The founder of the Columbia Faculty of Political Science (the home of the graduate department of economics), John William Burgess was 86 years old when the Faculty celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its founding in October 1930. He died only three months after receiving the tributes from his colleagues to him as the evening’s guest of honor.
The Faculty of Political Science celebrated itself in style and not a lily was left ungilded.
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A few related links
Alvin S. Johnson’s remembrances of the Columbia professors Burgess, Munroe-Smith, Seligman, and Giddings.
John W. Burgess, Reminiscences of an American Scholar; the Beginnings of Columbia University. Columbia University Press, 1934).
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THE POLITICAL SCIENCE DINNER
[15 Oct 1930]
On the evening of October fifteenth, by invitation of the Trustees of Columbia University, a dinner was served at the Hotel Ritz-Carlton to three hundred and eighty-five guests, in celebration of the semi-centennial of the Faculty of Political Science at the University. At the close of the dinner President Butler, who was presiding, stepped into the reception room and soon reappeared escorting Professor John W. Burgess to the head table. When the guest of honor had been seated amidst applause,
President Butler, turning to Professor Burgess, spoke as follows:
My dear Professor Burgess, My Fellow Members of the University and our Welcome Guests: We are fifty years old, and greatly pleased; but see how far we have to go! The world of letters is just now celebrating the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of the poet Vergil; so we may confidently anticipate one thousand nine hundred and fifty years more of life, if the doctrine of stare decisis is to hold!
Imagine, if you can, what would be the satisfaction of Alexander Hamilton if he could join this company tonight. Imagine that rare spirit and great mind witnessing what has happened in that little old college of his, to the study of those subjects of which in his day he was the world’s chiefest master. We have come a long way since Samuel Johnson put that first advertisement in the New York Mercury. We have climbed many mountains; we have crossed not a few rivers; we have trudged, in weariness sometimes, over wide and dusty plains; but in these latter days we have come into our academic garden of trees and beautiful flowers with their invitations to mind and spirit to cultivate and to labor for those things which mean most to man.
Fifty years ago, as Professor Burgess told us yesterday on Morningside in words and phrases that will never be forgotten by those who heard them, he carried to completion the dream of his youth. He told us how that vision came to him as he stood in the trenches, a young soldier of the Union Army, after a bloody battle in the State of Tennessee: Was it not possible that men might in some way, by some study of history, of economics, or social science, public law and international relations, was it not possible that they might find some way to avert calamities such as those of which he was a part? And then he traced for us that story, ending with one of the most beautiful pictures which it has been my lot to hear painted by mortal tongue, the picture of that evening on the heights above Vevey, when that little group had completed their draft of a supplement to the Statutes of Columbia College, had outlined their program of study, had discussed the Academy, the Political Science Quarterly, the Studies, and had gone out to look upon the beauties of that scene, with all that it suggested and meant in physical beauty and historical reminiscence, to be greeted by the brilliant celebration of the Fall of the Bastille. It was from the trenches of Tennessee to Bastille Day on the slopes above Lake Geneva that marked the progress of the idea, which like so many great ideas, clothed itself in the stately fabric of an institution whose first semi-centennial we are celebrating tonight.
Fifty years have passed and of that group so distinguished as to be famous, our beloved teacher and chief is himself the sole survivor. It is not easy for me to find words to express my delight and the gratitude which we must all feel that he has felt able to come to us out of his peaceful and reflective retirement, that we, his old and affectionate pupils and lifelong friends might greet him in person, hear a few words from his voice and give a unique opportunity to those of the younger generation to see this great captain of our University’s history and life. [Applause.]
I repeat, most of the others of that notable group have gone on the endless journey — Richmond Mayo-Smith, eminent economist and teacher of economics; Edmund Munroe Smith, brilliant expounder of Roman law and comparative jurisprudence; Clifford Bateman, the forerunner of our work in administrative law, who died so soon that he hardly became permanently identified with the undertaking and was followed by Goodnow, detained from us tonight, unfortunately, by illness. Then came Edwin Seligman, our brilliant economist, who is in the same unhappy situation as Frank Goodnow and greatly grieved thereby; then Dunning and Osgood in History, John Bates Clark and Giddings. One after another that group was built, John Bassett Moore coming to us from the Department of State, until in a few short years Professor Burgess had surrounded himself with an unparalleled company of young scholars, every one of whom was destined to achieve the very highest rank of academic distinction. What shall I say of its achievements of the greatest magnitude, of the brilliant men who from that day to this, as teachers, as investigators, as writers, have flocked to these great men and their successors, who have gone out into two score, three score, five score of universities in this and other lands, highly trained, themselves to become leaders of the intellectual life and shapers of scholarship in these fields? Are we not justified in celebration and in turning over in our minds what it all means, not alone by any means for Columbia, but what it means for the American intellectual life, for the American public service, for the conduct of our nation’s public business, for our place among the nations of the earth and for the safe and sound and peaceful conduct of our international relations?
