On October 4, 1889, Boas and Marie traveled to Worcester to visit with Clark University President G. Stanley Hall. They walked through the town and campus and found a rental home. Just two days prior, on October 2, Clark University had begun its first fall term. Toward the end of August, while still doing fieldwork in British Columbia, Boas had received the offer letter from Hall, and he had negotiated the later start date of November 1. Less than one month prior to the beginning of his employment, Boas was still trying to elicit from President Hall the parameters of his appointment. As he recounted to his parents, his “first and chief question was, ‘What is the Anthropology Department to be, an independent department or a branch of Psychology?’” Hall responded, “‘This is a question we wish to answer through experiment. Make of it what you can.’” Boas then inquired as to who his students would be, to which Hall responded, “None under 25 years of age, mostly professors and docents of the university, for example, himself, the psychologists Donaldson and Sanford and others.” Befuddled by the lack of structure, Boas admitted, “I must say that I am not starting this work very hopefully, as it is a very difficult problem and I am doubtful whether I am equipped at this time to do what is required of me.”1
Boas thought that Hall didn’t really know what he wanted. Hall, however, was clear about his goal: he wanted to establish the first exclusively graduate university in the United States. The focus would be on natural sciences, with departments of psychology, biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Hall had been recruited to the presidency of Clark University in spring 1888 from his position as professor of psychology and pedagogy at Johns Hopkins University. He had convinced Jonas Clark, the university’s founder and benefactor, to delay the opening for one year and to finance Hall’s eight-month “pedagogic trip” to Europe to visit universities. Through his connections in Europe and the United States, Hall recruited an outstanding faculty. As Dorothy Ross writes in her biography, G. Stanley Hall, “The university opened with eighteen members of faculty grade and thirty-four students. Of this group . . . fifteen had studied or taught at Johns Hopkins University, nineteen had done graduate work at European universities, and twelve scholars not on the faculty already held PhD degrees. As a group, they were uniquely well trained for and dedicated to scientific research.” Having come from the faculty, Hall knew how to recruit faculty. Although he wasn’t in the position to offer them high salaries, he could offer them “minimal teaching obligations, maximum time free for research, and all the research equipment they needed.” Proud of the results of his recruitment, Hall recalled, “We had brought together a teaching force . . . nowhere equaled in the country.” In his memoirs Donaldson echoed Hall’s observations on the faculty: “The years at Worcester were splendid. I never had such choice colleagues—Michelson in Physics; Nef in Chemistry; Boas in Anthropology; Bauer in Paleontology; Bolza and Tabor in Mathematics; Whitman in Zoology; Sanford in Psychology; Lombard in Physiology; Mall in Anatomy and Hall himself. It was an unusual group and we were mutually beneficial.”2
With the beneficence of Jonas Clark and the vision of G. Stanley Hall, Clark University rose from the fields on the outskirts of Worcester, Massachusetts. Arthur G. Webster recalled his arrival, fresh from his four years of study at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität of Berlin with Hermann von Helmholtz, at the nascent Clark University: “I remember perfectly the day on which I first saw the university, and the rather unpleasant shock I had as I stepped off the horse-cart in response to the direction of the conductor. The grounds were then surrounded by a simple picket fence, the yard was grown up to tall grass, and the now familiar architecture of the main building, which with the laboratory building, was all there was on the lot, did not arouse my enthusiasm.” Still, while the setting and the exterior of the buildings were absent grace and charm, the interior had “rooms of very ample dimensions and . . . finishing of the highest quality.”3
In laying out the campus that would bear his name, Clark was hoping to rival Johns Hopkins and to overtake Harvard. The intent was to give the faculty what they needed so that they could focus on their research and their work with graduate students. “Surrounded by a provincial city,” Ross writes, “they centered their lives during the day and far into the night on their research and study.” Years after the founding of the university, Hall hearkened back to this early vision: “It was nothing less than the conviction that we represented—small, weak, and unworthy as we were—the very highest vocation of man—research. We felt that we belonged to the larger university not made by hands, eternal in the world of science and learning; that we were not so much an institution as a state of mind and that wherever and to what extent the ideals that inspired us reigned we were at home; that research is nothing less than a religion.”4
Hall convinced the trustees to establish positions for docents, who would be paid a salary considerably less than that of the professors. While he had modeled these positions on the German university system of Privatdozenten, the salaried position of docents at Clark University was a departure from that in Germany, where the students who studied with the docents paid them.5 As instituted at Clark University, the docent position allowed Hall to hire highly trained academics and to pay them a scant salary.
