The Wage Problem

While other savants at the A. A. A. S. convention in Des Moines, Iowa were telling each other about the year's scientific wonders (see p. 58), Professor William Albert Noyes of the University of Illinois lamented to colleagues about the meagre stipends of pedagogy. Before them he laid salary statistics gathered from Harvard, Illinois, California, Ohio State, Yale, Michigan and Wisconsin. He had found that in 1900 the average professor's wage was $2,791; in 1925, $5,318--an increase of 90%. But the average nonteaching university executive had gotten $3,115 in 1900, had received 122% more ($6,904) in 1925. Associate professors had fared a little better than full professors. In 1925 they received an income of $3,895, a 99% increase over 1900.

Sadly spoke Pedagog Noyes: "The necessity of providing great leaders in our universities cannot be overemphasized. To do that we must pay such men adequate salaries. . . . While the income of citizens, on the average, has increased about 200%, that of these professors has increased less than 100%."

Not out of the mouths of pedagogs but from Edward A. Filene, Boston merchant (Wm. Filene's Sons Co.), charitarian, peace promoter, came a solution of pedagogical salary woes. Businessman Filene, whose who in Who's Who describes him as agitating to "increase wages and profits and raise the general standards of living," suggested a mild form of intellectual boycott. Said he, in a letter to the Association: "My hope is that our teachers will prove to be sufficiently selfish. Then it will be up to the colleges to find a way to keep them from accepting offers which they get. And the only way will be through raising their salaries--not to a mere living wage, but to several times their present level."

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