professional Schools of
Divinity, of Science, of Engineering and of Medicine. Bryn Mawr
could not hope to follow in their exact footsteps, but could she not
do something in the direction of higher training for women in par-
ticular fields where specialized training was so conspicuously
needed?
In such a college as this, the making of those "teachers of a
high order" called for more and more training and practice in the
actual technique of teaching and in educational theory. The rise of
the kindergarten and the later advent of the progressive idea in
elementary and secondary schools opened a whole new field for ex-
pert study. Graduates of Bryn Mawr were eminently well equipped
to teach in the higher grades and in colleges, but the exact and rap-
idly developing techniques for the teaching of the earlier grades
called necessarily for a different preparation. Legal lines had been
drawn so that, in the State of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, no one,
83
g. WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
no matter what her college degree, could be granted a certificate
making her eligible for a position in the lower public schools without
having a course in a teachers* college or normal school. Here, often,
a background of general education was scarcely available. Of this
President Carey Thomas had long been most amply aware. The
answer seemed to be to develop a Department of Education
wherein broad general study and practice under a trained eye
would be supplemented by lectures and research on educational
theory. Thus the newer methods of teaching young children would
be tested and proved as well as being imparted. What stood in the
way of such a new departure, if it was to be completely carried out,
was lack of funds.
None the less the opportunity arrived, as opportunity always
does for persons like Carey Thomas. Toward the end of 1910, Mr.
Samuel Thome declared his desire of making a gift in memory of
his sister, Phebe Anna Thome, who had been so greatly interested
in elementary education that the endowment must in some way re-
late to the teaching of young children. After some conferences with
the President, he designated the sum of 1150,000, which was to be
held in trust by the Directors and Trustees of the College and be
administered by them for the support of the Phebe Anna Thorne
Model School as an adjunct to the Department of Education. The
funds were to be used for endowment only and not for other pur-
poses* Within this new department it would be possible now to try
out the processes just emerging to enrich and extend children's edu-
cation open-air classes, freedom from restricted curriculum, nat-
ural expression of opinion and impulse, "direct" study of languages
by using them immediately, graphic and objective instruction in
other subjects instead of an approach to them through formal rec-
itations. It was a system under which children could be free, happy
and interested and, by the unhesitating testimony of all who par-
took of it, under which children abundantly were.
The basis of the whole plan rested on Miss Thomas's firm be-
lief that in a completely adequate preparation for college, even so
exacting a college as Bryn Mawr, the more solid subjects could be
coordinated with the arts painting, music, dancing and drama. It
may be that certain of the Quaker Trustees looked somewhat
askance on a few of the items in this program, but the undertaking
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 85
was so much Carey Thomas's own and so greatly her desire that
they refrained from protest. It was her further idea that each of the
school's graduating classes, restricted in number to fifteen, would
enter the College "perfectly prepared" and would become a leaven-
ing element in every freshman class. She was sure, moreover, that
all this could be accomplished in a seven-year course, where the
existing public and private schools customarily required eight.
There arose, presently, on the lawns of Cartref and Dolgelly,
opposite Pembroke Arch, a group of oddly shaped buildings with
glass walls and roofs curved upward at the eaves. Miss Thomas had
recently been on a vacation in Japan and was sure that the Jap-
anese form of building, with its open structure and airy archi-
tecture, was exactly suited to the new venture. Inside the two
existing buildings there was much alteration, for they were no
longer needed for students since the opening of Rockefeller in 1904.
For these preparations funds were advanced by the Trustees from
the resources of the College, although it was understood that they
were to be ultimately returned. The same amount was contributed
by Carey Thomas from her own means. It was not fully recog-
nized that the Thome fund could not hope to repay construction
costs and carry those of operation. Miss Thomas was, perhaps, as
happy and enthusiastic over this venture as in any other she un-
dertook. The School opened in 1913, with much interested atten-
tion from educators everywhere.
Except for some impractical details, it was a brilliantly con-
trived scheme from the educational point of view, and should have
worked well. It was worth much, so Carey Thomas thought, that the
enrichment of life, which she felt to be one of education's greatest
missions, could be demonstrated as beginning its accomplishment
early as well as late. She could see that such a school must make its
own way, and must win the approval both of children and of par-
ents with children to be taught, quite as much as it would test the
theories by which education was now being so rapidly advanced.
She saw also that the School would not maintain itself if it were
merely a testing and practice ground for student-teachers, and she
had already discovered that the best of the Bryn Mawr instructors
were willing, and what was more, were able, to give their under-
standing and their time to the new venture. Her choice of a Direc-
86 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
tor was especially fortunate. Mathilde Castro was a woman whose
brilliant career was cut short by early death, but those who worked
with her at Bryn Mawr have long testified that she was possessed of
real genius.
Many years before, Carey Thomas, the newly appointed Dean
sent by James Rhoads to get advice from existing women's colleges,
had been warned that preparatory departments, set up in con-
nection with a college itself, could be a burden and a liability. If
she remembered this warning she must have felt that now such dif-
ficulties could be overcome and was determined that nothing
should count in the face of the great prospects of the plan. Here
was something in the making of teachers and of scholars of the
future which needed to be done, and here was Bryn Mawr's op
portunity to do It.
Educationally the project was an immense success. The young
pupils were happy, interested and enterprising, as well as amply
taught. It did not invariably get them into college without some
disappointments, for young minds differ and the same system can-
not have the same results for all. Nor did all its graduates elect to
enter Bryn Mawr as Carey Thomas so confidently expected. But the
School stood unquestionably and successfully in the forefront of ed-
ucational experiment. Much of its theory was based on the ideas
of John Dewey and his work in Chicago, but no stone was left un-
turned for discovering whether this were all. Teachers were subsi-
dized to go abroad to study new methods in Italy, Switzerland
and Germany; they saw the Montessori schools in action; they
brought back the practice of eurhythmies, the combination of
music, rhythmic movement and muscular development which
has become the basis of training for the modern ballet. The open-
air feature, with its Eskimo suits, boots and mittens, with the naps
and nourishing lunches, was found to work well in keeping off colds
and resisting epidemics. And the children loved it.
Methods found to be ineffective or impractical were given up,
and new ones introduced as they proved themselves of value. In
combination with the Psychology Department, the Education De-
partment set up a system of mental testing for classifying the chil-
dren, a method which came to warrant the greater and greater re-
liance placed upon it. It was introduced into the public schools,
Joseph Wright Taylor, M.D.
Founder of Brvn Mawr College
James E. Rhoads, M.D. First
President of Bryn Mawr Col-
lege, 1885-1894
M. Carey Thomas, Second President of Bryn Mawr College, 1894-1922
(From the portrait by John Singer Sargent)
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 87
with the College offering an Educational Counselling Service which
was found to be of great value. In this field there first came
into notice a brilliant young graduate student in psychology, who
added to her other abilities a delightful gift with children. To see
Katharine McBride surrounded by a group of children of all sizes
and kinds, all chattering and interested and quite at their ease
as they lined up for a series of tests, is to remember a picture which
not even long acquaintance with her as a College President can
supersede.
Successful as the School was in its real purpose, it is unfortu-
nately necessary to record that on the financial side it did not, and
could not, prosper. When it opened in 1913 it was already top-
heavy with debt, and in its first year showed expenses far greater
than had been foreseen. Year by year it went forward, needing
more teachers as it extended its scope, needing more buildings*
piling up greater and greater deficits. These debts Carey Thomas
kept underwriting, out of her own means, so great was her enthu*
siasm and her confidence in the School. By 1921, however, when
she was on the eve of retirement, she realized how deeply the School
was involving her, and reluctantly admitted that she could no
longer support it.
So fully had it come, by this time, to be approved by the
parents who sent their children there, that they combined to form
the Phebe Anna Thorne School Association, which issued bonds
to cover the indebtedness and to ensure its being able to continue.
For nearly ten years more it went on its troubled and successful
way, always handicapped by narrowness of means, by the necessity
of painfully small salaries to teachers, by lack of equipment and the
other resources which once had seemed so delightfully within
reach. Marion Park, as the new President in 1922, took a very
great interest in it, but there was no denying the fact that its fi-
nances presented a grave problem. The income from the endow*
ment came to be barely equal to the interest on the debts, while the
returns from tuition were frankly too small to override the constant
increase in the expenses. In 1930 the Directors, realizing that the
situation was practically an impossible one, voted that the School
should be closed, and that the endowment must lie fallow until th$
interest from it should finally pay off the accumulated debt.
88 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
It was a school ahead of its time and so came to material and
temporary grief. In much later years, when progressive ideas in ed-
ucation have been sounded out and have settled to a more stable
and predictable method, the conducting of such a venture becomes
a different matter. Practice instruction in an eminent school is now
clearly so valuable that the matter of salaries Is not so vital as once
it was. Parents realize more fully that, while the best is none too
good for their children, the best demands its own costs. When time
had caught up with it, when the endowment, under the husbanding
of the Directors, had at last overcome the burden of debt, the school
was reopened, under another President who had worked in it earlier
and had not forgotten it. But its later status is part of a later
record.
Undeterred by what must have been a mounting anxiety over
the financial affairs of the Phebe Anna Thorne School, President
Thomas felt sufficiently satisfied with it and with the accomplish-
ment of the new graduate Department of Education to set about
another venture. Two years after the Phebe Anna Thorne Founda-
tion had been set to work, she announced to the Directors in Feb-
ruary, 1915, that the time had come to offer to Bryn Mawr's grad-
uates and those of other colleges the opportunity for direct training
in a new profession, one fully open to women, that of social service,
taken in its broadest meaning.
To all outward seeming the affairs of the main body of the
College were moving well. There was as yet no overcrowding in the
dormitories; the student body renewed itself every year both in sat-
isfactory numbers and in quality; the full number of fellowships
were available in the Graduate School; there was a sufficient and
able Faculty. Carey Thomas could look beyond the actual process
of educating women to the further question of what chance they
had to make use of that education. The world of commerce and
even the world of scholarship were, so far, visibly reluctant to ac-
cept women on an equal basis with men and, so Miss Thomas in-
sisted, countless positions which should be filled by women were de-
nied to them from pure reactionary prejudice. It was part of her
great work as an educator that she pursued so vehemently this
matter of fairness to women in their appropriate fields. It was, she
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 89
was convinced, a basic element in the whole subject o women's
education.
She observed very shrewdly what was the best point of attack.
As has been said, when she first began her own educational career
there had been two questions: Had women the right to insist on
entrance to existing men's colleges? and, Were women capable of
making the most of such education if it were available to them?
Outside of the campaign to finance the Johns Hopkins Medical
School provided that it would admit women, she had not taken
much part in this first controversy and had concentrated herself
upon showing what women could do with full opportunity for
higher education. It was to further this same purpose that she
chose those professions which it was logical for women to fill, the
old one of teaching and the new one of social service, undertaking
to offer able candidates in both fields. The Model School had been
imperfectly financed, although the real truth of the inadequacy was
not yet fully apparent. For this new venture the College was far
better equipped.
There had graduated from Bryn Mawr in the Class of 1907 a
student of whom only a rather limited circle of friends and teachers
had real knowledge and understanding. Carola Woerishoffer, to
those who knew her, was someone of extraordinary force of char-
acter, a nonconformist by temperament, moved, however, by a stir-
ring sense of reasonable justice and an eager student in the fields of
sociology and industrial economics, which were widening daily be-
fore the eyes of thinking people. During her undergraduate years
she stood in the rather difficult position of being a very
young woman possessing a large fortune in her own right. Study
was the key to accomplishing what she knew she wanted to do, and
those who taught her could not be other than struck with the fiery
spirit with which she flung herself into her chosen subjects.
After she left Bryn Mawr, she began at once to busy herself
with matters that had to do with justice to the underprivileged and
to the worker. Conditions even so late as 1908 were still very dif-
ficult in industry; great corporations were not, as a rule, sympa-
thetic with labor; unions were multiplying and were experimenting
with the methods of supporting justice for their members. Often the
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 39
In the summer correspondence between James Rhoads and
Carey Thomas one gets some idea of the questions and answers
that went back and forth between them. Matters of buildings were
so far entirely in his hands, except for the making over of the little
cottage already on the grounds which was to be the Deanery. Ar-
rangements for housekeeping they consulted over together, those of
finance only partially. The question of appointments and of cur-
riculum they discussed as equals, though final judgment lay in the
hands of President Rhoads with confirmation by the Board of
Trustees. Carey Thomas was their talent scout, their general di-
rectory of scholars, their preliminary inspector of candidates. Even
on her first tour she kept careful notes on different teachers and
professors, most of whom she found wanting. "He is a nice man
but a wretched teacher," she said of one. "His Logic recitation a
farce," she noted of another. "No degree, pretentious, disagree-
able." "Latin class well drilled, nothing further," described still an-
other, and of a Miss Emily Gregory at Wellesley, "Very able woman,
admirably adapted for our purpose."
Her report of her findings was read and digested; decisions
were made; the bulking major problems were brought under con-
trol along with the swarms of minutiae. Buildings were furnished
and organized; courses of study were laid down. One by one the
necessary appointments were made. Carey Thomas made it her busi-
ness to be widely informed concerning possible candidates, but she
and James Rhoads occasionally differed in opinion over them. She
was apt to stress scholarship at the cost of personality; he was more
careful in looking for the right temperament to fit harmoniously
into the new and untried organization. "As a man of moderate
mental force," he observed of one applicant, "I should expect him
capable of fairly thorough scholarship in a limited sphere." Of
someone else he pronounced flatly, "He will make us a stepping-
stone, with no sincere interest in his work."
On one special point they differed widely, but he was not to be
moved. "We are justified in making no other announcement than
that the College is founded on a Christian basis, and then solicit
applications for Fellowships. This would make our position can-
did, just and unimpeachable."
She would not have stressed the point so directly, but she did
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 01
in 1915, as designed "to prepare women for paid and unpaid posi-
tions in social service."
There existed already a few such professional schools like the
New York School of Philanthropy and the Boston School of Social
Work, giving excellent service. But none of them were sponsored by
a college or university, where, as was possible here, there could be
more advanced theoretical teaching, with research and investi-
gation to keep abreast of the swiftly changing times. Few fields of
experiment have offered such a challenge. The time of the found-
ing of the Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social
Economy and Social Research was followed by the conditions aris-
ing from the First World War, by the Depression and subsequent
recovery and by the Second World War, all of them having reper-
cussions on the state of society and of industry.
Although it was called a Graduate Department, it was more
nearly a professional school than any of the others, with its own
degrees of Ph.D. and M.A. and its own certificate for completion of
a settled two years' course. That its purpose was a constructive one
and thoroughly in step with the needs of the time was proved by
the opening, within the next few years, of similar schools and de-
partments, the first at Northwestern University, then at Johns Hop-
kins, Harvard, and the universities of Chicago and Missouri, with
various others to follow. President Thomas, at the time of her first
proposals, already had her eye upon the person whom she con-
sidered as the ideal head of the new undertaking, Susan Kings-
bury, from California, a Ph.D. of Columbia in 1905 and at that time
Professor of Economics at Simmons College. Under her planning,
four fields of study were outlined. They were Social Case Work
the one most immediately thought of in connection with such a
school; Community Organization a field which extended slowly;
Industrial Relations; and Social and Industrial Investigation. In
the first one much work had already been done; the others were to a
great degree still open country in 1915.
The plan was boldly experimental, as those launched by Carey
Thomas so often could be. To keep up with the changing and chal-
lenging demands of education in that period bold experiments
were a necessity. The greater reassurance as to financial resources
in the College gave the Directors full warrant to go forward with
Q2 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
this one. Actually, this department was to come closer to supporting
itself than have any others in the Graduate School, since here the
number of students has always been the largest in proportion to the
overhead. In present years it has come to include many new studies;
psychiatric social work was established in 1953, as its importance
and the need for training in it became so evident. One of the de-
partment's most important offices was the superintending and the
advising of the Summer School for Women Workers in Industry,
which was the last of President Thomas's innovations for Bryn
Mawr.
Carey Thomas, in these middle and later years of her Admin-
istration, was drawn Into giving more and more time to public af-
fairs, to speaking at innumerable meetings to support woman suf-
frage, the League of Nations, hostels for young persons traveling
abroad, and a myriad of other movements toward a more intel-
ligently ordered world, especially such a world for women. By rep-
utation she stood now in the forefront of modern educators; she
had brought her College into a place of prominence and of vindi-
cation of all that she had set out to do. It had been accomplished by
unfaltering devotion to this particular cause, with no staying of the
hand or thought of rest. But she had, as an unexpected result,
brought it also into a state of isolation, so great had been her
spoken emphasis on Bryn Mawr's being the first to do certain
things, or of being the only one to accomplish certain others.
Bryn Mawr's President could be relentless in pursuing what she
thought was for the good of the College; she could be utterly care-
less of what adverse opinion she stirred up in the accomplishing of
her ends. She had become a resplendent figure in the world of edu-
cation; in her own College she was someone whom it was easy to
criticize and impossible not to admire.
It is interesting to consider this spirit of very robust combina-
tion of criticism and admiration which grew up among the stu-
dents and Alumnae during those later years of her Administration,
a spirit which seemed not in the least to interfere with their con-
tinued and vehement loyalty to Bryn Mawr, and to her. In con-
trast to it we must remember the real devotion of those who were in
the early classes, who had far closer relations with Carey Thomas
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 95
than ever was possible later. Those personal recollections gathered
here and there today, which are so valuable and irreplaceable, re-
flect, nearly all of them, the greatest warmth of affection for her.
These memories stem from the time when she was the young Dean,
scarcely older than themselves, with whom they had long discus-
sions in the little Deanery in the evenings and on the walks back to
the door of their own dormitory. When she became President,
although she was still officially Dean also, and liked, oddly, to be
called by that title for some time after, she still entered into the stu-
dents' individual affairs for a little time. But it was not fully or for
long. She knew much of their records on paper; she was, in partic-
ular, extraordinarily kind and considerate concerning those who
were going through college on meager funds, but of themselves as
people she knew little, so great were the other demands upon her
time and attention.
The students lost much as this change came about, and it is
true that Carey Thomas lost much also. There was, as years passed,
a growing inflexibility about many of her decisions, about her firm
holding to earlier policies which had been so successful and appro-
priate for a small college making its way in a world skeptical then
of the mental capacity of women. It is very probable that she might
have been less unyielding in some of her decisions had there been
available to her more real acquaintance with the people involved,,
more understanding of their point of view. She was capable enough
of changing her mind once she saw good reason for it; but she was
also capable of pushing through differing opinions without fully
listening to them.
She had a protracted struggle with the students over a cut rule
which she considered extraordinarily necessary. The Faculty de-
clared that some restriction of cutting was required; the students
were reluctant to agree; the rule was made and applied and gave
rise to great discontent and protest. At last, by the intervention of
the Alumnae, it was left to student public opinion to regulate the
cutting, with the students themselves undertaking to be responsible
for their own system of monitoring and reporting absences. There
was another sharp battle over the matter of week-end absences,
which Miss Thomas wished to see restricted to a minimum. She
94 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
grew very bitter over this in her intensity of belief that the stand-
ards of the College were being affected. But the Self-Government
Association stood its ground and would not yield.
A great change had come about in her private life in 1907,
which could not fail to alter in some measure her approach to her
work. The marriage of Mary Gwinn, who had lived with her, from
the first, at the Deanery, a marriage to which Carey Thomas had
fully justified objection, cut off a friendship which had lasted be-
tween them since childhood. For a person of Carey Thomas's un-
yielding spirit and capacity for deep affection, the blow was as bitter
a one as one friend can ever receive from another. It is evidence of
her resourcefulness and her powers of persuasion that she at once
succeeded in inducing Mary Garrett to close her great house in Bal-
timore and come to settle down at the Deanery. Miss Garrett acted
against the wishes of her family, who thought that Carey Thomas,
with her liberal views, was a dangerous influence. But it thus came
about that a warm, comfortable, unexacting presence was substi-
tuted for that stimulating intellectual influence and companionship
which was so irretrievably gone.
"Miss Semper Paratus" David Scull used to call Mary Garrett,
since she was always ready to step forward and supply the means
for extrication from some unforeseen difficulty, to underwrite some
new idea. As a member of the Board of Directors, appointed very
early, she sat quietly in her place and said little, but was "always a
solid vote for Miss Thomas." What her unselfishness, her steady
good sense and affection, her faith in Carey Thomas all did for
Bryn Mawr and its turbulent-minded President is hard to estimate.
It may be that her unquestioning belief in her friend Carey Thomas
was not always for that friend's best good, but it contributed greatly
to her happiness. This constant interest and firm support Bryn
Mawr had enjoyed from the moment that Mary Garrett wrote that
first letter to the Trustees, stating that her "interest in the College
depended upon her [Carey Thomas's] connection with it."
For some years there had not been that great and continuous
need for buildings which had existed earlier. The larger student
body made a new gymnasium necessary, for which the Athletic As-
sociation, stimulated by Constance McK. Applebee, Director of Ath-
letics, undertook to find the money. They did gather a goodly part
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 95
of it, but in the end had to appeal to President Thomas's proficient
skill at money raising to make the amount complete. It was built
in 1909 and was followed by the necessity for a larger Infirmary.
For this the Class of 1905 gave a basic gift, supplemented by an-
other from 1909, with a loan to the College from Mary Garrett to
fill out the required sum.
Soon after Miss Garrett's taking up residence with her friend,
plans for the complete rebuilding of the Deanery got under way. It
spread out under the shadow of the new Library and of the new
prestige of the College made possible by its larger facilities. The
two had it in mind that the brown-shingled house, wide and capa-
cious now, should become famous for the entertaining of distin-
guished guests. They hoped that it might come about that all great
persons visiting America from abroad would be entertained at the
Deanery and would count it as a most memorable item in the itin-
erary. Wings were thrown out, servants' quarters added, the garden
was replanned with terraces and fountains and copings of glazed
Moorish tiles. There was still kept the great old cherry tree which
was left from the time when that high stretch of land was a farm
with an orchard, and Joseph Taylor had bought it for his new Col-
lege.
From all over the world, from Carey Thomas's extensive wan-
derings, from Mary Garrett's more circumscribed journeys, treas-
ures were brought back by these two for whom the ownership of
beautiful things was such a delight. The Deanery is even now a mu-
seum of all the taste and art of the late nineteenth century and the
beginning of the twentieth, some of it beautiful, some long since
outgrown. It is a pleasure to contemplate it and to think of how
two people could so fully have what they wanted. The Sargent
portrait of Mary Garrett, painted to hang in the Medical School
which she so richly and shrewdly endowed, had a singularly for-
tunate copy hung in the great entertainment room of the Deanery.
It shows a happy and lovable likeness of a just, able and eminent
woman, who managed the fortune which her father left her with in-
sight and constructive generosity. That kind and gentle face betrays
no evidence of the long and distressing illness, heroically borne, of
which she died in 1915.
She left the whole of her estate to Carey Thomas with the im-
96 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
plication that it should later go to Bryn Mawr College. Neither o
the two was aware of how much it had already diminished in the
changing conditions of a new economic era. Carey Thomas, after
her first overwhelming grief which for a time made her indifferent
to all matters, even to her work for the College, began, finally, to
gather her forces again. Here was a marked change in her circum-
stances. The girl reared in Quaker austerity, in a household of no
great means and of unbounded generosity in many directions, was
now a woman possessed of a fortune with a thousand enterprises
upon which to spend it, all of them allied in some way to her vision
of a finer world for women. Her College had a national reputation
and was beginning to have an international one. There seemed to
be nothing in the way of her going forward to wider undertakings
and greater and greater successes.
And yet she was riding toward the most profound crisis of her
life, and of her Administration. One of the great educational ques-
tions of the day was to catch her unawares, was to rock the College
from the highest to the lowest, was to show, as nothing else ever
could have shown, just what manner of woman she was and over
what manner of college she presided.
Chapter VIII
"THIS GREATEST
OF ALL EXPERIMENTS"
It was President Thomas's natural impulse and finally her chosen
method to carry forward her Administration with a firm and in-
dividual hand. It seemed to her that it was the most efficient kind of
procedure for one person at the center of things, and best informed
of conditions and circumstances, to make the necessary decisions
upon which others were to act. She had more than once repeated to
the Directors that it was preferable for her to decide all minor mat-
ters and ask for the approval of the Board later. Usually this worked
well enough; the Board deferred to her judgment concerning things
upon which she was better informed than they. Occasionally
it ended in strong differences of opinion, so that she learned, per-
force, just what matters could be considered minor and what could
not. In the high pursuit of ways and means in the building of the
Library, her most cherished material project, she pushed her au-
thority so far that there was deep disagreement between her and
some of the Trustees, leading directly and indirectly to a series of
resignations.
There was precedent enough at that time for this kind of ac-
tion. It was customary in most institutions for the head of the col-
lege to hold large authority. By Bryn Mawr's Charter the President
was the only point of contact between the Trustees and Directors,
who were the real governors of the College, and the Faculty whom
they employed and the students whose education they had in
charge. To be in the position of that intermediary was to hold
97
Qg WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
great power and to feel that the using of such power was in the in-
terests of successful administration. The slower course of consulta-
tion, of taking advice and getting opinion from the respective
bodies concerned, was often too tedious for her impatient determi-
nation. In her time, moreover, it was often the habit and example
of large and successful business as a matter of course to give much
authority to a central head and a strong hand. John Garrett, Mary
Garrett's father, had become President of the Baltimore 8c Ohio
Railroad Company when it was in mounting difficulties, had pushed
through his changes in the face of many protests and had arrived at
dazzling success. Johns Hopkins, his friend and the largest stock-
holder, had nominated him for President in this difficult time and
had always upheld him in a firm rule. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., had
been another case in point. They had all come a long way from
Joseph Taylor.
While buildings, upkeep, discriminating maintenance of the stu-
dent body in numbers and in ability were all of very great impor-
tance in Carey Thomas's eyes, she was keenly aware of the point
where she must be most vigilant, where any diminution of Bryn
Mawr's high reputation could well find a beginning. This was in the
quality of her Faculty. Over the choice and retention of the teach-
ing body she watched without ceasing, and with full assumption of
the idea that hers was the important voice and hers the ultimate
authority in matters of appointment and dismissal. She had won
a high reputation in the matter of finding and making use of prom-
ising young scholars. She knew so much more of the details and was
so convincing as to particulars in making her recommendations
that the Directors did not often oppose her offered judgment
Every new acquisition was the object of her direct and acute in-
spection as well as was his subsequent career. Such and such a per-
son is not the success that we had hoped, she would report, "but he
is aware of his mistakes and is trying his best to overcome his
faults. If we see some improvement we should try him further for
another year." The faults which she might enumerate could range
from "his shocking enunciation" to "his eccentric convictions, so
persistently held." Against the first of these she might have ordinary
right of complaint, but by inveighing against the last she was ap-
proaching the nerve center of a very delicate question.
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 99
The educational trend of the time was more and more artic-
ulately toward the support of freedom in teaching, a trend of which
her able Faculty was very well aware. And a body of Directors
whose central core was a company of Quakers would be certain
never to subscribe knowingly to anything else. Yet aware as Carey
Thomas was of new trends and new opportunities in education,
often indeed ahead of them in point of time, she seems now to have
been extraordinarily blind to the inexorable drift which had set in,
away from centralized and authoritative administration and toward
a fuller democratic method in every line of American procedure, in
the administration of colleges as well as in every other variety of
necessary government. And it was perhaps inevitable that she
should be blind also to the fact that the College was growing up,
with more and more of its own capacity for advance and develop-
ment. It had been an entity of its own even when it came into her
hands; it was even more so now Carey Thomas was not the Col-
lege, nor was the College Carey Thomas, no matter what the out-
side world might think. It was conceivable that the College might
outgrow her and ride over her.
Toward the end of the year 1915 all these matters had begun
to combine into definite shape. The newly organized American As-
sociation of University Professors took up the question of relations
between faculties and administration, and gave notice that they
were about to make a thorough study of all professors* contracts.
They had worked out a tentative system of more democratic pro-
cedure in the matter, particularly of appointments and tenure, and
had submitted it for examination to the American colleges and
universities. President Thomas laid these suggestions before the
Board of Directors, but insisted, as she did so, that Bryn Mawr was
not to be judged just as were other colleges. Elsewhere there was
strict departmental control, with individual heads regulating those
under them; here there was little authority delegated to heads of
departments; all real questions went back to the President. But
none the less she said that she was setting about holding confer-
ences with the full professors to talk over the contracts and to see
whether there were anything in them which the Association of
University Professors would be apt to condemn. It was obviously
her idea that, after due discussion, she and the Directors would de-
1OO WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
cide what changes were necessary and would grant, out of their au-
thority, such more liberal measures as they thought were appro-
priate. She did not realize that here was the crux of the whole
matter and that educational advance was calling for a vital alter-
ation in the whole of traditional procedure.
Other colleges and universities were already making their first
experiments with some more democratic policy in regard to the
position and tenure of professors, notably Yale and the University
of Pennsylvania, but were proceeding with caution and had not
yet gone very far. It fell to Bryn Mawr, because of circumstances
and unexpected timing, to be thrust into the forefront of the whole
discussion and the whole movement, to bring the question to wide
public notice and finally to be the first to establish a complete work-
ing system according to the new regime. The event was so entan-
gled with personalities, with outraged feelings, with matters which
seemed to be concerned only with a single college and finally with a
single individual, that even now perhaps the issue is not clear. Yet
there was worked out at Bryn Mawr, and settled, with unexpected
and what seemed at the time deplorable publicity, one of the vital
problems of modern education and its future usefulness to the
world.
It is clear enough now, since the question is so greatly magni-
fied by the position of leadership of the United States, that the
Western World has become the bulwark of freedom and democracy.
And it is also clear that the greatest support of that bulwark is
education, general education, all-pervasive education. To higher,
academic education belongs the great responsibility and opportu-
nity of training intelligent youth for its specific work in life, of the
advancing of techniques, of conducting research for support of new
formulas for political and social problems, of entering on scientific
experiments which will carry ordinary life into higher reaches and
greater security than it has ever known before. If academic educa-
tion is to support all these processes of advancing democracy, what
chance is there of its success if it is not democratic in itself? Yet
developing education had gone well into the twentieth century
without having given full attention to what seems now so obvious
and crucial a question.
At Bryn Mawr as elsewhere, there was a rising tide of interest
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 1O1
and argument over this new examination of the relations of facul-
ties to the administrations and to the governing bodies of their
colleges. And at this special time there was at Bryn Mawr an un-
easy undercurrent of criticism and of discontent with the estab-
lished methods of appointment and dismissal, with the restrictions
on the individual professor's right to lecture outside the College, to
take part in summer school sessions, or to his being given any as-
sured tenure of office. Small things have a way of coming to the
surface of any agitation, and of remaining there, tossed higher and
higher by the increasing turbulence of feeling, assuming far more
importance than anyone ever intended to attribute to them. The
matter of compulsory attendance at Commencement was one of
these. Into this troubled stream there suddenly flowed, early in
1916, an unfortunate succession of incidents, of specific cause for
indignation, for protest and open objection.
