Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1917-04-02
Let's Rescue Everybody!


One of the New York publicity ex-
perts sends out a pitiful appeal for a
relief expedition for college profess
sors. In part he writes:
That the man in the professors chair
is as hard hit by the wartime cost of
living as the occupant of factory bench
or Office desk. is shown by reports on
the living conditions of faculty teach
ers in New Haven that were received
today at the headquarters of the Yale
Alumni University Fund Association in
this city. While big bonuses have
helped the clerical forces of most bust
ness corporations to meet increasing
prices, and higher wages have been de-
manded by organized laboring men,
the best brain workers in their college
classrooms are still struggling with an
added living cost of 80 per cent at
salaries only slightly increased during
the last decade, Yale men are in
formed. Unless their democratic sys-
tenn of contributing any amount, how
ever small, by every graduate through
their alumni fund serves this year to
warrant Yale men in continuing to I'M
derwrite general wage increase to
the men who handle over 5000 students,
1t is prophesied, war conditions may
bring many hardships to the homes
about the campus.
While Yale pays its teachers better
than any American college with one or
two exceptions, no professor at New
Haven received over $3.50 a year up
to a few years ago and the assistant
annually from $1,000 up to $4,000. the
records show The Yale Alumni Uni
versity Fund Association has helped to
raise the average level of the salaries
of the great scholars in charge of de-
partments to something short of $4,000,
while veteran assistant professor
may now draw as high as $4,000; but
an economic investigation just COM
pleted. shows that prices for food.
clothing, rent and other items of the
living cost at New Haven have in
creased some so per cent in this short
while. Only the devotion and loyalty
of the expert educators at Yale is now
keeping them at their posts in the face
of probable privation and record living
cost in the event of an outbreak of
war.
When the men who heave coal in
the university boiler room recently
asked for wages higher than those paid
t. many of the men who have charge
of the classrooms, Yale graduates held
meeting to talk over the needs OF
the teachers, whose best work can not
come from the living conditions OF a
stoker. With their alumni fund devot-
ed by special vote particularly to in
crease in salaries and recent record
of payments of many thousands OF dol
lars each wear to raise the PROFESSIONAL
wage scale, Yale men throughout the
country are now counting on this fund
as a means of making their pennies or
dollars count in relieving of the strain
of the high cost of living those who
must give most unrestricted efforts to
teach most effectively the present crop
of Yale youths. Loss of the best men
to handle students and Gripping OF
the efforts of others by financial dlS-
traction must result If the graduate
contributions fail to provide for an in
crease in faculty salaries at TINS cru
cial time, it is admitted.
THE college professor occupies IN
American life a difficult position said
President Vincent of the Rockefeller
Foundation in communication re-
ccived at the headquarters OF the yale
Alumni University Fund Association at
SO Vanderbilt Avenue in this city to-
day. "By education and tastes he IS
fitted to associate with people who en-
JOY much larger incomes, and whose
standards of dress. entertainment, and
other expenditures are far beyond ms
reach. 1t requires philosophy. humor'
and the highest breeding to play such a
part with dignity and serenity. There
is an economic limit below which the
professor and his family can hardly
hope to achieve this difficult task.
This is all true, too true; but as 1t
applies with the. same force to editors
natural difidence fOrbids our taking up
the cudgel However. it should be re-
membered that now is the time to save
everybody by raising everybodys
wages and reducing the high cost OF
living at the same time.