- ∗ Research for this paper was partially funded through the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society and through National Science Foundation Departmental Development Grant # 6Y-781 through the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University. I am deeply grateful to President Saul B. Cohen of Queens College, formerly Director, Graduate School of Geography, for his generous support and continuing interest. I wish also to acknowledge the helpfulness of custodians of archives and manuscripts at the institutions holding collections cited, especially Suzanne M. Hamel, formerly Assistant Archivist, Clark University. For permission to consult records normally restricted, I wish to thank Mr. Sargent Kennedy, former Secretary of the Harvard Corporation, for access to the A. Lawrence Lowell Papers and Alice C. Higgins, former Chairman of the Board, for research access to the records of the Clark University Board of Trustees.
- 1 Early stages of this advance are indicated in William A. Koelsch, “Terrae Incognitae and Arcana Siwash: Toward a Richer History of Academic Geography,” in David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden, eds., Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor of John Kirtland Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 64–66, 71–72. This volume is one of the “three significant works” mentioned; the other are Preston E. James and Geoffrey J. Martin, The Association of American Geographers: The First Seventy-Five Years, 1904–1979 (Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1979); and Brain W. Blouet, ed., The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States (Hamden. Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1980).
- 2 Albert Perry Brigham, “Geographic Education in America,” Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report, 1919 (Washington: G.P.O., 1921), pp. 487–96.
- 3 See the eccentric and provocative book by Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism (New York: W. W. Norton Co., 1976) and references; Alexandra Oleson and John Voss, eds., The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979) and references; and the indispensible Lawrence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). The categories “strategies” and “structures” as used in this paper are adapted from Alfred D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1962), Introduction.
- 4 See William A. Koelsch, “The New England Meteorological Society, 1884–1896: A Study in Professionalism,” and Gary S. Dunbar, “Credentialism and Careerism in American Geography, 1890–1915,” in Blouet, ed., op. cit., footnote 1; also James and Martin, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 28–30.
- 5 Charles C. Colby, “Changing Currents of Geographic Thought in America,”Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 26 (1936), pp. 1 36; Thomas H. Manning, Government in Science: The U.S. Geological Survey, 1876–1894 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967), pp. 20–21; Josiah Dwight Whitney“Geographical and Geological Surveys,”North American Review, Vol. 121 (1875), pp. 37 85, 270–314; and John K. Wright, Geography in the Making: The Geographical Society, 1851–1951 (New York: American Geographical Society, 1952), pp. 124–27.
- 6 Albert Perry Brigham and Richard E. Dodge, “Nineteenth Century Textbooks of Geography,”The Teaching of Geography, Thirty-third Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (Bloomington, Ill.: Public School Publishing Co., 1932), pp. 3–27; Theodore H. Sizer, Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 241–43; and Virginia M. Rowley, J. Russell Smith: Geographer, Educator, and Conservationist (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), pp. 111–20.
- 7 For biographical material and appraisals of Atwood's scholarly work, see: George B. Cressey, “Wallace W. Atwood, 1872–1949,”Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 39 (1949), pp. 296 306; Kirtley F. Mather, “Memorial to Wallace Walter Atwood,” Geological Society of America, Proceedings for 1949 (1950), pp. 106–12, both of which have comprehensive bibliographies, and William, A. Koelsch, “Wallace Walter Atwood (1872–1949),” in T. W. Freeman et al., eds., Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, III (London: Mansell, 1979) and the biographical references cited therein. A briefer, more accessible appraisal is William A. Koelsch, “Wallace Walter Atwood,”Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Four (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974) pp. 31–33. The Atwood Papers are described in William A. Koelsch and Suzanne M. Hamel, comps., Wallace W. Atwood Papers (Clark University Archives, Register Series, No. 2, 1973).