In the English Department, the head of the essay section, the
course which we now speak of as Freshman English, was a woman
of brilliant mind and scholarship, who proved herself, in the course
of her years at Bryn Mawr, as a rarely competent teacher in a
difficult medium. But she was thought by the President to have
insufficient success with the organizing and administering of the
mechanics of that most difficult of courses, Required English Com-
position, which at this time went through both the freshman
and the sophomore years. She was rather abruptly supplanted by
a young man whom Carey Thomas thought to be one of her most
fortunate choices, since he came with high recommendations and
pursued by offers of places elsewhere. It is not difficult to imagine
the collision of authority and the personal feeling which grew out
of this measure, particularly when it was accompanied by the Presi-
dent's decision to accompany the change by a reduction in salary to
the former head of the essay section. Yet the young man and the
older woman met and composed their differences with understand-
ing, both of the situation and of the methods of Miss Thomas, and
in the end promotion, rather than reduction, followed for the dis-
placed instructor as she entered upon her most successful years at
Bryn Mawr. This department, after a furious upheaval, after hot
argument in which even the Alumnae took part, settled down to
functioning again. Along with this episode there had been wide-
102 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
spread talk of injustice to a young member of the Chemistry Depart-
ment who said he had an offer elsewhere, but was denied promised
promotion after the offer had gone out of reach. But this grievance
seemed to rest on very uncertain basis, and the talk died down.
The final incident concerned a certain Professor Richard Hoi-
brook, the only member of the Department of Italian, an able
scholar in his field who had reiterated for several years that he
would not stay longer unless he were made a full professor. It was
one of Miss Thomas's less popular decrees that there should not be
a full professorship in certain departments which she considered
of insufficient importance or which drew too few students to war-
rant one. Her choice as to which these departments were was natu-
rally never concurred in by the principal figure in the department
itself, and often by only a few of the rest of the Faculty. Dr. Hoi-
brook, after having had a year's notice that he would not have pro-
motion when his three-year term came to an end, was told, finally,
that his services would be concluded at the end of the academic
year. At first he said fhat he would stay on as an associate professor.
On that offer's being declined, he voiced vigorous protests and in-
sistence that his dismissal rested on personal grounds and that he
had been unjustly dealt with. He allowed his grievance to be taken
up by one of the important newspapers of Philadelphia, and a bat-
tle was joined which shook the College to its foundations.
The editors of the Philadelphia Public Ledger began their
campaign by sending a circular letter to various Alumnae and to
members of the Board of Directors, saying that they felt concerned
over the injustices done, citing a list of examples of which they had
heard. Some of their information in this regard was correct and
some widely erroneous. They finally reached their climax in saying
that since the College was an institution chartered by the State of
Pennsylvania for the service of the public, the conduct of the Presi-
dent was a public matter and they proposed to examine into the
question as to whether she were really fit to retain her office.
On seeing the circular letter, which of course came finally to
her hands, Carey Thomas was staggered by attack from such an
unexpected quarter and by the extent and severity of the accusa-
tions. She prepared a careful statement, refuting and explaining the
special details of unfair treatment which the Ledger letter had
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 1OJ
referred to in such unequivocal terms. She went herself, with the
reply in her hand, to the managing editor of the paper and stated
her case, stated her belief that these charges were unwarranted and
constituted serious damage to her professional reputation. The edi-
tor gave the reply his close attention, said that it was evident that
in certain matters they had been misinformed, and promised that
nothing should be published without her first seeing the article and
being given a chance to reply.
But although specific action in particular cases could be ex-
plained away, nothing could remove the fact that there had been
growing discontent for a long period, that sharp criticism had risen
into established distrust, that many of the teaching staff felt insecure
in their tenure of office, which was "at the pleasure of the Directors/'
and that they were deeply resentful of those matters in which they
were not allowed to make their own decisions. It was quite clear
that it would be no longer possible to maintain an adequate Faculty
at Bryn Mawr unless some very radical change was put into effect.
The full professors, who had taken updn themselves the re-
sponsibility of stating the grievances and asking for redress, had
already formed a committee consisting of Drs. Arthur Wheeler and
Tenney Frank of the Latin Department, Dr. William Huff in phys-
ics and Dr. George Barton in biblical history. They were all men so
well established in their departments and so valuable to the college
that there could be no question of their having any personal stake
in the matter. Under their initiative a letter dated March 29, 1916,
was sent to the President. It stated that "the present method of
making and terminating appointments ... at Bryn Mawr College
has for several years excited much unfavorable comment which
has been detrimental to the best interests of the college. It seems to
us that some remedy is needed. . . ."
It went on to suggest the adoption of the "Practical Proposals"
offered by the American Association of University Professors, and
in particular that the Faculty set up a standing committee to be con-
sulted on all appointments, or refusal of reappointments. It asked
further that representatives of the Faculty be given a place and a
vote on the Board of Directors. It was signed by nearly all of the
full professors but with one or two very definite abstentions.
The President laid it before the Directors at a special meeting
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
called the day after the Faculty letter was received. A committee of
the Directors was appointed to confer with the Faculty; it did not in-
clude President Thomas. A series of meetings for conference was
begun, during which members of this committee managed to talk
with the whole of the Bryn Mawr Faculty, including the associates
as well as professors and associate professors, to gather a consensus
of opinion and to ascertain the true state of mind of Bryn Mawr's
teaching staff. They were in the midst of these conferences when
the first Ledger article appeared on April isth. The opening state-
ment was that "in consequence of a charge of autocratic and arbi-
trary action/' the Faculty and Directors of Bryn Mawr were in con-
ference over proposed changes.
Appended to it was a letter from one of the very prominent
Alumnae, stating frankly that, fully aware as she was of the fine
work done by Miss Thomas for Bryn Mawr, the College in her
opinion was now "overadministered," with too many minute rules
and multiplied penalties infringing on what had been meant to be
a free intellectual life. The next day there followed an article even
more damaging and beginning with the statement, which was en-
tirely incorrect, that an "investigating committee" had been organ-
ized among the Directors "to sit upon the charges preferred by the
senior professors against the administration of Dr. M. Carey
Thomas." The implication of such wording was misleading to the
last degree and was answered at once by Thomas Raeburn White,
one of the Trustees, to the effect that the Directors' Committee had
been appointed not by any means to investigate accusations, but
to consult with the senior professors as to a new plan for laying
more responsibility of government upon the Faculty.
But what, in the Ledger article, was far less answerable, was
almost a full page of letters from former professors, some of them
of very distinguished position, among them Dr. Neilson who later
became President of Smith and Dr. Alvin Johnson who was to be
head of the New School for Social Research. There was a letter
from Dr. Gonzales Lodge, he who had once remonstrated with
Carey Thomas upon the overawing effect her presence had in the
Oral Examinations. Eight of the writers condemned the present rule
unreservedly, speaking bitterly of their treatment at Bryn Mawr,
and declaring that they would never recommend a student to
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 105
accept appointment there. At the end of the list of eight such crit-
ics, the ninth man spoke in her defense, saying that while Yale,
where he was professor, had a certain measure of Faculty voice in
appointments, it was still true that just such cases of apparent
injustice as had been cited could arise there also. Though he called
President Thomas "the autocrat of Bryn Mawr/* he pointed out
that centralized authority over appointment and dismissal was still
the custom "In most of our colleges," a state of affairs "which the
whole tendency of the time was bound to bring to an end." This was
indeed how the tendency of the time was bringing it to an end here
and now.
As a result of the publicity, everyone, of course, took sides at
once. There was hardly a member of the Faculty who had not some
sharp grievance small or great, yet a very small number raised
their voices still in praise of their President's accomplishments. A
large number of the Alumnae stated it as their honest opinion that
her method had been wrong and that a drastic change must be
made in the whole administrative system. Yet the idea of her being
removed from office, even of there being any question of doing it,
had not the smallest consideration. The Trustees and Directors
stood by her with a firmness which must have been infinite comfort
in the face of this fierce thrust against her pride and her pride
in Bryn Mawr. The Presidents of Harvard, Mount Holyoke, Smith
and Vassar published statements praising her leadership and her
high ideals for American education.
After her first shock of indignation, in which she planned bit-
terly to bring suit against the newspaper "for defamation of char-
acter," she was persuaded to take the matter less keenly to heart
and let the storm blow over. The management was already com-
mitted to a change, and the real necessity was for all of them to
address themselves to that task and accomplish it in cool judgment
and not hot altercation. As one reads the correspondence and
watches the give-and-take of acrimonious public dispute, and as
one observes also the concurrent negotiation and consultation
which were to lead to such constructive results, one realizes to the
full the differing qualities of Carey Thomas. It was the sum of her
inherent failings which brought about the situation, plus, besides,
the conflicting elements of traditional procedure and irresistible
1O6 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
trend of the times. Concerning those failings of her impetuous and
commanding character her adherents have never attempted denial
or excuse. But as she turned her back on the bitterly humiliating
public condemnation and brought to bear, where it was most in-
tensely needed, the whole of her experienced wisdom, her gift for
clarification and persuasion, we see her doing her largest service
for the College. The generosity of her surrender to the new necessi-
ties obviated a hundred difficult and time-wasting moments. A
new plan, a written constitution is no easy thing to bring into being,
and calls for long consideration and exchanges of views. Directors,
President and Faculty carried on the conferences with singular
lack of bitterness or antagonism. The Faculty asked for certain
measures which in the end they did not receive. One of them was
the right, which was the President's, to review the decisions of the
Self-Government Association. Against this, feeling and knowing it
to be an error, Carey Thomas argued more earnestly than she had
over any point which more nearly concerned her personal author-
ity. Here, as before, she set the position of the College far above
her own.
Much good was accomplished in the end. The Faculty Plan of
Government, to which the professors contributed their ideas, which
Charles J. Rhoads and Thomas Raeburn White, with their com-
mittee, shaped into working and legal form, stood well to the fore
among those new academic constitutions which were slowly taking
form elsewhere. The Faculty were to elect three representatives who
were to sit in the meetings with the Directors, to explain the posi-
tion of their colleagues, but who were not to have a vote. Matters of
appointment and promotion were to be passed on, with recommen-
dation to action, from the Faculty to the President, who was to
make final recommendation to the Directors. Committees of the Fac-
ulty were to govern the policies concerning examinations, curricu-
lum and the forming of new departments. Full professors were to
have indefinite tenure of office. The prohibition on outside lectures
it may have occurred to someone at this point that such oppor-
tunities brought prestige to the College and on teaching in sum-
mer schools was removed, but it was still compulsory to attend
Commencement. There had been a request for the altering of Bryn
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 107
Mawr's Charter, to make it officially a nonsectarian college, and
thus put it into the category accepted by the organization for retire-
ment incomes, the Carnegie Pension Fund. Bryn Mawr was not ac-
cepted as eligible until later, when the event came about largely
through the tireless efforts of Carey Thomas.
The smoke cleared away; the Public Ledger came out later
with an editorial giving tribute to Bryn Mawr's President as an
able officer in the great domain o education. Miss Thomas, in a
statement to the College News, declared:
"Trustees and college presidents should no longer shoulder
alone the responsibility of maintaining the teaching and research of
any given college at the highest possible level. I confidently believe
that the college professors of the country would rise to these respon-
sibilities if placed on them. It is my hope that at Bryn Mawr we
shall be able to solve this most difficult problem of all college ad-
ministration."
And in that statement, coming at the end of the bitter experi-
ence of merited rebuke, accompanied by criticism, much misstate-
ment and obloquy, she was none the less ungrudgingly sincere. One
of the harshest denouncements uttered by the Public Ledger re-
ferred to "the absolute dictatorship of the woman who holds a posi-
tion which might be made of the highest influence for the advance-
ment of learning and for the fostering of academic freedom." Such
an influence for the advancement of learning she had surely been,
stimulating, challenging and unfearing. Such an influence for aca-
demic freedom she would now set out to be, and would bring her
beloved Bryn Mawr once again into leadership. How deep the hurt
had been, how reluctantly she had changed her whole course of
action, she never voluntarily admitted. But she gave evidence of
it when nineteen years later she stood on the platform of Goodhart
Hall at the College's fiftieth anniversary celebration and made her
last public speech. She could not forbear indicating then that she
believed the professors were being called upon to spend precious
time, which should go into research, upon administrative duties
which could as easily "have been done by secretaries." In her years
of retirement she had somewhat lost touch with the heart of the
question, with the fact that while some drudging administrative
108 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
work was unavoidably necessary, the professors of Bryn Mawr had
not sought to take over the prerogatives of secretaries but of Presi-
dents.
But she entered upon the practice of the new system at once.
And at the Commencement of June, 1916, while her large audience
was waiting breathlessly to hear whether she would mention these
turbulent passages of the last few months, she spoke out nobly in
support of the Plan of Government: "Other great experiments
have succeeded at Bryn Mawr against prophecy and general ex-
pectation. Why not this greatest of all experiments in American
college education?"
Chapter IX
"THE ENDURING ELEMENTS"
Roughly speaking, the First World War did not make such an im-
pact upon women's colleges as did the Second. The United States
had not yet discovered the full measure of reserve force latent in its
feminine population, still not generally considered to be even
equal to the task of voting. But during 1917 and 1918 there was
such undeniable proof of what women could do when they were
given the opportunity, or when they had stepped out and taken it,
such illustration of their capacity for new sorts of trained skills,
of their industry and courage and their overflowing patriotism,
that general opinion was obliged to reconsider. It began by giving
them the vote, called then a privilege, but so long proclaimed by
Carey Thomas and others as an undeniable right.
With the men's colleges decimated as to students, made over
into military training schools, deprived of their young instructors
and in a good many cases of their older specialists, it fell, to a cer-
tain degree, to the women's institutions to carry on the normal
continuity of established American education, and to keep fully in
sight the high standards which it had achieved and could not afford
to lose. Therefore one finds Bryn Mawr moving forward on its own
way, with some diminution of upper-class students, with some loss in
teaching staff, much troubled by the multitude of smaller difficulties
but not giving ground on larger issues. Resident students' time which
was given to war work was taken out of that assigned to athletics and
similar activities. The great difficulty of obtaining proper food to
.supply the halls was much mitigated later by the working force of
^energetic young women on the Bryn Mawr Farm.
109
110
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
War brides were accepted in residence after a little debate
and were expected to carry on exactly as before. The experi-
ence of sudden marriage, of almost immediate parting, of seeing the
young husband plunge into a war already so far advanced that its
full danger and horror were absolutely known and unhidden be-
hind any rosy dreams of easy victory all this was the emotional
ordeal which few experiences in later life could ever match. Yet
these girls never asked for nor received any special consideration;
they toiled over their papers and wrote their examinations in a fine
pretense of business as usual Some left for war work or to follow
their husbands, but there was no lack of applicants for entrance.
Here as elsewhere there came to everyone an almost unbelieving rush
of excitement and relief when in November of 1918 there was an-
nounced a Faculty resolution that there should be no lectures that
day because an armistice had been signed. Isabel Maddison, Assist-
ant to the President, heretofore always moving in unimpeachably
correct British dignity, dashed up the tower stairs and rang Taylor
bell with her own hand.
The work of the Faculty during that period was extra heavy,
for, even though shorthanded, they had taken a large task to per-
form. The Plan of Government, if it were not to be merely some-
thing drawn up on paper, called for arduous labor in getting it into
working order. There was some justification in Carey Thomas's
later statement that it gave professors the work of secretaries to do;
it went further and gave them, so it sometimes seemed, the work of
galley slaves. Yet all were willing to settle to it, for it stood not
only for hard-won victory in the past but for wide results in the
future. For them it was a period of learning how a democratic
system could be turned to the efficient carrying out of a supremely
complex process. There was no room in these new debates for verbi-
age or personal difference; results and agreements had to be ob-
tained, and were.
Committees were made up on Petitions, on Curriculum, on
Admissions, besides the all-important one on Appointments. The
only member left of that first brilliant Faculty with which Bryn
Mawr opened, Charlotte Angus Scott, with her unruly cropped hair
growing gray and her rough-hewn strikingness of feature as strong
and rugged as ever, stood up to give their first report.
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? Ill
"Having now a share in the government," she said, "we must
do our share and not throw solutions of difficulties on the Board of
Directors, especially difficulties which would not have arisen under
the old system." Great effort had always been made on this commit-
tee, she explained, to send recommendations to the Directors as a
unanimous opinion. "So far we have not yet been obliged to have
recourse to the crude device of a majority vote. By devoting full
time to discussion we have been able to secure unanimity." She was
voicing the true spirit behind the Plan of Government, which, if
supported by anything less than the highest motives, could break
down into sectional or individual self-seeking.
President Thomas presided over the meetings without offering
comment or obstruction, and often contributed penetrating advice.
After all, she was more experienced in what they were doing than
they were themselves. But it must have been hard for her to see
the language examinations modified, and then a general recon-
sideration of the College Entrance requirements being taken under
advisement. It had always been Carey Thomas's contention that
these examinations must be difficult and exacting, increasingly so
as the resources and skill in preparation of the lower schools grew
greater. Some years before, Dr. Abraham Flexner, in a study of
the American college, pointed out that rigid requirements laid
down by the colleges exerted influence through the whole structure
of secondary education, tending to bind it to such a limited course
that it was impossible to keep real step with changing times. The
process tended also to produce students who had followed so closely
a prescribed line of work that the necessary power of selection was
wanting when they came into college, with its whole or modified
elective system. Into this matter the Bryn Mawr Faculty went also,
prescribing new specifications and changes, with a greater latitude
of choice in the subjects on which applicants were to be examined
for matriculation. The decisions on this question came after long
and complex debate. Other colleges had arrived at such changes
considerably earlier.
All these and other problems were deliberated and brought to
conclusion, even in the midst of so much overwork and the distract-
ing circumstances of the war, called the Great War then, with no
suspicion of how much greater a one was even then in the making.
112 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
In 1915 the Bryn Mawr Club of New York had made President
Thomas their first honorary member, in appreciation of her con-
tribution to "the enduring elements in the structure and life of the
College." It was the firm strength of these enduring elements which
had held Bryn Mawr so stoutly during this tumultuous period of
the war and of internal change. But with the peace there came to
everyone an upsurge of belief and an unquenchable feeling that
with all this struggle there must surely be something great to show
for it, a new world of ideas and action. People were set free to
be happy, to travel again, to embark on new enterprises. The air
was teeming with plans, those of Carey Thomas among them. But
first the Faculty and the College had to turn their hands to a large,
grave need.
In 1920 there had passed through the Board of Directors a
resolution requiring the retirement of all members of the Adminis-
tration and the teaching staff at the age of sixty-five. It brought Miss
Thomas's own departure very near, for she would reach that age in
1922. But she did not hesitate over this. She could still recollect,
as she had once told James Rhoads, having seen in the universities
of Germany and Switzerland a department's usefulness being par-
alyzed as all concerned waited for an aging and obstructive incum-
bent to die. This, she determined, was never to happen at Bryn
Mawr, She was quite certain that, in her own case, she could bow
herself out graciously and leave her work to other hands. With the
inheritance from Miss Garrett she would be able to go forward
into other, nonacademic activities, to travel widely and to give
largely to all those causes in which she was so much interested. Al-
ready she had been turning back to the College her salary as Presi-
dent, in place of the contribution which her friend had made yearly.
She had been practicing wide generosity in other ways, too wide
to be wise, as she was to see in time.
But for members of the Faculty, retirement was a very different
matter. With the high prices prevalent during the war, and the
expensiveness of even the most modest scale of living, the matter
of saving for later years had gone by the board. Any measure for
compulsory retirement, it became evident, must be accompanied by
some provision for academic pensions.
The answer seemed to He in the receipt, at this time, of a large
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? Hg
bequest from the estate of Margaret Olivia Sage, whose husband,
Russell Sage, had left her a substantial fortune which she consid-
ered a trust to be eventually distributed among the philanthropic
interests which meant much to both of them. Among the other
women's colleges, Bryn Mawr was left a portion designated, when
the will was probated, as $500,000, but which proved later to
amount to approximately $800,000.
Such a sum seemed at first, and to everyone's relief, to be com-
pletely adequate for the necessary purpose, but disillusionment
soon followed. The College was deeply in debt; all of the buildings
were seriously out of repair because during the war there had
been neither opportunity nor money for putting them in order.
The power house needed a large addition for the proper heating
and lighting of the College. In every direction could be seen a yawn-
ing repository for the newly acquired funds. The Carnegie Founda-
tion for the Advancement of Teaching had been set up some years
before, and was subsidizing a plan for retirement pensions, but
with the specification that its benefits could go only to nonsectar-
ian colleges and universities. This Bryn Mawr was not, so the Foun-
dation's Board declared, because of the requirement in Dr. Taylor's
will that the Trustees must be chosen from the members of the
Orthodox Society of Friends. It then became clear how wise had
been the step, in 1906, of extending the governing body to a wider
list of Directors, with Alumnae represented and with no stipula-
tion as to their being of any special denomination.
It was owing to the diligence of Carey Thomas that the deci-
sion of the Carnegie Foundation was altered. She wrote letters; she
enlisted the most impressive members of the Board of Trustees to
go with her to interview the officers of the Carnegie Foundation;
she gathered legal opinion and convincing statements as to Bryn
Mawr's real status. It was finally made fully evident that, although
the Trustees were the holding company in which ownership of the
College was vested, the Directors were the operators, in whose hands
lay the real conduct of its affairs. With this clarification the Carne-
gie Foundation declared itself satisfied, admitted Bryn Mawr to
their eligible list and promised a grant of $50,000 toward the setting
up of a contributory pension system at Bryn Mawr. It was still nec-
essary for the College to have, at the beginning, the interest on
114 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
$200,000 to finance its own share of the contributions. At the ear-
nest solicitation of the Faculty this sum was appropriated from
the Russell Sage funds. But this, even yet, did not settle the prob-
lem, so deep and difficult had it become. As inflationary conditions
mounted, the situation of the teaching staff became steadily and
seriously worse.
In a dignified and carefully considered report, the Faculty
stated the truly desperate nature of their plight. The younger mem-
bers were being obliged to borrow money to meet the most ordinary
scale of family expenses. None of them could afford the extra cost
of taking spare time and travel to enlarge their research. They were
not making specific demands; they were not threatening to leave;
but they were asking the Directors to look for some general remedy
for their critical and increasing need. President Thomas, presiding
at the Faculty meeting when this report was debated, said that no
person could agree with it more fully than she did. And Dr. Ar-
thur Wheeler, who had been so prominent in securing the Plan of
Government, now stood up to suggest his remedy. The Faculty
should ask all of those who were in any way connected with the
College to combine in a drive to raise a million dollars in endow-
ment funds. The Russell Sage Fund and the grant from the Carne-
gie Foundation made it just possible to set up a pension system.
But there was scarcely anyone there who could hope to join in a
contributory pension plan when he had no more than the barest
living.
After the years of chaotic financial conditions the country over
during the war, after the long period of bond drives, Red Cross
campaigns and money raising for foreign relief in the devastating
famine conditions that attended the end of the war, it seemed now
a tremendous undertaking to set out to gather funds for Bryn
Mawr. But the Directors agreed, and the Alumnae, throwing them-
selves into the plan, set the goal at two million instead of one. The
Alumnae were many times stronger than they had been at the last
money raising when the Rockefeller gift was to be met by an equal
amount raised by the College. Under the Alumnae Presidency of
Louise Congdon Francis they set up a far more systematic organi-
zation than they had ever had before, arranged by geographical
districts, with chairmen and committees for each. Truly notable
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 115
figures emerged as leaders, with Caroline McCormick Slade at their
head. The labor was arduous and often looked impossible as month
followed month, but the General Education Board had promised
the last $250,000 of each million, which gave a closer goal for
which to strive. By the end of the campaign in 1920 the sum was
completed and oversubscribed, a signal success and an irreplace-
able contribution to the welfare and security of the College. There
had grown up, also, a most satisfactory coordination of the whole
membership of the College organization, all working together in
full agreement and efficiency to the common end.
In the whole of the undertaking, President Thomas had played
a lesser part than in similar periods of the College's history. She had
passed through a most arduous three years, and some deeply diffi-
cult personal experience. She had also been steeped in the political
excitement of the immediate time, the coming of woman suffrage
for which she had worked so long, the campaign for the League of
Nations in which her persistent disapproval of Woodrow Wilson
had at last dissolved, and the growing vision of a possible system
of world peace. Throughout the war she had been cut off from
any opportunity for travel, which was her real rest and relaxation.
Now she had asked for a year's leave of absence in the academic
period of 1919 and 1920, to go around the world. Earlier she
could not have afforded it; soon she might be too old. Her place
was given over to Helen Taft, young for a Dean, very young for
an acting President.
But no person could believe that the mind of Carey Thomas,
no matter how far away she traveled, would cease to be occupied
with large and enterprising matters. Like many other people, she
was certain that something new and triumphant must emerge after
the war years of struggle and sacrifice through which the world had
been laboring. And she felt that in the quest for some new good,
Bryn Mawr must have its part.
The absolute necessity, which had developed during the war,
for the inclusion of women in the ranks of industry, was succeeded
by a general acknowledgment of its continued expediency. But the
place of women here, as elsewhere, was ill defined so that there
were wide opportunities for exploitation and for clashes of con-
flicting interests. There were sharp differences of opinion even
Il6 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
among the ranks of labor itself. This Carey Thomas had been
watching and considering, in her unending vigil as champion of
the various rights and activities of women. In some of her earlier
experiments, and the departments she had set up at Bryn Mawr,
she had added vocational and professional training to a more or
less established system of theoretical instruction. Now she was to
approach a new plan from the opposite quarter and was to add
theoretical teaching to vocational skill already acquired.
As she passed through England, she had observed anew and
more closely the labor colleges carried on by the trade unions,
and as she moved southward for a tour of Egypt these matters were
steadily in her thoughts. She has told vividly of the evening in the
desert, during one of those fertile moments of a creative mind,
when solitude, beauty of surroundings and subconscious approach
to a decision combined to produce within her the nucleus of that
plan which was to grow into the Summer School at Bryn Mawr
for the benefit of women in industry. She was convinced of the need;
she was sure of Bryn Mawr's resources and good will; she was cer-
tain that the organizing power of the College would surmount all
obstacles that would present themselves. As soon as she returned
home, in the autumn of 1920, she lost no time in laying her project
before the Board of Directors.
This undertaking, she assured them, would make no claim on
the income of the College; it merely asked for the loan of the build-
ings during the summer. Nothing would be set on foot until the
whole scheme was completely financed. The Faculty were to be thor-
oughly consulted so that there should be no misunderstandings as
to the sources of funds and the final purposes. What she wished to
do was to organize an eight-week Summer School for women in
industry, women "working with the tools of their trade," and to
offer them "a fuller special education and an opportunity to study
special subjects in order that they may widen their influence in the
industrial world, help in the social reconstruction and increase the
happiness and usefulness of their own lives."
It was perhaps the boldest of her bold plans, for it faced a
totally untried experiment in American education. A promise of
breadth of consultation was actually Its saving grace, for this
alone rendered it flexible and open to necessary change. The Direc-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 117
tors, although this was something utterly different from anything
presented, to them before, gave unanimous consent, as did the Board
of the Alumnae Association. The Faculty voted for it enthusiasti-
cally. It captured the imagination of the students who contributed
money, good will and hearty assistance. Contributions began to
come in; some were from a new quarter, from trade-union organi-
zations, from the Y.W.C.A. and from other associations acquainted
with the needs of working women. These offered expert advice on
the special problems which were to be met and on the selection of
candidates.
It was Miss Thomas's plan that a combined committee of Di-
rectors, Alumnae and Faculty, with some representatives from la-
bor associations, was to manage the whole undertaking. Yet her firm
belief was that the majority of the members of this managing body
should be of the College, since it was college education which was
here being dispensed. The Summer School opened in July of 1921,
with a student list of eighty-two.
The question of curriculum proved to be a surprisingly knotty
one. From the first, some subjects were required, English, and the
ability to reach a certain degree of self-expression, labor economics
and hygiene. In that first year there were courses in social and
political history, appreciation of music and others of the same sort,
along with industrial organization and women in the labor move-
ment. Tutors were appointed to consult with groups of five students
at a time, to see that they understood, that they were moving
forward and that they were not discouraged. Discussions were in-
vited and criticism was free and blunt. These students who had so
little time, who had, many of them, risked losing their jobs by tak-
ing these eight weeks for their own, could not be silent when they
were so desperately serious over getting the most possible out of the
two months of instruction.
There was for some time an unexpected undercurrent of curi-
ous suspicion, a haunting question. "What is Bryn Mawr College
doing this for? What do they expect from us?" There were, further,
strong clashes of opinion and ideas among the students themselves,
differences between unionists and nonunionists, between members
of different industries, of different nationalities, of different races.
General meetings, supposedly for recreation, could develop into a
Il8 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
tumult of furious argument and acrimony, completely beyond the
control of the chairman, until only the timely arrival of the Direc-
tor, Hilda Smith, could bring any order out of the chaos of warring
opinion. Hers was a remarkable gift for harmony, for promoting
real understanding and enlisting mutual good will, for stimulat-
ing the disputants to reach basic questions and to look for final
answers.
It was evident, by the end of the first session, that many changes
must be inaugurated if the School were to endure. This initial
period of trial and error, of pioneering experiment, was one of the
great contributions made by the Summer School for Women Work-
ers in Industry to further exploration and accomplishment in the
same field. One of the truths beginning to be clear was that labor,
not college organizations, knew really what form of instruction
labor required. This was difficult for President Thomas to see at
once, for when the School Director and others laid the idea before
her she still declared in effect, "We are professional educators; we
know more of this business than any layman from industry can."
At a meeting of the General Committee, held to discuss what
the experiences of the first year had shown, she was still holding to
this belief, through a long morning of argument and strongly con-
flicting opinion. When they adjourned for lunch, Carey Thomas
chanced to sit next to a buttonhole maker, a true representative of
the "women working with the tools of their trade," who offered her
a forthright account of labor's hunger for instruction and its specific
needs. As the afternoon session opened, Miss Thomas began it with
an arresting announcement:
"I have changed my mind."
The unwitting eloquence of her luncheon neighbor had con-
vinced Carey Thomas that labor knew what it wanted and alone
could explore the depths of its own needs. Henceforth there was a
Joint Committee, a very large one, with equal representation from
the College and from labor, with, in course of time, more and more
of the alumnae of the Summer School holding place on it. From that
time satisfactory progress was made.
