Old Missoula

The following article is an excerpt from The University of Montana, A History, by H. G. Merriam, published by the University of Montana Press in 1970.

 

The Clapp Years[1]

1921 – 1935

The ability and a desire . . . to live successfully – which means happily, beautifully and peacefully with all.

C. H. Clapp

            Oscar J. Craig and Charles Horace Clapp are the only presidents of the University who remained in office over an extended period of time.[2] Dr. Craig in his thirteen years could accomplish not much more than to lay down the foundation lines, hampered as he was by the presence of the preparatory school, by tight finances and by indifference to the University in the State.[3]

            Dr. Clapp, however, inherited the building of the University which Drs. Duniway, Craighead and Sisson, three able men, had accomplished. His fourteen years in office were a period of comparative quiet and slow, sound development. At that stage of the University’s growth consolidation and continuity were the deepest needs and Dr. Clapp, a patient and hard-working man, was a right person to preside over such a procedure. After his first year in office, 1921-22, he reported to the Board of Education that the University was “in the stage of adolescent growth.” At the end of those difficult and trying years there existed a substantial undergraduate institution gingerly reaching out toward graduate work.[4]

 

The Times

            The decade of the 1920’s, variously characterized as The Jazz Age, The Roaring Twenties, The Dry Decade, The Get-Rich-Quick Age, each a true epithet, were as bizarre and confused years as the American people had ever experienced. Conservative people called the period The New Era (ambiguous) or, appropriating the words of Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom. At first came relief from World War I – “Let’s live it up.” Then Prohibition, begun in 1917 and made the law in 1920, produced lawlessness moral, social and political. Rum-runners heavily operated from northern Montana to Canada and back on the Whoop Up Trail. Speakeasies were everywhere with their secrecy (?) and their sense of sin. In the movies came Theda Bara, the Vampire, and Clara Bow, the “It” girl (“We did as we pleased.”). Aimee McPherson and dramatized religion, Al Capone and gangsterism, President Harding and the Tea Pot Dome scandal, the Sacco-Vanzetti affair (which became a cause celebre), the Flapper (audacious in knee-length skirts), the Lindbergh kidnaping and the Hauptmann trial, “the Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, the expatriates in Paris – F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein (“A rose is a rose is a rose”), James Joyce and Ulysses, D. H. Lawrence and Lady Chatterly’s Lover. These and many more names and events reveal the lengths to which people and actions went. Then, at the end of the period, like a terrific thunder and lightning storm unpredicted, came The Great Depression, all the heavier because of the years of uncontrolled exuberance.[5]

            The events of tremendous importance during the decade of the 1920’s were the Lindbergh hop to Paris and what it meant to the public interest in aviation, the Ford cheap automobile and its influence on American life, and the radio, which made news quickly and widely available. These three re-made life not only for America but also for the world.

            Naturally, the years and their features were confusing and upsetting for sober adults and doubly or trebly so for the generation in the throes of growing up. Cynicism became a sought-after attitude. Students, by nature at their period of life conservative, responded in a bewildered way, though they thought of themselves as self-possessed. On the campus at the University, their “good times” became uproarious, at times daring, challenging. Clandestine drinking was smart for anyone, and women began smoking in public, imitated by college students.

            In the 1930’s the American people sobered up. With the sufferings caused by the Depression, security became the desired status, by young people and old, especially by students. President Hoover strove to soothe the immense distress by financial measures and President Franklin D. Roosevelt by the setting up of the New Deal with its alphabet of organizations – PWA, WPA, FHA, FCC, SEC and a host of others – and by speedy, wild spending of $5 billion which Congress appropriated. In these years Social Security was brought into being.

            Montana was in dire financial straits throughout the 1920’s and the 1930’s. In the first decade farming and ranching were depressed by dry season after dry season; wheat and cattle prices fell disastrously from war prices; dryland farmers abandoned their acres and left the State in numbers. In the first four years of the 1920’s nearly half of the State’s banks closed their doors. In the mid-thirties one-fourth of the State’s population was on relief.

            In healing the wounds caused by the Depression President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the National Youth Administration in 1935, of special importance for students, for without NYA help over the next few years hundreds of students would not have been able to attend the University.

            President Roosevelt also brought about a vastly important shift in government and in public life by taking university professors, the “Brain Trust,” into government, thereby breaking down the prevailing idea that business is business and government is government and education has little to do with either. From that time on the intellectual has been in government and business and both have so demanded his services that now, in 1969, alarm exists lest government bring about Federal domination of higher education.

            During these years, also, give and take a few, modern psychologists and psychiatrists were revealing the complexity of the human mind and of the whole human being. Henry Ford had already demonstrated the values of mass production; Einstein and others had placed research in mathematics and physics on a new and extended basis; the philosophy of pragmatism, which had been powerful in operation, came to seem too shallow. The Depression, government action and new knowledge instigated effects that have steadily been emerging and remaking life. For universities the 1920’s and 1930’s were indeed a time that demanded consolidation and continuity.

           

Finances and the University[6]

            When the millage tax for support of the Greater University units had been voted in 1920 a State valuation of $600,000,000 had been expected, but by 1922, it had slipped to $475,000,000, thus substantially dwindling the University’s income. “We will try,” wrote President Clapp, “to do a $700,000 job well rather than attempt to do a $1,000,000 job poorly. . . . We cannot attempt to do a work greater than financial resources.” The millage tax and the bond issue had to be voted again in 1930 and because of further shrinkage in State valuations, returns from the millage tax were even more inadequate.

