A late-starter for an academic career, Wellesley College alumna (1899) Mary Barnett Gilson attained her highest academic degree (A.M.) from Columbia at the tender age of about 49 years following a career in industrial relations. She then spent ten years teaching economics at the University of Chicago before retiring as an assistant professor emeritus in 1942. In her exchange of letters with the president of the university, Robert M. Hutchins, that have been transcribed for this post, one reads of her frustration at not having had an opportunity to teach in her field of expertise, industrial relations, either in the business school or the Downtown College. She is also quite clear in her disappointment as not having been promoted to the rank of associate professor. She believed she had hit a gender glass-ceiling. It would be of interest to compare other non-Ph.D. faculty of the period at the University of Chicago and elsewhere who had been promoted to ranks of associate professor and higher. Still there can be little doubt that we have here an account of a woman who had encountered genuine discrimination.
Also of interest is to read “I’m very busy trying to enlighten the Mid-West and dispel some of the fog created by America First” written five days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
She eventually moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina where she spent the rest of her long life.
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Mary Barnett Gilson, A.M. (1877-1969)
University of Chicago years
1931- 33 Instructor of Economics.
1933-34 Assistant in Economics
1934-41 Assistant Professor of Economics
1940-42 Assistant Professor of Economics in the College.
1942- Assistant Professor Emeritus of Economics in the College.
[Apparently only taught during the second semester at Wellesley College 1942. Lecturer in Economics. Resignation and expired appointment June 1942, Wellseley College, as of June, 1942.]
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Mary B. Gilson published a memoir in 1940
Papers at Wellesley College Archives
From a review of Mary Barnett Gilson, What’s Past Is Prologue. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940.
“Her ideas and feelings about industrial problems spring from varied experience as a branch librarian in a steel district, department-store salesgirl, vocational counselor, employment manager, research worker in labor problems, and university professor.”
Source: William M. Leiserson. Review of What’s Past is Prologue by Mary Barnett Gilson in American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 47, No. 1 (July 1941), pp. 123-124.
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Mary B. Gilson Papers in Wellesley College Archives. Records of the Class of 1899, 1898-1954: a guide. 6C.1899. Boxes 5-20, Oversize 2-4.
Apparently some of these items are on microfilm in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina. Mary Barnett Gilson Papers, 1909-1959. Does not appear to have any University of Chicago or Wellesley College related material.
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John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Fellowship: 1939
GILSON, MARY BARNETT
Appointed for the preparation of a book to be entitled “Industry, Management and Labor: A record of thirty years”; tenure, twelve months from October 1, 1939.
Born: September 10, 1877, at Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Education: Wellesley College, B.A., 1899; Columbia University, M.A., 1926. London School of Economics, 1935–36.
Engaged in industrial work in the fields of labor relations, employment and management, and consultant and research worker in industrial relations, 1912—.
Assistant Professor of Economics, 1931—, University of Chicago.
Publications: Unemployment Benefits in the United States (with others), 1930; Unemployment Insurance in Great Britain, 1931; Unemployment Insurance, 1932. Articles in International Labour Review, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences.
Source: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Website: Fellows/Mary Barnett Gilson.
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Handwritten letter by Mary B. Gilson to President Hutchins
The University of Chicago
Department of Economics
April 17, 1941
Dear President Hutchins,
Perhaps you have been notified that my resignation will take effect at the end of this quarter. I have deeply appreciated the atmosphere of freedom at the University of Chicago and your part in preserving it.
Cordially yours,
Mary B. Gilson
* * * * *
Attached slip of paper with handwritten notes:
[Secretary?:] She doesn’t say so but I know she wants very badly to see you.
[Hutchins?:] How do you know?
[Secretary?:] She told me so. She wants to tell you what is wrong with this institution. I think you should give her an opportunity for a parting shot.
[Hutchins?:] Will do some time. no hurry about it.–RMH
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Handwritten letter by Mary B. Gilson to President Hutchins
Mary Barnett Gilson—1154 East 56thStreet—Chicago, Illinois
Nov. 24, ‘41
Dear Mr. Hutchins,
I am confident Ben Selekman would not object to my sending you his letter to me. Please destroy it when you have read it.
It is too bad that on a recent barn-storming trip of one night stands in Western Pennsylvania I left, somewhere en route, the two pamphlets Mr. Selekman sent me. You would enjoy the Atlantic Monthly reprint, I know you would! Will you have your secretary ask him for a copy or shall I?
If I had not promised that Pittsburgh men’s forum I would speak on “Strikes and Production” I can assure you I would not have chosen November 17th, 1941 A.M.[?] to speak on that subject. A lot of steel and coal and coke magnates from their Triangle offices were in my audience and when some of them as well as some labor leaders told me after my 45 minute broadcast and a subsequent 30 minute question period that I had been “fair” I breathed normally once more.
It seems queer to know I shall soon be “emeritus”. I wish I had had some opportunity to use my industrial experience more effectively here during the past ten years but either the Mid-West is no place for a woman in that field or [Carl F.] Huth and [William Homer] Spencer and Raleigh Stone et al don’t think it is! I’d like to have demonstrated I could retire from here as an emeritus associated instead of an emeritus assistant. I try to think titles don’t mean anything but people in academic circles seem to think they do!
