2 The Depression Calls Forth Out-State Centers: The Thirties

The collapse of the stock market in late October 1929 marked the beginning of the severest economic depression the United States has experienced. Soon the disaster in Wall Street sent economic shock waves rippling across the country. Wisconsin’s citizens shared fully this distress. For example, the state’s manufacturing sector experienced a sharp decline in income, from $616 million in 1929 to just $173 million in 1932. Employment in manufacturing necessarily sagged, falling to 179,365 in 1932 compared to 309,397 in 1929. And workers lucky enough to keep a job suffered a twenty-five percent cut in their wages. These economic dislocations triggered a steep increase in the relief load throughout the state. Milwaukee County experienced the largest increase; in January 1930 the county’s relief roll listed 1,000 families, by mid-1933 twenty percent of its families needed assistance.

Conditions were no better in the rural areas, although farmers may have been a little better able to secure food and shelter. Farmers’ property taxes rose sharply (compared to ability to pay) as local governments struggled to meet rising relief costs. Farm prices plummeted fifty-seven percent between 1929 and 1932, while the prices farmers paid for commodities fell only twenty-nine percent. Total farm income declined almost by half in those three years.^[1]

These adverse economic developments, of course, had a negative effect on the educational establishment in the state. During the 1920s many rural areas had constructed free union high schools under the terms of a 1921 enabling act. Still, the urban districts remained far ahead in providing these schools–in 1930 the number of potential secondary school students was roughly 50/50 between urban and rural areas, but just 31,836 were enrolled in the rural union high schools compared to 77,779 in city high schools. Working teenagers could seek further education in the vocational high schools, which could contract with University Extension to provide specialized continuing education courses. During the 1930s enrollments at all levels of education slumped because families lacked the resources to send their students to secondary school or to college.^[2]

Enrollment in the Milwaukee Center’s college credit classes defied the general trend and surged twenty-nine percent from January 1930 to January 1931.^[3] Much of this increase no doubt occurred because students and their families could save a good deal of money by beginning at the Center, compared to living in Madison. A bill unsuccessfully introduced by Assemblyman John Ermene, a Milwaukee Socialist, in the 1931 session would have saved Milwaukee students even more money. Ermene’s measure would have reduced the Center tuition from $75.00 to $24.50 per semester, the Madison rate. Ermene noted that the Extension students paid eighty percent of the cost of instruction while Madison students supported just six percent. Ermene argued that his measure was merely a matter of equity and he offered the opinion that its passage would enable many poorer families to secure at least two years of college for their students. President Glenn Frank thoroughly undercut support for Ermene’s bill when he estimated that the state would have to add $200,000 to the University’s budget to make up the lost revenue.^[4]

The Center’s sharp increase in enrollment provoked criticism from Marquette University and the Milwaukee Normal School. No doubt jealousy fueled some of the attacks, but more likely fear for their own institutions’ survival triggered most of the accusations. Both asserted that Extension had plans to expand the Center’s college operation into four full years. Extension Dean Chester Snell publicly denied this allegation and noted that the Attorney General’s opinion, rendered during the building project dispute in 1925, clearly ruled out that option on constitutional grounds. Snell also pointed out that no student could earn more than half the required credits for graduation in non-residence courses, according to a rule adopted by the Madison faculty in 1906.^[5]

By 1932 concern for Wisconsin’s youth intensified. Principals of the public high schools knew that their graduates faced bleak prospects, while the directors of the vocational high schools labored to meet the divergent needs of their young day students. In March and April of 1932, at the suggestion of State Superintendent John Callahan, an ad hoc state committee met to discuss the problem and to propose solutions. In addition to Callahan, George Hambrecht, Director of the State Board of Vocational Education, Secretary E. G. Doudna of the Board of Regents of Normal Schools, Dean Snell of the Extension Division, and observers from the High Schools Principals Association attended these meetings.^[6]

By late spring the group produced Educational Plans for High School Graduates, a bulletin which reported the results of the committee’s work. The authors noted that 23,000 youths had graduated from high school in 1932; normally forty percent would have continued their education and most of the rest would have found employment.^[7] But these were not normal times. Local officials were becoming increasingly concerned about the rising number of idle young people and about the effect of idleness upon morale. Providing further educational opportunities, the authors wrote, would both reduce the youths’ idleness and maintain their morale. But how could this be accomplished?

In the section of the bulletin Dean Snell authored, he pointed out the many services the Extension Division could offer to fill these needs. Thanks to the 1911 law, the vocational schools could contract with Extension to secure instructors for both credit and non-credit courses. Another statute permitted the city high schools to establish part-time college classes, for which Extension could also provide the teachers. And the Division’s broad array of correspondence courses provided diverse options to the students. Snell suggested that a local school board might wish to provide a room where several correspondence course students could gather to do their lessons, although he cautioned that no assistance should be offered to them.^[8] Throughout the summer of 1932 meetings were held at each of the State Normal Schools. At these sessions, committee members explained the options to local school officials and introduced the Extension field representatives, who could help them make the necessary arrangements.

In the fall of 1932 the Extension Division experienced a significant increase in enrollment in its freshman level correspondence courses. The largest number enrolled in English, but history, foreign language and mathematics courses also recorded many more students. Consequently, in the spring of 1933 Extension employed seven English instructors who travelled from Madison to instruct classes in twenty cities.^[9] When this experiment turned out favorably, the vocational school principals at Antigo and Sheboygan made inquiries whether a complete freshman program could be offered in their facilities.