            Wearily, in report after report to the Board of Education, Dr. Clapp stated the needs of the University – low  salaries made difficult the attraction of good instructors; the laboratories were too small to accommodate the steadily increasing number of students; more and larger student loans were imperative; new fields of study must be added; additional faculty must be employed, and on and on – needs for a pre-medic course were pressing, for a full-time dean, and, in 1924-1925, at least one additional instructor in each of the thirteen departments and schools. The Board usually recognized the needs and often approved the recommendations, but the Board of Examiners, which was charged by statute with distribution of funds appropriated by the Legislature, did not have the money to meet them. In 1932 Dr. Clapp wrote to the board: “Since the State University has operated for the last seven years on a continuing budget, the needs of the institution are virtually the same as those of seven years ago, and it does not seem worthwhile to continue to enumerate the needs when there is no money to take care of them.” [Emphasis supplied/Merriam.] This comment sounded the nadir of the President’s patience; the nadir of his endurance he had expressed in a letter to former Chancellor Elliott on March 1, 1931:  “I am blocked at every turn by lack of support and money.”[7] In a letter to Elliott a week later he wrote: “The sum allotted for the annual maintenance of the State University for 1931-32 is the same for the year 1922-23. Since then the size of the upper division student body has more than doubled. The Legislative act gave 2½ mills, although the popular vote in 1930 allowed a levy of 3 mills. . . . The present headway seems to be downward.” In 1922-23 the total maintenance expenditures $481,212.36; seven years later in 1928-29 they were $488,639.27. The lack of support may in small part be explained in a letter dated December 20, 1922, to Melvin Brannon, who was about to become the Chancellor of the University: “Elliott’s tendency to interfere even in minor details. . . made the Chancellor’s office hated not only in the State University but in this entire community.” From 1921 to 1935 enrollment of students, he reported to the Board of Education, increased 83% and income from state sources dropped 1.7%. Yet surprisingly, under these cramping circumstances the University expanded and developed.

 

Land for the Campus

            Chancellor Elliott was given permission by the Board of Education in 1917 to have an over-all development plan drawn up for each of the four units of the Greater University. Cass Gilbert, of New York City, who was engaged to make plans for the University, contemplated addition of lands north, west and south of the campus. In that year the Legislature appropriated $20,000 for the purchase of the land and $5,000 was added from the University maintenance funds. The land purchased is now occupied by the heating plant, the Women’s Center, the Library, Fine Arts (old Student Union), Business Administration and Music buildings. Two years later the legislature appropriated $40,000 of which $10,000 was used to purchase land now occupied by Brantly and Corbin Halls. These additions pre-dated the Clapp administration.

            Dr. Clapp in 1921 proposed construction of Dornblaser Field, challenging the Alumni to undertake the financing.[8] The Alumni Challenge Athletic Field Corporation was formed, but the hard times blocked development of its plans. George Shepard, ’21, in 1924 became its president and at once the Corporation became active. The athletic field was completed at a cost of $25,000. Land on which the Lodge now stands was acquired in 1925;  in the next year land north to the Milwaukee railroad right-of-way was obtained, land on which it was feared that industries might be established. Indeed, across Van Buren Street to the west and along the tracks a coal business and woodyard were already there and some lots in the tract had already been sold. These two complete blocks were acquired in 1928. In the same year the Missoula Mercantile Company wished to dispose of the old Country Club lands along South Avenue and that too the Corporation acquired. In this purchase student reserve funds were used for the first time to pay for land. About eight acres up Hellgate Canyon were added. The Corporation of the alumni operated, in part, by acquiring options on lands, making small down payments and holding them until the University was able to purchase them. So, gradually, pieces of privately owned lots were added.[9]

            For much of the campus expansion in these years, George Shepard was responsible. At times he was tipped off by J. B. Speer, Registrar and Business Manager, an advocate of an expanded campus. Mr. C. H. McLeod, president of the Missoula Mercantile Company, whose attorney Shepard was, generously allowed him time for such an activity. In Helena at Legislative sessions Shepard, an effective lobbyist, time and again helped the cause of the University, at one time being credited by Dr. Clapp with blocking legislation which would have been “ruinous to the University.”

 

Buildings

            Money from the bond issue for buildings that was passed in 1920 soon became available. Dr. Clapp wished to have all freshmen in dormitories in order to fit them better into college life and to give them guidance which freshmen, he thought, needed. Two residence halls were therefore constructed, North for women and South for men. The Forestry School in 1922 found itself in a new building built to accommodate one hundred forestry students.[10] Three desperately needed buildings were constructed: the present Library, minus the north wing, the men’s gymnasium, and the heating plant. The Bateman house on University Avenue was purchased for the use of students in Home Economics and for students in Music a practice house on University Avenue, next door to the President’s dwelling. Craig Hall was abandoned as a dormitory and fitted up for the use of the Mathematics and Physics departments. Three war buildings were in use – Marcus Cook Hall housed the School of Journalism and Simpkins Hall housed the nursery school, the Little Theater (1926) and the University Radio Station, KUOM[11] The third war building was occupied by the Reserve Officers Training Corps and the small building behind Main Hall was used by the student store and the Montana State Library.[12] By some remodeling, space in the University Library was increased so that it would accommodate 80,000 volumes.