To each and all of these that little group, the seed of the great tree, has contributed mightily, powerfully and permanently. If ever there was a man in our American intellectual life who could turn back to his Horace and say that he had “built for himself a monument more enduring than bronze” here he is!
It is not for me to stand between this company and those who are here to speak on various aspects of that which we celebrate; but first and foremost, as is becoming, before any junior addresses you, I am to have the profound satisfaction of presenting for whatever he feels able and willing to say, the senior member of Columbia University, its ornament for all time, the inspiration and the builder of our School of Political Science and the fountain and origin of influence and power that have gone out from it for fifty years, my dear old teacher, Professor Burgess. [Applause.]
PROFESSOR BURGESS responded:
Mr. President, Colleagues, Friends, all: I did not come here tonight to add anything to what I said yesterday. I had my say, and I came to listen, and I have been fully repaid for all the trouble I have taken to get here, with what has already been said.
In thinking over, however, what I said to you in my remarks yesterday, I was struck with their incompleteness, in one respect at least; the failure to make plain the aim which I had in mind in the establishment of the School of Political Science. I do not know that I had that aim clearly in mind myself from the first, but before the school was established, it became clear, that what we intended, all four of us, was to establish an institution of pacifist propaganda, genuine, not sham, based upon a correct knowledge of what nature and reason required, geographically in reference to foreign powers, policies of government, in reference to individual liberty and social obligations.
We thought that alone upon such a knowledge, widely diffused, we might hope to have, some day, genuine pacifism, but not before.
I only wish to impress upon you that one thought and I can illustrate it by one picture. I have said to you in general terms that the idea of the School of Political Science came to me in the trenches, but it was not exactly in the trenches. It was this way; it was on the night of the second of January, 1863, when a young soldier, barely past his military majority, stood on one of the outposts of the hardly-pressed right wing of the Union Army in Tennessee, in a sentry-box….
[Here Professor Burgess drew for his audience a vivid picture of the battle of Stone’s River and rehearsed the prophetic vow which he had taken in the midst of that tragic scene, a vow to dedicate his life to aid in putting law in the place of war. These passages, made more memorable by his tone and manner, had originally been intended for his historical address the previous day, but had been excluded then for lack of time. They may now be found as the third paragraph of that address printed on a preceding page.]
You cannot wonder therefore that I say now, that I want to leave that word with you as my parting word, the Faculty of Political Science, the School of Political Science, is an institution for genuine pacifist propaganda.
Mr. President, I have only now to thank you and the other members of the faculty, all of the students or who have been students in the School of Political Science, all the friends who have met here tonight for this glorious demonstration of the fiftieth birthday of the School of Political Science, I thank you all; I am deeply grateful. I cannot express myself, my feelings will not allow it. Amen! [All arose and applauded.]
PRESIDENT BUTLER then said:
We are to have the privilege of hearing an expression from one of our elder statesmen. I remember being summoned to a meeting of the Committee on Education of the Trustees on another matter at the time when Professor Burgess succeeded in having established the Chair of Sociology. The Chairman of the Committee was Mr. George L. Rives, one of the most charming, one of the most cultivated, one of the most influential members of the University. When Professor Burgess’ proposal had been accepted and a distinguished professor of Bryn Mawr had been called to be Professor of Sociology, Mr. Rives turned to Professor Burgess and said: “Now that we have established a Chair of Sociology, perhaps someone will explain to me what sociology is.”
That has been the task of Professor Giddings. He has not only explained what it is, but by the integration of material drawn from history, from economics, from ethics, from public law, from the psychology of the crowd, he has set it forth in the teaching with which his life has been identified. He belongs in the history of the School of Political Science to the second group, the one now left to us, fortunately, in active membership. I have the greatest pleasure in presenting our distinguished colleague and friend, Professor Franklin H. Giddings, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and the History of Civilization.
PROFESSOR GIDDINGS spoke as follows:
President Butler, Doctor Burgess, and a host of friends that I see here tonight, who in former years gave me the delight of welcoming and working with them in my classroom: It was thirty years ago that I began teaching in this Faculty; that was two years before my appointment as a professor here; Professor Richmond Mayo-Smith planning to spend a Sabbatical year abroad, asked me if I would take over some instruction in sociology at Columbia in place of the courses which he was obliged to drop in social science. The Trustees of Bryn Mawr College, where I was then teaching graciously gave their consent and made this possible for me, and I was glad to improve the opportunity. This action of Bryn Mawr was subsequently followed by the appointment here of a remarkable group of men drawn from that small faculty. They included E. B. Wilson, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Frederick S. Lee and Gonzales Lodge. They came from a small college for women to take up graduate work in the faculty of this University.
