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At last the "bizarre" Scopes trial was pronounced dead. Last week, after having delicately reproached it in a divided opinion which held the Tennessee anti-evolution law constitutional but reversed the conviction of Teacher John Thomas Scopes (TIME, Jan. 24), the Supreme Court of Tennessee denied Teacher Scopes's lawyer their request for a rehearing, and Attorney General L. D. Smith formally carried out the court's suggestion that the case be pigeonholed forever.

He Also Serves

His wrists protruded from his sleeves bonily. His trousers stopped dejectedly far short of his shoes. Over his spectacles fell a strand of straw-colored hair. His Adam's apple gulped ominously within his amp'e collar. He was a grind, a poor boy, a social catastrophe-- but he left his books and store-counter to win the big relay race for Ohio State University. Pennants waved; men cheered; girls screamed. A hero emerged from a "poor nut."

That all happened in a play. The author of the play had actually attended Ohio State, had tried to "make" the track team. But he never won a big race, was never a hero, never "won his O." To make it all come true, to show how much they appreciated good drama, acting and advertising, the undergraduates of Ohio State University last week presented Alumnus-Author-Actor Elliott Nugent with the full insignia of an Ohio State 'varsity athlete when he visited his old college town with The Poor Nut.

On the Border

There was trouble on the border last week. In Tucson, Dr. Cloyd Heck Marvin angrily resigned as president of the University of Arizona. Four members of the board of regents resigned with him. In Albuquerque, Dr. David Spence Hill quietly resigned as president of the University of New Mexico. Both had been accused of disrupting campus morale; of being high-handed. Dr. Hill's ejection, an issue more broadly political than Dr. Marvin's, had necessitated the appointment of a new board of regents by a new Governor after an old board and Governor had taken his part. Dr Marvin's downfall was more picturesque.

As he left the thriving campus where he had expended much fruitful energy in the past four years, Dr. Marvin must have had to pinch himself to believe he was really going. It was almost ludicrous. Here he was, a planner of big things and a doer of them, a substantial, efficient person who left nothing to chance, actually tripped and frustrated by an obstacle which had seemed microscopic only yesterday. He was a lion laid low by a mouse, a pilgrim to El Dorado who had stepped on a dust adder.

When young Dr. Marvin was elected president in 1922, he had been at the University of Arizona less than a year. He had coma there as a professor of economics from the Southern Branch of the University of California, where he had risen in two years from assistant professor to the dual capacity of dean and public business adviser. He had behind him a thorough training at Stanford and Harvard. He had flown an airplane in the War. He was chunky, rapid, practical; the kind of man other men like to call "a dynamo." In Tucson he swiftly won the respect of leading business men, for he joined their civic clubs and "mixed well." Unlike Economist John Stuart Hill, He did NOT lose his natural bonhomie Through his interest, in political economy.He was a Mason and an American Legioner. When they elected him, at 33, he was "youngest university president," a fact in which his merchant friends took great pride. On paper in his office he visualized an institution in keeping with Arizona's wealth of copper and climate. He overhauled the faculty, noting deficiencies. He sent away for the ablest men he could find. And from Tucson he dismissed such professors as he thought were weak.

The latter move brought protests. The American Association of University Professors conducted an inquiry and found much to condemn. They admitted that his policies were constructive, but found an ulterior note. They suggested that Dr. Marvin was playing to Interests.

It was at this point that Dr. Marvin stumbled over the microscopic detail. In Tucson one Woodson D. Upshaw, started to publish a weekly newspaper the Independent, circulation 400. Hardly pausing to hang up his hat, Editor Upshaw had made his presence known by a vociferous attack upon the local gas corporation, demanding and helping to obtain a big rate reduction. After that the Independent had no mere "acquaintances." It had friends and enemies. It became a daily. And Editor Upshaw's next good fortune was a letter from a biologist at the university, a mixture of sarcasm and grief that referred to Dr. Marvin as "His Nibs."

By some means, not yet explained, the "His Nibs" letter left Editor Upshaw's office and came into Dr. Marvin's hands. Life became increasingly unpleasant for the letter-writing biologist, whom Dr. Marvin was powerless to dismiss since he was a Federal biologist.

