LOOKING BACK 
 
 An Autobiographical Sketch 
 
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 LOOKING BACK 
 
 An Autobiographical Sketch 
 
 by 
 SIMON LITMAN
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter ^^^' 
 
 1. Growing Up 
 
 1 '^ 
 
 2. First Stay in the United States ^^ 
 
 3. A Student in Paris 1'' 
 
 4. Meeting Ray. Studies in Munich and in Zurich 23 
 
 5 Return to the United States: At the University of 
 
 97 
 California " 
 
 6. On the Faculty of the University of Illinois 33 
 
 7. The Building of the Temple and the Founding of Hillel 59 
 
 8. The Trip to Russia ^^ 
 
 9. Trip to Palestine and England '^ 
 
 10. My Work on Committees 8j 
 
 11. My Meeting Rachefi' 93 
 
 12. The Death of Two Friends 97
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I remember vividly an incident of many years ago. A graduate student 
 came to see me with a problem. He had been gathering material for a 
 doctor's thesis, and after several months of what, for lack of a better 
 term, one may call research he was ready to put on paper some of the 
 results of his work. His problem was that he did not know how to begin. 
 "Well," I said, "then we had better select another topic." He was dumb- 
 founded ; this kind of advice he did not expect. Seeing how bewildered 
 he looked, I said, "Well, I think there is another solution. Do you know 
 what you want to write after the beginning?" ''Oh, yes," he answered. 
 "Well then, commence from that point." My problem is of a more 
 serious nature. I know where to begin, but I do not know exactly what 
 to write. Then why not leave well enough alone, and be silent, as has 
 been the case since the appearance of the memoir dealing with my dear 
 deceased wife when I refused time and again to add to it any additional 
 information about myself? 
 
 Why then write at all? This is a fair question and to it there is an 
 answer. One of my good friends, a well-known Chicago attorney, Ben- 
 jamin F. Goldstein, determined that what I have done during my career 
 as a teacher, writer, and speaker merits more attention than it was given 
 heretofore, that my articles, essays, and public addresses should be 
 brought together so that the reading public, those who might be inter- 
 ested in the professor's utterances, may get a more or less fair idea of 
 what the professor stood for and what he tried to accomplish. Personal- 
 ly, I never thought of my activities in the light that he threw upon 
 them, but I have decided to go along.
 
 The underlying philosophy of all my intellectual endeavors, whatever 
 form they may have taken, is expressed in an article which I wrote for 
 the Journal of Marketing (October, 1950). I said, 
 
 there was one guiding principle to which I strove to adhere; it was that 
 business courses in colleges should deal with fundamentals rooted in the science 
 of economics, and that concurrently with providing students with technical 
 knowledge should go an effort of educating men whose success should be based 
 on correct thinking and straightforward acting, an effort to train men for 
 useful citizenship, for intelligent upright living. 
 
 As I said in a talk at the dedication of the new Commerce Building 
 (May 7, 1926). 
 
 In this age of commercialization of art, science and literature, of professions 
 and statecraft, the salvation of society seems to lie in the placing of commerce 
 on a higher ethical plane than it has been heretofore. Men going out into the 
 world of business and finance must be imbued with high ideals, must be 
 taught to think in terms of public welfare and insofar as colleges of commerce 
 have been contributing to this end, they deserve well of the country. 
 
 From the shores of the Black Sea and the steppes of Ukraine to the 
 prairies of the Midwestern United States, from the thriving busy port 
 of Odessa to the small inland towns of Urbana-Champaign was quite a 
 step and many occurrences have taken place which shaped my character 
 and my outlook on life.
 
 1. GROWING UP 
 
 Perhaps this is as good a place as any to dip into the past and attempt 
 to explain how and why a romantic, as I was often called, became a 
 student of public law and economics, an exponent of scientific truths in 
 their practical application, a man who achieved a certain amount of 
 reputation as a scholar. 
 
 My narrative will be a desultory one but I hope sufficiently illuminat- 
 ing to do justice to the subject. 
 
 I had one brother, Alexander, or Sasha as we called him; he was 
 a year and a half older than I. We grew up in a well-to-do middle-class 
 Jewish family. It would have been a very happy childhood had it not 
 been for the fact that Sasha was a very sickly child requiring much atten- 
 tion ; there were trips to a resort near Odessa where he received mud 
 bath treatments and there was hardly any illness to which children are 
 subject to which he did not succumb. We had toys galore and were 
 never punished physically, our father believing that a disapproving look 
 and a stern word w^ere sufficient to keep children in line. I think, even 
 if I say so myself (who else is there to say it?), that we were well- 
 behaved boys. 
 
 At an early date my brother showed a capacity for drawing which 
 was a source of frustration for me. He could draw horses, dogs, sheep, 
 lions; as to me I would fix a four-legged creature and show it to him. 
 He would look at it, laugh, and say: "There is no such animal," to 
 which I would reply: "How do you know, have you seen all the animals 
 in the world?" However, I knew my limitations and I was hurt. 
 
 Soon thereafter I discovered that Sasha could write poetry; no verse 
 from me, hard as I tried. 
 
 Father fixed one room in our home as a gymnasium ; here my brother 
 exercised — rather too strenuously, it seems to me now. I looked on at 
 his antics on a trapeze or rings or some other devices intended to develop 
 and strengthen one's muscles. My own efforts were not equal to his.
 
 When we grew up Sasha could drive a carriage and expertly handle 
 spirited horses, a task entirely out of my reach. 
 
 I wonder whether these shortcomings of mine have not been to some 
 extent responsible for my determination to succeed, to show to this 
 older brother of mine that he was not the only one in the family that 
 could amount to something. And how proud I was when, many years 
 later in Paris where Alexander was a representative of the New York 
 Herald, he gave me a volume of the views of the city with the inscription 
 "To Dear Simon in Paris where he distinguished himself" (July, 1899). 
 
 I cannot tell whether it is usual for brothers to engage in combats. 
 As children Sasha and I fought, not very often and usually when some- 
 thing would happen that could not be solved otherwise. Being the 
 stronger of the two, Sasha would soon assume the supremacy; in desper- 
 ation I would resort to biting — not a very dignified procedure, I admit, 
 but this was the only recourse I had at my disposal. Then my brother 
 would give up in disgust telling me that I was not playing fair. "Fair 
 play?" There was defeat staring me in the face. Who would not have 
 fought tooth and nail to prevent it? 
 
 There was one line of endeavor in which I was superior to my 
 brother — music. We started to take piano lessons at the same time but 
 it became evident soon thereafter that it was I and not he that could 
 become a star performer. Our piano teacher looked at me rather seri- 
 ously one day after I played one of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without 
 Words" and asked whether I would not care to become a concert 
 pianist; he thought that I could play as well if not better than some of 
 his other pupils. I asked him what it would involve. When I learned 
 that it would require many hours of daily practicing, thus leaving little 
 time for studying, I decided to concentrate on the latter. Apparently I 
 was not of the stuff of which musicians are made. 
 
 We had in our home a wise bird, a parrot about thirty years old, 
 and when I would start playing, he would shout: "you fool, you big 
 fool." It seems that the parrot knew what I should and what I should 
 not do. Anyhow, I gave up the idea of becoming a professional musician, 
 keeping piano playing as a hobby. 
 
 Father's idea as to when our education should begin did not coincide 
 with ours. He did not want to send us to a public school until we 
 reached a certain age, and when a couple of our cousins were enrolled, 
 we went to see him and confronted him with a query as to whether it 
 was his intention to keep us ignorant. It took some courage to do it but 
 we felt that the gravity of the situation justified our procedure.
 
 I do not know whether our action produced any impression; I doubt 
 it, but soon thereafter our private tutoring started and we had some fine 
 teachers, except one under whose guidance we were supposed to learn 
 Hebrew. The trouble there was that he did something which I had 
 never seen before; ever}- little while he would scratch the back of his 
 neck; this intrigued me so much that I could not pay much attention to 
 what he was trying to impress upon us. 
 
 We had two governesses, one to teach us French and the other Ger- 
 man ; the latter was part Polish and she and I had arguments all the 
 time, I telling her how cruel the Poles were in dealing with the Ukrain- 
 ians, she correcting me by pointing out that it was a fifty-fifty proposi- 
 tion, a tit-for-tat afifair. 
 
 Our father believed in the educational value of travel and during 
 our adolescence and youth he provided us with opportunities to visit 
 the southern parts of Russia. With a mature person as our escort we 
 spent one summer on the beautiful shores of Crimea; another summer 
 brought us to the Caucasus, where from Batoum we went into the 
 interior and crossing the forbidding mountains passed through Tiflis 
 to the borders of the Asian continent. The summers which remain most 
 prominently in my memory are the ones when we stayed on the estate 
 of a landed proprietor from whom Father bought large quantities of 
 raw wool. There one could roam to the heart's content in the open 
 country' and lose oneself in the garden adjoining the ver>' large com- 
 fortable home of our hosts; there one could come in contact with the 
 peasants and learn something of their ways of thinking and acting, of 
 their ignorance and of their shrewdness, of their ability for adapting 
 themselves to any kinds of conditions confronting them. Anna Nikola- 
 jevna, the wife of the owner of the estate, a very attractive lady, took an 
 especial liking for me, which grew into one of the most beautiful friend- 
 ships. I still have the volume of Chopin's waltzes which she gave me. 
 She asked me to play a couple of compositions of which she was particu- 
 larly fond and which for a while I played just for her alone. 
 
 Somehow a few letters written at the time escaped oblivion and I 
 think that in order to show how a seventeen-year-old student of the 
 School of Commerce felt and how he expressed himself I can do no 
 better than to quote from them in a free (very free) transliteration. On 
 July 22, 1890. I wrote to Anna and her husband of our safe arrival 
 home and of our having been met by Mother at the pier. I said that 
 it was a happy moment, and yet I could not rejoice with all my heart.
 
 The memory of you whom I learned to respect and love as no one else, besides 
 my parents, marred the pleasure of the occasion. I could not drive out of my 
 mind the picture of our parting . . . 
 
 As the time went on my sorrow deepened because besides my parents, my 
 brother and our home life, there is nothing here that can bring peace and 
 joy. Certainly not the paved streets meeting at the regular angles and lined 
 with acacias and three or four story apartment houses; certainly not the hurry 
 and the bustle and the noise of the city. I feel out of place amongst the tightly 
 laced folks rushing to and fro, from whom one can seldom hear warm, sincere 
 words coming from the depth of their souls . . . How I wish to go away from 
 here to a place where one can breathe more freely and where one can meet 
 people perhaps more simple, but more friendly, more solicitous, more open 
 hearted. 
 
 And as I reminisce I see before me Grafskoje with its hospitable home and 
 its beautiful garden, and I see you, and there is a longing to go back to a 
 place where I spent a few happy weeks . . . 
 
 I pray that circumstances will permit me to see you often, but wherever 
 I shall be, whatever fate holds for me, I shall always look back with grati- 
 tude to the days we spent together. . . . Kiss the children for me, may they 
 grow up to be as good as their father and mother. 
 