I began my work in the autumn of 1892, and the work was with a class of very interesting young men among whom were two dear friends whom I greet here tonight, Professor Ripley and Victor Rosewater, soon afterward editor of the Omaha Bee. The work of that Friday afternoon course then begun and now since my retirement from teaching continued by Professor MacIver, has been uninterrupted from that day to this, I think a somewhat remarkable case of continuity in an academic program.
When I came here finally, resigning from Bryn Mawr in 1894, I was so cordially welcomed and so unfailingly assisted in every way, that you will not be surprised when I tell you my most vivid memories, my most cherished ones, of those years are of the faith, sympathy and support of these new colleagues of mine. I knew that as Professor of Sociology I was an experiment, but never once did my colleagues admit that I was, or that the teaching which I had begun was to be experimental; they assumed that it would achieve at least a measure of success. I felt many misgivings, but I wanted to find the answer to a question that disturbed me. Here was a group of gifted scholars of unsurpassed erudition in political theory, public law, history and economics, but I thought I saw multiplying evidences that the actual behavior of multitudes of human beings was not in line with the academic teachings of these men.
The carefully thought-out distinctions between the sphere of government and the sphere of liberty which our honored leader was year by year elaborating apparently had no interest for the multitude, and that embodiment of these distinctions which Americans possess in their heritage of Constitutional Law was subject to increasing disparagement and attack. That was in the days of talk about referendum, initiative, recall of judges and all that sort of thing; my question was, “Why is our political behavior so different from our political theory?”
I went to work on that question. My tentative answer was the naturalistic sociology which for two years I had been teaching in my Friday lectures. Increasing density and miscellaneousness of population mean an increasingly severe struggle for existence. The numbers of the unsuccessful multiply, and they have no understanding of the real causes of their misfortunes. Low in their minds, they attribute their hard luck to man-made injustice. Therefore, they think to better themselves by expropriation, by equalizing opportunity, by restricting liberty and, in the last resort, by communism.
In a population so constituted, government by discussion, by parliamentary methods, is obviously impossible. The working out of programs is handed over to dictators. At the present moment the political behavior of the multitude is more and more conforming to this picture, I think you will agree, and less and less to the parliamentarism and constitutionalism which half a century ago we thought we had achieved for all time.
Naturalistic sociology is abhorrent to sentimentalists, and to the men and women whom our former Fellow, Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, calls the professional sympathizers.
I found it seemingly incompatible also with the humane ideas of men and women of nobler quality. Foremost among these was President Low. He was deeply interested in a possible salvation of the unfit which nature would eliminate. At his wish and suggestion a close coöperation was brought about between the professorship of sociology and such agencies as the social settlements, the Charity Organization Society and the State Charities Aid Association.
A way of reconciliation was easier to find then to follow. It consists in logically developing the familiar discrimination long ago made in law and political theory between the natural man and the legal person. The legal person is a purely artificial bundle of immunities and powers. The state makes it and can unmake it. The natural man is biological and psychological only. He has neither social status nor legal powers. It is theoretically possible therefore, and presumably possible in fact, to exterminate the unfit as legal persons by extinguishing their law-made capacities and powers and yet at the same time without harm to the body politic or to future generations, to seek and save the lost, as human sympathy prompts and Christian teaching enjoins, provided we save them only as natural individuals, divested of social status and legal personality.
In the years that have passed we have made some real progress, I think, in working out these possibilities. Under the leadership of Dr. Devine, for some years a member of this Faculty, and of Professor Lindsay, still here, multiplying contacts were made with every kind of accredited social work; and the study of social legislation and the programs of the Academy of Political Science, always so practical and up-to-date under Professor Lindsay’s administration, have enabled us to achieve much.
But these years have not gone by without their disappointments. We have heard of the passing on of a large number of the men that were my colleagues and associates when I came here in those early days, but there still remain a goodly number of men, many of them here tonight, with whom my relations have always been of the most affectionate nature, and the chief word I want to say to you in conclusion is that so long as the years are spared to me I shall feel that the most satisfying moments of my life have been those in which, with the aid and support of these dear friends, I have been enabled in a measure to carry on the work I came here hoping to do.
For all the time that remains I know that I shall, day by day and through all the years, if there may be years, have the most affectionate regard for these colleagues for whom it is impossible to express my feelings of gratitude and love. [Applause.]
