Third interview with H. Edwin Young

H. Edwin Young #117 Transcript

LS: -- I think.

EY: Sixteenth.

LS: Sixteenth. We're interviewing in his office in Helen White in the Center for Development, and I'm Laura Smail. We're going to be talking mostly about, about the Economics Department today. I, I know you just came here in 1945. But you must've heard about the Milton Freeman incident a good deal.

EY: Not a good deal, but I heard some things. It was alleged, by the people I heard from, that what he said that Friedman would have stayed here except for Walter Morton, who made it very unpleasant for him, and he left. But that's the only thing I've heard. But I don't know any details of it.

LS: I guess that's another, that's another chalk mark against Morton, isn't it? 00:01:00I, so you don't think it was -- I've heard various reasons.

EY: Well, what have you heard? Maybe --

LS: Well, somebody said something about anti-Semitism.

EY: Well, uh, they had, were selling promos as a member the department.

LS: Yes, that's right, so that doesn't seem to be --

EY: And Elizabeth Brandeis was a member of the department.

LS: Yeah. How --

EY: One of the things that I've noticed around over the years is often, when a Jewish person is involved, whatever comes up, somebody starts charging anti-Semitism.

LS: Oh.

EY: Now there may be some of that. But in the department, you know, I recruited Peter Steiner and Bronfenbrenner and a lot of Jewish people. We never had any anti-Semitism. Oh, I suspect I, one of two people had some remnants of that in their system, but by and large, it was not, they wouldn't dare to voice it very 00:02:00loudly. They would, they might in their, in their decision-making, they might. But I don't really, I think it was more probably personalities. Morton is a very strange person.

LS: He was already then, strange, was he?

EY: Well, uh, he was -- one of the stories that I heard about the early years, that when he came up for tenure, this, of course, is all hearsay and a long time ago, there was a great, there was a real question about his personality and how, what he would be like to live with for all these years. And at that time, his own professor, I think it was, I think it was Scott, made a big speech, well, you know, what we want here is brilliance, and you're just being personal about this, and so it carried it over. It was a kind of a situation.

And again, this is all hearsay, you understand. I don't -- and it is not the sort of thing that I would have any reason to check on or anything, but that's what I heard. There's only one person alive who might know something, might remember something about that, and that would be Elizabeth --

BILL: Oh, excuse me.

EY: Who is it? Bill?

BILL: Yeah.

EY: Get some coffee.

BILL: Yeah.

LS: I didn't realize Jim [Werle?] was here that long, but I guess he was here in the '30s, wasn't he?

EY: In the late '30s, yes.

LS: He was in, he was in the union.

EY: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

LS: So Morton, it wasn't a deteriorating, a case of deteriorating personality or --

EY: I don't think so. I think it was, existed from the beginning, at least if this, if there's any truth to this, what I heard. And, you know, he was, it was 00:04:00in full, full steam when I arrived in 1945. I recall going into the office to ask to see the chairman, whom I thought was Mr. Groves, and then discovered that because of the, of Walter Morton's collusion with Evjue about calling Groves as selling out, that Mr. Groves was no longer chairman.

LS: Well, I wanted to ask you about that. He, so it was that Morton got him out of the chairmanship.

EY: Uh-huh.

LS: Now you know Groves has written a, an autobiography.

EY: I haven't seen it.

LS: Well, I was lucky enough, I was looking in our, we have a sort of a little public newspaper file, but it was thick, and it had about a, I don't know, 200-page biography that he had written, autobiography. And he talks about that, that incident.

EY: Well, uh, you see, what he had done is he'd accepted a grant from the 00:05:00Committee for Educational Development for research. You know, and that's a very progressive group, and so, but Morton, again, was very close to Bill Evjue. Whenever there was anything at the University, he'd leak it to Evjue.

LS: That's strange, isn't it?

EY: Strange?

LS: Well, I would've thought Morton was a very conservative man, and that Evjue was a --

EY: No, no, not necessarily, no, no, sometimes, yes. His brother-in-law was --

LS: Can I turn this off?

EY: Yes, was [Amli?]. Why don't we just pull the plug? Was Amli, you know, that progressive, leftist congressman.

LS: Oh, I didn't know that.

EY: Yes, you see, there's a complicated, lots of complications. See Morton sometimes was on the liberal side and sometimes on the conservative side. Only in his later years did he stay on one side, and when it became profitable for 00:06:00his consulting business and so on.

LS: And liberal would have to do with attitudes toward business and labor as well.

EY: Yes, yeah.

LS: So that must've been confusing for Elwell, I suppose.

EY: For Evjue?

LS: No, I was thinking of Elwell.

EY: Oh, Elwell, yes. Well, yes, Elwell would never have, I don't think, might've worked with Morton when it was convenient to him, but they would never have trusted each other.

LS: I see because you get the impression that, from looking at the files, that Elwell and Morton are on the same -- even though Elwell says he would never have Morton teaching in the -- he wanted the department, but not Morton, I guess.

EY: Yeah.

LS: Is that --

EY: Well, I don't know, but I'd understand that. See Elwell would've used Morton when he could, and vice versa. They would use each other. But they, I don't, Elwell wouldn't, I didn't know this particular thing, you see. I haven't dug into any of the files. I don't know these past things, but that would be my 00:07:00guess. So, but I, so as I say, when '45, now one of the interesting things about this infighting in the department where, and by that time, Groves and Morton were on separate sides, quite separately divided.

None of that, to my knowledge, ever affected the career of a graduate student. Nobody ever took it out on the other person's graduate students. Walt Morton might be fighting with some, with Groves or something, but he wouldn't ever [word unclear]. So they were very honorable about that. And actually, as a graduate student my first year here, I didn't know much about any of it was going on.

LS: Who were you working with?

EY: Pearlman.

LS: Mm.

EY: See, I came expecting to work with, in a big course with, as a teaching assistant to, to Mr. [Kiekoffer?] in a big principles class. And when I went in 00:08:00the office, Miss Bridgeman said, Mr. Pearlman wants to see you. I said, what about? She said, well, go down and ask him. I said, well, do you have any idea? Well, he was up here looking through the folders of the new people, and maybe he wants to talk to you about teaching or something.

So I went to see him, and he wanted me to be his teaching assistant. Well, that was a great honor for me, you see, because it was my own field, and he could, had the pick of all, lot of -- I didn't know at the time when he asked me, and I agreed to it, that Bill Knowles was coming in, who had been his assistant before, and expected to be, continue to be. So he hadn't told me or told Bill that.

LS: Oh, I see, so [words unclear]

EY: So I got a little -- Bill didn't take kindly to that. But that was not my fault, and I had a wonderful relationship with Selig Pearlman over many years. I had the most ideal situation that a graduate student -- first place, he always 00:09:00treated me as a colleague. And, oh, I worked, that first year I taught, in four different courses, assisted him in four different courses, only one of which I'd ever had. So I attended all his lectures.

And over there in the Historical Society are my notes in longhand because we had a deaf-mute in the class, who couldn't read his lips with his Russian accent. So then by the end of the year, we had, I had several assistants. So I was sort of a foreman. So, but the department at that time, they, then Ed Witte became chairman somewhere in there, in that period.

LS: He's, somebody refers to him, oh, Bronfenbrenner as King Log.

EY: Well, I suppose that's derogatory in a sense.

LS: It seems so. I assumed that he was somebody who didn't really do anything 00:10:00about the problems the department was having.

EY: He did a great deal. He was a very good man. Martin Bronfenbrenner, who was quite bright and sometimes almost, you know, he just didn't know what was going on. He was, he didn't understand how things worked really. And he was always looking for something. He was always moving. I remember when he, when he left here, decided to leave here, he got an offer from Michigan State. I said, Martin, why are you going from here to Michigan State? He said, well, if you're at Wisconsin, you can't get an offer from a good place. But if you're at a poor place like Michigan State, you can.

So he went there, took, they gave him a leave, so he could go to Japan, which was what he really wanted to do. And by the time he came back, he'd made an agreement to go to Minnesota. You know, he jumped around like that and did -- 00:11:00Martin was, he used to come into my office. Pounded, when are we going to raise the standards around here? And I'd say, well, go ahead. He said, what do you mean, go ahead? I said, well, you, just teach a little better.

He was one of the best teachers we had. That would infuriate him. But if we ever had an oriental student who was in difficulties, Martin was always the one who wanted to pass him. He just, he was enamored of Japan. He had a Japanese wife, who didn't like to live in Japan. It was very difficult for her, she, her health. But he wanted to live there, you see, much as possible. So partly his whole life had been getting grants. But he was a very good teacher, and I used to kid him and all. But he didn't, from my point of view, he didn't have a lot of common sense. Now he wasn't the only one who criticized Mr. Witte.

But Mr. Witte was a stabilizing force for a while in the department. Eventually, he couldn't take it anymore from Morton, who pounded him all the time. And it 00:12:00was support from these, with the Bronfenbrenner, people like that. Now behind Bronfenbrenner's back, of course, Martin would run him down to beat hell and to criticize him. But to his face, he would -- and see all the, as the new people came in, Martin would cultivate them. It would take them four or five years, three, four years, to discover that they, that he'd been feeding them things that were not, either half truths or untrue, or telling them somebody was out to get them, all kinds of, that's the way he operated.

LS: Hmm.

EY: And so he worked, he would be, work with Bronfenbrenner at first, you see, and then, take, and then behind Bronfenbrenner's back, he would denounce him as being foolish. I saw a lot of that.

LS: When did Bronfenbrenner come?

EY: I can't remember the year, but --

LS: I mean, was it, it must've been the late '40s then.

EY: Yes, late '40s, no, probably early '50s.

LS: Well, he, he said --

EY: Could've been '49 or '50, but, you see, because of, Ellsworth and, I think 00:13:00Ellsworth came just before the war. He and Morton were close for a while, and Ellsworth discovered what a scoundrel he was in these dealings with --

LS: But they seem to have voted together on a lot of things even --

EY: Well, for a long time they did, you see. And then, but it was finally, it was Ellsworth helped bring Morton down.

LS: That's right. You said that in your interview, that he said, we've got to be honest with each other.

EY: Yeah, yeah. And, uh, so, but I would guess that, and Morton came in '48, and I think maybe Bronfenbrenner came in '49 --

LS: I really, I don't know why I'm asking.