 It was a unanimous decision of Sasha and mine to go again the follow- 
 ing summer to Grafskoje, where we were sure to be most welcome. Ad- 
 dressing my letter this time to Anna Nikolajevna, I wrote on September 
 1, 1891, of the coming of autumn and how 
 
 fine it must be now in the garden with its hundred years old oak trees and 
 stately poplars, with its moss-covered paths . . • , the trees wave their branches 
 and drop their leaves — the wind whistles as it passes through the garden ; how 
 wonderful it is to be there, to witness the transformation, to breathe the fresh 
 autumn air. 
 
 (I am giving a rather abbreviated version of the letter as the future 
 professor was inclined to be rather verbose.) 
 
 But how can a man feel, sitting in a stuffy room, bent over a table, transcrib- 
 ing some commercial forms or memorizing some statistical data? To him it 
 is immaterial whether cloudless skies smile on flowers in bloom or whether the 
 earth is covered with ice and snow ; mother nature does not exist for him. 
 
 How often as I sit in my room do I wish to be transplanted to the great 
 outdoors, to forget for a while the textbooks and the notes — to fill the lungs 
 with the air from fields, to feast the eyes on the peaceful landscape enfolding 
 itself. 
 
 How fortunate are people who possess great imagination; how fortunate 
 are the poets. They can forget their surroundings and see before their eyes: 
 "silver lakes, and magnificent palaces, and green valleys, and snow covered 
 mountains."
 
 Anna was unassuming and refined, which was not true of her hus- 
 band, who was loud and self-assertive. A graduate of an Institute for 
 the daughters of nobility and younger than her husband, Anna was 
 prone to do things which did not always meet with his approval ; so 
 things often had to be done clandestinely; such was the case, for in- 
 stance, when we took a dozen bottles of beer (there was a brewery on 
 the estate) and tins of imported sardines and went to the home of the 
 village priest and his wife; there someone played on the guitar or some 
 other instrument, there was singing, and we had a good time. Once 
 we were discovered and the fun came to an abrupt end. My sympathies 
 were, of course, with Anna Nikolajevna. 
 
 That I was cognizant of my tendency to be prolix may be gathered 
 from a letter which I wrote to my mother on June 25, 1891, from 
 Grafskoje. It is a rather lengthy epistle and I shall condense it, leaving 
 out repetitions and elaborations which characterized my writings at that 
 time. I wrote that after I mailed a letter on Saturday I realized that 
 it was a shameful performance. 
 
 Hundreds of miles will it cover until it reaches Odessa where you are waiting 
 for news . . . Days go by, then finally Boris [Boris was an office boy in the 
 employ of my father] brings a long-awaited missile from my brother and 
 myself . . . and what do you find? . . . from Sasha a few lines and from 
 Simon many words but little sense . . . 
 
 Forgive me, my dear, I promise you to be more factual from now on. 
 
 Here follows a discussion of what being factual means; it means 
 giving an account of actual happenings. 
 
 We left, as you know, little mother, on June 18, at 8 a.m. The weather was 
 perfect. ... If I were a poet I would describe to you colorfull)' the blue 
 waters of the sea meeting on the horizon the cloudless blue skies. ... I would 
 tell you how gradually disappear from the passengers' view the green shores 
 on which stands our noisy, dusty Odessa ; but I am not a poet and what I 
 can do is just talk, displaying cheap wisdom and bringing condescending 
 smiles from listeners by my attempts to be humorous. . . . But not much can 
 be accomplished by phrases, however sonorous; one can easily distinguish 
 between a shallow speech, dressed up in striking phrases, and one spoken in 
 simple language without affectation but appealing to one's mind and heart. 
 ... If I had the gifts of a poet, if I could by my verses thrill my audience, 
 ... I would not sing, as most of our poets do, of springtime, and flowers, of 
 women and love ; I would tell them the tragic story of our unfortunate com- 
 patriots who are leaving their mother land, . . . mother land, how ironical 
 these words sound to those who are not wanted, who go forth to seek security 
 miles and miles away from here.
 
 A succession of paragraphs follows in which I ask where my tongue 
 has led me, where are the facts of which I want to speak. 
 
 It seems to me that the knack of writing much and saying little did 
 not bother me at the time, but it may account for my later careful 
 elimination of what I considered nonessentials; this led the students 
 to complain that in my textbook on Essentials of International Trade 
 there was nothing that they could skip — no padding in the book to add 
 to its length, and to the comfort of the students even if they had to pay 
 a somewhat higher price for a text because it contained more pages. 
 
 The days which I still remember with much anguish were those 
 connected with the Greek Orthodox celebrations of Easter. The Jewish 
 community looked forward to them with much apprehension. It was 
 not impressed by the solemn prayers and chanting in the churches or 
 by the carnival spirit which prevailed in the outdoors where in a nearby 
 field all kinds of shows attracted crowds; each year it expected an 
 outburst of savagery — pogroms with their destruction of property and 
 injuries and death. The pogrom came in 1881. We lived outside of the 
 ghetto where the drunken hooligans with the connivance of the police 
 were avenging the supposed killing by the Jews of Christ about two 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 Father's travels necessitated his possession of arms to defend himself 
 against brigands who infested some parts of the country which he had 
 to traverse. When it became clear that a pogrom was in the offing, our 
 home became the center of activities which to my childish mind were 
 very exciting. The gates leading to the inside court were kept locked 
 and persons coming in and going out were subject to scrutiny. A few 
 young university students came to stay with us and they were armed 
 by my father. Jewelry and silverware were brought to us for safekeeping. 
 I anxiously awaited an attack, not realizing that the result would have 
 been most disastrous for the defenders. But nothing happened ; we were 
 left alone. A couple of days after the pogroms I saw what happened in 
 places where the Black Hundreds had their say, and it was heart- 
 rending. 
 
 I was abreast with my brother in our studies ; when the time was 
 ripe for our preparation to enter a public institution both of us selected 
 the School of Commerce; a few months were left to study for entrance 
 examinations which would admit us to one of the upper classes. My 
 father called me in and asked me whether I did not think that it would
 
 be fair to allow Sasha to enter a class one year ahead of mine since he 
 was the older of the two. I did not exactly like the idea but after some 
 thought I acquiesced. Both of us did good work. I graduated with 
 excellent marks in all subjects, which entitled me to an honorary citizen- 
 ship of Russia, a desirable accomplishment under the the czars as it 
 freed me from applying each year for a passport and permitted mc to 
 travel at will throughout the land. 
 
 There was one disturbing factor in our family life. Mother was 
 quiet and peace-loving, taking good care of a rather large house and 
 wishing nothing better than to be left alone; Father was kind and 
 thoughtful but subject to outbursts of violent temper which would 
 come and go for reasons which I could not always understand. When 
 we had visitors I was on pins and needles and heaved a sigh of relief 
 when the affair went off smoothly; one could never tell where an 
 argument would lead. 
 
 Father traveled a great deal and during the summer he spent a large 
 part of the time at his plant near Cherson where raw wool was washed 
 and baled for shipment to textile factories abroad. Then our home was 
 a peaceful heaven where one could relax, read, play the piano, and 
 consort with birds; in addition to the parrot, of whom I spoke before, 
 we had canaries, two lovebirds, and a nightingale (which never sang, 
 though we acquired it for that purpose). We had also a squirrel and a 
 large bowl of goldfish. Quite a collection and some work for Mother, 
 even if she was assisted by a maid and a cousin who before her marriage 
 lived with us. 
 
 Of inanimate objects we had a very large collection — antique and 
 modern silverware and then books and more books. Father could read 
 and write German as well as Russian and the three main book stores 
 sent him books as they received them ; when at home he spent hour after 
 hour, often late at night, perusing them and keeping what he considered 
 worthwhile to preserve. It meant quite an addition to the library, which 
 grew into a few thousand volumes covering the greatest variety of topics. 
 
 One of my joys was attending the performances in our fine opera 
 house, where again and again I was thrilled by the coming to life of the 
 masterpieces of Meyerbeer, Gounod, Saint-Saens, or Verdi, as they were 
 interpreted by young, mostly Italian, singers; they were attracted to our 
 cosmopolitan city by the knowledge that their acceptance by our discrim- 
 inating audience meant their future success elsewhere. Of course, Rus-
 
 10 
 
 sian operas were not neglected and usually more mature Russian singers 
 would bring us the works of Glinka, Rubinstein, and Tchaikovsky. 
 
 The curtain would rise and with rapt attention I would follow the 
 fortunes of Raoul in The Huguenots or of Manrico in // Trovatore 
 as in beautiful arias they would express their undying love usually for 
 the soprano and then often go to their death still singing. As students 
 we could go to the theater only on weekends, but as one with excellent 
 marks in all subjects I applied for and succeeded in obtaining a permit 
 to attend the opera on any day. I must have heard some of the operas 
 six or seven times and never grew tired of them. 
 
 When the opera was not in session I liked to go to a theater where 
 Ukrainian actors, very capable performers, staged their dramas; and 
 blood-curdling, soul-chilling tragedies some of them were. 
 
 I usually went alone, as no other member of our family shared my 
 enthusiasm for the theater; once in a while I would succeed in inducing 
 the family to go along, which was a gala occasion for me, for then I 
 had a much better seat, usually in a box facing the stage. Mother was 
 faintly interested ; as to Father, he was often actually bored^ — imagine 
 being bored when Alfredo Germont voices his passionate love for 
 Violetta, or when poor innocent Desdemona sings so tenderly, so plain- 
 tively "Sake" and "Ave Maria" before she is killed by the madly 
 jealous Otello. This is one of the things that I could not understand 
 in my father. 
 
 The winters in Odessa were rather cold with snow lying on the 
 ground for weeks at a time and it was a treat to be bundled up and 
 taken by Father and Mother for a lengthy sleigh ride through the busy 
 streets of the city out into the open country; faster and faster would 
 go the horses under the whip of the warmly dressed coachman and 
 fresher and cooler would feel the air until we felt that we had enough ; 
 then back home where a steaming samovar awaited us and we had 
 glasses of hot tea, sandwiches, and cake. What a fine way it was of 
 spending a chilly afternoon. 
 
 In the long winter evenings Father would often read to us ; he read 
 very well and it was through these readings that I became acquainted 
 with some of the gems of Russian literature, with the stories of Gogol, 
 Pushkin, Turgenev, and many others. I also learned the desirability of 
 being absolutely quiet and all-attentive ; Father would assemble us all — 
 Mother, brother, the cousin who lived with us — and as he read he 
 would watch from one to the other noting whether we were taking it 
 in the way we should.
 
 11 
 
 After I graduated Sasha and I took a trip to Moscow and Petrograd ; 
 it was our first journey northward into the heart of Great Russia, to 
 the centers of czarist activities whence the ruh'ng classes were sending 
 iheir orders regulating the life in every nook and corner of the Empire; 
 it was our first look at the magnificent palaces and art galleries filled 
 with priceless pictures and statues, but also our first acquaintance with 
 restless university students. In Moscow's Latin Quarter (so different 
 from the Latin Quarter I later learned to know in Paris), they were 
 discussing how to overthrow the hateful regime. A Latin Quarter 
 without open air caies \vith their bright lights, without gay laughter 
 and overpainted grisettes, a serious, sober, almost somber quarter. There 
 were young women there too, but how different was their relationship 
 with the men. They were admitted into men's circles on terms of equal- 
 ity, as comrades in arms, as the ones whose counsel was heeded. Over 
 cups of tea and very little to eat. they would talk not of the heroes on 
 the gridiron, not of baseball and football, but of the victims of previous 
 revolutionary uprisings and how the mistakes committed before could 
 be eliminated. 
 