PRESIDENT BUTLER continued:
A part of Professor Burgess’ original plan was the organization of an Academy of Political Science. Its primary purpose was to bring together former students and alumni into a permanent body for the consideration and discussion of questions which fell within the purview of the political sciences, and then to add to such a group others like-minded in that and neighboring communities.
That Academy has flourished, done notable work from that day to this, and from its ranks we are to have the pleasure of hearing from an old, very old friend, despite his youth, Dr. Albert Shaw, Editor of the Review of Reviews and Vice President of the Academy of Political Science and associated with it these many years. I have great pleasure in presenting Dr. Shaw.
Dr. SHAW then spoke as follows:
President Butler, Professor Burgess, Friends of Columbia University and Members of the Faculty of Political Science in the University: I feel more than usually diffident in standing here as representative of the Academy of Political Science, a speaker on behalf of the Academy who is not himself a member of the Faculty of the University. I may say that I have come at times near to being considered a member of the Faculty. I came to New York almost forty years ago with some academic experience behind me, and a great deal of printer’s ink on my fingers, and a great ambition to present in my editorial work in a practical way to the man in the street some of the aims and ideals for social and public improvement that I knew were represented in the work of the men who were leading the University.
I realized that the University was a great and permanent source of inspiration and of help to the body politic, that government could derive enormous aid from the standards that could be set by the University and particularly here in this great metropolis by the Faculty that Professor Burgess was gathering about him in the University.
The hospitality of the University toward me when I came here is something I remember with gratitude. I had been here only a year, almost forty years from now, when the University asked me to give lectures in conjunction with Cooper Union, on the way Europe governed its cities in contrast to the way we governed ours. I had been criticised for my writings about the city government, as I had held up some of the practical and progressive ways in which European cities were trying to provide for their own people in contrast with some of our forms of government.
Columbia University did not mind in the least my seeming heretical point of view and gave me the opportunity to speak my mind.
At other times I had the same kind of more than kindly and generous recognition from Columbia, so I have always felt that though I was working at a practical, every-day profession, I was regarded at Columbia as of the same mind and as of the same purpose. So I have tried through long years to give a little of the touch and flavor of the academic spirit to the discussions of practical and current affairs.
A good many years ago, in an acute presidential campaign when tariffs and questions of that kind were in rather bitter controversy, I thought that it might be desirable to give to the politicians of the country a little booklet [The National Revenues: A Collection of Papers by American Economists, Chicago, 1888.] presenting those subjects from the academic standpoint, written by men working in the universities; that was before I had come to New York. I was then an editor in the west. I picked up today that forgotten little book and I found that the contributors had so presented their topics that my volume is very much like one of the current issues of the proceedings of an annual or semi-annual meeting of the Academy of Political Science. Professor Mayo-Smith contributed, Dr. Seligman contributed, Professor John B. Clark contributed, Dr. James H. Canfield contributed and one or two other men who were then or have since become conspicuously associated with the work of the Faculty of Political Science, contributed to this little book of mine, published in 1888, dealing with the most acute questions with the most perfect frankness. Professor Hadley from Yale, two men from Harvard, Dr. Ely from Johns Hopkins, himself a Columbia man, all dealt with the subjects with perfect candor and without reservations, telling their views about tariffs and similar pending questions, but all with that air of truth-seeking that was in such contrast with the kind of discussion that was current at that time. It gave me as a journalist a fresh understanding of the possibility of presenting subjects in such a way that there might be permanence in the quality of the discussion, although the issue itself might change with the lapse of time.
It seems to me this permeation of our social and political life by a great body of scholars, of men who were essentially statesmen, has had a greater effect upon the country, been a greater protection to our institutions as they have gone forward, than is commonly realized. There are so many conditions in our current political life, so many things that seem unworthy in politics, so many men who hold offices who do not exhibit in their expressions and in their work the standards we should like to set for them, that we are a little confused at times; but it does seem to me that the spirit that goes out from the universities is, to surprising degree, developing the standards of public opinion and they in turn bear upon the course of practical politics and save us from many things that otherwise might be more disgraceful than anything that ever comes to light in the processes of exposure or investigation.
I remember very well the growth and development of the Teachers College and the whole science and philosophy of education as centered in Columbia University and now that in a great metropolis like this we have more than a million children being trained, I have within the last weeks looked over reports and documents of all kinds pertaining to the courses of study and instruction and the standard now prevailing in the schools of New York in order to see if I might trace there what one might call the developing standard of education as fixed and set by our institutions, like the Teachers College. It seemed to me that the profession of teaching moves on, improves the school, lifts the lives of our children to far better standards than one found here twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago; that in spite of any sort of condition in political life that may or may not be exposed, the standards of civilization are improving all the time in American life and largely through such agencies as that which we have heard described tonight, this remarkable leadership in the study of politics as a science and in the various departments of economic and political and social study.