Changes in curriculum laid greater and greater emphasis on
instruction in economics and labor relations. The Recreation De-
partment, met at first with the cry, "We don't know how to play,"
Panorama of Campus with Rhoads Hall in the foreground
A class in the Cloisters of the
M. Carey Thomas Library, 1953
(Photo Tom Leonard, by per-
mission of the Conde Nast Pub-
lications)
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 119
was able to convince these toiling women that life need not be
wholly barren of pleasure. It is difficult to measure what great good
this hitherto untried venture accomplished in its years at Bryn
Mawr, how it broadened the vision, overcame prejudices and en-
riched the industrial life of women who worked with their hands.
There was always pressure of applicants for admission. In the end,
the Summer School outgrew the space and time which the College
could give it. The occasion of departure, coming in the next
Administration, was an extraordinarily difficult passage in its con-
nection with the College. Other, similar schools followed it, at the
University of Wisconsin, at Barnard, at Smith and in the South.
One student at the Summer School managed, with sacrifice and
pride and happiness, to send a daughter to the larger Bryn Mawr
to acquire an A.B. Carey Thomas, long after her retirement, re-
mained a member of the governing Board.
June of 1922 arrived inexorably, with President Thomas among
the first to retire under the new regulation. She had made far-
reaching plans, to travel, to write her autobiography, to devote
herself to her rich variety of interests. So closely and so long had her
single and arresting personality been identified with the College
that people were asking everywhere what Bryn Mawr would be
without Miss Thomas. A committee to choose her successor had
been at work, with the names of candidate after candidate passing
under their scrutiny. Carey Thomas had some preferences of her
own; it was natural that she should lean toward someone with
whose work or whose mind she was sufficiently familiar to forecast
the Administration which would follow. Her methods could be
startlingly direct. "We shall now pass to the consideration of the
choice of a President/' the Chairman of the Board would announce,
upon which Miss Thomas has been quoted as saying at once, "Miss
Reilly, will you please withdraw?"
But among the Alumnae there was more and more urging
of the appointment of Marion Park, of the Bryn Mawr Class of
1898, European Fellow, M.A. and Ph.D. of Bryn Mawr, now Dean
of Radcliffe. The Directors began to feel the truth and soundness of
their opinion, reached agreement among themselves and offered
her the place. But Marion Park hesitated. She felt that her whole
nature, taste and dedication were with New England; she had
120 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
conscientious doubts as to whether she were really the right person
for that special and exacting position.
Carey Thomas could not understand how anyone would hesitate
In accepting what she herself felt was so privileged a place. When
the representatives of the Trustees journeyed to Cambridge, to speak
officially to Dean Park, President Thomas went also, for a word of
her own. A young Radcliffe student, coming suddenly into the
house, remembers being confronted there by an unknown and au-
gust lady, sitting in the dining room waiting for the end of a con-
ference. Visible through an opening door was an elderly gentleman
in close consultation with Marlon Park. The girl realized afterward
that the lady, who spoke to her graciously, but seemed a little
distraught, was Miss Thomas. As a result of the conference, Marion
Park overcame her hesitations and, to the great benefit of Bryn
Mawr, decided to accept.
President Thomas stepped out of her place in a blaze of
glory, of receptions and dinners, of honorary degrees and newspa-
per editorials and public tributes from every direction. The adula-
tion was all justified, the praise of what she had done fully de-
served. Hers was a figure bound to become legendary in time, a
person of unparalleled force and enterprise, of undaunted enthusi-
asm and all-embracing vision. She had been the center of more
than one controversy; criticisms had been hurled upon her; antag-
onists had risen up In her way. But no one could ever question
the completeness of the devotion with which she had given herself
to her chosen task, that of making education, "so freely offered to
young men," the natural right of women. She had gone on to the
opening of doors to women in all directions, doors of opportunity
for which they had not even thought to ask. No one could say
that such work was yet complete; a single lifetime could not possi-
bly compass all that was to be done. But she had set the feet of
very many upon upward paths, paths o which not even her vision
could see the end.
PART THREE
Marion Edwards Park
PRESIDENT 1922-1942
A.B. Bryn Marwr College, 1898
M.A. Bryn Mawr College, 1899
fh.D. Bryn Mawr College, 1928
Chapter X
"THE ANCIENT AND
UNIVERSAL BODY
OF SCHOLARS"
The many Quaker principles and ideas which had gone so largely
Into the founding of Bryn Mawr were rather unexpectedly and ex-
actly complemented by the advent, in this third Administration, of
that spirit of New England which arrived with Marion Park. In the
new President's House it was hardly necessary to see the portrait of
Jonathan Edwards on the wall to know that Bryn Mawr had, with
rare good fortune, enlisted the services of a member of that family
whose specialty ran so strangely to College presidencies. In her, as
in them all, there was that strain of conscientious, self-questioning
devotion to any accepted responsibility, which would ensure and
guard its fulfillment to the uttermost detail.
Marion Park came of a family in which ministers and scholars
had followed one another for generation after generation; she had
grown up, the daughter of a Congregational minister, in the par-
sonage of a small town, Gloversville, in upstate New York. Her
father was a scholar by nature; her brother, Edwards Park, was
destined for a career of brilliant scientific accomplishment. Jona-
than Edwards himself, who was her three times great-grandfather,
was so deeply absorbed, all his life, in religious and philosophic
thought, that it was said that he did not recognize his own children
on the street. In this respect Marion Park was the very epitome of
what he was not. The warmth of human kindness and understand-
122
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
ing which she brought to her contacts with people, the reassuring
friendliness of which even a stranger was immediately aware, had
their origin in her true and vivid interest in the citizens of the world
around her, and went far beyond any casual gift o agility of mem-
ory and easy recollection of names and faces.
Miss Thomas, on retirement, had expressed the wish that, after
a year of travel, she might continue to live in the old Deanery, so
much had it become identified with the sort of living which she and
Mary Garrett had established there. For Marion Park a smaller and
a simpler house was far more welcome, and she found it in Pen-y-
Groes, built first by Marion Reilly of the Class of 1901 when Bryn
Mawr, having in 1907 a Dean again, appointed her to the place. She
was one of Bryn Mawr's most distinguished Alumnae, in that office,
as Director, and in her great services to the Alumnae Association.
With some addition, the house was made ample enough for
the uses and the kind of entertaining which were so much more
congenial to Marion Park. In later years the Deanery was once more
to be available for the President's larger occasions, but during a
great deal of Miss Park's administration there were, here, with little
appearance of effort, a succession of dinners, teas, meetings, break-
fasts most particularly breakfasts and the entertainment of the
distinguished guests and speakers who came to the College. Marga-
ret Lord, Marion Park's friend who came to live with her there,
an able and delightful hostess in herself, "made it all possible/' as
Marion Park has said.
The receptions for the seniors, gay and friendly under James
Rhoads, gorgeous and rather alarmingly formal under Carey
Thomas, now turned into gatherings that began with breakfast
and lasted long after, in a babel of discussion and good talk. The
spring Faculty party which included all the Faculty children has
come to be an institution looked forward to for weeks ahead by the
very young population bordering the campus. The quality of en-
tertainment at Pen-y-Groes was, and continues to be, a full ex-
pression of a relation between President and students very different
from that which an older and more formal academic etiquette had
seemed to demand everywhere.
Members of the Faculty, of the administrative staff, of the
student body, after one interview, thought of Marion Park as a
124
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
friend, which she was. Combined with this quality of warmth she
had, as part of her inheritance, a cool judgment, a capacity for
rapid and true analysis of a problem or a situation, while there was
within her an arrow of integrity which pointed always and steadily
toward the right of a matter as she conceived it. And there was,
beneath everything, a strong, courageous wisdom which deepened
and strengthened as she and the College stood more and more in
need of it. There was the fullest necessity for these qualities, for
from the very beginning, she found herself launched into deep and
uncharted waters.
No one can forget how those wonderful changes toward mak-
ing a better world, which should come with victory in World War I,
failed to materialize. Changes there were, to a dizzy and bewil-
dering degree, but not the ones which had been so earnestly
looked for. A peace, long discussed, which satisfied nobody, neither
victors nor vanquished, was the first disillusionment. And follow-
ing the peace came extraordinary world conditions, unexplainable
until afterward which political and economic science had not
foreseen nor for which, for a time, could they suggest any sort of
remedy.
Within the College itself, the rapid expansion during the first
two Administrations and in the initial thirty-seven years called very
plainly now for a period of consolidation and final assaying of every
one of the extended measures, in every one of the new depart-
ments, in the large experiments of Self-Government and of the
Graduate School. It was a time of trial and testing which proved
to be crucial indeed.
With that spirit of conscientious New England which Marion
Park had brought, there was also the New England of the town
meeting, of the small and complete democracy of a designated com-
munity, where good stiff minds meet together to discuss and give
one another fair play no matter how great is the divergence of
point of view. Democracy stands for an ideal in every American
mind, but it is true that New Englanders have perhaps the most
thorough and practical course of training in how to carry it out.
It is hardly possible that the complicated but deeply required
changes with which the College was then confronted could have
been completed successfully or have achieved wholehearted ac-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 125
ceptance by any other than the democratic process. This Marion
Park was wise enough to see, and to suffer the word in this con-
nection having true significance. There is no one who can say
that those first years for her were easy.
Not only the changing times, but other reasons made an altera-
tion in the curriculum undeniably due. The old plan of a double
major, two subjects inexorably yoked together, to which was added
a list of required courses which filled an entire two years* work, had
been an inflexible and efficient plan. It had stiffened that spear-
head of achievement with which Carey Thomas had attacked the
entrenched public opinion hostile to women's education. Argu-
ment in that quarter was now no longer necessary and it was time
for different methods. But the way was neither plain nor easy. The
Faculty had their Plan of Government, but they may have felt some-
what insecure about its full recognition by a new President, may
have been unconsciously jealous of their rights. Innovations were
in order, yes, but they seemed to find it difficult to approve any of
those offered. A Curriculum Committee had gone at once to work,
but plan after plan was reported, demolished in Faculty discus-
sion and returned for further study. Marion Park made no outward
protest, although those who knew her best were aware of how
strongly she felt that some of the discussed changes were pressingly
necessary.
Meanwhile there was another major problem to absorb her
attention, to partake of her wisdom and good sense. The behavior
of the students in the Halls of Residence was becoming, to a cer-
tain extent, open to criticism, such criticism as a college, always
the focal point of public observation, can ill afford to incur. It
was not easy to see then, although it is clear enough now, that
the particular set of students who had come to college age in the
years of the early and middle 1920*5 could scarcely remember
any other atmosphere than the high-pitched emotionalism of the
war period and the almost equally high-pitched tension of the in-
flationary years which were following it. The unexpected and de-
fiant response of society to the attempt to introduce prohibition
had confused the picture of proper law and order still more.
Quite aside from this, there had been the natural and steady
development of a newer code of behavior, of manners, considered
12 6 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
in their widest sense as the outward aspect of any society. Since it
was the young who had to bear the true and dreadful burden of
carrying out the war, it was the young who claimed the right to
establish standards now. Many matters stemming from the arti-
ficial customs of the Victorian age were passing into oblivion,
among them that abstract but obstructionist figure, Mrs. Grundy.
All this was true everywhere and was giving rise, in the women's
colleges particularly, to problems many and acute.
By the middle 1920*5 it was undeniable that the spirit had
largely gone out of Self-Government, with a strong tendency toward
the Association's rules being little implemented or observed. A
large portion of the students seemed to regard the whole privilege
of Self-Government with careless indifference. Yet an alert and en-
terprising few were searching for the causes of failure and the
means of improvement. It had to be asked whether Self-Govern-
ment, once hailed as so important a step in the development
of education, had really shown itself to be an impractical idea, as
many doubters had declared in the beginning. Was it bound, after
the first enthusiasm had spent itself, to become ineffectual and dis-
regarded? Or was it true that, like other human institutions, it had
to go through a period of trial to prove itself capable and worthy
of surviving?
Marion Park, the first President who was an alumna of the
College, and once undergraduate head of Self-Government herself,
realized how serious the situation could become, since a system so
disregarded was not only no safeguard, but a menace* Yet she for-
bore to use her authority or to interfere, though she was open to
consultation always with those who understood, with her, that
such a situation could not and should not continue.
There were examination of old rules and intensive considera-
tion of new ones. The regulation forbidding smoking anywhere on
the campus or in the neighborhood had been on the books since
1897. With it had survived various insistencies on strict chaperon-
age, close requirement as to the hours of return from social occa-
sions, overconservative regulations as to dress on the campus. The
matter of smoking was, of course, the question most violently ar-
gued. Marion Park came forward suddenly, not with an act of in-
terference, but with a public announcement.
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 127
"The regulations of the Self-Government Association" she de-
clared, "have been based on the public opinion of the moment.
Such public opinion is controlled in larger matters by conscience
and in lesser by convention." A total prohibition of smoking, she
pointed out, did not, in this day, depend either on conscience or
convention. "I agree . . . that no democracy can keep on its books
a regulation . . . that no longer rests solidly on intelligent public
opinion."
The courage and good sense of this statement were criticized
in some quarters, applauded in others. The New York Times, in
an editorial commending it, observed that "a statute manifestly per-
verse brings in question all law/' A sigh of relief went up from
the other women's colleges; intelligent public opinion was indeed
with her.
Frances Jay, the President of the Self-Government Association,
a descendant of the great jurist and partaking of his ability, had
been the moving force in trying for a solution of the whole difficult
problem. She now called a mass meeting and put the question
boldly, "Should Self-Government be abolished?" The body of the
students, come to their senses at last, rejected the possibility with
emphasis and a single dissentient vote. One unreasonable prohibi-
tion and a half-dozen slightly old-fashioned rulings were the basis,
not for accepted failure, but for considered reform. Restrictions
were put upon smoking as to where it was and was not permissible;
a new set of social regulations was compiled, and the whole laid
before the Directors for approval. They were accepted in the same
liberal and confident spirit that the first ones had been. There was
to be another crisis, of a similar sort, brought by another war, but
that was still years away.
Smoking for women, in such general use now that its practice
is only a matter of personal taste and opinion, was still an object
of doubt and misgiving for some time. Yet Bryn Mawr had recog-
nized the truth that its presence was an accomplished fact and could
not be regarded as anything else. The other women's colleges, debat-
ing what to do, but not quite ready to act when Bryn Mawr did,
followed quickly, Vassar in the following spring and the others of
the Eastern women's colleges in the next year.
The temporary indifference concerning Self-Government was
128 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
replaced quickly by renewed interest and confidence. But there had
arisen, meanwhile, a question of a very different kind. The possi-
bilities of change were everywhere; new opportunities were bur-
geoning and everyone wanted to see them fulfilled. Was it going to
be possible to carry out all plans and still keep up all those earlier
established? Searching eyes were everywhere; some people's fell and
remained in lingering doubt on the Graduate School.
It was among the Alumnae that the question first arose. There
had been, from time to time in the past, little gusts of doubt as to
whether it was quite practical to carry the graduate work forward
Indefinitely, so heavy was its cost to the College in comparison with
the teaching of the undergraduates. Such whispers died away before
the certain knowledge that Carey Thomas would never give it up, no
matter what danger might threaten the finances. But under the new
Plan of Government the matter was not so simple and, technically
speaking, the President's was not the final word. Curiously, also,
the Graduate School had no spokesman of its own, to represent it
before the Faculty, if discussions concerning it were to arise. Now it
began to be asked by certain Alumnae more and more definitely,
Was this portion of Bryn Mawr's make-up really essential? The high
cost resulted from the number of students, small by deliberate pol-
icy, who were accepted for graduate study. A definite proportion
of them were supported by fellowships, which came from the in-
come of the College, not from any foundation or special funds to
carry them. Graduate instruction occupied a third of the time of
the most highly paid portion of the teaching staff. So persistent
were the queries that the Executive Board of the Alumnae Associa-
tion took cognizance of them and asked its Academic Committee, in
1925, to devote the next year to making a full study of the Grad-
uate School and its affairs. A member of that committee was Eu-
nice Schenck of the Class of 1907, head of the French Department,
with no official office in regard to the Graduate School, but its ear-
nest advocate, none the less. Two more whose work was of great
value were Josephine Goldmark, 1898 and Frances Fincke Hand,
1897, both of whom have given great services to the College in other
ways. The results of this study were to go extremely far.
Through all the years, the Graduate School had been the
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? I2Q
great pride of Carey Thomas who had done so much and with such
farseeing purpose to bring it as quickly as possible into its full use-
fulness. From the moment that she was appointed Dean, she took it
for granted that it would be a definite and organized part of the
general plan, nor had there ever been a word of doubt or hesita-
tion on the part of the Trustees or President Rhoads. She had not
rested until she had got established a fellowship in every depart-
ment, to ensure the nucleus of a research group, and to guarantee
material for instruction. The European Fellowship, for graduate re-
search and study abroad, awarded to the undergraduate with the
best final record, had been set up for the very first graduating class*
When there was to be a new appointment to the Faculty, the appli-
cant was always considered as to whether ultimately he or she
would be capable of giving graduate courses.
The first circular of the College, sent out by Joseph Taylor's
Trustees, had repeated in somewhat vague terms that "Teachers
who desire to perfect themselves in one or more branches of learn-
ing . . . may be admitted if they give satisfactory evidence of schol-
arship and good character. They must, however, show exemplary
diligence and devotion to study." The second circular, with Carey
Thomas behind it, made it entirely clear that these advanced op-
portunities were open to all who wished to pursue scholarship in
any established field and that they constituted real graduate study.
Authority was given by the State to the College to grant the M.A.
and Ph.D. degrees, and in the second year of its history Bryn Mawr
undergraduates saw the impressive process of admitting a candidate
into "the ancient and universal body of scholars." Through the
forty years of the life of the College, students of the Graduate
School, hailing from every state, from Canada, from Europe, from
Japan and China, had studied at Bryn Mawr and had carried
Bryn Mawr training into the widest reaches of the educational world.
They had supplied Bryn Mawr with a President; they had furnished
deans and full professors to many other institutions; they had sent
their own students, both graduate and undergraduate, back to the
College to which they felt they owed so much. Further, by sheer
proof of their own ability and training, they had shown, the world
over, what class and kind of real learning had been administered to
1^0 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
them. On many listings of educational institutions, Bryn Mawr,
with her limited numbers and her narrow endowment, none the
less ranked, and with right, as a university.
It was true that the very large proportion of the undergradu-
ates took surprisingly little note of the Graduate School, being so
absorbingly occupied with their own affairs. Thus many of the
Alumnae had left with small realization of what that portion of
the College was doing. To some of them, loyal as they were as they
went about their earnest work of supporting the College, it seemed
a little absurd to see a full professor spending so definite a part of
his time on a handful of students, sometimes hardly more than one
or two. A business organization would not suffer such an unsound
arrangement for a moment. Might it not be that Bryn Mawr was
too small, her endowments too limited, to be able to balance such
an uneven distribution of the weight of teaching cost?
And it began to be further urged that the necessity for a
women's graduate school no longer existed, since all the great uni-
versities had at last opened their doors to women working for
higher degrees, where wider facilities were offered, a greater variety
of courses, a broader choice among professors as specialists. But
there could have been, Inside each one of these questioners, a still
small voice to inquire, "Just what led the universities to discover
that women were worth higher training, the very highest that could
be given?"
The situation, with all its Implications, was acutely clear to
Eunice Schenck who did the major part of the work on the com-
mittee's study and its report. Her undergraduate life, her three
degrees and her teaching experience had all been under the aus-
pices of Bryn Mawr, with further study in France to compare with
that which she had received at home. She was fully aware of the
value and power of Bryn Mawr's graduate instruction, and what it
meant to the College and to education as a whole.
The Committee made a thorough study of the Graduate School
records and also sent out a questionnaire to all former graduate
students, asking for a statement as to what their work had been
since taking their degrees and what they felt that the Bryn Mawr
training had done for them. The resulting report, with its facts,
statistics, and its interpretations, was sent to the President, the
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? igi
Faculty, and broadcast to the Alumnae through their Bulletin.
It touched briefly on the past, and showed, without so stating
it definitely, how, while Bryn Mawr had extended women's oppor-
tunity for undergraduate education, it had actually taken funda-
mental part in the founding of women's graduate work in America.
It did not deny that the Graduate School was costly, but its worth
to the College was assessed and made evident. Its students, on an
average through the years, made up, in fact, a fifth of the College,
amounting to what one could consider as an extra class. While all
the professors were always called upon to teach in the general un-
dergraduate courses, the graduates had their vested right to their
own proportion of teaching time.
And what did the Graduate School return to the College? The
careful analyses of those lifeless tables of statistics revealed the
extent, the high honor and influence of those positions attained by
the accepted scholars who had stepped from the Bryn Mawr plat-
form each with an M.A. or a Ph.D. degree and set out into the
greater world to be deans, full professors, leaders and discoverers in
the field of research. Their application of method, their contribu-
tions to the sum of learning, their able administration in such
varied situations gave a vision and a promise to prospective stu-
dents of what they would find at Bryn Mawr. It could be seen that,,
in large share, it was due to their standing and their prestige that
Bryn Mawr could continue, year after year, to demand that those
applicants for entrance to the graduate and undergraduate schools
should be students of the highest kind of intelligence and intellec-
tual ambition, and that such should continually be found.
When set beside those greater institutions which had lately
come to accept women for higher degrees, small Bryn Mawr could
still offer in comparison some very distinct advantages of her own.
She had an excellent and adequate Faculty, with the whole of it at
all times available to the graduate students. And one after another,
until the answer was practically universal, the former graduate stu-
dents declared that in small classes, which the College was still gen-
erous enough to support, they felt that they got the largest returns
for their efforts. There was constant consultation with their pro-
fessors, who partook wholeheartedly, every one of them, of the Col-
lege's policy of generous interest in every student's undertakings.
Ig2 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
There was the student's opportunity and thrilling experience of
entering fully on her own original work, the feeling that, having
chosen the profession of scholarship, she was being treated already
as a scholar. There was the knowledge of becoming a part, even
though a very small one, of that wide field of human endeavor
in the advance of learning. All these were of immeasurable value
to her. Perhaps the most able summary was that of one student
who said that she would remember always "the splendid vision of
scholarship."
The report, while it took no direct note of the questions and
doubts which had called it forth, answered all the queries and laid
the doubts to rest. That should have been enough for the Alum-
nae's project to have set forth, but actually it accomplished a very
great deal more. Those members of the College itself, from Marion
Park downward, saw in it far more than simply a vindication. It
made clear that the graduate work was really in an anomalous posi-
tion, with no center of its own for consultation and direction; in-
stead its policies were in the hands of a set of committees acting
under the Academic Council of the College. It was most obviously
high time for something more.
Marion Park acted promptly by making Eunice Schenck her
special representative on the Faculty and for advice to students for
the Graduate School. The two of them together, with the advice
and support of the Faculty, set out on a program of reorganization
and rehabilitation which was to make the status of graduate affairs
solid and final. In 1929 the Graduate School was set up with full
organization of its own and with a Dean of the Graduate School
who was, most appropriately, Eunice Schenck. She declined the
presidency of another college to accept this office from Bryn Mawr.
With her appointment went a new and drastic step in the deci-
sion to abandon Carey Thomas's often attempted purpose of hav-
ing graduates and undergraduates live together in the same halls
in 'little republics of letters." Such an arrangement might have
been possible abroad in connection with the formal old universities,
but here in exuberant and uninhibited America it had no practical-
ity at all. The graduate students, settled here and there in the
various dormitories, even when they had a wing nominally to
themselves, complained bitterly of the noise made by the younger
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
students, who In turn, were certain that graduates existed only to
interfere with the pleasant hours of recreation. There was cer-
tainly much that each group could get from the other, but an in-
superable barrier seemed to be set up between them by the different
objects of their interest and by their different hours of concentrated
study. Even now, so many years after, It does not seem that the full
way has yet been found to make each branch of Bryn Mawr's aca-
demic life get the true advantage of living and working in the
presence of the other. But certainly the move then made was to
the real benefit of all.
By one of those inexplicable processes which drift across a
college's well designed arrangements, Radnor, the second dormitory
in point of age, had fallen into being an asylum to those students
who had not found places of their choice in one of the other halls,
It had rooms of a better size than Merlon, its older sister, and a
more pleasant exposure. To the graduate students, who, it was now
decided, were to be brought to live there together, it seemed a
beautiful haven where they could carry out their own kind of life
and where, happily, for a few years it was practical for their Dean
to occupy an apartment in the same building. Here they could dis-
cuss their own subjects, get full stimulation from those who had
come to Bryn Mawr on the same serious quest, including particu-
larly those increasing numbers of foreign students to whom the
College was reaching out. Here could flourish their own organiza-
tion, the Graduate Club, which partook of some of the nature of
the Undergraduate Association but also carried the responsibility
of Self-Government. People invited to their entertainments or to
dine in the hall could vouch for what gracious hostesses they made
and how full of salt and savor was the conversation along the tables.
Changes in the character of the work went on more slowly,
covering an extended period of years, taking up, as it were, where
the new phases of the undergraduate curriculum ended and deliv-
ered a new sort of candidate to the Graduate School. When the
altered requirements for, first the Ph.D. degree and then the M.A.
were discussed, Eunice Schenck called in an advisory committee
of students of which Katharine McBride was one. The plans were
liberalized, made more flexible, with greater stress on independent
study and research from first-hand material, and less on settled
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
courses and seminars Bryn Mawr has always called them semi-
naries. As time has gone on, the opportunities opened by gifts to
the College, such as, in particular, the grant for coordinated study
of the sciences, and by special fellowships for special research,
could always be embraced by a Graduate School thoroughly organ-
ized and prepared to take advantage of them.
Good years followed, especially those when Dean Schenck
could be in residence, an arrangement which, unfortunately, was
not possible after a certain lapse of time. Her lively and construc-
tive interest in the students was always available to them, however,
even after she lived elsewhere on the campus; her planning for the
Graduate School was continuous, her vision always wide. She never
lost the warmth of enthusiasm which is sometimes a casualty of the
rigors of scholastic life.
In the end, other matters drew her inexorably away from
standing longer at the head of the graduate work, and at the begin-
ning of World War II she resigned, to devote herself entirely to the
continuing and defending of the understanding of France by
America, in a dark hour when invaded France was understood by
few. She had long worked in the spirit of that understanding,
throughout her work as head of the French Department which she
had carried along with her duties as Dean. The French Govern-
ment recognized her important services by making her, in 1929,
"'Officier d* Academic," and, in 1934, by bestowing on her the Cross
of the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Her place was taken by Lily Ross Taylor, a Bryn Mawr Ph.D.,
head of the Latin Department and a scholar of more than na-
tional reputation. She was an able administrator and possessed
of the full ability, so necessary in such an office, to understand and
give good counsel. Under their hands, the organization of the Grad-
uate School advanced steadily further, through the prosperous
years, through the stringent time of the Depression years when
funds were low, and through the war period when good graduate
students were diverted by the demands of Government depart-
ments, by commercial laboratories and by research projects. Per-
haps the greatest work of all that these two Deans accomplished
was the choosing and receiving and the helping to adjust to a
new life of those youthful fugitives who came out of the dark spirit-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 135
ual caverns of invaded Europe and Asia, of making them see that
there still existed a peaceful world, globe-encircling still, the world
of scholarship.
In all that had gone forward Marion Park had taken her full
part in advice, support and steady confidence. "It all came about
quite naturally," she likes to say of any signal achievement of her
administration and resulting from her policy. Natural the advance
of the Graduate School may have been, beginning with the initia-
tion of the study asked for by the Alumnae Association; but natural
progress here was accompanied, on the part of several people, by a
good measure of stalwart wisdom.
Chapter XI
ONE STONE UPON ANOTHER
The fabric of a college's history is run through by separate threads
which often must be followed consecutively to make for a clear
record and show a final end. The account of the Graduate School
has been thus given complete, even though the process of its reor-
ganization extended through the twenties and the thirties. It is
now necessary to return to the beginning of another series of signif-
icant events and their resulting, but not always predictable,
development. As those who follow educational history well know,
large and most unexpected consequences can follow a small pre-
liminary step, this being most emphatically true in the record of
Bryn Mawr's acquisition of a Music Department.
The founding Quaker fathers, in whose own lives music
meant nothing, had not considered such an item in the original cur-
riculum. Early Alumnae will still remember how, even after there
began to be a choir at Miss Thomas's daily chapel service, there
was, for a long time, no instrument permitted to accompany the
singing. Even the having of a piano in the gymnasium to keep
marching undergraduates in step was most seriously debated by the
Trustees and firmly resisted by some of them. But with the advent
of the Directors came a greater interest in the use of music, and in
time, therefore, the gymnasium had its piano and the chapel ac-
quired a tuneless melodeon. And toward the end of President
Thomas's administration a serious discussion began as to whether
the College should not have a Department of Music.
The students were asking earnestly for one, and the first prac-
tical step was taken by an undergraduate who gave anonymously
136
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 17
$5,000 as a preliminary move toward an endowment. But as the
needs were examined, the number of them and their cost rolled
up to alarming proportions. There must be research material call-
ing for a large and very different addition to the resources of the
Library; there must be space for lectures with means for presenting
illustrative music; there must, in the end, be facilities for giving
concerts, and room for the College orchestra which would, by nat-
ural process, grow out of the undertaking. The dreary little row of
rooms in the basement of Pembroke East, designated for students'
piano practice, was the meager and only token of all that would be
required. But student desire continued to be strong, and the inde-
fatigable Alumnae took up the challenge.
A group of them in New York, under the leadership of Alice
Carter Dickerman, of the Class of 1899, gathered a committee and
pledged sufficient annual income to support the undertaking for an
experimental four years. Thus the new venture came into being in
1921, with, as its sole sum of possessions, two pianos and a half
dozen books. It had, however, Horace Alwyne, supposedly Assistant
Director and even from the beginning the real heart and soul of
the enterprise which has so grown and vindicated itself in all these
ensuing years under his guidance. The appointed Director was
Thomas Whitney Surette, who was to come down from Boston every
week to carry on the principal courses. But the arrangement of time
proved to be impractical for him, so that it was actually Horace
Alwyne under whose hand most of the instruction went forward.
Very shortly he became the official Director. The Music Department,
with its courses, its attendant choruses, orchestra, operas and con-
certs, has been under his superintendence ever since.
Because there was absolutely no inch of space anywhere on the
campus to harbor this new department, it was decided to rent the
studio of Wyndham, home of the Ely family, the beautiful old stone
house across the road from Pembroke. It had once been the owner's
residence on that farm of which Joseph Taylor had bought the
greater part for his new College. After some years of this rental ar-
rangement, the Ely property came upon the market for sale and, al-
though the College had not the funds to buy it, the Alumnae were
determined that it should on no account slip through Bryn Mawr's
fingers. They urged its purchase on borrowed money, and promised
128 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
v/
to underwrite the interest until funds could be raised to pay the
debt.