 A sidelight on the bureaucracy, aristocracy', and a part of intelli- 
 gentsia was gained when my brother and I attended a concert in Petro- 
 grad ; we found ourselves almost the only ones who spoke Russian ; the 
 rest of the audience conversed either in German or in French ; Russian 
 was not good enough for them. Perhaps this can partly account for, 
 if not justify, what happened when the Bolsheviks took control and the 
 ignorant masses in their dislike, their hatred, of the upper and middle 
 classes killed right and left.
 
 2. FIRST STAY IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 Fearing that my brother and I might be drawn into the vortex of 
 antigovernmental activities and himself tired of a constant endeavor to 
 keep on good terms with the police, Father decided to leave Russia. 
 The final decision came when one of our cousins was arrested and 
 threatened with being sent to Siberia. It took a great deal of influence 
 to extricate him, but it was done; he was sent to jail where he was 
 kept for some time in order to allow him to sober up. The break came 
 in 1898 ; we moved first to Montreal in Canada and from there to New 
 York. It would take me too far afield to consider the various ramifica- 
 tions in connection with my father's attempts to adapt himself to the 
 new environment and his failure to succeed in the New World ; he was 
 too set in his ideas, accustomed to having his own way for too long. 
 After three years, the latter part of which was highlighted by his own- 
 ing and managing a retail store where dress goods supplied by his 
 friends of Botany Worsted Mills were to be sold and where I acted as 
 a bookkeeper and cashier, he gave up. The store was not in a neighbor- 
 hood where high-priced woolens could find purchasers; Father began to 
 add cheaper articles and finally closed the doors. He decided to go 
 back to Russia, taking Mother along. Sasha and I remained in this 
 countr}'. I applied for a position and was engaged as a correspondent 
 in the New York office of Botany Worsted Mills; my main work 
 there consisted in making abstracts of the reports supplied by Dun and 
 Bradstreet's mercantile agencies. I was not especially interested and 
 when after a four-month stay there my brother asked me whether I 
 would not care to become one of the inspectors and later a tabulator on 
 the newly organized first New York State Tenement Committee, I 
 gladly accepted the job. Sasha was then with Richard Watson Gilder, 
 of the Century Magazine : Gilder was president of the committee and 
 Edward Marshall, of the New York Press, was its secretary. 
 
 I do not really know whether I am putting the events in their proper 
 sequence as I did not keep a diary and my memory may fail me, but the
 
 14 
 
 reader, I hope, will agree that this is really not of great importance as 
 what I am trying to do is just to give an account of some of my activi- 
 ties before I came for the second time to the United States, first to join 
 the faculty of the University of California and later that of the Uni- 
 versity of Illinois. 
 
 Given the choice of territory to cover I took the part of the city 
 inhabited largely by Jews, many of them more or less recent arrivals 
 from Russia. Before being assigned the task and supplied with a badge, 
 I had to pass an examination in plumbing; I read a couple of books 
 on the subject and acquitted myself to the satisfaction of the authorities. 
 Then started my climbing to the fifth and sixth floors of the red brick 
 tenement houses where large families huddled in small quarters carried 
 on a rather desolate existence. At the termination of my services Edward 
 Marshall presented me with a book by Jacob Riis, How The Other Half 
 Lives, inscribed "with thanks for good work done." It contained nothing 
 new to me as I had learned at first hand how this half lived, if this 
 could have been called living. What an experience it was! The impres- 
 sion it produced on me may be gained from a letter which I wrote at 
 about that time to one of my classmates in the School of Commerce. 
 
 Towering buildings raising their heads to heaven, palatial hotels vrith 
 marble columns in the lobbies and soft Oriental rugs under one's feet, stores 
 covering city blocks and carrying goods from all over the world, magnifi- 
 cent theaters, brightly lighted streets, thousands of carriages and other ve- 
 hicles and shabbily dressed, hungry boys shouting at the top of their voices 
 "Extra, extra" — this is New York ! 
 
 Rows of red brick houses with dark stairways, with the tenements of two 
 or three rooms, with little light or air, where one finds huddled together 
 twelve to fifteen persons, dirty, ill-smelling streets, heart-breaking poverty and 
 sorrow — this is New York. 
 
 Here followed the description of the ideal life of the gypsies (as I 
 conceived it at that time to be ) , of gypsies who in their tents under the 
 open skies know the warming rays of the sun, and the fresh breezes of 
 flower-scented air. But what about our tenement dwellers? 
 
 They remind me of herrings in a barrel. I am not joking; the comparison 
 may be somewhat of an exaggeration, but it is not far from the truth. Air 
 and light which should be free for use by the rich and the poor alike are 
 doled out in small doses to the latter. Why not? Why not sell at a premium 
 the light and the air to the unfortunate arrivals from the Old World attracted 
 to New York like moths are attracted to a lighted lamp. . . . Unfortunate 
 newcomers, what brought you here? . . . Well, welcome; New York will greet 
 you with damp, stuffy, dark rooms, where you can relax breathing foul air
 
 IS 
 
 . . . Not satisfied with the welcome? Blame yourself, you were not asked 
 to come . . . 
 
 One of the purposes of the survey was to ascertain the extent of 
 overcrowding, and the first question asked by the investigator was: 
 "How many people live in your tenement?" The person opening the 
 door would look at the inspector and at his badge with some misgivings 
 and reply, "Six persons — my husband, my grandmother, myself and 
 three children." The inspector then would ask to be admitted and over 
 thirty questions would follow. I sometimes wondered at the patience, 
 if not accuracy, with which they were usually answered. Only once was 
 I threatened with ejection unless I left of my free will. We could call 
 on the police to help us in case of need. I told the man so; also that 
 our purpose was to see whether his living conditions could be improved ; 
 he finally calmed down and we parted more or less amicably. Back to 
 the problem of overcrowding. The first question I woud ask of the 
 next-door neighbor of the tenement just visited would be: "Could you 
 please tell me how many people live in the place next to yours?" The 
 lady would start to enumerate (it was usually a woman who opened 
 the door) ; it seemed that she would never stop; instead of three there 
 were six children; there was also a grandfather and some lodgers. What 
 could one do? Six or sixteen? My decision was that the truth lay 
 somewhere in between and I wrote down a figure accordingly. "Statistics 
 do not lie but statisticians do," so goes the saying; but my faith in the 
 exactness of statistical data themselves had been somewhat undermined 
 and when later I read in our Census Reports that the number of rabbits 
 in the country was 4,735,981, I wondered where the enumerator caught 
 the last rabbit; the animal must have been asleep. 
 
 The work of the committee brought me in contact with many people 
 whom I would not have met otherwise and I learned that mild manners 
 coupled with a determination not to be thrown ofi balance were valu- 
 able assets, that in most cases people were ready to reason if one ap- 
 proached them in the right way. I wondered of what value the police 
 could be in helping us in our work. An unwilling householder could 
 not be compelled to answer questions; there was no need for him even 
 to invoke the Fifth Amendment. 
 
 The work of tabulating the results of the investigation in different 
 sections of the city was somewhat baffling but very interesting. Some of 
 the inspectors did not follow to the letter the instructions and at least 
 one of them, it seemed to me at the time, did the filling in of the ques- 
 tionnaire sitting comfortably at home.
 
 3. A STUDENT IN PARIS 
 
 Sasha was leaving for Paris to represent the New York Herald; I 
 decided to go along. 
 
 Upon arrival I was encouraged by my father and Sasha to continue 
 my studies, which had been interrupted by the stay in the United States. 
 The institution which attracted my attention was the Ecole Libre des 
 Sciences Politiques. And so 1 went back to school, to sit at the feet of 
 the great social scientists of France, to listen to Albert Sorel, who ex- 
 pounded most lucidly the diplomatic history of Europe, to Anatole 
 Leroy-Beaulieu, who lectured on the political history of the leading 
 European countries, to Funk Brentano, who considered the rights of 
 men, to M. Renault, who spoke on international law, and to many 
 others. It was a wonderful experience and I was grateful for the oppor- 
 tunity not only to learn but also to obsene how the subjects were 
 handled so as to keep interested a heterogeneous group of students, many 
 of whom, like myself, came from foreign lands. 
 
 Not all the lecturers were up to the mark; some taught me what I 
 should not do. Such was the case of Professor Dietz, whose subject was 
 the constitutional, parliamentary, and legislative history of France. 
 When he lectured 1 took many notes only to find that I was wasting 
 good paper, as what he was saying I could find almost verbatim in 
 print; but he was so uninspiring, so tedious that note-taking was an 
 escape. Not so with Sorel; he and later Lujo Brentano were two of 
 the great teachers that I had. Sorel would come into the room and begin 
 to talk. I had paper and pencil ready. Then the bell would ring. What? 
 So soon? How the time flew! Only three or four sentences written 
 down. I was so absorbed in watching him, in taking in not only what 
 he said, important and erudite as it was, but the way he was saying it 
 that I could not write. 
 
 A course in political economy was given by M. Cheyson, a firm 
 believer in laissei; faire; he presented the subject matter from the stand- 
 point of individuals' participation in the production, distribution, and
 
 18 
 
 consumption of goods and services; dealt with the remuneration for 
 the work done as it appeared in wages, rent, interest, and profits; empha- 
 sized the importance of harmonious relations between capital and labor; 
 and referred rather briefly to the role of the State in the economic life 
 of the nation, emphasizing its limitations. No Keynesian philosopher 
 was he. 
 
 A good course on commercial geography and statistics was given by 
 Levasseur, a member of the Institute and a professor in the College 
 de France. 
 
 A course on banking brought me in contact with Raphael George 
 Levy, who later was of assistance to me in obtaining work as a 
 translator. 
 
 A man who took the friendliest interest in me and to whom I owe a 
 debt of gratitude was Maurice Caudel, a comparatively young man 
 then in charge of conferences. It was he who encouraged me to write 
 an article in French, "La Siberie et le Transsiberien," and who saw to 
 its publication in the Annates des Sciences Politiques; more important, 
 he was instrumental in my getting a letter of recommendation from the 
 Societe d'Enseignement Superieur signed by many members of the so- 
 ciety, by such men as Lavisse, of the French Academy, Darboux, dean 
 of the Faculty of Sciences, Berthelot, of the Institute of France, Lyon 
 Caen, of the Law Faculty, Boutmy, the director of the School of Politi- 
 cal Sciences, and many others; it was a recommendation to all professors 
 and to all friends of higher education. 
 
 In order to obtain a degree one had to present a thesis. I asked Ana- 
 tole Leroy-Beaulieu, whom I knew as the author of three volumes 
 dealing with The Empire of the Czars and of a book on Israel Among 
 the Nations, whether I could not write the work under him. He sug- 
 gested as the topic "Turkey and the Armenian Question." Many Ar- 
 menians had been massacred by the Turks not long before and he 
 wanted me to analj^ze the situation. I did this to his satisfaction. 
 