The freedom with which men meet and discuss those subjects has been greatly improved by the practices that prevail in this Academy of Political Science which was one of the features of Professor Burgess’ scheme as he outlined it some half century ago. The Academy could not have developed as it has except in its close association with the University and it has enabled a great many men not in the University to come into contact with the University leadership and the association has been very valuable to them.
The Academy beginning with a small group at the University has now so extended that there are several thousand members. The Quarterly, founded at the same time, has grown and gone forward in association with the Academy; it and the annual Proceedings give the membership a sense of contact with Columbia thought. So it has been possible to hold the activities all together as an associated group, and their influence has been very valuable as the Academy has taken up from time to time current questions and problems and presented them to the country in such a way as to have undoubted influence on public opinion and the course of affairs.
Dr. Lindsay has been President of the Academy for almost a quarter of a century; he might better have spoken for it; but at least I have the opportunity to speak in praise of his work, and I know all of you would be glad to have that work so praised.
I am sure that I have spoken as long as I ought to. I can only thank the Faculty of Political Science and the Academy for permitting me to speak on its behalf. [Applause.]
PRESIDENT BUTLER then said:
I have a message from one of our seniors, kept from us tonight by illness, which I am happy to read: “It is with the greatest regret that I find myself prevented from attending the ovation to my old teacher, colleague and dear friend. Whatever of note has been achieved by the Faculty of Political Science in the half century of its existence is due in large part to the tradition of scholarship he emphasized, the spirit of tolerance he inculcated and the freedom of thought and expression he exemplified in person and so zealously guarded for all his colleagues. (Signed) EDWIN R. A. SELIGMAN.” [Applause.]
It is becoming that we should turn now to one of Professor Burgess’ “bright young men.” Among those who in the early days of the Faculty came quickly to distinction and occupied the position of Prize Lecturer for a number of years is the distinguished economist of national and more than national reputation who has served so long and with so great distinction at Harvard University that he is now Professor Emeritus of Economics in that Institution. I have the very greatest pleasure in presenting to you, as a representative of the very early group of graduates in political science from this University, Professor William Z. Ripley.
PROFESSOR RIPLEY spoke as follows:
Beloved Dean, Mr. President, Professor Giddings, and my former colleagues and outsiders: I take it that this is a family party. First I want to correct the record. Our honored President is not the first man in New York who has tried to place me on the shelf; a taxi-driver tried to do it, also, a few years ago. [On 19 January, 1927, Professor Ripley was seriously injured by an automobile in New York City. — THE EDITOR.] I am no longer Professor Emeritus; I am back on the job; in fact, when depression came on they found they could not do without me. [Laughter.]
I am here, I take it, in a two-fold capacity; first, and by all means the pleasantest, is to present the felicitations of other universities, particularly of Harvard University, to the Dean and to the School of Political Science and to confess and acknowledge that it did a pioneer work that none of us can claim a place of priority in any respect in this field. I trust you will believe me when I say that in fealty to Harvard University, I have spent a good part of the last two weeks digging over every source that I could discover in order to find some way in which Harvard University scored in this field, and I cannot find it. [Laughter.] And so I come with the full acknowledgment of my colleagues that this was pioneer work.
Think back, and see where we stood at Harvard University in this field. Dunbar, a newspaper editor, was giving one course in economics. But the elective system had not yet come in; practically all of the time of the students was tied up on a fixed schedule. This course of Dunbar’s was admitted on the side as an extra and didn’t amount to much except in quality; in following it stood for very little at the time of the foundation of this School of Political Science. Macvane was there in history; there was nobody in government; there were one or two attempts by other men but they were half-hearted and one might characterize them as one did on a certain occasion speaking of a man, saying “he was a good man in his business career, but he was not a fanatic about it.” And so we acknowledge with the utmost gratitude the contribution that you made, sir, and that this University made, in founding the School of Political Science.
We have but one satisfaction. That was that in these endeavors there was a very happy understanding between the two institutions. The Political Science Quarterly and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, if I am not misinformed, started in the same year. For a moment there was a little feeling lest there might be rivalry, but I am told in the interchange of correspondence largely by Mayo-Smith on your side and Dunbar and Taussig on our end, that there was not only understanding but accord and agreement that they would divide the field. They have never been rivals and each has been utterly proud of the achievement of the other.