Hall had explained to Boas, “Our Trustees have established a few Docentships intended primarily as honors but yielding an income larger than that of Fellow. Docents will be fitted out with rooms, books & apparatus & expected to give a limited number of lectures & reside here during the academic year.” Hall continued, “These appointments are annual & are intended to give a few men, deserving & awaiting more permanent & more lucrative positions, opportunity to spend a profitable year in qualifying themselves more fully for academic advancement here or elsewhere. The pay is $1000.” Boas had accepted the position on the condition that he could have his summers free to continue his work in the Northwest Coast in order to augment his salary. Hall responded that he had no problem with Boas having “as early a summer as you wish & I am glad to hear that you propose to keep up your connection where you are.”6
Hall explained, “We have carefully considered the department you so well represent in connection with the plans of this University.” He continued, “It is an experiment not yet tried in this country as you know & we cannot launch out too largely at first but must proceed tentatively.” To Boas’s query about “the approximate limits of the field you wish me to cover and what you think its relation should be to the plan of the University,” Hall replied that Boas needed to determine “the ground you wish in instruction & by the methods you wish.” He went on:
If I have myself any preference intelligent enough to be considered, it would be to touch upon the whole field in the broadest possible way by a hasty preliminary survey, citing a few standard works & then to work your way to those special problems & parts of the field in which you have yourself done most. I have a general conception that Myth, Custom & Belief or the Psychological side, are on the whole of greater import & interest at present than craniology, pre-historic remains or even industries, important as these are & desirable as it is that something be said of them.
Hall asked Boas to send him a “list of your chief publications & account of your work,” as well as a list of books and journals for first-year students. He also asked for “a description of the field you intend to cover, methods & such other things as students might desire to know.” Hall concluded with the following advice: “By all means do not burden yourself with lectures or instruction. Condense the matter & save yourself time here for your own work.”7
Paying no heed to Hall’s assessment of craniology as having lesser import than other aspect of anthropology, Boas wrote asking for “a set of anthropometric instruments.” He asked, “May I be allowed to send my collection of crania and skeletons (about 150) to the University?” He added, “I am afraid of the danger of its being destroyed by fire in a wooden house,” in the event that he had to store the collection at home. Boas sent Hall his complete list of books for the first-year students and requested a small budget for “books on South America & Central America. Much of the literature on South America is not trustworthy and I have written to . . . men in Caracas, Venezuela, and Cordova, Argentina Rep. for information.”8
In his first year at Clark University, Boas taught two yearlong lecture courses—Anthropology of North America and Methods of Anthropological Investigation—and two laboratory courses. As described in the Clark University Register and Second Official Announcement, Anthropology of North America covered the following: “The distribution, physical characters, languages, inventions, customs and beliefs of the various tribes . . . beginning in Arctic America and proceeding southward along the Pacific Coast” and then moving “east of the Rocky Mountains.” Particular stress was placed on “the diffusion of cultural elements all through North America.” The course on Methods of Anthropological Investigation was divided into two parts: “The methods of describing and measuring skeletons and living individuals formed the subject of the lectures until Christmas. . . . [and] the use of anthropological apparatus was explained.” The second half focused on “the subjects of language, social institutions, religion, and customs.” The laboratory courses consisted of “two courses, each of two hours weekly.” The first covered “the methods of field investigation,” and the second, “Anthropometry.” The catalog described Boas’s courses for the second year (1890–91) as follows:
1. Physical Anthropology, Osteology, particularly craniology. Physical character in the living subject. Anatomy of races. In connection with the course of lectures, practical work on methods of studying the anatomy of races will be conducted in the anthropological laboratory.
2. Anthropology of Africa. Geographical distribution, physical characters, languages and culture of the native tribes of Africa.