 I came to Paris in 1897, two years after Captain Dreyfus was de- 
 graded and sent as a spy to languish on Devil's Island off French 
 Guiana, all the time proclaiming his innocence. The affair seemed to 
 have been forgotten, except for the facts that the Dreyfus family had 
 never rested in its efforts to rectify what they considered an injustice 
 done to one of its members and that Joseph Reinach, a publicist, and 
 Bernard Lazare, a brilliant journalist, soon joined by Scheurer-Kestner,
 
 19 
 
 a Protestant statesman who was formerly the colleague of Gambetta in 
 founding the Third Republic and an Alsatian like Dreyfus, were prob- 
 ing into the way in which the trial had been conducted because they 
 were convinced of its irregularity. 
 
 In the spring and early summer of 1897 Paris was quiet with no 
 foreboding of what was to come. I rejoiced in the possibility of taking 
 my books and notes to the Luxembourg Gardens during the early morn- 
 ing hours, to study there in the surroundings of blooming flowers and 
 chirping birds. Somewhat later nurses would come with little children 
 in their care and I would retreat to my room on the left bank of the 
 Seine not far from the Gardens. 
 
 My interest in the opera continued unabated and what a treat it was 
 to go to the Grand Opera, where I saw and heard a Faust or Aida 
 different from the ones produced in Odessa. Great singers, fine orchestra, 
 wonderful dancing, and splendid settings. 
 
 I preferred the Opera Comique (somewhat a misnomer), where 
 operas not so grandiose in their conception and execution but to me more 
 intimate, more poignant, were being sung; where one could follow the 
 fate of IVIimi, Manon, Tosca, or Louise as they were conceived by a 
 Puccini or a Charpentier. 
 
 Tosca reminded me of having seen Sardou's drama with Sarah Bern- 
 hardt in the title role. I heard so much of the excellence of her acting 
 that I went to the theater with great expectation and I was not dis- 
 appointed. From the moment she entered the church in the first act 
 until the curtain fell at the end of the drama, I could not take my eyes 
 off her. With each gesture, with each shading of her voice, she made 
 Tosca vibrate with life and love, with agony of despair, with apparent 
 readiness to sacrifice herself, and with courage to kill. 
 
 There was another great actress in Paris at that time (there may 
 have been many more) which I remember well. It was Rejane, She 
 played the role of a lawyer in Red Robe. As I stood one day before the 
 Odeon considering what seat to take commensurate with my slim 
 finances, I was approached by a tall middle-aged man who asked me 
 whether I would care to join the claque. This was news to me. I had 
 never heard before of its existence, and I did not think that claques 
 were needed in the case of well-known performers, but I was mistaken. 
 And so I joined the claque, applauding when directed to do so, and 
 thus starting a general applause.
 
 20 
 
 In the autumn of 1897 Emile Zola came to Paris from his home in 
 Medan to spend the winter season in the city. He was approached by 
 Lazare to get him interested in "the Case," but all that the Dreyfusards 
 had so far were suspicions and doubts, no proofs of any kind. Then the 
 new head of the Secret Service, Georges Picquart, discovered in the 
 course of investigations that the real traitor w^as Esterhazy and that 
 Dreyfus was an innocent victim. As I am not writing about "the Affair," 
 suffice it to say that Zola, now convinced of Dreyfus' innocence, began 
 to write articles in the Figaro (which was soon closed to him), flaying 
 the passions aroused by anti-Semitism. "A horrible punishment inflicted 
 on an innocent man, what a monstrosity," he wrote ; and then he him- 
 self was attacked as one "who had sold himself to the Jewish Syndicate," 
 who himself was a traitor, an Italian (Zola's father was an Italian), 
 who was the author of La Debacle. In one of the most eloquent and im- 
 passioned appeals to France's young men, Zola in December of 1897 
 asked them to redress a social wrong, to remember the sufferings their 
 fathers had undergone to gain the liberties they now enjoyed, and to be 
 generous and humane. 
 
 I do not know what impact the appeal had on the French youth ; I 
 read and reread it, each time more and more impressed by it and gaining 
 a greater and greater admiration for the man who wrote it. 
 
 I never cared much for Zola's novels ; he was too much of a realist 
 and naturalist for me. Among the French writers whom I preferred 
 were Victor Hugo and Flaubert, Alphonse Daudet and Anatole France; 
 and then suddenly Zola grew in stature, a man in whom was mirrored 
 the soul of the better part of France, a fighter to redress wrong with 
 all the resources of his mind and heart. And what a struggle it was. 
 Esterhazy's trial was a farce; he was acquitted. Something drastic had 
 to be done. Zola, now at the head of Revisionists, wrote a letter to the 
 President of the Republic, a daring lengthy letter in which he retraced 
 step-by-step the sordid story of the trial, describing with an uncanny 
 insight the machinations of Dreyfus' accusers and judges. It ended with 
 a sweeping accusation of all involved in the case. / accuse brought a 
 storm of protest. A large part of the press, with Drumond's Libre Parole 
 at its head, demanded the trial of Zola and his incarceration; some went 
 so far as to suggest that he be executed for having insulted the army 
 and the government. What an atmosphere of darkness against light, 
 what a titanic struggle with scientists, men of letters, and intellectuals 
 on the one side and reactionaries and obscurantists on the other. 
 
 Zola was brought to trial. Mobs paraded the streets, shouting "Down
 
 21 
 
 with Zola, down with the Jews." It required the exercise of strong will 
 to apply one's self to study, to the reading of textbooks, when the world 
 around was aflame, when one of the greatest dramas was being enacted 
 before one's eyes. But study I did and in two years obtained my diploma. 
 What next? This was the question. Dr. Joseph Goldstein, then a 
 privat-docent at the University of Zurich and later one of the best- 
 known Russian professors of statistics, entered the scene. He was in 
 Paris at the time and his advice was for me to go to Munich and be- 
 come one of the pupils of Lujo Brentano with the object of obtaining a 
 doctor's degree and then entering the career of teaching. Sasha was 
 very much in favor of my doing it; he was so thoughtful, just like a 
 big brother considering my interests first and last. I hated to leave him, 
 to leave Paris where we had so many happy days together in our room 
 on rue Bertholet, in the Latin Quarter. But he insisted on my going and 
 I went.
 
 4. MEETING RAY. STUDIES IN MUNICH 
 AND IN ZURICH. 
 
 Was it destiny that brought me, at Goldstein's recommendation, to 
 Pension Quistorp in Munich and my meeting with Ray Frank, one of 
 the persons who stayed in the pension ? 
 
 The chapter "After We Met" in Ray Frank Lit/nan, A Memoir, 
 tells of our first evening together when she expressed a desire to learn 
 of the happenings in Paris and when after dinner we talked for hours, 
 she plying me with questions and I telling her of my experience in the 
 city from which I had just come. After a few days in Munich I went 
 to Russia to visit my parents before coming back to begin my studies 
 of the theory and history of economics with Brentano, of finance with 
 Lotz, and of statistics with Meyer. 
 
 Upon my return to Munich and to the pension I found Ray and 
 her friend Sophie Rosenthal, a member of a musical family and herself 
 a fine violinist, where I left them. 
 
 Those who read my memoir about Ray know what brought Ra\' 
 and the student of economics together; it was art in general and piano 
 playing in particular. It seemed also that from the time I came to the 
 pension and had my seat at the dinner table assigned next to hers, Ray 
 showed a keen interest in my being well fed. As I said in the Memoir 
 one form of this interest I did not appreciate; she wanted me to partake 
 of too many vegetables, the taste of which did not appeal to me. The 
 coarse vegetables dished out m the pension after the French cuisine, 
 even if not at its best, were distasteful to me. What I did appreciate 
 were our visits to the art galleries where, to quote from the Memoir. 
 
 it was a revelation to listen to Ray's remarks as we stopped before a Rem- 
 brandt or Reubens or Bokline, . . . her remarks touched upon the divine spark 
 which made the artist paint the way he did and the same spark would 
 illuminate the face of Ray as she would bring out in a language full of 
 imagery the beauty, the indestructible value of the canvas.
 
 24 
 
 Brentano suggested as my topic for the doctor's degree a dissertation 
 on "The Possibility of a Rise in Wages and the Wage-Fund Theories." 
 In it I allied myself with those who questioned the existence of such a 
 fund both in its old and in its new interpretation. 
 
 In view of the situation that had been developing in industrialized 
 countries, and particularly in the United States, my thesis (which was 
 that of a number of German economists including Professor Brentano) 
 that the wage fund theory, as advanced by classical economists, was not 
 valid has been fully justified. I criticized this theory even as it was 
 brought forth in modified form by Professor Taussig. The basis of dis- 
 agreement has been the contention that by being able to raise money 
 wages the laborers could enjoy an ever increasing share of the national 
 dividend. This, of course, meant that they could provide themselves 
 not only with the bare necessities of everyday existence, as the wage 
 fund theory allocated to them, but with many comforts enjoyed by the 
 other members of society. 
 
 As a student in Brentano's and Lotz's seminar I learned to know 
 the two men well. The seminar met in the evening; when a student 
 began to read a part of his thesis Brentano covered his face with a large 
 handkerchief and it seemed that he had fallen asleep. However, this 
 was not the case. When the student was through the handkerchief came 
 off and Brentano pointed out the flaws in the paper from a theoretical 
 point of view, the flaws in the construction of the work, the way in 
 which the student arrived at his conclusions. Lotz took up next ; and 
 his approach was entirely different. He questioned the accuracy of the 
 facts and figures presented by the student and to me it was a mystery 
 how no topic was outside the range of his knowledge. 
 
 There was a small group which Brentano invited after the seminar to 
 go with him into one of the places where in addition to listening to his 
 off-the-record remarks one could consume good Bavarian beer; both 
 Brentano and the majority of the students present did justice to the 
 beverage. For me, one stein was sufficient. It was fine after the serious 
 atmosphere of the seminar to see everyone, including the dignified pro- 
 fessor, relax. 
 
 It soon became apparent that I could not obtain my doctor's degree 
 from the University of Munich; to do so one had to be a graduate of 
 a gymnasium. As a graduate of a school of commerce and a school of 
 political sciences, I did not qualify. Fortified with a letter from Bren- 
 tano, I went to see the Minister of Public Education, but it was of no
 
 25 
 
 avail. A rule is a rule and if one breaks it in one case, where will the 
 rule go? I really could not answer this question though I was a believer 
 in exceptions. The minister was adamant in his decision to stand by the 
 rule and so I went to defeat. Brentano suggested my transferring to 
 Zurich to continue my work under one of his former students, Professor 
 Herkner, an authority on labor problems. 
 
 At the end of the semester I went to Zurich, a delightful place to 
 study, on the shores of a lake with mountains looking down upon the 
 city in their serene glory. Ray left Munich to go to London, but she 
 did not stay there long. She came to Zurich also. Was it to enjoy the 
 beautiful scenery of the Swiss Alps, to escape from the London fogs, 
 and to breathe the refreshing air of the mountainous country or to be 
 nearer to the student of economics whom she learned to know in 
 Munich ? Whatever it may have been, here she was and while her 
 presence made my stay more pleasant, it was not conducive to undivided 
 attention to my graduate work. 
 