I spoke of there being a two-fold capacity in which I appear. I take it I am exhibited here as a horrible example, one of the products of this School of Political Science. I am tempted to paraphrase an introduction an acquaintance of mine told me he heard Mark Twain give in Sydney, Australia, the time he went around the world. He came on the platform for his lecture with a lugubrious countenance and said: “My friends, Julius Caesar is no more; Alexander the Great has passed on; Napoleon has joined his fathers, and I am not feeling very well myself!” [Laughter.] If I were to paraphrase that, I should put it something like this: The glacial epoch took place we will say ten million years ago; the Pyramids were set up six or eight thousand, (we won’t quibble about a thousand more or less) and I graduated from the School of Political Science thirty-seven years ago! [Laughter.]
There was a connection, perfectly happy on my side, as Prize Lecturer so long as I was at Tech, but Dr. Seligman told me frankly when chosen as Professor at Harvard, that would have to come to an end. He said, “You could hardly ride two horses, even if you ride parallel.” So I resigned, with a whole year to run on that Prize Lectureship; think of it!
Thinking back over the early days, it may take down your pride to think how modest some of those affairs were. My lot as a teacher here was not as happy as Professor Giddings’. He spoke about his class being experimental, in a way. I was there as a student the first year; there must have been thirty or forty of us at least; [turning to Professor Giddings] you didn’t have to worry when a rainy day came, or a snow storm, wondering whether you would lose your whole body of students. I did! For two or three years, in that course in anthropology, I had only two students, and when you have only two, the weather counts. [Laughter.] I realized that on another occasion when the Hartford Theological Seminary decided to go into sociology. I had two students. The next year the course was not repeated because those two married one another! [Laughter.]
In this Academy of Political Science that they are blowing about, I read a paper the first year of my attendance here at Columbia, down at Forty-ninth Street. We held the meeting in Dr. Seligman’s office; you remember what a little place that was? Francis A. Walker was there; I got him to go. Dr. Seligman was there. I think Mayo-Smith came. Nobody else but the faculty, Francis A. Walker and the speaker; we had a wonderful meeting, and I got the chance of publishing that paper in the Political Science Quarterly. But the existence of that Academy, even in that little way, in its early beginnings, was stimulating. The young student could feel that there was an opportunity to present something he had worked out in his own head, and all these agencies played in together, the Quarterly was there to publish the paper and when it appeared as an address before the Academy of Political Science the world at large didn’t know how many people there were not present at the time. [Laughter.]
In closing I want to emphasize for you the happy fact that this Faculty, this School of Political Science should have arisen in the greatest center of population and activity in our whole country; you don’t realize it, you who live in it. If you lived in a remote part of the country, where as Barrett Wendell once told me he doubted whether most of our colleagues realized that the Charles River was not mightier than the Mississippi, you would realize what a live spot New York is, and, I take it, to the economist and student of government it is a little bit like Vienna in its attractiveness to the medicos; you get what diseases you get in very, very advanced stages. As a spot where you get the ultimate fruition and decomposition of human endeavor, New York seems to me to be unsurpassed.
That is why it is such a royal laboratory, why there is such a stimulus to the young men coming from all over the United States to be suddenly thrown into this great aggregation of human beings. I like to apply the description that I ran across the other day in Hardy’s letters. Somewhere he spoke of London, “that hot plate of humanity, on which we first sing, then simmer, then boil, and dry up to ashes and blow away.” That is New York, viewed from the outside. Never in our history has there been such opportunity for wholesome, stimulating activity and an example of a body like this, than at the present time.
We are all of us appalled and discouraged at times by what we see, and tempted to lose faith and “let ’er slide,” but it is the continued activity of institutions of this sort and led by this particular School which means so much for the whole land. And so, from the outside, I bring felicitations, and from the inside I bring affectionate acknowledgment. [Applause.]
PRESIDENT BUTLER:
Not even in darkest New York can one always be wholly accurate. The other day a typical old-fashioned New Yorker, a former student in the School of Political Science, ventured to offer to the public a list of the really controlling personalities in the life of America. [See James Watson Gerard, 1889 C, 1891 A.M., 1929 LL.D., in the New York newspapers of 21 August, 1930.] Shortly afterward Rollin Kirby had a cartoon in which he had a bootlegger standing with a racketeer, and they were looking at this list. One said to the other: “That man is simply ignorant!” [Laughter.]
