Social Animal

Harvard's long-legged Yankee President James Bryant Conant is rapidly proving himself as able a money-getter as his canny predecessor, Abbott Lawrence Lowell. While pocketing with one hand the $2,000,000 gift of Gloveman Lucius Nathan Littauer for a Graduate School of Public Administration (TIME, Dec. 23), he dashed off with the other an appeal for Harvard's Three Hundredth Anniversary Fund. The Fund will be used partly for fat, new scholarships, partly to establish University Professorships. The "roving professors" may work where they choose, breaking down the artificial barriers between fields. Rich Harvardmen were invited to give $25,000 for a scholarship. Very rich Harvardmen were invited to put up $500,000 to found a University Professorship. Last week Thomas William Lament, No. 2 partner and traditional spokesman of J. P. Morgan & Co., proved himself a very rich Harvardman. To Dr. Conant he wrote: "I am glad to give . . . $500,000 as a foundation for one of the University Professorships. It would be a great satisfaction if the Corporation were able to call to this chair a scholar pre-eminent in the field of political economy. This vital subject has to do, I take it, with the fundamental principles which govern human affairs, as they concern the State and as they concern individuals. Political economy concerns itself as much with the behavior of man as a social animal as it does with any known laws of industry and trade and agriculture and finance. And when I speak of fundamental principles I do not mean old principles or new ones, or conservative principles any more than radical principles, but rather those principles which take into account the experiences of the past and are at the same time alive to the needs and aspirations of the present."

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