Author: Irwin Collier

A quarter of a century is a long-time in dog-years but does not even span a healthy scholar’s productive lifetime. Nonetheless, the University of Chicago (founded in 1890 with classes beginning October 1892) celebrated its Quarter-Centennial with much pomp and proportionate circumstance. The address to the Chicago Ph.D.’s attending the celebration was given by the founding and long-serving head of the Department of Political Economy, J. Laurence Laughlin. He was among the earliest domestically trained American Ph.D.’s. These reflections on the life of a young scholar cover the first forty years of economics Ph.D.’s, Made-in-USA. The address provides unique insight into the formative years of organized graduate education in North American economics and academic career paths.

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THE ASSOCIATION OF DOCTORS OF PHILOSOPHY

The Association of Doctors of Philosophy met in the Quadrangle Club at 12:30 P.M. Tuesday, June 6 [1916]. Two hundred and forty-eight doctors were present, and many more sent congratulatory messages. In the absence of President Judson, Dean James Rowland Angell welcomed the guests at luncheon, and expressed the great satisfaction of the University in the large body of doctors who so ably represent it in all parts of the world. In response to an invitation from the Association, Professor J. Laurence Laughlin delivered an address.

PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG SCHOLAR

By J. Laurence Laughlin Professor and Head of the Department of Political Economy

I

Perhaps it will be allowed me to discuss with you for a few minutes some problems of the young scholar in the United States; for the problems of the doctor are practically those of the scholar. In the widest sense they raise the old questions of idealism versus materialism. To vow one’s self to scholarship means renouncing “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” a dedication unto the hopeful, but often disappointing, search for the unknown. On the shining brow of the young scientist there should be the same glow as that which transfigured the face of Sir Galahad when he set out, uplifted in heart and purpose, to search for the Holy Grail.

Whatever the elevation of purpose, however, we must face the matter of preparation. In scholarship, as in war, he who is prepared is favored by the gods. How are scholars made? The only factories are our universities. This inevitably brings us face to face with opinions as to what the university should be. In these days the mobilization of educational resources in any great university involves such questions of administration that executive ability of a high quality is as essential in a faculty as in the departments of a great business house. Men must, therefore, be found in our membership who are not distinguished as scholars; and such men may not even be good teachers. Again, in this country, it goes without saying that the teaching function of the college cannot be wholly separated from the higher activities of the university. Men never can be fitted for research, the highest function of the university, without first passing through the systematic accumulation of knowledge and getting a seasoning of intellectual fiber to be obtained only under good teaching in the secondary school and the college. Teaching is in the main imparting to students the learning of others; but the successful teacher, while engaged in imparting the results of past thinking, may also create a thirst for knowledge and an eventual desire to discover new truth. I doubt if the teaching function ever can be much reduced in the university. It is the condition precedent to final achievement in research; for the inspiration to the possible student investigator usually comes through the medium of highly successful teaching. This opinion of mine may not be in accord with that which decries teaching because it hinders investigation. And yet I fully believe research to be not only the most important, but indeed the highest, function of the university — the brightest jewel in its crown.

It is a question as to what we mean by teaching. In the development of investigators some men, who are not themselves effective producers, are very successful in sending out men who are producers. If by teaching we mean guidance to the nascent investigator, then teaching is directly necessary to research. In the usual lament, that the drudgery of teaching stifles research, reference is undoubtedly had to the heavy work of introductory teaching and the time-consuming reading of students’ papers and reports. Here is one of the serious problems of the young scholar. The fabric of the educational system that leads up to the heights of research and discovery necessarily requires much teaching of a fundamental character. There must be preparation of the student for the final achievements of scholarship. To many a trustee a university should be created for the students, and success is measured by the numbers of students; to many a professor a university should be created for the professors, and success is often measured by the leisure allowed them for study. To others, a university is a place consciously organized so that by constant tests, gradation, and selection a few chosen persons may be evolved competent to carry on the highest tasks of research and discovery. In short, the recipe for stimulating investigation is, first catch your carp; first find the man capable of investigation. To one kind of man a splendid laboratory seems to give him a sense of importance; but the real man of research gives the laboratory importance. Big thinking may go on in a very small room.

II

Perhaps my only qualification for speaking to you today are that I am old enough — or young enough — to bridge with my memory the whole doctoral history in this country. It seems to be well established that I was part and parcel of the first seminar work in our universities, and among the first Ph.D.’s. Before Johns Hopkins University was established in 1876, three of us — of whom one was the present Senator Lodge of Massachusetts — had been engaged in research under Henry Adams, the historian, and we were made doctors at Harvard in 1876. The light literature which resulted from our investigations was contained in a volume of “Anglo-Saxon Law.”