- 8 Atwood's San Juan study was finished in the 1920s, at which time it had taken on a more geographic point of view (see Atwood to Col. W. B. Greeley, U.S.G.S., May 29, 1924, Atwood Papers, Clark University Archives; hereafter CUA), and finally published in the early 1930s. Atwood and Kirtley F. Mather, Physiography and Quaternary Geology of the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 166 (Washington: G.P.O., 1932), 176 pp. Kirk Bryan later assessed Atwood's work in mountain glaciation as “comparable to any in the world.” Bryan, “Physiography” in Geological Society of America, Geology, 1888–1938: Fiftieth Anniversary Volume (New York: Geological Society of America, 1941), p. 10.
- 9 Atwood's innovative work with museum education as Secretary of the Chicago Academy of Sciences is described in “The Chicago Academy of Sciences,”Science, n.s., Vol. 31 (March 4, 1910), pp. 358–59; and Vol. 33 (March 3, 1911), pp. 352–53; “Annual Meeting of the Chicago Academy of Sciences,”Science, n.s., Vol. 43 (Feb. 25, 1916), pp. 284–85; Atwood, “A Natural History Museum and Workshop for Children,” in Chicago, Child Welfare Exhibit, 1911, The Child in the City (Chicago: The Hollister Press, 1912), pp. 405–09; see also Atwood, “Habitat Groups in the Teaching of Geography,”Visual Education Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3 (May 1920), pp. 30–36, and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Culture and the City: Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago From the 1880's to 1917 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), pp. 209–10.
- 10 William Morris Davis and Reginald A. Daly, “Geography and Geology,” in Samuel Eliot Morison, ed., The Development of Harvard University. 1869–1929 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), p. 326; Burton M. Varney to A. Lawrence Lowell, March 15 1910; “Report of the Committee of Geology, Minerology, and Petrography,” [Feb. 28, 1912]; Robert De C. Ward to Lowell, June 1, 1912; Reginald A. Daly to Lowell, June 9, 15, July 2, 1912; Davis to Lowell, July 11, 1912; “Extract From Letter of Professor Ward … dated Sept. 28, 1912” Daly to Lowell, Oct. 17, 1912; Lowell to Atwood Dec. 5, 1912; all in A. Lawrence Lowell Papers, Harvard University Archives.
- 11 Roderick Peattie, The Incurable Romantic (New York, The McMillan Co., 1914), pp. 57–58, 60–61, 64, 83–84; Atwood to Salisbury, April 9, Dec. 23, 1914, Rollin D. Salisbury Papers, University of Chicago Archives.
- 12 For biographical data on Thurber, see J. McKeen Cattell, ed., Leaders in Education, 1st ed. (New York: Science Press, 1932), p. 927; obituary, New York Times, Dec. 10, 1938; Who Was Who, Vol. 1., p. 1238; and Thomas B. Lawlor, Seventy Years of Textbook Publishing: A History of Ginn and Company, 1867–1937 (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1938), pp. 149–51: see also pp. 79–82 (for Frye) and 193–96 (for the Atwood series). The Atwood Papers at Clark amply document the evolution of the Atwood texts through correspondence with various offices of Ginn and Company.
- 13 J. B. Woodworth to Lowell, March 1, 1918, Woodworth to Atwood, March 1, 1918, Lowell to Atwood, June 5, 1919, Atwood to Lowell, June 21, 1919, Daly to Lowell, June 28, 1919, Lowell Papers; Atwood to Salisbury, December 6, 1916, Salisbury to President E. J. James (University of Illinois), June 13, 1919, Salisbury Papers; Preston E. James to William A. Koelsch, Oct. 23, 1975, Feb. 21, 1976 (personal communications). Atwood's Geography in America,”Geographical Review, Vol. 7 (1919), pp. 36 43, was written while World War I was still in progress; internal evidence suggests that this paper contains in substance the second proposal to Lowell, and it prefigures the plan of instruction actually implemented in the early geography curriculum at Clark.