 Both Ray and I liked to walk, and as we walked we talked — talked 
 of many things. These talks gave us an opportunity to iron out our 
 differences and as we respected each other's intellectual integrity, they 
 were patched up fairly quickly. During one such talk we walked too 
 far. How to get back? Fortunately (this is what we thought), a cart 
 made its appearance going in our direction. We asked the driver to 
 give us a lift. A simple procedure. "Five francs" was his price for the 
 service. It was rather exorbitant and I told him so. The driver looked 
 at us, hit the horse, and departed remarking. "If you have no money, 
 why are you in Switzerland?" 
 
 On another occasion we started to climb the Jungfrau ; it was not 
 our ambition to reach the top — we knew better — but we thought that 
 climbing would do us some good. All went well, or almost well, as long 
 as we were going up. The trouble started on our return trip. It looked 
 as if we were to remain halfway between the summit and our starting 
 point. No help was in sight. Finally, with a great deal of effort, we 
 succeeded in extricating ourselves. No more mountain climbing for us 
 after that. 
 
 One fine day Goldstein, then a privat-docent at the university, and I 
 almost drowned in the lake. We took a sailing boat for an excursion ; 
 all went well until suddenly a squall came up, and I found out that 
 my friend was a better economist than navigator; as to myself, the 
 less said the better. It was fortunate that our plight was discovered and
 
 26 
 
 help came from the shore. We were admonished never to try it again. 
 As good advice as we could have gotten under the circumstances. 
 
 Ray and I took a number of trips out of Zurich ; we visited Basel, 
 Bern, Spitz, Lucerne, and Interlaken ; they were interesting and enjoy- 
 able trips which made us better acquainted with what Switzerland had 
 to offer to the tourist, and also better acquainted with each other. 
 
 To cut a long story short, my thesis was accepted, I passed two written 
 examinations, and presented myself for the final test, which almost 
 turned into a debacle. Vogt, who considered me one of his prize students, 
 was sick and could not come. Herkner was delayed ; Goldstein, under 
 whom I took five courses, was not on the examining board. Confront- 
 ing me were professors whom I knew only by reputation and who did 
 not know me at all. I felt uncomfortable. The questioning began, most 
 of it dealing with subject matter taught by the distinguished group and 
 with which I, who did not take any work under them, was more or less 
 unfamiliar. I wanted to say that I felt like David in the lion's den, 
 but not knowing really how he felt I can merely say that I felt very 
 badly defending my position as well as I could until the arrival of Dr. 
 Herkner. Then I heaved a sigh of relief. From then on it was easy 
 going. Replying to him I was on solid ground; I knew the answers. 
 Even Sasha, biased as he was in my favor, could not have said that I 
 distinguished myself. However, I obtained the degree even if not with 
 flying colors, and this was important.
 
 5. RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES: AT THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Ray and I were married in London on August 14, 1901, and went to 
 live in a three-room furnished apartment close to the Place de I'Etoile 
 in Paris. In my memoir about Ray, I gave a fairly good account of the 
 beginnings of our life together and there is little that I can add to it, 
 except perhaps to mention that in addition to my activities and unsuc- 
 cessful attempts to find a place on the faculty of one of the French 
 institutions of higher learning, I wrote an article in Russian on the 
 "Bureaus of Commercial Information in England." It appeared in the 
 Journal of Industry and Commerce published by the Russian Ministry 
 of Finance and enriched me to the extent of 181 francs and 38 cen- 
 times; a franc was a franc at that time in value as well as in name. 
 
 As the days lengthened into months and as it became apparent that it 
 would not be possible for me to start in France on the career for which 
 I had prepared myself, that of a university professor, both Ray and I 
 decided that the best thing for me to do was to go to the United States. 
 We left for California. 
 
 L'pon arrival in Oakland we stayed for a while with Ray's relatives. 
 There was an urgent need for me to find work. I surveyed the situation 
 and the first person I went to see was the president of Stanford Univer- 
 sity, David Starr Jordan. He knew Ray as a student of art and philoso- 
 phy and a very able lecturer. As I came with fine credentials from 
 France he had no hesitation in offering me a position. They were looking 
 for a man in the Department of Philosophy. Could I qualify? I knew 
 enough about Plato and Aristotle. Kant and Hegel, but my knowledge 
 of more recent philosophers such as William James and John Dewey 
 was not adequate and I told President Jordan so. He then suggested my 
 coming to give talks a couple of times each week on economic topics, 
 until a place could be found for me in the department. This was not a 
 satisfactory arrangement for me and my next step was to see Professor 
 AdoJph C. Miller at the L'^niversity of California.
 
 28 
 
 It so happened that he was in the process of establishing a new de- 
 partment separate from the social sciences (in which economics had 
 been taught theretofore) and he was looking for a man to teach courses 
 in commerce and industry. He offered me a place on the faculty. I 
 decided to accept the offer and so my academic career started in the 
 second semester of 1902-1903 when, as I learned later, I became one of 
 the pioneers in teaching courses in marketing and merchandising in the 
 colleges of the United States. 
 
 The teaching of such courses began a semester earlier at Michigan and 
 Illinois. It was somewhat of a challenge as there were no textbooks or 
 much other material to which one could refer. As I wrote in an article 
 published in the October, 1950, issue of the Journal of Marketing, the 
 works known to me covering the subject were German treatises on 
 trade and trade policy. 
 
 I used them in outlining my work. A few elementary English text- 
 books dealing with business forms and documents were of some help ; 
 they permitted me to familiarize the students with activities leading to 
 the employment of the various documents and with the functions per- 
 formed by each. It was a roundabout method but it worked fairly well. 
 I abandoned it after two semesters and proceeded to deal directly with 
 the status and characteristics of market distribution as it was organized 
 by sellers of industrial raw materials, of agricultural commodities, and 
 of semifinished and finished goods. 
 
 In order to gain information as to how the mercantile activities were 
 specifically carried on in the United States, I interviewed wholesalers, 
 retailers, managers of industrial concerns, brokers, advertising agents, 
 exporters, and importers. It took some time to make them admit the 
 feasibility and desirability of having marketing courses in universities; 
 their resistance was finally broken down and their rather hostile atti- 
 tude changed to that of cooperation. The businessmen whom I ap- 
 proached thought that problems of merchandising could not be dis- 
 cussed effectively in the classroom, that this had to be done in the field 
 under the supervision of men of affairs. I pointed out what they were 
 favoring was a system of apprenticeship prevalent in many lines of 
 endeavor in the past but discarded for more efficient methods with bene- 
 ficial results to all. Some successful businessmen refused to answer 
 questions, contending that in doing so they would play into the hands 
 of their competitors, that they would divulge business secrets. I met 
 this argument by calling their attention to the fact that competition
 
 29 
 
 based on knowledge was much more desirable than competition carried 
 on by ignorant persons who could not only ruin themselves but disrupt 
 the business as a whole. From the very beginning I found the students 
 interested in the work and found Ray a valuable assistant. 
 
 The year 1906 brought earthquake and fire in San Francisco. The 
 quake was felt in many parts of central California but it was in San 
 Francisco that the fury manifested itself most severely. It was a terrible 
 sight to watch for three days and nights how the beautiful city across 
 the bay from Berkeley was being laid in ashes. With indomitable spirit 
 the citizens started the work of rehabilitation as soon as the conflagration 
 was brought under control. 
 
 The Southern Pacific Company issued bulletins dealing with "Events 
 Relating to the Rebuilding of San Francisco." In its June 13, 1906, 
 number appeared a short article of mine, "The Trading Place of Na- 
 tions," in which I spoke of the San Francisco harbor as being justly 
 considered one of the best in the world from the point of view of its 
 geographic location, its natural advantages, and the administrative con- 
 trol of its facilities. Lying between the most productive areas of the 
 United States and the rapidly developing Orient it was a logical termi- 
 nal for the railways spanning the American continent and the steamers 
 plying between foreign markets and our shores. 
 
 I wrote of the Golden Gate as one of the safest entrances to a harbor, 
 protecting San Francisco Bay from the westerly winds sweeping over 
 the Pacific and offering perfect safety to vessels. I spoke also of the 
 state ownership of docks and piers as giving the most homogeneous, and 
 in many respects, the simplest and most desirable administration of a 
 harbor. This short statement preceded by two years my article on "San 
 Francisco as a Foreign Shipping Port," published in the University of 
 California Chronicle in July, 1908. 
 
 In this article, while speaking enthusiastically of the spacious San 
 Francisco Bay, capable of giving shelter to the combined fleets of the 
 world and endowed with a climate permitting year-round activity on 
 wharves and piers, I posed the question : 
 
 What have we, the possessors and custodians of this matchless opportunity, 
 done to prove that we are conscious of its worth and capable of utilizing it 
 to the best interests of ourselves and the world at large? . . . What improve- 
 ments have we made on our water front; what equipment have we provided 
 for the rapid and efficient disposal of cargoes? . . . The answer to these 
 questions is, to say the least, most disappointing.
 
 30 
 
 In the summer of 1906 I went East largely in order to present there 
 the case for rebuilding San Francisco, which was in need of outside 
 capital in order to do the work more expeditiously. My talk at the 
 summer session of Columbia University on "San Francisco as the Gate- 
 way of the Orient" went unnoticed by the New York press; this was 
 not true of Philadelphia. Philadelphia papers covered my address at 
 the summer school of the University of Pennsylvania beyond my ex- 
 pectations. The Philadelphia Public Ledger^ the Philadelphia Record 
 and the Philadelphia Inquirer gave lengthy excerpts of my talk, in which 
 I emphasized the safety of investing in the "Metropolis of the Pacific." I 
 contended that while an unprecedented calamity had overtaken the fine 
 city, its repetition would be made impossible. Experts were working on 
 making the buildings earthquake-proof and on preventing the succumb- 
 ing of water mains and of the sewage system to any shocks. I empha- 
 sized the value of the city not only for the West but for the country 
 at large, as beyond it lay the great markets of the Orient, for which 
 the city was the best available port, bound to grow with the passing of 
 time. The North American and Philadelphia Everting Bulletin, in their 
 issues of July 28, also contained references to the talk. 
 
 One of the men who impressed himself on my memory during this 
 trip was E. H. Harriman, the railway magnate who controlled a number 
 of lines leading to the north and south Pacific coastal areas. He was 
 kind and patient when I went to see him and listened most attentively 
 to what I had to say, though I am certain now that he knew as much as 
 I about the situation confronting San Francisco. When I was leaving 
 he asked, "And what can I do for you?" I replied, "Nothing." Two days 
 later I received a railroad pass from New York to California which I 
 returned with appreciative thanks. 
 
 Upon my return to Berkeley, I continued the work at the university, 
 bending every effort to make a success of my teaching. Our life in the 
 home on Warring Street was moving along on a more or less even keel, 
 when on March 1, 1908, came a letter from Dr. David Kinley stating 
 that it was not unlikely that the University of Illinois might have of)en 
 a professorship in commerce for the next year. As I had been warmly 
 recommended he asked me, if interested, to fill in as soon as I could the 
 enclosed blank and send him any other information I could about 
 myself. 
 