Its coming into the possession of the College was the beginning
of several interesting uses, for soon the Music Department outgrew
the studio and went on into far more extensive plans. It may be
said, to complete the account of Wyndham, that for some years it
received the overflow of freshmen when there was a dearth of space
in the dormitories. Finally it reached its perfect use and has become
the French House, where the students contend for the privilege of
living, under pledge to speak only French among themselves, and
where distinguished guests and lecturers are glad to be invited. The
accomplishing of this arrangement and the gracious scheme of
living which was here set up were the work of Eunice Schenck with
her helpers in the French Department.
"We are interested not just in spoken French but in ideas as
well/* was her statement of policy concerning the French House,
which her successors have been happy to continue. And once a year
Wyndham becomes the setting for the seniors' Garden Party when,
with its sweeps of lawn and great trees, it offers the ideal back-
ground for the gay dresses, the proud parents, the equally proud
but slightly uneasy fiances, the host of congratulatory friends and
all the truly gala atmosphere of this last day before graduation.
The New York Alumnae Committee carried the expenses of
the Music Department through the promised four years. Then, see-
Ing by its unqualified success that it ought surely to become an in-
tegral part of the College, they laid a proposal before the Alumnae
Association as a whole, suggesting, in 1925, a campaign for funds
which would ensure an endowed professorship in the field of music,
as a basis for continuing something which had so thoroughly proved
itself to be of great value. It is interesting to note, from this point
forward, how, where wise and determined people are concerned,
one thing can lead to another to a surprising but reasonable degree.
A fully equipped Music Department should have an audito-
rium of at least a respectable size for the giving of student concerts
and for bringing real musical events to the College. But Bryn Mawr
had always needed something far more than that, for one of her
most heroic economies had been in the matter of proper meeting
space. The very day that the College opened it was plain that the
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 139
only central gathering place, the chapel In Taylor Hall, was hope-
lessly inadequate for a general audience. No one doubts it who can
recall the packed and breathless Commencements with half the
spectators in a back room where they could see nothing and hear
but little more, with Taylor's rigorous interior architecture only
slightly softened by the tremendous rope of daisies which the de-
voted members of the Sophomore Class had been working on since
two in the morning of Commencement Day. "How excellent it is to
think of all those daisies having been removed from the fields!" one
practical owner of an estate was heard to exclaim, thoroughly miss-
ing the aesthetic note which was actually not in very close harmony
with the style of building which Francis King had specified must be
of such Quaker plainness.
The building of the new gymnasium in 1909 came to the rescue
of those overcrowded Commencements; here the stage was larger
and a greater number of rows of hard-bottomed chairs could be
squeezed together on the wide but completely flat floor. The Ac-
ademic Procession, walking from the Library down between the
lines of maple trees of Senior Row, had as picturesque a setting as
it had later when passing under the vaulted arch of Rockefeller's
Owl Gate. The platform in the old chapel had hardly seemed more
than of the proper size to hold Miss Thomas and Dr. Barton com-
fortably at the morning exercises, but it was called upon too often
to do far more. In the gymnasium, the stage, set up only when oc-
casion demanded, offered more room, but never enough. Yet here,
for sixteen years, the graduations, with their steadily growing num-
ber of students and Faculty, had to be held. Then, in 1924, State
fire laws laid down such restrictions that neither the second-floor
chapel nor the gymnasium with its narrow entrances could ever be
used again to contain the number of people who had the right to
witness a Bryn Mawr Commencement.
Student dramatics, which had not attained much impetus
during President Rhoads f s administration, had begun to press for-
ward during that of Carey Thomas. She had a full appreciation of
dramatic art, nor was she blind to the fact that young actors, with
the right material and setting, could reach very high levels. But she
felt instinctively that the very real zeal with which the students
threw themselves into such ventures was an interruption to their
140 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
precious studying time, and tended toward that dreaded possibility
of lowering the standard. But to certain established plays of the
year she always came and gave a criticism of performance and per-
formers afterward in chapel. There is a letter preserved, written in
1913 by her assistant Isabel Maddison, telling the President that
she, Miss Maddison, had had "a difference of opinion with the
Junior Class over their Banner Show." She declared, "They wanted
to paint a house but I have absolutely stopped that." They were to
be allowed to have some old scenery, "to hang at the back," al-
though Miss Maddison was obviously very much afraid that the
President would not approve. Carey Thomas's reply, written on the
margin of the letter was, "We can let this stand but it is, I fear,
dangerous."
The first gymnasium, where all the early dramatic efforts were
presented, had a stage with one curious inadequacy there was
great danger of falling off it. The temporary structure was such
that it could not be built back against the walls. It was nothing
unusual for a performer in a student drama or opera to disappear
suddenly with a crash, having stepped unwarily too close to the
curtained edge and plunged into the void behind. In both old and
new gymnasiums it was the case that, since the real use of the build-
ing was for very different things, the stage could only be erected at
the last minute and there was opportunity for only one rehearsal
complete with scenery, curtain and footlights. Under Marion Park,
under professors who realized that one of the best ways to begin to
understand a great playwright was to act him, dramatics went for-
ward with increasing and happy success. But even in 1925 there
was still lacking one thing more that was needed beyond acting and
directing talent, the modest adjunct of a stage.
All these matters were discussed in Alumnae consultation with
Directors and Administration; and suddenly it was suggested that,
besides combining the requirements of the Music Department and
its need for funds with the real necessity of a full-sized auditorium,
there could be added another factor, the long-standing project for
a Students' Building. The very earliest of the Bryn Mawr classes
had talked of this possibility of a building of their own, constructed
out of their own funds, to house their own extracurricular activities.
Entertainments had been given to raise money for it; the first big
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 141
May Day, the festival of Elizabethan plays and dances, was per-
formed for its benefit. It was a perennial interest and a perennial
Incentive to the students to make what contribution they could to
something which was to be entirely theirs. So nebulous a project
was it, however, that many more definite ones had intervened and
the fund grew only by bits and dribbles. In 1908 it was said to be
about $20,000 and was between f 20,000 and $30,000 by 1920. And
here, all at once, was a chance to bring this long-standing project
to its completion by combining it with the other needs. By adding
the students* wing to the proposed building now being considered,
the cherished object could at last be attained. Then one more ele-
ment came into the waiting situation which might otherwise have
waited far longer: benevolence of a true and most effective sort.
Marjorie Walter Goodhart was the youngest member of the
Class of 1912, quiet, generous, hard-studying, deeply interested in
history, and graduating brilliantly at the age of twenty. She was
soon married, was mother of 1912*5 Class baby and later, in 1920,
died of that devastating postwar influenza which was so specially
deadly to young mothers. A small and friendly minded college
is an excellent place for a shy person, as many others have learned
to know. Marjorie Walter experienced at Bryn Mawr that un-
qualified happiness which loyal Alumnae like to think is one of
the particular things which the College has to give, although it can-
not always succeed so fully. She was able to pass on to her husband
the knowledge of that happiness, so that, after she was gone,
Howard Goodhart set himself to honor and cherish the place which
had given her so much. Her class had taken up the project of es-
tablishing in her memory a Chair of European History, which was
quickly accomplished with the assistance of her husband. It was by
means of a further gift from Howard Goodhart and his family that
it was possible to set about building what was to be called Marjorie
Walter Goodhart Hall.
Those who knew Howard Goodhart well found him unforget-
table, a person in whom high ability in financial fields was com-
bined with brilliance of scholarship in the region of his special in-
terests. Book collecting was his hobby, the rare volumes of the very
early days of printing, the incunabula which were being sought and
gathered in the great libraries of the world. He was generous even
1^2 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
in this absorbing pursuit and liked to bring together those o his
friends who knew and loved books. No one will ever know the sum
of his gifts, large and small, the special salaries underwritten, the
books and dissertations published for those who could ill afford it
themselves, the encouragement, recognition and untiring kindness
to young scholars.
After the death of Walter Cope, Lockwood De Forest, who had
been associated with him, had supervised the designing of the gym-
nasium, built in 1910, and the 1905 Infirmary, given by that Class
and opened in 1913. A subsidiary architect had overseen the actual
work on these two. In 1924 there had been appointed, as the Col-
lege's supervising architect, Ralph Adams Cram, of Boston. He had
made an elaborate plan for Bryn Mawr's campus of the future, with
one of his most emphatically urged items the tearing down of
Taylor Hall and putting up a substitute elsewhere, a project
toward which the Directors had very definitely not seen their way.
He was consulted concerning Goodhart, but said he could not hope
to take part in the actual building, since he felt himself too old and
at too great a distance. He suggested a younger man, Arthur Meigs,
of Philadelphia, but he came to Bryn Mawr to take part in the pre-
liminary discussions, chose the site and sat upon the committee
which passed upon and accepted the submitted plans. Funds had
been gathering for all three of the purposes involved; the extremely
complicated interior plans had been reviewed again and again, and
construction began in 1926.
The building of Goodhart was attended by more delays, more
bitter criticism and, one can truly claim, more ultimate satisfaction
in achieved purpose than any other project which the history of the
College had yet produced. The sloping site, chosen by necessity be-
cause the building had to be upon a public road, offered more dif-
ficult construction problems than could have been foreseen. While
they were being solved, prices skyrocketed, result of the inflationary
years. Yet Arthur H. Thomas, Chairman of the Buildings and
Grounds Committee, pushed the work courageously forward.
Marion Park had earlier offered the idea that the auditorium,
the Students' Building and the Music Department were "all phases
of a new trend in college life." The students 1 activities, over which
they exercised their own enterprise and control, had grown greatly,
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 143
as outcome of the vigorous individualism which was the reaction
from World War I and its regimentations. The Music Department
reflected change also, reaching out into the arts at great remove
from the Quaker conservatism with which the College had begun.
As the walls and roof took shape, the style of the building, ac-
tually seen now for the first time, became the target for a barrage
of conflicting comment, high in intensity at the time, slow to die
away. No one could ever do again just what Walter Cope had done
with Denbigh, Pembroke, Rockefeller and the Library, with his own
variation of Jacobean Gothic. The gymnasium had not achieved
the same dignity and individualism. Yet continuous following,
through thick and thin, of an established style could well be over-
done, especially when regarded by the eyes of a young and shifting
college population. But a change of style and Arthur Meigs's en-
try on a different style of Gothic was a very bold one is always at-
tended by some doubt, much misgiving and a vast variety of
opinion.
At the end of 1927 when the building was nearing com-
pletion, every organization of the College, every class in the Alum-
nae Association, threw itself into the task of final fulfillment, some
underwriting the great studded doors, some the huge wrought-iron
lamps, the seats for the auditorium, or the furniture for the Com-
mon Room where the students were to have their own smaller
lectures, their own meetings and discussions. There was space in the
students' wing and good provision for other interests, especially for
all that intensive toil which goes by the name of extracurricular ac-
tivity. The College News, the departmental clubs, the meetings of
the League, the Alliance, all were to have headquarters there. The
Music Room, where most of the classes were held and all but the
very large religious gatherings took place, was of excellent propor-
tions and was enhanced, presently, by the donation of a fine organ.
The Music Wing, with its offices and practice rooms, looking out
over the green valley below the hill, had privacy and, for a time
at least, sufficient room for its own operations.
A college auditorium has its own problems, and with all the as-
sorted needs which entered into this combined undertaking there
were resulting but unexpected errors. The main idea of the whole
plan had begun with music to go with the music courses. Leopold
144 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
Stokowski came himself to give advice, and his weighty influence
had gone far in shaping the plans. Most serious of all was the diffi-
culty with acoustics, the problems of which were not, at that time,
reduced to as exact a science as they are now. But the introduction
of amplifiers, also then unknown, has gone far toward remedying
this drawback, and there is still left that immense airiness afforded
by the tremendous roof above. Student scene shifters have learned
to make the most of the backstage accommodations of winches and
windlasses and swinging platforms to carry the scenery, and the
actors rejoice in the ample room of the great stage.
In 1928 Goodhart was finished. It was music which had in-
augurated the original idea; music was the balancing need which
had set the whole project in motion. It was music, therefore, which
celebrated its opening. Leopold Stokowski, close friend of the archi-
tect, came with the Philadelphia Orchestra; the warm rose color of
the thousand seats disappeared under the billowing finery of the
choicest and most discriminating of audiences, and Goodhart Hall
was open.
When the first plans were being laid and the first announce-
ments being sent out, Marion Park had added to them the declara-
tion that Goodhart Hall would be an invaluable asset "not only to
the College but to the community." Far more than anyone could
have surmised or measured, that fact proceeded to prove itself true.
Only now and then has there been put into words the realization
of that strange gulf which, almost by inexorable process of nature,
tends to grow up between a community and a college within it.
Bryn Mawr had, in the neighborhood, some of the warmest, most
loyal and generous of friends, but it was undeniable that public
opinion as a whole tended to look down upon, even suspect or dread
this institution which was in their midst without their invitation.
The region was one in which conservative social custom stood
perhaps as firmly entrenched as anywhere in the country. Parents
felt insecure when their non-college-going daughters could, in those
arguments familiar in every household, offer the plea that "the
Bryn Mawr girls can do it." The Bryn Mawr girls made their own
rules, and kept them, but there were many neighboring parents who
doubted their ability to formulate a really orthodox code of behav-
ior. It was believed, also, that a college which did not require
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 145
chape! and church attendance must be godless. That the students
had their own services and attended them in perhaps quite as con-
scientious a proportion as did their neighbors was either unknown
or unconsidered. Faculty members, it was reported, were given posi-
tions without any questioning as to what were their political or
religious opinions, a procedure which seemed to many to be rash,
to say the least. A single indiscreet public utterance by one of them,
reported in the press, could raise a storm which a year of self-
restraint could not balance. It was all understandable, all a part of
the process by which higher education, especially for women,
seemed foreign to its own community and must make its way slowly
to final acceptance and regard.
When the doors of Goodhart were finally thrown open to those
without the College as well as those within it, a change began to
come about at once. As the great building came to exercise its true
function, all the tribulations of its construction, all the small dis-
appointments and the larger criticisms took their place as only
minor details. It was delightful to have a place where those real
friends of the College could be so freely invited. The brilliant
audience assembled for the opening was in certain ways a his-
toric gathering.
With a fitting place, at last, for really large audiences, the Col-
lege began to gather to itself the means for unusual occasions. The
Mary Flexner Lectureship, set up in 1928 by Bernard Flexner in
honor of his sister, brings to the College, approximately every year,
some distinguished scholar in the humanities, who spends six weeks
on the campus, holds a seminary for graduate students, meets for
lectures and discussions with the undergraduates and, principally,
gives a series of six public lectures to which all who are interested
may freely come. It has grown to be one of the famous foundations
of American education and has brought to Bryn Mawr, and to
those who came to hear, Breasted, the foremost Egyptologist of his
day, the philosopher Whitehead, Paul Hazard and Henri Peyre,
masters of French literature, Ralph Vaughan Williams the com-
poser, Arnold Toynbee, leader of his time and a most difficult
time it has been in constructive historical theory. Each depart-
ment in turn chooses a speaker in its own field and, though the very
greatest have been invited, very few have declined.
146
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
Matched with this plan was the Anna Howard Shaw Memorial
Fund, established by subscription in honor of this great woman
suffragist to whom Carey Thomas had been so warm a friend and so
powerful an ally. These lectures were to be in the field of economics
and politics and have set before the Bryn Mawr listeners such distin-
guished women as Jane Addams, Judge Florence Allen and others
of their caliber and kind. The Sheble Lecture, supported by an-
other memorial fund, provides every year for the appearance of
some important writer, and has brought among others, Robert
Frost, William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot on the exciting eve of
the announcement of his being granted the Nobel Prize in Lit-
erature. Some of the greatest musical artists have sung or played
upon that stage: Traubel, Kreisler, Menuhin, Marian Anderson.
There is one more, less important, but still telling fact in this
list of enlarged opportunities. The College was surrounded by a
group of excellent girls' schools, and the parents, gathered for
their daughters* white-gowned, flower-bedecked graduation, would
read at the foot of the program, "Through the courtesy of Bryn
Mawr College the exercises will be held in Goodhart Hall." As
they looked about at the really noble setting which made the back-
ground for their young people's great occasion, habitual preju-
dices and distrusts began, perforce, to melt away.
The College body itself could be accommodated in not many
more than half the seats in Goodhart, but when T. S. Eliot spoke,
or Toynbee, or Madame Pandit, people jammed the galleries, the
windowsills and sat on the stone floor of the aisles. Outsiders who
had caught glimpses through Pembroke Arch of girls running about
in shorts or bluejeans now could see these same young persons,
gracious-mannered and impeccably dressed, doing the honors as
ushers. Such moments began to alter some basic errors about the
ways of college students. And the Presidents of the College, standing
up to welcome and introduce, became no longer mythical persons
in the view of outsiders, but real people from whom it was impos-
sible to withhold admiration and regard. Long study of the various
means, long-extended action in this matter of real understanding
of College and neighbors, have brought results slowly, as full sat-
isfaction usually is brought. Although Pembroke and Rockefeller
arches gave material access to the College from the world outside,
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 147
the real way in has been through the great doors of Goodhart Hall.
The years which followed its completion were beset by certain
anxieties over the very large debt which it had left behind, owing to
the increase in prices and the difficult terrain. Considering that it
was actually three undertakings in one, its final cost does not
seem now to have been startlingly excessive, but to those to whom
it seemed too much of an innovation it was easy to wonder if it had
not been a dangerous extravagance. The Directors courageously
took on the burden of final payment. But when the work was quite
finished and all the accounts in, Howard Goodhart again stepped
forward. His means and those of Marjorie Walter's family were
ample but not fabulous, and he now explained that they had
wished to give the building entire when it was first needed but had
not felt it to be possible. They would, however, take over the re-
maining indebtedness and would pay it off in installments. This
they proceeded to do by contributing a sum every year.
In 1928 the Julius Goldman family presented $50,000 to Bryn
Mawr on the occasion of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They
had also contributed three daughters, one of whom was Hetty
Goldman, the distinguished archaeologist, one of the very few
women members of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
In the same year Howard Goodhart had instituted a custom more
or less unique in the annals of benevolence, as a continuing pro-
cedure. Whenever there was an anniversary of any kind in either
the Walter or the Goodhart family, it was observed by an extra
gift of securities to Bryn Mawr College. Even after full payment had
been made on the Goodhart Hall debt, Howard Goodhart went on
with his yearly contributions, sometimes to be applied to this need,
sometimes to that one. The last of them went toward the purchase
of West House.
Meanwhile Goodhart Hall continued and still continues to
carry out all of that for which it was intended. The efforts of the
Alumnae raised funds to endow the Alice Carter Dickerman Chair
of Music, and the Department has grown steadily in numbers and
distinction. College members and guests flock in at the doors on the
continually occurring occasions of hearing distinguished visitors or
witnessing indigenous talent. For students, ever since its inception,
Goodhart stands as part of the background of unassailable College
j-0 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
scale, something capable of being defined and analyzed and against
which protection and safeguards could in time be set up.
At Bryn Mawr the rigorous economies were undergone with
spirit and no lack of courage, for this was a College which had
known stringent times before. It was hard to see the cherished build-
ings falling into shabbiness, even the smooth grass growing shaggy.
But inside the halls the spirit of gracious living still maintained it-
self, even with many of its details shorn away. And the quality of
the academic standard never faltered; it had come to be more fully
appreciated now that it was more hardly bought.
It was characteristic of the Alumnae that, since it was plain that
there could now be no intensive raising of funds to mitigate the
rigors of the times, they set themselves to work at a different proj-
ect. With the Directors, they established two committees who were
to consult together and work out a tabulation of the needs of the
College, not the requirements of the moment but for its long-time
development. James Rhoads had said to Carey Thomas in one of his
letters long before, "When it shall appear that we are good
stewards, more will come." The Alumnae felt convinced that the
good stewardship had been plentifully proved and that, even be-
yond the funds for the Music Department and Goodhart, the "more
will come 1 ' could be fulfilled in time.
Faculty salaries, which must keep pace with a rising cost of liv-
ing, must have some settled source for steady increase. This they
were sure was advisable and possible, even in the face of the fact
that it might be necessary to reduce them now, as a measure born
of the Depression. As the buildings became mellow and venerable,
there must be some settled policy for keeping up the rising main-
tenance cost on them; the process of aging was not wholly one of
increasingly picturesque beauty. At a new and expanding rate it was
the duty of colleges and universities to add to the sum of knowledge,
but with those additions to learning came the need of greater
library space, of longer lists of technical journals. Just as, earlier,
Johns Hopkins University had been leader in the field of graduate
study, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California
Institute of Technology were now pressing forward the movement
to develop to the full the scope of laboratory science. Both these
advances Bryn Mawr had been keen to follow as best she could.
Cornelia Otis Skinner as
Queen Elizabeth on May
Day, 1932
(INS Photos)
May Day at Bryn Mawr College, 1944
(Wilbur Eoone}
Class songs on May Day, 1951
A group of student carolers
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 15 1
Long ago she had delayed setting up her Physics Department until
two years after the College opened because of a lack of the proper
laboratory; she had been driven to compromises and makeshifts
more than once, but the early belief in laboratory work, fostered by
James Rhoads, had never been lost to sight. Now her scientific de-
partments were attracting more and more attention and reputation,
but that very success called for greater laboratory facilities.
Over all these matters, over these needs there was long and
careful deliberation. In the end was evolved the Seven Year Plan,
notable for its completeness, its insight and its courage. Consider-
ing the boldness with which it attacked the basic problem of the
College's welfare, it was singularly free from errors, although not
entirely devoid of them. Only experience can show, later, just what
consequences arise from just what measures.
There must be, they decided, a more extensive allowance for
depreciation on the buildings, so stoutly constructed but inevitably
showing signs of the passage of time. There must be still greater
addition to the yearly income of the College, to take care of con-
tinuing salary increases. In 1920 it had been shown that salaries
appropriated on the prewar level were inadequate less than ten
years later, a problem which would arise again and again. Bryn
Mawr should not be helpless in competing with other, more largely
endowed institutions in bidding for the services of established and
eminent scholars or for the promising new ones who would be at
the head of their profession tomorrow. "To maintain a scholarly
Faculty in the face of necessary competition with other colleges; to
provide more individual work for advanced undergraduate stu-
dents . . ." So the report read. It was a large order.
The implementation of the plan was very definite. To expand
the College income, the number of students was to be increased
from four hundred to five hundred. Tuition was increased in 1930
from 1400 to $500, but this proved not enough and it became
$600 in 1934. To house these new students and to take away the
overcrowding in the present halls, there must be a new dormitory.
This could be legitimately financed from College funds, the build-
ing itself being taken as an investment, the interest and amortiza-
tion coming from the room rents. It was the first time that the Di-
rectors had taken so large a step in such use of College funds. To
! 2 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
use those of the Joseph Taylor endowment was against the provi-
sions of his will but other money had come to the College since, on
which there were no such restrictions. The plan was to prove itself
well justified, and to be repeated later.
Moreover, there must be a science building, to replace the
completely outgrown Dalton, and there must be another unit added
to the Library building, corresponding to the original east build-
ing. These would be financed by direct contribution, for it was only
on income-bearing property that the Directors could lay out college
funds. Adding it all up, evaluating, balancing and reconciling the
estimates, the two committees set out a table of yearly increasing
income, until the full number of students was taken in, with each
step of the expansion carefully listed. The whole would require,
they decided, with the Depression bearing heavily upon them and
everyone feeling virtually penniless, the subscribed sum of a mil-
lion dollars. 1935 would mark the end of the College's first half
century. The Alumnae would raise the amount and call it the Fif-
tieth Anniversary Fund.
Their deliberations had been careful and well advised, but in
one point their reasoning was in error. It was not realized then, as
it came to be seen later, that to add a certain number of students
to the College body did not, in exact proportion, add to the Col-
lege income. Even with the increase in tuition fees it continued to
be true that a college education cost more than the student's fees
would pay. At Bryn Mawr they did not reach to much more than
half the amount. Many years earlier a troubled Trustee was once
heard to say somewhat indignantly to his colleagues, "Shall we be
like Harvard and lose money on every student?" It is one of the
basic facts in higher education that such is bound to be the case,
Harvard having resolutely recognized the truth early, with others
reluctantly following in her wake. Addition of students, therefore,
calls for a certain proportion of addition to endowment. Added to
that fact also there was proved, by further experience, that a greater
number of students means at once a greater need for scholarship
funds, since there is immediately proportional rise in applications
for such support.
Carey Thomas and James Rhoads had gone through a course
of reasoning similar to this of the Alumnae and Directors, when
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 155
that earlier two were persuading the Trustees that if Pembroke
were built, almost doubling the number of students, the College in-
come would be equally increased. Neither of them saw what was a
weak point in the plan for which provision must be made. When
Rockefeller was built, with a further addition of students and an
undeniable need for increasing the number of the Faculty, the re-
sources for the professors* salaries were so plainly insufficient that
there was real want, or else a strong natural impulse to seek em-
ployment elsewhere. Not until 1920, when the Alumnae carried out
the 2, 000,000 drive for addition to the endowment, was the situa-
tion really in balance again.
In spite of this discrepancy, visible now and so not to be re-
peated, this was a really notable plan, destined to be of even
greater significance than the makers were aware. No move could be
made, in the grim economic atmosphere of the Depression, to ful-
fill it at once, so that, until it could be, the College went forward
on its ordinary way. There were no means of lightening at once the
load of anxiety and there were, besides, certain apparent reverses,
each more disheartening than the last.
In 1928 the Directors, with commendable foresight, declared
that the Phebe Anna Thorne School must be closed. It was difficult
to accept such a dictum. Under the earlier supervision of Mathilde
Castro, the School had accomplished much of great value in carrying
forward the very best of the new ideas in progressive education.
She had resigned earlier to be married; but at this time the school,
outwardly, was doing well, with plenty of pupils, a good head-
mistress in Frances Browne and good teachers in spite of the
scanty salaries. But those in whom the final responsibility rested
could not help seeing that such a collection of debt which had
now been accumulated would make an unjustifiable liability in
times which were becoming more and more uncertain. Reality had
to be faced, and the School did not reopen in the autumn of 1930.
The School would open again, the Directors assured everyone, but
it seemed a far cry to the day when it would be possible. The rather
too hastily built pavilions used for open-air classes began to disin-
tegrate and were presently pulled down. Only one, adjacent to Car-
tref and capable of being heated, was to be kept and used for the
work of the Child Study Institute, still giving its able advice and
154 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
assistance to the nearby schools and still continuing Katharine Mc-
Bride in the work which Interested her so greatly and which was so
largely of her own creating. The service was carried on steadily
even after she had left to become Dean of Radcliffe and, on her re-
turn as President, was to be much extended.
On the heels of this difficulty there arose another, not this time
due to material reasons, but to those less tangible and more dis-
turbing. It, also, had Its origin in the conditions of the Depression,
but It was a far less direct issue and it gave rise to deep feeling
and very strong differences of opinion.
For eighteen years the Summer School for Women Workers in
Industry had carried on its sessions on the campus with glowing
success, with extending knowledge of what the curriculum for such
a school for workers should contain, with accumulating results in
Its students' bringing to their working lives a better and wider un-
derstanding of what Industrial conditions stood for and what w r ere
the real problems and necessities with which employer and em-
ployee had to deal. It seemed that early experimentation had
brought so much of valuable experience that nothing but contin-
uing satisfaction could arise from the year-by-year relation.
But in this harsh time, when unemployment grew greater and
reached desperate proportions, when labor unions and operators de-
veloped bitter differences over what one side called exploitation
and the other declared was necessity, when strikes and the closing of
factories tore the fabric of any mutual trust to pieces, there was
little hope that such conditions would not, in the end, invade a
school for industrial workers. Public opinion, moreover, began to
run away, as public opinion can, with the suspicion that teaching
in the Summer School was propaganda in the direction of labor un-
rest, although, in truth, it was the exact opposite. The Directors
were to find themselves under an unreasonable fire of criticism
and questioning as to what manner of school this was which bore
the Bryn Mawr name, and what it really stood for in this uneasy
labor-and-capital world.
Along with all this it was practically inevitable that there
should arise, among the Summer School students, a minority of rad-
ical and dissatisfied members, those who, as unrest and unemploy-
ment mounted, felt that somebody or something must be held re-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 155
sponsible. From the beginning there had been a scattering of Com-
munists in the student group, about eight or ten in a hundred, with
no reason yet apparent for questioning their presence or for ex-
cluding them. Now, although the number did not increase, the
group had become noticeably more bitter and articulate.
The definite break arose primarily from an honest misunder-
standing, in the summer of 1934, as to what restrictions the Sum-
mer School had promised to observe on the part of students and
Faculty, and what the Directors had understood was agreed upon.
In a clash between striking labor in Philadelphia and the police, so
it was reported, members of the Summer School had been present as
onlookers, although in actual fact two members of the Faculty had
merely gone to intercede with the employer over the condition of
women and children suffering from the tear gas used by the po-
lice. Exaggeration of this incident brought from the not too well
informed public a storm of protest declaring that representatives
of the School had actually taken part in the strike. The session of
1934 came to an end in a burst of accusation from without and in
doubt and misgiving from within. The Directors, at their wits' end,
announced that the School could not be continued the next year
unless some plan were offered which would ensure the retaining of
those earlier objectives which President Thomas had laid down but
which now seemed to have been lost to sight.
Weeks of discussion passed with no agreement reached. Hilda
Smith, who had resigned as Dean of the College to take charge of
the Summer School, had now gone on to the larger field of Labor
Education under the United States Government. Without her wise
and firm hand, famous for its power of persuasive control, dishar-
mony and turbulence had been difficult to keep in bounds. To add
to the difficulties of settlement, a Fact-Finding Committee, made up
for the most part of former members of the Summer School, sent
in to the Directors a report bristling with criticism of the Bryn
Mawr management and demanding as a right that permission be
given for the use of the College grounds the next summer. This
committee bitterly reproached their own governing Board for ac-
cepting the decision of the Bryn Mawr Directors and for looking
for quarters elsewhere.
There entered upon this scene Marion Park, who had been
jg WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
away at the time of the first decision, on a long tour of the Far
West, in the interests of raising funds and of a future and more
widespread list of applicants for entrance. She examined the dis-
turbing details and put her finger at once on the center of the trou-
ble. The Fact-Finding Committee, she declared, was self-appointed
and had no official right to make any statements on the part of the
School, certainly no right to Insist upon the return of the sessions.
The year had advanced so far now% with no settled plan adopted,
that there was no possibility of arranging for a session at the Col-
lege for the summer of 1935. It would be necessary that it be held
at Mount Ivy, the new location the Summer School Board had
found. And Marlon Park insisted that there was little use in com-
ing to a final conclusion "while every wire is red hot." "Do not
let us part In disagreement/' she urged upon both sides. Let there
be a settled plan made that could and would reassure the Bryn
Mawr Directors and let there be a trial period set up for at least
two years of reassociation. Thus equilibrium was at least tempo-
rarily established, and the Summer School was scheduled to return
after another season.