In the spring, Boas offered “a special course of lectures” on American Myths.9
By the third year Boas had reduced the number of lecture courses he offered to be commensurate with his position as docent. The catalog entry for 1891–92 reflected this with a bare three lines devoted to “DR. BOAS.–ANTHROPOLOGY. The work of next year will be: 1. Lectures and laboratory work on Physical Anthropology. 2. A course of lectures on the Application of Statistics to Anthropology.” Boas obtained a fellowship in 1891–92 for Alexander Chamberlain, who in turn offered “a course of lectures on the Relation of Linguistics to Anthropology and Psychology.”10
Boas’s work with Chamberlain reflected the focus on graduate education at Clark University, tailored specifically to “the needs of those students who present themselves.” Chamberlain arrived at Worcester from his position as a fellow in modern languages at the University of Toronto. Delighted with the prospect of coming to Clark University to study under Boas, Chamberlain had written, “I beg to thank you for the interest you have taken in regard to my appointment as Fellow in Anthropology, notice of which I have duly received.” Boas had intended that Chamberlain arrive for the 1890–91 term. This was contingent on Chamberlain being able to join Boas for the BAAS-sponsored summer fieldwork in British Columbia in 1890, the substance of which would provide the basis for his work as a fellow at Clark University. Sir Daniel Wilson, president of the University of Toronto, had stipulated that Chamberlain must be on hand to assist Boas in the Northwest Coast no later than the end of June or he would have to defer the trip for the following year. Due to previous obligations, Chamberlain could not depart before the end of July. He wrote Boas that he would “devote the whole of next summer to anthropological work.” He planned to work with the Mississagas, “to collect some more material & shall try if possible to get some anthropological specimens.” Chamberlain joined Boas for the 1891 summer fieldwork in the Northwest Coast, came to Clark University as a fellow in anthropology under Boas’s tutelage, and completed the first PhD dissertation in anthropology in the United States: “The Language of the Mississaga Indians of Skūgog: A Contribution to the Linguistics of the Algonkian Tribes of Canada” (1892).11
Even though Hall expected him to teach only “a limited number of lectures,” Boas aimed during his first two years at Clark University to become indispensable to the president. With the number of lecture and laboratory courses he offered, Boas had equaled or exceeded the work of the professors who had been hired at three times his salary. When the time came for him to sign his reappointment letter for his third year, Boas sought clarification about his employers’ expectations. As he wrote, he had accepted the reappointment “to my present position on the old basis only with the clear understanding, that under such conditions I am not willing to devote myself so exclusively to the development of the Department, as I have done heretofore.” Boas wanted to perform “the duties of a docent, that is to deliver lectures at regular intervals” and to continue the “independent researches by students in the laboratory.” Apparently, Hall, who had previously expressed a lack of interest in physical anthropology, had suggested that Boas set aside his work in the laboratory. Boas asserted that “a discontinuation of the laboratory and of independent researches by students in the laboratory would be almost equivalent to a loss of all that has been accomplished during the past two years.”12
Boas’s salary remained low in spite of his own efforts to garner a raise and Hall’s promises to give him a salary commensurate with his performance. The strain was clear in Marie’s letter to her in-laws: “Today I am furious at the old misers at the University! What are they thinking? That we can live on $1,500 in this nest when everything is as dear here as in New York!” She had hoped that the university would provide a salary of at least a $2,000, so “that Franz would not necessarily have to take on extra work again.” With each annual reappointment, Boas had to negotiate permission to assume responsibilities external to Clark University in order to augment his meager salary. The BAE supported Boas’s 1890 summer fieldwork in the Northwest Coast for a total of $1,100, with a salary of $150 per month for 3 months and $650 travel expenses, the latter covering payment for the assistance of the Indians. Boas’s work focused on “the coast Salish and the Chinook of the lower Columbia River.” Powell advised, “The first of June is considered a favorable time for the trip, and it is deemed best that you should first visit the Chinook of the lower Columbia. After obtaining a good vocabulary of this language, the Salish tribes may be visited in such order as you may deem best.” While working on the Siletz Reservation in Oregon, Boas remarked, “The Chinook spoken here is very different from that in British Columbia, and therefore I experience difficulty in talking with them.” Boas also received $300 in support from the BAAS for purchase of ethnographic specimens and as payment for anthropometric work. Of his work with the BAAS, Boas had written Hale from New Westminster, BC, that he couldn’t work “satisfactorily here” because the people were occupied “too long in the canneries.” He was “almost desperate and thinking whether it would not” be better “to give up the work for the present and not to spend your funds in such unsatisfactory way.” With great embarrassment, he admitted that he had missed his boat to Victoria; it had left one day ahead of schedule. Replying sympathetically, Hale wrote that Boas had “done the best” he could after the steamer left unexpectedly. He assured Boas that he had written to the BAAS committee that Boas would pay “special attention to anthropological measurements, and I am glad to know that you have an opportunity of doing so.”13