EY: Because you've got all the stuff?

LS: He came, he came in '50, yeah.

EY: Yeah, and I'm, yeah.

LS: Uh, either, let's see, whether, I think it's, trying to remember whether it was he or Groves, who said that the decision about raises in the department, uh, 00:14:00were being, were not being backed up by Dean Ingraham, that the department, I think, didn't want to go on the merit system. Do you know anything about this?

EY: Oh, I don't know the details of it, no. You see, one of the things they would do was sit around the table and discuss each other's salaries. And that, you know, left wounds and lasted the whole year. So the condition that I took the chairmanship on was that I would consult with everybody about every salary except their salary and mine. Mine, I'd leave to the dean, and then I'd put something together as a package. And they'd take it, up or down, the whole package, no changes.

LS: I see.

EY: And then I carried it off. And that stopped a lot of the problems.

LS: So that had been going on up to the time you became chairman?

EY: Uh-huh.

LS: Yes, Groves had said that he hadn't raised Morton's salary, and he thought maybe, because he thought Morton was such a troublemaker, and he thought Morton 00:15:00was angry about it. And that was a reason for this attack in 1945.

EY: Yeah, well, whatever the reason was, I suspect it could well have been. I don't know.

LS: Grove said he felt badly about that, and that he wished that he hadn't, that he felt it was, he was ill advised on taking, done that work, which I gather was with business manufacturers and --

EY: Well, you know, it wasn't ill advised to do that. He, I mean, it cost him a great, I mean, in hindsight, it was very, it cost him a great deal. You see, Groves' advice to me after that, when I became chairman, was don't fight Morton. You can't win [Laughs.]. He didn't know what a devious Yankee I was, or how stubborn I was.

LS: Because you had, you had a, planned a way of fighting it. Is that right?

EY: Well, I --

LS: Somebody said they thought you would've had a scheme for doing it.

EY: Well, I didn't have, I didn't have a scheme. I never had a scheme for anything.

LS: I should tell you what you told me before, by the way.

EY: What did I tell you?

LS: You -- we didn't talk about this much. But you did say that, I think it was Pearlman came to you and said, I can't --

EY: Yeah.

LS: Yeah. You told me that, I think that's --

EY: Yeah, Pearlman said he couldn't stand up to him, and he was always hammering him. So said to Pearlman, well, in that case, I'll protect you. Just, everybody will understand, you have no influence over me whatsoever in the department. I'll pay no attention to you in departmental matters. So that'll protect you from Morton. That hurt his feelings, but he, Mr. Pearlman, in some ways, was a personal coward, you see. A great man, you know. When you -- because I say that about him doesn't mean I don't have the greatest --

LS: No, no, I, yeah.

EY: -- admiration for him because, his greatness. But when it came, he couldn't take that kind of, because he couldn't say, get the hell out of here and leave me alone, just couldn't.

LS: Well, a great many people couldn't. I mean, that sort of thing is very hard to take actually.

EY: Yeah.

LS: Well, how did Pearlman and Witte differ? You know, one hears about these 00:17:00great men from the past, and you put them all in the same, same little slot. And they must've been very different.

EY: Very different, completely different, and I was close to both of them. They weren't terribly close to each other.

LS: Hmm. That's odd. I mean, one thinks of them as being like this.

EY: Yeah, I know because they were in time at the same time.

LS: Yeah.

EY: But, uh, Pearlman was a Jewish intellectual, read and spoke many languages, was not a, and stuck most of the time, with the exception of when he was with the Industrial Commission, he had a job when he was very young, which took him to, and interesting story, to Lowell, Massachusetts. But the rest of the time, he stuck to his last, teaching and writing. Witte started his, got his degree in 00:18:00history, started his career in the Legislative Reference Library --

LS: Yeah, he's the one.

EY: -- where he met legislators and drafted bills. And from ever afterwards, he was involved in public policy.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: And became a national figure, was the executive director of this group that wrote the Social Security Act, did a, tremendous things, and wrote great quantities of stuff. Pearlman didn't write very much, but what he wrote was very good and very solid, and I just, maybe I told you. We reviewed his book for some group recently, and it's just as fresh today as it was when it was written, his theory of the Labor Movement.

LS: Is he the, is he the scholar you admire the more of the two then?

EY: For, well, for different reasons. See the different kinds of scholarship. Pearlman's was the insight and the intellectual -- putting the theory together, taking the whole thing and putting it together so it had some meaningful, more meaningful. But Witte turned out great quantities of very useful materials, more 00:19:00current materials.

LS: Applied, applicable, hmm.

EY: At the time, you see. Now being the kind of person he was, Mr. Pearlman didn't have as much respect for all that activity, you see, because that, you know, we always think what we're doing is more important than what the other fellow is doing. Witte grew up on a farm in Jefferson County. And when I wanted to tease him, we would be riding back from Illinois or someplace, and I'd say, don't you think we'd better stop and get a case of colored Oleo? He'd just go right up. He was very proud that he drafted the bill that would color Oleo purple [Laughs.]. Well, they're just completely different kinds of people, you see.

LS: Yes, I see. So it's Pearlman that Nathan Feinsinger would've said, he was a man who's only interested in the theory and who didn't understand how things really worked. Is that, do you think that would --

EY: Well, Nate could've said something like that, yes.

LS: He was talking about a case up in Minnesota.

EY: Yes, perhaps it was. Although, people underestimated Pearlman's 00:20:00understanding of things. He always pooh-poohed, you know, he didn't understand theory, economics theory. His son, Mark, was a graduate student, worked at his master's degree here. One time I came into the office, and he was explaining Keynes to Mark, and he understood it very well [Laughs.].

So, no, but he, well, but he could understand the concept of it, but he couldn't do it. He could describe very accurately the development of the steam engine, how it worked, what was behind it, and its importance in the Industrial Revolution. But Bob Fleming lived across the street from him. One day, one of the girls came dashing across. Have I told you this story?

LS: No.

EY: Uh, come, come quick. Our house is flooding. He, Mr. Pearlman had softened 00:21:00the water, but he hadn't got the cap back on, and when he opened it up, he didn't know [words unclear]. I don't, he could have a change the, the, uh, fuse, you know, light bulb or something. But he would understand the theory of it. So it's different. When he was, at some stage in his life, he, somebody told him you had to slam the door of a Model-T. So forever after, he slammed people's car doors when he got out.

And when I, and he all, he didn't have a car and would ask for a ride, and, in fact, Mrs. Pearlman didn't mind calling up any of their friends and asking if they're going somewhere to take him and so on. And the taxis were cheap. But, so I was all, whenever he got out of the car, I'd always lean over and hold my door, catch the door before he broke the window.

LS: Yeah.

EY: Well, it was marvelous. Mr. Witte, I remember once, we were going to an economics meeting in Des Moines. And he and I were sitting in the back seat. He 00:22:00was explaining the history of the area we're traveling through, which he knew because he was a very good American historian, Middle West, had a Ph.D. in it, you see, and had worked in all this stuff. At the same time, he was writing a speech.

When he was very ill, must've been '55-'56, Kohler was governor, they were trying to put through a merger. And Mr. Witte was bleeding internally, I know that. And we were, we had just a few hours to put in a substitute bill, which got this University of Milwaukee. He sat down at his desk, wrote out in longhand that, drafted that bill, cited all the passages, didn't even look at the 00:23:00appropriate past legislation, and just like that. So he had a marvelous memory.

We'd go to the Economics Association meetings, we'd have a Wisconsin breakfast. And he'd get up, took great pride in getting up and introducing everybody by name. But there would always be one or two he would forget, and those people would be so embarrassed that Mr. Witte should ever forget. But once he got something in his head that was wrong, there was not way in hell of getting it out. He used to go around saying two or three things.

I've forgotten them at the moment. They'll come back to me sometime, he would say as being true. They were absolutely untrue, but you couldn't [Laughs.], he was, oh, they were, well, too long an answer to your short question, but these were marvelous, exciting people.

LS: Well --

EY: And the other thing about Mr. Witte, he had great many friends, and he worked very hard at getting jobs for students. He wrote reference letters. He 00:24:00loved to dictate. Oh, he loved to dictate. And he'd write these three, four page letters. Well, around the country, his letters were very famous, but nobody took them too seriously because he found good things to say about anybody and everybody.

LS: Yeah, Paul [Curtie?] has that reputation too.

EY: Yes. Well, it isn't a bad reputation, you know.

LS: No, of course not, no. Well, that's a question, I was going, you mentioned Keynesian Economics, and I wondered how, whether the department was excited when -- this came out in 1936, is that right?

EY: Yeah, the book was, yeah, I think it was published in '36, yes, came around, but --

LS: But it was, it was sort of percolating through.

EY: Yes.

LS: Is that right? So that it wouldn't really have hit the United States for a while.

EY: Until '37-'38, of course, in economics, like any professional, the profession gets these things very fast.

LS: Oh.

EY: You see, the general theory, I guess, do I have it here? Let's see. I have a 00:25:00copy here. Maybe my question, my copy is at home. I was going to look at the date, but that's near enough for the purposes, the publication of general theory. It must, I guess it's at home.

LS: His, his first explication of it?

EY: Well, yeah, I suppose some, maybe some of the ideas had been talked about, but the, it was put together --

LS: Yeah.

EY: -- in that monumental work.

LS: But wasn't it all, in the mid-'40s, I mean, when you came here, was it still something that people were talking about and debating?

EY: Oh, yes, yes. And, you know, all the younger people, it was gospel. In fact, I was lecturing about this to my class the other day, how we --

LS: Oh, really?

EY: In that time, we knew the answers to all these problems, because we got them from Keynes.

LS: So, so people really --

EY: Yeah, but by '47, Morton was calling this, [plumbing?] Economics.

LS: Yeah, that's right.

EY: Although, later, earlier on, he'd accept some of it.

LS: That's what I read, that he had it and --

EY: Yeah, sure, but, you see, he's very bright. Walter Morton is an extraordinary bright person. And have you interviewed him yet?

LS: Well, Donna interviewed him, and I [Insertion.] -- the Morton interview is restricted.