Yesterday, Professor Burgess made it clear in a score of ways why we honor at Columbia the name of Ruggles. He made it plain that it was the foresight and the energy and the persistence of Samuel B. Ruggles that enabled him to carry to a conclusion his project in the month of June, 1880. Mr. Ruggles left his physical mark upon the island of Manhattan in Gramercy Park. He left his intellectual mark through some forty years of service to old Columbia College as a Trustee, the crowning part of which was his making himself the agent to secure the approval by the Trustees for Professor Burgess’ plan. It is highly appropriate then that the Ruggles Professorship of Constitutional Law should exist and that its incumbent at the moment should be the Dean of the Faculty of Political Science, as well as the Dean of the Faculties of Philosophy and of Pure Science in Columbia University.
An anniversary of this kind offers two invitations: one to look back; with sentiment, with rich memory and affection; the other to look forward with hope, with courage and high purpose. What could be more fitting then than that we should hear in conclusion this evening from that colleague and friend who is the captain of our enterprise as it enters upon its second half century, Dean McBain.
DEAN MCBAIN responded as follows:
Professor Burgess, Mr. President, my friends and guests: We celebrate a birth, the birth of the Faculty of Political Science and of its hand-maiden the Academy of Political Science. Fifty years have unrolled since our distinguished founder called together, as he told us so vividly, so dramatically, yesterday, that small but remarkable group of young scholars who then and there dedicated their lives to the difficult but most inspiring task of applying at least the aspirations of science to the study of actualities of society. For thirty years and more he guided and he shared the life of these twin children of his youthful vision. Happily he tarries with us, as rich in intellect and experience as in years. He lingers to behold that unlike the ephemeral grass of the Scriptures this vision of his youth which grew up in the morning is not in the evening of his life cut down, dried up and withered.
I say we celebrate a birth. Much more truly do we celebrate the passing of a mere paltry half-century of our indomitable and perennial youth. Our youth must be perennial because the fields of our interests never have been and never can be fallow fields. On the contrary, they are all too fertile of problems old and of problems new, that call for investigation and study in the intensely interested but dispassionate spirit of scientific inquiry. As long as man remains on earth in something like the present estate of mind and of body just so long will the political and social sciences also remain.
I confess that as my mental fingers move across the keys of my memory, I find some difficulty in choosing the chord I would most like tonight to sound and for a moment to hold. For one thing the possible chords are numerous; for another, they are intricate of execution; for a third, I do not perform well, either in public or private, upon a theme that lies very close to my heart. The Faculty of Political Science is such a theme.
Obviously, as the President just indicated, I have a choice of toasting the past, or of hailing the present or feasting the future. Of these, to toast the past would no doubt seem the most appropriate. The occasion invites to reminiscence, to appraisal. But the truth is that our past needs no toasting; certainly it needs no toasting at our own hands. Even for our honored dead we pour our libations in reverence and affection rather than in praise or exaltation. Moreover, were I competent to the task, it would ill become me to venture to appraise the men of this Faculty and their work.
Professor Burgess yesterday told us of those thrilling events that marked the fateful fourteenth of July, 1880. I beg leave to mention another event that happened almost at the same moment, wholly unknown to that little band in Switzerland. Under that same summer moon that smiled gloriously down upon the birth of the Faculty of Political Science, in that same week of July 14th, in that same year 1880, another very important event also occurred: I was born. Important, of course only to me. The Faculty and I crossed our first quarter century mark in company, though I need scarcely remark that I, then a student under the Faculty, was somewhat more aware of and more interested in this coincidence of anniversary than were my revered preceptors. Fortunately for me we are likewise crossing our second quarter century in company.
Since the beginning of its history, only sixty-three men have held membership in this Faculty. I have personally known every one of them save two who passed beyond the portals of the University before I entered them. I can say, therefore, that I have known and that I know the Faculty, which makes it all the more difficult, not to say impossible, for me to talk to the Faculty about the Faculty.
But this I must record, striking again the beautiful note just sounded by Professor Giddings: Scholars I suppose are essentially individualists. Men have been and are appointed to this Faculty primarily on the basis of scholarly achievement and scholarly promise. But the quality of being a scholar does not inevitably preclude such qualities as irascibility, even pugnacity. It is, therefore, or it may be, only a chance, but surely a very providential chance, that this Faculty, this company of scholars, have lived their lives together in such splendid harmony. They are the most coöperative group I have ever known. Indeed, they exemplify better than any other group I have ever heard of that non-existent thing, the group-mind.
I do not imply that we have not known occasional trouble and disagreement. We are human beings. But such experiences have been Faculty ever passed, one of my fundamentally irreligious colleagues once said to me: “Jesus was right; the only thing worth while in life is love, and our Faculty has that.” He spoke truly, and I feel no shame in avowing the deep affection that the members of this Faculty have and have had for one another.
