Oldster's Blast

When a man has ''owned 46 railroads and built four," wrested a great fortune from the Chicago stockyards and retired to live in fox-hunting grandeur outside of Boston and abroad, he may well, at 73, feel entitled to tell the world what is what.

Such a man is proud old Frederick Henry Prince of Prides Crossing, Mass., Newport (where he bought the Marble House of the late Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont), and Pau and Paris, France. Returning to the U. S. last week from Europe, Frederick Henry Prince delivered himself of a dictum to which many a lesser U. S. businessman doubtless subscribed with admiration and respect.

"Professors," declared Businessman Prince, "are one of the chief curses of the country. They talk too much. Most professors are a bunch of cowards and meddlers. Men do not shrink from life unless there is some cowardice about them. Professors do not hesitate to accept the endowments of those who have served the people and the nation in commerce and industry, but do nothing themselves but talk. You have only to think back over the last ten years to realize the difficulties we have been drawn into through professors. The sooner we get away from their influence the better. . . .

"I don't think the farmer is as badly off as he says he is. His chief trouble is that he is land poor. . . . Did you ever see a farmer--outside of New England--who did not want to buy the next piece of property to him? A second trouble is that there has to be a general moratorium on mortgages. We are getting it indirectly. Let's be honest, take it on the chin and write off these mortgages on the basis of 50-c- on the dollar. This does not apply to farms alone but to all business.

"Chuck out the professors, declare a general moratorium . . . and forget about Europe. That will lead us somewhere."

Businessman Prince's outburst had apparently been touched off by the seven-point program for the Roosevelt Administration enunciated last fortnight by Columbia's Economist Rexford Guy Tugwell (TIME, Feb. 6). From him and the rest of the professorial Roosevelt "brain trust" came no retort. But pedagogs throughout the land promptly answered Businessman Prince. Snapped young President Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago: "If professors had been listened to more in politics and economics . . . conditions wouldn't be what they are. But in times of prosperity no one will listen to a professor because he isn't prosperous. In times of Depression he's told that he's rocking the boat if he talks." Dean Ralph Emerson Heilman of Northwestern nodded: "Surely. Some professors are meddlers and busybodies, just as some financiers are crooks."

Minnesota's Arthur W. Marget observed: ''Professors are steadily making recommendations that are systematically disregarded. If Mr. Prince can point out a single instance outside the Glass-Steagall bill where their advice has been taken on anything, I will award him a gardenia."

After his blast Businessman Prince entered the fastnesses of "Princemere," his 1,000-acre estate with 70-room house at smart Prides Crossing. There he raises horses and hounds, sometimes plays polo despite his age, is regarded by Boston as one of its crustiest celebrities.

Frederick Henry Prince quit Harvard before he was graduated, entered the brokerage business in 1881, married the daughter of a wealthy waterworks builder. His railroad deals and manipulations soon made him one of State Street's most spectacular figures. Much of his fortune, reputed one of the largest in Massachusetts, came from Chicago Junction Railways, which he sold to New York Central for $32,000,000, and from Union Stockyards Co. Both companies were built by him in the early 1890's. A good part of each year he spends in France, either in his Paris house or at Pau where he is Master of Fox Hounds. After the death of Cleveland's Myron Timothy Herrick, Frederick Henry Prince was mentioned for Ambassador to France but New Jersey's plump, influential Senator Edge beat him to it. Other interests of Businessman Prince are his big America's Cup yacht Weetamoe and the swank Myopia Country Club which he and his friends founded, taking the name from the fact that most of them were nearsighted.

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