In the spring of 1933 Marlon Park had announced from the
Chair in Faculty Meeting that, for the next academic year, all sal-
aries above $2,000 were to be cut 10 per cent. The Trustees for
it was In their hands that the final decisions on finances lay had
held out as long as they could, but were facing the inevitable now.
In prosperous times a College might face an increasing deficit and
still hope that possible gifts or a rise in value of assets might cover
a part of the difference, but at this moment such risk was too great.
No college could afford a dangerous deficit now, and this was the
only way in which to avoid one.
The President gave the news calmly, with no sign of what it cost
her to make such a statement or of what it had cost the Trustees
to face the fact of having to vote such a necessity. Everyone knew
it to be unavoidable. What it meant to family budgets which would
have to be rearranged, to cherished plans of travel for research, now
to be abandoned, to the increased pressure of unrelaxed economiz-
ing, was not to be expressed. The announcement was taken stoi-
cally, nor was there then or later any criticism or protest. It was
hard to see such a step being taken after all the years of building
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 157
up salaries. Other colleges had taken it many months before; some
had taken it too late. This was witness of what the Depression was
doing to education everywhere. The only thing to do was to resolve
that no matter what the increase in anxiety or the disappointment
in plans for any man or woman there, in no case would there be
any diminution in the quality of the appointed work.
The Depression, for those who were going through it, seemed
utterly interminable except to the few who were working upon a
solution. To most, it had come to seem a permanent institution of
modern living. But the end was nearer than had been thought, and
only in this year and the next were Faculty salaries cut. And it is
good to be able to record that financial astuteness on the part of
the Trustees surmounted even the Depression deficits and that they
were able to return, in the end, the money which it had been nec-
essary to withhold.
As the academic year of 1953-1934 opened, there appeared the
first gleam of light in the general gloom. Marion Park made, at
the chapel meeting which inaugurated the year, one of the finest of
her addresses. She always spoke well, in strong and fine prose which
at the moment went almost unnoticed, so absorbing was the inter-
est of her basic idea. Even the full depth, wisdom and final insight
of what she was saying show in their entire measure only as one reads
her speeches over again.
The state of the world seemed slightly less confused, she de-
clared to the assembled College, "and we can unreef our sails a lit-
tle"; but, she warned, "not too much." "As the world careens, rights
itself or sinks, so Bryn Mawr careens, rights itself or sinks. A force
neither entirely understandable nor controllable is taking us from
the past into a future in which you must live, make your friends or
your enemies, earn your living, grow old. . . . The college must
educate for a changing world and the method must be in no way
that of earlier custom. . . . You must prepare yourselves from the
teachers, the books, the laboratories which we can put at your dis-
posal, to meet something as yet not developed, something about
which we know only that it will be different from anything of which
we have now had experience."
This was no attempt at the mysteries of prophecy; it was only
straight thinking in the face of gigantic world problems. There
1-8 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
must of course be change and she called it change and not dis-
aster when all the old supports were breaking down. "Whatever
cosmos comes out of this chaos/' she ended, ''will come, I believe,
from the creative power, not of the individual but of the group.
This generation must relearn loyalty to an idea; what is made out
of many minds is a new thing and will demand a new loyalty of its
own."
Marion Park was, in effect, introducing her hearers to a new
form of learning and a new method of approaching it, one in which
the emphasis on individual choice and individual responsibility was
to be beyond anything attempted before. Her wisdom and courage
in facing an immense new task began with her statements here,
which would bring others to face it too. Bryn Mawr, with the rest
of its kind, was to go forward into an unfamiliar world, new indeed
and brave because there was nothing else to be. The educational
possibilities were even now r on the forge and under the hammer.
Where there might be threats of looming disaster, there were also
the openings of new opportunities, if only there was also the spirit
which could embrace them.
With the first glimpse o a rift in the dark cloud which had
hung so heavily and for so long, the Alumnae were up and away on
the active phase of their carefully weighed plan for the College.
Caroline McCormick Slade came forward to head her third drive
for funds; her very name was magic and already the toiling com-
mittees could hear in imagination her triumphant voice announcing
the achievement of the million-dollar goal. Architect's plans were
being drawn, tentatively, for the proposed new buildings; the dor-
mitory, at least, was a certainty with College funds behind it. The
architect was Sydney Martin, a new and warm friend of Bryn Mawr.
An early gift for the construction fund came from the Rhoads
family, while at the same time it had already been agreed that one
of the new buildings should carry the name of the first President.
Many have wondered why, in view of James Rhoads's great interest
in the scientific work of the College, and in the earlier science
building which, as a friend records, he sought "with passionate urg-
ing/' it was not the new science building which was named for
him. But his son, Charles J. Rhoads, now Chairman of the Board of
Trustees and Directors, felt that, close as his father had been to the
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 159
sciences, his even greater Interest was In the students themselves
and that it was the dormitory which should be called Rhoads Hall.
In the Alumnae Plan it had been settled that when the Library was
completed It was to be named for Carey Thomas, so fully had it
been the w r ork of her hands and her spirit. There was no doubt in
the world as to what name should be commemorated also upon the
campus, and the new Science Building, even on paper, became
Marlon Park HalL
The year 1935 came round and with it the time for taking
stock of Bryn Mawr's fifty years of history, a record of origin,
achievement, change and difficulties overcome which was enough
to fill a mere half-century full to overflowing. Perhaps it was be-
cause it came at the end of a period of such special trial, perhaps
because everyone felt the quickening possibilities abroad in the
world of education, that this Fiftieth Anniversary celebration was of
such particular import. One might almost feel that it was for this
alone that Goodhart had been built, as, on that November day
chosen for the celebration, the long procession wound in at its great
doors. Inside, the packed crowd rose as one In a thunder of ap-
plause and cheers, for at the end of the line walked the two Presi-
dents, Marion Park and beside her that sturdy, white-haired figure,
a legend to some, a cherished memory to others, President Martha
Carey Thomas, in her old place again. Marion Park was applaud-
ing with the rest as they came down the aisle, for this hour was
Carey Thomas's own.
There were speeches, and a President of Johns Hopkins greeted
Bryn Mawr on the brink of her second half-century as another had
done at the opening of her first. President Conant, of Harvard,
spoke of the independently endowed college, "free from entan-
gling alliances," its possibilities of leadership and enterprise, its
sacred responsibility to carry out its opportunities. Ada Corns tock,
President of Radcliffe, spoke of the special character and quality of
a college, "which affects teachers and students alike, hard to analyze,
traceable as the Gulf Stream in the sea." But the real moment of the
day was when Carey Thomas rose to speak, introduced by Marion
Park.
"Miss Thomas, we give you of the fruit of your hands and let
your own works praise you in the gates/'
i6o
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
Carey Thomas was never, fundamentally, anything but com-
pletely herself. For those in that audience who knew her only by
hearsay, she was the full realization of all that they had been told.
For those who remembered her and no process of time could blur
that recollection she was the complete return of everything they
had thought of her as being. She was as vigorous, as forcible in argu-
ment, as unconsciously roughshod in some of her comments, as
broadly constructive and as full of clear vision of the future as she
had ever been. Women have not even yet been given the full re-
wards of deserving scholarship, was the burden of her address; we
must push on, push on until they have complete recognition and
high employment. Actually, she insisted, practical recognition was
growing less.
"This is the last time that I shall ever speak to the Bryn Mawr
Alumnae," she said as she came to her close. There were cries from
the audience, "No, no, Miss Thomas/' but only her nephew and
physician, sitting among them, knew how close she had come to be-
ing unable to speak to them now. She offered her final admonition,
"Help women scholars in this field which is now being closed to
them." She made her conclusion, her voice halting at the end, and
sat down while Goodhart rocked with applause. In all her stormy,
varied and magnificent career, perhaps this moment was the great-
est and the happiest.
It was Marion Park's great day, also, but she was quite content
with little emphasis upon that fact.
Scores of colleges and universities were represented there that
day. The Alumnae present all marched in the procession, with at
least two members of every class that had been graduated from the
beginning, and more than a third present of the first one, the Class
of 1889. Joseph Taylor had been spoken of with gratitude and af-
fection, but to Carey Thomas alone was he a living memory. A
brief list, extending through Marion Park's college generation, had
visual recollection of James Rhoads's dignified figure and kindly
face. Yet these four, as, at the end of that crowded hour, everyone
could know, had been good stewards indeed. And the "more" had
come, for Caroline McCormick Slade had announced that three-
quarters of the million had been raised, with conviction that the rest
would follow. For those twelve members of the first class, that open-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? l6l
ing day fifty years ago, was as vivid as this one, the lowering skies,
the wind blowing the photographer's black cloth as he sought to
take pictures of arriving notables. How much of promise there had
been then, how much of fulfillment now! Yet the sense of promise
was still there, making electric the atmosphere of recollection, early
affection, present excitement and belief in the future. The long
procession wound its way out again into the sparkling autumn day.
Not merely the new half-century but the whole of the stirring future
was now to be taken in hand.
An undergraduate wrote home to her father that night that she
had decided, "I couldn't spare the time to go to the celebration/'
but had strolled across the grass to watch the dignitaries assembling
when Miss Thomas was flatly refusing to join the procession at
Goodhart, vowing that she could and would walk the whole of the
way. The girl waited to watch the line proceed. "It was like May
Day/* she said, only half conscious that this glimpse of pageantry
was one of the rare occasions when the achievements, the scholarly
labor and the beauty of the intellectual life were made graphic and
visible in the flowing gowns of black or scarlet, the varied rich
color of the hoods, in the learned faces. Quite without her knowing,
she was drawn into the wake of the line and sat in Goodhart to
hear the speeches, to be carried away by the ovation to Miss Thomas.
She had, as she tried so earnestly to tell her father, a sudden real
knowledge of what Bryn Mawr meant to everyone who came there
and went away again, invariably bearing with her something which
was as intangible as it was imperishable.
A month after that day of the fifty-year celebration, Carey
Thomas was dead. She had been in no way mistaken when she knew
that she would never speak before that audience again, never hold
converse with "her Alumnae/' never see those rows of earnest faces
each representing someone to whose fullness of life her College had
made signal contribution. There must always be a last time, and for
her it was a glorious one, with all the differences and disputes com-
posed and forgotten, all the greatness of her work known and ac-
claimed. To some changes she had remained stubbornly unrecon-
ciled, but that perhaps was inevitable, for she really belonged to
another age, the one of struggle and justification rather than of
completed accomplishment and forward progress. On that day of
l62 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
1885 when Bryn Mawr opened, there may have been many doubt-
ing Thomases among the grave Quakers and others who had gath-
ered there. On this day of her great acclaim, among that far greater
audience whom she addressed, there was not one dissenting spirit.
The whole of education, in her lifetime, had taken this long step
forw ard, of admitting women to free access to learning, of accept-
ing the great contribution that women could make. There could
be no doubt that the Bryn Mawr experiment had been a most po-
tent factor in this accomplishment.
Some years before Carey Thomas died she made over to the
Alumnae all her equity in the house, still called the Deanery, which
she and Mary Garrett had rebuilt with such care and filled with the
spoils of their wide travels. Technically the real title to the building
lay with the Trustees, but the contents were Miss Thomas's and
these went with the house furniture, inlaid secretaries, rugs, pic-
tures, even a closetful of brocades for recovering chairs when orig-
inal coverings were worn out. With all these she bequeathed her
innate conviction that the beauties of gracious living went naturally
with the beauties of scholastic life. The responsibility laid upon
the Alumnae was a large one, both financially and morally.
Miss Thomas would have liked to endow the house with a trust
fund for its maintenance, but the ravages of the Depression had di-
minished the fortune left her by Mary Garrett, so that project was,
finally, not feasible. None the less the Alumnae carried out what
they knew so well to be her wishes. The Deanery has been main-
tained as a gathering place for the Alumnae, for a Faculty club,
as a place of hospitality of wide and variable resources. Her china
and linens are still used in the public dining room, where the wait-
ing is done by college students, with whom it is always interesting
to have snatches of conversation on the subjects of philosophy
and literature as the plates are being changed. Concert audiences
sit on the brocaded chairs, and Alumnae come to committee meet-
ings in the Blue Room where once, dressed in their best, with hats
and gloves, they had conferences with the President. Only the Dean-
ery Committee itself can say what all this has meant in work, in
planning, in hope and enterprise.
Not only has the Deanery carried out all its possible and in-
dispensable functions, but it is the place where, as in no other con-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 163
nectlon, Carey Thomas is intimately remembered, is quoted and
described by those who knew her, is asked about by those who did
not. Hither have come, in continuing numbers, those distinguished
guests whom she and Mary Garrett had in mind when they planned
those great drawing rooms, the luxurious suites and the secluded
garden watched over by the two grotesque stone lions. Here have
been entertained those eminent scholars who have come to deliver
the Flexner lectures, and others such as Eliot, Kittredge, Robert
Frost, Bertrand Russell, Auden, Spender, a myriad of great person-
ages.
The pronounced stamp of the taste of these two ladies, belong-
ing so definitely to the last days of the nineteenth century when it
was formed, has been left unaltered, so complete is the harmony of
building, furnishings, purpose and fond reminiscence. What also
survives, unthreatened by change in point of view or trend of the
times, is the knowledge of the devotion of these two women to the
spirit, the ideal and the unbounded possibilities of Bryn Mawr.
Chapter XIII
"INTO A FUTURE IN
WHICH YOU MUST LIVE ..."
There had been great promise in all that had been spoken of on
that day of 1935 and the half-century celebration, but for the next
months it began to seem like promise that would be slow in fulfill-
ment. Even in those later 1930'$ the shadow of the Depression had
not yet passed away; money had never been so difficult to come by,
and the needs of the College grew steadily more pressing. The dor-
mitory was safe enough, but the other projected buildings seemed
like castles in very thin air indeed. Yet there had been much gen-
erosity.
An Alumna who said that her name was to be withheld until
her death gave $50,000 "in honor of Miss Thomas." A memorial gift
was offered that was of special significance. Quita Woodward, of the
class of 1932, was a student beloved by all, gay, friendly, intrepid
in the face of advancing ill health, bound to graduate at Bryn
Mawr, bound also to let nothing darken her happiness there. Her
death, in the year after her graduation, inexorable as merciless ill-
ness had made it, was a desperate blow to all of the many who had
known her and been so deeply attached to her. As Bryn Mawr lives,
so her memory is to live, in the wing and the reading room which
carry her name. It is, somehow, a memory that has preserved the
impression of the beauty and happiness of her short life, not the
unreconciled sorrow that goes with untimely death. Her father and
mother subscribed to the new Library wing, particularly for the
164
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 165
housing of the departments of Art and Archaeology, and for the
specially designated reading room for the students to be called
the Quita Woodward Room.
But in spite of this and other giving, the amount collected grew
slowly and in the face of ever increasing needs. Marion Park, there-
fore, came to a sudden conclusion hased partly on the pressure of
the moment, largely on logical reasoning and strong common sense.
If there were not sufficient money to complete the addition to the
Library, planned as matching the main and eastward portion, then
why not build something smaller? It would be quite in order to
make the new construction correspond, instead, to the existing
north and south wings which bounded the cloisters. Even if it were
no different In height and depth, and would, unfortunately, be the
sooner outgrown, it would still be large enough for offices, class-
rooms and the exhibition space needed by the Art Department. If
there were not enough funds for the Science Building as designed,
why not take a portion of the plan, set up the central part and
leave the wings to be added later? This would, inevitably, involve
separating the sciences, for it was evident, after very brief discus-
sion, that the new site could not, without great waste and incon-
enience, be adjacent to Dalton. And here was the most difficult
proposal of all much could be saved if this building were of brick,
and in austere modern style, instead of the cut stone and outward
form of towered Gothic. It was very difficult for the Bryn Mawr so-
ciety to accept this last detail of the proposal. Could the College be
really itself in any garb but gray stone and ivy? The answer plainly
was that if it was to continue to be Its progressive self it would
have to accept some compromises.
In the end there was quicker recovery from the shock of the
gray brick than there was from the modified Gothic of the archi-
tecture of Goodhart. Modern science did not really have to be set
in surroundings that referred back to the origin of all Western ed-
ucation in the monastic schools of the Middle Ages. To the profes-
sors of chemistry and geology it was clear enough that a foursquare
building of functional form would very well contain classrooms,
laboratories, small rooms for individual experiments, and museum
and library space. The celebrated Rand Collection of minerals,
given to the College through the good offices of Florence Bascom,
l66 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
would here have full justice, Instead of being hidden in those dark
corners in the top floor of Dal ton.
The new portion of the Library could well be adapted in beau-
tiful proportion to the matching and completing of the existing
wings. At the moment it seemed, by contrast, to give palatial room
to those who had been used to the overcrowded classrooms and
makeshift offices which had been their necessary habitation. The Di-
rectors, Alumnae and Faculty all finally fell in with this bolder and
more sensible method of facing difficulties, and the work began to
go forward. Rhoads Hall was begun first, then the Science Building.
The Library wing came into use last, a year later than the others,
in 1939.
The sum of all this building going forward in the late twenties
and in the latter years of the 1930*5 materially altered the face of
the campus. But it was but little in comparison; it was indeed
only an adjunct to the invisible changes that were going on within
the academic processes of the College. Students now were to "pre-
pare themselves'*; they were not to be taught. So Marion Park de-
clared to the students on that morning which opened the academic
year of 1935-1934. Only so could they be ready for that future
which, it was even then foreseeable, was to be so different from any-
thing which had gone before.
It was a startling challenge, but more than a decade had al-
ready gone into the evolving of a system in which this would be
fully possible. That study, begun almost with Marion Park's ad-
ministration itself, had been laboriously going over the necessary
alterations in the old plan of the curriculum, in the group system
in the first place. This, except for some increase in the number of
departments and available courses, had seen no variation in prin-
ciple since it was first set on foot in 1885. Changes were to come
now in a different way from that in which, much earlier, the old,
ultraclassical scheme of study was brought to an end, subject by
subject. What was being sought for now was a whole new approach,
a fashion of learning. And conclusions were reached through com-
parison of judgment and experience, and adopted by common con-
sent. Much time and long effort are bound to go into any such
complete remaking of an outworn method.
There had been revived, under the new President, the College
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 167
Council, a group formed of the heads of the various undergraduate
and graduate associations, a body set up during World War I to
coordinate services and activities. Marlon Park set out to make use
of them as a consultative committee for this question which was of
such Importance to them all. They formed a Curriculum Commit-
tee of their own; they met with the Faculty's Committee and offered
some of the most helpful suggestions in the whole, lengthy study.
Everyone worked arduously over the unending details, the unex-
pected and exasperating difficulties. Everyone felt conscious of hav-
ing a share in what was accomplished In the end.
It was settled that, instead of the old double major system,
wherein the main subjects were pursued in indivisible pairs, there
should be for every student, a single central subject, with a broad
list of "allies" as a guide to sequence and connection in choices
made. The selection of the major and its allies was left fully to the
student's own decision. There was a radical change in the distribu-
tion of time and the weighing of courses, while those which were
required were reduced in number to scarcely half the older list.
There was thus a far wider margin for the choice of free electives.
There was, too, less and less dependence on lectures alone; class
discussion was to accompany them wherever possible, for exchange
and establishment of opinion within the class itself. Yet lectures
were not lost sight of as necessary to cover wide ground, to gather
knowledge from many sources, as basis for the students' informed
discussion.
Above all there was to be ample opportunity for consultation
between professor and student. Particularly for upperclassmen there
should be generous individual attention and guidance in the chosen
discipline, to use that term of current academic parlance to which
so much of the flavor of ancient learning still seems to cling. Disci-
pline it surely is, but not from outside, nor even is it deliberate
self-discipline, but the rigorous ruling out of extraneous things
which the special field of learning itself entails upon those who,
with true interest and devotion, set out to follow it. To give freely
of time and attention to young people's individual intellectual
needs has long been a strong tradition of the Bryn Mawr Faculty.
Such a thing is kept up far less by definite requirements and stipu-
lation at the time of appointment than by discussion and example
i68
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
between older Faculty members and younger ones. It is only thus
that the true spirit of generous scholarship can be kept alive.
The new curriculum was warmly welcomed by the students.
For them it split the shell of an old rigor which had remained too
long sheltered in its own immobility. They were moving, perhaps
not quite consciously, into a plan of study which called for more
and more of their own thinking processes, which rendered them
more mature and, in this sense, more educated. Following the first
step there came quickly the introduction of Honors work and the
resultant "graduation with honors." For this, specially able stu-
dents were invited with the privilege of declining to pursue dur-
ing their senior year some phase of their appointed study carried
out by their own research, with no settled course or classes or at-
tendance on lectures. Instead there was regular and direct consul-
tation with their professors. Every mind has its own single and best
direction, and it is the true flowering of complete education when
that mind can follow, under its own effort, its own innately ap-
propriate way.
After Honors, there came, in 1937, the plan for the Com-
prehensives, technically designated as the Final Examination. Here
the student was called upon to review, and offer for questioning,
the whole of her knowledge of her major subject, with one field of
special concentration and one of an allied study. The students were
greatly alarmed over the Comprehensives after the Faculty had
finally voted to adopt them, and believed that degrees might well
be lost by some chance casualty on a final examination paper. Time
has shown, however, that methodically approached through the help
of their professors, the comprehensive review was not a liability but
an asset. It gave a greater sense of true understanding of the entire
subject, instead of that sum of various courses, set end to end in
the student's mind, that afforded a lesser grasp of their study as
a whole. Bryn Mawr came to this system of Honors and Com-
prehensives a little later than did some of the other colleges, and by
the express and patiently pursued desire of Marion Park.
As a further development in these accepted changes, there came
the organizing of the Language houses, in 1937 and 1938, where stu-
dents pledged themselves to use only the language in question while
they were under a Language House roof. German and Spanish
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 169
houses have been arranged for, whenever the demand was sufficient.
The French House has gone on continuously, in Wyndham, as has
been told elsewhere. The French Department also joined in the
University of Delaware's plan for the Junior Year Abroad, and the
College has shared with Smith in a similar plan for study in coun-
tries other than France. Students work at foreign universities of
their choice and live, under sufficient advice and supervision, with
families near by. Until the war temporarily put an end to it, this
scheme was one which enlisted larger and larger interest.
The person who contributed most to the practical working
form of all this new order was Helen Taft Manning, Dean of the
College at that time, although she had, in her indefatigable services
to Bryn Mawr, been many other things. She was traveling compan-
ion to Carey Thomas on one of her fabulous journeys abroad; she
hearkened to, and took seriously, Miss Thomas's constantly re-
peated behest that a Dean, instead of confining herself to the giv-
ing of individual advice, "should put more time on educational
problems/' Entering as a student in the autumn of 1908, she took
three years out to be of help to her father and mother during their
term in the White House, and came back to graduate with the Class
of 1915. Her connection with Bryn Mawr since then has been nearly
continuous; as Helen Taft she was made Dean when still very
young; she was absurdly young when appointed as acting President
during another of Carey Thomas's journeys. As Helen Manning,
she was acting President later for Marion Park and acting Dean
of the Graduate School in 1943. In 1946 she gave up her sabbatical
year and postponed the writing of a long-planned and important
book, to become Executive Director of the Alumnae drive for funds.
She is now Chairman of the History Department, with a wide field
for her ample scholarship.
She contributed with extraordinary constructive ability to the
working out of the intricate details, and to the establishing of the
deeper import, of the new curriculum. The system, to achieve full
success, had to be founded on profound scholarship, on sensible
planning and on a true understanding of those brisk young minds
for whom the whole effort was being expended. All who worked
on this greatly altered order of study drew on their full familiarity
with the brilliant capacity of some students, the toiling devotion of
l >- WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
others, the alert intellectual curiosity of the many, the inevitable
difficulties of the few. Out of her expert knowledge, her own high
sense of scholarship and her endless resourcefulness, Helen Manning
made her great contributions to the new idea, the new College.
A new College it had become indeed. "Old plans proved their
essential Tightness by being unexpectedly adaptable/' Marion Park
said later. It was surely true that the new plan came out of the old
one, that it was stoutly founded upon what Carey Thomas's Alum-
nae had called "the enduring elements." Without those elements it
could not have come into being. Now it was really completed, with
the carrying out of the Alumnae plan, with the addition of the hun-
dred students, with the new buildings and with the Faculty's reor-
ganized curriculum moving steadily forward until it was completely
under way.
It seemed, then, since all had been so heroically accomplished,
that everyone concerned could stop for a moment at last and draw
a long breath. But could they? It is to be noted that the last step
of the plan ended with the opening of the Library wing and that
this occurred in 1939.
The activities of a college are many-sided, and these were not
all of the changes going on at Bryn Mawr in the face of a changing
and hurrying world. In November of 1938, the connection between
Bryn Mawr and the Summer School for Women Workers in In-
dustry came to an official end. Reassociation, renewed for a trial
period of two years, had been extended to a third. But now, at a
meeting of the Joint Committee of the Summer School, of which
she was Chairman, Marion Park presented her decision, fully con-
scious of how unwelcome it was, and how necessary. She could not
recommend, she said, a renewing of the old arrangement. Labor
Education was a great movement of its own, recognized early by
President Thomas and given, by her plan, both incentive and ex-
tending experience. But this unique experiment had merged into
something different and had passed beyond the point where Bryn
Mawr could well follow it. Labor itself should control it, and the
School should become a larger organization without the restrictions
that short summer sessions on a college campus would afford. The
School itself had been getting many requests from Trade Unions for
larger facilities, for opportunities to carry on institutes of various
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 171
kinds, for work which could extend over longer periods than a sum-
mer vacation would allow. Marion Park declared that she would con-
tinue, gladly, her interest and her work for the School, but the im-
mediate arrangement was proving too narrow of possibility. For its
own sake the Summer School should move on to something larger.
She did not say, as she might have, that it was only by accept-
ing the proposal that the President of Bryn M awr should be the
President also of the Board of the Summer School, that the re-
newed connection could go forward at all, with a resulting large
addition to the work of that office. It required a constant steering
of the project over small but dangerous difficulties, more in number
than history will ever record.
She was giving them the best of her considered opinion now,
and to this opinion she held. There was protest and criticism from
various directions, but in the end she was rewarded by seeing the
Summer School do w r ell under its new auspices and in its new lo-
cation. At West Park, New York, "Hudson Shore," the family home
of Hilda Smith, had been earlier remodeled and used for four years
as a workers' school and was equipped now for just such a purpose.
Here, under the name of the Hudson Shore Labor School for
Women Workers in Industry, organized now for year-round activity,
the next chapter of the former Summer School began. Certain gifts
to the College, made for the well-being of this particular venture,
were turned over to assist in the launching of the new and ex-
panded program. There was regret over the final departure of the
School, but there was left the satisfaction of knowing that, through
all the ups and downs, there had not been lost sight of that original
conviction of Carey Thomas's that intellectual training is certain
to enrich any walk of life, and that it is worth going far either to
seek it or to bestow it.
One more definite break with the past was made, and brought
about In the spirit of forward educational progress along a whole
line and with manifest result. The College was steadily moving
away from what some of the Alumnae had called "the splendid iso-
lation of Bryn Mawr." That isolation had grown particularly
marked in the later days of President Thomas's administration,
more conspicuously so since other women's colleges were so
definitely drawing together, particularly those of private endow-
iy^ WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
ment. Bryn Mawr's undertakings and problems were peculiar to
herself, and her own kind of college, so Carey Thomas insisted,
and there would be little benefit in consultation with others. As
President she more or less automatically had place on various
Boards and committees which had to do with general education,
such as the College Entrance Examination Board, but her own im-
pulse toward outside activities, in those final years, was in woman
suffrage, which was achieved only two years before her retirement.
With the common problems of higher education growing so many
and so difficult, It was hardly probable that such withdrawal could
have continued much longer.
With a steadily growing college-bent population, there was vis-
ibly no need to compete for students, since it was difficult enough,
during those early 1920*5 to find places for all who wished to at-
tend. It was clear also that there were more and more matters upon
which common discussion was very pertinent, matters of construc-
tion, of operation and social regulation. It was a long time since
Joseph Taylor and Carey Thomas had made their tours seeking in-
formation on just such questions and had been so earnestly and so
vainly advised by the President of Smith to include closets In the
building plans. Four colleges, Vassar, Smith, Wellesley and Mount
Holyoke, had begun having meetings of their own, following the
meetings of the College Entrance Board, with President Neilson of
Smith as their leading spirit. He had urged Carey Thomas to join
them but she had remained elusive. Marion Park, however, imme-
diately began attending the meetings, which were later joined, in
1940, by Radcllffe and Barnard, formerly considered in a different
category because each was part of the organization of a great uni-
versity.
Bryn Mawr from the beginning had presented its own examina-
tions for entrance, but had come finally into using those of the
College Entrance Board, although continuing to rely a good deal
on her own reading and interpretation of them. In 1933, however,
when the Depression had brought an alarming decrease in applica-
tion for all colleges, there was a sudden general agreement, among
other institutions, both men's and women's, to turn, for a basis of
acceptance for matriculation, to the new form of aptitude tests and
a very limited number of written papers of the general nature
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? l^g
called achievement tests. Since all the others had gone along with
the large universities in accepting the change, Bryn Mawr, with
some reluctance and some doubts and criticisms at home, joined
with the rest. It was very soon to be plain to everyone concerned
that the new method brought a change very much for the better
in simplifying and making more effective the process of choice
among applicants.
This association of women's colleges, become the Seven Col-
leges after 1940, has gone forward as an able and firm organiza-
tion, a distinct feature in the whole picture of modern education
and a full proof of the value of cooperation. Deans meet now, as
well as the heads of the colleges; Faculty representatives come also,
and undergraduate presidents of Self-Government Associations. A
Seven College Alumnae Committee has followed. A campaign of
publicity had been organized early to show thinking Americans how,
even to a newly enlightened generation, it was not everywhere clear
how inadequately the funds for women's education were meeting
the actual needs, how strong is still the tradition for giving to men's
colleges and universities instead. No drives for funds attended this
effort; it was simply made in the cause of provoking general con-
sideration of a vital subject. It has borne slow but tangible fruit in a
changed attitude in the Educational Foundations and Corporations
which have money to assign, and in wills made then with bequests
that have come to light many years later.
The National Scholarships were set up by the Seven Colleges,
following World War II, to apply to ten states, where any applicant
could compete for them and, with success, could make a choice of
any one of the seven for entrance. They arose from the knowledge
that a college, to have a complete and balanced student body, must
draw candidates from all geographical areas and from all economic
backgrounds. Only in such combination can young people teach
one another toleration and understanding, and can lose, in their
common life, the provincialism or the loneliness which so easily as-
sails the young student.