In Boas’s 1891 appointment letter, Hall had written, “The Trustees are disposed to look with favor upon your proposition . . . to cooperate with Professor Putnam in preparing physical charts of Indians for the [Chicago Columbian] exposition, provided it does not interfere with your regular work in Lectures & Laboratory in this University.” Additionally, the trustees would allow Boas to give a series of “eight lectures at the Peabody Museum at Cambridge next year provided it is understood that the course is given by the courtesy of this Institution.” During the 1891 summer field season, funded in part by the BAAS, Boas worked with Chamberlain on linguistic matters. In his cool appraisal of Chamberlain, Daniel Wilson had written, “He is studious, shy, and thus far has shown more aptitude for the closet than the field. But possibly, if once he overcomes his reserve, his quiet manner might not be unacceptable to the natives.” Reiterating this point of view the next year, when Chamberlain joined Boas for fieldwork in the Northwest Coast, Wilson expressed a desire to see Chamberlain work with Boas and not by himself.14
In 1890–91, Clark University’s second year of operation, Hall tightened the budget but still maintained high expectations for research on the part of the faculty. He wrote Boas (and, undoubtedly, other faculty members) that he was preparing a “private printed Report to our Trustees” on the research work carried out at the university. He asked for “a brief and not too technical description of what you attempted & accomplished here in the way of research,” to be accompanied by a list of publications with the number of pages, “if the work is far enough along [and] done since you joined [Clark University].”15
The élan of the first two years ended for Boas and for other members of the faculty when it became clear that the budget challenges were a result of Hall’s opaque decision-making. From late December 1891 through the winter of 1892, there was froth and turbulence between the faculty and the president, which resulted in a vote of no confidence in the president by the faculty and a raid on the faculty by the new president of the University of Chicago, William Rainey Harper, in April 1892. The turf war of the group of faculty members and docents against the president would draw in the board of trustees. Ultimately this resulted in an exodus of teaching staff and students that would threaten the very existence of the university. Through a combination of serendipitous and predictable factors, the stage was set for this perfect storm between the president and the faculty.
Hall was stricken with a personal tragedy that sapped him of the energy needed to direct the university. While he was away from home recuperating from diphtheria, his wife and eight-year-old daughter were asphyxiated on May 15, 1890, by gas that escaped from a faulty furnace. Unrelated to this, but nonetheless simultaneous, Jonas Clark’s enthusiasm for the university he had founded began to wane. He grew disappointed and disillusioned with what he had intended as a gift to the community, and with the reactions of the citizens of Worcester to the university that he had established, above all, “in & for Worcester.” Instead of appreciating the center of elevated learning, many of the townspeople resented Clark University and all that it represented. What emerged was the classic tension between town and gown, a divide between the residents of the community and the denizens of the campus.16
The Worcester Telegram enthusiastically inserted itself into this divide with inflammatory articles describing and decrying the vivisection of cats and dogs that took place in laboratories on campus. Albert B. Southwick, editor of the editorial page for the Telegram & Gazette from 1952 to 1986, characterized the founder of the Worcester Telegram Austin P. Cristy as “a firebrand, remembered for his antagonisms.” Cristy, a man of strong emotions, “was a Republican on steroids who despised his competitors.” He detested Democrats, the Irish, and those who drank alcohol, in equal measure. With his rigid, xenophobic views and his insistence on journalism with popular appeal, Cristy undoubtedly encouraged his reporters in their aggressive and incendiary reporting about the university.17
The title of a March 9, 1890, column set the dramatic and unsettling tone—“Dogs Vivisected, Scientific Torture at Clark University, Helpless Animals Are Killed By Inches, Cruelty that is Reduced to a Fine Art. Dumb Victims writhe under the Cruel Knife, Afraid the Matter Would Reach the People, Detailed Description of Docents’ Doings.” The divide between the town and the gown was clearly drawn: “Ever since the erection of the big brick buildings out toward New Worcester not much in the line of results has been seen by Worcester people save the big word CLARK on the front.” The reporter of the Worcester Telegram used aggressive investigative techniques; asserting that the “newspaper representatives of Worcester have been excluded from the . . . institution and reporters have been furnished with no news,” the reporter of the Telegram simply “went in” and searched the building— the basement, the boiler room, the classrooms, and the laboratories—described a harrowing scene of dogs kept in unsanitary pens in the basement. Since much of the article was written in a sensationalist manner, it