EY: -- he can be, but he's very bright, but --

LS: I mean, he was just, he was just saying the stories about, in fact I guess I'll ask you some of the --

EY: Yeah, okay. Now, of course, he and I wouldn't have the same interpretation of things. See, he supported me for the chairmanship, voted for me. He assumed that I would take his advice, you see. And I didn't, I didn't have any, they needed me so desperately, I didn't have to sign any contracts in advance, whose 00:27:00advice I'd take. So it came to a shock to him when I didn't. And then he turned against me very heavily. But, you know, he's --

LS: This is '54, isn't it, and so there is already a, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, well, how many people in the department, about 14?

EY: Yeah.

LS: Yeah.

EY: Well, you've got more information right there than I can remember, but --

LS: Ah, but it's just lines.

EY: Yes, I know, but I can remember some of the thing in between those lines, but, uh, yes. But Morton was a very good critic. He gave a seminar. You had, everybody, every graduate student felt he had to take because Martin was chairman of the Theory Committee for year.

LS: Yes, what do you mean by that?

EY: Well, everybody had to take an exam in theory.

LS: In Economic Theory?

EY: Yes, that was fundamental.

LS: That would be, would that be Keynesian Economics or --

EY: Keynesian Economics, all kinds of economics.

LS: All right.

EY: Both kind, yes, and, and there would be, there's a committee. But he chaired it, you see. Now later on, as I discovered, you know, he would sound gruff, and people were scared of him, but I never knew him the way they, he was just too -- I've seen him ridicule students in class terribly. But I never knew, when the final got down to it, whether he, that anybody got a grade and would flunk because of Morton. But they felt they had to take his course.

Well, the first seven or eight weeks, kind of refresher because he was a great critic. But then, after that, it was just repetition. And he didn't, he never had any constructive contributions. I don't think, if you went back over the literature, you'd find very much that Walter Morton did, except criticize.

LS: Yeah. I saw the editorial he wrote in the Cap Times on Groves. And it was very well written. I could see that he wasn't, hadn't lost his capacity to write, but --

EY: No, you see, and for Evjue to follow him -- see, Evjue was a, was not a greatest man that ever lived. You know, there are a lot of people in this town 00:29:00you can talk about.

LS: I suppose, why not to get sidelights on him, I mean, he won't appear unless somebody went down there. But from the University, he must've had a big influence in causes that he espoused.

EY: Oh, yes, and you see, it was a liberal paper. People regularly came to Madison, joined the faculty, saw this liberal paper, refreshing, and for two or three years, they went with it. And then they discovered it wasn't so. It was petty. And this is why they're, I think they're, why their subscription keeps going down, is we're not getting a lot of new people. Everybody here knows, knows the paper. Although, I think the paper is getting better. They were in real trouble two or three years ago. And Morrie Rubin did a, I don't know if you knew about it.

LS: No.

EY: He interviewed 100 people on why, what's wrong with the -- so I was telling what I thought. I said, maybe nobody else is like -- he said, yes, everybody is 00:30:00like, has the same ideas about it. And then they've changed it some. They made no announcement of changing, and, but Evjue was the kind of person who would cook up, hook up with a guy like Morton, you see.

LS: Morton, one of the things Morton said was that the place was run by a matriarchy. He was very, Elizabeth Brandeis was somebody he apparently disliked intensely.

EY: He kept her from getting tenure until I became chairman. Then I put, I gave her tenure. I put it through.

LS: Oh, I thought the, I didn't realize that she could've gotten it. I thought that as a part-time instructor, she couldn't. Do you mean, they would've done it sooner if [words unclear]?

EY: If he, if they hadn't been afraid, he'd cause it to flank.

LS: Well, was it because of her, or just because she was a woman, or because she was --

EY: No, he, well, she didn't agree with him. She was a friend of Groves, and she was, Elizabeth didn't put up with that nonsense, you know. And, of course, she also was, denounced her husband some, who was Paul Roshenbush. Paul was more 00:31:00vulnerable in some ways than Elizabeth.

LS: Well, what about, let's see, he mentioned, uh, Mrs. Otto, Mrs. Goss. Is there, is there, this interests me just because I'm interested in the influence that faculty wives may have had on things. And is there any, is there anything, did a group of women have any kind of influence on the -- and you said that Dykstra too was on --

EY: Well, see, I didn't know Mrs. Dykstra. I knew Mrs. Goss, and I knew Mrs. Otto slightly. Well, they had influence the way women do now, uh, to some extent. It's more diverse. There are more people now. But Mrs. Goss, we used to go -- he was my minor professor, so we used to go to their house quite a bit. She was a very nice lady. I never thought of her as having the grandest 00:32:00influence. In some small circle, they may have expressed their opinions, but they didn't make the decisions. They influenced them. Every wife influence, you know, women always -- women's lib is nothing new really.

I mean, you make a lot of noise about it, but in our society, women are a tremendous, with their intellectual, if they were intellectually strong, they had a lot of influence. Um --

LS: Wait.

EY: The, some of them got it by status, that they were very active, I suppose. Mrs. Dykstra would be using the, the president's house as a social center.

LS: Yes.

EY: Mrs. Harrington didn't do much of that.

LS: Well, this is, administrators' wives do. I, I, just by, I think that's, uh --

EY: But see, the, in the, when I came in, before I came, there were many more 00:33:00social affairs that involved students. And, for instance, we went to the Goss's a good deal. We were at the Pearlman's, and the Witte's, and so on as graduate students.

LS: Yes.

EY: And now probably I more than many was, I've lived a charmed life around here. I've been treated so well. They, but others did too. And in, and the fact, and departments were smaller, so that the social life of a department, by the very nature of the size, I suspect if you took a very small, we'd find some small departments here now, where the, everybody's, almost everybody's involved in the social situation and know each other, you see, and they are, that's where the wives get their words in. And there were discussions, you see.

LS: And this was true in the Economics Department in spite of Morton. There was still, there was still social life?

EY: Oh, lot of social life, yes. And, you know, Morton wasn't ostracized. He 00:34:00hasn't been since, really, socially. People liked his wife.

LS: Well, you said he was a charming person.

EY: Could be very charming, and his wife is very fine person. She put up with a hell of a -- because he --

LS: That's interesting.

EY: Yes, indeed. If she would talk, I'm sure she won't.

LS: No, she wouldn't [word unclear].

EY: No, I don't think she will. But do you know Mrs., uh, her name is Reis now.

LS: Oh, yes, Briggs, Hazel Briggs.

EY: Briggs.

LS: Several people have mentioned her as somebody --

EY: Isn't she Mrs. Morton's sister?

LS: Oh, yeah, I think that may be. I --

EY: Well, I'm not, I think so. Anyway, there's, or she's, or anyway, she was close to them, or close to her. So she was close to Elizabeth Brandeis. And she, 00:35:00see, she's old enough. She knew those people [words unclear] and all those people. She's some, she could tell you a lot of things that you might not learn on the campus.

LS: Yeah.

EY: If Hazel wanted to talk, she's a very alert person.

LS: Well, we'd better --

EY: Get on with your questions.

LS: Let's see. I'm, I'm interested in the, uh, well, the School for Workers, you talked some about that. And as I picture the Campus though, there were these labor economists, and the School for Workers was found in the '20s when there was a liberal government. And then in the, uh, in the '40s, when there was a very conservative governor, that, and perhaps Elwell was very influential here, one suddenly sees this big push against or before more help to business and to management and gets the Industrial Relations Committee.

EY: Uh-huh.

LS: And the Industrial Management Institute, I'd like some perspective on them, 00:36:00how important they were on the campus, say as compared to things that were going on in the Ag School and extension and, uh --

EY: Well, I think the Industrial Management Institute came out of some war-time act, there was a chap here working some, a musician, whom I still get Christmas cards from, and is retired. And I can't think of his name at the moment. He's, he left the campus years ago.

LS: It's not [Moberly?], is it?

EY: Moberly, yes, Moberly, there's the chairman. He became very close to Elwell, and so Elwell set up this management institute, and with Moberly as director of it.

LS: But was that thought of as a reasonable thing to do? I mean, do you think it 00:37:00was? I'm just curious.

EY: Well, not an unreasonable thing to do, to work with management. Most schools have management institutes.

LS: Hmm, all right.

EY: Uh, this, the thing that was wrong with this one was that they had a musician in charge [Laughs.] and there was a little bit of, apparently, a little bit of a scandal because he eventually double-crossed Elwell in some fashion and got fired. That's what happened to him. I've forgotten the details of it, but Russ Moberly was really a good -- he would've been a good man in The Music Man. He would.

LS: How [word unclear].

EY: He's still very friendly to me.

LS: Hmm.

EY: And, you know, and, and but what, I think there was a push for the management to take over the School for Workers, you see. And what it is is some branch, and this is why Witte and Feinsinger and the others wanted the Industrial Relations Center, which would come as a kind of an in between. See, 00:38:00the management people looked upon, thought the University should teach the workers to be good and behave.

LS: Yes, one gets that very strongly, some of the things that the letters --

EY: Through this thing, and, of course, Elwell was feeding all kinds of stuff about how radical the department was and a bunch of communists and so on. That's where I had my showdown with him on that one. The, uh, and the School for Workers was, was, uh, not completely clean handed. They had --

LS: What do you mean by that?

EY: Well, I meant that they were, they felt that they were, they weren't beyond being a University representatives. They felt themselves, some of the staff, they were organizers of the workers.

LS: I see.

EY: And it was a mostly Socialist, young Socialists. It was a, this is how I got into the act. Uh, [Schwartzstrauber?] was an old-time Socialist, very fine person. And he, but when they hired people, they hired Socialists and on the 00:39:00staff. And some of these young fellows were quite, you know, militant maybe is a little strong, but they knew that some people in their classes were going back and telling management what was said. So they would, did say things about the management, just because it just annoyed them, you see.

LS: Yeah.

EY: And so, it was things like that. And, uh, the other thing is that the School for Workers technically, a part of extension, tried to keep as far from the University as it could. And so you had that kind of thing.

LS: And eventually, the University took it over, didn't it?

EY: Yeah, well, yeah, that was my job really.

LS: Oh, I see, that happened after you became --

EY: Well, technically, it was before. See, it was always part of the University.

LS: Well, I mean, but --

EY: Really, getting it into the University, that's what I did.