- 14 Clark University Board of Trustees, Minutes, Vol. III, p. 191, CUA; E. C. Sanford, “A Sketch of the History of Clark University,”Publications of the Clark University Library, Vol. 7, No. 1 (January, 1923), pp. 7–10; Harry Elmer Barnes, “Clark University: An Adventure in American Educational History,”American Review, Vol. 3 (May 1925), pp. 279 80; and Amy E. Tanner, “History of Clark University Through the Interpretation of the Will of the Founder,” ms. CUA, pp. 90, 107. The problems of 1891–92 are authoritatively treated in Dorothy Ross, G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), chap. 12.
- 15 Worcester Gazette, Feb. 3, 1920, Clark University clippings, 1919–1920, p. 66, CUA; [Atwood], “Worcester Address,” Atwood Papers.
- 16 Hall to Thurber, May 10, 1920, Thurber Papers CUA; [Hall], “Physical Geography and History,” in Hall, ed., Methods of Teaching History [1883], 2nd edition (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1898), pp. 223–26.
- 17 Atwood to Thurber, April 14, 1920, Thurber Papers; Thurber, “Confidential Letter to Clark Psychology Alumni,” May 15, 1924 (Copy in Louis Napoleon Wilson Papers, CUA); Clark University Board of Trustees, Minutes, Vol. III, p. 244a; Atwood to George E. Vincent, March 28, 1920, June 21, 1920; W. S. Tower to Atwood, March 3, 1920; Atwood to Tower, June 2, 1920, Atwood Papers.
- 18 Atwood to Lowell, May 12, 1920, Lowell Papers; Clark University Board of Trustees, Minutes, Vol. III, passim. Atwood, in his reminiscences of the founding of the school, asserts that he was offered the presidency only much after he was asked to set up a Graduate School of Geography at Clark. This is not a likely sequence in view of the imminence of Hall's retirement announcement and the fact that there were no other candidates being considered for the presidency at the time. There is no independent documentation for it, indeed his March 28th letter to Vincent, op. cit., footnote 17, suggests the early linkage. Thurber's version, stressing that a combination of president and chief department head was being sought at the same time, is undoubtedly the correct one. Atwood, “Administrative Report, 1920–1945,”Publications of the Clark University Library, Vol. 9, No. 7 (May, 1945), pp. 14–19; Atwood, “A Brief Review of Our First Twenty-Five Years,” in The Clark Graduate School of Geography: Our First Twenty-Five Years (Worcester: Clark University, 1946), pp. 4–6; Broadside, “Statement made by Dr. Charles H. Thurber, President of the Board of Trustees, and Statement Issued by President Wallace W. Atwood upon the Request of the Boston Transcript,” June 7, 1923, Atwood Papers; “Copy of Mr. Thurber's Confidential Letter …,” Wilson Papers.
- 19 Boas to Hall, Nov. 28, 1916, Franz Boas Papers, American Philosophical Society. Boas had recommended H. K. Haeberlin, an outstanding recent Columbia Ph.D., who had then presented a paper at Clark. Hall was unable to move on the appointment, and Haeberlin in any case soon died of diabetes. See Haeberlin, “Types of Ceramic Art in the Valley of Mexico,”American Anthropologist, N.S. Vol. 21 (1919), p. 61; and Boas, “In Memoriam; Herman Karl Haeberlin,”American Anthropologist, N.S. Vol. 21 (1919), p. 71 74. Margaret Mead describes Haeberlin as one of Boas's best students, held up to other graduate students as a model. Mead to William A. Koelsch, March 14, 1977 (personal communication); see also Mead, An Anthropologist at Work (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959) p. 14.
- 20 A great many factual statements concerning the general history of Clark University in this period are not seperately cited, but are documented by materials available in the Clark University Archives.
- 21 See Herbert Parker, Trustee, to Thurber, April 16, 1920, Thurber Papers. A supporter of Atwood's candidacy and his plans, Parker says that he assumes that “adequately providing for it” will require “a substantial appropriation of funds,” and further that “I am assuming that adequate funds are available for such purpose.”