is difficult to assess its veracity. Certainly, the following description was false, since the animals were not operated on without first being anaesthetized. Eliding science with an allusion to the magical reading of entrails, the reporter linked all this to the docents, who themselves were an unknown category of academics to some readers of the Worcester Telegram, and, therefore, imminently suspect: “It must be a great pleasure to the dog when he is led out for vivisection to know that he is being cut to pieces scientifically, and that he is being slowly put to death in order that he may be honored by having his quivering entrails gazed upon by a learned docent of anthropology, biology or some other ology.”18 The reporter sought out Jonas Clark, whom he described as “the millionaire founder of the institution,” at his home. Clark acknowledged that vivisection was undertaken at the university, as it was “at every university in the world.” Stepping arrogantly into the divide, Clark maintained that the people of the town “‘don’t understand high scientific researches and their prejudices can be worked upon.’” When the reporter posited again, “‘The people don’t know what is going on there and they want to,’” Clark retorted, “‘Well, it’s none of their business. They can’t understand it, and so there is no way they can know anything about it.’” Suffering from diphtheria, President Hall was spared the intrusion of the reporter into his home on this instance, but not the reporter’s disparagement: “Prof. G. Stanley Hall, president of the institution, is sick with diphtheria, and there is evidence that his disease may have been contracted from filthy conditions that directly result from vivisection.” In his autobiography Hall recalled the unrelenting attack on Clark University by the “leading daily paper of the city,” which published articles “several times a week for about six months.” Hall continued, “I had personally to answer scores of calls by day and by night from those who had lost pet cats and dogs.”19
The reporter linked vivisection to “Jonas G. Clark’s pet hobby . . . to have his university like the German universities.”20 Appealing to xenophobic sentiment, the reporter continued, “There the docents and the students, after they go through a course on vivisection on animals, get up high enough to vivisect each other in sword duels. They cut each other up.” Making “a trip to interview . . . docents,” the reporter selected two who had been educated at German universities. He went first to the home of “Dr. Oskar Bolzar [sic], whom he found to be a mathematical calculator of remote degree,” and then to the home of “Dr., or, rather, Docent Franz Boas, who lives at No. 210 Beacon street.” Identifying Docent Boas as a lecturer in anthropology, who “has been vivisected to quite an extent and bears the marks,” the reporter sketched a physical description of Boas in sensationalist detail: “He is a German, a student at one of the German universities, and has evidently studied human vivisection with a rapier, or has had it practiced upon himself, as numerous scars on his face show. He is a battle scarred veteran, though still a young man.” The reporter continued, “On the left side of his forehead near the temple two scars convene and cross. A scar ornaments also the left side. His nose was at one time nearly severed and the left side of his face from the angle of the lips to the ear shows a long scar.” With heavy sarcasm, the reporter concluded, “He is a very learned man.”21
Undeterred by the sensationalist reporting, Boas undertook a project to measure children at the Boys Club in Worcester. In January 1891 Boas applied to the Worcester school board for permission to expand his project to the city schools and gained approval “to go among any of the public schools and take such measurements of the boys and girls as he desires for statistical purposes.”22 The Worcester Telegram made every effort to whip its readership into a frenzy of indignation. Schoolchildren were having “‘their anatomies felt of and the various portions of their bodies measured for no reason established in science, and by a man unknown to Worcester, either personally or by established reputation, except as the representative of an institution UNDER A BLOOD RED CLOUD.’” Attempting to smear Boas with innuendo, the reporter accused him of having “‘fooled around with the top knot of medicine men and toyed with THE WAR PAINT of bloodthirsty Indians.’” This man, with a scarred visage that would “‘make a jailbird turn green with envy,’” would be touching their children’s bodies.23
Apparently recognizing scurrilous reporting for what it was, the school board maintained its support of Boas’s project. Boas was also able to secure permission for his research from 80 percent of the parents. By minimizing the number of measurements, the five-person team—led by a fellow in anthropology, Gerald West, who worked with four assistants—proceeded with efficiency. Every three minutes, they completed the measurements on one child. Before he had even begun measuring the schoolchildren, Boas had conveyed to his parents that he was “‘fed up with the whole thing.’” Marie wrote Boas’s mother of her own concerns, that the newspaper reports might “‘cripple Franz’s work’ even though all the educated people of Worcester are on Franz’s side.” Hall equivocated. At first, yielding to the fiery rhetoric of the newspaper, he withdrew his support of Boas’s project, and then, when the school board reconfirmed its support, Hall offered his full endorsement.24