LS: But with, the Fred's files begin to have a folder, a committee for School for Workers.

EY: Yes, uh-huh, yes.

LS: So that he was keeping an eye on it.

EY: Oh, that's why, that's why I got in there because, you see, when they, the conservative business people would call the conservative regents, and they'd call Fred.

LS: Yeah, Sensenbrenner especially was --

EY: Yes, he was chairman of the board.

LS: Oh, he kept a, his file is this thick, and he, every single thing that happens, he writes a letter about.

EY: Yes. Oh, E. B. Fred was one of the great presidents, and, but people didn't understand how he handled all --

LS: But do you, do you mean that?

EY: Yes. In this respect, he kept those reactionary regents from laying a hand on the University. Look, during the McCarthy period, we were scot-free. That wasn't --

LS: Do you think that was purely because of Fred's efforts?

EY: More than anybody else, and I used to think when I was young, that he was, sort of just didn't know much what he was doing up there. But he really did know a great -- he was very sharp. And, uh, when he was talking about Virginia and 00:41:00cows and things, that was, that was part of the act. I'm convinced, because, now, he wasn't terribly interested in, in the things I was interested in.

LS: No.

EY: No, he was there to guide the Ag School, that's all, mostly, but in, but he really guided the University. We defended the -- we're the only public University in the country that kept the Young Communists on the campus in that period.

LS: Actually, this University of Michigan history contains what they went through, and you can see that it's very different. They were, they had to get rid of --

EY: Yeah, and E. B. Fred is responsible for that more than anybody else. That's what he did. He was on the phone with those people. Look what he put up with in the '60s.

LS: But was it because of -- I mean, he, himself, was little bit afraid of communists and their --

EY: Well, I am too. I don't trust them either.

LS: Oh, I see. All right, that's fair enough. And you know the post, this business about the journals from East European countries, whether they should be here.

EY: That part, I didn't know about, but I do know about that E. B. Fred without -- and he called Ullrickson in to get the ammunition to defend the School for Workers. And Ullrickson misunderstood and attacked Fred, assuming he was being criticized in the School for Workers, you see.

LS: Would this have been about 1948? So there's no record of this that I --

EY: 19-, late '49 or early '50.

LS: Oh. I guess it just didn't get into the files. I was going to find something on it, but --

EY: No, because it was an old matter, you see.

LS: Yeah.

EY: Now Ullrickson would've been the ideal director for the School for Workers. He was not a, he was not a Socialist. He was a dyed in the wool trade unionist, but, and he got a good, but he was a man of integrity. But he just, he was an older man, old by our, he was probably 10-15 years older than me, maybe, yeah, something like that. He was widowed and came here to do graduate work. And he 00:43:00came down, he thought he should be Pearlman's. Another one, people thought he should be Pearlman's assistant, you see.

LS: Oh, so he was, he was here as a student?

EY: Yes, a graduate student.

LS: Oh, that's right. You did, okay.

EY: Yeah, and so it was an attempt to defend him that the thing blew up because once he started denouncing E. B. Fred, you know, that finished him. It came about because E. B. Fred was trying to defend him.

LS: Yeah.

EY: But Mr. Fred, look, I would, I've been, Mr. Fred defended people that he didn't agree with at all. He wasn't defending his friends. He was defending academic freedom. And he did it at a very rough time. And he was a, but he was on the phone all the time with those characters. And he would, the other thing he did endlessly was stack the committees. I mean, well, in a way, he was very, 00:44:00very careful who was on committees. And he used to worry about salaries. He didn't understand the budget, but he would worry about who got raises. But, you know, but it was a time when you needed somebody who could stand up. See, the Dykstras couldn't live with those people. Fred Harrington wouldn't have lasted.

LS: Well, that's -- do you think Dykstra really did resign because of the School of Commerce? I've heard this because --

EY: I don't know a thing about it.

LS: Because he was defeated on that? Oh, all right.

EY: I don't know. Or was he asked not to come back? I don't know. See, I don't really know.

LS: Yeah, it's not in the files. It's [words unclear] you get his letter of resignation, you know, I've been offered a nice job, and --

EY: Yes, yes, yes, but, you know, and for the person that does what you're doing 20 years from now will have nothing in the files.

LS: That's right because nobody's writing these things.

EY: We can't write anything. Somebody will sue you. Every time there's a charge of discrimination, or somebody doesn't get promoted, and are they a woman, we 00:45:00get all these lawsuits. So it's, you know, nobody is going to put anything down. And I don't pay, I would no more pay any attention to a reference letter.

LS: Yeah.

EY: And I, of course, for a historian, I'm impossible. I've never kept a log of telephone calls. I never write memos. I've lived all right. I get along all right [Laughs.].

LS: Yes, it is fun to go through the files when people are writing little notes on the edges of memos.

EY: Yes.

LS: Very explicit about --

EY: You haven't found much on mine, have you?

LS: No, I haven't. You're right.

EY: It wasn't a deliberate plan. It was rather laziness.

LS: Yeah, I can see that, well, but also I can see the need because you were in, after all, the late '60s. I mean, there's quite different --

EY: Well, my office was broken into, my files ransacked.

LS: Oh.

EY: And the other thing is, I didn't, wholly trust everybody in the archives either. I had some reason to because I had some evidence that some of the things that were supposed to be confidential got leaked years ago.

LS: Hmm.

EY: Not the guy who's running it, but he had some people working for him who 00:46:00were, once you have a, the answer, the true religion, whatever it is, the end justifies the means. And whether it is some, whatever it is, whether right or left, those people, I would never trust them.

LS: Yes, that was certainly a time when everybody felt that. I have a, oh, the Elwell was not put on the committee to set up this Industrial Relations, which was very interesting.

EY: Center.

LS: Center, yes. And I imagine that was --

EY: That's probably --

LS: It would've been Fred's doing that, because --

EY: Yeah, with advice from Witte. We, uh, he, uh --

LS: And Gaumnitz, what was Gaumnitz?

EY: Gaumnitz was, was sort of a center-of-the-road, how lived, stood Elwell all those years, I don't know. But he managed. He was kind of a buffer between. I 00:47:00knew him --

LS: Could you trust --

EY: What?

LS: Was he a man you could trust?

EY: Oh, I'd, sure. I'm very fond of Erv. He wasn't a dynamic guy. And he, but he was not, well, it was respect. He wanted to be respectable professor, you see. He was a good teacher, by all reports. He would talk endlessly. So I never let him in my office when I was dean or chairman or chancellor. I would always go to his office so I could leave. But we worked together on projects. We used to go down, he and I jointly went to Racine night, week after week, to talk to, help some business group.

LS: When was that?

EY: When? I've forgotten, one year. One year, he and I taught a course. I was offered a chance to teach economics for schoolteachers, and I said, I won't. You 00:48:00know, I'll take half pay and use the other half on Erv Gaumnitz because they ought to hear both sides because he was a little more conservative. But when we got in there, it wasn't really that much different. We're both economists, you see. He was basically a respected --

LS: Oh, I see, an economist.

EY: Economist, yes.

LS: Even though he was in the business school.

EY: Yes. Most people in the business school, you see, were trained in economics. Elwell was an exception. He was an accountant.

LS: Yeah.

EY: But again, one of the tragedies, has anybody ever told you about why Elwell never got a degree?

LS: Yes.

EY: Yeah, see, he couldn't, and so it was always a problem with him. But it was not reason -- he did it, the University persuaded him to teach instead of getting a degree. You know, I kind of liked the old boy. You had to kick him in the teeth once in awhile, but, verbally, but that's the way he understood. He was a bully.

LS: Yes. I've heard there.

EY: I, so I, that's why I got along with him. [Laughs.] He thought I was a radical. But --

LS: So you became, you became, uh, let's see whether I missed anything here. Fleming came to head this up, and Feinsinger brought him here.

EY: Uh-huh. He'd known him at the [word unclear], well, the other thing is Fleming had been a --

LS: Law student.

EY: A law student here, uh-huh.

LS: The, the Economics Department didn't, wasn't wholly in sympathy with this Industrial Relations Research Institute.

EY: Outside of the labor people, no -- I don't know. See, they didn't have much to do with it. It was set up sort of outside, and so they might've in some passing way, but most of the things that -- it didn't have any courses, so 00:50:00there's no conflict in teaching. And, uh, it was really supposed, it was a device to head off the, the School for Workers being taken over by Elwell. That's why the Institute was set up.

LS: Was he just, in other words, Witte and, and --

EY: Feinsinger.

LS: And Feinsinger worked that, uh-huh, invented it.

EY: Yeah. Well, they were being set up around the country too. It was quite fashionable to do it.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: Now some business people wanted it set up too because there were some who thought this was the way to, to teach labor to behave.

LS: Yeah, yes. It's a long way to see it. It should, what's in the public interest? That's what labor and management have to --

EY: Yeah, well, they would've been right, if all -- it isn't all, well, the record isn't all in yet.

LS: And you became head of both of these for a while.

EY: Yeah, let's see, how does this go? 1950, I became director of the School for 00:51:00Workers on a half-time basis, because everybody said, look, if you take that thing, you're finished. Nobody could ever survive being mixed up with that crowd as, academically, career-wise.

LS: Uh-huh. Well, why did you take it then?

EY: Because Witte and Pearlman told me, asked me to do it, said it was necessary, or it would go down the drain. See, it, they had it rigged so it would go down the drain if I didn't. I mean, Ullrickson went around the state and got a pledge from every union, that if they didn't make him director, and went outside and brought in a director, that they would boycott it.

LS: I see.

EY: And Witte and Feinsinger and Pearlman thought this was too valuable to have it destroyed. And it never occurred to Ullrickson that there was anybody in the state that could do it. Well, I had no interest in it, no knowledge about it. I was drafted. And, but I said --

LS: Well, why you? You were very young.

EY: Yeah, why me?

LS: Hmm.

EY: I was the only one they could kick around, I guess [Laughs.].

LS: Well, that's a --

EY: The only one that they, that -- there weren't many people available, you know, to, that they had confidence in and could trust.

LS: Was this your first administrative job?

EY: Yes. I didn't want it. I wanted to be a professor. That's where I got off the track, right there. Then, two years later, I got out of that one because I got this guy in working for me, Ozanne.