Cordially yours,
Mary Gilson
* * * * *
[handwritten note: “Please destroy”]
B. M. Selekman
24 Province Street
Boston, Mass.
November 3, 1941.
Miss Mary Gilson
Faculty Exchange #169
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
Dear Mary:
It is very kind of you to write me about the little screed in the Survey Graphic. I feel the whole thing very keenly and I am glad that you agree. I developed the same thought at somewhat greater length in the Atlantic Monthly. Apparently you missed it so I am sending you a copy as well as a reprint of another article in the Harvard Business Review which I think you will find interesting from the point of view of your own experience in labor relations.
Your piece in the current Survey Graphic touches also on the same theme that I tried to develop in the Business Review article.
Let me now tell you that I should have written you a long time ago how much I enjoyed your book. It just breathed your kindliness, human understanding and impatience with cant and stupidity.
We are both, naturally, disappointed in Hutchins. How can a person with his sensitiveness to the classic tradition fail to see the issue of humanism in the current world crisis as projected by the Nazis! I wish you could get him to read my Atlantic Monthly article, although one despairs of changing a point of view in a person as intelligent as he is. Sometimes I find the intelligent person the most closed mind. They live within a framework of thought which is so consistent to them that they do not see the complexities and subtleties in actual life about them.
I am happy to hear that you are out barnstorming in the interest of getting our mid-western neighbors to see the issues clearly in Hitler’s threat to us.
I am sorry to hear that you are to retire in another year. I should think that your first-hand-experience could have been put forth to students for a great many more years with profit to them.
It is good news, however, that you are thinking of settling in Boston or Wellesley. One is not quite so much in the hurly-burly of things as in New York. On the other hand one does get a better opportunity living in New England to think and reflect.
With affectionate greetings from both of us,
Ever yours,
[signed]
Ben
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Carbon Copy of President Hutchin’s response to Gilson
November 27, 1941
Dear Miss Gilson:
Thank you for your kind note. As for Selekman, tell him that I am disappointed in him and that if he will read my speeches I will read his article.
I share your views on the anti-feminine leanings of this University and on the issue of academic rank. There is a sub-committee of the Senate Committee on University Policy now at work on a proposal to abolish academic rank in the University. If the suggestion ever gets out of the sub-committee it will be buried with a unanimous whoop in the Senate.
Come and see me some time.
Sincerely yours,
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS
Miss Mary B. Gilson
Assistant Professor of Economics
The University of Chicago
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Handwritten letter by Mary B. Gilson to President Hutchins
[Handwritten note: “no ans.”]
Mary Barnett Gilson—1154 East 56thStreet—Chicago, Illinois
Dec. 2 [1941]
Dear Mr. Hutchins,
You see I always get promoted in print, and when I lecture I spend the first five minutes telling my audience that I am not “Professor” and that I haven’t even a doctorate. That’s the chief reason I’d be in favor of doing away with titles! Program chairmen just can’t bear the ignominy of bringing an assistant professor to their groups. So I always get a promotion, which lasts until I get on my feet.
I surely shall accept your invitation to drop in to see you some day. Thanks ever so much. I’m very busy trying to enlighten the Mid-West and dispel some of the fog created by America First. I’m sure you are busy, too.
I am playing with the idea of going to Becea[?] for Christmas vacation. I have always wanted to see it and this seems a possible time.
Please give my kindest regards to your beloved father. It was a joy to have a chance to become acquainted with him the summer of 1940.
Cordially yours,
Mary Gilson
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Handwritten letter by Mary B. Gilson to President Hutchins
WELLESLEY COLLEGE
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Department of Economics
Friday, February 27 [1942]
Dear Mr. Hutchins,
I was sorry indeed to come away from Chicago without saying good-bye to you. As my beloved old [Wellesley College] teacher Vida Scudder said the other day, “Even if we don’t see eye to eye on present solutions of present problems, we agree down deep on fundamental issues.” Well, whether you and I agree on fundamental and also on less fundamental issues or not, I have a lot of respect for you and I regret deeply not having had a chance to say good-bye.
President McAfee’s s.o.s. to come here and take over a group of seniors in a course in industrial relations came so precipitately that I had little time for anything but packing and storing my household goods and attending to all those chores that must be done when one moves from one town to another. It all had to be done in a week.
I am having a grand time with twenty-five of the finest girls I’ve met for a long time. We meet around a big round table, which is an answer to the prayer I sent up every little while during the past ten years when those gloomy, repelling rooms in Cobb put a long face on this school arm. I always wanted a whack at an industrial relations course “on the side” at the U. of C., in the School of Business or Downtown College) but Deans [William Homer] Spencer and [Carl F.] Huth evidently thought a woman didn’t and shouldn’t know about the mysterious field of business and industry.
Please throw away the enclosures after you have read them. They are between you and me and the gate-post.
As you said, the last time I saw you, “God bless you!”