- 22 Clark University Register and Thirty-Second Official Announcement, 1920, pp. 24–26. Atwood in his letter of tentative acceptance, op. cit., footnote 17, mentions having studied the catalogues of both university and college, as well as the treasurer's report; his copy of the Register suggests that he had read this particular section rather carefully, as evidenced by the bending of the pages and pencillings around Bylaw 4 and elsewhere in these pages. (Copy in CUA)
- 23 Clark University Board of Trustees, Minutes, Vol. III, p. 122; Clark University Faculty Records, Minutes, June 15, 1915-June 11, 1920, pp. 1, 28, CUA; Clark University Register and Thirtieth Official Announcement, 1918, p. 23; Hall to Thurber, June 23, 1920, Thurber Papers.
- 24 The Outlook, Vol. 125, No. 16 (Aug. 18, 1920), p. 663; Worcester Telegram, Sept. 15, 1920, Clark University Clippings, 1920–1921, p. 2. “President Atwood Gathers Up Reins at Clark,” Worcester Telegram (Magazine Section) Sept. 19, 1920, in Wallace W. Atwood, Collected Papers, Vol. 3 (1911–1922), No. 39, CUA.
- 25 , “President Wallace W. Atwood,”Clark College Record, Vol. 15, No. 3 (July 1920), pp. 1999; Association of American Universities, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses, Twenty-Second Conference (Nov. 18–19, 1920), p. 44.
- 26 Atwood, “The New Meaning of Geography in American Education,”Publications of the Clark University Library, Vol. 6, No. 4 (April, 1921), pp. 25–37; reprinted in School and Society, Vol. 13, No. 321 (Feb. 19, 1921), pp. 211–18.
- 27 “Inauguration of Wallace Walter Atwood as President of Clark University, February 1, 1921,”Publications of the Clark University Library, Vol. 6, No. 4 (April, 1921), passim. Davis amplified his remarks in a Clark commencement Address on “A Graduate School of Geography,”Publication of the Clark University Library, Vol. 6, No. 6 (October, 1922); reprinted in Science, Vol. 56 (1922), pp. 121–34. His speech did not reassure a now traumatized faculty, who were less impressed by the expanse of Davis vision than by its expense.
- 28 New York Times, February 3, 1921 (reprinted in Worcester Telegram, Feb. 4, 1921); Boston Herald, February 12, 1921, Clark University Clippings, 1920–1921, pp. 105, 112, CUA; Wissler to Atwood, Feb. 4, 1921, and other letters of congratulation, Atwood Papers.
- 29 Worcester Post, Feb. 17, 1921, Clark University Clippings, 1920–1921, p. 118, CUA; Clark University Board of Trustees, Minutes, Vol. III, pp. 232–33.
- 30 The general course of developments is detailed in Arthur O. Lovejoy, et al., “Report of the Committee of Inquiry Concerning Clark University,”Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, Vol. 10, No. 6 (October, 1924), pp. 40–107. See also “Papers Concerning the New Administration at Clark University, 1920–1923” (typescript), Carey E. Melville Papers, CUA, and William A. Koelsch, “Harry Elmer Barnes at Clark University, 1920–1923,” unpublished seminar paper, Department of History, The University of Chicago, Autumn Quarter, 1960 (copy in CUA), passim and references cited.
- 31 Barnes to Atwood, Feb. 23, 1921, Atwood Papers; Barnes, “Clark University,” passim; Koelsch, “Harry Elmer Barnes,” passim.