            Plans for a student union building had been in student and faculty minds since 1928,[13] Professor Elrod in particular keeping the idea alive. The fee of one dollar which the students began paying in 1930 toward construction was raised in 1945 to five dollars a quarter.[14] During these years President Clapp had been enthusiastic about having a center for student life: “The great failure of collective education,” he said, “has been the great failure of mankind, the failure to develop the ability and a desire . . . to live successfully – which means happily, beautifully, and peacefully with all with whom they come in contact or influence in some way.” This was said when he turned the first shovelful of dirt that began construction of the building in 1934, but the idea had lived in his mind and heart throughout his life. A student union building would surely contribute, he was convinced, toward peaceful, happy, and cooperative living. After prolonged correspondence with the Federal Emergency Administration he received a letter from it offering a loan of $240,000 and a grant of $60,000. The loan was to be paid off through use of the student fee and earnings from the building. The completed building was dedicated on Homecoming Day, 1935, nearly six months after the death of Dr. Clapp.[15]

 

The Faculty and Troubles

            During the fourteen years of the Clapp presidency only two difficulties with personnel occurred. One came when in 1926 Professor Sidney Cox, a most provocative teacher and a highly moral person, allowed the phrase “son-of-a-bitch” to be published in The Frontier, then a student literary magazine.[16] The Company press rose in horror and controversy spread. The President supported Professor Cox; the Chancellor disavowed University responsibility for the magazine. Newspapers proposed that the University be investigated for moral turpitude. At that moment Dartmouth College offered Professor Cox a professorship; he accepted it, and taught there, a much valued teacher, until his death about twenty years later. The controversy died down, but the magazine was under suspicion for some time.  In 1927 H. G. Merriam took over ownership of the magazine and financial and moral responsibility.

            A more serious difficulty flared up when, in the last year of Dr. Sisson, Arthur Fisher, reputedly a pacifist and certainly a young man of strongly held ideas, was made an assistant professor of Law. The Law students did not like his personality and some did not like his instruction. Among the students were members of the American Legion. Soon the Montana Legion Post, in July, 1921, sensitive so soon after the war and self-appointed guardian of American patriotism, charged Fisher before the Board of Education with what amounted to draft dodging and lack of patriotism. In early August Professor Fisher requested the faculty Service Committee to investigate the charges. Dr. Clapp, the newly appointed President, requested the committee also to look into Fisher’s “effectiveness as a teacher” and “the matter of participation of faculty members in partisan activities such as the operation of a partisan newspaper.” Fisher had labored vigorously, as he did all things, to help develop a local Farmer-Labor newspaper, The New Northwest, into a community organ. Since the paper advocated ideas that were advanced for the time, the public, sensitive like the veterans, to any even remote possibility of radicalism, was alarmed. The Missoulian was hostile to the New Northwest and its editor time and again denounced Professor Fisher.

 

[Dr. Merriam did not choose to present the information here that The New Northwest was created by the previously fired President Craighead – Don Gilder.]

 

            The Service Committee reported that it found no substantiation for the charges against Professor Fisher, but the Board of Education, also responsive to outside influences, placed the Professor on leave of absence with full pay for the last year of his three-year contract with the University, forbidding him to teach on the campus.[17] Again the American Association of University Professors sent to Missoula an investigating committee, which, after thorough probing, like the Service Committee found the charges unsubstantiated and pronounced the Board of Education “guilty of a grave dereliction of duty in prohibiting a regularly appointed professor in the University from meeting his classes without a statement of reasons for terminating the contract.” At the end of his third year Arthur Fisher left to take up law work in Chicago.

 

Dr. Clapp and the Faculty

            Dr. Clapp was a modest man. He deplored as unseemly the advertising of the University, and unlike his predecessors did not travel frequently and widely over the State talking up its values.[18] This restraint caused some dissatisfaction among downtown supporters. He preferred, however, that the excellence of the work being done on the campus should speak for itself, and believed that it would. He pushed doggedly, under adverse circumstances, toward that excellence and the faculty doggedly pushed along with him. No display or boasting existed, only solid, steady work. “Daring,” he once wrote, “checked by professional humility as shown in the spectacular progress science was making can bring similar progress in all fields of learning.”

            Throughout his presidency Dr. Clapp studied the geology of Montana. From time to time he issued studies, notably in 1932, a sizable and important monograph on “Geology of a Portion of the Rocky Mountains and Northwestern Montana.” This scholarly activity was exemplary for the faculty.[19] He never ceased urging its members to engage in creative or research work, but overloads of class work kept all but a few from doing so.

            The President and the faculty made an Educational Statistical Survey in 1928 comparing the University with eleven other Northwest and Rocky Mountain institutions, with results unfavorable to the University. Promptly, the President created a plan for development during the next decade, 1928-38, providing for new buildings, with estimated costs, improvement in the educational features, development of the offices of the deans of the faculty and of men, establishment of both a personnel and a publications office. The lack of finances temporarily defeated the fulfillment of most of these projects.

            In spite of repeated frustration, principally from lack of money, the relationship between the President and the faculty remained cordial. The faculty frequently consulted the President and he them, just as freely. No chain-of-command shut him apart in his office. Years later J. B. Speer, his Registrar and Business Manager, characterized the relationship as camaraderie, and Carl McFarland, who as a student was his part-time secretary, spoke of him as “of blessed memory.” Many faculty members shared that regard. A reading of the faculty minutes over the years reveals little pushing and pulling and much mutual trust.

