The meat of the following post is found in the correspondence regarding a one year appointment of a Harvard graduate student in 1922 as Thomas Nixon Carver’s assistant for Economics 8 (Principles of Sociology). Wilfrid Harris Crook’s appointment was shot down by the Harvard Corporation over the express positive recommendation of the department chairman (who happened to be Thomas Nixon Carver himself). There were two economics faculty members (unnamed) who voted against hiring Crook, and one suspects that one or both had raised red flags of pacifism and socialism in their dissent high enough for President Lowell to have seen them. I am simply amazed that any candidate for a humble teaching assistantship would have been vetted by the President of the university himself.
For those interested in what had become of Crook, who eventually went on to complete his Ph.D. in 1928, I have assembled a few snippits of biographical and career data. His irregular employment is consistent with both a difficult personality (“In a world of teetotalers Crook would be a conscientious drunkard”) and the challenges posed by dual academic careers.
Small world: The above image of Crook’s calling card from his time as Assistant Minister, Central Congregational Church, Boston, 1916-1918 was found in the online material from the W.E.B. Du Bois archive.
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Scraps of information from the life and career of Wilfrid Harris Crook
Born: May 16, 1888 in Swinton, Lancastershire, England.
Married: Lucy Mildred Cluck, Sept. 1 1917 in New London, New Hampshire. (still together in 1930 according to the U.S. Census)
Son: Sydney L. Crook (b. ca. 1919)
Married: Evelyn Buchan Sept 8 1931 in Glens Falls New York. She was a professor at the University of Maine at the time according to the Bangor Maine City Directory, 1931.
1929-30. Bowdoin College Catalogue. Listed as Assistant Professor of Economics and Sociology. Besides listed with the other members of the department of economics and sociology, he is listed for the three semester courses in sociology (Principles of Sociology, Applied Sociology, and Social Evolution of the Hebrew People)
1930-31. Bowdoin College Catalogue. Listed as Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology on leave of absence.
1933-34 Boston City Directory: Wilfrid H. Crook and Evelyn B. instr. Simmons College (see item below)
1935 Haverhill, Mass. City Directory. Crook Wilfrid H. inst. Bradford Junior College.
1935 Wilkes-Barre, Penn. City directory. Wilfrid H. Crook and Evelyn B. instr. Bucknell University Jr. College.
Bucknell Junior College, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (1942, Draft registration of Wilfrid H. Crook)
Wilfrid H. Crook born 16 May 1888, Social Security Claim date 30 April 1956.
Died April 16, 1963 in DeKalb, Georgia
Two details about Wilfrid H. Crook’s second wife Evelyn Buchan
From a UP report, Sept. 17 1946, Albany in the Dunkirk Evening Observer (Dunkirk, New York)
“Three professors of sociology join the faculty today of the Associated Colleges of upper New York. They are Mrs. Evelyn Buchan Crook, who has taught at five other universities….The associated college [is] located at Sampson…”
From The 1962 Yearbook of the Westminster Schools, Atlanta, Georgia (Vol. V): Mrs Wilfrid Harris Crook, Testing and Counseling, Ph.B. and M.A., University of Chicago. (Note how in 1962 women still lost both their first and last names upon marriage!)
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Economics Ph.D. awarded 1928
Wilfrid Harris Crook, A.B. (Univ. of Oxford, England) 1911, A.M. (ibid.) 1914. Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Thesis, “The General Strike in Theory and Practice to 1914.” Assistant Professor of Economics and Sociology, Bowdoin College.
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1927-28, p. 113.
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Instructorship at Simmons College
Wilfrid Harris Crook, Special Instructor in Economics. B.A., Lincoln College, Oxford, 1911; M.A., 1914; Hibbert Scholar, 1915; Harvard, 1914-16, 1921-1923; Ph.D., 1928.
Formerly: Assistant Minister, Central Congregational Church, Boston, 1916-1918; Editorial work, New York, 1919-1920; Special Instructor in Economics, 1922-1923; Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology, Bowdoin College, 1923-1931.