Faithfully yours,
Mary B. Gilson
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Attachment 1
Typed Letter from Mary Anderson to Mary Gilson
[Anderson, Mary. Woman at work: The autobiography of Mary Anderson as told to Mary N. Winslow. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1951. Obituary: Mary Anderson, Ex-U.S. aide, dies; Directed Women’s Bureau in Labor Department, New York Times, January 30, 1964.]
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
WOMEN’S BUREAU
Washington
January 30, 1942
Dear Mary,
I am very much interested in your letter and it seems to me that instead of going to Wellesley you ought to be staying at Chicago University and teaching in this new class. [Gilson added “*” in the margin with a handwritten note at the bottom of this letter]
I am going to Chicago next week to speak at the American Management Association conference at the Stevens Hotel and I have been asked by Mr. Mitchell to stop off at Chicago University and give a talk on Thursday morning the 5th. I shall do so because I want to know what they are doing, what they are teaching and what they are preparing the people for. He says they have 150 men and 50 women in the class. The training classes are now being opened up to women all over because they realize that they will have to use them and that means of course that they will have to have training for women supervisors as well as production workers. [Gilson added comment to this sentence in margin: “But Chicago is training women for white collar jobs.”]
I hope you will find your place in Wellesley more to your liking. I suppose you won’t be coming to Washington now, since the Wage and Hour Division is moving to New York. We in the Department of Labor regret that moving very much. Of course we may find it will strike us.
With much love to you,
[signed]
Mary
Miss Mary Gilson
1154 East 56thStreet
Chicago, Illinois
[Handwritten note: *I told her I had never, in the ten years at U. of C., been called into the Business School or Downtown College for any sort of a contribution I might have made toward training women for anything. I think Raleigh Stone may think I’m a “red” M.B.G.]
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Attachment 2
Mary Anderson typed letter to Mary Gilson
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
WOMEN’S BUREAU
Washington
February 18, 1942
Dear Mary,
I was very glad to have your analysis of that class at Chicago University. There were 150 men and 50 women. The men were training mainly for supervisors in industry and the women were training for supervisors in offices. The attitude towards the women was the same as usual. [underlining by Gilson with marginal note “Usual white collar stuff for ladies!”] They asked me questions – if women ought to have the same wages as men, and would women get out of the factories after the men come back from the war. I told them that there was much more to it than just coming back from the war and getting the jobs back, that it was a question of converting the industries back to consumer goods and there was also the question of some of the industries that would not be working at all after the war as we would not need their material; then there is of course the cutting down on war material quite considerably, and then I said to the men, “Have you any idea how many of the men will come back from the war and how many of the men that come back will be able to take any jobs?” I said that was a very hard way of putting it but at the same time we were in a different war than we have been in and it is very difficult to tell what would happen, that after all if we are to win this war it will take men and women together, all of us, and that I think we would do well not to quibble over who is going to have the jobs after the war is over. [underlining by Gilson].
I didn’t see Mr. Mitchell, so I have no opinion of him. I thought the two women that were steering the class were very good, and earnest. One of the professors was giving a psychology lesson just before I spoke so I heard some of it, and it was a regular college psychology lesson. I don’t know what good it would do a class that will take positions in industry as supervisors. One of the women, however, (and I don’t remember their names) had a very bad attitude towards labor. She could not understand why labor wanted more money when the men that enlisted got only $21 a month. I told her that after all they got a great deal more than that, they got their clothes and their keep, which amounts to a great deal more; I didn’t think, however, they got enough fro what they were risking by any means, but that was no reason that the workers should not have a decent wage. They, too, were risking their all, and the employers in bidding on the contracts took the labor costs as well as the costs of material into consideration.
I had a grand time at the American Management Association and the training of women is now beginning. They were very much interested and they have written in for all kinds of information.
I think our work from now on will be that of seeing that women are not exploited and that labor standards are maintained.
With love to you,
[signed, “Mary”]
Mary Anderson, Director
Miss Mary Gilson
Claflin Hall
Wellesley College,
Wellesley, Mass.
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Handwritten note by E.F. [Vice-President, Emery T. Filbey] attached to previous Gilson letter
Personally I would not pick either of the Marys for instruction in industrial relations unless I wanted to start a private war.
E.F.
[underneath: in a different handwriting “Nice long letter. How etc[?] we [??] & so on.”
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Carbon copy of typed letter from Hutchins to Gilson.
March 4, 1942
Dear Miss Gilson:
I could not hope for a more generous statement of good faith overlooking difference of opinion than that expressed in your letter of February 27. I cannot do better than return the sentiments with my regret that we had no opportunity to exchange them in person.
I hope that Wellesley will treat you as you would like, or in other words, that Wellesley will treat you as well as you deserve.
The enclosures you sent me lead me to believe that you and I do not disagree on fundamental issues. You and your friends are concerned about exploitation of our women and disintegration of our labor standards. I am concerned, as you are too, about exploitation of our citizens and disintegration of our democracy.
Sincerely yours,
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS
Miss Mary B. Gilson
Department of Economics
Wellesley College
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Source: University of Chicago Library, Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration. Records. Box 72, Folder “Economics Department, 1939-1943.”
Image Source: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Website: Fellows/Mary Barnett Gilson.