Chester Allen, Extension’s Director of Field Organization, relayed these inquiries to Dean Snell. From the outset, both men were enthusiastic about the potential of on-site freshman courses to help the Division weather its looming fiscal crisis. Snell immediately consulted with President Frank and Registrar Frank O. Holt about the idea. The two of them objected strongly to the proposal on the grounds that such out-state classes might further reduce Madison’s enrollment. Snell, however, decided to ignore these objections because he felt the 1911 law required that Extension fill requests from the vocational high schools. So, Allen and his field representatives very quietly set up freshman courses in six cities for the fall of 1933.^[10] These were the first Freshman Extension Centers to operate outside of Milwaukee. In the next two years, seven more cities opened Freshman Centers.^[11]

Each Freshman Center was a lean operation which offered just two to four courses per semester, depending upon the number of students and their needs. English was almost always offered. The remaining courses were selected from among History, Geography, and Spanish. Geography became the laboratory science course by default because a “lab” could be set up in a standard classroom and did not require special equipment. A few students also enrolled in one or two correspondence courses to supplement these meager offerings. Sometimes an instructor requested some books from Extension’s lending library and these volumes became the Center’s very little library.^[12]

The 1933 legislature unintentionally gave the Extension Centers a boost when it enacted Assembly Bill 922, a measure which appropriated $30,000 for each year of the 1933-1935 biennium to pay the tuition for unemployed persons for Extension courses. Dean Snell had given powerful testimony of the necessity for the scholarships when he noted that the “army” of young men roaming the state and nation swelled each month. And, he further observed, more and more adults were also joining these ranks when their resources and prospects gave out. Snell argued that the money would allow hundreds to be occupied “with constructive tasks and thus prevent individual and community morale from breaking down.”^[13]

The bill split the appropriation into thirds: $10,000 each was allocated to 1) correspondence courses outside of Milwaukee County, 2) fees for Extension classes outside Milwaukee County, and 3) students enrolled in Milwaukee County. To qualify a person had to be age 21 and employed less than fifteen hours per week. Any person receiving relief qualified. Young people between the ages of 18 and 21 could receive the scholarships if their parents were unemployed. On August 1, 1933, the Extension Division began accepting applications. In a little more than two months, on October 11, Extension announced that all the funds had been awarded. A follow-up study for 1933 showed that 2,452 Extension students had received an average of $12.87 each. The largest number of recipients (1,029) attended out-state classes, including the college courses at the Centers. When not all of the Milwaukee County money was claimed, Extension received permission to transfer the surplus to the other groups.^[14]

During the spring of 1934 the County Normal Schools in Mayville (Dodge County), Wausau (Marathon County) and Wisconsin Rapids (Wood County) contracted with Extension to provide a full freshman program in their facilities in the fall. When the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune praised this arrangement, someone brought the article to President Frank’s attention and he censured Dean Snell and ordered a halt. Frank said his concern was for legalities–could Extension enter into a contract with any county normal without prior consent from State Superintendent Callahan? But even after Callahan gave his blessing, the President stalled. Chester Allen believed that the real basis of the delay was jealousy over Extension’s ability to find new sources of revenue in the midst of the depression. Only after the three principals had written a pleading letter did Frank, on August 14, 1934, finally give his go-ahead.^[15]

The cost to operate a typical Freshman Center program in a vocational high school was $1,500.00 per semester (25 students X 12 credits X $5.00 per credit). But the students often only paid $25.00 per semester out of their pockets, which generated $625.00 for the contracting school. State aid paid forty percent of the cost of instruction, or $600.00. That left just $275.00 for the community to raise. Most school boards paid this sum, justifying the expense by noting the economic advantages to the community of having its young people begin college at home. Each student, for instance, saved $400.00 in living expenses by attending a Center. In addition, surveys suggested that the instructors spent about $300.00 in each Extension Center community for meals, hotel rooms and other expenses during the course of a semester. These economic advantages created a good deal of enthusiasm for the program throughout the state.^[16]

The Extension Division made a little money from each Center. Instructors received, on the average, $2,000 per year, plus $800.00 for travel expenses. This $2,800.00 represented the total instructional costs for a typical freshman program because the contracting school provided the facility, janitorial services, and utilities. Thus Extension cleared at least $200.00 per year from each of its Freshman Centers. This was a significant sum during the depression years and it enabled the Division to continue other services, such as correspondence courses, even though they operated at a slight deficit.^[17]

The depression compelled the University to adopt some unorthodox fiscal procedures. The second semester had barely begun in Wausau when, in late January 1933, the town’s banks announced they would close for a thirty day “bank holiday.” Of course this meant that many students’ fee payment checks could not be cashed until the banks reopened. Then, in March 1933, newly installed President Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed a national bank holiday to provide time for bank examiners to sort out the healthy from failing institutions. Extension, along with Madison, really had no choice but to continue the classes and hope that all of the checks could eventually be redeemed. Later that same year Dean Snell proposed to the regents a partial payment plan which would allow students to pay one-third of their fees when they enrolled, one-third in thirty days, and the last one-third in sixty days. Snell estimated the losses would be less than one percent and that the plan would mean $15,000 in income for Extension that would otherwise be lost. The regents approved. The field representatives who set up the freshman classes also regularly accepted post-dated checks from students. Chester Allen reported that not one cent was lost through this practice, and he was convinced that Extension earned inestimable good will by allowing this courtesy.^[18]