A much earlier realization of this same truth, and a means for
helping to lay the foundation for such a plan, has been Bryn Mawr's
long-standing institution of her own, the Regional Scholarships. It
has been mentioned that, for the purposes of the drive for funds in
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
1920, the Alumnae Association had been organized geographically
into districts with Councilors for each and plans for regular meet-
ings of this combined Council One of the first activities of this
newly organized system was to set up, in 1922, this arrangement for
regional scholarships whereby Alumnae in each district raised funds
for the support of one, two, three or more candidates entering Bryn
Mawr. Effective methods have been evolved for finding out the best
applicants, talking with them and passing on their promise, and
keeping contact with them as they go forward for their degrees.
The whole was conceived as a definite part of Marion Park's ex-
panded view of the opportunities for Eryn Mawr's usefulness.
The New England district proposed the plan, it having origi-
nated with Eleanor Little Aldrich, of the Class of 1905, who has
been so long and so faithfully a Director of the College and who
has moved mountains in the carrying out of this special under-
taking. The Regional Scholarships give assistance now to as many
as forty-three Bryn Mawr undergraduates at a time, and have pro-
duced a group of notably excellent students and of loyal and val-
uable Alumnae.
The College has, besides, a long list of endowed scholarships
and of scholarships offered by the Trustees to the neighboring pub-
lic schools and to Quaker schools in memory of Joseph Taylor. But
there are never enough. As the college population of the whole
country grows, so Bryn Mawr inevitably grows, and with every ac-
quisition of numbers there is the attendant necessity for more ex-
tended aid to the promising ones who are in need of it.
"We need a half-million for scholarships now," James Rhoads
said to Carey Thomas in 1885. It was wishful thinking indeed when
a whole million was all that they had for everything.
Bryn Mawr's foreign scholarships, standing in a somewhat dif-
ferent category, are to be described elsewhere.
Joseph Taylor, in his letters and his discussions with friends,
noted at various times that the geographical proximity of Haver-
ford and Bryn Mawr might prove of use to both of them. He con-
cluded, finally, however, that his new College should be at great
enough distance from any other to be entirely independent. The
same idea of usefulness did not seem to occur to him in regard to
Swarthmore, removed from Bryn Mawr by what once seemed a very
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 175
considerable distance. But modern transportation has brought them
all much nearer together and modern ways of thinking have brought
them closer still. Haverford, set up by Orthodox Quakers and for
men; Swarthmore, founded by Hicksite Quakers and coeducational;
Bryn Mawr, Quaker-sponsored too, and for women, are definitely
alike in some ways, definitely different in others. It becomes In the
end a natural conclusion that they could complement one another
in all those matters where one has what the others do not. The Idea
and the possibility of their w r orking together in certain matters had
been considered earlier, but it can be said that it was Marion
Park's special effort that brought what w r as only a possibility into a
real working reality. There had been earlier, but much less exten-
sive exchange of students between the University of Pennsylvania
and Bryn Mawr.
Marion Park kept to the determined view that the solution of
problems, the spur for going forward, should come from the group
rather than from the single person, no matter how long or slow was
the process of arriving at conclusions. But in this matter it was
necessary at the beginning for one person to show the initiative, to
spend time and interest, to make, by 1940, the value of what has
come to be known as Three-College Cooperation a self-evident fact.
Two of the colleges involved were about to have new Presidents,
and Haverford had only recently acquired one; it was the desire of
all three heads of their institutions that some arrangement be made
as an asset to those who would have the future responsibilities.
The first meetings between Presidents Park, Morley and Nason
were incidental and casual, over small practical matters which
called for concerted discussion. The points of common interest and
the opportunities for mutual helpfulness, however, soon became
very plain, were considered, developed and set in working order. It
was thought at one time that the three libraries might be organized
under one common head, but this was not found to be practical.
But a complete pooling of library resources, a regular and organized
exchange of books, the inclusion in the Bryn Mawr catalogue of the
books available so close by at Haverford, all have made for greatly
extended resources and a relief of pressure on budgets. An inter-
change of students followed, where one college offered courses
which the other had not. When a number of students were involved
!^5 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
it was found better to have the professor go to and fro rather than
to transport the class. From that point the step was obvious to the
idea of joint appointments, when certain new members of the Fac-
ulty were chosen with the special view of their teaching in more
than one of the three colleges.
As everyone knows, student opinion is emphatic and occasion-
ally unaccountable, and, at first, Bryn Mawr student opinion, sur-
prisingly, was voiced as being thoroughly against the new idea. "It
was not our intention to attend a university/' an editorial in the
College News declared. They thought that this was something being
forced upon them, diminishing the prestige and individual standing
of their own College. But reassurance followed quickly: nothing was
to be obligatory; much was clearly to be gained by this wider
spread of courses. Supporting enthusiasm followed soon, and the
three colleges stepped easily into that established and friendly inter-
change which has simplified problems, enlarged resources and en-
riched possibilities ever since.
In 1953 a national survey, backed by the Fund for the Advance-
ment of Education, produced a report entitled The Younger Amer-
ican Scholar; His Collegiate Origins. Its purpose was "to discover
the fountains of scholarship in America, that is the colleges that pro-
duce men and women dedicated to advanced scholarly endeavour."
Among the men's institutions, Haverford was listed at the head;
among those which were coeducational, Swarthmore; among the
women's colleges, Bryn Mawr. There is plainly, therefore, much here
of common standards and common purpose, so that interchange
comes easily and with profit to all three. This innovation in Marion
Park's administration was something unique, and it was Marion
Park's own.
It may be seen, by this review, how packed full were those two
decades of the igso's and iggo's with forward-looking plans, with
tireless effort, with large achievement. But the time had come now
when there could be no more looking ahead, when all that was pos-
sible was to entrench, to stand fast, to hold to what was good. The
whirlwind of totalitarian ideology was sweeping across Europe with
its accompanying purpose of world domination. One of its hideous
characteristics was already plain: its determination to overthrow
free scholarship. Among other desperate questions there was also
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 177
this one: How would education fare in a world darkened by such
deliberate destruction of human welfare, material and spiritual? No
person then present will ever erase from memory that scene in De-
cember, 1941, when the whole college body gathered in Goodhart,
grave, silent, intent as no one had ever seen them before, listening
to the broadcast voice of President Roosevelt asking his Congress
for a declaration of war.
In the ordinary course of things Marion Park would have re-
tired from the Presidency of Bryn Mawr in June of 1941. She
would have been spared the impact of that staggering blow to
American society when, as is always true of a war, everything
changed utterly overnight. Restrictions on food and travel, Civil
Defense organization, departure of Faculty, the specter of reduced
income and reduced enrollment, all had to be met. Her training in
office had been rugged, but this was the most demanding situation of
all. There was a night when a telephone call from Washington
brought warning that all laboratories where experimental work for
the Government was going on, were to be blown up. Princeton had
received similar warning. Bryn Mawr's President and her chief air-
raid warden, together with the College workmen, spent the night
guarding the different entrances to Dalton, but morning came with-
out the threatened disaster.
"We take for granted the tumult of affairs beyond our walls,"
President Park said in her yearly report to the Directors, and went
on to record what had been done, what was being planned within
the possibilities which were left.
The matter of choosing a new President had been undertaken
with great care and thoroughness. A committee had been appointed
among the Faculty and another among the Alumnae. Everyone was
asked to send in a list of suggested names so that the possibility of
choice might be as wide as possible. At the end of a year no con-
clusion had been reached. Without Marion Park's willingness to
continue in office the situation would have been grave; a forced de-
cision made in haste would have been a serious matter. Discussion
and investigation went diligently forward. Meanwhile, a young as-
sociate professor in the Department of Psychology and Education
had been called to be Dean of Radcliffe and, in a term of able
service, was building up her administrative experience. Marion Park
178 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
had made heroic effort to conceal the fact of who was her favorite
candidate, but her delight in the final selection was unnecessary to
hide. It was a clear and brilliant day in the autumn of 1941, with
all the gay College banners streaming from their staffs in the No-
vember wind, that the Faculty was called to a special meeting to
receive the announcement that the new President was to be Katha-
rine Elizabeth McBride.
When the last days of her Administration came, Marion Park
strove to avoid, as far as possible, those occasions of adulation
which go with the act of retirement. She was anxious that all praises
should be for the College and not for herself. But with such suc-
cess behind her, full acknowledgment was not to be put by. Hon-
orary degrees, letters of affectionate recollection from those who
had worked with her, all these were hers. She had gone about the
purposes which she pursued, never with partisanship, always with
inspiring leadership, but so quietly that one might almost feel that
her own appraisal of herself might have been taken as the final one.
But time and public opinion were too just for that. Twenty years
of devoted and wise toil could not be hidden. She was given the
M. Carey Thomas Award by the Alumnae, their highest honor,
announced to her by Caroline McCormick Slade on the platform of
Goodhart at that closing Commencement. With it went the esteem
and gratitude of all who had in any way to do with the College, in
recognition of the great legacy she was leaving to them, these spa-
cious buildings, this even more spacious concept of learning and
teaching, this deep impression that here was what she had been
called in her Faculty, "a great liberal."
PART FOUR
Katharine Elizabeth McBride
PRESIDENT 1942-
A.B. Bryn Mawr College,
M.A. Bryn Mwwr College,
Ph.D. Bryn Ma f wr College, 1932
Chapter XIV
"PERIL DOES NOT
UNDERMINE THEM'
Courage is demanded of everyone during a war, but there is surely
need for more than an ordinary measure of it to face taking up the
administration of a college with World War II just getting into the
real and deadly swing of its stride. The usual thing had happened,
historically speaking, when a trustful and peace-loving democracy
found itself suddenly involved in struggle with adversaries who were,
even as nations, professionals in the field of military attack. The
country's ever expanding circle of needs and responsibilities, the
unsolved problems, the inevitable defeats in the first contests with
the enemy, the wearing thin of the immediate and excited patri-
otism and the beginning of knowledge of how long and dreary the
ordeal was to be, all these had already arrived in those first ten
months before Bryn Mawr's new President came into office. But
there was no faltering in the face of these looming difficulties to be
met and dealt with. Katharine McBride's inauguration was a gay
and beautiful event, full of the evidence of high intention and new
promise.
Among the Alumnae, in crowded attendance that day, it came
to a proportion of them as something of a shock to realize that,
with the advance of Bryn Mawr history, it was now in order to see
a President appointed who was so much younger than themselves.
Now, of a sudden, they were the elder statesmen. But respect and
admiration for the young is as warming and satisfying a sensation
as respect and reverence for those long established, and just such
180
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? l8l
respect and affection Katharine McBride had on every hand.
Charles J. Rhoads, President of the Board, and Rufus Jones were
the officials who presided. Rufus Jones, with nearly fifty years of
devoted service behind him, could not look to see the inaugura-
tion of another President of Bryn Mawr College. But, as all could
see, the pride and gratification upon his face and in his voice made
clear, as he took his part in her induction into office, with what
happy confidence he and Charles Rhoads entrusted to her the cher-
ished affairs of the College.
Besides the fully evident abilities which had been the basis for
choosing Katharine McBride at the age of thirty-seven for this dif-
ficult place, other gifts were hers beyond what could have been
reasonably asked for. She had already, as everyone knew, a high
reputation for scholarly achievement. She brought brilliance of
scholarship and, coupled with it, a quality of mind and spirit, that
were to prove an indescribable but fully tangible asset to the
College which she was to serve. She brought also unflagging en-
terprise, a rapid and effective faculty for organization, an extraor-
dinary and generous capacity for knowing, for liking and for un-
derstanding people, younger and older. She brought to her decisions
a strong firmness of conviction, but they were decisions made always
after true reflection and with the human factor taken into full
consideration. The College News said of her, in adequate summary,
"She is both wise and young/*
In her inaugural address she faced resolutely those difficulties,
foreseeable and unforeseeable, which the next years of her Admin-
istration were bound to bring. She spoke of the elements of the
civilized world, "reason, sympathy, freedom and justice and the
qualities of growth/' which are the foundation stones of education
and scholarship. And she declared, "Peril does not undermine them."
We can see now how it was that those same professional fight-
ing nations had, from the very beginning, committed the vast blun-
der of striking at scholarship to overthrow it. Instead it was the
inexperienced and unpracticed newcomers to the field of war who
were wise enough to enlist scholarship at once, and, when hostilities
finally ceased, were to open, as never before, the opportunities for
higher education. All educational institutions were to feel, first the
depletion of student bodies in the men's colleges and universities,
12 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
the draining of faculties, the carrying away of scholars into a wider
and more materially prosperous world, then the flooding in, later,
of a great tide of students of a different type from any dealt with
before these would be enough indeed to make every settled sys-
tem reel. And there was to follow, still later, that seeping stream
of corrupting propaganda, creeping everywhere, arousing suspicion
that was like a disease, attacking the integrity of honest thought
and of free and enterprising mind. This was to be another danger
still. Those who sat and listened that day knew that they faced dan-
gers both known and unknown, and yet felt their confidence un-
shaken.
The immediate duty of the new President was, of course, to
take measures to preserve the efficiency of the teaching staff in the
face of all the inroads now being made upon it. The younger mem-
bers of the Faculty, both men and women, were already passing
into the armed services. The older professors, established in dis-
tinction, were summoned to Washington for this Commission or
that one, as advisers, as heads of new sections of Government ac-
tivities, as directors of laboratories or of research. Many of them
disappeared into those inner recesses of Army or Navy offices where
the work was "confidential*' and its nature never to be divulged
even after all was over.
"A hundred percent loss in Deans, more than thirty- three and
a third percent loss in Faculty," was Katharine McBride's cheerful
summing up. It was actually more than that, for the office of Dean
of the College was vacated twice, as was also that of Dean of the
Graduate School. No voice in the higher management ever forbade
their going. Not many stopped to think of what all this meant to
the Quaker Trustees, to whom war was a greater moral outrage
than to other people. They accepted fully the right of all to follow
their own consciences and they responded promptly and generously
to every notice that came in of one more person's decision to leave.
But the task of keeping up the work to its normal level be-
came an ever more desperate one. Here appeared now the full
worth of the plan for cooperation between the three colleges, all
of whom were suffering, in greater or lesser measure, in this calling
away of teachers. Between Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore
the broken ranks closed up; there was always someone who would
Marion Edwards Park, Third
President of Bryn Mawr Col-
lege, 1922-1942
CBachrach}
Katharine Elizabeth McBride,
Fourth President of Bryn Mawr
College, 1942-
(Bachrach)
(Bachrach)
Charles J. Rhoads, Trustee of the College from 1907, President of the
Trustees and Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1936 to 1956
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
take on a greater burden of work, would crowd some of his efforts
Into smaller time, to come to the assistance of another institution.
It was, of course, the specialists and those most difficult to replace
who were usually the ones to be swallowed up by the demands of
Washington. But somehow a way was always found. It is never to
be forgotten that those who remained, to face heroic toil, made as
great a contribution as those who went. The country needed educa-
tors as much as it needed specialists.
The high demand for the young graduates of the College was
full proof of the effectiveness of the new method of teaching and
independent study. In a world of new techniques, utterly unthought
of a few years earlier, in no way prepared for now, young minds
that were highly trained in adaptability and intellectual enterprise
found their way with a minimum of difficulty. At Bryn Mawr the
requirement of a reading knowledge of two modern languages had
been retained, although the old, stylized Orals had been abandoned
even in President Thomas's time. The guarantee of this extra
knowledge put the Bryn Mawr alumna into a special category in
the eyes of the Civil Service. Willingness to work arduously for the
satisfaction of seeing a job well done, a trait behind the first im-
pulse to choose Bryn Mawr as a college, was depended upon now by
an anxious head of personnel trying to fill the insatiable demands
of his department for a myriad of new workers. "You are graduat-
ing on Tuesday?" a recruiting agent would say. "Then we can
count on your reporting for work in Washington on Thursday
morning." Not even a week end of vacation could be allowed be-
tween the receiving of the diploma and the embarking upon an
extraordinary and exacting new life.
It was a difficult situation for the young graduates, just en-
tering upon complete independence. There was no time to choose
a career, to consult, Inwardly, their own cherished impulses or ambi-
tions. They went where they were needed most, usually without
being able to know beforehand much of what the nature of their
work would be. They worked so hard to master the immediate and
challenging tasks before them, that they had little time to speculate
upon other possibilities. They were to feel it after the war years
were over, when suddenly they had to think again as to what way
of life was really their proper one, what signposts their inward
184 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
instincts really bade them follow. The signs were not so clear after
that intensive interval which was like nothing that they would ever
see again. But that problem was to come later; for the time being
they were rewarded by this bewildering opportunity for employ-
ment, thankful for the education which had put them so fully in the
way of it. One saw Bryn Mawr Alumnae everywhere in Washington,
from Ruth Cheney Streeter, of the Class of 1918, Director of the
Women's Marine Corps, through the ranks of WAAC and WAVES
and Coast Guard, on into the multitude of research assistants and
others of unnamed occupation with strange secrets harbored in their
capable heads. Certainly as at no time in American history before
had the field of education been able to offer such contribution to
the needs of its country. The headquarters in Philadelphia, where
applicants' records were cleared, had a saying, "Join the FBI and
see Bryn Mawr."
As time went on and one war year merged into another, Bryn
Mawr evolved more long-term plans, taking as hypothesis that the
needs of the war would be of no short duration, looking forward
also to the time of reconstruction and restoration to follow. Sum-
mer courses were introduced for acceleration in the Departments of
Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics, for in these fields were the
greatest calls for trained experts. Under the auspices of the United
States Office of Education courses in photogrammetry were given,
these being for students outside the College, studying the technique
of reducing airplane reconnaissance photographs to maps. Techni-
cal courses in analytical chemistry were also given.
It was resolved by the Faculty that students who married mem-
bers of the armed forces "were to have excused absence equal to the
time of the husband's furlough." There were many girls who had
had their weddings and their partings and had come back resolutely
to complete their degrees. The Faculty set itself to restudy the
curriculum, with a view to solid preparation, possibly through in-
terdepartmental majors, for future careers in a world under recon-
struction. Rhys Carpenter, in the Department of Classical Archae-
ology, spread the contagious magic of his great learning and his
extraordinary gifts in lecturing over the "Cultural Geography of
the Mediterranean" as a basis for understanding the peoples and
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 185
places of that large section of the war which was focused there. It
was hailed as one of the College's finest courses.
The students had organized among themselves the War Alli-
ance, an offshoot of their Undergraduate Association, which had
for its purpose the coordinating and channeling of the restless de-
sires in everyone to be of some significant use* Classes of instruction
multiplied everywhere, the usual ones of first aid, home nursing
and nutrition, which were attended by Faculty and students alike,
with nurses' aide study as certainly the most important. Many of
the students did remarkable service on the recreational programs
of Government hospitals, in particular the nearest one at Valley
Forge, among the men who had suffered loss of eyesight or facial
disfigurement. Ordinary extracurricular activities were given up as
the students collected clothes, packed food, rolled bandages,
knitted.
There was a critical season when the hospitals of the whole
area presented a combined plea for help in their crippled condition
through the absence of nurses. Could not the young women of the
educational Institutions in the neighborhood give some organized
assistance? It was proposed within the College that students in
good health and good standing should be allowed to cut down their
courses by half a unit, roughly by five hours a week, if they would
undertake to give ten hours weekly to training and assistance in
hospital work. This was to be accompanied by a promise to give
150 hours' service in the summer. There was much debate over such
a decision, with the emergency of the moment weighed against the
responsibility of the College, which had received the students with
the pledge to give them full measure of education. The insistent
need, however, was finally considered to be something not to be
passed over, and the shortened program was allowed. A few of the
students had already been affording such help in the hospitals with-
out the respite of decreased academic work, although it was difficult
to see how they had been able to manage it. A good number em-
braced the new offer and carried out their undertakings with faith-
fulness.
It was probably inevitable that there should arise, in this time
of high tension, another serious crisis in the Self-Government As-
W
HAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
soclatlon. In the igso's an undercurrent of criticism and discon-
tent had brought the question into open meeting as to whether it
should not be given up entirely. The student body, shocked into
realization of what it really meant to them, supported it then with
only one differing vote. Bryn Mawr had never lost its pride in this
once unique institution, now adopted almost everywhere as a mat-
ter of course. But in the war years there were bound to be difficul-
ties of a new sort which the twenty-year-old constitution was not
adapted to meet. There was spiritual weariness from long anxiety,
impatience with inconvenient living, unending self-questioning as
to whether to finish college or to go at once into war service,
civilian or military. There was unremitting emotional tension over
private affairs; even the day-to-day watching of the mail was a
strain in itself.
Before the eyes of the upperclassmen was the knowledge that
young women, only a year older than themselves, were carrying
unbelievably large responsibilities and living most successfully in
complete and free independence. Why should those who were so
little younger be subject to regulations as to their behavior and to
their comings and goings? Many were involved in love affairs, as
was quite natural, keeping them under constant sense of how rap-
idly the time was passing, how few were the moments left which
they and their fiances, or in many cases their young husbands, could
-spend together, with that black pit of the uncertain future deep
before them. By 1944 unorganized grumbling had intensified into
bitter complaints of unjustified restraints, until there was formed
a group which voiced loudly the idea that Self-Government in itself
is an anomaly and an anachronism.
An editorial appeared in the College magazine, the Lantern,
-suggesting in no uncertain terms that it was time for Self-Govern-
ment to be abolished and that there be "no separate government
beyond that of the State." If we do not break any public law, it
was argued, we can be considered as staying within decent and
proper limits. The group responsible for this idea based their views,
they said, on a somewhat vague conception of "individual rights/'
They made it their business to go from smoking room to smoking
room, getting the freshmen bewildered and the upperclassmen
roused. There were not very many of them but they were very
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 187
earnest. The President of Self-Government, Patricia St. Lawrence,
was in a desperately difficult position; the Self-Government idea
had always seemed so thoroughly grounded in reason and complete
acceptance that there were no precedents and no experience to
show how to meet such a situation. She stood her ground; and those
who stood with her realized that fallacies were being circulated,
that the issue was many times being utterly confused. The College
News by necessity printed the letters of the dissenters, but in its
own editorials stanchly upheld the value and the proved service of
Self-Government. When a mass meeting was called and the trench-
ant question was put to vote, "Shall Self-Government be given up?' r
though a stout majority was for its continuance, a surprising-
number raised their voices on the other side.
True to Bryn Mawr procedure, the President took no stand on
authority, although she was constantly available for discussion and
consultation. Counsel from her and from other members of the
Administration led always toward searching for the real principles
at stake. Only after the matter had been voted upon and settled did
Katharine McBride, addressing the students all together, point out
some further matters which, in the dissenting minds, had not seemed
to be clear. A Self-Government Association had responsibility to
the College as a whole, she told them, not merely to individuals,
not even just to the student body. "The whole welfare of the Col-
lege," she declared, "requires the respect of the parents, the com-
munity, the Alumnae and the friends of Bryn Mawr."
The final result was a review of the constitution, doing away
with some regulations which had been outgrown, just as the ban on
smoking had been outworn in the twenties. And one of the most
important provisions adopted was that every four years there was to
be a reconsideration of the whole body of regulations and a read-
justment, when necessary, to keep abreast of the times and conven-
tions. The Directors approved the new rulings and passed a vote of
appreciation for Patricia St. Lawrence as "having acted with dis-
cretion and continuing force in a trying time."
Under all these conditions, the President's task was a very
heavy one, but no one was to know from Katharine McBride
herself how much actual daily labor went into the endless adjust-
ments, rearrangements and difficult execution which attended what
1 88 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
once had been normal routine. The Office of Defense Transporta-
tion Insisted that vacations should be staggered with those of other
colleges, and attempted at one point to declare that there should be
no spring holiday at all. This the College realized was entirely
unwise, and said so; amid the tensions and high-pressure work there
had to be some break. Free board was offered to all who would be
willing to remain, a new problem in the Intricate calculations of
rationing. By 1944 the Office of Defense Transportation had or-
dered that Commencement must be no more than a local affair,
with only parents invited who lived in the neighborhood. Week-
end travel was kept to a minimum. Air-raid drills completely lost
their humor and their novelty. The Dramatic Workshop was closed
to save fuel. Wherever there was no precedent or provision for
settling these unfamiliar questions and difficulties, the President had
to decide, and did.
There were larger matters which came up constantly before
the Faculty, for irregularity and exception were rather the order of
the day, and there had to be constant adjustment to circumstances
and understanding of individual situations. A student's petition for
excused absence to visit her fiance on the eve of his going
overseas, ended with, "I am trying as hard not to get married, as I
am to get my degree." It was a fairly frequent truth. It is good to
remember that she and others like her achieved happily all the
appropriate ends, immediate and of the future. In more basic mat-
ters it was plain that time would not stand still in the history of
education, even for a war, and that there was much of the greatest
importance to be pondered, tested and decided. With the men's
institutions so depleted or so filled with programs for military train-
ing, it was even more true than in World War I that it fell to the
women's colleges to go on with an unbroken tradition of forward-
moving education. In difficult discussions in Faculty meetings, Kath-
arine McBride exercised her right to turn over the Chair to the
Dean and come down to the floor to offer her own views and
arguments. Her sagacious good sense was a great addition to the
matter of weighing a conclusion. If the Faculty disagreed with her
and the vote was not on the side that she was advocating, she
supported the conclusion as fully as though it were her own.
"We must concentrate on what is the College's best contribu-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? l8
tion," she said in her report to the Directors. The deprivations, the
continued losses of Faculty were in a way a sure measure of how
large that contribution was. Yet the level of teaching was kept
up; there was a continual march of young, able and highly trained
citizens out and into the service of their country.
The Graduate Department of Social Economy had functioned
on a wider and wider basis, since its founding in 1915, making,
finally, for necessary changes. An early and large undertaking in
Katharine McBride's administration was a complete study and re-
consideration of its work and the evidence of results. The high
pressure in industrial life in wartime, the problems of dependent
families and of disturbed family connections, made greater the
possibilities of usefulness and the demands of special training. The
large study in theory and research, such as would lead to an M.A*
and later to a Ph.D. could not now be so well combined with the
more practical training as preparation for purely vocational serv-
ice. In the end it was decided that there should be a separation.
A newly set-up graduate and undergraduate Department of Sociol-
ogy and Anthropology would offer courses and research in the
wider theories of social study and would lead more appropriately
to the higher degree, particularly that of M.A. The Department of
Social Economy was to grant a degree of Master of Social Service
that rested on a thorough training and experience in casework with
its owrr proportion of necessary theory, complemented now by the
psychology and psychiatry lectures which had been added to the
other preparation. A difficult facing of basic facts and a complex
and careful analysis and readjustment ended by dispelling any pos-
sible confusion and by returning the department to its full useful-
ness.
The Graduate School was small in those war years, for Govern-
ment needs had lowered its numbers beyond ordinary calculation.
So great was the demand for young, agile and well trained minds,
so tempting the offers of employment elsewhere, in commerce as
well as in Government, that very few young people felt themselves
warranted, just then, in spending time for study toward higher de-
grees. The situation promised trouble later, when so many would
come back all together to set out on the long road to the doctorate,
and when there would be a dearth of trained young instructors.
jg WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
But that matter was still In the future and not fully foreseen. The
foreign graduate students who had been coming to Bryn Mawr in
growing numbers, because of the individual attention that it was
possible to get there, were now, of course, largely cut off. Since
there had been such thinning of the ranks of the professors capable
of giving graduate instruction, the falling off in number was, at the
time, no great misfortune.
Contrary to some expectations, the enrollment of undergradu-
ate students remained nearly the same, the very large value of an
A.B, degree having become too evident to be overlooked. Again and
again, however, the upperclassmen would weigh the question, born
of restlessness and the great desire to be of use, "Shall I go or
stay?'* Some very difficult decisions were turned over within very
troubled minds, but they were, for the most part, settled deliber-
ately and wisely. The Deans and at all times the fantastically busy
President were available for discussion and good counsel.
Into the midst of these doubts, difficulties and anxieties Dr.
Erich Frank came, in 1943, to deliver the Flexner Lectures on
a study of Philosophy and Religion. He brought unforgettable re-
assurance to anxious minds in the renewal of awareness of un-
conquerable truth and of eternal good, present even in so shaken a
world. He came back later to take a place in Bryn Mawr's Philos-
ophy Department, where he remained until his retirement six years
later. What he gave to the College in that time, the light which he
,shed upon the questions and bewilderments which beset young peo-
ple just attaining their intellectual maturity in such a misleading
and turbulent age, would be difficult to appraise. The whole of
the College regretted the necessity of his retirement, and more
deeply still mourned his death which followed so soon after. Even
to his closest friends he had talked little of his days in Germany, as
a great and distinguished scholar, beloved and consulted by his
students, admired and applauded by his colleagues, summarily dis-
missed by the Nazi Government. He never spoke of what it had
meant to him to go into exile, but he did let fall, more than once,
.his conviction that these years of his life at Bryn Mawr had been
the happiest that he had ever known.
In his own rare person he represented a repeating factor which
was now moving into American education, small in proportion but
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? IQ1
truly great in significance, for he was early among the advent of the
refugee scholars. Some of the greatest minds in the world came to
find asylum in a free country. One thinks with a shudder of those
who never escaped. The ones to arrive came humble, destitute, with
nothing material to show for a lifetime of glorious learning. But
the reputation of scholarship is not merely a national matter; these
men and women were known and valued; societies were formed to
aid them; Foundations gave grants for their salaries, as did generous
individuals like Howard Goodhart.
Bryn Mawr was specially fortunate in those who came to work
and teach under her shelter. The Mathematics Department had
been distinguished by being led on its own part by two world-
renowned scholars, Charlotte Angus Scott, of the original Faculty,
and Anna Pell Wheeler, her almost immediate successor. To these
was now added another, Emmy Noether, a German woman of
world-wide distinction in the same field. She too spoke of her hap-
piness at Bryn Mawr, where every effort was made to do full
justice to what she had to give; special fellowships were set up that
she might have graduate students worthy of her instruction; warm
friendship was offered by her immediate colleagues, reverence and
respect by all. She died all too soon after her becoming a part of the
College. Practically the same story is that of Eva Fiesel, so pro-
found a scholar in philology that heads of departments from the
institutions of the whole neighborhood came to attend her seminary
on Etruscan inscriptions, from which she was drawing the discovery
and advancing knowledge of a language heretofore lost to modern
scholars. Her life also was a short one. Exile, even though it can be
made happy, seems something that certain natures are not made to
bear.
There were not enough of these great scholars who came to the
various colleges and universities, to fill the gap left by the count-
less men and women who had gone into the service of their
country. What they brought from abroad was something very dif-
ferent from mere substitution. They carried to us the erudition of a
different world of learning from our own; they were the preservers
of that world of profound scholarship wholly lost in the Germany
which blazed behind them, scholarship once so unique and so
reverenced in America that in the middle and later nineteenth cen-
jgg WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
tury the mark of true and professional proficiency was to have
studied in Germany. Each one who came had tragedy behind him,
had his or her own tale not often told of danger and escape and
the destruction of the fruit of years of labor and research. The
whole institution of American higher education opened its doors to
them. Bryn Mawr, for one, can bear witness of how great was their
contribution and, in the hands of those similar ones who followed
them, how large it continues to be.