Publications: The General Strike, 1931; articles in Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, The Survey. The Nation.
Source: 1933 Microcosm, Simmons College Yearbook, p. 35.
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The case made against hiring Wilfrid Harris Crook as a teaching assistant at Harvard in 1922…in spite of the departmental recommendation to hire him
Economics department’s recommendation to hire
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Oct. 23, 1922
The Division Department of Economics respectfully recommends to the Corporation the appointment of W. H. Crook [as] Assistant [in] Economics for one year from Sept. 1, 1922 at a salary of $400. Courses in which instruction or assistance is to be given: Economics 8.
Remarks: See letter to President Lowell.
[Signed|
T. N. Carver
Chairman.
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Letter to President Lowell from the economics department chairman
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 24, 1922
Dear President Lowell:
At a meeting of the Department of Economics held Monday afternoon, October 23, it was voted to recommend to the President and Fellows that W. H. Crook be appointed Assistant for one year in Economics 8, and that C. N. Burrows be appointed as Assistant for the first half-year in Economics 9a.
Sincerely yours,
[signed]
T. N. Carver
Chairman
President A. Lawrence Lowell
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Elaboration by economics department chairman regarding the case of W. H. Crook
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 24, 1922
Dear President Lowell:
The case of W. H. Crook was pretty thoroly [sic] discussed at the Department Meeting before the vote was taken. The vote stood eight in favor of the recommendation, two against it, the Chairman not voting.
When I talked with you about the case several days ago you stated that if new information could be furnished regarding the case you would take it into consideration. I asked Dean Sperry to write you what he knew about it. Mr. Crook has given me some documents, including his certificate of discharge from military service on the ground of physical unfitness, his correspondence with the Hibbert Trustees, etc. The information is pretty well summarized in the enclosed copy of a letter which he wrote to Professor Bullock in 1921. I think that this correspondence with the Hibbert Trustees and other documents which he submits support every important statement which he makes in the letter. It appears that his anti-war attitude in this country was by no means so positive as it has been made out to be. Being a pacifist he could not do otherwise than urge peaceful mediation on the part of this country rather than actual war. After war was declared he seems to have quite accepted the situation, did not take advantage either of the fact that he was an ordained minister or a conscientious objector to evade the draft. In fact I think he showed a much finer spirit in refusing to enjoy the luxuries of peace in war time than many of our people who pass as respectable.
I should be glad to hand you the other correspondence which Mr. Crook gave me if you care to be bothered with them. Their only value, however, would be to verify what Mr. Crook has said.
Very sincerely,
[signed]
T. N. Carver
Chairman
President A. Lawrence Lowell
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President Lowell’s letter to Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE
PRESIDENT’S OFFICE
October 25, 1922
Dear John:
Would you mind looking over these papers and sending them back to me as soon as you can, for it is a question that will come up at the next Corporation meeting. Professor Bullock evidently thinks Crook a rather blatant propagandist for socialism and pacifism; and of course this is one of the cases where we shall be somewhat blamed whatever we do. But while protecting free speech on the part of our professors, I do not think that we are obliged to appoint to the instructing staff men who would bring us into unnecessary criticism, or people of a quarrelsome disposition. This last impression of Crook I derive rather strongly from the enclosed letter from Dean Sperry. This is a question of balance of judgment. What do you think?
Very truly yours,
[stamp] A. Lawrence Lowell
John F. Moors, Esq.
111 Devonshire Street
Boston, Mass.
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Theology Dean’s assessment of Wilfrid Harris Crook
The Theological School in Harvard University
Andover Hall, Francis Avenue
Cambridge, Mass.
Office of the Dean
October 20, 1922
My dear President Lowell:
Professor Carver tells me that the name of Wilfrid Harris Crook has been suggested as an assistant in one of the economics courses, and that objection to this appointment has been filed with you, on the ground that he was an ‘English draft dodger’, etc. Professor Carver asks me to send you a word on the matter.
I know Mr. Crook well. He was my assistant for two or three years in Central Church, Boston.