But creative financial arrangements for students did not solve the University’s basic problem–there just was not enough money to balance the budget. Each state budget through the mid-thirties decreased funds both to Madison and to Extension, which still received a separate allocation. Extension experienced an especially drastic change in its budget. At the beginning of the decade, the state provided about fifty-five percent of the operating budget and the remainder came from course fees. By the end of the thirties, the Division was compelled to earn almost sixty-five percent of its total revenue.^[19]

The extra income earned via the freshman courses did not entirely offset the reduction in state funds and the decline in fee income in many of Extension’s programs. Because the out-state Centers operated on a pay-as-you-go basis, they were not affected when the inevitable cuts occurred. But the Milwaukee Center definitely felt the crunch. By 1932 its program had grown to include a full array of sophomore courses, except for some pre-professional programs like engineering. Consequently, the number of permanent faculty in Milwaukee had also increased and some of them had earned tenure. These instructors shared fully in the so-called salary waiver program imposed in three consecutive years, beginning with the 1932-33 academic year. The theory behind the salary waivers was that the money voluntarily given up now would be restored when the state’s finances improved. The restoration, of course, never occurred.

The salary waivers in Extension amounted to eighteen percent. All of the Milwaukee personnel and Extension’s permanent employees throughout the state had their compensation reduced by this amount. In addition, the number of faculty at the Milwaukee Center was slashed by fifteen percent to bring its operating expenses in line with fee revenue. Despite the obvious pain these belt tightening measures produced, the Milwaukee Center retained and even attracted new, highly qualified faculty members because conditions in Wisconsin were far better than in many other states.^[20]

During 1932 Dean Snell successfully warded off an attempt to combine Extension’s and the University’s budgets into one account. This move was proposed to the regents by President Frank, at the suggestion of the Business Office. Alarm bells immediately went off in Extension, where many believed that this was a bold scheme to get control of the Division’s revenue so that it could be used to support Madison’s programs. W.H. Lighty, the Director of the Department of Extension Teaching, drafted a long memorandum in which he recalled that Dr. Charles McCarthy had insisted upon a provision for a separate budget in the 1907 bill which had revived General Extension. Lighty also noted that, even though the legislature no longer made a separate appropriation for Extension, the regents had made and had kept a “gentlemen’s agreement” to keep Extension’s account isolated from the University’s budget.^[21]

Snell asked President Frank to put this issue on the agenda of the Deans Council. In the Council Snell campaigned vigorously against merging the accounts.^[22] Apparently the anti-Extension prejudice on the Hill now proved an advantage. Several of the residence deans objected to the budget merger proposal because they feared their schools’ funds might somehow get transferred to General Extension! Given Extension’s brisk resistance and a lack of broad support among top administrators, President Frank and the regents allowed the resolution quietly to die.^[23]

Tensions had been gradually building between Dean Snell and President Frank. Snell had quietly defied the President by starting the out-state Freshman Extension Centers and by later contracting with several county normals to offer the same program in their schools. The continual battles over the budget also strained their relationship. From time to time Madison deans complained about Snell’s direct contact with legislators during state budget hearings, a privilege which they did not have.

During the budget building process in early 1934 Snell made what turned out to be a fatal error. He recommended, apparently without any consultation, that the four assistant professors at the Milwaukee Center be given one year contracts rather than the traditional three year agreements. The four affected faculty quickly complained to their union–Local 253, American Federation of Teachers–about Snell’s arbitrary decision. The Union’s executive committee set up a Fact Finding Committee to investigate the complaints against Snell.

After taking testimony from several Milwaukee faculty, the Union forwarded its report to President Frank during the summer of 1934. The report was highly critical of Snell. The Fact Finding Committee charged that Snell had made many arbitrary changes in the administration at the Milwaukee Center in order to gain more personal control and that he had granted salary increases only to faculty who supported his policies. L.E. Drake, the author of the report, described Snell as an “autocratic dictator,” who terrorized his staff and who completely lacked the “human quality” essential in an administrator. Drake stressed the recommended one year contracts to the assistant professors as proof of these general allegations.^[24]

President Frank apparently kept his own counsel about the union’s report until October 1934 when, in executive session, the Regents voted to set up its own three-man committee to investigate the Extension Division. Regent Vice President Harold Wilkie of Madison, who presided over this session, made himself chairman of the group. Later, accusations were made that this decision had been deliberately timed to occur during the absence of Regent President Fred Clausen, who presumably would have opposed undertaking the investigation. The Regent Committee operated entirely in closed sessions, taking testimony both in Milwaukee and Madison. When Snell finally learned that an inquiry into his Division was underway, he protested the secrecy and demanded to be told the objective of the investigation. Wilkie informed Snell that no charges had been lodged against him and that the probe was of a general nature.^[25]

During its March 12-13, 1935, meeting the Board of Regents unanimously voted not to renew Snell’s contract when it expired July first. However, the decision was not publicly announced so that President Frank could deliver the bad news and urge Snell quietly to resign. Snell asked for time to think about his response. According to Chester Allen, Snell’s initial reaction was to go quietly, but gradually he became incensed over how badly he had been treated by President Frank and the regents.^[26] Consequently, Snell refused to resign and resolved to fight his dismissal. Snell’s combativeness compelled the regents to reaffirm their decision and to make public the reasons for terminating his contract. The regents asserted that Snell’s ouster was not entirely a response to the complaints from Milwaukee and that ample reasons existed for their action wholly unconnected to that Center’s operation.^[27] Nevertheless, the press accounts of Snell’s dismissal zeroed in on the allegations made by the Milwaukee teachers union as the real basis for the regents’ action.^[28]