Editor Upshaw told Tucson about the "His Nibs" letter episode and began saying Dr. Marvin was unfit to head the university. He said it very loudly.

Then came Dr. Marvin's friends, the Tucson merchants. He had made them believe in him so thoroughly he could not now stop them from threatening Editor Upshaw (whose circulation was still only about 400) with an advertising boycott if the Independent did not "lay off" Dr. Marvin. Advertising boycotts, of course, are to small newspapers what persecution is to small religions. They kill or cultivate. Editor Upshaw demanded Dr. Marvin's resignation, was boycotted and the Independent's circulation quadrupled. Editor Upshaw was no longer a quidnunc but a martyr and a St George. The railroad brotherhoods backed him. Independent advertisers rallied to him. The Tucson Ministerial Association gave tongue with him. All demanded an investigation of Dr. Marvin's activities--and got it.

When the regents met for this investigation, Dr. Marvin had the comfort of knowing that Chancellor E. E. Ellinwood, general counsel for the Phelps Dodge Corp (copper), had called the meeting with reluctance. The regents deadlocked on Dr. Marvin's reappointment and those who voted with Chancellor Ellinwood for reappointment had the bad sense to hold up the appointments of other faculty members. It was a most dismal charivari of pedagogical politics. And after the gubernatorial primaries, Governor George Wylie Paul Hunt of Arizona, ex-officio a member of the board of regents and a winner at the polls despite opposition from Chancellor Ellin wood, called another investigation.

When drawling, sunburned youths from Phoenix, Globe and Flagstaff went back to their classes last September they found a Dr. Marvin shorn of power. With Governor Hunt's vote swaying the balance, the regents had constituted themselves executors of the university with Dr. Marvin retained merely as agent. Governor Hunt won the November elections, was in a position to appoint anti-Marvin regents in the places of pro-Marvinites when their terms ran out. Dr. Marvin, knowing well what would happen at the next regents' meeting, resigned. With him resigned Chancellor Ellinwood and the three Marvinite regents.

Dr. Marvin is now the country's youngest onetime college president --but all is not well in the land of little rain, all is not peace at the university where polo is a year-round sport. There is a report that all but two of the university faculty will resign in June. Onetime Chancellor Ellinwood has joined his faction in the lower house of the Legislature to fight Governor Hunt.

Feudal Delaware

The State of Delaware did more thinking about public education last week than it had done for eight years. For eight years, whenever a question of public education arose, Delaware had said: "Let Pierre duPont do it." But last fortnight, Pierre duPont, tired of "doing it." Pierre duPont, having personally contributed some $5,000,000 to build public schools and support public instruction in Delaware, now beheld an apathetic legislature about to let public instruction languish for lack of state funds. Pierre duPont made statements:

"I believe the state should appropriate at least $2,000,000 annually to improve the school buildings throughout the state. If the request for this amount is pared it will be a mistake. . . . I hope what I have done will be an example. . . . The next Legislature may make me change my mind, but my present attitude is that I'm through.

In naming a figure he thought his state should spend on public education, Mr. duPont did not speak as an inert and dogmatic philanthropist. The duPonts, almost dynastic, are always dynamic. Pierre Samuel duPont,* born 1870, Wartime President of the E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co., now Chairman of its board; recently President of the General Motors Corp., now Chairman of its board, is a financial magnate who is as active as he is important. It is said that Judge Gary would speedily resign as president of the U. S. Steel Corp. if Pierre duPont would take his place.

Descendant and namesake of Pierre Samuel duPont de Nemours,* who fled from France to escape the guillotine and who had a habit of thinking in terms of empires and republics, the Pierre S. duPont of today seems to have all the qualities of his illustrious ancestor and some that are distinctively his own. He is tall and heavy domed, with calm eyes and unagitable lips--a massive, impassive, impressive man. He can make money perhaps more easily than anyone in the U. S. but lets many a chance pass. Instead, he tries to make citizens.