The basic fact about Crook is this. He comes of a long line of English dissenters and Non-conformists. And the ‘dissidence of dissent’ is bred in his blood and bone. He had been, for years, a more or less doctrinaire pacifist of the Tolstoian type.
But he is not a ‘draft dodger’ in any correct sense of the word. In the spring of 1914 he had received from the Hibbert Trustees and Manchester College, Oxford, their Hibbert Fellowship for foreign study. He had intended to take the academic year 1914-15 doing economics in Germany, and was caught there at the outbreak of the War.
He came back at once to England, and with the consent of the Hibbert Trustees transferred his fellowship to this country and to Harvard. The draft was not then in force in England. Whether he ought to have stayed and volunteered, or faced the ultimate consequences of not volunteering is another matter.
He has been in this country ever since. He remained a ‘doctrinaire pacifist’ all through the War. His native non-conformity, with its anti-imperialist heckling temper was not understood here at all. His best friends deplored a good many of his utterances, and found it hard to bear with him at times. While he made a good many enemies who did not hesitate to go far beyond the facts and accuse him of actual political irregularities of which he was technically quite innocent.
The whole case of the man was put in a nutshell by the Chairman of my Parish Committee, who once said that, “In a world of teetotalers Crook would be a conscientious drunkard.”
It seemed impossible for him to do much useful work in our Parish in Boston after we had entered the War and he eventually dropped out. His opinions on War in general were abhorrent to most of our people at that time. But I never heard anything but words of respect and affection for the man’s character, his personal charm and his transparent integrity.
He must have been under suspicion here during the War. But so far as I know he never ran foul of any actual trouble with the authorities.
He was, I think, in process of becoming an American citizen during the war, and was called for the draft but dismissed at once for a shockingly bad heart, the result of rheumatic fever.
My impression is that his citizenship has since been granted, and that if there had been any technical case against him it would have appeared at that time and would have held that matter up permanently.
Perhaps he ought to have gone back to England, perhaps he ought to have felt differently here. All that is debatable ground.
Technically, I think his case stands clear. As to the basic fact of the man himself, it is the problem of the rather remote idealism of the Tolstoian type.
He has been plugging along latterly for the Ph.D. degree in economics. My latest impressions of him are of a man somewhat sobered and reluctantly making concessions to the stubborn world of hard facts, which his dissenting heredity and romantic temperament incline him to regard as given over to Satan.
Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Willard L. Sperry
President A. Lawrence Lowell
Harvard University
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President Lowell’s response to Theology Dean
October 24, 1922
Dear Mr Sperry:
Thank you very much for your letter about Mr Crook. He does not seem to be the kind of person the Corporation would like to appoint as a member of the instructing staff.
I asked Mr. Foote to inform me about the denominational relations of the members of the Faculty, and I think you would be interested in his answer, which you need not return. It shows very clearly that the School has not been Unitarian; but I am not sure that the publicity would do us any good.
Very truly yours,
[stamp] A. Lawrence Lowell
Rev. Willard L. Sperry
Andover Hall
Cambridge
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Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors responds to President Lowell
MOORS & CABOT
111 Devonshire Street
Boston, Mass.
Telephone Main 8170
Members
Boston Stock Exchange
John F. Moors
C. Lee Todd
Francis E. Smith
William Ferguson
Willis W. Clark
October 26, 1922.
President A. Lawrence Lowell,
Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.
Dear Lawrence:
I have read and return herewith the documents received from you today about Mr. Crook.
Let me say at the outset that it speaks well for Carver, who himself analyzes socialism, to advocate a man of the Crook type, for Carver, we know, is himself so far from being a socialist that it would be very easy for him to feel prejudiced.
Our bookkeeper in this office is a prominent member of Mr. Sperry’s church. I have today asked him about Crook and find that, though he likes him personally and respects him as a man, he has pronounced abhorrence of his views and says that in thus speaking he feels sure that he reflects a vast majority of the congregation.