 I was definitely interested, as I felt that my advancement in Cali- 
 fornia would be slow. I also wanted to get nearer to the industrial and
 
 31 
 
 political centers of the country. A contributing factor was the realiza- 
 tion that Ray was not happy in Berkeley. It irked her that, according to 
 her, I was not sufficiently appreciated by the university. As to her own 
 position it was radically different from the time when she was acclaimed 
 as a unique personality, as an inspired preacher and lecturer, and when 
 the salons of the Jewish leaders in San Francisco were open to her for 
 her lectures so that they could bask in her reflected glory and act as her 
 patrons and patronesses. 
 
 During the summer session of 1908. the last session I taught in 
 Berkeley, I arranged, with the assistance of the local chamber of com- 
 merce, a number of trips for my students which permitted them to in- 
 spect the west-end factories where superintendents and managers gave 
 them practical illustrations of how goods were manufactured and pre- 
 pared for shipment. 
 
 I also took the students across the bay to San Francisco where we 
 visited the customs-house and the office of a customs-house broker, where 
 they learned something of the machinery of collecting customs duties. 
 
 After I accepted the position at Illinois we were confronted with a 
 problem of selling our house and it was quite a problem. No property 
 had been moved in Berkeley for many months. People spoke of it as a 
 slump in the Berkeley real estate market and it appeared for a while 
 that I would have to go to Urbana alone, leaving Ray with the house 
 on her hands. However, we finally succeeded in our sales efforts and 
 were ready to go. Not exactly, as Ray wisely did not dismantle our 
 home until it found a buyer. And so we proceeded to sell most of our 
 furniture, then packed and shipped to Illinois books and personal effects. 
 
 When I came to Urbana-Champaign, I wanted to meet the man who 
 preceded me in the field I was to cover; unfortunately Professor Fisk 
 was drowned in the lake at Madison where he went to live, and so I 
 had to figure out myself why he had so many courses, such as, for in- 
 stance, one on the consular service. I proceeded to combine a number of 
 them so as not to lose myself in too many details, in what I thought 
 would be irrelevant discussions. Perhaps Fisk was right, but then I tried 
 to do the best I knew how.
 
 6. OX THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 
 It was a case of good fortune, if there is such a thing as luck, that 
 brought me to Illinois where I found in Dr. Kinley, then the head of 
 the economics department, one of the most understanding and friendly 
 individuals who, under a rather austere exterior, concealed a warm heart 
 and who almost from the first days of my joining the faculty showed 
 confidence in my ability to succeed. 
 
 His confidence presented me at times with rather difficult problems. 
 Thus, in the latter part of 1909, there was a meeting to be held at the 
 University of Chicago to discuss the aims of courses in elementary eco- 
 nomics. Kinley was invited as a speaker; instead of going there himself 
 he sent me. I tried to acquit myself to the best of my ability. My talk 
 was well received and, apparently, did not undermine my reputation, 
 as shortly afterward Kinley called me in and advised me of my promo- 
 tion to an assistant professorship for a three-year term. I did not say 
 anything. "What is the matter?" asked Kinley and I said, "Dr. Kinley, 
 do you remember what you wrote when you asked me to come? It was 
 on a two-year appointment. And you wrote that 'it seems to the Presi- 
 dent wise that we should make the offer as above, both on your ac- 
 count and ours, in the hope that your work during these two years will 
 be so successful as to justify us in doing more for you at the end of that 
 time.' Is it that you wish to try me for three additional years?" Kinley 
 smiled rather enigmatically, but when the appointment came, it was on 
 an indefinite tenure. Unless I am much mistaken, it was a first appoint- 
 ment of this kind for an assistant professor. Indefinite terms were re- 
 served for those who achieved the rank of full professor. 
 
 Those were rather busy and hectic years, my first two years at Illinois. 
 One fine day I was called in by Dr. Kinley. who informed me that the 
 professor teaching business law had become mentally incapacitated and 
 that he wanted me to take over the course. I did, and until recently I 
 wondered how my teaching struck the students, as my knowledge of
 
 34 
 
 business law was somewhat deficient. A little while ago, one of my 
 former students told me that he took this course and it was one of the 
 courses in which he learned more of later value to him than in any 
 other course. One can never tell. 
 
 Then there was a paper to be written by Dr. Kinley on "The Atti- 
 tude of the Democratic Party Towards the Tariff." He transferred the 
 writing to me. "Get all the assistance you can and give up one of your 
 sections in Economic Resources" was Kinley's advice. I followed it and 
 a few days later received a letter signed "Victim in Economics 26" ask- 
 ing me to come back. 
 
 The coed wrote (she did not declare herself as such, but there was a 
 feminine touch in her letter which betrayed her), 
 
 I hated commercial geography till I heard jou teach it and now I like it, 
 but I don't want you to leave it because you are the nicest instructor I have. 
 The rest are cross and nothing funny ever happens in class. All of us were 
 sorry when you said you had given the class to someone else. If you send us 
 to someone else, he will think there is nothing to talk about except climate 
 and navigation and resources which are tiresome unless they are made funny 
 as you make them. Please come back. 
 
 I seemed to have been able to gain and hold the interest of undergradu- 
 ates as well as of graduate students and one of the possessions I treasure 
 is a note from the members of Economics 29 and 30 classes, juniors 
 and seniors, who presented me with a lifetime fountain pen in 1942 "as 
 a modest token of appreciation for the privilege of studying under such 
 a lovable man and grand instructor," I learned that this was a rather 
 unusual thing for undergraduate students to do. 
 
 Speaking of undergraduates, I always regretted that the new ar- 
 rivals, somewhat bewildered freshmen and rather sophisticated sopho- 
 mores, are seldom taught by the older and more experienced members 
 of the faculty. With due respect to young assistants and instructors, 
 many of them are not the best persons to handle the transitional stage 
 when the products of our high school system of education become col- 
 lege students. I came to know many of them before other duties took 
 me away from meeting and teaching them. It was quite an experience. 
 
 It has been a mystery to me how young people could graduate from a 
 high school without being able to express themselves in correct English 
 and having difficulty in thinking logically. At the beginning of the 
 second semester of my teaching at Illinois, a girl came to my office in 
 tears. "Dr, Litman, I cannot understand it, I graduated a few months
 
 35 
 
 ago from high school as a valedictorian and now in this one hour quiz 
 you gave me a grade of E." I asked her to sit down and give me the 
 paper that she wrote. I went over it, paragraph after paragraph, showing 
 her how she failed to give correct answers because of her inability either 
 to grasp what the question was or to write understandably^ I may add 
 that she was a bright girl and finished the course with a grade of B. 
 
 Later, as a member of the educational policy committee of the 
 Senate, I came to realize how serious the problem was. Upper classmen 
 were not less guilty than the recent arrivals at the university. Many 
 hours through weeks and months stretching into years we sought ways 
 and means of remedying the situation. 
 
 Soon after my coming to Illinois I received a letter from Wesley C. 
 Mitchell telling me that Professor Dewey would like to invite me to 
 speak at the December meeting of the American Economic Association 
 but that they discovered that I was not a member, so would I not join? 
 My decision was a foregone conclusion and so at Atlantic City competing 
 with an orchestra in another part of the hotel I delivered a talk on the 
 "Tariff and the Final Consumer." I participated also in a discussion 
 dealing with accountancy, contending that accounting was not a statisti- 
 cal science as was stated by one of the speakers. According to my views, 
 accounting was not a statistical science because it was not concerned 
 with a study of group and mass phenomena and did not attempt to de- 
 tect and to state tendencies and regularities in our social life, which was 
 the object of statistics. To quote in part what I said, 
 
 When we begin to group similar business undertakings in order to study the 
 relations between capitalists, landowners, entrepreneurs, and laborers, we are 
 doing statistical and not accounting work. The statistician of today may find 
 for many of the problems confronting him help and inspiration in the labors 
 of the accountant, just as the accountant may be guided in many of his 
 pursuits by the work of the statistician ; but there is, to my mind, a definite 
 demarcation line between the two. 
 
 I spoke also against the introduction of elementary accounting into 
 our colleges and universities. The argument used for it was that we 
 had on our programs a number of subjects in no way superior to 
 elementary accounting, such as elementary French or elementary Ger- 
 man. Without entering into the discussion of the desirability or non- 
 desirability of introducing elementary accounting, I most seriously 
 objected to it on the ground that we have other elementary courses. 
 I thought that so far as it was practical, we should strive toward the 
 elimination of such courses and not toward their further increase.
 
 36 
 
 One of the men attending the meeting whose kindness contributed 
 much to my feeling at ease in the unfamiliar surroundings was Paul 
 Warburg. It was my first appearance as a speaker before a body of 
 American economists, many of them of national and international 
 reputation, and I wondered how my talk would be received. Warburg 
 sat next to me before I was called to speak and he sent me of? with 
 a smile and a word of encouragement. He also performed a service 
 for me later. There was a banquet to be held and I discovered that 
 I had forgotten to bring along cuff-links. In a nearby store on Penn- 
 sylvania Avenue I bought a pair, but when I tried to put them on, 
 one of them fell apart. I went back to the store confident that the 
 thing would be rectified. To my surprise the clerk said, "Sorry, but 
 you saw what you were buying. The transaction is final." The mar- 
 keting expert discovered that "Let the buyer beware" still held true 
 in some stores, but he did not expect to find it so close to the White 
 House. When I related my experience to Warburg, he gave me a 
 pair of his cuff-links and so the day, or rather the evening, was saved. 
 
 Part of the time in 1909 was taken up by my writing a book for 
 LaSalle Extension University on Trade and Commerce. The first 
 few chapters of the book dealt with problems confronting businessmen 
 as they carried on their activities and the methods which they used 
 in trying to solve them. The rest contained information to be found 
 in treatises on economic geographic data about the world markets and 
 the products moved from country to country. The work was bound 
 in the same volume with Stephen Leacock's Government and Industry, 
 a strange coincidence — a work of a political scientist bracketed with 
 one who graduated from a school of political science before getting 
 his doctor's degree in Zurich. 
 
 The director of the LaSalle Instructional Department wrote to 
 me on November 17, 1909, "It is an excellent piece of work and I am 
 sure it will be of great value to the students of our school." 
 
 While working on the book for LaSalle Extension University, I 
 wrote a "Review of Legislation on Commerce and Industry for 1907- 
 1908" for the New York State Library Bulletin. This made me wade 
 through many enactments, selecting those which I considered most 
 important and deserving the attention of the readers of the Bulletin. 
 It was a tedious task which I did not care to repeat. As I was not 
 asked to do so, I had no opportunity to refuse which was just as well. 
 
 On June 2, 1910, H. W. Ruoff, chief editor of W. F. Richardson
 
 37 
 
 Company, asked me whether I would be available to prepare a series 
 of articles on business organization and administration for their con- 
 templated "Volume Library." I agreed to do so. Upon the receipt of 
 the outline of my article, which in the space of 12,000 words was to 
 cover such a variety of topics as wholesale and retail trade, the foreign 
 market, business correspondence, salesmanship, credit and collections, 
 and land and sea transportation, Ruoff wrote that he had no suggestions 
 to make as to its improvement. Following his instructions, I made the 
 text "as practical as possible, and not in any sense academic or rigidly 
 scientific in treatment." No one could have accused me of having 
 done otherwise. It was quite an accomplishment, if this is what you 
 want to call it. 
 