LS: Yes, well, you said that, but you didn't explain why. And you said somebody joked and said if you let him in [words unclear].

EY: Yeah, well, got him, well, he came in. We needed some help, and I think it was Ullrickson who'd hired him originally. But see, Bob had been an organizer for the retail clerks out in Denver. And he was natural to work in the School for Workers.

LS: Uh-huh. Was he an academic?

EY: Well, he was, well, he came here to do graduate work. He decided he wanted to be an academic. And so he was working for the School for Workers as a, you 00:53:00know, he was a person who was a little older, and he'd had this background, ideal background for the job. And so when he came over there, and I recognized that he didn't have much ideology, but he was, you know, knowledgeable --

LS: Not much ideology?

EY: I mean, he wasn't a, he wasn't a Socialist, you know, a conviction you had to be this way. This was the only right way to go or something like that. I'm not, uh, you know, because people were Socialists, I wouldn't, no reason for not hiring them. But it was more comfortable if you got, if they've got to survive in a, in a situation where their Socialism demands that they have confrontation with some very reactionary employers. And so they -- and he was smart.

And so I, we didn't have a lot of room. So I brought him right into my office, and we shared an office. So he knew everything went on, and then people kept 00:54:00warning me that he would take my job, and it was exactly what I wanted. So, see, I got --

LS: But you put together the statement warning you, and you wanted that, so that doesn't sound, those things don't go together. You're saying, don't worry, and he'll take your job. You don't have to keep it anymore, or --

EY: See, I thought it was very amusing when they warned me because, see, they warned me against what I wanted to happen. See, these people were trying to be helpful to me, you see. No, I thought it was great fun [Laughs.] because it was exactly what I had in mind, that he would take my job. And at the end of two years, I got out. But that was the time when Fleming left, and there was the Industrial Relations Center, see, so I had to pick that up.

LS: Tell me about why Fleming left because Nathan Feinsinger said that Elwell got rid of Fleming, but it doesn't look that way in the files, naturally.

EY: No, it never looks that way in the files. Two things, uh, one, why would he leave? Well, first, they offered him a very attractive position, that's --

LS: Yeah, $9,000, yes.

EY: Money, and an important budget and shop, which was very good, you see. So anyone might've left under any circumstance for that. But there was some push from this side, in that everything he tried to do, and bringing labor and management together, Elwell frustrated him because Elwell would get -- Elwell had a close friend who was running the Manufacturer's Association, Evans. And Evans worked at getting them to boycott everything that Fleming tried to do. See, Fleming was a middle-of-the-roader. He was neither labor, nor management, just absolute straight guy. He only ever double-crossed me once.

LS: When?

EY: Oh, this is, now can you shut the thing off?

LS: Yes.

EY: Fleming, and so that this constant frustration, trying to set up a conference, and then having it boycotted by some people, having, see, you were trying to work with industry and labor, and you've got the industry people boycotting you, with their organized, in an organized fashion. Now everybody 00:56:00didn't. There were some very, Bob had many friends among, because a person, you know, everybody trusts Bob Fleming. He's just absolutely tops. And as I say, there was this one episode, but outside of that, that's a pretty good record over 40 years. Anyway, he went down there, and he did very well, and then he got a chair.

LS: Well, wait a minute. Don't leave that story. I just wondered, here was the Industrial Management Institute going on at the same time.

EY: Yes.

LS: And presumably, these industrialists thought, I mean, they may have seen him as two thing, one for labor, and one for them instead of realizing that the, that the one was supposed to be for both. Was that --

EY: Oh, no, they understood the game. But they wanted, but these people were so anti-labor, they didn't want to be on the same platform with labor people.

LS: Oh, like the Israeli and the Syrian last night.

EY: Yes. About that kind of thing, it was very, very bitter. And so, but we had some other programs going, and we had German students here, which is a whole other thing.

LS: Oh, yes, I saw, the --

EY: And some things like that, so I, and I didn't want it to die. So I picked it up. We organized it more as, and we stuck the work research in, I believe, at that stage.

LS: Yes.

EY: And then out of it has grown the present program, which is a pretty good one. But I kept it alive. I wasn't very dynamic about it. I wasn't interested. The other thing is, I didn't want it to be a degree program.

LS: Why not?

EY: Well, I think the, see, I was, I'm conservative. And I thought this would pull the labor people and their interests out of the department, out away, you see, and the students. And my own view was if you're going to be dealing in labor management, you ought to know economics much more than psychology. Now 00:58:00that may not be good, but, you know, what is just my narrow view. Sociologists and psychologists are not, haven't been tremendously successful in these things. Or they weren't at that -- and anyway, we had a long tradition at the department.

I wanted to maintain the department's tradition, you see, or the past. And that was part of it. Also, I guess I really believe that a degree needs a discipline. And industrial relations really, at that time, wasn't a discipline, and it may be getting to be one, but it's a little confused still. Though we turn out some very good people, and they get very good jobs, and so on, but anyway, I probably was wrong. But that was my position. And then when I went to Europe, in 1955, I took a year off. And Reed Tripp became the director.

LS: Was he brought in for that?

EY: No, Reed was brought in as, we needed another person in the, in the department to teach labor -- there was a lot of course, lot of work to be done. Reed was a fine, splendid person. He wasn't very, he wasn't a very good teacher. He could -- on a one-to-one basis, he could teach a great deal. He had lots of insights.

He was never terribly popular with some of his -- see I got -- well, I'm no great scholar, never was, and never will be because I never, I, you know, I intended to do it, but never, they never gave me time, and I, you know, I don't feel that I had any great thing to offer. So I have no regrets about it. But Reed worked at thing, but didn't get, somehow, he didn't get to respect of his colleagues in the department.

You know, I was on good terms with everybody except Walter. And even with him, I 01:00:00got [word unclear] we're still cordial. He's forgiven me everything he ever said about me [Laughs.] most of the time.

LS: At least to your face, right?

EY: At least to my face, yes, and that's good enough, you see. So, but Reed, uh, but Reed, I think probably Mr. Witte brought Reed in.

LS: Oh, I know what. People thought Feinsinger should've been -- I guess that was, when was that? Was that at that point that thought Feinsinger should've been handled by IRRI?

EY: I don't --

LS: You don't know about that?

EY: I don't know, but I can't believe, probably would've been great if he'd have done it, but he was too --

LS: Maybe he was too busy.

EY: He was too -- look, he was making three times his University salary as, outside the University at the time. You know, he had a very complicated family situation.

LS: No, I didn't know that.

EY: I don't want to tell you too much. Well, again, some of this is gossip, I suppose. Most interesting things are. Gunnar Johansen was brought in, you know, 01:01:00to be, as a Brittingham artist in residence at piano. Nate was a very attractive bachelor.

LS: I can imagine.

EY: And he persuaded Mrs. Johansen to leave him, and she married Nate.

LS: Oh, I didn't know that. That's --

EY: And, of course, the man who lucked out on that was Johansen because he's got a wonderful wife now.

LS: Yes, I've talked to him, and I know he has.

EY: But, so maybe, I wouldn't put it past Johansen to have rigged the whole thing.

LS: Well, did she, did Mrs. Feinsinger, when did she die? She's not --

EY: She's still alive.

LS: She is? Oh, they got divorced? I often wondered about that when I --

EY: Yes. Well, what happened, you see, I said he led a complicated family life, when the, after she married Nate, she refused to live in Madison.

LS: Oh.

EY: So she moved to Aspen where Nate had some property, they got some. And so he spent his life teaching here, arbitrating around the country, and flying out to Aspen in all kinds of weather.

LS: For heavens' sakes.

EY: Oh, that man just, uh, did a [word unclear] because she refused to come to Madison after that divorce.

LS: She did -- and are they still married?

EY: No. They were divorced some years ago.

LS: Oh.

EY: The person who's kept Nate alive really was a woman named Rose, one a marvelous woman.

LS: Was she? I --

EY: Just marvelous.

LS: I suddenly realized, I should've interviewed her. That would --

EY: Yes. She probably wouldn't have told you very much, but they used to travel together, and, well [words unclear] --

EY: -- take positions just like that, and I'd say, oh, hell, let's go home and forget it. And he'd say, oh, no, let's keep on talking. And he'd find some crack somewhere. He did more, he settled more disputes. I've never seen anybody like him. And the other thing is he had tremendous stamina. He, I've been with him where we didn't go to bed for two nights in a row. And I would be absolutely out, but he was, he, you know, he was a national track, a national swimming champion when he was a student at Michigan. He was, well, where were we?

LS: It's his humor, I suppose. I mean, I suppose it was his humor in these situations that must've charmed everybody.

EY: It was his humor and his imagination. He could think up things that nobody, they hadn't, that they hadn't said no to yet [Laughs.]. It was great.

LS: I see.

EY: I used to play straight man. I'd say, whichever side we were talking, I said, you know, the public isn't going to stand for this damn foolishness. You guys are just out of your, absolutely out of your mind, you see. And I'd give them a lecture like that. Then Nate would come in and say, well, now, it's not that bad, and you guys aren't that bad. You know, I was the -- then we'd go and work the other side over [Laughs.]. Oh, it was fun. I learned a lot from him. You know, every one of these people, I learned a great deal from and liked very much.

Coming back to the, and so we carried the institute along, cut back down on the out, on the attempt to bring things together, moved it in a kind of a holding pattern until we could get things cleared away to do something about it. The, one of the byproducts of all this, in my opinion, is that in the Management 01:05:00Institute here has never risen to a very high status.

LS: Is it still going on?

EY: Oh, yes, it's a big operation, an extension. As I said, Moberly got fired because he, I've forgotten the details of how he double-crossed Elwell. He would double-cross anybody. The, uh, and then they -- we had a -- then the next fellow, Dick Sullivan, I think is name was. Marvelous guy, just splendid person, and was going, would've made something of that, and he had a brain hemorrhage and died very quickly. He was one of the most promising people on the management side this school had, and could've done, was on the way to do, and his success, it was just somebody was there now and just very ordinary. And --

LS: So this is an extension appointment.

EY: Yes, now, yes, it's and extension. And, uh, the business school doesn't have much to say about it anymore. Elwell did when he was there. But so it's now, it does a lot for the, you know the supervisors and sales managers and so on, but this isn't the place for the top executives come to look -- they go to the graduate School of Business at Northwestern or something. So we've never gotten, it's never achieved the status in the business world that the School for Workers has in the, in the labor world.