There was a wider ocean and a broader rift which was nearly
impossible to surmount. A few students of great courage, a few
scholars, managed to cross that gulf of distance and danger between
China and the United States, but from Japan there was even more
meager access to escape. There could be practically no definite
news, even, of what might be called Bryn Mawr's academic off-
spring, the two colleges founded by Japanese women who had
studied with her. Ume Tsuda had been a special student, beginning
in 1889; she had learned, appreciated and realized how much
there was to carry back and render into terms which would meet
the needs of her own people. She founded Tsuda College in 1900,
through the help of loyal friends in America and Japan. By her
own determination that every one of her students should be a "true
seeker for truth/* she and her successor as President, Ai Hoshino
(Bryn Mawr, 1912), have built and maintained its high reputation
for education in the fullest sense. This college stood unwaveringly
for liberal thought even in the blackout of world war, which cut
them off so completely from their friends at Bryn Mawr.
Ume Tsuda's coming to America had been through the vision
of Mrs. Wistar Morris, of Philadelphia. Traveling in Japan in the
i88o*s, she was deeply distressed over the condition of Japanese
women and was convinced of the great benefit which American
education could offer them. She brought Um6 Tsuda back with her,
aged only fourteen, saw that she had ample preparation in a proper
school and watched with pleasure what she was getting out of her
study at Bryn Mawr. What Ume Tsuda subsequently accomplished
for Japanese women should have been reward enough for Mrs.
Morris, but she did not, for a moment, think of stopping there.
She proceeded to organize the Japanese Scholarship Committee,
unique indeed in that day and vigorously functioning still with
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? ig$
Mrs. Morris's granddaughter, Mrs. Logan MacCoy, now at its head.
Every year they raise funds for bringing a Japanese girl to America,
nor do they insist that she shall enter Bryn Mawr. Several have
taken degrees with honors; many have offered great service to
their country at home. One, Yoko Matsuoka, has become a famous
author. They no longer need a term in a preparatory school; they
enter Bryn Mawr at once, even sometimes in the junior class or in
the Graduate School.
One of the early students brought by this committee was Michi
Kawai, in the Class of 1904, who returned to Japan, taught briefly
under Miss Tsuda and in 1929 founded her own school, named it
Keisen (Fountain of Blessings) and set out with a stout heart and
few other tangible assets to carry out long-cherished hopes. She did
not attempt to duplicate what Tsuda College was doing; she began
first with high-school grades and carried the work finally to the
college level. Michi Kawai is gone, but her school now numbers a
thousand students. Her college and Ume Tsuda's have raised up a
company of young women amply able to take their constructive
places in Japan's postwar world. The work of the Japanese Scholar-
ship Committee has been complemented by that of the Chinese
Scholarship Committee, founded much later, which has been bring-
ing students to Bryn Mawr since 1920.
The year 1944-1945 opened at Bryn Mawr with the final neces-
sity of dropping certain courses from sheer lack of instructors.
Problems which seemed insoluble mounted and mounted; buildings,
hopes and cheerfulness all seemed in crucial need of repair. But
young spirits are not easily quenched; even in the face of a war's
worst or deadliest aspect young people can manage to be light-
hearted. Perhaps the most cheerful place in the world for seeing out
a war is a college.
Danger to life in heavily bombed England led finally to the
coming over of many young persons of school and college age; a
number of Faculty families had their Young Visiters who stayed
year by year as the war went on. Colleges and universities were
generous in their scholarships for those who wished to study for a
degree. The result was an exchange of views and understanding
among America's and England's rising generations which was to
show enduring value. One instance at Bryn Mawr was so revealing
194 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
of what that exchange amounted to that it must be here recounted.
Helen Burch, affectionately known by everyone from the President
down as Henny, came to the College for two years, then, having
reached the age for military service, found that she could not en-
dure to stand apart from the struggle at home and returned to
spend two years as a WREN. She came back after the war ended to
complete her last two years, holding many of the undergraduate
offices, and taking her degree with honors. She was married, a few
days after graduation, to a member of the Canadian Navy. The wed-
ding was in the nearby Church of the Redeemer, under crossed
swords and attended by the large company of her student and
Faculty friends.
Because of Government regulations, it had been impossible for
her family to supply her with funds; the College had seen her
through with scholarships and grants and had been proud to do it.
At her Commencement, in 1948, it was announced that her parents
in England had every year put into the bank the money which they
would have sent to America for her education. They now offered
the opportunity for two students to come to England for postgradu-
ate study. It was a most happy illustration of how one country can
meet another in the field of education and of what good will can
arise from such friendly interchange.
Chapter XV
"A DIFFERENT KIND
OF OPPORTUNITY
A war brings one good moment the homecoming after it is over.
At Bryn Mawr and at every other such institution there was not
only the return to family and friends and to the familiar surround-
ings of happy living; there was also the coming back to chosen
work, to the field of true fulfillment of special abilities. There had
been for all those who had been away the sobering experience of
seeing theories and abstract knowledge put to the uncompromising
severity of testing in a time of relentless need when only solid
truth could stand upon its feet. It was with a new spirit that they
came back to the work of their own intellectual way, to work for
the creative good of man's knowledge and not for the mere ensur-
ing of his survival. Everywhere throughout American education
there were reassembling of forces and readjustment of burdens, a
relieved laying down of too heavy tasks by those who had so un-
complainingly borne the brunt at home, a delighted settling in for
those who had seen far dangers and far distances, or for those who
had toiled in cramped quarters against pressing deadlines. For all
there was the change which few could describe, the relief no one
could give voice to the finding again of the spacious promise o
scholarly research where the mind could reach into as broad dis-
tances as it would, the returning to the guiding of young minds
ready and waiting to be carried as far as instruction could attend
and advise them. Everywhere the scholarly life was welcoming back
its own.
195
ig6
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
Bryn Mawr could welcome hers with pride, for they returned
full of honors, Germaine Bree of the French Department with the
Croix de Guerre; Walter Michels cited for "outstanding perform-
ance of duty as head of an operational Research Group"; Lincoln
Dryden with special commendation "for studies of beach landing
conditions"; Arthur Patterson for "meritorious civilian service in
notable scientific leadership"; Joseph Sloane as receiving a Navy
commendation; Roger Wells appointed to the Military Govern-
ment of Germany ... a list too long for full recording and a
cross section of that service which scholarship had afforded its
country. The Navy sent a special message of thanks for research
in physics; the Johns Hopkins Medical School sent acknowledg-
ment of Bryn Mawr's lending her campus summer after summer for
a school of nurses. Katharine McBride had been well justified in her
backing of the policy of generous permission for leave to be taken
by every person who asked for it. The educational world had made
its enormous contribution to the country's war needs, and educa-
tion had, in turn, obtained a vast practical experience, a hard-won
wisdom which benefited not only single individuals but permeated
the whole field of active and current learning.
"The opportunity is restored, but it is a different kind of
opportunity," the President said in a report to the Directors. There
was a great expansion in the area of possible research, so many new
problems had arisen, so many new lines of necessary knowledge
had become apparent. There had also entered into the picture the
feature of special grants and subsidies given by the Government,
T>y learned societies, by Foundations or commercial companies, to
support, in greater numbers than they ever had before, the special
projects of research with all their accompanying complex arrange-
ments concerning copyrights and patents. These were to continue
and expand to such an extent as to give a whole new aspect to the
field of intellectual exploration, especially in science, enlarging it
and liberating it from earlier stringencies. Along with this greater
demand on professors' time and interest was the need for meeting a
larger number of students, because there was increase in the lists
of applicants everywhere, once the economic tensions of war had
been relieved.
The problems of peace promised to be almost as intricate as
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? IQ7
those of the war period, but these, at least, could be solved in the
atmosphere of joyful relief and ease of mind. Now became evident
the seriousness of that diminishing of numbers in the graduate
schools everywhere; the yearly supply of younger scholars, complete
with Ph.D.s and an instinct for teaching, was simply not there.
Bryn Mawr was fortunate in losing no one by casualty in the field,
but there were a certain number of her professors who had chosen
to remain in Government service or who had made connections
elsewhere which carried them to other institutions. Like every other
college, she found some places vacant and with very few promising
candidates by which to fill them. The whole supply of teaching
material, especially for higher education, had been so drastically
cut down that competition became sharp between institution and
institution for qualified teachers, and for applicants for graduate
fellowships who would be the teachers of the near future. Into the
midst of this already tight situation came the Government measures
called Public Laws 16 and 346, universally known and spoken of as
the "G. I. Bill of Rights."
Perhaps no Government measure was ever more wise, more
generous or more productive of extensive results than was this one.
It was an unprecedented step, this decision to offer this especially ap-
propriate recompense to young people who had given their critical
years, ordinarily devoted to making a start in life, to the service
of their country. It was a deeply impressive tribute to what college-
trained American citizens had meant in the resources of a country
needing the utmost and best from her available manpower. This
offer of college training at Government expense for all veterans
of the armed forces was a chance of untold and unhoped-for value to
young Americans. There were those who, earlier, had left their high
schools longing to go further but aware that it was economically
impossible for them, and those who had achieved an A.B. degree
and knew that they had it within them to attain higher scholarship
but found it financially out of reach. Most of all there were those
undergraduates who had left in their college years to join the
Army or Navy or Air Force and felt, with such interruption, that it
was scarcely possible to go back. For all of these it was an opportu-
nity, an incentive, an extraordinary proof of recognition of how
much was due them who had given so much. Further, the Govern-
XgS WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
ment's step emphasized the fact, not yet fully recognized, that
higher education must and should be taken as an Inherent right of
those qualified to receive it, and that, for the future, American
parents and American citizens must look more liberally upon the
aspirations of their young people.
Everyone who had to do with education at that time remembers
in what numbers, In what floods the applicants presented them-
selves at the doors of the colleges and universities of their choice,
until the Inundation was so great that finally it was no longer a
matter of choosing; they must accept entrance at any place which
was not obliged to turn them away. It was the evident part of the
women's colleges to accommodate the girls who could not be given
places at the coeducational institutions now overflowing with vet-
erans. But this was not enough. Men were being turned away every-
where, from pure necessity, and yet it had been promised that
everyone eligible should have his full share of education. Large
plans had been made, plans which could be extended under pres-
sure, but no one had foreseen that the pressure would be so great.
It required much weighing of many questions before it could be
decided whether or not Bryn Mawr should open its doors to the
men veterans, where the men's institutions were not sufficient to
meet the need. Boys in the classes, or masculine figures at the
reading desks in the Library, were no complete novelty, for under
the plan of cooperation of the three Quaker colleges, more stu-
dents had come from Haverford to Bryn Mawr than the other way
about. But that had been a fairly simple matter, where the courses
were already integrated and belonged to established patterns. It
was far more difficult to fit in these new applicants who came from
a completely outside source, with previous training and definite
needs quite other than anything Bryn Mawr had dealt with before.
But, where they were sufficiently qualified, accepted they were
and, when Haverford and Swarthmore could take no more, Bryn
Mawr fitted them into the plan of courses skillfully enough, en-
rolling them as day students. There were, in the end, no very great
number of them, and year by year the group diminished as there
came to be room for them elsewhere. The overflowing numbers
were so profuse everywhere that temporary organizations were
finally set up by the Government in different neighborhoods, to
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? igg
take care of those for whom there was no more definite place. Thus,
In the end, these newcomers to the campus were absorbed Into a
system of their own, and the Dean's office drew a long breath again
as course lists assumed their normal tenor. The presence of the
young men had, apparently, been no very great distraction; all
concerned were bent on an education, boys and girls alike, and
continued to pursue it. It was, however, a more difficult and gen-
erous effort on the part of the Bryn Mawr management than can be
fully realized now, especially in view of the College's struggle to
make Faculty appointments. But it was undertaken by all con-
cerned as being the right measure to support an eminently right
Government policy.
What made a larger and more important element in the College
body came through the growing influx of foreign students, both in
the graduate and in the undergraduate schools. They brought, first
of all, a fuller and much more startling knowledge of what young
people had been through during those hidden years. From the
undergraduates one learned something of the "Youth Movement"
In Germany, its insidious undermining of national integrity.
"At first I thought It was all splendid," one of the younger
German refugees said of her first Introduction, at school, to Nazism.
"The marching and the songs and the flags, I could not have enough
of them. Then my mother took me into her room one day and made
me see how, by race, I could never be one of the Nazis. It was the
worst hour of my life."
The young Chinese students would tell, by casual mention in a
theme, of walking half across China dressed in peasant clothes,
traveling by night for safety against bombs, against bandits, against
treacherous betrayals, to join fellow students in the university set
up in the rough quarters of Chungking. It was nothing, they seemed
to think, for a girl of fifteen or sixteen to embark upon a plane and
set off alone to a new life and to purely hypothetical friends whom
she had never seen. The refugee students were welcomed, made to
feel the worth and dignity of their effort in coming so far with such
courage. The undergraduates raised money for special foreign stu-
dents' scholarships to supplement those which the College was strain-
ing every resource to give.
When world affairs had somewhat disentangled themselves,
2OO WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
there came to lecture Elizabeth Gray Vining, alumna of Bryn Mawr
and the person chosen to be the special tutor to the Japanese
Crown Prince. Coming out of Goodhart immediately after, the
Dean of the Graduate School, Lily Taylor, said firmly, "We must
have students from Japan again/'
Preparations were already going forward to make that possible.
A captain in the occupying forces had written to ask whether Bryn
Mawr would take a series of internes who would work in the Gradu-
ate School and study the organization of American four-year col-
leges. A fellowship had been voted, and there came to hold it Taki
Fugita {Bryn Mawr, 1925), one of the staff of Tsuda College who
was to go back, presently, to become Director of the Women's
Bureau in the Japanese Government's Department of Labor. There
came also from Keisen, Hanna Kawai not a relative of Michi who
had founded the College to study the methods of the new Bryn
Mawr and to return to Japan to be assistant principal at Keisen.
Thus it was that after such wide parting, the College in America
received messages and messengers from those two institutions which
had planted in another hemisphere the seed of her own sort of
liberal education.
The State Department had sent out warning earlier to the
colleges and universities of America to make preparation for a
great increase in foreign graduate students, set in motion by the
crowding and the destruction in the universities of Europe. These
were to be brought, for the most part, through the auspices of the
Institute of International Education. Being older and more respon-
sible, they had, more than the younger undergraduates, thrilling
and deeply moving tales to tell of their years under German oc-
cupation. Usually the story was never told but once, in the confi-
dential interview in the Dean's office, where details were given for
purposes of simple information. "Nearly all of the students in the
universities who were old enough were members of the Resistance,"
they reported. Beyond that the account varied, according to circum-
stances and the chances of fortune.
"The night I was arrested I was on my bicycle; I might have
got away but the front wheel hit the curb and I fell. A girl on the
sidewalk rushed up to me and said, 'Those are German police who
are calling to you/ and I answered only with my father's name and
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 2O1
address. She could tell him and my mother what had happened;
otherwise they would never know." There were stories of prison
camps, of forced labor and terrible living conditions, of perilous
escape when the advance of the liberating armies made the threat of
a massacre of prisoners so great that any risk was worth the taking.
Word came back that Marcelle Parde, brilliant and beloved in-
structor in the French Department of a few years earlier, had died
of starvation in the camp for women political prisoners at Ravens-
briick. She had organized her school at Dijon into a Resistance
unit and had furnished invaluable information bearing on the in-
vasion of Normandy. Of the teachers in her school who were ar-
rested with her, not one came back.
The psychiatric service for consultation, now added to the
Health Department of the College, was to find its deepest problems
among these young people who could not possibly go through those
torn and broken years without suffering deep effects. Yet for those
who could not bear to look back upon the immediate past there was
the consolation of throwing themselves into the academic tasks at
hand, to build for the future. And all of them had the same com-
ment: "They take so much trouble over us, all of our professors!
We can go to them with anything at any time. Even before the war
such a way was not possible in our own universities." To be an
individual, and a valued one, and not merely a name put down
among many, was an idea at first received with incredulous sur-
prise, then with relief and as a strong incentive to work to the
fullest extent possible.
The center of this whole situation was still the matter of main-
taining the necessary kind and quality of teachers, of filling up
depleted ranks, of enlarging the Faculty and finding young candi-
dates and keeping those who had, in the years past, earned dis-
tinction for themselves and the College. Even how to accomplish
reasonable promotions was a complex problem. The existing en-
dowment could not afford this increase in expense; as has been
told, the addition of numbers of students gave only a proportion
of the increase of income that, it seemed at first sight, should come
with them. In 1946, therefore, the Alumnae offered to organize for a
drive for a new addition to the endowment, two million dollars to
be gathered in the next two years, a promise made with full knowl-
202 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
edge of how many and how recent had been the drives for war
bonds, for the Red Cross, for foreign relief. By earnest request
Caroline McCormick Slade, of the Class of 1896, came forward once
more to direct what was perhaps the most difficult undertaking
which the Alumnae of Bryn Mawr had yet faced.
Mrs. Slade had taken part in every campaign for raising
money upon which the College had entered. When she left Bryn
Mawr in 1896 the endowment was in the neighborhood of $350-
ooo; at her death, fifty-five years later, it was $9,000,000. Without
the able help which always supported her, she could never have
accomplished so much, but her leadership, her organizing ability,
her utter refusal to take any account of reverses made, in the end,
the great factor of success. Her contribution was not through the
mere fact of money-getting, for it was her devotion to the College
and her immediately kindling vision when a new need arose that
carried the efforts, the enthusiasm and the willing labors of others
at high tide through the whole term of an undertaking. She died in
1950 after having been thirty years a Director, after having known
all four Presidents, after being the warm friend and counselor of
three of them. The thread of her life and spirit ran through the
fabric of the College's history for close to sixty years, not as a link
with the past there was nothing of the past in her ever alert and
untiring personality but as evidence of the continuity, the real
unity of spirit and devotion which began with Jarnes Rhoads and
had come so far and in such unbroken directness since.
She was associated in this drive with Caroline Chadwick-Col-
lins, of the Class of 1905, that resourceful and variously gifted
person who held the position of Director in Residence, a place
created by the Board of Trustees to show appreciation of her serv-
ices in Public Relations, in money raising, in many uncharted
channels of usefulness. Because of the illness which obliged Mrs.
Chadwick-Collins to withdraw, Helen Manning assumed Caroline
Chad wick-Collins 's share of the direction and carried it stanchly to
the end. The conditions of the time made heavy odds, but three-
quarters of the first million was announced as having been gathered
by the 1947 Commencement. So great was the confidence of the
Directors in the final fulfillment of the Alumnae promises that they
advanced the necessary money from existing funds and raised the
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
203
salaries of the Faculty Immediately. The fund was fully completed
by June of 1 948.
Meanwhile, work was going forward on the Plan of Govern-
ment, which, adopted in 1916, had long been due for revision. This
very complex matter had been postponed until the full Faculty
would return from its journeyings and be present to debate it. The
procedure concerning tenure of position was one which needed
especially to be clarified. Now a carefully working committee
brought in a report on revision of the Plan, section by section,
which was argued over, considered and reconsidered, before being
adopted.
The earlier Plan had given to the Faculty the right of recom-
mending measures to the Board of Directors, with whom lay the
final responsibility for the College, recommendations which, in
point of fact, had practically always been carried out. But this new
constitution, for that is what it has amounted to, puts into written
and explicit agreement the liberal usage which had been develop-
ing during the years of the Plan's existence, making a step forward
beyond the practice of all but a few other places. For instance, if it
seems necessary to remove, for special cause, a member of the
teaching staff who has been given indefinite tenure, it can only be
done by recommendation of the President to the Board of Directors,
and that recommendation, after a full and complete hearing has
been held, is not to be made unless the decision is supported by
four of the five members of the Appointment Committee.
The long and minute debate over the changes came to an end;
the new Plan of Government was voted on and passed, to be ratified
by the Board of Directors in June, 1950, a significant advance in the
operational structure of American education.
In those years between the end of the war and 1950 many new
adjustments were made, and much deep thinking was done. The
opportunities of which Katharine McBride had spoken had been
weighed and examined as each one came forward. The presence of
the foreign students in such numbers had given everyone matter for
deep consideration. These young people were all looking so hope-
fully to American education to render them better able to meet
that difficult life which they were to face at home. The College
itself learned much in that close contact between teacher and stu-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
dent which was the basis of the Bryn Mawr curriculum. It became
clear that the new learning, thus applied to foreign minds, was not
such a simple thing. The utterly different racial impulses, the cen-
turies of another tradition and culture stood in the way of literal
acceptance of what was being offered now. The manner and sub-
stance of American education, founded upon the manner and sub-
stance of American democracy these were the two Important con-
cepts for these newcomers to carry away. But the plain pattern of
Western ideas, it began to be revealed, could not be transferred
whole into Asian thinking, into age-old European custom. All that
American education could really do was to show the fruits of the
experiment in freedom as Americans had tried it, to let that exam-
ple be the basis for some future pattern forming itself in the en-
lightened thinking of newly awakened minds. Where it had acted on
a first, too simple premise of laying down a chart to be copied,
American education must reconsider and try again.
In all of this searching out of opportunity, the vision was
forward and not backward. Stress has been laid on the war record
of members of the College, and on their contribution, because that
contribution was the most tangible and the most evident. It is not
so easy to set forth what has been done, what was being done, for
ultimate and permanent peace. Mankind is obliged to fight wars
while waiting for the perfection of the will and the structure of an
organization which will establish continuing peace for a seeking
civilization. Those who belong to Bryn Mawr feel that she shines a
little by reflected glory when they consider the accomplishment and
recognition of certain ones who have labored so valiantly in this
wider field.
Charles G. Fenwick, Professor of International Law in the De-
partment of Political Science, gave the summer of 1939 to making
addresses abroad in a final urging of public opinion toward the
negotiation of differences, a principle which was to be overwhelmed
and quenched, for the time being, by the determined ambition of
dictatorship government. In his later work for cooperation among
the American countries, he has been a member of the Neutrality
Committee of the Pan-American Union and is now Director of the
Department of International Law for the Organization of Ameri-
can States. He was recently given the award of the Catholic As-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
205
sociation for International Peace, for the notable work which he
has done for this gradual joining of interest and friendship which
has begun to play its solid part in the affairs of the three Americas.
Rufus Jones, known for so many other acts of leadership, had
been one of the founders of the Friends Service Committee which
came into being in the First World War, and brought it forward to
an enlarged sphere of usefulness in the Second, reaching the out-
lying corners with succor for bodily needs and steadying moral
support in the pitifully devastated byways of Europe, the remote
and unknown scenes of struggle and suffering in Asia. Quakers
have always worked for peace and for the long-time enterprise of
abolishing war, but when the tidal wave of war has actually broken
upon the world it is Quakers who are at the forefront of those
dangerous, thankless tasks which noncombatants who are also men
of good will must always carry out. Well organized and far-ex-
tended benefit was spread in the years of 1940-1945 by the Friends
Service Committee. Part of the Bryn Mawr students* general pro-
gram of fund raising has always gone as a contribution to this
work; many of the ablest Alumnae, and of these many who are not
Quakers, have joined in the Committee's efforts. When, within a
short time of his death and with the war well past, Rufus Jones
gave up the chairmanship, his place was taken by Henry Cadbury,
also Trustee of Bryn Mawr, also a scholar of deep knowledge in
the philosophy of good and evil, also a man of inspiring good will
for his fellow men.
And there is another, single figure, to whom Bryn Mawr
thoughts turn with gratitude and pride for work well done where
work is very hard to do. Emily Greene Balch, member of that first
class of 1889, first European Fellow, scholar of deep learning and
indefatigable intention, has spent her life first in the study of social
injustice, later in unremitting toil for the cause of peace. As a
teacher in economics during that simpler period when politics and
economics were taught together she never failed to point out to
her students the historic weight of those several and ever growing
efforts to establish world peace which have appeared again and
again, only, apparently, to go down defeated under the tidewash
of human passion and human fears.
In 1915 she asked for leave of absence from Wellesley, where
206 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
she was teaching, so that she might join Jane Addams on that
project of calling a Congress of Women at The Hague to discuss
what women could do toward bringing peace to the world then being
rent by World War I. It was while she was taking part in that
enterprise that Emily Balch formulated a plan for trusteeship of
undeveloped countries, a principle of which we hear so much to-
day with little acknowledgment of that mind which devised and
made public such a progressive idea. Theoretical peacemakers, no
matter what their quality and ability, were not popular in that
bewildered time. It was her own suggestion that her presence at
Wellesley might be embarrassing to the College; she took leave of
absence without pay until the war was over, and took, finally,
without protest or complaint, the decision of the College not to
renew her appointment because of the objection of certain of the
Trustees. She pursued her chosen way as International Secretary
for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom,
which had grown out of The Hague meeting. Its headquarters were
at Geneva, where the League of Nations was soon to follow them.
Here she worked long and steadily over organization and research,
voicing more and more the conclusions which she had reached:
"The political nationalistic tension is all intermingled with the
social-economic unrest. . . . What we need is a substantial 'peace*
structure. . . . There is also the still more difficult work of trying
to deal with the sources of trouble, the injustices, stupidities and
inadequacy of the system (or lack of system) from which the
peoples of the world are trying to escape by different paths."
In 1946 Emily Balch was given a share in the Nobel Prize for
the notable work of her scholarly lifetime in the furthering of
peace, and the ideas upon which future peace must be founded.
Although it was not in the same year, the Friends Service Commit-
tee had the same award and the same honor for its accomplishment
in the same great cause. Emily Balch has given her medal of the
Nobel Prize to Bryn Mawr.
No one can speak of Emily Balch without, in the same breath,
coming to Alice Gould, even though their accomplishments, schol-
arly and profound in both cases, lay in different fields. They
entered the second class at Bryn Mawr, coming together from the
same Boston school and graduating with the first class, following the
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 207
first of the very rare acceleration projects. They both stood at the
very top of the class in the excellence of their work. The Class of
1889 can speak of them as her two European Fellows.
Even in the long years which have gone by since her gradua-
tion, there has been no more distinguished, patient and effective
study than that which Alice Gould has pursued. Her chosen subject
was the voyages of Columbus; in particular she was concerned with
discovering the make-up of that varied crew of adventurers, ref-
ugees from justice and heroic voyagers and discoverers who were
his companions. Out of the eighty-nine who sailed with him on that
first stupendous journey, "only four of them had been in jail,"
she declared with authority, thus doing away with the theory that
the great admiral-to-be went to sea with ships manned only by the
offscourings of the Spanish prisons. The whole of her working life,
forty-two years, was devoted to this single subject, this one example
of bringing close the apparently unreachable past, and the demon-
stration of how unremitting search can recapture what seemed ut-
terly lost. The Spanish Government, realizing the great importance
of her work and the new lines of research which she had uncovered,
gave her, in 1927, the Cross of Alfonso and, in 1951, awarded her
the high honor of the Cross of Isabella the Catholic. They were just
tributes to her long and fruitful study of America's and Spain's
common hero. These two women have indeed brought honor to the
College where the beginnings of their great scholarship were so
happily nurtured.
Bryn Mawr is justly proud of her long list of distinguished
Alumnae, women of rare gifts and accomplishment who have
touched and contributed to every aspect of American society. No
record of this scope can pretend to name even a fraction of them.
It has been necessary, therefore, to speak, for the most part, only
of certain ones as they enter individually upon the scene of the
College's story. As a body, however, the Alumnae, with their stimu-
lating and untiring interest in the conduct of the College, have
been and always will be a vital part of the Bryn Mawr history.
Chapter XVI
"A WAY WILL BE FOUND"
The achievements in the academic field, the advances in thought
and experience which came with the war years and those immedi-
ately following, were naturally and necessarily attended by the
material changes which belonged to them. Greater funds had been
gathered for the paying of more proper salaries and for the protec-
tion of a Faculty beset by offers to go elsewhere. The need for
greater space to take care of the steadily increasing student body
was just as plain. The foreign students would continue to apply
for American education as long as American leadership, American
ability and clear thinking stood as a hope for a still staggering
world. The G.I. Bill of Rights would educate its veterans, and that
pressure would pass; but it had brought final proof before public
opinion of how desperately a great part of America's young peo-
ple hungered and thirsted for higher education, and how eminently
many of them deserved it. Bryn Mawr was making no plan for
attempting to increase the number of its students; it was, instead,
finding it obligatory to assume the responsibility for its own pro-
portional share of the greatly extended student population of the
country.
The now fully recognized special mission of the Graduate
School in relation to the needs of the time made it clear that, with
its methods and its objectives, it was something apart and should
have even more of its own standing. The more friendship and
understanding between the two sets of students, the better, for each
had something to give to the other, but each must have ample
means for meeting its own needs. The facilities for the Graduate
208
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
209
School were obviously too narrow, but it was necessary to await
the best opportunity to set that matter right.
The chance came rather suddenly, when there was put upon
the market the building across Roberts Road from the campus,
the Wright School, now for some years unoccupied. Properly re-
modeled, it could hold as many students as Radnor had been capa-
ble of doing, and by freeing Radnor, pressure of overcrowding in
the other halls of residence could be relieved. The word "dormi-
tory" was never applied to what was now to be called the Graduate
Center, it was so evident to everyone's eyes that here was some-
thing far more, dedicated to a more complex design, the embodi-
ment of one of Bryn Mawr's largest purposes.
The problem of acquiring the place was far from simple. In
the summer of 1947, when it became available, the $2,000,000
drive was still in progress, having taken longer than the hopeful
Alumnae had expected, and was absorbing all their efforts into
raising funds for endowment. The Directors, with the consent of
the Trustees who were the real controllers of financial matters,
again took the step of considering such a purchase as an investment,
a putting of the College's money into income-bearing property. If a
practical plan for meeting and amortizing the cost of the building
could be determined upon, the project could be undertaken.
Pembroke was the last building paid for by Taylor money;
Rockefeller and the Library were the first put up by private sub-
scription alone; Rhoads was the first venture of the Trustees in this
new policy of investment. This last was not a mere adding up of
dollars and cents on a balance sheet and arriving at a conclusion;
it was an experiment now well tested and of a sagacity and bold-
ness which was to yield the College much benefit. The success with
Rhoads and the visible prospect of its repaying its cost to the
College in due time made it possible now to take the step again.
After being purchased, the building stood for most of the win-
ter in its unoccupied aspect, amid its tangle of unkempt grass. By
spring plans were complete and energetic activity set in motion.
When autumn came the students moved in with the hammering and
riveting still going on about their ears, with the kitchens unfinished
so that for a time meals had to be taken in the other halls.