Unwilling and perhaps unable to communicate with the plain-speaking residents of Worcester, Hall failed to assuage the townspeople and to make them feel that they were part of the adventures of building a new university. Clark faded from the scene: he took his fortune and dreams away from Worcester and from Clark University in May 1891. Hall reflected on Jonas Clark: “During the third year he had entirely withdrawn from the board and never afterward attended its meetings,” and gave the university no more financial support. President Hall was challenged on all sides—from the town, from the benefactor of the university, from the faculty, and from the students—and he was found wanting. He lacked the crucial negotiating style and the transparent honesty needed to handle a crisis with a highly intelligent and highly energized faculty. With his obdurate personality, his resistance to compromise, and his predilection for masking the unpleasant, Hall was in the tight spot where no university president ever desires to be—squared off against an angry faculty.25
The spark that set fire to faculty resentment sprang from a seemingly minor, though callously handled, matter. In fall 1891 President Hall withheld the twenty-five-dollar monthly stipend for a fellow who had missed the start of school because he had been caring for his ill mother. Of this incident, Donaldson recalled that “Mead was a Fellow in Whitman’s department [of zoology] and Whitman was for resigning.” From October 1891 to January 1892, the “general indignation” over the treatment of the fellows intensified when “several men were about to seriously consider offers elsewhere,” and the teaching staff shared the view that “the University was in very great danger.” By mid-January, from morning to evening the days were filled with meetings—meetings in the homes of faculty members and of docents, with the president, and with the entire faculty. As Donaldson recounted, “A half-dozen of us came together to see what could be done in order to put matters straight. We made suggestions but Hall resisted and was uncompromising. We had many meetings, mainly at my house and the conferences seemed to bring out a number of instances of trickiness and sharp practice on Hall’s part that were distinctly unpleasant.” It was unlikely that anything else could be accomplished during this time, save for the endless meetings.26
One week later, on January 21, 1892, after day-long meetings, the group comprised of Donaldson, Michelson, Whitman, Nef, Mall, Lombard, Boas, Bolza, and Baur met in Donaldson’s house at seven thirty in the evening. The men had invited President Hall, who, in a poor decision, declined to attend. All concurred that “the attempt to save the university from the impending danger by openness and frankness” had failed due to the willful actions of the president. In what must have been a somber, almost ritualistic, procedure, each voiced his position: “Prof. Michelson could see no other course than to resign. Lombard said he had told the President that if things didn’t change he would leave. Donaldson said, ‘I shall resign.’ Mall said that under existing circumstances he could not remain here after this year and he should resign. Whitman and Nef said [they would resign]. Bolza said, ‘I am ready to resign.’ Boas and Baur [each] said, ‘I shall resign.’” Together they drafted a letter of no confidence in the president and tendered their resignation effective September 1, 1892.27
In subsequent negotiations, the president agreed that a committee would be established to meet with him and to discuss the points of discord. “The concerned faculty,” as they were called, met with the president, agreed to put aside their disagreements, and requested “that the paper containing their resignations be destroyed.” However, two days later, President Hall had changed his mind, and the faculty felt betrayed. At this point the trustees had been drawn into the dispute. They saw “no recourse but to accept the resignations tendered” and concomitantly, stated their support of President Hall. The crux of the disagreement between the faculty and docents and the president involved questions about who should be responsible for making decisions about faculty governance—the faculty, or the president. As Ross remarks, this conflict occurred prior to the “development of processes and procedures for dealing with shared governance.”28
William Rainey Harper, president of the newly established University of Chicago, saw ripe pickings at Clark University. Throughout the tumultuous winter months, Whitman and Mall had been in secret negotiations with Harper. Informed about the dissension and resignations at Clark University, Harper came to Worcester on April 16, 1892, “settled down in Whitman’s house and began to gather a scientific faculty.” As Ross recounts, “Within a few hours of his arrival, Harper formally engaged five men in biology.” Among these were Whitman and Mall, who “wanted Harper to take seven faculty members, including Boas; he left with eight,” but did not take Boas.29