This conflict in the University attracted the attention of the legislators and added fuel to the fires of political controversy. Philip LaFollette, younger son of Fighting Bob, had led his Progressive party to victory in the 1934 gubernatorial and Assembly races but the Democrats had retained control of the Senate. Early in 1935 the Senate Democrats seized upon alleged subversive activity on the Madison campus and set up a special investigating committee to look into the University’s affairs. The Progressive majority in the Assembly decisively refused to make this a joint committee and labeled the Democrat’s maneuver an attempt to embarrass the LaFollette administration, whose close ties to the University were well known. The Senate investigative committee immediately became known as the Brunette Committee, after its chairman, E. F. Brunette, a Democrat from Green Bay. Brunette and his four colleagues had just started the hearings when the Snell affair broke. They quickly decided to invite Snell to testify because, in addition to looking into communistic activities, they were empowered to probe “other irregularities” in the University of Wisconsin.^[29]

Snell’s account of the events that led to his dismissal totally contradicted the regents’ and President Frank’s explanations. Snell testified that he had gone confidentially to the President early in 1934 to tell him that he wished to dismiss four members of the Milwaukee Center faculty for improper conduct and immorality. Frank told him to proceed. Then, somehow, this information reached the affected persons and they mounted a campaign to discredit Snell. The alleged ringleader of the counter attack was Colin Welles, the son-in-law of former regent Meta Berger and the head of the Milwaukee County federation of labor unions. Welles enlisted Mrs. Berger in the fight and, according to Snell, she went directly to Frank and used her influence to turn him against the Dean of Extension. Snell told the Senators that he was confident he would still have his job if he had been willing to wink at the “irregularities” in the Berger family relationships. He also stated that Mrs. Berger had held a grudge against him ever since he had refused to put several members of her family on permanent contract in Milwaukee. For a while Snell had acceded to her requests for employment, but he had eventually tired of this “family job plan.”^[30]

President Frank, of course, related a very different story when he appeared before the Brunette Committee. Frank carefully outlined the defects he had found in Snell’s administrative style and recounted his repeated attempts to convince the Extension Dean to correct these deficiencies. In regard to the Berger family allegations, he said that Snell had not produced any evidence of impropriety or immorality among the Milwaukee faculty, despite many invitations to do so. The President defended vigorously the Berger family’s reputation and castigated Snell for his unsubstantiated allegations. Frank reiterated that Snell’s dismissal had resulted from many administrative problems that the regents’ investigating committee had turned up and not solely from the complaints made by the Milwaukee teachers’ union.^[31]

The Brunette Committee also called Regent Vice President Wilkie to the stand. In his first appearance Wilkie explained that Snell had been fired because he had lost the confidence of practically every leading educator in Wisconsin and of many co-workers in the Extension Division. The Dean had alienated all these people by being harsh, dictatorial, and petty in his relationships. For example, Snell had not allowed the Director of the Milwaukee Center, Professor Frank C. Purin, any real authority and required that Purin come to Madison for consultation before making any decision. Wilkie also scored Snell for his attempt to violate the University’s tenure procedures by giving the Milwaukee assistant professors only a one year contract.

In a second appearance, however, sharp questioning by the Brunette Committee compelled Wilkie to concede that “there was nothing in the testimony taken by the [regents’] committee to substantiate any of the charges.” Wilkie admitted that the regents, not Snell, had the final authority over faculty contracts and that, in any event, the Dean’s recommendation for the one year contracts for the Milwaukee Center assistant professors had never been formally presented to the Board. Dr. Purin, moreover, had told the regents that he had been hired to teach, not to administer, and that he wanted no more authority than he had received. Wilkie admitted, too, that two personnel cases Snell had allegedly handled unfairly had, in fact, been decided by other persons in the Extension Division.^[32]

“Snell Dismissal Was Unfair,” read part of the Capital Times headline announcing the findings of the Brunette Committee.^[33] The Committee’s report asserted that President Frank deliberately brought the charges of Local 253 to the Board of Regents when he knew Regent President Clausen was out of town and that Frank had told some people in Milwaukee the Snell would be “got” in October 1934. The legislators listed three reasons for a finding of unfairness. First, the regent investigators had purposely deceived Snell as to the nature of the inquiry. Second, Snell had not been informed of the charges against him. Third, the regents kept the hearings closed, so Snell had no opportunity to respond to his critics. In addition, the Brunette Committee assailed the regents for not keeping a record of their secret meetings; the Board’s secretary had admitted recreating some minutes from memory many months after one closed session and he grudgingly conceded that his recollections had been challenged by those who had attended the meeting. The report concluded that “to find a parallel we must go to the medieval inquisitions or to the present day Russia.”^[34] Needless to say, the regents rejected these findings and reaffirmed Snell’s dismissal.^[35]

University of Wisconsin Registrar Frank O. Holt was appointed Snell’s replacement. He assumed the office on July 1, 1935, but also continued to serve as Registrar for almost a year. Several members of the Extension administration viewed Holt’s appointment with suspicion because he had opposed the opening of the Freshman Centers and because he was generally viewed as being President Frank’s closest advisor and confidant. These men feared that Frank would now secure greater control over the Division, something which Snell had diligently resisted.^[36]

The Snell affair obviously caused a great deal of embarrassment for President Frank, the regents, and the University. Very soon Frank found himself under fire for mishandling it. Snell’s dismissal and the messy business with the Brunette Committee evidently convinced several people that the President had to go. Regent Harold Wilkie, who was elected president of the board in June 1935, orchestrated the campaign. The anti-Frank forces received a boost in January 1936 when five new members joined the Board of Regents, bringing the total of Philip LaFollette appointees to eleven of the fifteen members. In mid-1936 three Regents visited with President Frank to inform him that the Board desired his resignation. Frank agreed. But, a few days later, he vowed that he would fight his dismissal on the grounds that it was politically motivated by the LaFollettes and their Progressive allies.

