XII
The Doubtful Years, 1876–1881
THE University being apparently in tolerable shape, President White determined to take a year’s leave of absence. The published reason was concern for his health. He was not alone in finding Ithaca winters unkind to a sensitive throat. He was also tired of presidential worries. He longed for a placid stage among the intellectual delights of Europe.
He delayed his departure, however, to receive President Grant in his Ithaca home. The visit, on 27 September 1876, is commemorated by a brass plaque above his hearth. As Romeyn Berry remarked:
We wish there might now be inscribed a postscript to that record, telling the rest of the story as Andrew D. told it so often, and with so much gusto: the terrible time he had searching the pantry and the kitchen closet at 2 A.M. for a nightcap for the General. The butler had gone to bed, after locking up the supplies, and all the President of Cornell could uncover for the President of the United States was a half-empty bottle of inferior cooking brandy. But Andrew D.’s embarrassment was short-lived. Grant took that half bottle of cooking brandy, he said, as promptly, and as unconditionally, as he once took Fort Donelson.1
White had a happy stay in England, France, and Italy, so happy that in the spring messages began to arrive from the Italian Lakes that his condition might require another year in Europe. In June the trustees resolved that they heard with delight of the improved and improving health of the President, and that they consented to the extension of his leave “as long as his health or inclination might require.” Is there a barb in the choice of the word “inclination”?
The trustees’ delight was tempered with concern. Willard Fiske wrote White (2 August 1877) that Henry W. Sage wanted him to come home, if only for thirty days. Sage himself wrote (29 September): “We need the Master’s head and hand.”
Most of Ithaca agreed. But White had found new obligations. For one thing, he was appointed Honorary Commissioner from the State of New York to the Paris Exposition of 1878. At first, he says in his Autobiography, he was inclined to take his duties lightly, but since very few of the American commissioners could speak French he soon found himself deeply involved as a member of the top prize-giving jury. His correspondence reveals that he esteemed his duties at their full value; he wrote a series of irritated letters inquiring about the Legion of Honor due him.2
In President Whited absence, Vice-President Russel was clothed with the powers of Acting President. Russel had already so served during the frequent presidential absences. His merits were many and great, but his air of sardonic superiority was not fitted to endear him to the faculty, students, and trustees. His view of the faculty is revealed in many letters to White; for example, on 7 January 1874: “The Faculty meeting yesterday exhibited nothing new, only the impracticability of carrying out a system with such a mob.” His opinion of his colleagues was all too evident; in fact, he would have regarded tact as a mere euphemism for insincerity. The colleagues reacted in ways that a tactful man would have foreseen. Russel describes (14 March 1875) “the amiable backbiting of others interested only in the general way of demonstrating my odiousness…. Prentiss shakes hands with everyone in the room but myself…. I accept the fact that literary and scientific men are eminently unreasoning beings, governed by impulse rather than by engrossing interests and that they are always in a state of irritation about their salaries and ready to snap at anyone at any time, and that I am always handy.”
White, always faithful to his friends, paid no heed to the rumblings of anti-Russelism. His reception without protest of Russel’s scathing criticisms of the faculty suggests that he agreed with them. Perhaps all college presidents would agree on occasion.
Russel’s position as Acting President was a difficult one. Times were hard and money extremely tight. Only under the utmost pressure would the trustees authorize salary increases and essential departmental expenditures. Elsewhere salary scales were rising; Cornell’s low pay became notorious in the college world.3 Tuition was raised from $60 to $75 a year. Faculty and students complained of their distresses, but the Acting President was likely to receive their grievances with his unfortunate irony. The suspicion arose that he found a dour satisfaction in the griefs or his colleagues, for whom he had no high regard.
Poor Russel deserves our sympathy. His educational purposes were clear and sound. However, impotent in the absence of his chief, and unable to obtain any enabling funds, he could initiate no changes of policy and practice. He had indeed for a time the grudging approval of Henry W. Sage, who wrote White (30 April 1877): “Russel does as well as he can, and that is tolerably well, in spite of adverse comments.” But Russel had less than the full confidence of his trustees, some of whom were nettled by his tactlessness, some by his outspoken religious liberalism. It must have been galling for him to read in the Era, on 27 September 1878: “Those who have regard for the prosperity of the University deprecate the non-progressiveness of the institution under the present management.” In the circumstances, how could the management be progressive?
After two collegiate years abroad, Witte returned on 30 September 1878, after classes had begun. (Such tardiness he found inexcusable in professors.)The University soon felt the effects of his energetic direction.
Not, however, for very long. In January 1879 reports came that President Rutherford B. Hayes was considering him for the American Ministry to Berlin. White let it be known that he would regard acceptance as his patriotic duty. He might have gone farther, to say that the Ministry would be the fulfillment of his dearest dreams.
The report filled Ithaca and Cornell with panic. Russel, never one to dodge the telling of home truths, wrote him (17 January 1879): “Some people already think that you are tired of the University and are trying to draw out of it. Your going would confirm this idea.” In White’s absence, he continued, the University would certainly suffer. Everything would be provisional; the machine would want steadiness; the trustees would lose confidence; and the faculty would be in constant embarrassment. “Everyone expects the Vice-President to assume airs, and stands ready to snub him at his first movement.” Progress, in short, would be impossible.