With you have I trod the typical path of all doctors, who had to begin with a salary less than a policeman’s. I wonder how many of us feel like describing that wearisome path from five hundred dollars a year to an assistant professorship, in these words of Milton :

Long is the way

And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

A president who was able to raise the salaries of learned young doctors was a very Jehovah on a golden throne, whose locks glowed like a thousand searchlights — before whom we stood, wistful acolytes of learning, with the dust of libraries on our brows.

Certainly one thing came prominently forth from my doctoral training. Never afterward could I balk at work because it was hard. The lesson of persistence in getting materials at no matter what cost of time or labor was learned, never to be forgotten. In a study of the origins of English law and institutions I was never supposed to whimper at re-reading the whole body of Anglo-Saxon laws six times in search for procedural methods from feud to jury, or to pore over twenty-five thousand pages of capitularies in mediaeval Latin. Never since has any task seemed impossible.

We young doctors must have been interesting to onlookers. We supposed that the whole world was watching us. We were distinguished in most cases by a big pipe in our mouths, a large sense of condescension to the non-doctoral universe, and by the air of great candor, which obliged us, solely in the interests of truth, to indicate that we were in the line of direct descent from Minerva. We might well have been admonished to “Tarry at Jericho until our beards are grown.”

There was the sort fresh from German kneipen, greatly respected,

For he by geometric scale
Could take the size of pots of ale.

But how many of us, having gone forth with the morning dew on our shining armor, have come back after long days with the cup? What a lot of rusty, dinted old harness is scattered along the doctoral highway!

If many of us have fallen short of our early promise, it is probably due to a loss of our inspiring vision. There are two possible reasons for such failures: First, in our egotism we thought we were investigators, when really we were not. For the advance of research there is nothing so deadly as conceit, and nothing so productive as humility. Learning is an essential to a teacher whose function it is to impart knowledge; but, as we all agree, education is not information. To collect the learning of others may impress the ignorant; but it is not research. To succeed in research one must have extended the boundaries of human knowledge, discovered a new principle, conquered the unknown. Sometimes the investigator comes with awe into the presence of a new truth. One day a young man came out of his laboratory, a new and strange expression on his face, and said, “Today I have just seen something that no man has ever seen before.” Columbus on the deck of his ship, when the dim coast line of America rose over the sea, could not have had a nobler thrill of discovery. Indeed, the uncharted seas of science today offer as many prizes of discovery as ever before in history.

It is a well-recognized fact that many persons seek and often obtain the doctorate merely for the purpose of increasing their revenue as teachers. These never had the vision, and never will be discoverers of truth. Our real interest is in the picked few. It remains true in research, as in the church, that “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

III

Failures, however, are more often ascribable, in the second place, to what may be called economic reasons. Before he has fairly mounted, on his journey the young doctor has added unto himself the burdens of a family. If never before, he must now exert himself to the utmost to be a bread-winner. Then comes the situation which has become so familiar to us all — and, I suppose, to every university president. The would-be scholar finds himself of necessity taking on routine teaching as a means of income; while the less gifted soon give up the hope of research, and the gifted few chafe against the bars of repressive drudgery, constantly hoping to find out a way of research while still earning a living. In short, even with the flower of young scholars the problem is to earn a living and yet to cling to the ideals of research. It must be frankly admitted that, if he has had obligations thrust upon him, it is his first duty to earn a living. That duty every man must face. But not infrequently a young idealist, full of his vision, feels that the world owes him a living, in spite of the burdens he himself has voluntarily assumed, in order that he may be free to hunt in the unknown fields of knowledge. Bitterly— but quite naturally— he is inclined to assail his university as unappreciative of the investigator; and his heart grows heavy.

It will not, I hope, be regarded as brutal to say plainly that if the will to produce is in us no power in heaven or earth can keep it down. No drudgery of teaching kept Moody from expressing himself; nor Ricketts from penetrating to the secrets of disease. And as to Shorey, no drudgery of teaching could prevent him, on receipt of a telegram, from packing his valise and in twenty-four hours beginning a course of twelve lectures in Boston on the “Efflorescence of the Diastole in the Poems of Pausanias.” If the divine fire burns within us, it must come forth somewhere, somehow. When a young scholar says life is too distracting, too noisy, for the serious work of production, he is publishing his own inadequacy. Was it not Chesterton who said, in reference to this matter when men complained of an unsympathetic environment, that Bacon and Shakespeare turned out their products as naturally and easily as we perspire? If a young scholar feels the inner surge to produce, let him somehow give a sample product by which he may be rated. It has been said of Jacques Loeb that if he were cast away on a coral reef with only a shoestring and a collar button he would probably soon be producing sea urchins, or frogs, by parthenogenesis.