 Soon after my coming to Urbana, I was asked to address the first 
 meeting of the year held by Ivrim, the Jewish students' organization 
 of the university. It was on October 12, 1908. I discussed "The Russian 
 Jewish Situation" with special reference to the Jewish students who 
 jointly with other students were working toward the overthrow of the 
 autocratic and bureaucratic regime which held Russia in its grip. I 
 told them how, disregarding their own safety and having barely enough 
 to eat in some cases, they were dedicating themselves to the task and 
 when apprehended were punished by being thrown in jail or exiled 
 to Siberia. 
 
 A couple of months after my talk at Ivrim, a mass meeting was 
 held under the auspices of the Cosmopolitan Club to consider the 
 case of Christian Rudowitz, who was in danger of being deported to 
 Russia as a fugitive from justice and who, according to many, was 
 not guilty of arson and murder as charged, but was a political refugee 
 and thus entitled to asylum in the United States. I was not very familiar 
 with the situation and when asked to speak said that "while the efficiency 
 of our officials is not to be questioned, the voice of the people should 
 be raised because a doubt exists in regard to the guilt of Rudowitz." 
 The main speaker was Professor J. W. Garner and at the close of 
 the meeting resolutions were passed to be sent to the Secretary of State 
 and to President Roosevelt. 
 
 Next day in a letter which appeared in the Daily Illini, Mr. G. 
 admonished us not to get hysterical in dealing with the case of Rudowitz. 
 Replying to this comunication which "threatened us with ridicule that 
 hysterics might bring upon the good name of the University . . . and 
 that the meeting might be construed as an attack upon the judicial
 
 38 
 
 and administrative authorities of the United States," I wrote, "A 
 disapproval of a decision passed by Commissioner Foot does not imply 
 the questioning of the efficiency of our governmental institutions." I 
 called attention to the fact that the history of every country is replete 
 with examples of judicial errors, citing the most recent example of it 
 in the United States when the higher courts reversed the decision of 
 Judge Landis against the Standard Oil Company. 
 
 Let us not sidetrack the real issue by using big words such as "Department of 
 State" ... let us remember that back of these words stand mortal beings who 
 as yet do not speak "ex cathedra" ... let us also remember that many a vic- 
 tory for liberty and honor has been won not by serenity and cool calculations 
 but by impetuous words and acts that have stirred the souls of men. 
 
 As to ridicule, we have too high an opinion of our great statesmen to think 
 that they will find anything ridiculous in the sincere enthusiasm for justice 
 Avhich should animate the youth of our land. 
 
 In 1911, as the chairman of the Commercial Committee of the High 
 School Conference, held at the university, I proposed a definition for 
 one unit's credit in commercial geography. It was a carefully prepared 
 report which is hardly necessary to consider here except that one of 
 the items which I suggested was that students be made to study, as far 
 as practicable, specimens of the products of mines, fields, and forests 
 as well as of industrial plants and that for this purpose each school 
 should have a commercial museum. We had a well-attended, interesting 
 meeting and after some discussion the report was unanimously adopted. 
 
 I may add in this connection that when I came to Illinois, I found 
 a collection of exhibits supplied to a number of colleges by the Phila- 
 delphia Commercial Museum. I proceeded to enlarge it by sending out 
 letters to various concerns with, on the whole, satisfactory results. 
 Most of the firms which I approached sent specimens and while their 
 classification and housing took some time, I found it a rewarding 
 experience. 
 
 One of the letters which I came across in looking over my corre- 
 spondence of 1910 was from Henry G. Foreman in which he wrote 
 on December 17 that "Agreeable to the request of yourself and Dean 
 Kinley, I have written Mr. W. L. Abbott, President of the Board of 
 Trustees, setting forth my views of the School of Commerce and 
 recommending an increased appropriation for the same. Thanking you 
 for calling my attention to the same, I am. Very truly yours. ..." I 
 do not remember what Kinley and I wrote, nor what were the tangible
 
 39 
 
 results of our writing. It is apparent that my efforts to work toward 
 the expansion of the work of the School of Commerce started at an 
 early date. 
 
 In the early part of 1912, Dr. Kinley called me to his office and 
 informed me that Dr. Towles was leaving and that he had no one in 
 sight to take over his courses on labor problems and socialism and social 
 reform. I wondered whether he wanted me to suggest someone, when 
 out of the blue sky came his suggestion (it was really more than a 
 suggestion) that in the interim I should take over the teaching of 
 these two subjects. "Drop some of the work you are doing." It was 
 as simple as all that. 
 
 Fortunately, I had spent some time studying labor problems under 
 Lujo Brentano in Munich and under Herkner in Zurich, and my 
 doctor's thesis dealt with "Wage Fund Theories and Possibility of a 
 Rise in Wages"; fortunately, also, for the professor and his prospective 
 students there were satisfactory textbooks and other literature available 
 and I had some time to acquaint myself with them. I am at liberty to 
 report that the two courses survived 1912-13 at Illinois and so did 
 everyone else concerned. 
 
 On March 21, 1912, I had the temerity to address in French the 
 Cercle Francais of the university on "The Workmen of Paris." This 
 was the first and the only effort of mine to give a lecture in French. It 
 was somewhat of an effort; after that I decided to leave well enough 
 alone. I had the lecture written out, not having trusted myself to do 
 otherwise. If confession is good for one's soul, I confess here and now 
 that it was really foolhardy of me to accept the invitation to speak 
 in a language which I had not used for about ten years. 
 
 I knew my subject but this was hardly enough. The audience listened 
 attentively and when I finished, a number of those present told me 
 how interesting the talk was. They were certainly charitable. 
 
 It was only on one other occasion that I gave a public address not 
 in English. This was a few years later at the dedication of the Russian 
 People's University of Chicago on October 5, 1918. It was a memorable 
 occasion with about 300 people present, some of whom had recently 
 escaped from the Bolshevik-controlled country and who hoped to return 
 there when she had been liberated from the clutches of the hated regime 
 and when the sun of freedom which she experienced for a short while 
 after the abdication of the czar would shine once more upon the 
 martyred land.
 
 40 
 
 It seemed as if a part of intellectual Russia came to the Midwestern 
 section of the United States to speak through her educators to an 
 assembly eager to listen and to learn. I heard later that I rose to 
 the occasion, speaking well and to the point. I have before me the 
 address as it appeared in the first number of University News and 
 shall quote briefly from it. 
 
 Though I was opposed in principle to schools where subjects are 
 taught in a foreign language to a group which had come from a 
 country where this language is a native idiom, I found that there 
 were extenuating circumstances which justified the establishment of a 
 Russian University. I spoke of the Russian immigrants, to whom 
 American life with its institutions of learning, its libraries, its popular 
 lectures in English was a closed book, immigrants who were familiar 
 only with the negative sides of American democracy and I said, 
 
 If the Universit}' could do nothing else than disperse the dense fog which 
 prevents the Russian immigrants, through their ignorance to grasp the ideal 
 aspirations of the American people, if it should do nothing else than acquaint 
 them with the ardent love for freedom which animates the citizens of the 
 United States and their willingness to undergo sacrifices for its perpetuation 
 and for the triumph of Justice and Truth, ... its existence would be justified. 
 
 But the activity of the University will go beyond that. It will bring together 
 the representatives of Russian intelligentsia and other immigrants from that 
 country. One of the reasons for the fratricidal struggle which has been going 
 on in Russia drenching this country in blood was the chasm separating the 
 Russian bourgeoisie and professional classes from the masses, from the peasants 
 and factory laborers, . . . with the exception of a few who worked among the 
 people, the well fed and more or less secure . . . upper and the middle classes 
 paid little attention to the suffering prevailing among the proletariat. This 
 chasm has been transferred to the Ignited States. For the good of Russia and 
 of the world at large, it must be closed; the Russian University will be one 
 of the means for doing so. 
 
 It is hardly necessary for me to point out what service the University ^^i\\ 
 perform for those who intend to return to Russia. Russia needs educated men 
 in every branch of economic endeavor. She needs leaders in the field of agricul- 
 ture, mining, manufacturing, means of transportation. The University will 
 supply such leaders. It is dark in Russia today . . . fire destroys villages and 
 towns, thousands of innocent people perish. We are told that the Western press 
 exaggerates the extent of the calamity, but we know enough to realize how 
 bad the situation is ... It is not too late yet. Russia is large and has abundant 
 resources; her people have many fine qualities which will permit them to 
 engage in constructive work when peace and freedom come back to the land. 
 
 Universities are like beacons; they provide light but they cannot light the 
 way for those who do not want to see. However high may be the ideals of
 
 41 
 
 your professors, however wise may be their decisions, however great maj- be 
 their striving for universal good, they will not succeed unless you students 
 give them your moral and material support. 
 
 Dedication ceremonies were over at about 9:30 P.M. Then many 
 stayed on to consider the problems confronting the university and the 
 ways they should be met. The unofficial meeting broke up at 12:30 A.M. 
 We went into the open air. It was still outside and this stillness 
 descended upon us. Some said that they were hungry. We went to an 
 Italian restaurant and were served macaroni and spaghetti, the only 
 food they could give us at the late hour. It was 2:00 A.M. when I 
 reached my hotel. It was a day and part of a night well spent. 
 
 In 1912, the Council of Administration granted me permission to 
 take my class in domestic commerce to Chicago. Dr. Kinley was at 
 first reluctant to approve the plan; it had never been done before 
 and he was fearful of having a group of students go to the city with 
 all its allurements not to be found in the quiet university towns. I 
 assured him that I would be able to handle the situation and bring 
 the students unscathed back to the campus. I also suggested that 
 many students were from Chicago and that closer than this city were 
 towns to which students could and did go when they were in need 
 of relaxation. On our trip we visited the Board of Trade, Marshall 
 Field and Company, the Credit Clearing House, Montgomery Ward, 
 and a couple of other establishments. 
 
 We were together as a group until about 7:30 P.AI. I devised an 
 ingenious system of control ; at least this is what I thought at the 
 time. At 10 P.M. the students had to check into the Palmer House, 
 where we were staying. It consisted in their coming to say good-night 
 to me. I could then go to bed with a clear conscience. In the morning, 
 we were together again continuing our visits to some of the Chicago 
 concerns and returned to Champaign on the evening train. 
 
 It was a worthwhile experience for the students who learned at 
 first hand many of the items discussed in the class. However, I did 
 not repeat it; I found it too much of an ef^fort and with each succeeding 
 year, other duties made it impracticable for me to absent myself from 
 Urbana for any length of time. 
 
 In 1912, the University YMCA instituted a series of lectures on 
 "Face to Face Salesmanship." I was asked to open the series and on 
 February 26 spoke on "Principles of Salesmanship." About 75 students 
 listened to what one of the papers described as an instructing and
 
 42 
 
 forceful lecture. Defining salesmanship as a progressive force which 
 stimulates human activities, as an act of presenting what one has to 
 sell in such a way as to make the buyer feel that it is to his advantage 
 to purchase, I considered also the characteristics of a successful salesman. 
 