In connection with this celebration, it was at one time mooted that we should publish a history of these fifty years of the Faculty of Political Science. But such a history written by or under the aegis of the Faculty could with Jeffersonian decent respect for the opinions of mankind have been little more than a record without appraisal. It might not have been wholly barren of interest, but in its indispensably backward leaning objectivity could scarcely have failed to minify or otherwise mispresent facts. Nor could it possibly have expressed that many-faceted, flashing thing of spirit that is and always has been the Faculty of Political Science. And so it was abandoned, this project of a history. In its stead we are publishing a bibliography of all the members of the Faculty, past and present-a stark list of the titles of the books, the articles, the pamphlets, the papers of their authorhood. The list runs to something over three thousand five hundred items. To this we are appending the titles of the nearly seven hundred dissertations that have been written under the guidance of the Faculty, into the warp of which (perhaps I should say some of which) there have been woven many hours of love’s labor in the cause of sound scholarship. To some of you such a volume may seem both deadly dull and useless. I think you will find it is neither of these. To the members of the Faculty themselves this volume cannot fail to be a treasury of historical recall. To them and to others it cannot fail to be of use as a locator of vaguely remembered contributions that lie in widely scattered depositories. But more than that, I think you will find, strange to relate, that this skeleton of titles tells a story, partial it is true, but a story of the progress of the intellectual life and intellectual interests of the Faculty, and something of its services.
Consider the period in which this Faculty has lived its life. Measured in terms of cosmic history, it is less than infinitesimal. Measured in terms of even authentic human history, it is almost negligible. But in terms of social, economic, even political change, this fifty years just past is probably longer than the millennium between the fall of Rome and the discovery of America, or the tercentenary span between Gutenberg and Arkwright. In this packed period of change in the subjects of its interest, the Faculty has lived its thus far life; and its deep absorption in the problems of its own age is reflected in this list of writings, not, of course, but what numerous other interests are also reflected. Our distinguished founder, as our distinguished President remarked the other day, was indeed both prophet and seer. But of a certainty, as Mr. Justice Holmes once said of our constitutional fathers, he and his coadjutors “called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters.”
A glance at the formidable list of its publications might convince one that the members of this Faculty, apart from student contacts, have spent their entire lives behind locked doors reading, pondering, writing. This is far from fact. Again and again its members have responded to knocks upon those doors calling them to exacting public and quasi-public service. To you, Mr. President, both the public and the Faculty owe an unpayable debt, in that you have not only given sympathetic ear and understanding thought to the scholarly interests and desires of the Faculty but have also aided and abetted in every possible way their ambitions to be of use in the formulation of public policies and the direction of public affairs. You recognized, as one would know you would recognize, that their scholarship equipped them for service as their service enriched their scholarship. Pericles once said of Athens that it differed from other states in that it regarded the man who held himself aloof from public affairs not as quiet but as useless. Almost, though not quite—it should not be quite the same may be said of the Faculty of Political Science.
You see I have, despite my disclaimer of intention, been toasting the past. I would do more. The loss of a great scholar whether by retirement or resignation or death is always irreparable. Someone else may take his chair, may succeed to his subject, though not even that always happens. But nobody ever takes his place. He would not be a great scholar if his place could be taken. We have had losses from time to time with the results I have just mentioned, and so the company with the passing of the years gradually changes in personnel, in point of attack, in point of specific interest, in method of approach. It could not be otherwise, and those who have gone before would not wish it otherwise. They need no reflectors, no echoes. And well they know that each scholar must with his own hands laboriously carve his niche in the huge hall of human fame, and that the work of carving is not the work of a day or a year, but of a life. The spirit alone remains unaltered—the spirit of fearless and unrelenting search for social truth and of devotion to the high and precious ideals of scholarship.
And so, Mr. President, while with all my heart and soul I toast our honorable past and the achievements that have gone into its making, I also hail with satisfaction our honorable present, and feast with great confidence the honor of our future. [Applause.]
PRESIDENT BUTLER said in conclusion:
This notable and memorable evening comes to its end. My dear Professor Burgess, may I, for all this company, say once more to you what a satisfaction, what a deep satisfaction, your presence and your words yesterday and today have given us. As to our younger members who are personally known to you for the first time, we, their elders, may well feel that we have offered them a benefaction. We only say, my dear Teacher, Au revoir! As you go back to your quiet home, your books and your reflections, it will continue to be your spirit, your teaching, your ideals that will guide and inspire us, as we set out on the second half-century of the study of what Mr. Oliver has so charmingly described as The Endless Adventure, the government of men. [Applause.]
Source: Columbia University Quarterly. Vol. 22 (December 1930), pp. 380-396.
Image Source: John W. Burgess in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2. Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1899, p. 481. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.