A few days later Charles H. Blair ’72, Ezra Cornell’s son-in-law, wrote White: “l express the general sentiment among the people of Ithaca and a portion, perhaps a large one, of the Faculty, more than my own, when I pray you not to resign your Presidency.” He adjured White to limit his stay in Germany, or, if that was impossible, to make Goldwin Smith President. For, he said, it was evident that the University had not advanced during White’s absence, the Vice-President being unpopular and a man of scant scholarly repute. Blair concluded his sound advice by asking that, if White must go to Germany, he take the writer along as Secretary of the Legation. White refused to listen to such unpalatable counsel.“My work here can go on well without my presence, he told a friend.4
He offered his resignation of the presidency in March 1879. The trustees by unanimous vote declined to accept it.5 The Executive Committee then granted him a leave of absence and empowered him to choose a replacement. Despite much cautionary advice, he chose Russel. One of White’s virtues, or faults, was fidelity to his friends. In this case, White’s fidelity wrought the destruction of his friend. White did Russel the kindly but unfortunate service of installing him and his family, pro tem, in the President’s House. Russel’s ill-wishers wondered audibly if he would ever be dislodged. Rancor and jealousy seethed in the professors’ cottages.
White left Ithaca on 16 May 1879 to take up his honorable post. His two years as American Minister to Germany are amply described in his Autobiography. He seems to have escaped confrontation with any very serious problems or decisions. His activities were mainly social. Scholarly Andrew D. White and his charming, cultivated wife were admirable representatives of America in the diplomatic world. He was on easy, even friendly terms with everyone from old Emperor William I down. He conceived a great and perhaps naive admiration for the Crown Prince, later William II, and for Bismarck. It was quite a change from Ithaca.
Shortly after his arrival in Berlin he received a call from a vigorous young student of philosophy at the University of Berlin, Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman. His record was brilliant; he had lived for eight years entirely on Canadian and British scholarships. He was presented as “a Canadian who feels himself an American.” At least, he felt himself qualified for an American professorship.6
At home, Russel strove to deal with manifold problems. He tried to smooth ruffled sensibilities, to promote good feeling. “Of course,” he wrote on 18 April 1880, “Crane sneers and Fuertes gets mad, but it is their nature to; and I ask Fuertes to dine every may, and listen to Crane as patiently and sweetly as if caramels were dropping out of his mouth.”
Russel’s chief problem was financial. The trustees were more than niggardly with funds. Do not blame the trustees; they had no funds to advance. The western lands continued to drain away the endowment. Two wealthy donors, Ezra Cornell and John McGraw, were dead; Hiram Sibley was miffed about something; Henry W. Sage was more than generous toward his special projects, but his growing dislike of Russel chilled his impulses. And receipts from students dwindled, for the enrollments were falling off alarmingly.
In 1875–76 the total enrollment was 542, in 1876–77, 561. In 1877–78 the number dropped to 529, in 1878–79 to 476. In 1879–80 the enrollment remained fairly steady, at 463, but in the following year, the last of Russel’s regency, it dwindled to 399. In 1881–82, when President White returned, it reached its all-time low of 384.inereafter it began to rise: 407 in 1882–83, 461 in 1883–84, and a triumphant 573 in 1884–85. In the lean years, civil engineering and architecture suffered particularly. In 1879–80 there were only two majors (as they would now be called) in chemistry and physics. However, classics, letters, and the humaner subjects did well, reflecting no doubt the tastes of the women students.
Various reasons were given for the dwindling enrollment: hard times, increased tuition, stiffened entrance exams, coeducation, Cornell’s reputation for irreligion. Probably each of these reasons was valid in certain cases. Probably also Cornell was undergoing a transformation of which at the time it was hardly aware. The enthusiasm for technical education, rife in the sixties, died away during the hard times of the seventies, when many a competent builder and engineer could find nothing to do. Cornell had begun as a kind of radical working-class university, with the promise of opportunities for self-help for the penniless. Few of the early students had any money. But by 1880 there were not many working students left, and hardly any could support themselves while doing their scholastic work. The tuition of seventy-five dollars contrasted with the twenty dollars charged at Michigan. We had of course the winners of state scholarships, but they did our treasury no good. We attracted some students by the excellence of certain courses, some by the promise of four agreeable years. We were coming into competition with the old eastern universities on their own terms.
The underlying reason for the diminishing student body was surely the absence of the President for all but seven months of five long years. The lack of an effective head with power to act kept the University at a standstill. The morale of trustees, faculty, and students drooped. Professors at conventions, students on vacation, made gloomy reports; their hearers decided to send their sons or younger brothers elsewhere. No one likes to pledge his love to an Alma Mater with pernicious anemia. Newspapers, sensitive to trouble, diagnosed Cornell’s ailments without sympathy.
White read such an article in the New York Tribune just before his departure for Germany. He wrote to Willard Fiske (6 May 1879): “It seems to be taken in many quarters as a fact that we are hopelessly running down and that I am leaving the Institution in consequence. This is a cruel blow to receive just at this time. I have never felt any so deeply.” The cruel blow did not, however, change any of his plans.
Though enrollments dropped, the stiffening of requirements, and perhaps the hard times themselves, had a wholesome effect on the students. Russel reported to White (30 September and 10 October 1880) that the tone of the University was good, the teaching good, the students enthusiastic. The entering class was above the average of any previous year. He could see no reason for discouragement.
If he had no reason for discouragement, he had at least plenty of subjects of concern, the inevitable problems of the university president or acting president. These may be roughly classified as physical, academic, trustee-connected, and human.
Of the physical problems the first was sanitation. Students sickened and died at an alarming rate. Six undergraduates died in 1876–77 and five in 1877–78, out of a student body of about five hundred. Proportionately, that would mean the death of a hundred students annually today. We are inclined to forget, if we ever knew, how familiar was mortality only a few years ago.
Russel suspected that the drinking water, drawn from Fall Creek and unguarded campus springs, was in part responsible. A committee, A. A. Breneman and Caldwell of Chemistry and Law of Veterinary Medicine, was appointed, on 11 June 1880, to survey health conditions. Breneman investigated the sanitary systems of Ithaca and geneva and reported a menacing lack of drainage and sewerage. His report aroused great local indignation and a demand f...
