At Wisconsin

When the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor last month censured the University of Wisconsin for accepting $12,500 from the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Institution, to be used for medical research, few people took the matter seriously. No one expects Labor organizations to see good in anything connected with the Standard Oil Co., least of all money-gifts bearing the Rockefeller name.

Wherefore surprise was general when the Regents of the University of Wisconsin met last week, voted 9 to 6 that "no gifts, donations or subsidies shall in the future be accepted by or on the behalf of the University of Wisconsin from any incorporated educational endowments or organizations of like character." Though Regent Daniel H. Grady, framer of the resolution, pointed out that his colleagues "had no moral right to accept money from the Rockefeller Institution in view of the spending by the Standard Oil Co. of $2,770 for lobbying in the last session of the [state] legislature," he did not persuade his colleagues to make the resolution retroactive to the medical research money, $5,000 of which had been spent or allocated, nor to $218,000 in the past accepted from the Carnegie Fund for teachers' pensions. Zona Gale, authoress-trustee (in effect) : "A question of fundamental democracy is involved. The University should not accept such gifts no matter how far backwards it may go."

President Edward A. Birge (in efect) : "This will shut the university off from higher education.* It is not fair to my successor, President-elect Glenn Frank, for it commits him to a policy about which he knows nothing."

John S. Thompson, Wisconsin alumni secretary (quoting an earlier resolution of Wisconsin regents) : " 'Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state university of Wisconsin should ever encourage that fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone truth may be found.'"

Impressions

William Webster Ellsworth, of New Hartford, Conn., onetime (1913-16) President of the Century Publishing Co., is no close relative of Pole-flying Lincoln Ellsworth (TIME, June 1 et seq., SCIENCE). He does his exploring in U. S. schools. For 30 years he has been mounting school and university rostrums lecturing on topics "from [Playwright] Moliere to [Poet] Edna

St. Vincent Millay." He has addressed "such widely separated institutions as Miss McGehee's in New Orleans and Miss Porter's in Farmington, Conn., to the number of 200."

Last week he gave to the press some impressions:

"In the East there are still many who go to college because of athletics or social life or because it is 'the thing to do.' That does not obtain so much in the West. For instance, in one small Ohio college at which I lectured, 90% of the boy students were working their way through school.

"And last winter I visited what might be called a 'fresh water' college far up in Minnesota--St. Olaf, at Northfield. It has 990 students and 95% of them were born of Norwegian or Swedish parents. Their interest in literature was extraordinary. The whole college turned out to hear me talk of Shakespeare and when I discussed the new poets 150 cut their classes and joined the English class to hear. Would they have done that at Harvard or Yale? Hardly.

"Ibsen, of course, is Northfield's patron literary saint. The man in the drug store or the girl who serves you dinner can tell you about him. Indeed, some friends of mine who live there entertained one night at dinner and, of course, discussed Ibsen. The Wild Duck formed a part of the discussion and one of the guests in particular expounded his idea of its meaning.

"The next morning the Norwegian maid who had served the dinner informed the lady of the house that the guest was entirely in error. 'I was a maid in the Ibsen household when The Wild Duck was written, and I know all about it.' And she proceeded to tell the story."

*Typical research accomplished with the aid of Rockefeller Funds: Prof. A. A. Michelson's (University of Chicago) experiment with light rays in a pipe-rectangle to check the Einstein relativity theory (TIME, Aug. 11, 1924); Professor Niels Bohr's (University of Copenhagen) atomic investigations in the infra-red region of the spectrum (TIME, Feb. 4, 1924), for which he last week received the Barnard Gold Medal from Columbia University.