Rocks and Brickbats

"I hammered together spools for barbed wire in a Chicago factory. I worked 70 hours a week and the first month I was paid $3.50 a week. From this, I developed a strong feeling for the underdog and the less well-to-do." Kirtley F. Mather has never forgotten these early years in Chicago. "Perhaps the thing that influenced me the most was my experience as a census taker in Cook Country. I worked in a district known as 'Irondale' where most of the people were recently-arrived foreigners. In one block there were over 400 people jammed on one side of the street; men worked in 12-hour shifts and the beds worked in 12-hour shifts."

While attending the University of Chicago, Mather managed to spend his weekends, holidays, and week vacations working sometimes as a shoe salesman in the basement of Marshall Field and Company, a ticket seller for the Michigan Central Railroad, and as an office boy in the South Chicago Mills of the Illinois Steel Corporation. "My interest in geology was started by a high school teacher who taught physiography and took us on field trips. By the time I entered the University of Chicago, I was intensely interested in geology."

While Mather's grandfather expressed grave doubts as to the value of an education "in that God-less University of Chicago," Mather himself, began to get bored "peddling my bicycle back and forth from my home to college and not getting anything out of college," so he switched to Denison College where he majored in Geology.

"I didn't become interested in politics until I came to Harvard in 1925," and Mather considers the Teacher's Oath Law of 1936 one of the most important battles he has undertaken. "The bill was proposed while I was a member of the Newton School Committee; I was aware of the effort being made by the politicians to control school policies and the teaching programs. To me, the law was the first step in putting the educational system under the control of the politicians. It seemed that we should take our stand then and refuse to permit state officials to tell Harvard University whom it could and whom it could not have as teachers."

"This brought up a fundamental issue, one on which I feel many leading educators have taken the wrong position. The question is: should the educational system of a democracy be an instrument of national policy? I say--no. Teachers should not indoctrinate; they should teach. This is exactly the thing underlying the House Un-American Activities Committee report which wants educational institutions to indoctrinate students with Americanism as they define Americanism."

While appearing as an expert witness in the 1925 Scopes anti-evolution trial in Dayton, Tennessee, Mather saw "the bigotry of so-called religious men." He has tried to adapt his scientific research with a striving for higher ethical ideals. Writing in the Christian Century, he notes: "No wonder there is a widespread desire for more Christianity in higher education. If civilization is to be saved from catastrophe, the ethical and social consciousness of each individual must be greatly strengthened, renewed, and improved. Where better to concentrate upon that task than in our colleges and universities."

But Mather is just as concerned about present trends in the political world as he is of the relation of religion and science. Recently, the House Un-American Activities Committee berated Mather for sending out letters to ministers requesting that they "get acquainted" with Dirk Jan Struik, M.I.T. professor under indictment for sedition. "I have often wondered what caused the House committee to focus its machine guns on me, and I think now it was because I was the first scientist who came to the aid of Edward Condon who was blasted by the same committee. They said he was pro-Soviet, and I said he was a loyal American and a great scientist. This, I believe, was my original sin."

For Mather, what happens to this country depends on two factors: "catastrophe for the world through war or accepting the fact that we will have to live with communist countries. I think we will have to find a modus operendi between the United States and the Soviet Union. We should not try to change the internal government of these communist countries--it isn't our business to do this. There is damn little we can do about relations but it is not too early to start adapting our feelings to accepting Russia."

"I believe in evolution rather than revolution," Mather says quietly. "I try to be an ideallist in my aim, and a reallist in my policy."