With a lasting sense of betrayal, G. Stanley Hall recounted the events of this day in his autobiography, which he wrote three decades later, toward the end of his life. Unbeknownst to him, he said, Harper had met with the dissident faculty in the home of Whitman, where he had “engaged one morning the majority of our staff. . . . Those to whom we paid $4,000, he gave $7,000; to those we paid $2,000, he offered $4,000, etc., taking even instructors, docents, and fellows.” As Hall described, “When this was done he called on me, inviting me also to join the hegira at a salary larger than I was receiving—which of course I refused—and then told me what he had done.” Likening Harper’s methods to those of a “Standard-Oil institution”—in reference to the source of wealth of the benefactor of the University of Chicago, John D. Rockefeller—, Hall continued, “I finally threatened . . . to make a formal appeal to the public and to Mr. Rockefeller himself to see if this trust magnate (who was at that time about at the height of his unpopularity and censure and who was said to have driven many smaller competing firms out of existence by slow strangling methods of competition) would justify such an assassination of an institution as had that day been attempted here.” For one who had brought faculty, docents, and graduate students with him when he had left Johns Hopkins University, Hall’s indignation seemed slightly overblown. Hall had, of course, merely poked holes in departments at Johns Hopkins, while Harper had devastated every department save for Hall’s own, that of psychology.30
With the philanthropic backing of John D. Rockefeller, Harper was in position to stress “the larger opportunities offered at Chicago, opportunities for advancement, for research, for developing great departments of knowledge, for enlarged usefulness.” As Hall had been, so Harper was skilled at the recruitment of high-powered faculty, though there were instances in which he had to offer considerable enticements. Such was the case with C. O. Whitman of Clark University, who, as Goodspeed wrote in The History of the University of Chicago, “drove a hard bargain.” Whitman had wired President Harper, “‘I can accept on following terms, salaries and running expenses [for the Department of Biology] thirty thousand dollars, equipment twenty-five thousand, building one hundred and fifty thousand.’” Whitman “did not get his building for biology, and Mr. Michelson [of Clark University, who did not negotiate] did get the great Ryerson Physical Laboratory.” Five years later, in 1897, Whitman got his building as a gift from Helen Culver.31
As Jonathan Cole notes in The Great American University, fierce competition in recruiting outstanding scholars was standard among American research universities at the end of the nineteenth century. “The University of Chicago,” Cole writes, “is perhaps the quintessential example of how a new research university could achieve high standards in very little time.” In To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900–1940, Robert Geiger remarks that the University of Chicago had caused “turbulence in the academic marketplace,” by beginning its first year “in 1892 with a faculty of 120, including 5 teachers enticed from Yale and 15 drawn from Clark.” Ross summarizes the exodus from Clark: “In the end, two-thirds of all those of faculty rank and 70 percent of the student body left Clark in the spring of 1892. Half of those leaving went directly to the University of Chicago. Out of the ruins of Clark, Chicago had the foundation of distinguished departments in physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics.”32
Nine faculty members had signed the letter of no confidence in President Hall and had tendered their resignations. Of these, seven went to the University of Chicago, with the following appointments:
Warren P. Lombard went to the University of Michigan as a professor of physiology. Only Boas was left without an academic position. Possibly Harper decided not to offer Boas a position because, as Browman and Williams suggest, “Boas lacked any national visibility” in 1892. Or perhaps Harper left the decision as to whether or not to hire Boas to Albion W. Small, who was head professor of social science and dean of the college of liberal arts. With respect to the latter point, Harper had given responsibility to the heads of departments to identify potential faculty and then to consult with the president. Albion Small headed the department of two, joined as he was by Frederick Starr, assistant professor of anthropology. As the first professor of sociology in the United States, Professor Small would not have relished being outnumbered by two anthropologists and thus was likely in hearty agreement with Harper’s decision not to hire Boas. Finally, there was the possibility that Harper simply did not warm to Boas when he met him in Worcester. Goodspeed remarked that Harper followed an intensive process for identifying potential faculty, but, ultimately, he relied on his own judgment when he met with the potential faculty in person. In sum, there is simply no definitive answer as to why Harper did not hire Boas.33
Boas and Marie had passed a full life as a family during their three years in Worcester. In February 1891 “‘the shrieking Ernst’” had been born. Boas joked in his letter to his parents that his son was the reincarnation of the Raven in the folk narratives that he had collected in British Columbia. The following year, in February 1892, Boas had become a naturalized United States citizen. Boas and Marie had made enduring friends with the Baurs, the Donaldsons, and with Oskar Bolza. Marie wrote to her in-laws about “the custom in the small towns” to have new comers over for dinner. “We really have more company with us here than in New York. It is easier to get people together and it’s all simple here.” With the gift of money from Franz’s parents, they rented a piano: “We really are spoiled children. . . . Franz plays every day now.” Marie wrote of the friends who gathered to play “something from Mozart” and other selections, “On Sunday Prof. Michelson, a physicist, played the violin; and Herr Loeb, the viola; and Franz the piano. . . . I am so happy for Franz that he now and then has some music.” In June 1892 Boas and Marie, with their little girl, Helene, who would be four years old in September, and baby Ernst, at sixteen months, departed Worcester for Germany.34
