President Little

The President of the University of Maine resigned. "My action is in no way prompted by any unpleasant factors," he wrote, "but by the fact that I have been offered an opportunity to try, on a very large scale, the educational policies which the state of Maine has not as yet been willing to adopt. At the present time, the state of Maine is lacking woefully in its support of its state university. It has departed somewhat from an absolutely inadequate appropriation in 1922, but it is still far from realizing its obligations, and even from adopting as generous an attitude as that shown by smaller and poorer states."

Regardless of whether or not Maine is miserly, many persons were a bit taken aback that the emphasis should have been placed just where it was. President Clarence Cook Little of Maine, aged 37, had been told that, if the Maine trustees accepted his resignation, he might succeed no less a person than the late Marion LeRoy Burton, as President of the University of Michigan. A man of less lively principles might have glossed over any criticisms he entertained for his old, smaller position, thoughtless of anything but his great advancement.

There was nothing for Maine to do but accept the resignation. Dr. Little is President-elect of Michigan, putting an end to the seeming candidacy of Samuel Emory Thomason, Michigan '04, Vice-President of the Chicago Daily Tribune, only other individual whose name was even mentioned in connection with the important Michigan chair (TIME, Tune 29).

A native of Brookline, Mass., a Harvard graduate and onetime professor, Dr. Little is just one year the junior of President-elect Glenn Frank of the University of Wisconsin. In 1917, he was commissioned a captain in the aviation section, reserve corps, U. S. Army; then a major in the Adjutant General's Department. For two years before he succeeded Dr. Robert J. Aley at Maine (in 1922), Dr. Little worked in the Carnegie Institute for Experimental Evolution (Long Island, N.Y.).

At Indianapolis

It was a great junket. Breakfasting at their hotel, the Washington delegates sang over their shredded wheat, war-whooped between eggs and coffee. The Hawaiians wore festive yellow lei and broad smiles. There were delegates from Alaska, and even from the South Seas, for whom the whole week was one long holiday.

But, just as important political palavers usually go guised as rowdy picnics, important doings were afoot at the 63rd annual convention of the National Education Association, which met, last week, in Indianapolis. Those present, a goodly proportion of the association's 147,000 members,* felt that the doings were "epoch-making." Herding into big Cadle Tabernacle and assembly rooms of the Shortridge High School, the delegates discussed:

A Federal Department of Education. For several years, the N. E. A. has campaigned for a U. S. Secretary of Education in the President's Cabinet, together with an Assistant Secretary, empowered to undertake the present functions (advisory, informative) of the U. S. Bureau of Education (adjunct of the Department of the Interior). Simultaneously with requests for these offices and the machinery to go with them, Congress has been asked to appropriate some 100 million dollars for Federal aid to the elementary and secondary public schools of the U.S.

To the latter feature of the proposed legislation, bureaucracy has been so strenuously urged as an objection that the N. E. A., last week, endorsed a bill omitting mention of Federal aid, providing only for a Secretary of Education and his assistant, with salaries of $15,000 and $10,000 respectively. The assistant's stipend was set thus high "to attract as able a man as possible" for the more permanent of the two posts.

Said Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford, Colorado state superintendent of public instruction, onetime (1917-18) President of the N. E. A.: "This measure is practically my child."

Miss Charl O. Williams of Washington, D. C., secretary-elect of the N. E. A. legislative committee, mountain-climber, suffragette, onetime (1920) national Democratic Vice Chairwoman: "When a Department of Education is established, my contribution to American education will be made."

Child Labor. The convention pulled in its horns similarly on this subject. A resolution was passed reaffirming the N.E.A.'s desire for and insistence upon the speedy passage of child labor legislation, state and Federal, no mention being made of the Constitutional Amendment, now rejected by 34 states, for which the N.E.A. labored long.

Research. Educational research--into methods, means, conditions--would be the prime purpose of a Federal education department. Typical research accomplished by a committee of the N. E. A. was into the "hire and fire" policy followed by many states respecting their teachers.

Scopes Case. Other researchers had investigated the case of Teacher John T. Scopes of Dayton, Tenn., indicted by a grand jury for expounding Evolution in his classroom. President Jesse H. Newlon brought the case into a speech with brief allusion, but the convention, cautious of controversy, passed no resolutions on the matter.

Illiteracy is handled by the N. E. A. through a department of adult education. Reporting for the past year, President Charles M. Herlihy of this department stated that of four and one half million adult illiterates in the U. S., 300,000 had received instruction. Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart, originator of "Moonlight Schools" (night schools) in Kentucky, announced her intention to study illiteracy next year in every Federal prison and in penal institutions in every state.

Officers. The Association had, according to custom, to choose a lady successor to President Newlon. There were two candidates (and rumors of electioneering). Each candidate made a speech. Miss Cornelia S. Adair, grade teacher of Richmond, Va., said she did not see how you could do your duty by your children if you did not take part in community affairs. Miss Mary McSkimmon, principal of Pierce High School, Brookline, Mass., said: "The great opportunity before education today is to apply the new understanding of childhood to teaching." Miss McSkimmon got elected, 507 to 322.

At Indianapolis, meeting at the same time as the N.E.A., the American Classical League reiterated its belief that the boys and girls of nowadays should bury their noses in Greek and Latin. In the final third of a long report on conditions at home and abroad (TIME, Oct. 6), Dean Andrew Fleming West of the Princeton Graduate College, made it known that England, France and Germany have all resuscitated the classics (especially Latin) from the ill-effects of wartime. The League reelected Dean West as its President.

*Over 80% are classroom teachers.

Fortunate Headline

What if a wight named Tell should win a shooting match? Or one called Nero should give violin concerts? Or some Greek christened Achilles die of blood poisoning in the heel? Almost as fine a day for lovers of coincidence occurred one day last week, when The New York Times headlined: DR. JOHNSON TO EDIT DICTIONARY, referring to crisp, diffident Dr. Allen Johnson* of Yale University and the Dictionary of American Biography, the production of which the Times has underwritten (TIME, Dec. 22, THE PRESS).

Nor should "the Great Lexicographer" far outrun in fame his 20th Century namesake when the latter's work is completed. Twenty volumes containing lives of U. S. celebrities (dead 25 years at the minimum) would be a monument to any man that compiled them. Moreover, the second Dr. Johnson was chosen because it is intended that the work shall be finally authoritative, modeled on the English Dictionary of National Biography, edited by the late Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sydney Lee. He was chosen because his record (as professor, as biographer of Stephen A. Douglas, as U. S. historian, as supervisor of the cinema-historical Chronicles of America) marked him as the unanimous choice of the learned societies planning the dictionary--a man who will exercise a high degree of literary skill and judgment in editing and a broad knowledge in inviting appropriate contributions.

*An Amherst graduate (1892), Dr. Johnson received his M.A. from that college in 1895, the year that Calvin Coolidge was graduated cum laude.