LS: Uh-huh. It's an example. It always seems to boil down to who's there, who's doing it.

EY: Yes, it does, makes a great deal of difference, critical times.

LS: Well, I'm trying to think if there are any other things to ask you about the 01:07:00department in this period before the whole social studies, social sciences and international studies push got going, because that was beginning in the '50s, wasn't it? The international --

EY: That was the beginning of that. There wasn't a great deal of it in the '50s. I had my first international experience in the '50s.

LS: Well, I think I would rather pursue, to be sure that we get to it, the hiring of Orcutt. And, well, you brought Pete Steiner in, and Gerry Somers here before.

EY: Yes, uh-huh.

LS: They were econometricians, is that --

EY: No, no. Pete was not an econometrician. He understood the stuff. He was a general theorist, a very good one, and a very good statistician. But he was not an econometrics man. Jim Earley, I think it was, who identified, you see, by any 01:08:00sensible thing, Jim should've been chairman instead of me. He was, he had the seniority, he was a full professor, but the fight wouldn't, at that time, see, he'd been very close to Morton earlier on, and been Morton's student, and then they'd broken, and so I was the -- I was the youngest person with tenure in the department. And I was the, I didn't have any enemies.

LS: At that time, were they voting for chairman? Was the --

EY: Oh, yes.

LS: -- whole department, members who voted.

EY: Uh-huh. They -- well, they nominate by voting, yeah.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: And the dean had to accept it. But most of the time, the dean, when I was dean, I accepted almost always, not always.

LS: They hadn't yet started the three-year cycle, it seems to me, standard then. 01:09:00I mean, you were chairman from '54 to '61.

EY: Yeah, but you, it was a year at a time.

LS: And with at year out.

EY: A year at a time.

LS: Yes, but, I mean, you were, you stayed in that long.

EY: Yes, yes. I didn't intend to, but it just seemed to be, things were moving, and there were a lot of things going, you see. We, that was the period when we did tremendous changes.

LS: In the department?

EY: Yes. And, uh --

LS: Was Ingraham, I just want to ask you. I don't, this isn't as disorganized as it sounds, but I have seen the statement that there was an anti-Ingraham group on campus, and that he wasn't pushing on fronts that some people thought he should, perhaps in the social sciences. Did he, did he accept your appointments, and did you have any feelings about --

EY: Oh, I had great help from him. I found him very helpful. I was a little in awe of him. He seemed much older because he didn't have any hair, and he, I, it 01:10:00took me awhile to learn what a sense of humor he had, marvelous sense of humor. This is one of the wittiest people, you know. You read the stuff he writes, and it's marvelous. But he kept a deadpan, and I -- but I went up there, and I had the utmost support from him.

LS: Who would've been an anti-Ingraham group on campus?

EY: Oh, I suppose a man like [Gillen?] was one of them.

LS: Who's Gillen?

EY: French Gillen, he was a wild man in French, who, you see, Mr. Ingraham was very tough on giving raises to people who were no damn good. And --

LS: Oh, I see, no damn good, you're saying, I guess what Bronfenbrenner was saying, you said not to pay too much attention to him, but his objection was that anybody who was sort of odd and oddball and wild man didn't get, didn't get raises and didn't get promotions.

EY: Well, not if they were, not -- no, if they just weren't very good 01:11:00academically, weren't doing things, either teaching well or researching well. Oh, I think, no, Mr. Ingraham would have a great deal of respect for some, for genius.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: You wouldn't expect him -- now, of course, Mr. Ingraham had, was, had some pretty strict - I think he had more, was more concerned about people's behavior too. He wanted them to be conventional. He, uh, he wouldn't have put up with some things that I did as dean, I mean, people's personal lives needed secrecy, you see. Although, he put up with at lot, but --

LS: You mean that would've been a factor in his saying [words unclear] tenure?

EY: Well, if he thought it affected the department.

LS: Uh-huh, but he couldn't do anything about Morton.

EY: Morton was his mortal -- Morton hated him, and he hated Morton. But he couldn't, you see, alone, he couldn't do, as a dean, you can't reach down and, and change the department, pick somebody up, see.

LS: Hmm. Harrington wrote a long [mailer?] to Fred with suggestions about what 01:12:00to do about Morton. Did you know that?

EY: I don't, I don't remember.

LS: Because I, I have a copy of it here. There were several copies in the file, so I took one.

EY: Yes. Well, I'd like to see that sometime. I wonder, let's see, if we, if it fell into place. I may even have seen it at the time.

LS: Yeah, you did, '57 it is.

EY: Yeah, we see, yeah, let's see. Well, I can't remember the date of the 01:13:00showdowns. Was this about the time when we were having that big row? I can't remember what date that was. But, yes, this is the kind of thing they were talking about. But that was considered. I knew about that, now that you show it to me. You wanted to talk though about bring Orcutt or --

LS: Yes.

EY: Well, let me say that Jim Earley was, should've been the chairman, and Ellsworth were, once this decision made, I became chairman, whatever we agreed to do, and wherever I, they'd back me to the hilt. We settled out disagreements by consensus and discussion, then we went ahead. And we always had enough votes to outvote Morton, Glaaeser, and whoever else they could bring around. And, of 01:14:00course, we had the Wilmot problem, which was very serious problem.

LS: Wilmot?

EY: Yes.

LS: What was that?

EY: He was, would've been, he was a grad, a person who took, was Mr. Kiekoffer's assistant and then taught the big course, and didn't finish his degree, and they want -- he was very close to Morton and Glaeser. And they wanted to get him promoted and kept, you see. And he was not kept. That was a big row, and they got, very serious matter. The name doesn't, he never got to be -- he got to be an assistant professor, I think.

LS: I see. That's why I didn't write him down.

EY: But beyond that, maybe only instructed. And it was very great bitterness. He was a good teacher, he [word unclear] a lot of students on for support, but he didn't, either didn't finish his degree or didn't get anything else done. And he went to, off to teach somewhere in Florida.

LS: Hmm.

EY: Nice, fine, nice person, hardworking, spent a lot of time with students. You 01:15:00know, they -- but he fell in, he thought -- see Morton persuaded him he was his only protector. It's the worst thing he could do is to join with Morton against the department.

LS: Hmm, yes.

EY: And Glaeser, never, Glaeser was always, and Morton were always close. Glaeser, again, felt that it was -- see Morton could persuade people that everybody else was against them.

LS: Yeah.

EY: He had -- so Glaeser, Wilmott, so there was that one problem. Well, anyway --

LS: Well, what about, Lescohier, just while we're still --

EY: Yeah, Lescohier wasn't terribly important. He, you never knew just where he, I think he generally sided with would be, he might vote with Morton. He was a little bit out of the department. You didn't have a great deal of respect for him. He had, he wasn't doing anything much, and there wasn't -- he had done some things earlier, and he was, they let him work on his time. He had some personal 01:16:00problems, you know.

His wife, I think, was, uh, I think either she lost her mind or something, and he was living with Mary [Amend?] or something like that. There was something going on. I know it was something -- but he was sort of, he wasn't terribly important. He was pleasant person to talk to. Again, I suspect he didn't get very much raises in those years because --

LS: Okay. Well, go on, then.

EY: And, let's see. So somewhere, I think it was Jim Early, but I'm not sure, who identified, we needed, you know, people were retiring, and we needed to, we were growing, and we needed some people. Pete Steiner, somewhere, and we persuaded Pete to come here. He was at Berkeley, I think, or before he came to us.

LS: Uh-huh. Is he the -- he eventually went to Michigan, is that right?

EY: Yes. Great person, wonderful. Just one of the best teachers we ever had, one of the clearest minds and the best poker player I've ever known. When he came, he then brought Roger Miller from Berkeley. And later, Peter divorced his wife and married Roger's wife. And that's why they left primarily.

LS: Oh, I see. That's interesting because one looks at it and one says, oh, well, he must've left because [words unclear].

EY: If he'd stayed here, he would've been one of the, he would've been --

LS: '68, I think maybe --

EY: He was one of the strongest people and best people.

LS: Yes, he apparently was very well, highly thought of at Michigan.

EY: Yeah, oh, he is. He's fine. He got to be, he's a dean, isn't he or something now?

LS: Maybe.

EY: Or maybe chairman of the department at some stage, but he got to be president of the AAUP nationally, you know, after he left here.

LS: Hmm.

EY: I used to kid him a little bit because he was not, didn't believe much in collective bargaining, and here he was the head of an organization trying to promote it. And he'd say, well, no, we're not really and so on. But just, that was one the big losses we've ever had. Well, once he -- and then Gerry Somers was quite a different situation. The labor field was expanding. We were looking forward to some retirements, you see, with Witte and Pearlman going, and Miss Brandeis going, and we were looking around.

And Elizabeth Brandeis had been as some meeting in, somewhere, she ran into -- no, that's not right. Somebody, we, some meetings we ran into Gerry Somers. He 01:19:00was -- and we were quite taken with him. And so we invited people out, and we [word unclear] him, and we brought him here. And he was a great catch.

LS: He was? Hmm.

EY: Oh, yes, just very, very good. He was a very good, very steady teacher, good teacher, terribly hard worker, and as a very stead scholar, a very, of high quality. And one with, one of the best people in the country. And, of course, he died suddenly, and Rita -- do you know Rita, his wife?

LS: A little bit, yes.

EY: Yeah, I was very fond of him, those. During the period of the black strike, Rita, for some reason, which I don't know, identified very closely with blacks, the black cause. She came from Toronto, where there, I don't think they had much to do with blacks there, but she was way out. And she one time called me a 01:20:00racist or something like that. Well, we're still good friends, by the way. But she just so -- and Gerry was the one who made the emotional speech that, when we had 800 faculty members there, that set up the Department of Black, of Afro-American Studies.

LS: Oh, really? Yeah.

EY: He was the one that carried the swing vote because he was so respected. And it was --

LS: That is [word unclear].

EY: It was very unlike him. If he hadn't made that speech, we would've had a program, you see, which is what we should've had.

LS: Yes.

