Taft on Feather-Heads

Chief Justice William Howard Taft last week spoke about education to members of Psi Upsilon, his Yale fraternity, who were convening in Washington. Roundly did Mr. Taft rebuke undergraduates who went to college for social reasons and those who, once there, overstressed the extracurricular.

Said he: "When a man grows old as I have, he then feels like resorting to profanity, as he ought not to do, at the misconception of life and the use of the universities by feather-headed young men that don't look ahead to know the opportunities they have and to appreciate these opportunities. ... I don't want to criticize athletics or a great many extra-curriculum duties, but I think there is a great deal of time and money wasted on these things. . . . We must get our public and private schools down to a simpler curriculum."

Girard's Day

Last week, many hundred alumni returned to the campus of Girard College, Philadelphia's great school for orphans.

Ninety-eight years ago Stephen Girard, the college founder, whose motto was "To rest is to rust," had died. Alumni, whenever they can, go back to Girard for Founder's Day.

But not all the Girard alumni ambled, as they usually do, placidly and gregariously about the halls of their undergraduate years. Several seemed perturbed, some even seemed alarmed last week. What disturbed them was a rumor that their college endowment--77 millions, or eight millions less than Harvard's (greatest U. S. endowment)--might fall into political hands and be spirited away.

Such alumni pointed to Girard Trustee Francis Shunk Brown, an attorney who has often friended Pennsylvania's U. S. Senator-suspect William Scott Vare, and to Albert M. Greenfield, a realtor recently elected to the Board of Trustees. Realtor Greenfield has been a large contributor to Vare election funds. Trustees of Girard are elected by the Judges of the Common Pleas Court, whom Senator-suspect Vare reputedly controls. If the Judges should have occasion to elect more Vare men to be Girard trustees, what, wondered the alarmed alumni, might happen to the huge Girard endowment?

Calmer alumni pointed to Girard trustees like Lawyer Owen Josephus Roberts, whom President Coolidge chose as special Federal prosecutor in the Oil Scandals (TIME, Feb. 25, 1924), and William H. Kingsley, a Girard alumnus. They felt sure that trustees like these would keep intact the Girard endowment, even supposing that Senator-suspect Vare might be covetous, which seemed to them impractical if not incredible.

Born in Bordeaux, France, Stephen Girard arrived in the U. S. as a ship's cabin boy. At odd times he was merchant, mariner, banker. When he died he was considered one of the richest men in the U. S. Blind in his right eye from an early accident, he used, in the 1820's, to wear his hair long, and tied into a short pigtail. Always he wore a white neckcloth and a Revolution-style coat. He left his fortune to charity and to his college. His beautiful insane wife died before him.

So meticulous was his will that he specified even the balconies and kinds of doors which Girard College should have. Because he wished "to keep the tender minds of orphans . . . free from the excitements which clashing doctrines and sectarian controversies are so apt to produce," he enjoined that no ecclesiastic might teach at the college.

By Pennsylvania law an orphan is a fatherless child. By the terms of the Girard will, Philadelphia male orphans have precedence in entering the college, may be followed, in order, by orphans from Pennsylvania, New York, New Orleans. But so many orphans has Pennsylvania that no New York City or New Orleans boy has yet been able to attend Girard. There are now 1,667 boys in Girard. When each is graduated he will leave Girard with a practical education, three new suits, six shirts, six pairs of socks, one hat, three pairs of shoes, two neckties, four suits of underwear, two suits of pajamas, one raincoat, one overcoat, one suitcase, one trunk.

Chief Vollmer's Department

In Berkeley, Calif., where towers the great University of California, certain residents have sometimes said: "Crime is on the decrease. Well, here's to crime." Such frivolous toasts would not be proposed in August Vollmer's presence, but it is to him that should go credit for Berkeley's low percentage of crime. August Vollmer is Berkeley's Chief of Police. He has never been to college. Nevertheless, he was appointed, last week, Professor of Police Administration at the University of Chicago to which Yale's Law School Dean Robert Maynard Hutchins, 30, has just been elected President (TIME, May 6).

In Berkeley, people wondered if crime would now begin to increase. At the University of Chicago, "the entire resources of the University, not only in social sciences, but in the natural and physical sciences as well, including physics, chemistry, medicine, psychiatry and anthropology," waited to assist Chief Vollmer, whose new duties begin October i.

Professor Vollmer's department will study police administration in the U. S.

and Europe, formulate standards of police practice. His courses will be correlated to existing courses in psychology, criminology. Vollmer graduates who become policemen will be courteous, gentle, intelligent.-- Vollmer graduates who become chiefs of police will be scientific. They will allow no punching in the basements of precinct headquarters, they will frown on "third degrees." Instead of third degrees they will use Professor Vollmer's famed "lying machine"--a combined stethoscope and sphygmanometer which records by the quivering of a malicious needle the pulse-acceleration, the delicate increase of blood pressure, usually attending an unpracticed lie.

Although less famed in the East than New York's Police Commissioner Grover Aloysius Whalen, Chief Vollmer in the West is considered "the greatest U. S.

police chief." England's Assistant Secretary of the Home Office Arthur Lewis Dixon recently hailed him as "the one American policeman and criminologist respected in Europe." W:hen the Illinois Association of Criminal Justice turned to studying the Chicago police. Chief Voll mer was consulted. When Detroit, Los Angeles, Havana, San Diego reorganized their police forces. Chief Vollmer helped.

The Chicago Police Administration Department will not be the only one of its kind in the U. S. Last week, Northwestern University announced that it, too, would offer similar courses.