As with Snell’s removal, this battle quickly turned nasty. The major allegation against the President was that he was a poor administrator, one who did not pay attention to necessary details. This defect, his detractors said, was compounded by his numerous and lengthy absences from the University during which he pursued his speaking and writing career. Zona Gale, who had played an instrumental role in bringing Frank to Wisconsin, defended him in the state and national press. The showdown occurred during the regents’ January 1937 meeting. Wilkie presented the case against the President, then Frank spoke in his own defense. A few minutes after he finished his plea, the Board voted eight to seven to immediately dismiss him. Thus ended the Glenn Frank administration.^[37]

The regents immediately initiated a search for a successor. The tremendous publicity surrounding both Snell’s and Frank’s dismissals certainly may have scared off some potential applicants. The search, however, moved rapidly along and in mid-1937 Clarence A. Dykstra was named President of the University of Wisconsin. Dykstra, a political scientist and historian, had taught for eleven years in various universities and then had worked in city government for seventeen years. At the time of his appointment, Dr. Dykstra was the city manager of Cincinnati, Ohio. Because of his expertise in politics and government, he served on over a dozen state and federal committees, commitments which he continued after he came to Madison. In contrast to his predecessor, Clarence Dykstra served a relatively uneventful seven year term as the chief executive of the University.^[38]

The intense political battles of the 1930s naturally reflected the distress many of Wisconsin’s citizens felt in the midst of the deep economic depression. It seemed to some that basic American values were being challenged as never before and they did not know what to do except strenuously to defend those values. Some also believed that anyone who would question even one of these “virtually sacred” values must be a communist bent on the overthrow of the entire American system.^[39]

Consequently, an academic critique of America’s institutions in the classroom sometimes placed the instructor in jeopardy. In one episode, Albert E. Crofts, a sociologist who taught in the Extension Centers in Green Bay, Manitowoc, and Fond du Lac, got himself into such serious controversy that he eventually resigned from the faculty. During a Green Bay class session Crofts blasted holding companies which controlled a large number of electrical power companies. Several employees of the Green Bay Power and Light Company happened to be enrolled in this class and they took serious exception to the instructor’s remarks. A bit later, in Fond du Lac, Crofts delivered a lecture on the issue of social control by pressure groups, among whom he included the Roman Catholic church. A visitor to this class, a graduate of Notre Dame, registered a strong protest with a local priest, who relayed it to Extension administration in Madison. Dean Holt sent a representative to Fond du Lac to look into the allegations. Many students, including several who were Catholic, rallied to Crofts’ defense. The priest, after visiting with Holt’s emissary, announced publicly that he would have no objection to Crofts continuing to teach at the Center. Nevertheless, Crofts decided to seek employment elsewhere when his contract with Extension expired.^[40]

In another case the Wausau American Legion Post demanded the dismissal of T. Harry Williams, an history instructor. On November 11, 1936, Williams delivered the annual Armistice Day address to the assembled Wausau High School students and, during the course of his speech, described Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as “the finest example of propaganda ever expressed in America.”^[41] When the Legionnaires met that evening all the talk focused on the report of Williams’ speech in the Wausau Record Herald. The men decided to demand Williams dismissal, at the very least he should not be allowed to teach another class in Wausau. The next day E. A. Holm, the Director of the Wausau Vocational School where the Extension classes were held, announced that he would not allow Williams to hold his classes on November 13. Marshall Graff of Appleton, the District Extension Representative, also denounced Williams and said that Holm’s decision had been approved by phone by Dean Holt. For the next several days, newspapers across the state carried accounts of affair drawn from the Record Herald’s ongoing coverage.^[42]

Williams stoutly defended his remarks, claiming that he had been quoted out of context and observing that every political leader uses propaganda in winning support for his policies. Williams asked the Record Herald to print the entire text of his speech and allow the readers to judge whether he had tarnished President Lincoln’s reputation. Meanwhile, the University’s History Department had initiated its own inquiry. It sent Bessie Edsall, who also taught Extension Center history courses, to meet with the Wausau school officials. She concluded that Williams had in fact been misquoted and that the local officials had acted with haste and undue emotion in deciding to terminate Williams’ contract in Wausau. Even so, Dean Holt announced that Williams would not be returning to Wausau but would continue his other classes in Merrill, Rhinelander and Antigo. In a few days, however, Holt reversed himself when the History Department absolutely refused to appoint a successor to Williams at Wausau. The Department repeated that Williams had been both misquoted and quoted out of context and warned that he could seek redress in the courts for violations of his First Amendment rights if he was not reinstated. Williams also received strong support from his Wausau students, who stood to lose their credits if the impasse was not settled. The Capital Times blamed the whole affair on “Witch Hunters Over Rib Mountain” who were “old moss-backed reactionaries.” At the end of November the Record Herald carried a joint announcement by the Extension Division and the Wausau Board of Vocational Education that Williams would return to his classes the next day. Thus the “Williams affair” quietly ended.^[43]