EY: Because then, you can evolve it. Instead of that, we got into all kinds of trouble. It's going to come along, and, you know, some good people over there now. But, anyway, that was one of those things, that, this is my opinion of what --

LS: Yes, yes.

EY: But I think I'm fairly right about this. And, but outside of that one episode, which we're, that's one of the only few times, one of the few times in my life I ever disagreed with Gerry. But he was such an absolute top-drawer scholar and person.

LS: That's good to know.

EY: Uh-huh. Then, oh, we -- the future seemed to be going towards econometrics. And Pete Steiner and I would talk a lot, and Jim Earley, on what we should do.

LS: Now this had already happened elsewhere in the country, hadn't it?

EY: To some extent, yes.

LS: The departments had been --

EY: Yes, it was moving along, yes, faster.

LS: I mean, Wisconsin was quite a ways behind.

EY: Yes, in this, yes. We wanted to do something big. And so we talked about what we could do. Well, Pete said, uh, that we should try to get Guy Orcutt. Pete knew him from Harvard, where he was an associate professor. Well, it would 01:22:00take some money to get him, of course, because we wanted, or to bring anybody. We knew we needed money. So I went to Connie Elvehjem and Fred. Connie was graduate dean.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: And I asked for $100,000. Well, I wasn't in agriculture. I wasn't in biology, and what the hell would anyone -- but, you know, they were a little worried about the Economics Department a bit and, you know, about me. I, we, I put, I'd quite a lot of things around here by that time, and they wanted, they wanted to appear to be helping. Now this is what I heard later. I don't know if this is true, but I believe it to be true.

They had a WARF board meeting in Milwaukee. And Connie and, I was asking for WARF money, and Fred went over, and I'm told that they said to these guys, now look, Ed Young wants $100,000 to bring this guy Orcutt. Now he isn't going to get Orcutt for [words unclear] so it's perfectly safe to promise them $100,000.

That's what they did. Well, I went to, went to Cambridge, and I went to see, oh, Summer Slichter. You know, he was a Wisconsin man, and a wonderful, wonderful man. And he was always willing to be helpful. But he said, Ed, you know, you're not going to get any senior person from, to leave Harvard and go to Wisconsin. And, well, I said, uh, you know, I, you're probably right. And he said, you know, I talked about Dorfman, and I talked about Orcutt. I didn't want to show my hand too fully. And I wasn't quite sure in my own mind, you see. I was 

LS: As to whether you wanted Orcutt?

EY: Yeah, or Dorfman, which one? See either one would be a great catch. And all I wanted was somebody. And I thought I wanted these people, but I, but if I told 01:24:00him which specifically, and, you know, that would've cut me off from the others, and I didn't know what I was going to get. So I was keeping my hands, playing a little close to my chest too. And, but Mr. Slichter was just great, but he was so sure that there wasn't, I wasn't going to get anywhere. I was just wasting my time. And so I visited with Dorfman, and I visited with Orcutt.

LS: Had you met either of them before?

EY: No. Talked to them. And Orcutt was quite interested. What had happened was that he was an associate professor. He was going to be promoted the next year, but he thought they were a year late promoting him. And Guy was a person who was restless in a way. He wanted to do some, he had this, he had this model in mind that he wanted to do this, but I want the money for it. And so I talked, and I liked him very much, and just a very attractive person.

And we -- he said he would consider it. And so we, he had to bring certain people, and wanted to build this model of the American economy. And so we went through and brought him here and gave him some money, and one of --

LS: Now, wait, don't go so fast. Uh, why had you decided on Guy Orcutt?

EY: Well, mostly Pete Steiner, you see, Pete Steiner told me that --

LS: He, he'd already written --

EY: Well, no, Pete knew them. You see he was a student, a Ph.D. from Harvard.

LS: Ah.

EY: And he knew these people, and, and he'd had, I think he'd had some, some inkling from somebody that there was some restlessness there. But also because Guy fitted what we needed. He had the, you see, there weren't many people that really, of the stature, with this econometric model, that could -- we had to 01:26:00make a quick catch, jump, catch up.

LS: Yeah.

EY: And --

LS: So when you went to WARF, and you said you still were not decided between Dorfman and Orcutt.

EY: Well, I, I mean, when I talked to Mr. Slichter, because I hadn't met either of them.

LS: Oh, I see.

EY: And I didn't know if, Dorfman wasn't interested, so that crossed that off immediately, see. I later got to know Bob Dorfman better in Pakistan, but he wasn't interested in leaving Harvard.

LS: What interests me here is comments I've heard about Orcutt, not as a scholar, but as, in the way, his failure to understand how departments work and, which I guess was what got him in trouble. And I was just wondering if maybe that's why he was, if Harvard maybe didn't want him to stay. Do you think that may be true?

EY: Well, I think one of the, one of the most interesting documents I've ever laid eyes on, and I got to get a copy of it. It's in the New York Times.

LS: Is this 1971?

EY: No, this was 19 -- well, whatever year he came. What year did he come? You 01:27:00got your chart there?

LS: '58.

EY: '58? Well, it was 1958, New York Times. This is a letter from Seymour Harris, the chairman of the Economics Department at Harvard, saying what in the hell is the world coming to, complaining in the New York Times, that a place, no, kind of place like Wisconsin can take somebody away from Harvard. Oh, they were really upset. They didn't think, you know, they didn't want to lose him.

LS: Well, why didn't they offer him more salary then?

EY: When we made the offer?

LS: Yeah.

EY: I think he wouldn't have taken it. He'd made up his mind. Guy was the kind of person, you know, that once you, he wasn't playing with us to get a --

LS: No.

EY: No, counter offer, and they, and so they probably knew that. You mean, why didn't they promote him a year earlier?

LS: Well, no, I can, I mean, presumably they, they have their ways of doing things. No, I was just wondering, if they realized how valuable he was, but, so you were able to promise him, confidently, that he would have, because he needed 01:28:00a great many. I mean, he needed computer --

EY: Yeah, well, see, we were going to use the $100,000 from, from WARF, and then we were going to go to Ford, which we did. In fact, you know, Guy Orcutt got the money for that wing on Social Science.

LS: Yes, yeah.

EY: He was very, you know, we -- not only were, I didn't realize how, how persuasive he was, but he had great standing, you see. And he had enough confidence himself that with that $100,000, he could get this other money, and we did get a lot of money. And then we had -- so things moved very -- this was very exciting times. I was operating all over the place [Laughs.].

LS: But then, when he came, and he got the money, and he got the Ford Grant and set up the Social Systems Research Institute, but then, so what happened?

EY: Well, this --

LS: Why, I mean, I know what happened in fact, but why did it --

EY: Why did it happen? Guy had this dream of this great scheme of a real model 01:29:00of the United States economy, very difficult. I never -- I didn't ever think -- I thought it was only a very small chance of ever pulling it off. I never thought he -- but the man was go good, you see, and the pieces that he needed to put it together were so valuable, that even if you never got it all together, you know, it isn't like a house. Lots of pieces would stand alone.

LS: You can still use them, yes.

EY: It's more like a condominium. If you don't get one roof on some part of it, you can still get quite a lot of building. And, you see, I'm not -- I don't understand a lot of this stuff. But I understand a little bit about the pieces. And so --

LS: By pieces, you mean, people and computer and the--

EY: Yeah, you had to do certain parts of it, like, the people particularly.

LS: Yeah.

EY: The part, Arnold [Zellner?] was brought here, very brilliant. He left us to go to Chicago. He told me, primarily, because Chicago promised that they would 01:30:00send these, pay the tuition for his five sons to go to Harvard if they could get in or any other place.

LS: Wow. That's quite an inducement, isn't it?

EY: Yes, he had five boys.

LS: Yeah.

EY: Well, they thought also, Chicago is a great place. He brought, uh, Roger Miller was brought with Pete's suggestion. Charlie Holt came, wasn't the greatest in the world, but --

LS: Oh, he wasn't? You didn't think so highly of him? I mean, there seems to be --

EY: Yeah. No, I, no, I liked him as a person, but he came to really help Guy.

LS: Would he have been a reason why the thing didn't work?

EY: No, no, no. No, it didn't work, I think, now this is my view, and you ought to check this because this is, these are highly subjective things. Because when you got Zellner here, and you got these various people, they got interested in their own things and moved away from the model, you see.

LS: Yes.

EY: You see, there's no controlling them. It isn't like a group of graduate students that, research associates. When you assign things to them, they get, 01:31:00but Guy, well.

LS: People, somebody said he worked on the Manhattan Project, and he was used to being able to control the research of people under him.

EY: Yeah. Yeah, and this is, I think, why the thing fell apart. He didn't understand that these people, these very good people brought here, came because they were excited about it. One other just mention, while this was going on, I think it was '57 to '58, the Economics Association meeting was in Philadelphia. And we had tried a couple years before to get Bob Lampman to come here.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: And Bob Lampman, the phone rang. I was in bed, middle of the night, and Bob said, Ed, wait, I've been at the meetings, and all the excitement was about Wisconsin. Sounds like it's going a great place. I want to come. I said, Bob, you've got a position with tenure. No vote, nothing. The only time I ever offered a tenure position without voting clearance.

LS: I can see in this case, you were safe.

EY: Well, yeah, but, you know, but in the morning, I thought, my God, what did you do in the night? You know, if anybody ever finds out that you offered him a position without --

LS: Do you know what he said? He said, I think I was probably brought here to replace Bronfenbrenner.

EY: Who?

LS: Bob Lampman said that. I mean, he treated it very casually.

EY: Yeah, well, he was brought here because it was Bob Lampman, and he was the best, he's about the best thing going still in his business.

LS: Huh.

EY: Yeah, he's good. He's very good. He, uh, his work is uniformly good [word unclear].

LS: That's nice.

EY: And so, well, it was tremendously exciting time. And it, you see, it, I wasn't the architect of all this, you understand. The ideas didn't come from me necessarily. The ideas came from this group, as we grow and expand --

LS: Oh, Steiner and Somers?

EY: It's Steiner, Earley, Somers, Ellsworth, people who wanted the, the department to succeed even though the work was not, in the field that they weren't in, but they --

LS: I'm just looking through the names.

EY: Somers wasn't very important in the econometric side of it at that stage.

LS: I see.

EY: No.

