The New York herald., 1922-05-21
Pay Of College Professors
Deplored as Inadequate to
Insure Them Decent Living
By KATHERINE LEE BATES,
Professor of English in Wellesley College

IL was that he gave those women to-
night. and how they beamed on his
platitudes and clapped his elocution.
He hates his own rotund banalities as
they still boom about his ears. but they
have saved him the humiliation of put
ting off the dentist and that con-
founded plumber again. But he IL
tired-too tired to get up his class work
for tomorrow. There is never time
for honest thought and study now
adays. He has had to cut down his
book orders and give up his learned
periodicals. one after another. with the
result that too many of the fresh
theories and points of view slip Nv
him. How sorely he needs. not only
for comfort and dignity of life but for
his own intellectual self-respect, a SAL
airy adequate to his needs!
The college professor who is pre-
eminently the scholar is usually, too,
family man of normal human re-
uuirements. though the monthly
wrestle with the checkbook. the shut
fling of bills and putting off of credi-
tors more often fall to the lot of his
much enduring wife. His thought 10
focused on his search. The rugged
old line of Piers Ploughman:
When all treasures are proved truth is
the best.
is his law and his gospel.
Training Has Cost Big Sums
For Teachers of Either Sex
His preparation has been long aEd
costly-his or hers, for the colleges
employing women now demand learn
ing no less elaborate of these heroines
of academic romance than in medieval
story:
And OF wisdom forsooth this maiden
might boast her wondrous store
No tongue but she spake, French. Latin
and Payninn. in all such lore
AS men read in the highest heavens.
dialectics. geometry.
In all was she courteous trained. and
her name it was called-Ph. ID.
If this professor, man or woman,
highly dedicated to the endeavor TO
advance the boundaries of knowledge,
TO wrest another strip of light from
the great, encompassing darkness, is
not still in debt for his protracted edu-
cation, it may be taken for granted
the publication of his thesis. He de-
pends upon his salary. utterly made
quate to the demands of his depen-
dcnts-and it should not be forgotten
that college women as we'll as mon
have households to maintain and rela-
tives to care for-plus the demands
of his research. as foreign books and
journals, complicated apparatus, trave!
to consult distant manuscripts.
He is glad TO live austerely, for that
mental concentration which Is the sine
qua non of success calls for the ut
most simplification of life. He has no
time, no energy left for the petty prac
tical problems. But he would live hon.
orably. kindly, giving his family the
necessities for health and happiness.
only-he overlooks them. His work
drinks up his life. Like King Alfonso
of Leon and CASTLE, the astronomer
who abandoned the crown for the
| astrolabe and forgot the earth for the
sky" that modest sage who once OBJ
served: Had l been present at the
| Creation / would have given some USE
full hints for the better ordering of the
universe" he is unaware of what is
nearest to him. Catastrophe comes.
His wife breaks down. Or the new
cost of living forces him to the writ
ing of popular articles and textbooks.
His own work halts. He is doing what
people regard as his duty, but in the
depths of his heart he is Inundated
suffering under a sense of spiritual
cstrangement.
Truths angry with me-
In that ! would abuse her sacred white
ness