During the 1936-37 academic year, S. I. Hayakawa, a Canadian of Japanese extraction who taught English in Rhinelander, Merrill, and Wausau, was a victim of prejudice. After he had been employed, the Extension Division field representative, Marshall Graff, encountered much resistance to a “foreigner” teaching English to white students. In addition, some complained that a foreigner ought not be hired when good American teachers remained unemployed. Invariably the local boards said that they had no objection to Hayakawa but they feared their communities would not be so open minded. Near the end of the second semester Graff conducted a survey of the three communities and found that, especially in Wausau, the resistance to retaining Hayakawa was strong. Graff recommended that Hayakawa not be reappointed. After consultation, Dean Holt appointed Hayakawa for one more year to a circuit where there was little or no outspoken opposition to him. Holt forthrightly admitted to Hayakawa that the anti-alien bias “out in the state” made his further employment a problem. In this instance, Extension clearly compromised in the face of overt racism.^[44]

The instructors who taught in the Freshman Centers came primarily from the Madison Graduate School and the Milwaukee Center. Those from Milwaukee faced a layoff if they did not accept an assignment to travel to the hinterlands. These professors were augmented as necessary with high school teachers, qualified housewives, and local professionals. In all instances the Madison departments maintained control over the appointments and the evaluation of Extension’s college credit class faculty.^[45] The History Department regularly conducted inspection tours of the out-state classes to assess the quality of instruction and the morale of its instructors. The departmental visitors reported that faculty morale was pretty low because the Extension Center historians were isolated and had no opportunity to interact with colleagues. To remedy this, they recommended that each Extension history teacher receive one expense-paid research trip to Madison each month. The History Department also decided that it would limit the appointments of its graduate students in the Centers to three years. The other Madison departments were not nearly as active in keeping tabs on their Freshman Center classes and apparently did not adopt the three-year maximum appointment rule.^[46]

Because they travelled to three or four cities, Extension Center instructors were called circuit riders and itinerants. For example, in 1934 Howard Blackenburg, a historian who lived in Antigo, taught classes in the Antigo Vocational School on Monday and Friday mornings, travelled to Rhinelander on Tuesday for a three hour session which began at 9:30 A.M., and rounded out his week in the Marathon County Normal School in Wausau with classes on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. Blackenburg received $250.00 per semester to defray his travel expenses. By contrast, R. J. Colbert, who taught economics and sociology, had a teaching schedule compressed into just two days–Monday and Tuesday. On Monday he taught Rural Sociology 25 in the morning at the Dodge County Normal in Mayville, then journeyed to Sheboygan where, between 4:15 and 9:30 P.M., he offered Economics 1B and Sociology 197. Each of these was a two hour class. The following evening Colbert taught Sociology 197 and Economic Trends (a non-credit course) in Fond du Lac.^[47]

Because the majority of the instructors, like Colbert, lived in Madison, they travelled by train or automobile to their classes. Car pools were regularly formed to reduce the expenses, or for the simple reason that not every instructor owned a vehicle. Being on the road during a Wisconsin winter in the 1930s presented problems that our newer highways with wide shoulders have pretty much eliminated. The well equipped circuit rider’s car carried chains, a shovel, and a lantern.^[48] Mrs. Frank Rentz, who taught Spanish in the Centers for eight years during the Thirties, recalled that the winter of 1935-36 was very severe. She had to travel roads with only one plowed lane between snow banks that towered over the roof of her car. She remembered that twelve inches of snow remained on the ground in Sturgeon Bay at the end of May 1936 when she met her last class.^[49]

John Bergstresser, the Assistant Dean of the University Extension Division, related that early in 1938 two fairly new Extension circuit riders were trapped by huge snow drifts in an overcrowded farm house for two-and-a-half days. The family and its many stranded guests subsisted on dried fish and slept on the floor in two hour relays.^[50] L.H. Adolfson, who later became the Dean of the Extension Division, told a story of what happened to him when he was a political science instructor during that same rugged 1937-38 winter. He taught an afternoon class in Sheboygan and, as usual, rented a hotel room in that city before heading to Fond du Lac for an evening class. The weather was clear when he arrived in Fond du Lac but by the time he dismissed class a fast-moving Wisconsin blizzard had closed the road back to Sheboygan. So, Adolfson rented another room and spent the night. The next day he made an early start and struggled to reach Sheboygan for his 9:00 class. But the even greater struggle occurred when he had to explain to the business office why he should be reimbursed for hotel rooms in two different cities for the same night!^[51]

The Extension Center instructors taught in classrooms that varied considerably in quality from town to town. Commonly, the classes met in the city vocational school but high school and county normal facilities were also used. In Merrill the Center was located on the second floor of the City Hall.