Some years ago Pierre duPont conceived that his native state might be made into an ideal commonwealth. His cousin, U. S. Senator Thomas Coleman duPont, was already building a concrete highway the entire length of the state as a personal contribution to the new civilization. Pierre took education as his domain. He began by putting about $2,000,000 into small Delaware College, giving the impetus to what has become the modern University of Delaware. In 1918 he founded the Service Citizens, a society designed to investigate Delaware's social needs and minister thereunto. Thus far the Service Citizens have used $720,000 in their multiform activities--schooling of aliens; developing community organizations in 320 rural school districts; bringing the average daily attendance of pupils from 90 days a year in 1918 to 148 days in 1924; establishing libraries in country schoolhouses; publishing books of nationwide value on Negro educational problems and the failure of the one-teacher white school in Delaware and elsewhere; starting a teacher-training department in the state university; financing the Foreign Study Group of U. S. undergraduates (it now includes 18 institutions) through which students spend their junior year in France; testing a traveling dental unit and medical inspection of rural schools; standardizing vital statistics under the state Board of Health; operating an employment bureau in conjunction with the Federal Government; tuberculin testing of cattle; co-operative marketing a,nd a score or more of social and civic functions which had been neglected or overlooked.

In 1919 Pierre duPont became a member of the State Board of Education and forthwith organized the Delaware School Auxiliary Association to demonstrate what good schools should be and how much they would cost. He is the one U. S. multi-millionaire who has made the public schools his hobby. This one experiment has cost him $5,000,000. In order to free the state of the expense of a dual system, Mr. duPont undertook to build all of the Negro schools. Thus far he has erected 86 schools for Negroes. At present he is building a Negro High School in Wilmington which will cost $860,000, exclusive of the land contributed by the city. Also he has built and given to the state 20 schools for white pupils, and has pooled his money with local districts in erecting 12 schools. Guided by the best experts available, Mr. duPont has provided model accommodations for 17,300 of Delaware's 40,000 school children. Up to the present the state has hardly lifted a finger toward new public school construction and hence the crisis.

But how could Delaware do anything with an empty treasury? In 1925, Pierre duPont, who had been handling a billion dollar corporation, accepted the tax commissionership for his small commonwealth of 240,000 population. The treasury was empty because the tax office was not adequately organized and the taxes were not collected strictly. In less than two years he has accumulated not only enough money for the maintenance of an up-to-date public school system but has reported to the legislature now in session between two and three million dollars cash surplus in the school fund available for immediate school construction on the pay-as-you-go basis, with no resort to state bonding.

Here is where he crossed the tracks of the politicians. Delaware has a $3-per-capita filing fee or tax. If this tax were abolished 100,000 people would cheer for the politicians. It would also leave the bulk of the income tax to be paid by about 680 well-to-do people in Wilmington and environs (many of them duPonts). As a vote-pulling measure it might be tremendously popular. Pierre duPont could go on putting millions of dollars into the school system while most of the beneficiaries would never feel a burden.

So Mr. duPont called a halt. He felt his commonwealth was becoming a feudal state. Delaware was becoming too dependent upon private beneficence for her public works. Generosity had begun to eat into the self-respect of citizenship. Public conscience seemed to need time to breathe and reassert itself. Huge dividends from DuPont, General Motors and other sources were diverted from the channels they have taken for a decade while Pierre duPont sat back to see what would become of a hobby as dear to him as Bach symphonies and horticulture. Philanthropy, he must have reflected, can be a bigger gamble than poker, and often without the fun.

*The other outstanding duPont is Senator Thomas Coleman, born in Louisville, Ky., in 1863. He was a surveyor and mining engineer before he moved to Wilmington where he served as head of the family powder factory, 1902-1915. Banking and politics followed. He entered the Senate by appointment of Governor Denny in 1921, to fill a term expiring the next year; was elected to serve 1925-31. Poor health has lately prevented his frequenting Washington. *Famed economist, educator, statesman. He conveyed Thomas Jefferson's challenge for Louisiana to Napoleon in 1802. At Jefferson's request he drew up a plan of national education for the U. S.