            The faculty knew that the President was aware of them and their welfare. He frequently tried to lighten the teaching load, which he found “practically double that at most large middle western universities and three times that at the University of Chicago.” But the students steadily increased in number and money for employment of additional instructors was still lacking.[20] It seems almost incredible that so many good instructors could have been employed and retained for the rest of their teaching careers. Among others were E. A. Atkinson, W. P. Clark, Helen Gleason, Robert C. Line, David Mason, J. E. (Burly) Miller, Mike Mansfield, Lucia B. Mirrielees, Ann Platt, G. D. Shallenberger. Two dynamic professors who moved to larger opportunities after ten or more years of University service were Charles Deiss, who built the Department of Geology so well that many years later, again under good leadership, it was the first department of the College to offer work for the doctor’s degree, and John Crowder, whose ideas and activity laid the foundations for the excellent and constantly spreading work since carried on and enlarged by the staff of the School of Music. During the Clapp years Vardis Fisher, novelist, taught at the University during the summers of 1932 and 1934 and the academic year of 1933-34. Mrs. Lucille J. Armsby began her forty years as a remarkably competent secretary to seven presidents. Mr. Thomas Swearingen began his service as maintenance engineer for an even longer period of time. The faculty also appreciated the President’s reports to them on proceedings of the Executive Council, which kept them informed of trends among the six units and with the activity of the Chancellor.

            The loyalty of the faculty to the University and its welfare during the Clapp years is shown in two matters, one the small number of resignations – two in 1926-27 and two in the following year, and the other the relatively quiet acceptance of a 20% cut in salaries in 1933. The minutes of its meetings reveal a faculty bent on doing away with weaknesses in organization, in regulations and in curricula when and where possible. Through its Budget and Policy Committee it was helpful to the President. In his report to the Board of Education in 1922 Dr. Clapp wrote that the committee, then a year old, “did its work most successfully, with recognition of the responsibility as well as the protection which the right to participate in administration gave.” He thus nipped in the bud any fear that such a sharp change in faculty action as participation in administration might engender. He also wrote to Chancellor Brannon in 1926, in explanation of the formation of the Budget and Policy Committee, that the faculty, “jealous” of administrative and physical plant costs, instituted it for protection by them (the faculty) “of the educational system in the budgeting of available funds.” At about that time he announced to the Committee that approximately 80% of the budget was going into faculty salaries, a high percentage. Earlier in 1926 he had written to J. W. Freeman of Great Falls that the cost of administration, including the University’s share of the expenses of the Chancellor and his office, of the president’s, the registrar’s, the business manager’s offices and the offices of deans and publications, plus travel totaled, in the preceding year, $54,120.59, an incredibly insignificant sum of money for so many services.

            The steady, deep financial pinch of the Clapp years necessitated the replacing of experienced professors when they retired or resigned with inexperienced, low-salaried instructors, a definitely weakening procedure. One counteracting and thrifty resort was employment of graduate students as instructors in elementary courses and in laboratory supervision. This practice lifted some eyebrows and stirred doubts about good instruction, but the graduate students, close to freshmen, understood them better than older instructors and usually gave competent service. The responsibility of teaching also steadied the graduate students as students. Incidentally, without such employment graduate work at the University would have developed at a much slower rate than it did, for graduate students had to be given graduate studies.

            The faculty in 1929 felt that its instruction and the generally healthy conditions in the departments and schools on the campus warranted an application to the National Phi Beta Kappa for a chapter and prepared an elaborate dossier, but a chapter was refused largely on the decision that some departments and schools needed additional staff members.

 

Achievements

            The faculty minutes of the fourteen Clapp years show the constant making of changes, especially in curricular matters, that were small in themselves but in the aggregate amounted to an important raising of scholarly standards. For instance, an honors system was experimented with, the number of elementary courses was cut, departments and schools were permitted to set comprehensive senior examinations, examinations were made compulsory for honors, a grade-point system was adopted in which the number of points required for graduation must correspond to a “C” average. Scholarship was bound to improve, for Dean Jesse was a strict watcher of achievement and he was seconded by Dr. Miller, the Dean of Men.

            A notable achievement of the Clapp years was the setting up of an affiliated School of Religion, supported entirely by church and private contributions. In the School, non-sectarian in its studies, students were permitted to elect fifteen credits toward graduation but could not take a “major” in Religion. At the time there was some objection to having a unit in religion on the campus, even when only affiliated.[21]

            Extension and correspondence work had been a concern of the University from its earliest days, but such work, like research, had been and was being done on the almost non-existent marginal time of the professors. All such work was placed by Dr. Clapp under a Division of Public Service, but without a full-time director, and the number of offerings was increased. An extension of public service was the almost continuous issuance from 1922 to 1938 by the members of the Department of English of a leaflet entitled “English Notes,” which was mailed to every teacher of English in Montana secondary schools. Another service was the formation of an English Council, composed of instructors of English in the six units of the University. It was designed to encourage uniform work in English, especially in Freshman Composition, to bring about understanding through acquaintanceship among the teachers, and to exchange ideas.[22] Summer sessions at the University were steadily strengthened by the offering of several short conferences each summer participated in by nationally known men and women, especially in Education.