Some of the residence departments periodically dispatched a faculty member or two to make an inspection tour of various Centers. These inspectors often found serious inadequacies. For example, Professor Mark Ingraham, Chairman of the Mathematics Department, complained about the inadequate blackboards in all four of the cities he visited–Green Bay, Manitowoc, Sheboygan, and Fond du Lac. He stressed that mathematical concepts and formulas had to be demonstrated on the blackboard and that students should have an opportunity to work problems on the board. At Green Bay, the students were wedged into youth-sized chairs and Ingraham demanded that the chairs immediately be replaced. In all four communities, he was gratified by his brief visits with the school officials, who were eager to try to make the corrections he suggested.^[52] Historians William Best Hesseltine and R. L. Reynolds conducted class visitations in Manitowoc, Merrill, and Wausau. All of the classrooms lacked maps, which created a real problem for the instructors. At all three sites the halls resounded with noise because the students with free time had nowhere else to congregate and visit. They described the second floor of the Merrill City Hall as a “fire trap” and stressed that its busy atmosphere was not at all conducive to education. At Wausau Hesseltine and Reynolds found the library facilities so inadequate that they recommended the history class be dropped unless books could be provided for the students’ research papers. The Wausau Public Library, they noted, could not fill the void because it owned only a dozen history books.^[53]

Because this problem was not limited to Wausau, the Extension Division gradually created its own library in Madison. The books were selected from lists provided by the residence departments; often multiple copies were purchased so that several classes could be supplied with the same volumes. Each semester the books were shipped out at an instructor’s request to the Centers. The instructors usually served as the librarian for their classes–checking the volumes out to the students, collecting them when due, and returning them to Madison at the semester’s end.

The students who attended the Centers represented a good cross section of the youth of rural and small town Wisconsin. A study conducted in 1937-38 revealed that the freshman classes continued primarily to serve students who would not have started college if a Center had not been available. Extension’s Assistant Dean, John Bergstresser, concluded that only ten percent of the students could have afforded to go directly to Madison. Most students worked part time to help pay their expenses; some were employed at the Centers by the N.Y.A. (National Youth Administration) for up to twenty hours per week at a rate of ten to fifteen cents per hour. The N.Y.A. was an important source of financial aid to depression era students. In April 1937, Dean Holt wrote to L. R. Evans, the Vocational School Director in Sheboygan, that, in Fond du Lac, out of a class of fourteen, twelve had jobs with the N.Y.A. Holt also noted that one young lady in that class, the valedictorian of her high school graduation, was so desperate economically that she was allowed to use one of her N.Y.A. checks as a down payment on eyeglasses rather than signing it over to Extension. Bergstresser noted that the Centers attracted good students–72% were from the upper half of their high school graduating class and just over 50% had ranked in the upper quarter. The students who continued at Madison did as well as those who began at the main campus. In 1936-37 the 67 former Extension students enrolled in the College of Letters and Science earned a 1.52 grade point compared to the College’s 1.51 overall average.^[54]

Shortly after Berstresser’s appointment as assistant dean, he instituted, in July 1937, a guidance and counseling program to help the students make a smooth transition to Madison. Bergstresser was assisted by Dr. Louis E. Drake, a psychologist who had set up a counseling service at the Milwaukee Center. Dean Holt transferred Drake to Madison so that he could better administer the service. In Madison, a residence student committee made up of former Center students organized an orientation program for the transferees similar to the one offered to the incoming freshmen.^[55]

The students who attended the Extension Centers, however, were shortchanged in some respects. The student body lacked the diversity that existed in Madison. Because of space and staff limitations, the Centers offered almost no extracurricular activities during which the students could mingle and socialize. Thus loyalties remained with the local high schools instead of being transferred to the University. Some students also found that living at home interfered with their studies because parents expected them to shoulder numerous duties. For obvious reasons, the students from farms reported the greatest difficulty in this regard.^[56]

The new Dean, Frank Holt, did not immediately take a firm grip upon the reins at Extension. For about a year Holt continued to serve as university Registrar; for almost another year Holt did not, in Chester Allen’s opinion, offer strong leadership to the Division. Then, in mid-1937, Allen noticed a dramatic change–Holt firmly took charge and his attitude toward the Centers, whose establishment he had opposed, became much more positive. Allen attributed the change to a battle among the department chairs for more money. In order to make informed decisions, Holt had to visit several Centers and become knowledgeable about their operation. In the process the gregarious Holt met with local school officials, instructors, and students and when he encountered their enthusiasm, he was won over. In the fall of 1937 Holt began to use his great facility as a speaker to spread the word of the Extension Center program across the state.^[57]

Holt, however, had not been entirely inactive in Extension’s behalf. The 1935 Legislature had expanded the eligibility for legislative scholarships to the University to include Freshman/Sophomore Center students, provided they met the same academic standards as at Madison. But in the uproar over Dean Snell’s contract, nothing had been done to implement the program. During the summer of 1936 Holt successfully lobbied President Frank and the Board of Regents for authority to award the money for the fall semester. The legislative scholarships provided fee remission to the recipients, a sum of $27.50 per semester.^[58]

The state legislature paid more attention than usual to the Extension Division, and specifically to the Centers, after Dean Snell’s removal. The publicity generated by the Brunette Committee’s investigation may explain this phenomenon. In any event, the 1937 session considered two measures which proposed additional aid to the out-state college credit classes. Senator Earl Leverich (Progressive-Sparta) introduced legislation that would have added up to $30,000 annually to the vocational school aids to assist vocational school boards which contracted with Extension for freshman and sophomore courses. Leverich’s measure would have reimbursed the boards for fifty percent of their aid to the college students, up to a maximum of $75.00 per student. In 1937 twelve districts would have benefitted from this program while five would have received nothing because they made no contribution toward their Extension Center student’s expenses. Leverich promoted his bill as a measure for economic justice which would provide a college opportunity to the children of poor men who could not afford to send them to Madison. Dean Holt, State Director of Vocational Education George P. Hambrecht, and several directors of city vocational high schools testified in favor of the measure in the Senate hearings. Despite this testimony, the bill attracted little support and it quietly died when the legislature adjourned in early July.^[59]