- 32 Documentation of the Nearing incident and its aftermath is abundant; see Barnes, “Clark University”…, pp. 286–87; Boring, Psychologist at Large (New York: Basic Books, 1961), pp. 32–39; and Nearing's own account in The Making of a Radical (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 79–81. (I have also talked with Nearing, who was awarded an honorary degree from Clark in 1974). See also clippings and correspondence in the Atwood Papers and in Clark University scrapbooks, especially “Nearing Affair, 1922 Clippings.” In addition to material in the Atwood Papers, manuscript material exists in the Boring Papers, Harvard University Archives; the Barnes Papers, University of Wyoming; the Henry D. Sheldon Papers, University of Oregon Library; the Edward B. Titchener Papers, Cornell University Library; and the Melville, Thurber and Wilson Papers at Clark. See also W. A. Koelsch, Interview with the late J. Ross Fraser (Student President of The Liberal Club in 1922), Feb. 10, 1973, CUA; W. A. Koelsch, interview with Mrs. Gladys Diliberto (daughter of Arthur Gundersen), June 12, 1974, CUA. Preston James to William A. Koelsch, October 23, 1956, Feb. 21, 1976, op. cit., footnote 13, nicely clarifies the context of the incident and provides a reasoned interpretation of Atwood's behavior.
- 33 For the counterstrategy, see the correspondence among Atwood, Thurber and Wilson in their respective papers. The draft communication of the professors is included in “Papers Concerning the New Administration,” No. 3. Major portions of it were later published in the Boston Evening Transcript, May 31, 1923.
- 34 A. George Bullock to Atwood, March 13, 1922; Bullock to Thurber, March 17, 1922, Thurber Papers.
- 35 Lovejoy, et al., passim; Barnes, “Clark University,” pp. 283–85. For the reaction of liberal journalists, who covered the story extensively, see Arthur Warner, “Fiat Lux, But No Red Rays,”The Nation, Vol. 114, No. 2960 (March 29, 1922), pp. 364–65; Bruce Bliven, “Free Speech, But …,”New Republic, Vol. 30, No. 383 (April 5, 1922), pp. 160–62; “The Geographical Eclipse,”New Republic, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Nov. 26, 1924), pp. 7–8; J. E. Kirkpatrick, The American College and its Rulers (New York: The New Republic, 1927), pp. 133–35, 142–51; Upton Sinclair, The Goose-Step (Pasadena: The Author, 1923) pp. 287–302.
- 36 Clark University Alumni Association, “Report of Committee appointed by the Clark University Alumni Council in Accordance with a Vote of the Alumni Association, June 10, 1922” (Worcester: Clark University Alumni Association, 1923), p. 3. (Copies in Melville and Thurber Papers; the copy in the Melville papers has useful annotations.)
- 37 Lovejoy, et al., op. cit., pp. 459, 464.
- 38 Atwood, “Administrative Report, 1920–1945,” p. 19, “A Brief Review …,” p. 6; Lovejoy, et al., op. cit., pp. 418–20; Clark University, Reports of the Treasurer, 1919–1923, CUA. Atwood also told the AAUP Committee that “when I accepted the Presidency of the University no arrangement had been entered into with Trustees of the University or with any other body looking to the abandonment or dropping of the work in any of the older departments.” (Lovejoy, et al., p. 418, quoted from Atwood to Lovejoy, July 25, 1924, Atwood Papers.) Atwood's letter to Thurber dated April 14, 1920, op. cit., footnote 17, of course spells out precisely such an arrangement among the agreed-upon conditions for Atwood's acceptance of the position.
- 39 Lovejoy, “Memorandum of Conversation with President Atwood on January 17, 1924,” p. 4, Atwood Papers.
- 40 Clark University, Board of Trustees, Minutes, Vol. IV, pp. 104–05.
- 41 Atwood to Thurber, June 19, 1934, Thurber Papers. “Distinguished” in this context means roughly that the department was rated in staff and facilities in the top twenty percent of all Ph.D.-granting departments by a majority of well known scholars in the field; see discussion in Laurence Foster, The Functions of A Graduate School in a Democratic Society (New York: Huxley House Publishers, 1936), pp. 17–18.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Volume 70, 1980 - Issue 4