LS: What about Dave Johnson, was he --

EY: No, Dave, Dave was on the labor side. He was brought here to, I guess to replace Tripp. Did he come before Tripp left? Maybe --

LS: No, he's before Tripp left.

EY: Yeah, it was, in prospect of taking the place of Brandeis then.

LS: Ah.

EY: Yeah.

LS: Let's see, Watts and Martin David were coming around '62.

EY: Yes. Watts was, again, attracted by the caliber of the people that had come 01:34:00before him, you see.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: But by '62, you see, I was out of it.

LS: And Goldberger.

EY: Yes.

LS: That I understand was the star acquisition.

EY: Yes, and he still is.

LS: And did he come because of Orcutt or --

EY: I think so, yes. What year did he come?

LS: I have probably '61 or --

EY: Yes, with Orcutt and Steiner, and other people were persuasive, but Goldberger just absolutely tops -- what very nice people they all are, with the exception of Walter, as individuals, you know. And it was really fascinating.

LS: Now do you say this from you later experience as dean and chancellor that, that not all departments were as lucky? I mean, is it --

EY: Yes, yes.

LS: Is it in that context that you say that?

EY: Yes. When I see this, the many departments have very, outside of, once the 01:35:00Morton issue was settled, we had a very congenial group of people. Now as it's gotten bigger and bigger, there tend to be some splits in interest, but as individuals, it just, it's nice people. But, you know, there isn't one of them over there that I don't really like quite well. I chose to be here because I don't want to get mixed up in the [word unclear]. I'm lazy.

LS: And how much did you, uh, or what contact did you have with the department after 1961?

EY: Very little, except I've known so many of them, and now as a dean, of course, I had to deal with the chairmen of the department.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: And, uh, but always invited to social affairs and still am, of course.

LS: So, but to bring the Orcutt story, was it just that?

EY: That he left? The reason he left?

LS: No, I mean, that, well, for instance, I guess in about 1964, Ford wouldn't give him any more money. And I think that's about the time.

EY: Uh-huh. And I think he was discouraged.

LS: Is it that he was a genius who couldn't understand how the little things worked? Is that the way you put it or --

EY: I don't know that I'd say he was a genius. I mean, he wasn't a, he had this particular dream, and he was very good at it. But there were a lot of people, you know, some other people were just as good around the country, more single minded, yeah, he was more single minded than some of the others. The, I don't know. Maybe, you see, he's also an idealist.

And this urban thing in Washington, I think, appealed to him as to get, gone 01:37:00with that too, something. And it got him out of the situation that wasn't working out too -- see, he'd gotten himself so committed, but, see, but at that time, I didn't see a lot of him. We saw him socially, but we were real good friends, and, you know, his wife was just marvelous woman. She just, she's now is elected her second or third term in the Connecticut Legislature.

LS: Oh.

EY: Yeah, they, uh, we used to go out. They had some land out in the country, and we used to go out there sometimes and do things with them. But I'm not sure, see, by the time he left, I wasn't seeing very much of him. I was busy deaning.

LS: But you were on the Advisory Committee of the Social Systems Research Institute.

EY: Well, my name was on there.

LS: Oh, I see, but you didn't have much to do with it.

EY: No, no, I was -- see, once I became dean, I pulled away from the department.

LS: Yeah.

EY: There was always the danger I'd be charged with getting --

LS: But it was supposed to be interdisciplinary.

EY: Oh, yes, I know. Yes, I know, but --

LS: I mean, it was something like AMRC.

EY: But, you know, I wasn't really, I hoped it would work. But it didn't, you see, I didn't have that craving for this one model. What I wanted from Orcutt was the kind of people that he would attract to his dream.

LS: Hmm.

EY: And I would let them do their thing. But I wouldn't, I didn't want to tell him how to do it.

LS: Hmm.

EY: I wasn't interested in telling him how to do it. I didn't know enough.

LS: Did he teach?

EY: Yes, yes.

LS: And was he a good teacher?

EY: Oh, I think he was a little difficult for the undergraduates to follow. But the very good ones, he was a good teacher for. I don't think he was the greatest teacher we -- he was not like Steiner, for instance, who was extraordinarily good.

LS: How about with graduate students?

EY: I don't know. That would be a nice question. You'd better ask somebody else, because I don't recall how he was with them. He had, he was all, he was a planner. He liked reorganizing things, and he had a lot of influence in 01:39:00reorganizing the elementary course in a way that didn't work out very well. He was very attractive, very persuasive person, a man that everybody, anybody would trust, you know.

LS: Would you say he was a, a child in a way, in relation to University politics and --

EY: Oh, I don't think so, no. No, I don't think so. He wasn't that naïve. I didn't regard him as terribly naïve. You know, everybody who comes here, we have a different system, and you have to explain it to them how this place works. And every other place, so, no, I just thought he, he pushed for this thing. But he also was interested in, very much interested in undergraduate teaching, a little bit like Martin David.

Martin, for a while, was interested in that, and Hansen, who wanted to reorganize things and plan things. Things seemed [word unclear] this picture of how everything an orderly way, and I'm a very disorderly person, you see. So I was always amused by all this orderliness.

LS: You're saying both Martin David and Lee Hansen were orderly, or just Lee?

EY: He tried, well, Lee Hansen particularly, yes.

LS: I know Martin David was very concerned, I mean, he wrote memos to the department.

EY: Yes. Martin always had some of that. Martin is not successful at it as Lee. Lee works at it. You know, Lee is really quite a marvelous person. He wasn't a very good teacher.

LS: I'm going to be interviewing him, and particularly Martin David.

EY: And he, and he, uh, took this seriously and set about becoming a good one, and he did. He, he's the, he's a prime example of if somebody makes up their mind, who will change their ways and teach, and they can. And Lee Hansen did it. The first thing he did when he became chairman of the department is issued a 20-page bulletin on how to find paper clips and everything else. Well, it was 01:41:00very useful. Nobody had ever bothered. You had to find out the hard way.

LS: I can see that.

EY: Oh, I think very well of Lee, and he's a little more serious than I am, I think. I don't take some things -- but they needed somebody to neaten up the place after I left. But we, you know, we were going off in all directions. At the same time we were doing all of this [word unclear], we were starting this overseas business.

LS: That's right. What, statistics was a thorn in the in your flesh, and had been 20 years earlier.

EY: Uh-huh.

LS: Uh, how did you, I mean, can you, what about it?

EY: Well, we finally got it worked out because of changes in, you know, with Pete here, who was a first-class statistician, and then we, George Box came to the Statistics Department.

See, the trouble with statistics before, it was in the Math Department.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: You never had statistics in a math department. All those guys want to teach 01:42:00is mathematics because, see, people who are disciplined, they don't play to the students. They play, most of them play to their colleagues. It takes a strong person to be independent of what, you have to have a sense of self-security to do your own thing. And most people don't. They, you know, Jim Earley, of whom I was very fond, Jim used to put out a bibliography about that thick for his course in the history of economics thought. There was no way, it was page after page, no way anybody could ever read that stuff.

And so most people didn't read any of it. But it was a very impressive document, certainly. I don't know whether Jim did it for that reason, but some people do that kind of thing, you know. Or the talk about their standards, or they, about the big assignments they give. You know there are various ways. But the mathematicians, and it isn't, most of them, when they stop statistics, really 01:43:00weren't interested in teaching people to view statistics. They were interested in teaching them mathematics.

LS: Uh-huh.

EY: Now I think Mark Ingraham may have been the exception. He was a statistician [plaid?] economist, plaid mathematician. But then George Box came and was really interested in statistics. So that made --

LS: Didn't you have something to do with getting him here?

EY: I can't remember. I can't remember the date. If I were dean, I did.

LS: It would've been the 1960s sometime.

EY: Yes, I think probably I did, as dean, you know. But, you see, dean can be helpful, but he doesn't make initiatives.

LS: Yeah.

EY: You see, so you can help find the money or persuade the person or so on.

LS: So you, but it's getting, I thought it was business, commerce that was fighting for statistics. They were earlier.

EY: Oh, they, Gaumnitz taught statistics, you know, and they taught it for us, you know. That's before Steiner came. And they wanted, but they didn't want the 01:44:00math statistics either. So we preferred to have our students go to commerce. But some of our people didn't think it was the best statistics in the world. So, you know, every different group had a different view. See, for some, statistics was just a requirement. For others, it's a useful tool. And for the mathematicians, it was mathematics.

So you got all, Gaumnitz taught statistics to undergraduates a long time before economics, and Phil -- I took my graduate course with Phil Fox, the philosopher. It was in the Business School. Phil had his degree in philosophy. Oh, he taught me to, a great suspicion of statistics. I remember when I got my paper back, I had an A. I got an A in the course. And Phil saying, he said, well, Ed, you know, see, I'd never taken an undergraduate course in statistics. I started with a graduate course. And I had to work pretty hard, reading the undergraduate book with one hand and working on the other with the other.

He said, now, don't let this go to your head. He said, there's a lot you don't know yet [Laughs.], which is absolutely true. But he was, Phil was a great person. But later, you know, when he was older, after he retired, he became a very embittered old man. He was quite wealthy. But he wouldn't go anywhere, wouldn't travel. He died a year or two ago, very tragic thing.

LS: Yeah, I won't pursue why a philosopher should be teaching a business course, but [words unclear].

EY: Well, I don't know how he got into it. Well, he and a man named Fox, a man named, oh, what was the other fellow's name, the philosopher's name? Oh, Sharp, we used to have a philosopher named Sharp here, built the house that Emily Earley lives in. And they, Fox and Sharp wrote a textbook in business ethics. It was wonderful, the type of authors to have for a book. Maybe he got into it that way. I don't know how he got into it, Phil got into it. But he was a -- maybe 01:46:00because he was a statistician as well as a, as a philosopher.

LS: But did you set up the Department of Statistics then to solve this? Was that it?

EY: I don't know how, I can't remember much about that. I remember the problem, but it wasn't one --

LS: It's just that somebody said of you, that one of the problems of getting Orcutt here was that you were -- suddenly this whole thing about statistics came up again, and you had to solve it.

EY: Yeah, well, we solved it. But it, it had been festering for a long time. You know, we were doing so many different things at that time. It's hard to remember what you were doing. See, most of my life is that, you know, I just keep jumping from one ice cake to the next [Laughs].