"The Graduate Center?" said a cheerful taxi man to a student
21O
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
telling him where she wished to be taken. "Huh, you ought to see
It!" She was not daunted when she did see it; scaffolding and lum-
ber and ladders were mere promises for the future, and its broader
accomplishment It took a number of weeks for the Graduate
School, moving out of Radnor with the undergraduates hot upon its
heels, to settle down to the gracious and rewarding life which
the new plans and the new building made possible. There was
ample room now for official guests, for discussion meetings, for
social gatherings to which Faculty and undergraduates were invited,
where students of different nationalities were asked to speak and
who cast light, many times unconsciously, upon the problems at
home which had led them to seek education in America. The Grad-
uate Club, which took the place both of the Undergraduate Associa-
tion and of the Association for Self-Government, entered on wider
responsibilities and gave to the successive students who were head
of it a broadening and illuminating experience of opportunities
and duties.
The use of College funds for building investment was only to
be applied to income-bearing property, and was also still an exper-
iment. Therefore the Directors felt they could not take action when
the Scull property became available for purchase, the pleasant
steep-roofed, tree-surrounded house standing in wide grounds at
the western corner of what might be called the natural boundaries
of the campus. These are Roberts Road, New Gulph Road, Morris
Avenue, Merlon Avenue, and two small thoroughfares, Yarrow
and Wyndon Avenues. It was difficult for those interested to sit
by and see the house offered and offered again, to see a strip at a
time sold from the aggregate of the property and still to have it
plain that it was not sound business to plunge in and buy it. It
was an undergraduate member of the consultative committee who
finally saw in the possible purchase of the barn for a Field House the
opportunity to do honor to Miss Applebee, that stanch supporter
of field sports and sportsmanship. Two of the Alumnae had also
been urging upon their Association that the property must be
bought before it was lost permanently to the College. The Alumnae,
therefore, urged the Directors to borrow the money and undertook,
on their part, to underwrite the subsequent debt. It was by this
same procedure that Wyndham had been retrieved at the last rnin-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 211
ute when it had almost slipped through Bryn Mawr's hands, a
move which had brought a wonderfully successful asset to the Col-
lege.
The Scull property was accordingly bought in 1951. The dwel-
ling house was renamed West House and turned to a use which
at that moment was crying for just such accommodation. For a small
college like Bryn Mawr, building up its ways and means as it went
forward, every move, every acquisition was of the nature of an
adventure. Each step is ever a vindication of the truth of that
sustaining Quaker phrase, "A way will be found/'
The Phebe Anna Thome Fund, so overburdened by debt in
1930 that the Directors had decided that it could go no further in
its educational program, was now, thanks to patient and watchful
management, on its feet again. The last debts had been cleared,
the last bonds canceled. Once more the income was free for service
to education. It was decided, on careful thought, that the reopen-
ing of the same sort of secondary school as before was no longer
advisable, for the excellent preparatory schools of the neighbor-
hood were carrying on satisfactorily much the sort of training which
the Phebe Anna Thorne Model School had set out to establish. It
was evident now that the real lack was that of a school for younger,
preschool children. And it was true, also, that in the training of
young teachers, the smaller children gave better opportunity for
study and observation.
The Phebe Anna Thorne Nursery School, therefore, moved
into the newly acquired house, which proved itself unusually well
adapted for such a purpose. The upper floor was given to the
Child Study Institute, that branch of the College's work in educa-
tion which had begun so long ago under Miss Thomas's first plan
and had continued through all these years to give expert psychologi-
cal services and advice to the schools of the neighborhood, the first
field for the activity and responsibility of Katharine McBride.
Downstairs the parlors, the dining room and the garden space out-
side have all lent themselves to the needs of children's daily school
affairs, the background for the familiar companionship with other
children which is the beginning of education itself.
On any day you can see here the intent and conscientious small
housekeeper waiting on her dolls or making her corner immaculate
212
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
with dustpan and broom; see the future business executive taking
large hold of a game and learning, by means which he never rec-
ognizes, that If he wants to be the center he must learn to lead and
not dominate. You see the shy child who tends to slip away into a
corner drawn Into play with the rest, and the child who has always
had everything his own way rinding out that there can be other ways
even pleasanter to follow. The appointed teachers and their student
assistants are an integral part of this small, ordered tumult, this busy
and profitable playing. To Mrs. Cox, the head and executive of the
School, and responsible for the plans and arrangements, large con-
gratulation is due. Here is a wreath of small roses to add to the
laurels of Bryn Mawr.
It had always been a pleasant sight to those students who had
a feeling for the out-and-out country to see the very small and en-
terprising farm which was carried on upon the Scull property, the
horses, cows, ducks and chickens which had their unexpected being
in the midst of the shaven lawns and barberry hedges of a sophisti-
cated city suburb. The barn, therefore, was large enough to meet
admirably the uses of a Field House, for athletic meetings, picnic
suppers and gatherings of all sorts of a gay and informal nature.
Its opening was marked by an Applebee festival, with Constance
Applebee herself present, with much deserved tribute given and
many reminiscences recalled from the vigorous past.
"Did you have any athletics when you were in College?" an un-
dergraduate of 1950 once inquired of an Alumna of 1907. The
younger generations, with their multiplied activities, little recked of
the extent and intensity of the feeling for sports which existed dur-
ing what might be called the "Applebee Period" in Bryn Mawr
outdoor affairs. She had introduced field hockey for women into
America from England and had instilled into the Bryn Mawr stu-
dents such zest for the carrying on of all field sports that she would
have a dozen teams in course of practice through the same season.
She had besides been counsellor, mediator, and stimulating ad-
viser to individuals, clubs and societies. To be coached by her on
the hockey field was an experience unlike any other in the world,
startling but salutary; her method of carrying on gym classes was,
to say the least, never dull. It was truly satisfying to think of the
Field House as bearing her name.
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
213
A conference on child study opened the Child Study Institute
in West House. Those who had taken part in the older Phebe Anna
Thorne School, either as pupils or as teachers, could well rejoice
over this new setting forth, with such sound facilities and plans, and
such abundant promise.
The gradual introduction of the Graduate Center to its full
uses, and the careful preparations made in West House for the new
version of the Phebe Anna Thorne School, were in sharp contrast to
the hasty taking over of the Mellon property at the opposite ex-
treme of the campus boundary and called East House. It had been
rented from time to time by the College for extra students, and
when finally the College found itself able to buy it, out of funds
that could be used for income-bearing property, there were a dozen
uses already waiting.
When the sale was finally completed in 1953, the moment was
so late in the fiscal year that, if the place were to qualify as tax
exempt for use by a nonprofit educational institution, occupation
must be at once. The Social Economy Department, bursting its
seams in its existing quarters, moved in literally overnight, with ta-
bles and desks, bookcases and files wafted from the Library and the
little pagoda which was the last material relic of the old Phebe
Anna Thorne School Taking the move in its stride, the work of
the department went on without visible interruption while the Col-
lege caught its breath and deliberated on what should be the real
and final office of this new possession. It was, in the end, given over
to quarters for students, to relieve the existing pressure in halls
again overcrowded, and space for the Social Economy Department
was set up elsewhere. A College can no more help growing than can
a vigorous oak tree. Even outwardly and materially a college is apt
to grow in four geographical directions at once, as is clear to those
who attempt to lay out new space on any plan of its campus.
In 1953 Bryn Mawr lost one of her dearest and closest friends
in the death of Howard Goodhart, who had so long and so carefully
watched over the great and the small needs of the College and, like
Mary Garrett, had always been ready to come forward with timely
help when other aid was lacking. His last gift was the magnificent
bequest of his books to the College, the center and core of the col-
lection being his medieval library with its treasure of incunabula
214 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
and rare manuscripts. Bryn Mawr became at once one of the lead-
ing repositories in the country of research material in the literature
of the Middle Ages, of volumes which the great libraries of the
country would have been proud to own. In Howard Goodhart's
memory a Fellowship in Medieval Studies was founded, to take
full advantage of Bryn Mawr's rare possessions. His daughter, Phyl-
lis Goodhart Gordan, had been authorized by his will to keep any
items which she wanted, but in her generosity to the College she
gave the great majority to Bryn Mawr. In combination with
her mother's class she and they made possible a new and enlarged
Rare Book Room for the safe and appropriate keeping of these
valuable additions to the Library. She and her husband have as-
sumed, as a legacy from her father, this continued interest and care
for the welfare of the College, even as before, celebrating their
anniversaries with gifts to Bryn Mawr. The growth of the College,
in its tangible and intangible increase, has been notably aided over
a long stretch of years by Goodhart friendship and generosity.
Out of the welter of problems, necessities and limitations
brought by the war and its aftermath, there came, through the far-
seeing provision of certain minds in Washington, a new element in
college education everywhere, the Fulbright Awards. Sponsored
first by a young Senator who had been a Rhodes scholar, a profes-
sor and a college president, this arrangement, beginning in 1950,
was financed by the funds which foreign countries owed to the
United States for the purchase of surplus war material. These new
awards offered opportunity to study abroad, first to young graduate
students, then to professors on higher and higher levels of teaching
and research. Where the G.I. Bill of Rights had opened the wide
range of undergraduate education to those for whom it would other-
wise have been out of reach, the Fulbright Act was a similar libera-
tion in the field of advanced study.
The inauguration of the program has given full recognition to
the fact of how great an office is that of education in the increase
of international understanding. It is early yet to see the full results
it is difficult even to envision the time when our young people
who have studied side by side with Britons and Gauls and Swiss and
Scandinavians will have come to high place in government and com-
merce and when complex and harsh questions between country and
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 215
country can be discussed among old acquaintances and friends in-
stead of between total strangers, knowing nothing of one another's
national characteristics and problems. But already it is clear that
those colleges and universities abroad which have received our
American scholars and lecturers, and those who have returned home
from their terms of research or teaching overseas, have a new ad-
mixture added to the sum of their thinking and learning.
The Fulbright, the Guggenheim and many other awards,
the grants from great foundations, all involving departure for a
year or more to work elsewhere, have added great complication to
already complex academic schedules. But the steady administrative
policy has still been to let all go who so desired, and to compensate
somehow for the absences, sometimes comparable in number to
those brought about by the war. There is always taken into account
the ultimate benefit to the individual, and through him indirectly
to the College, to education itself. There has also been a certain
diminution in the best applicants for the College's graduate fellow-
ships, since the ampler Fulbrights carry them elsewhere. But these
are small matters in the face of a breadth of experience and under-
standing which advanced study can now take on, entering on a new
and wider phase with this strong support behind it.
A college thus grows in its geographical directions and extends
itself into other intangible dimensions. Wider extent comes with
the increase in the number of students and their assumption of re-
sponsibility; greater depth comes as the aggregate of human knowl-
edge grows and the fields of research, explored and inviting ex-
ploration, widen before men's eyes. More solidity comes with the
increase in number of Faculty and in the addition of course after
course, as material for them offers more in new knowledge and in
the demands of the students for that knowledge.
It is interesting to take here a brief survey of that growth in
the curriculum and the list of courses through the years, rather over-
whelming to observe that the original Faculty of nine carried on
the work of what became, very soon, fifteen departments. There
were originally philosophy, mathematics, Greek, Latin, German,
French, Spanish, Italian and, in a single department, history, polit-
ical science, and economics; biology, botany, chemistry, physics,
English, and a changing group of studies which can best be desig-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
nated as history of religion. French, Spanish and Italian were
classed together as Romance languages; botany was given up after
three years, nor has it been renewed; physics was not formally or-
ganized for the first two years for want of a laboratory. This there-
fore is the approximate curriculum for 1885 and the years imme-
diately following.
Natural separation, growth and the addition of other courses
have raised this early number of departments to twenty-five. Nor
have all these new courses and departments emerged and survived by
any uniform process, but by addition, by separation, by combination,
by student request, by individual conviction in short, by that some-
what unpredictable forward movement which we designate as hu-
man progress.
History of art appeared as a new item on the list as early as
1892, though only carried on by nonresident lecturers. Those who
have full recollection of Carey Thomas and her delight and enthu-
siasm in the riches of art may know that this subject did not
languish under her administration nor did her kindred object of in-
terest, archaeology. The two went forward together as the Depart-
ment of Art and Archaeology. In 1913, so President Thomas re-
counted later, Georgiana Goddard King came to her and said that
she would like to leave the English Department and organize a full
and complete Department of Art, which she felt herself capable of
doing. Carey Thomas agreed with her at once, with fulfillment,
under G. G. King's vigorous personality and wide erudition, far
beyond the greatest expectations. Later in the same year President
Thomas invited for an interview concerning appointment the very
young Dr. Carpenter with a recent degree from Columbia.
"The separate Department of Classical Archaeology was cre-
ated in sixty split seconds on September sgth, 1913," Rhys Car-
penter says. "I saw Miss Thomas making up her mind and doing it
at that exact minute." Scarcely any other college or even large uni-
versity had such a department at that time.
The original combination of history, economics and political
science over which Woodrow Wilson presided separated at once
after his leaving in 1888, although economics and politics were
taught practically together until the advent of E. H. Keasby in
1893. Not until 1950 was political science made a separate depart-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
217
ment. Meanwhile, the graduate Department of Social Economy was
organized through financial opportunity and through the idea of
President Thomas that such would be the best memorial to Carola
Woerishoffer. Through the students' asking for a major in sociology
there arose, from a combining of courses and the addition of a new
one, anthropology, the Graduate and Undergraduate Department
of Sociology and Anthropology.
Bryn Mawr's course in psychology, taught in the second year
of the College, was one of the earliest in the country. Under its
auspices courses in education began to be given; there was in 1896
a Department of History of Education and Pedagogy later Educa-
tion and Psychology. Sometimes they have been named together in
the Calendar, sometimes separately, but there has always been an
alliance between them, with academic appointments made jointly.
The Department of Geology began with the appointment of
Florence Bascom in 1895, the first woman to have a Ph.D. from
Johns Hopkins University and so forcible a personality that she not
only established the position of women's work in that science, but
went forward to building up the importance of geology itself, then
a new subject of research with a world of opportunity for explora-
tion. It had been plain that this growing subject ought to be in-
cluded in the Bryn Mawr curriculum, and Dr. Rhoads, whose interest
in the development of science teaching had been so great, had al-
ready laid some plans for the introduction of geology courses. Carey
Thomas's enthusiasm was somewhat less than his, yet she carried out
his intentions with one of the best appointments she had ever made.
The work of Florence Bascom was, however, assigned, by ap-
parent necessity, to the cluttered space among the store closets on
the fourth floor of Dalton. Her new course attracted so much at-
tention that it shortly became a major, but the President, still un-
convinced, and without much consultation with anyone, trans-
formed it into an elective once more. Upon this, Florence Bascom
promptly resigned, but both were persuaded by the Directors to re-
consider, and geology grew to be one of the great departments,,
carrying forward the special work of research on the geological
structure of the Pennsylvania and Delaware Piedmont, begun by
Miss Bascom and continued by her successors. Through her means
the Rand Collection of minerals, one of Bryn Mawr's great treas-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
ures, was presented to the College, although it, too, before being
given its deserved setting in the new Park Hall, was crowded into
the fourth-floor cupboards of Dalton and, so those teaching below
declared, threatened to break through the beams of the floor. Flor-
ence Bascom, journeying up and down on horseback, mapping the
eastern Pennsylvania region, was a figure to be long remembered
by neighbors and by scientific history.
It has already been told how the Music Department, through
the desire of the students, the first gift by an undergraduate and the
determined ambition of the Alumnae, came about in 1921 and
brought so many events in its wake. It is still headed by Horace
Alwyn.
The pressure of the war made, in the 1940% a clear case
for the introduction of Russian. Classes in it were held first by a
nonresident instructor in 1943. Then followed an interim of dif-
ficulty in finding someone to come for the next year. One of the
English instructors, Bettina Linn, of stout heart and enterprise, sup-
plemented some earlier work of her own with a summer at Harvard
and carried on the Russian classes until some more formal arrange-
ment could be made, and until she herself was summoned for serv-
ice in Washington. Russian is now a settled department, carried on
by joint appointment with Haverford under the Plan of Coopera-
tion.
In 1940 began the move which, while it did not lead to new
departments, made great extension in the scope of study and teach-
ing. In response to a request to the Carnegie Corporation and a
report of a plan for coordinated teaching of the sciences, a grant
of $150,000 was given to support this new departure. This widening
of teaching plans has been mentioned earlier in connection with
graduate work, but has been of equal benefit and equally enlarg-
ing in that of the undergraduate courses. The possibilities of cross-
ing the boundaries between science and science, in particular the
combinations possible among the four subjects of chemistry, biology,
physics and geology, stretch into almost endless variety and possi-
bility. Some of these possibilities have been organized into settled
courses like biochemistry, biophysics and geochemistry; some remain
as fields of research only, with the opportunities always wide and
open. In addition there has been set up in the science departments
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
what is being called the Fifth Year, which is provision for a student
in any department to return for work, not necessarily for a degree,
but individual and of her own choosing as to combination of sci-
ences.
At almost the same time, since they began in 1943, and much
through the requests of students and the initiative of professors,,
there have been organized among the liberal arts subjects the inter-
departmental courses which, also, offer a wider reach of thought
and knowledge. They are, for example, Aspects of Eighteenth Cen-
tury Life and Thought, participated in by professors from the
departments of History, Economics and English, and the Theory
and Practice of Democracy, carried out by the departments of Po-
litical Science, Economics and Philosophy.
A matter of which thorough note should be taken is that,,
among all these courses and departments, there is scarcely one
which has not had, at one time or another, some scholar of rare
distinction teaching in it, often of world importance. It is not pos-
sible to review them all here, but certain principal ones can be
mentioned. History has had Woodrow Wilson, to be followed soon
after by Charles McLean Andrews. Mathematics has had three im-
mensely important women, Charlotte Angus Scott of the first Fac-
ulty, the refugee scholar Emmy Noether and the equally prominent
Anna Pell Wheeler. Political Science had Franklin Giddings, who
followed Wilson, who had already achieved a high reputation when
he moved on to Columbia, where he carried it higher, never there
forgetting his devotion to James Rhoads. Paul Shorey, the very
young man in Greek when the College opened, won wide distinc-
tion as the years passed, which he always shared with Bryn Mawr,
coming back for lectures again and again even after he was an old
man, always voicing his affection for that place where his career
as a scholar had begun. Latin has had Herbert Weir Smythe, Tenney
Frank and, later, Lily Taylor, newly retired, still in the high
and active phase of her truly great and everywhere recognized
work as a Classical scholar. Edmund Wilson and Thomas Hunt
Morgan are very great names in biology, also David H. Tennant,.
the second of the two having received a Nobel Prize. Archaeology
has had Rhys Carpenter and Mary Swindler.
In English were Carey Thomas herself, Chauncey Tinker, W.
22O WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
Allan Neilson who became President of Smith, Lucy Martin Don-
nelly, warm and sympathetic and inspiring as few teachers ever can
be; Carleton Brown of broadly known erudition, Samuel Chew
whose approach to scholarship and teaching has, besides profundity,
a grace and charm unmatched by any other's. Chemistry had Drs.
Keiser and Kohler. It is still told at Harvard, to whom this small
College was obliged to give up Elmer Kohler, that he was long
prone, at Faculty meetings, to tell his colleagues carefully just how
things were done at Bryn Mawr. Mackenzie and Huff, able pupils of
the great Rowland at Johns Hopkins, carried forward the Depart-
ment of Physics in his own brilliant tradition to its firm establish-
ing as basis for the large things that have been accomplished there
since.
The work of Eunice Morgan Schenck in the Graduate School
has been described. More subtle and less easily recorded is what
she accomplished in the field of interrelations in French and Amer-
ican culture, of the enlarging of mutual respect and mutual un-
derstanding between the scholars of these two countries. French
Philology has had Grace Frank. And the departments of Psychology
and of Education have had Katharine McBride.
Out of those who have taught at this small College, those who
have been a part of her comparatively short history, there have been
others of nearly equal accomplishment; there have been, as there
must be everywhere, those who have done their work with no very
wide recognition except for unfading memories in the minds of
their students. The acquisition of such a Faculty has been some-
thing for which Bryn Mawr has hoped, toward which she has strug-
gled in the midst of narrow means and often of adverse circum-
stances, never losing the uncompromising belief that only the high-
est things go to make real scholarship. As is very evident, it is not
possible to speak individually of those who are in the midst of their
work here and now, in full appreciation and appraisal. The per-
spective of time and the opinion of the world has already found
some of them, is in process of finding others.
But it is possible to speak of them together, as that united
working body in which one can see where the great strength of the
College lies. The Faculty's constant development of academic plans,
of ideas and intellectual purposes, has been neither accidental nor
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 221
casual nor greatly dependent on a few forward-looking minds. It is
something over which all have thought, have toiled, have debated
together. A Faculty meeting here is that of a working group of in-
telligent and active minds, where every person knows the mettle of
every other, knows what each one advocates or hesitates to accept,
knows what contribution of knowledge and experience each one
can offer. The flowers of eloquence, the disquisitions on trivial mat-
ters, have long since gone by the board. One who sits and listens
can witness, not merely the process of deliberation, or the birth
and development of pertinent ideas, but the actual working and
forward progress of American education itself.
Chapter XVII
"THE TIME IS SWIFT
AND WILL BE GONE"
"The place is like a graveyard with Them gone," Joe Graham,
the night watchman of long service once said to Marion Park. To
him, the student body, with whom he had odd and casual meetings
in the depths of the night, was elusive, unpredictable and often
troublesome with outrageous requests, but was always deeply re-
garded. It was indeed true that the College was nothing without
them, that they were the direct basis and subject of most of the im-
portant debates in the Faculty, of the measures of the Administra-
tion and, more indirectly, of the deliberations of the Directors. Not
only their presence, as the reason for the existence of the College,
was the dominant factor in the whole academic scheme; but their
quality, their attitude, their limitations and their capacities were all
matters to be definitely and constantly reckoned with. At the end of
the war only two of the established Faculty did not return. A very
few more left a little later because of connections made during their
term of Government or military service. But for those who had
stayed through the war, as well as for those who had leave of ab-
sence, the opportunities to change to something larger, more lucra-
tive and with more apparent future were endless. When discussing
the reason why so nearly the whole number had returned, there was
the recurrent item in their final analysis of what had brought them
back. "It was the kind of student we taught here."
It has been surprising how certain qualities have remained con-
stant through year after year, through college generation after gen-
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 22$
eration, In spite of the unending change in individuals. Teachers in
a college grow used, in time, to that constant moving onward, the
unending flow of class after class, entering, maturing in scholarship,
finding themselves, discovering the wide reaches of learning, inevi-
tably going on to be swallowed up in the waiting world outside,
with their places just as inevitably taken by others as the whole
process of academic growth begins again. For them the four years of
college are an isolated and unique period in their lives, years all
too short for the vast amount which must go Into them, with every
minute crowded with experience, every hour valuable for some-
thing which cannot be found elsewhere. For them Time's winged
chariot is always hurrying near, close at the heels of their lives.
There is always that sense of movement, of haste, of catching the
minute before it goes beyond reach. The staff of the College must
learn to take all that as a composite, must learn to make plans,
not for those individuals hastening past, but with a general concept
of the student, eager, responsive, receptive of mind and with who
knows what future possibilities latent within, waiting to be aroused.
There are superficial changes, perhaps more in outer manner
than in any other aspect, which come as the whole spirit of the
time changes, more noticeable, one learns to observe, in a period
following a war. There comes over them then a more assertive in-
dependence, an assumed diminishing of seriousness, an intensified
stress on what, so far as their experience goes, they consider to be
reality. Those entering in the year 1885 accepted the challenge of
this opportunity for women's education with much sober earnest-
ness, and pledged themselves, one with another, to make the most
of it, to prove themselves and Bryn Mawr before the world. For
those who have come later, with the opportunity no longer a matter
of privilege or doubt, there is still the same high intelligence, the
intellectual curiosity and honest willingness to work for intellec-
tual ends. But these qualities now are oftentimes disguised under
an air of nonchalance, so that the owner may not take herself, or be
thought to be taking herself, too seriously.
To select those first candidates, Bryn Mawr set up examina-
tions, "the most difficult that we could make/' as Carey Thomas
said, with the added provision that she was to read every one her-
self before the student was admitted, this during a time when other
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
colleges, especially other women's colleges, relied heavily and some-
times entirely upon school certificates. The list of those selected was
an excellent one; the College took them as a pattern and formed
its first curriculum in accordance with their capacity, formed its
taste upon them, it might be said, just as those of a certain slant of
mind and a desire for higher learning began to form a taste for
Bryn Mawr. No matter how the method of selection has since
changed, it has always been possible for Bryn Mawr to lay a finger
upon the kind of student upon which its own special system thrives,
just as the student of congenial mind and enterprise has found her
way to the doors of Bryn Mawr.
As years passed and it became more in order for the College to
integrate its method with the whole field of education, rather than
to stand further upon individual experiment, it was taken to be
wiser to use the College Board Entrance Examinations. Even though
the actual examinations seemed less difficult, the selection was
just as meticulous. And finally, with the growth and study of the
whole examining system, Bryn Mawr found that the Aptitude and
Achievement Tests, taken in reference to the whole school record,
made a briefer, better and more easily arrived-at conclusion pos-
sible. Although some entering classes prove, in the aggregate, bet-
ter than others, depending upon the amount of choice which the
year affords, yet altogether there have been no low periods, no
stretches of time when a succession of classes falls by any definite
degree below the desired quality.
As this study has unfolded, it has become evident how often the
students' own enterprise and initiative have entered into the various
situations, how strongly they have characterized the actual nature of
forward progress. Brief recapitulation can sum up their part in
shaping the very first courses, their making of Self-Government a
real and working system, their early raising of funds, their rallying
to the needs of World War I, and carrying on, for instance, the
Bryn Mawr farm to supply the College with needed stocks for the
winter.
"Fewer than twenty of us picked, prepared and canned three
thousand ears of corn and ten bushels of string beans, all in one
hot day," certain Alumnae still recount modestly. These were fruits
of the field grown by their own hands, picked, processed and put up
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 225,
in cans all in a temporary set-up outdoors, manned (and it seems
justifiable to use the word here) purely by amateurs. It was under-
graduate initiative and largely undergraduate effort which launched
and completed the project for a new gymnasium; it was their press-
ing enthusiasm over the inauguration of the Music Department
which made it clear to the Alumnae that the experiment must be
made permanent. It was as an undergraduate that Carola Woeris-
hoffer framed the will which gave Bryn Mawr the Department of
Social Economy. They recognized the critical state of their Self-
Government and accomplished their own changes.
As has been said, they organized more vigorously for World
War II than their mothers had for World War I, for women's op-
portunity in the second war was so much greater. They prepared
themselves intensively for immediate usefulness, and the moment
after graduation they trooped away, practically in a body, to fill the
crying needs of the new multi-alphabetical Government organiza-
tions.
Beyond all this it is a matter for separate study to see what
these young persons do purely and entirely on their own account,
in the give-and-take among themselves and the activities which are
of their own creating and their own ordering. The College's sched-
ule demands of them, roughly, a forty-hour week of academic lec-
tures and study, not including gymnasium sessions, some extra
laboratory hours and, when necessary, extra courses in languages.
They are at Bryn Mawr to learn, to work, to win a degree, a pur-
pose which they take in different gradations of carefree ease, real
or assumed, or similar gradations of anxious seriousness. What they
manage to get into those extra hours which are presumably their
own, the teeming interests and occupations, the building up or car-
rying out of traditions, the activities and responsibilities, makes
food for deep thought and sometimes incredulous wonder. Three of
the firmest and most justly cherished traditions, the Big and Little
May Days and Lantern Night are so completely characteristic of
this particular student body that, even though the first of them
seems to have slipped into definitely past history, a study of the
College cannot pass any of them by.
From the very beginning of the College's history there had been
a project for a Students' Building, to be undertaken and completed
226 WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE?
by their efforts and dedicated to their own extracurricular activities
with no outside factors of direction or participation. The first effort
to gather a really substantial sum for this purpose was in 1900,
when a group of students met at the house of Evangeline Walker
Andrews, then a young Alumna and young bride established on
Faculty Row, and still in close touch with the undergraduates. She
has told how, after an afternoon of discussion which produced no
good suggestion, she watched them walk away up the green slope
opposite, where the spring was coming, and there came to her sud-
denly and quite complete the idea of an Elizabethan May Day,
a country festival with dances and plays, with shepherds and shoe-
makers, and a procession to accompany the oxen that brought in
the great central Maypole. The plan, when proposed, was received
with delight, was adopted and set in motion at once, with a scant
.six weeks left for preparation. All the students were to participate,
and they all took a pledge not to cut their classes or allow then-
work to suffer. The Alumnae offered assistance and took over the
costuming; dancers were drilled, oxen were found, and the curiosity
of a wide public was whetted as to just what it was that the erudite
Bryn Mawr was preparing to offer.
It was erudition in an entrancing form, as was proved when
the final result was set before the waiting audience. The whole stu-
dent body, three hundred then, walked in the procession, marshals
with white and yellow tabards, a rose-wreathed Maypole drawn by
the deliberate oxen, shepherdesses with their lambs, musicians and
players, Robin Hood and Maid Marian on horseback, Queen Eliza-
beth carried in a chair on the shoulders of her subjects. All was ac-
complished with extraordinary completeness and perfection; even
the programs, designed by Violet Oakley, were works of art. The
costumes were a joy with their grace and harmony of color. In de-
signing them, especially for the men's parts, the utmost discretion
had been used, for it is to be remembered that in 1900 Queen
Victoria still reigned. An eyewitness still insists that Robin Hood
wore skirts, but it seems that they were very short ones, assisted
by leather leggings. Yet discretion was nowhere too obtrusive or
frustrating, and the refreshing comment by one Philadelphia re-
porter, "The girls were as leggy as young colts," caught the real
spirit of vigor and lightheartedness in the dancing and acting.
WHAT MAKES A COLLEGE? 227
At the end of the pageant, when the whole College joined hands
and swung in a great circle, winding in and in toward the center,
there was a quick breath of realization, among those who watched,
as to just how much such unity of spirit and enthusiasm could do.
Many people still remember it as the most memorable instant of
the whole great affair.
The person who was, perhaps, the happiest of anyone present
on that day was Carey Thomas. Rufus Jones has said of her that
she was a true child of the Renaissance. And here, before her, as
the creation of her own college, was Renaissance England brought
back in convincing reality and beauty. Her students had seen the
affinity between the Gothic buildings, the stretches of greensward
and the older day when learning and gaiety and pageantry all came
together in a natural meeting of congenial spirits. She and Evange-
line Andrews were to have long and varying association; they were
to have some firm differences of opinion, but there remained al-
ways a tender spot in Carey Thomas's heart for this brilliant 
