Fire of Learning

Onetime chairman of the Yale chapter of the A. A. U. P. is Professor Yandell Henderson, able physiologist, expert on noxious gases, no fearer of publicity. Born in Kentucky 58 years ago, graduated from Yale in 1895, he is a somewhat unkempt savant, fond of his pipe, his British tweeds, his tennis. Professor Henderson developed gas-masks used by U. S. troops in the World War, has done much research in automobile exhaust gases, in the biochemistry of respiration and the physiology of circulation. Year ago he wrote an article for the Yale Alumni Weekly in dispraise of "industrializing education" and "unionizing professors," publication of which coincided with the A. A. U. P.'s meeting in Cleveland (Time, Jan, 12). Last week he performed again. In a letter to the Weekly he calculated the maintenance cost of new Yale buildings at 6 per cent per annum, which would represent the income from a fund greater than the whole original building cost not, as is generally assumed, the income from a fund equal to 25 per cent of the original cost. Professor Henderson found "that each additional million cubic feet. . .in buildings draws from general income a sum equal to the salaries of four or five professors, or nine to twelve instructors. . .It appears reasonable to suggest that as many as possible of the new buildings should be kept closed, unheated and unlighted, until times improve."

The day his communication appeared in the Weekly and in newspapers throughout the land, Professor Henderson spoke to the Chicago meeting in much the same vein. Vast building programs, said he, result in underpaid professors. At one university, "by 1945 I suppose it will be necessary to stop paying professors' salaries altogether, so that the wages of the president, the janitors, window washers and scrubbers can be met." Professor Henderson's figures as to the proportion of university income paid to professors; at Johns Hopkins, 65 per cent; University of Chicago, 52 per cent; Princeton, 42 per cent ("pretty fair"); at Yale 40 per cent ten years ago, 34 per cent last year, with income more than three times as large. "It will be even less this year," lamented Professor Henderson, whose own salary is understood to be from $8,000 to $10,000 a year. The proportion at Harvard has dropped the lowest; from 24 per cent five years ago to 23 per cent last year. "Mind you, Harvard is where the fire of learning was lit. All the other fires of education in what's now the United States had their spark from Harvard. And now. . . ." --Time