            One of these conferences was for creative writers. Four such conferences were held from 1930 to 1934, bringing to the campus for work with students such nationally known writers as Struthers Burt and his wife, Katherine Newlin Burt, Mary Austin, Frank Ernest Hill, Wilbur Daniel Steele, and from Montana, Frank B. Linderman. Students came from Montana and many States.[23]

            A substantial development in the College of Arts and Sciences was the establishment of a Lower and Upper Division, which came after a year of study by the President and a faculty committee. In the former were placed elementary courses upon which could be built studies for the latter and the general courses that hopefully broadened the student’s knowledge, outlook, and interests. Upperclassmen were allowed to elect only a small number of credits in these courses and thus graduation with a disproportionate amount of elementary work was prevented.[24] The principal feature of the change to Divisional organization was creation of four general courses for lower classmen – in the biological, the physical and the social sciences, and in the humanities.[25] At first all four of these courses were required of all lower classmen, but within a year or two only three were required. The hope was that in exposing young students to the origin and history of ideas in many fields of knowledge, the riches of culture from early times, and the beginnings, the progress and interrelations of the sciences, they would leave the University with increased awareness and understanding of man’s heritage. Four Divisional Chairmen were appointed, but though they functioned for nearly twenty years they were never given sufficient responsibility and authority for development of the fields of study supposedly under their supervision. The chance to encourage and in part effect interdepartmental studies in the upper classes was lost because of the failure to develop strong divisions.

            Along with these changes was a desire, strong in some professors who wished to strengthen long-time learning, to give comprehensive examinations at the completion of Lower Divisional studies and again at the end of the Upper Divisional studies, but again the faculty was not ready for such a change, though departments in the College were allowed to set such examinations for their major students at the end of the senior year.

            With the thought of helping freshmen adjust to college life and its increased rigors and freedom, the faculty set up Freshman Week, during which freshmen received counsel from faculty members and upperclassmen in such matters as ways to study, use of the library, fraternity and sorority life, and profitable personal conduct at a university.[26]

 

Culture and the University

            The cultural life of the campus throve during the Clapp years. The President, who was deeply interested in the arts and in social life, reported annually to the Board of Education not only the year’s scientific achievements but the exhibits of art held on the campus, the dramas produced, concerts, lectures, especially those by nationally known men and women – for instance, Carl Sandburg, poet, Percy Grainger, pianist, Frank Linderman, student of Indian life, and the many scientists who visited the campus.

            Also serving cultural ends was publication of The Frontier, issued first in the spring of 1920 (as The Montanan) by students in the class in creative writing, then in the fall of 1927 issued as a regional magazine of the Pacific Northwest, independent of students and owned, published and edited by H. G. Merriam. It became sort of a mecca for beginning writers largely because of E. J. O’Brien, in his annual publication, Best Short Stories, and the O.Henry Memorial Award Short Stories reprinted stories from it and ranked others as excellent, and because Eastern publishers read it and solicited writings from its contributors.[27] From the fall issue of 1927 it carried an historical section, documents of early Western exploration and life, which were considered such an important contribution that they were reprinted by the University as Historical Sources of Northwest History.[28]

            Until 1927 the writing in The Frontier was by students; they also found expression for a year or two in The Wrangler, which published thoughtful discussions on social and philosophical subjects of interest to the campus community.[29] It was one of the most thoughtful student publications ever issued on the campus, but when it discussed religion over-frankly, as readers of that time thought, publication was stopped.

            Dramatic productions on the campus prospered, as they had since 1920. Under the supervision of Professor Carl Glick the southern end of Simpkins Hall was converted in 1926 into a Little Theater, seating about 250 persons. It was the home of the Masquers, crowded though the space was behind stage and in dressing rooms, until 1935, when the theater in the Student Union building (now Fine Arts) became available. Before 1926 Masquers productions had been staged in the downtown Liberty Theater (Harnois), now razed. Alexander Dean, storming coach and able director who later was director of plays at Yale University, John Mason Brown, New York drama critic, Barnard Hewitt, later in charge of drama and dramatics at the University of Illinois, Lennox Robinson, Irish playwright and director of Abbey Theater in Dublin, Maurice Browne and his wife Ellen Van Volkenburg, who established the first Little Theater on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, all taught drama and dramatics on the campus during the years 1920 to 1935. Productions by Barrie, Synge, Masefield and other dramatists of the day were staged. Andreyev’s “He Who Gets Slapped,” a Russian play never before produced in English anywhere in the world, was staged in the Liberty Theater, Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenburg playing the leads with students in the other roles.

            A group called the Author’s Club, which fostered scholarship and the association of scholars, was set up by Mathematics Professor N. J. Lennes during the Clapp years and managed by him for more than a quarter of a century. The requirement for membership was publication of a book or of articles in professional magazines. The membership included Missoula men, especially men in District 1 of the U. S. Forest Service, faculty from the University, and workers at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, U. S. Health Service, in Hamilton, Montana. Papers were read at the monthly meetings and discussed. In the University Library are publications of members of the group. This Author’s Club was a stimulus to scholarly work.

 

Students and Their Activities

            Students in the 1920’s shared in the confusions general in the nation but being so far removed from large centers caught the fevers of the time only slightly. Sly drinking was only somewhat evident; college women began smoking and wearing skirts almost up to the knees; fun productions on the stage strove toward a smart sophistication and sometimes approached a limit of acceptability. Hi Jinx was in high gear until 1934, when it was deemed best to drop it. Varsity Vodvil became more and more elaborate (and daring) until the expense itself closed it down.

            The Depression cooled the fevers of the ‘twenties. Parents found difficulty in keeping their young people in college and students who were under the necessity of earning part or all of their expenses found greater difficulty. Fortunately, by 1933 the National Youth Administration came to their assistance, providing money for employment on campus.