I have heard Crook speak and have addressed audiences in the Chapel of the Central Congregational church at which Crook as assistant minister has been present. His voice is soft, he is gentlemanly, he has no brilliant sparks such as Laski threw forth, he is, I think, very much as Sperry describes him, a natural dissenter of the outwardly rather meek but inwardly recalcitrant type. He would, I imagine, present socialism sympathetically rather than analytically.
While his letter to Bullock indicates that Bullock took a rough attitude toward him, which may have led him to feel sore, it seems to me that the first paragraph and the next to the last paragraph in his letter lack self-restraint; and I though this before I read the rest of the correspondence, my eye having caught this letter first.
Having seen Crook mostly in the pleasant relationship of a speaker being introduced (as speakers are introduced!) I should have said before I read the correspondence that I liked him. I suppose too that no one can really teach anything who does not heartily believe in it; and Carver’s reasonableness is the thing which most impressed me in the whole correspondence. I should like to back him up in it. But while all great men are cranks, all cranks are not great men. Judgment seems to lie in distinguishing which is the great man without the crankiness, which the crank without the greatness. I am inclined to think that Crook would get us into hot water without our being sure, when we were in it, that we were right.
Yours very truly,
signed]
John F. Moors
Dict. J.F.M.
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Department Chair T. N. Carver senses one or two other persons with a “vindictive disposition” are the source of Crook’s troubles
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
November 6, 1922
Dear President Lowell:
I have your letter of October 31 informing me that the Corporation did not think wise to appoint Mr. Crook as Assistant in Economics 8. The reason given must be based on information that was not in the possession of the Chairman of the Department. You state that it was not on account of his opinions but on account of his disposition, and that the Corporation felt that it would be a mistake to introduce into the teaching staff a man who has shown so much capacity for getting into trouble. So far as any information has come to the Chairman of the Department, Mr. Crook has had no trouble since early in the war on account of his own disposition. Such trouble as he has had seems to be due entirely to the vindictive disposition of one or two other persons.
I think that Mr. Crook would like to have the carbon copy of his letter to Professor Bullock which I enclosed with my letter to you of recent date. Will you kindly have some one return it to me and I will hand it to Mr. Crook?
Very sincerely,
[signed]
T. N Carver
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Wilfrid Harris Crook’s request to speak with Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors
20a Prescott Street
Cambridge, Mass.
November 9, 1922
Mr. John F. Moors
32 Mr. Vernon St.
Boston, Mass.
Dear Mr. Moors
Professor Carver of Harvard, in a letter of Nov. 6th, writes me as follows: The Department of Economics recommended your appointment as assistant in Economics 8, but the President and Fellows, as you learned the other day when in my office, declined to make the appointment. Inasmuch as all appointments have to be made by the President and Fellows, there is nothing more that the Department can do about it.”
As you are the only member of the Corporation with whom I am to any degree acquainted, I take the liberty of inquiring, for my own satisfaction, what were the reasons for the attitude of the Fellows to my appointment as Professor Carver’s assistant. I am studying for a Ph.D. at Harvard, and am meanwhile acting as Special Instructor of Economics at Simmons College. The decision is, therefore, one that causes me some degree of regret and of interest as to its cause.
I wonder if you will give me the privilege of a brief personal talk with you on this matter? If so, I should be glad to meet your convenience any afternoon next week, or any hour on Tuesday or Saturday, on which days I have no class.
Faithfully yours,
[signed]
Wilfrid Harris Crook
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Harvard Corporation member J. F. Moors declines with “kindest personal feelings”
MOORS & CABOT
111 Devonshire Street, Boston
November 10, 1922.
Rev. Wilfrid Harris Crook,
20a Prescott St.
Cambridge, Mass.
Dear Mr. Crook:
I wish I could give you the information which you ask for. It is, however, essential that the views of the individual members of the Board on which I serve and the nature of our discussions should not be divulged except through the President of the University.
I have sent him your letter.
With the kindest personal feelings, I am,
Yours very truly,
Dict. J.F.M.
Source: Harvard University Archives. President Lowell’s Papers 1922-1925, Box 189, Folder 188 (1922-25).
Image Source: Crook, Wilfrid Harris, b. 1888. W. Harris Crook, 1915?. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
