Elevation of Suzzallo

One night four years ago, on a hill above the black water of Seattle's Lake Washington, gyrating torchlights shed their glow upon the heads and shoulders of hundreds of young men and women, undergraduates of the University of Washington. They were vigorously and visibly protesting against the enforced resignation of President Henry Suzzallo, who, the young men and women told each other, was being dismissed without a hearing from Washington by Governor Roland H. Hartley (TIME, Oct. 18, 1926). As Wartime wage umpire of the National Labor Board, President Suzzallo had sponsored the eight-hour day for lumbermen, a policy irksome to timber-owning Governor Hartley. Technical cause for the rift was a disagreement about educational policy, but President Suzzallo left Washington in a torchlit blaze of personal glory. Last week he was given as distinguished an educational post as the nation affords: the presidency of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, in which he succeeded Henry Smith Pritchett, 73, co-founder and president of the Foundation since its inception 25 years ago.

When Andrew Carnegie, believing that "the least rewarded of all the professions is that of the teacher," wanted someone to direct the organization which was to be endowed with $10,000,000 worth of his U. S. Steel Corp. bonds, he chose his good friend President Pritchett of M. I. T. To President Pritchett, astronomer as well as educator, Mr. Carnegie applied his celebrated industrial maxim: "Find an efficient man and enable him to do the work." For years President Pritchett was not only Andrew Carnegie's next door neighbor in Manhattan, but his chief philanthropic adviser and severest critic. To President Pritchett once remarked Charitarian Carnegie: "You really don't realize how valuable you are to me. You are one of the few people who tell me when I am wrong."

As the years wore on, more millions were supplied to carry out Mr. Carnegie's design. Originally intended simply to pension superannuated pedagogs, the Foundation began a campaign of thoroughgoing educational research. To date it has published 50 fat, dun-colored bulletins and reports. President Pritchett had to bear the brunt of hostile criticism when, in 1918, the Foundation ceased giving further pensions, inaugurated instead the Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association (assets: $18,992,018) which insures the beneficiary at cost. In the U. S. and Canada 8,132 provident pundits are now guaranteed old-age annuities.

President Suzzallo, who has been a Carnegie Trustee since 1919, was once (1926) board chairman. He will still have the benefit of President Emeritus Pritchett's experience when he takes office in August. In addition to the Carnegie presidency, Dr. Suzzallo has other important chores which will keep him occupied for some time to come. He has not yet finished his work of coordinating the educational activities of the Government as director of President Hoover's advisory Committee on Education for which he temporarily dropped a study of U. S. graduate schools for the Carnegie Foundation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.