            In the Clapp years the Tanans organization was set up. In 1924, chapters of Druids, a national forestry group, and Scabbard and Blade, a national military group, were obtained, as was a chapter of Kappa Tau, an honorary scholastic society. Bear Paws, twenty in number, were “the wardens of university traditions.” A song contest was held for three or four years, fraternities, sororities and independents competing. The Interscholastic Meet in 1935 enrolled 101 competing schools and 756 contestants. Oratory and debate continued in high interest. Two or three debates were held with Oxford University teams, the English style of debating frustrating their American opponents. From 1907 to 1919 the University sent no Rhodes Scholars to Oxford but from that date on to the present it has had its full share of representation there. Notable in these years was the excellent record made by University graduates in mid-Western and Eastern universities, and in business and social agencies, especially in New York City. They were a source of deep pride to the University and strengthened its prestige abroad.

            In athletics track repeated its usual successes. In 1927 Arnold Gillette and Russell Sweet, trackmen in long- and short-distance running, were placed on the National Collegiate Honor Roll. Interest in baseball gradually diminished until it was abandoned as a major sport. In football “the famed Bernie Bierman” was the coach for three seasons, but met with little success, except in beating arch rival, Montana State College, twice and tieing it once.[30] Following him was a list of short-term coaches, each meeting with about the same successes and defeats as he had – J. W. Stewart, Earl (Click) Clark (who had been a brilliant end for MSU from 1914 to 1916), Major Frank Milburn (for five seasons), Bernie Oakes, and finally Doug Fessenden. The University had joined the Pacific Coast Conference in 1925 and was playing teams from the large coastal institutions – Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA, Stanford, California. The Varsity team, however, downed the State College eight times, tied it once, and lost twice. These “greats” were playing in the mid-twenties: Ted (Chief) Illman, Russ Sweet, and Bill Kelly – it was a question which was the best backfield player, but a Northwest athletic coach commented on “the superior level to which Kelly . . . raised Western football.”

 

[It should be noted that Illman and Kelly played for the 1921 state championship football team from Missoula, and Sweet starred in Miles City. Illman and Kelly went on to play professionally. Sweet was a world class sprinter who later attempted to qualify for the Olympics, before becoming injured. Sweet and Kelly combined for the winning touchdown in the 2^nd annual East-West Shrine football game held in San Francisco in 1927 (attended by Babe Ruth). Kelly had been selected captain of the West team. – Don Gilder]

 

            President Clapp, as with faculty, identified himself with the students. The Kaimin gleefully recorded that he and Dr. Jesse alternated at fullback “in a crazy football game.” He was easily approachable, though students knew where he drew the line in any matter and respected his decisions. They caught some of his interest in the arts, so that drama, art, music, and lectures by “outsiders” flourished.[31] In 1933 Central Board put a vote to the student body to raise a fee for lectures and outside entertainment by fifty cents a quarter. Dick Ormsbee, as chairman of the Outside Entertainment Committee, arranged with a downtown group which was bringing artists to Missoula for the presentation one year of three musicals and one concert, students helping to meet expenses by contributing $800 and being admitted free. He also arranged for a film to be shown at the Wilma, “King Henry VIII,” again students admitted free.

            The Kaimin was pretty well tied up with campus happenings during the 1920’s, but in the next decade found wider interests, the editorials covering a good range of national and world happenings. Also, each issue carried two or three editorials. It was beginning to think of itself as a newspaper knowledgeable not only of the campus but of the outside world as well.

 

The College and the Schools

            A summary of conditions at the University at the end of 1935 shows the organization of the University to be: the College of Arts and Sciences, the Schools of Business Administration, Education, Forestry, Journalism, Law, Music and Pharmacy, the affiliated School of Religion, the Graduate School (with only a part-time dean), the pre-med course, the Division of Public Service, the Summer School, the Biological Station, and the ROTC. Only the School of Fine Arts has been added. Because the Clapp years were relatively calm, allowing attention to be given to improvement and growth (in spite of difficult finances), a quick survey of the organizations will show what progress had been made. The College of Arts and Sciences, as had been noted, was now offering excellent undergraduate work for the bachelor’s degree with developing master’s work in several of the departments. The President and perhaps a half-dozen professors were engaged in creative or investigative work. Salaries were low but many excellent teachers were on the staff. The curriculum had been well shaken down into important offerings, and requirements for graduation settled.

            The School of Business Administration had at first been a department within the Department of Economics, then a separate department in the College of Arts and Sciences, and finally itself a full-fledged School (1918). It had then a staff of three instructors and about 25 students.[32] Like many other of the University units it had been shunted from building to building until in 1950 it found a home in a new building, which it shared with the School of Education.[33] The School was formally organized by Dean S. J. Coon in 1920 as an upperclass professional institution, with several pre-business administration courses taught in the College of Arts and Sciences. Within four years 92 students were taking the professional work and by 1932 the School was graduating annually about 40 students. The courses offered were largely vocationally oriented – in credit and collections, and in accounting.

            Robert C. Line, ’12, became Dean in 1927 and continued in that office until 1946. President Clapp urged that the new Dean keep the work of the School in the liberal tradition, that the Business faculty should not fill the student’s time with strictly professional courses but should encourage him to take work in such subjects as economics, history and sociology. Recognizing that many of the School’s graduates would remain in Montana as store owners and operators, the Dean set up a course in Retail Stores and one in Office Machines. A most important development was the establishing of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research, at first pitifully supported on $100 a year. In 1929 demand for shorthand and typing was so insistent that the Dean, under pressure of an inadequate budget, employed an instructor to be paid out of a student fee of $12.50 per quarter, but when only 30 students registered the instructor resigned. In the following year a budget item cared for the salary of an instructor in these fields and enrollment mounted. Accounting, however, became the course most in demand – in 1934 its beginning course registered 134 students. The staff never exceeded four until 1945.

