In Chicago

Bitterly righteous was the wrath last week of Editor John P. Barden of the University ot Chicago's Daily Maroon. Accusing the Chicago Tribune of "unethical journalism," of "deliberate misuse of the freedom of the press," of bad taste, folly and falsehood, he said that the "world's greatest newspaper" could not be called a newspaper at all, but only "Colonel Gump McCormick's daily indignation was expression an of opinion.*

All this indignation was an eloquent undergraduate's reaction to the Tribune's Rev. John Evans, who, unique among U. S. religious editors because he often gets news, last week got on Page One with a story that a merger between the University of Chicago and Northwestern University was really going to happen.

The original Baptist University of Chicago first became famed as the first great Rockefeller philanthropy. But in recent years, as everyone knows, it is the gigantic institution over which presides the briskest personality in U. S. education, Robert Maynard ("Bob") Hutchins, 34.

Brisk Bob Hutchins did not leave his brilliant position as right-hand of Yale's President James Rowland Angell* and go to Chicago just to be feted as a boy wonder. He went to lead the way out of that mediocrity which critics have found to be the chief characteristic of U. S. "higher education." His reforms were radical. But they had barely begun when Depression came to smite down the income of all universities.

One day last June President Hutchins found himself in a train with Chicago's other president, an elderly man, Walter Dill Scott of Northwestern University. Both bound for Springfield, the State capital, they had four hours to compare notes on finance and other matters.

Later in the summer, it became known that committees (under Banker Melvin Traylor for Northwestern and Packer Harold H. Swift for Chicago) had been appointed to study merger.

When the Tribune's Rev. John Evans spilled his story last week, he had little to add. But he thoroughly irritated everybody concerned, because the merger was a vastly complicated project and if opposition should be organized even before a merger plan had been found, confusion would be added to complexity.

"Conference, not action, has characterized the merger proceedings," reported Maroon's Editor Barden, adding:

"President Hutchins, whose genius for organizing progressive innovations is unequalled, and President Scott, whose qualities of good judgment are surpassed only by his appreciation of good publicity, have had three or four conferences. . . ."

Nevertheless, the annoyance provoked by Newsman Evans indicated that the merger had progressed and that, probably, only the Tribune's kind of noise was likely to prevent it. Typical Tribune scare: that the merger would enable the University of Chicago to avoid $300,000 of taxes by getting under Northwestern's liberal tax-free charter.

A merger between the University of Chicago, on Chicago's South Side, and Northwestern, on the North Side and farther north in Evanston, would bring under single control some 20,000 students. Undergraduate work would continue on both campuses. Some post-graduate departments would consolidate to the south, some to the north. Economy is a point in the merger plans but not so big a point as certain education policies. Particularly involved is the question of medicine. Last year the University of Chicago hospitals and clinics lost $831,000. Under the merger, Chicago would turn over its practical work to the Presbyterian Hospital and, taking over Northwestern's ablest men, would concentrate on research. This would conform to the Rockefeller notion of emphasis on research.

Finally, all dopesters were convinced that President Scott, able money-raiser, will be exalted into a chancellorship and brisk Bob Hutchins, as president, will actively direct Chicago's dream of creating "the greatest University centre in the U. S."

* Editor Barden intended impolitely to bracket rich, potent Individualist Robert Rutherford McCormick with his newspaper's most famed comic strip character, "Andy Gump."

* Last week the Boston Transcript reported that President Angell will retire "probably on or about his 66th birthday in 1935," may be succeeded by the university's Provost, Historian Charles Seymour, 48, author of The Intimate Papers of Colonel House. In New Haven, this rumor was dismissed with the firm expectation that President Angell would continue active for at least four years.

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