Carnegie pensions

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Preface

The Carnegie Foundation has made lavish distribution of its literature ; it seems desirable that the position adverse to its plans for the control of academic teachers should be stated in accesisible form. There are consequently here reproduced several articles that I have written on the subject, including extracts from 214 letters by university and college professors; an article on the history of the foundation by Professor Jas- ,trow, and the reports of the committee on pensions and insurance of the American Association of University Professors. Permission has been obtained from Professor Jastrow for the use of his article. The reports of the committee of the American Association of University Professors were printed in a journal that I edit, but the association is not responsible for their present republication.

Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation and of the new Carnegie Company, opens his article on "The Pension Problem and its Solution" in the December (1918) issue of The Atlantic Monthly with the definition of " Pension" in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary:

An allowance made to- any one without equivalent. In England, it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

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He characterizes the effects on the professor of the foundation that he has administered for thirteen years as follows :

Aside from the economic and financial weaknesses which have just been alluded to, there is a more serious objection to the free pension which only those who have administered such a system can fully understand. This lies in the fact that, to get something for nothing, or to seem to get something for nothing, has always proved demoralizing. The so-called free pension is perhaps the most prolific breeder of human selfishness ever set up in the social order.

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University and a member of the executive committee of the Carnegie Foundation, in one of his last reports quotes the sentiment: "Academic freedom means freedom to say what you think without thinking what you say, ' ' and he writes still more explicitly in the Educational Review :

Truly the academic animal is a queer beast. If he can not have something at which to growl and snarl, he will growl and snarl at nothing at all.

These remarks by those responsible for the administration of Carnegie Pensions scarcely exhibit an attitude proper for the conduct of a (foundation established to "encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education. ' ' They are quoted in ( order to use the authority of office as a shield for the character of the counter-statements made by

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college and university professors in some of the letters here printed.

Criticism is always ungracious ; it is futile unless it leads to construction. Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller have had the best of intentions in making their large endowments ; most of those who conduct these foundations and most of the trustees and executive officers of our endowed universities have sincere faith in the methods that they use and in the objects that they seek to accomplish. But a democracy can not submit to the policy that the common people should do the work assigned to them and leave it to the king and his lords to care for them.

As is shown in this book, the teachers directly concerned hold by a majority of fifty to one that the plans of the Carnegie Foundation are unsatisfactory. The only solution is to change the plans. The first step should be to discard those responsible for the existing situation; then the teachers should come into control of a foundation established for their benefit.

J. McK. C.

Garrison-on-Hudson, N. Y. , May, 1919