            Courses in Education from early years to 1913 had been in the Department of Philosophy and Education, taught principally from the philosophical point of view. The work was based upon little or no research in the field. The professor in those days, as in all subjects, was considered an authority and almost infallible and thus old ideas about education lived on. Dr. Craighead brought to the faculty as chairman of the Department of Education Professor Freeman Daughters, a student of philosophy, theology and education as it was being researched at the time. He became Dean when the School was set up in 1930 and remained in that office until retirement in 1942. The change from department to school seems to have been one largely of status, for what development could be expected from a staff of three professors with a steadily enlarging enrollment of students and an enlarging conception of education?[34]

            The first master’s degree in Education was granted in 1917 and in the following year a program was organized for master’s work. Between that date and 1925 forty-seven master’s degrees were bestowed on the School’s graduates. The School was also the first among college departments or schools at the University to offer doctoral work, one leading to the degree of Ph.D. in Education.

            For the first twenty or thirty years of this century Education came to be more and more in the hands all over the country of men whom other professors called, not wholly without disrespect, “educationists.” Teachers College of Columbia University was turning them out in numbers. On the University campus it was felt that the work in Education was being overprofessionalized, was mindful of courses rather than students. Schools of Education in universities the country over were “getting in the saddle” by gaining the recognition of State departments of public instruction. The University School likewise became recognized by the Montana State Department of Public Instruction. Before long a program of twenty-three credits in Education plus the student’s major study (roughly 60 credits) and a minor subject (25 credits) and, if possible, a second minor was required of all students who desired the certificate to teach in a high school.

            The School of Forestry, like the Schools of Business Administration, Journalism and Law, had been moved from pillar to post, finally finding itself in a new building in 1922 which was dedicated to Gifford Pinchot, the outstanding conservationist. Under Deans Skeels and Spaulding, 1913-45, the work of the School was largely directed toward forestry as technology, though research had constantly been in mind. The University catalog for 1913-14 described the School and its work in thirty-three pages – “The West is to be, in the not distant future, the scene of the principal education in forestry . . . . [the School had been established] to meet a great and growing demand on the part of lumber companies, large holding corporations and national and State governments for logging engineers, forest engineers, and men of professional training in the practical administration of Western forests.” This resounding statement set the tone which the School was trying to live up to in the Clapp years.[35]

            From its beginning, also, the School has developed among its students a character and a personality which has set them somewhat apart from the general student body. They took comparatively little part in the campus social or government life. They were devoted to their field of study and early developed a Montana Forestry Alumni Association which built up an Alumni Memorial Fund. They also set up early an annual Foresters Ball which, elaborately staged, has constantly been popular. Only the Barristers ball could compete with it.

            During the Clapp years a nursery, planted on the campus in the mouth of Hellgate Canyon, served the community of the State for thirty-five years and became the largest one in the United States connected with a school. A German forester of strong personality, great self-confidence, much learning and wide experience, Dr. C. A. Schenck, was brought to the campus three times for lengthy visits. He stirred faculty, students and even townspeople by his unbounded energy and his enthusiasm for forestry. Dean Stone wrote of his visits: “He gave the foresters a finer and a broader conception of the duties and responsibilities of their calling, so has he effected a better realization of the meaning of forestry.”

            Dean Thomas C. (Tom) Spaulding had a mind that conceived large plans. For instance, in 1927 he began negotiations to acquire forest land from the Anaconda Copper Mining Company for University experimental uses. He had his eye on about 27,000 acres about thirty-five miles northeast of Missoula in the Blackfoot River drainage. It had been cut over by the Company and part of it had been burned over. In 1937, with the help of W. C. Lubrecht, manager of the ACM lumber operations at Bonner, he acquired as a gift by the Company to the State 19,058 acres to be used by the University for forest experimental purposes and for wildlife study. The Northern Pacific Railroad donated 1,310 contiguous acres, and since 1937 individual owners have contributed small tracts. It was dedicated as the Lubrecht Forest and buildings were erected.[36] This was a notable achievement, made possible by the personality, persuasion and patience of Dean Spaulding. No professor had done more in a material way or conferred anything of more lasting benefit upon the University.[37]

            A. L. Stone was the dean of the School of Journalism from its founding in 1913 to his retirement in 1942.[38] He held fairly closely throughout those years to his idea of a kind of apprenticeship as the right instruction for journalists. His first statement of purpose was “to train reporters, not to attempt to turn out managing editors.” He was proud of the fact that no textbooks were used and that conditions in the School approximated as nearly as possible those in a newspaper plant. It was not until J. L. C. Ford became dean in 1944 that a substantial shift from that concept took place.

            Although the number of credits required of students for graduation in Journalism varied from 50 to 81 out of a total of 180, there was recognition that journalists needed training in a wide spread of knowledge. The trade and professional journalistic courses did not, as in some schools, demand the almost total study time of the student. The staff of the School in these fourteen years increased from two to four, the annual number of graduates from 4 to 17.

            The School existed in Marcus Cook Hall, a wind-sifting war barracks. As a result of the passage, in 1930, of the bond measure, Referendum No. 43, money was allocated for a Journalism building, but it was 1936 before construction began. Meanwhile, both the laboratory facilities and the equipment as well as the building were inadequate. In 1930 gifts of printing machinery from newspaper publishers around the State made possible the setting up of a print shop.