Boas would return to Worcester in September 1909 from his position as professor of anthropology at Columbia University for the twentieth-anniversary celebration of the founding of Clark University. Professor of Psychology E. C. Sanford had extended the invitation to Boas: “It would give us all the greatest pleasure if you would consent to be present and to give one of these lectures in the psychological program. We wish to emphasize the research idea for which the university has stood so far as it has been able from the first, which you have so fully exemplified.” As a participant in the conference on psychology and pedagogy—the highlight of the gathering, as Hall called it—Boas delivered a lecture on “Psychological Problems in Anthropology.” With pride, Hall listed the participants in his autobiography: “In psychology we were fortunate in inducing Sigmund Freud of Vienna, W. Stern of Breslau, C. G. Jung of Zurich, E. B. Titchener of Cornell, F. Boas of Columbia, Adolph Meyer of Johns Hopkins (both the latter formerly at Clark), H. S. Jennings of Hopkins, H. Ferenzi of Prague [sic; this was Sándor Ferenczi], Ernest Jones of Toronto, and William James.” Hall recalled, “Nearly every day was spent in listening either to formal lectures and demonstrations by these and other eminent experts or in more informal conferences, which were facilitated by provisions by which all could take their meals with those of their own group.”35
Hall treated both Freud and Jung as his honored guests. He scheduled the conference around Freud’s availability in the fall, rather than with the first conference in July on Child Welfare and Research. In his letter to his wife, Jung wrote that Hall’s wife “promptly took over Freud and me as ‘her boys’ and plied us with delicious nourishment and noble wine.” Freud and Jung moved into the Hall’s home, where they were “beautifully taken care of.” Hall had extended the courtesy to both Freud and Jung to speak as they chose, either in German or English. Of his experience Freud wrote, “In 1909 G. Stanley Hall invited Jung and me to America to go to the Clark University, Worcester, Mass., of which he was President, and to spend a week giving lectures (in German) at the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of that body’s foundation. Hall was justly esteemed as a psychologist and educationalist and had introduced psychoanalysis into his courses some years before; there was a touch of the ‘king-maker’ about him, a pleasure in setting up authorities and in then deposing them.” Buoyed by the reception in America, Freud reflected, “In Europe I felt as though I were despised; but over there I found myself received by the foremost men as an equal. As I stepped on to the platform at Worcester to deliver my Five Lectures upon Psycho-Analysis it seemed like the realization of some incredible day-dream: psycho-analysis was no longer a product of delusion, it has become a valuable part of reality.” Jung referred to Freud’s speeches at Clark University as his “‘American triumph.’”36
As Hall noted, at the conclusion of the conference “the University departed from its custom of being very chary in the conferring of honorary degrees and bestowed thirty doctorates of no less than nine kinds. . . . This was more than three times as many honorary degrees as we had given in the preceding twenty years.” In his letter to Boas in advance of the conference, Hall wrote that the faculty had voted to award him an honorary degree because he ranked “supreme” in his achievements in anthropology.37
On Hall’s retirement, Boas wrote, “At this time when you lay down the burdens that you have carried so long, permit me to express to you my thanks for your serious attempt to develop the highest ideals of scientific achievement in our university life. Even if circumstances did not permit the realization of your great plans to their fullest extent, I feel certain that your work has given a stimulus to research that is even now bearing fruit.” Hall responded, “I cannot forbear telling you how very deeply I appreciate your kind phrases and your courtesy in writing at all.” He went on, “The great cloud on my life, which will never entirely lift, was the situation here at the end of 1893.” After reviewing the record of the debacle, Hall concluded, “But I will not expatiate on these, the most painful memories of my life, but I must express my profound appreciation of the fact that you are the only one of those who left us at the close of the third year who has had a kind word for me. I can only hope that with the years all those who survive will have a little of the same feeling and insight that you do.” Thus, the relationship between Franz Boas and G. Stanley Hall resolved in friendship and reconciliation.38
Nonetheless, when Boas left in 1892, he had only profound regret for the squandered potential of Clark University. Writing to his father from Cambridge, where he was working with Putnam in preparation for the anthropological exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Boas reflected, “‘After having lived so long there and having had such relationships . . . I feel a great affection for Worcester. I will, whenever I think about it, always be angry that all our hopes came to such a disgrace.’” Boas, Marie, and the children had returned early from their family visit to Germany because an epidemic of cholera had broken out in Hamburg. When they disembarked in Baltimore, Boas bade farewell to his family, who traveled on to New York, arriving there on September 17, 1892. Boas headed straight to Cambridge, where he and Putnam worked in frantic preparation for the Columbia World’s Exposition in Chicago, scheduled to open in less than eight months.39