IV

There is, to be sure, another and economic side to this matter. The price of a scholar is not difficult to explain. If scholars of the productive type are scarce, they “come high”; they occupy a monopoly position as truly as the successful captain of industry. Moreover, the statement of a new truth is often the heresy of today. The scholar who penetrates into the unknown must be content to be lonely; not infrequently he is obliged to go without a publisher. To be unappreciated, if not to be unpopular, is the part of the scholar who finds himself in antagonism to some illogical, but accepted, opinion of the day. Hence it may be said that

Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

Not only are men of research scarce, but their value to the university is infinite. The productive scholar is the one every university is seeking. At the time when President Jordan was gathering his faculty at Stanford, he wrote me on hearing of my coming to Chicago: “If a few more universities are established the position of a professor will soon become respectable, even in the eyes of the richest trustees.” But, if scholars are in such demand, why is there any complaint as to their economic conditions?

The truth is that a would-be teacher — like a horse — is not always what he seems. To invest in a professor is as much a gamble as to buy a horse. After being permanently corralled he is apt to lose speed, and to develop unexpected peculiarities. A university should be as experienced as a Kentucky breeder in picking promising colts. When a scholar has arrived, it is easy enough for an institution to know that he is a desirable man to have. We come to see, then, that a young scholar cannot expect to be discovered until he has somehow indicated his quality; but that, on the other hand, a very great responsibility rests upon the university to be keen in recognizing the productive quality early in life, to nourish and feed it, and be proud to give it that environment which will encourage production and thereby greatly honor the university. For, after all, the institution that is putting forth new growth of research at the top is the only institution that is really alive. If it is content to teach merely the accumulated learning and results of others, and itself to put out no new growth, it is really moribund.

Therefore, if productive scholars are not easy to find, and yet are absolutely essential to a live university, I may be permitted to suggest some practical means for mending the ills we now endure. Many men of promise have been crushed by untoward conditions of poverty. There are some trees that rise splendidly to heaven because they are planted in good soil and are favored by sun and rain; others of the same species are stunted and gnarled by an evil environment. So it is with scholars — most sensitive of all plants to kindly influence. What can be done by the university to find the stock true to species and give it its full growth?

Without doubt endowment funds should be set aside for the purpose of freeing men capable of research from the drudgery of elementary teaching. But — keeping in mind the frailties of human nature — these funds should be transferred from one man to another, and not given permanently to one. If a promising investigator were disclosed, such a man could be encouraged; if the promise failed of fulfilment, the man was not the one to be encouraged. Thus could be devised a practical means of discovering which of the many aspirants for research were fit for further trial. By some such method as this, without doubt, the university could gradually build up a corps of effective producers. Then, certainly, if the producer is found, the duty — and the ambition — of the university is clear. An investment in productive men is the highest possible use of the university’s funds. The creation of a permanent fund to be devoted to the encouragement of research, gradually accumulated or enlarged by gift, is the one clear sign by which an enlightened and progressive university may be known. To such an institution will come the pick of ambitious graduate students from everywhere. Doubly rich in investigators and in students of ability who are worthy of attention, then indeed will science grow from more to more in that place of learning.

V

In these past twenty-five years much has been done; more remains to be done. In many directions encouragement has been given to research; but while emphasis has been put upon good teaching — and teaching should aim to develop, not only the mind, but also character and good form — would we not make even more progress in the future if greater emphasis were placed on the methods of trying out promising producers and making possible to the gifted few the highest university distinctions?

We are turning out increasing numbers of mediocre doctors. They are too often given a degree for the careful collection of the learning of others. Very soon the degree of Ph.D. will have — as it may already have — gained the connotation of the routine A.M. degree. Some means should be found for separating collectors of learning from the productive investigators.

To some of us who have nearly reached the end of an academic career there is much of inspiration and cheer on an occasion like this. About to leave the stage and turn our faces to the sunset, we pause here a moment to look back to the sunrise; and out of the morning is seen the long line of young scholars sweeping on to the present hour, aflame to take up the tasks of scholarship we are leaving, and to carry forward the work of research far beyond our own expectation. Iturus salutat.

Source: The Quarter-Centennial Celebration of the University of Chicago, June 2 to 6. A record by David Allan Robertson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918, pp. 161-168.

Image Source: Cap and Gown, 1906.