            The student paper, The Kaimin, was fully under the control of ASUM during the Clapp years. Its relation to the School was almost unique, for only Central Board, composed of students, could dismiss an editor. It was financed by student fees and advertising, local and national. The staff of the paper enjoyed an unusual freedom to express their views on the editorial pages and the students and faculty in letters to the editor. The staff determined the material to go into the paper and made it up as it pleased unless it chose to consult with the faculty advisor. The editor and the business manager were elected by a Publications committee, composed of students and one faculty member.

            C. W. Leaphart served as Dean of the School of Law from 1919 until retirement in 1954, with the exception of two years when he worked in the Department of Justice in Washington and one year at Harvard University in obtaining his S.J.D. degree. During his deanship his demand for excellence and his staff’s response raised the reputation of the School to a position among the best Western schools. In August of 1923 the American Bar Association rated the School “A,” one of the thirty-nine law schools in the United States so esteemed. Requirements for admission to the School were stiffened several times during the Clapp years – for instance, after 1923 no “special” students were accepted; prospective students were advised to take three years of college work before applying for admission; courses which lasted more than one quarter had grades withheld until completion of the entire course, thus emphasizing, as is still so needed in all schools and departments, the importance of long-time learning.

            In spite of difficulties standards were upheld. During the great Depression drastic steps had to be taken to avoid decreditation, for salaries, which were already low, took a 16% cut, and teaching loads were about twice as heavy as accrediting associations demanded. To meet the requirements of the Association of American Law Schools of four full-time professors, a $5.00 per quarter tuition charge was levied, and town attorneys, who had been on half-time service were put on one-quarter time. In the following year they went on leave of absence, in order to release their salaries. Accreditation was held.

            To the credit of the School a course in Legal Ethics has been since 1922 a part of the curriculum. As late as 1951, only thirty-nine law schools out of eighty-seven members of the A.A.L.S. have offered it.

            J. Howard Toelle, who came onto the staff in 1926, and David Mason, who came the following year, were stalwarts in holding up the standards of the School. The entire Law faculty has constantly been of service to the University administration, to the general faculty and to the State of Montana. For instance, since 1922 at the request of the Montana Bar Association short courses on the income tax and other problems have been given. Publications by the school in the 1920’s and 1930’s have been of genuine value.

            The School of Music, located on the third floor south end of Main Hall, was granting the Bachelor of Music degree before the 1920’s; in 1921 the University faculty approved the offering of the Bachelor of Arts in Music, a step up. Students working as majors in Music increased in number from eight in 1919 to fifty-nine ten years later, but the staff of instructors increased from 1921 to 1935 by only two. This disproportionate growth in number of students and number of instructors, caused by the static University budget, was typical for departments and schools. For many years instructors in Music received only the fees paid by their students, a most unhappy condition, but by about 1930 they were paid fixed salaries out of the University budget.

            The University band mushroomed to 99 members in the ‘thirties, and as early as 1922 included women. It was said to be the first college band in the country to include them. When radio station KUOM was in operation an orchestra of eight pieces presented programs of classical music. The faculty, of course, from time to time gave recitals. Especially popular were lecture-recitals given by Professor Crowder. The School was called upon to supply performers at numerous campus and town meetings and over the State. Singers and instrumental musicians of repute were brought to the campus as frequently as budgets allowed.

            Dean Smith was well on the way by 1935 to making the people of Montana music-conscious, aided as he was by the radio. John Crowder, who succeeded him, carried on the assignment.[39]

            During the Clapp years the School of Pharmacy, with two instructors, operated out of rooms in Old Science Hall. So crowded was the space that Dean Mollett had built in one of them a mezzanine floor from which he looked down upon students. In 1920 Gamma Eta chapter of the National Professional Pharmaceutical Association was granted, and two years later Delta chapter of Kappa Epsilon, for women, was also granted. In 1933 four years were required for graduation in Pharmacy.

            When in the 1930’s medicine shifted to synthetic organic medicinal agents it became necessary for students in Pharmacy to know organic chemistry. A course in that subject was added to the requirements for graduation. The drug garden, which Francis Mollet started in 1914, became of somewhat less importance but was maintained until 1963.

            The Biological Station on Flathead Lake was a copious source of prestige for the University, but owing to lack of money, even for maintenance, it was only slightly active during the Clapp years. Like a few other natural advantages which Montana possesses, this one could not at that time be capitalized on. Upon retirement in 1933, Dr. Elrod released his directorship to Botany Professor J. W. Severy, who turned over the office in 1940 to Zoology Professor Gordon B. Castle.

 

The Last Days

            Beset by insufficient financial support, with an inadequate office staff,[40] with chancellors meddling in matters which should have been handled on the campus and ineffectually trying to solve the large problem of support, Dr. Clapp struggled through his fourteen years as president. In 1935 he was taken ill and spent many weeks hospitalized. Indomitable, he administered the University from his hospital bed. He died in office in May, 1935.

            The letters that poured in from educators, from faculty, from alumni showed the deep respect and admiration in which he had been held. The students wrote: “Blessed with an amiability which won him a place in the hearts of the thousands of students he had known since 1921, a remarkably keen foresight and principles of toleration, freedom and eager friendship in abundance, he labored for the best interests of the school.” They voted him Man of the Year for 1935. The faculty stated that his “tolerance and sense of justice often lightened their responsibilities and made consultation with him friendly. His courage and counsel were heartening. His leadership carried them in continuous and loyal endeavor.” His was indeed a job well done.