An amendment to the 1937-39 biennial budget proposed by Senator Roland E. Kannenberg (Progressive-Wausau) proved very controversial. Kannenberg wanted $165,000 added to the University allocation specifically for the purchase of a site and construction of an Extension building at Wausau. The Madison press vigorously denounced this scheme; the Wisconsin State Journal decried the threats of the “tombstone terror from Wausau” to tie up the entire University budget unless he got his way.^[60] Attacks by the Capital Times finally moved Kannenberg to reply. He said that his motive simply was to provide good educational opportunities to the youth among the 100,000 residents of his senate district. The Senator denounced the Capital Times for desiring to continue Madison’s monopoly over state funds.^[61] Kannenberg’s measure passed the Senate, 18 to 10, but was killed in the Assembly.^[62]

In 1937 the state’s Department of Justice gave the Extension Centers an apparent boost when the Attorney General ruled that a vocational school could admit students from outside its district to the college classes and that it could levy a non-resident fee. This decision pleased the smaller Centers because they could now augment their funds with the fees from non-resident students and collect state aid for them as well. But this simply meant that a limited number of dollars would have to be spread over more students, thus reducing the per-capita aid. Confronted with complaints from the vocational school districts that did not have Freshman Centers, the State Board of Adult and Vocational Education decided in mid-1938 that the subsidy to the college students would cease at the end of the biennium, despite strong testimony in favor of continuing the aid.^[63] This decision placed several Centers in jeopardy. In an attempt to stave off a looming disaster, several vocational school directors met in Antigo in August 1938 to decide how to proceed. Dean Holt, State Superintendent John Callahan, State Director of Vocational Education George Hambrecht, and Regent Carl Drexler of Menasha accepted invitations to attend. The men decided to create a legislative sub-committee which would draft a bill to be presented to the 1939 Legislature. They proposed that up to $100,000 per year in direct state aid be appropriated to the Centers to replace the funds being withdrawn by the State Vocational Board. Once the bill was outlined, they paid visits to several legislators to enlist their support. The legislators’ favorable reactions made passage seem almost certain.^[64]

But the election of 1938 shattered these well laid plans. In that canvass the Republicans swept the Progressives out of office, capturing the governor’s mansion and control of both the Senate and Assembly. Joseph P. Heil, the new Governor, was a political neophyte who generally let the Republican old-timers in the legislature set the pace. The 1939 Legislature quickly approved a revision of the Board of Regents’ statute to throw all fifteen incumbents out of office and replace them with inexperienced Heil appointees. In the midst of all this turmoil over university affairs, the bill to provide state aid to the Freshman Centers languished and eventually quietly died.^[65]

In the late 1930s local school officials still wrestled with the fact that many graduates would be idle after they left high school. One possible solution they considered was to add a 13th and 14th year to the secondary schools and employ the high school teachers to teach both the college credit and non-credit vocational courses. University officials hastily pointed out that they would not accept the credits from such college courses unless they had certified in advance the course content and the instructors’ credentials. Dean Holt, who certainly agreed with this assessment, urged the school districts interested in college courses for recent graduates to contract with Extension for the instruction. This arrangement would assure transferability of the credits because the circuit-riding instructors had been appointed by the Madison departments. After he had tried this idea out in a few meetings with secondary school principles without encountering any opposition, Holt wrote the text for a pamphlet which explained this option and underscored its advantages.^[66]

Accordingly, early in 1939 the Appleton High School Principal contacted the Extension Division about setting up a freshman program in his building the following fall. In May he conducted a survey of the 1939 graduates which revealed that 36% of them would be “idle at home,” 38% would be employed, and 25% would go to college. The survey also showed that a sufficient number of the 1939 graduates would enroll in a local Center to justify pursuing the arrangements with Extension. But before proceeding, the principal wrote to President Thomas Barrows of Lawrence College in Appleton to see if he had any misgivings about a freshman program operated under the auspices of the University of Wisconsin. Barrows objected strenuously. Barrows wrote Holt and told him that Lawrence had worked hard and successfully to assist Appleton students and that the proposed program was unnecessary. Holt sent Chester Allen and Marshall Graff, an Extension field representative, to visit with President Barrows. Allen reported that they got along fine, but that Barrows would not withdraw his opposition. In the end, Barrows won. The Appleton High School freshman center never opened.^[67]

As the end of the decade approached, Holt eased his missionary work in behalf of the Centers and turned his attention to the Extension programs that were not doing nearly as well, such as the correspondence courses which had experienced a steady decline in registrations. By 1939 the Freshman Centers had become the mainstay of Extension’s fee income, a fact demonstrated in 1938 when an unanticipated enrollment decline caused a $13,000 deficit. By careful management and aggressive recruiting the shortage had been made up and the fall 1939 enrollment was strong. Still, an uneasiness haunted the Extension administration. As the economy improved, it seemed inevitable that more high school graduates would opt to work than to attend a Center. Also, more students could afford to go directly to Madison or to a private college. The reduction in aid from the State Vocational Board had hurt some centers, most notably Antigo, where another $1,000 had to be raised from local sources to maintain the program. In September 1939 World War II erupted in Europe when Germany attacked Poland and the subsequent expansion of the United States military forces reduced the number of young men who might choose to attend college.^[68] As the decade came to a close the Freshman Centers remained the fiscal backbone of the Extension Division, but that was to change very soon.