Chief Justice William Howard Taft last week spoke about education to members of Psi Upsilon, his Yale fraternity, who were convening in Washington. Roundly did Mr. Taft rebuke undergraduates who went to college for social reasons and those who, once there, overstressed the extracurricular.
Said he: "When a man grows old as I have, he then feels like resorting to profanity, as he ought not to do, at the misconception of life and the use of the universities by feather-headed young men that don't look ahead to know the opportunities they have and to appreciate these opportunities. ... I don't want to criticize athletics or a great many extra-curriculum duties, but I think there is a great deal of time and money wasted on these things. . . . We must get our public and private schools down to a simpler curriculum."
Girard's Day
Last week, many hundred alumni returned to the campus of Girard College, Philadelphia's great school for orphans.
Ninety-eight years ago Stephen Girard, the college founder, whose motto was "To rest is to rust," had died. Alumni, whenever they can, go back to Girard for Founder's Day.
But not all the Girard alumni ambled, as they usually do, placidly and gregariously about the halls of their undergraduate years. Several seemed perturbed, some even seemed alarmed last week. What disturbed them was a rumor that their college endowment—77 millions, or eight millions less than Harvard's (greatest U. S. endowment)—might fall into political hands and be spirited away.
Such alumni pointed to Girard Trustee Francis Shunk Brown, an attorney who has often friended Pennsylvania's U. S. Senator-suspect William Scott Vare, and to Albert M. Greenfield, a realtor recently elected to the Board of Trustees. Realtor Greenfield has been a large contributor to Vare election funds. Trustees of Girard are elected by the Judges of the Common Pleas Court, whom Senator-suspect Vare reputedly controls. If the Judges should have occasion to elect more Vare men to be Girard trustees, what, wondered the alarmed alumni, might happen to the huge Girard endowment?
Calmer alumni pointed to Girard trustees like Lawyer Owen Josephus Roberts, whom President Coolidge chose as special Federal prosecutor in the Oil Scandals (TIME, Feb. 25, 1924), and William H. Kingsley, a Girard alumnus. They felt sure that trustees like these would keep intact the Girard endowment, even supposing that Senator-suspect Vare might be covetous, which seemed to them impractical if not incredible.
Born in Bordeaux, France, Stephen Girard arrived in the U. S. as a ship's cabin boy. At odd times he was merchant, mariner, banker. When he died he was considered one of the richest men in the U. S. Blind in his right eye from an early accident, he used, in the 1820's, to wear his hair long, and tied into a short pigtail. Always he wore a white neckcloth and a Revolution-style coat. He left his fortune to charity and to his college. His beautiful insane wife died before him.