 There was a discussion going on at the time (it may be still on 
 so far as I knov.) as to whether anyone can be made a good salesman 
 through training or whether he must be born. I was inclined to the 
 opinion that introverts who shrink at the contact with the outside 
 world may be able to overcome this difficulty but when they select 
 business as a career, they should confine themselves to work in an 
 office. Of course, a person who is at ease when he meets people is good 
 material, but, like a singer, he must be trained to do the work properly. 
 
 In July, 1914, a convention was held in the Armory to discuss the 
 European war situation ; President James was the main speaker. He 
 spoke of man as a fighting machine and said that it was in man's nature 
 to tiy to force anything that disagrees with him into submission, that 
 no international peace could be established until there was some power 
 that could compel nations to obey its commands. Other speakers confined 
 themselves to consideration of the events which brought about the 
 conflict and of the reasons why the powers allied themselves the way 
 they did, I expressed the opinion that Great Britain seemed to have 
 replaced her fear of Russia with a fear of Germany, which had become 
 her greatest rival in the commercial world and whose growing power 
 she wanted to curb. 
 
 The United States was neutral in 1914, but the war was looming 
 large in the thoughts of the American people and it was a subject of 
 many public utterances. When Ray and I were spending our vacation 
 in Denver, I was asked to address a B'nai B'rith meeting, as "a visiting 
 brother from the East." I spoke on "The European War." 
 
 The ruthless submarine operations of Germany, particularly the sink- 
 ing of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, in which 1,154 persons (including 
 114 Americans) lost their lives, brought a wave of indignation; but 
 although most of the papers thundered against the outrage, it took two 
 years before the resistance of isolationists and German sympathizers 
 was broken down. The Congress, stirred by President Wilson's appeal 
 that "the world must be made safe for democracy," declared war on 
 April 6, 1917. Thus, what started as a European conflict took the pro- 
 portions of a world war.
 
 43 
 
 In the meantime, between 1914 and 1917, the life of the university in 
 general, and of its commercial division in particular, was proceeding 
 at a more or less even pace. 
 
 In February, 1915, was inaugurated a "short course in business," de- 
 signed to afford those already in business an opportunity to broaden 
 their knowledge of fundamental business principles and to get informa- 
 tion about the best practices in their respective fields. My contribution 
 to the course was two talks on "Credit and Collections." This first at- 
 tempt to go outside of the classroom in order to reach the business world 
 and the public at large proved successful. The course was repeated in 
 1916 and again in 1917. In 1916, I enlarged my field and gave five 
 lectures. The first was devoted to the "General Aspects of Marketing," 
 the second to "Retail Distribution," and the last three to the problems 
 connected with "Mercantile Credit." In addition to the members of 
 the faculty, we invited outside lecturers. 
 
 On April 11, 1917, I was the speaker at the banquet held in Chicago 
 in connection with the buying convention of the United National 
 Clothiers. I chose as my topic "Co-operation in Retail Trade." On July 
 24 of the same year, I again spoke in Chicago at a banquet held by the 
 United Mercantile Stores; both banquets were at the Auditorium 
 Hotel, now housing Roosevelt University. Apparently my talks struck a 
 responsive chord among the businessmen as they were meeting in con- 
 ventions. In February', 1918, I was asked to address the Illinois Retail 
 Clothiers Association when they met in the Sherman Hotel. In Febru- 
 ary of that year a short course was given at the university for retail 
 merchants. The topics I covered were "The Store: Its Place in Market 
 Distribution" and "The Problems Confronting the Retailer in His 
 Buying Operations." In commenting on the last lecture, the Illinois 
 Retail Merchants' Journal, in its issue of March, 1920, was kind 
 enough to refer to me "as a man of great learning . . . [who] held his 
 subject with a clear conception, making his analysis distinctive and plain 
 so that everyone present realized the benefit thereof." 
 
 In addition to my addresses in Chicago, I spoke in Peoria in 1915 
 and again in 1917, thus "disseminating information and serving the 
 state in a larger measure than it could have been possible otherwise," 
 but making additional demands upon the professors. 
 
 On November 10, 1920, there was held the first get-together meet- 
 ing of the season by the Urbana retailers, grocers, druggists, coal dealers, 
 dry goods men, confectioners, auto dealers, and so on. As an "expert"
 
 44 
 
 on the subject of credits and collections, I gave "a talk of much interest 
 to everyone present." I do not know why I got a reputation of being an 
 expert on credit, perhaps because I spoke so many times on the subject. 
 I warned those within hearing of the disastrous effects that may result 
 from promiscuous credit granting, of the deadening effect of "dead ac- 
 counts," cautioning that the longer one lets an unpaid account run, the 
 deader it becomes. Departing from the subject of credits, I gave advice 
 not to indulge too much in competitive price cutting, especially in what 
 may be called "cutthroat" competition. After my talk, the meeting was 
 thrown open for questions. What was the nature of the questions asked 
 and how the expert answered them, I do not remember. Perhaps it is 
 just as well. 
 
 Unless I am mistaken, 1920 marks the end of my participation in 
 business banquets as well as in short courses dealing with domestic com- 
 merce. I started to devote full time to problems connected with inter- 
 national economic relations, with foreign trade in its various manifesta- 
 tions, with ocean shipping, and later with counseling graduate students, 
 and with the conduct of the seminar for doctoral candidates. 
 
 In the summer of 1917, Ray undenvent a major operation in the 
 Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago. It was successful and while she was 
 at home in Urbana we considered where we could go so that she could 
 recuperate more rapidly. While we were discussing the matter, a letter 
 came from Dr. Kinley, who was at that time in Washington, D. C, 
 asking me whether it would be possible for me to come there. The 
 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was undertaking the 
 preparation of a series of studies on the economic effects of the war and 
 he thought that there were some topics in which I might be interested 
 and helpful. "Of course," he wrote, "if you do so, you will be properly 
 remunerated and your expenses taken care of." 
 
 Considering the state of our finances after Ray's operation, we de- 
 cided that here was a chance for her to have a good rest and for me to 
 do some worthwhile work. I accepted the invitation. 
 
 When I arrived in Washington, I found Kinley working on a mono- 
 graph, "Prices and Price Control in Great Britain and the United 
 States during the World War" ; he asked me to join him in the under- 
 taking. However, he found out soon that lack of time would make it 
 impossible for him to do his share of the work, as he originally intended, 
 and I was left to struggle along with a topic which was not exactly what
 
 45 
 
 I would have selected if I had had a choice. He transferred to me his 
 notes and a mass of other material through which I had to wade until 
 the monograph was completed and became No. 19 of the Preliminary 
 Economic Studies of the War. 
 
 My being in Washington where Dr. Kinley was the editor of the 
 studies and whose office was close to mine made me understand and 
 appreciate him better than I had been able to do theretofore. I knew 
 that he could analyze clearly any problem which presented itself for 
 discussion, I knew of his adherence to justice and fair play, and I knew 
 of his willingness to listen to other people's arguments as well as to 
 express his own ideas; but it was in Washington that I learned of the 
 depth of his feelings, of his sympathetic understanding, of his ability to 
 be a friend. As I said at the testimonial dinner given to him on his re- 
 tirement as chairman of the directors of the First National Bank in 
 Champaign in 1940, 
 
 Often when I was working in the adjoining office ... he would come in and 
 say, "'Well, this is enough. Let us go home." And we would walk together 
 through the busy streets of Washington in those turbulent days, neither at 
 times saying a word, absorbed in our thoughts, but I felt most keenly there 
 the presence by my side of a friendly spirit, of a great versatile mind, of a 
 man in whom one could implicitly put one's trust. If I were asked what are 
 the most outstanding characteristics of Dr. Kinley ... I would sa}' that they 
 are his intellectual integrity, his unwillingness to sacrifice principles on the 
 altar of experience, his uncompromising search for truth and, last, but not 
 least, his insistence that individuals stand or fall on their own merits, that no 
 one should be condemned because he belongs to a particular group, faith or 
 race . . . 
 
 I did not need any confirmation of Dr. Kinley's friendship but it 
 was gratifying to read in Professor E. L. Bogart's letter of April 19, 
 1946, from New York that, "He [Kinley] had a very warm place 
 in his heart for you and used to speak of you as 'Simon'." Bogart wrote 
 in this letter that my "obituar\' of Kinley was a fine — a just tribute to 
 an able man who might have been a great scholar, if he had not been 
 an even greater administrator." 
 
 I sent a reprint of the obituary to Janet, Kinley's younger daughter. 
 In a letter of April 15, 1946, she wrote that she and her husband, Dr. 
 J. R. Gregg, thought that it was the "best thing that was written about 
 Father," and she added to it something which touched me very much, 
 "I could not help thinking how it would have pleased him that you 
 should be the one to write this article for the American Econotnic Re-
 
 46 
 
 vieWj for he would have known that he is in the hands of a warm 
 friend." 
 
 The entry of the United States into the war led to a series of lectures 
 under the heading of "War on Waste." The first lecture was given by 
 Professor F. H. Newell on January 15, 1918. I spoke on February 19 
 on "War Prices and Profiteering," attributing the rise in prices in part 
 to the striving to take advantage of the situation by corporations and 
 others who raised prices to add to their profits; higher taxes, withdraw- 
 ing men from production work and drafting them into the army, the in- 
 creased demand for food and textiles by soldiers working outdoors and 
 being subjected to strenuous exercise were indicated as other reasons 
 for the rise. I suggested that "business as usual" cannot be carried on 
 in time of war, that buyers should refrain from purchasing nonessentials 
 and insist on reasonable prices when buying. 
 
 The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Assemblies for 1917-18 
 were devoted to a discussion of the various aspects of the war. A large 
 crowd greeted me, showing interest in the topic if not in the speaker, 
 when I gave a lecture in Morrow Hall on the "Meaning of Recent 
 Events in Russia" on January 10, 1918. I shall not quote from this 
 address as what I said is well expressed in an article on "Revolutionary 
 Russia," which was published in the American Political Science Reviezv 
 in the May, 1918, issue and also in a much later study on "Understand- 
 ing Russia," in Opinion and Comment (August 10, 1946)). On Janu- 
 ary 27, 1918, the Women's Literary Club of Urbana held its annual 
 guest day, at which I repeated the performance which I gave in Morrow 
 Hall. 
 
 A few days later, I spoke on Russia again, this time before the avia- 
 tors stationed at Rantoul. It was done under the auspices of the Uni- 
 versity War Committee. 
 
 To interest the students in a War Fund sponsored by the YMCA, 
 a fund to provide "huts" for our fighting men, many faculty people 
 including myself were asked to appear as after-dinner speakers in fra- 
 ternities, sororities, and cooperative units. I am sorry not to be able to 
 report how successful was this eflfort. 
 
 In the February, 1919, issue of Historical Outlook appeared my first 
 study of the "Effects of the War on Foreign Trade." I was pleased to 
 receive in this connection a letter of Mr. A. E. McKinley, the editor of 
 the monthly, thanking me for my "co-operation in making this issue one 
 of the best which has appeared." This article was followed by two in the
 
 47 
 
 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, one on 
 "The Foreign Trade of the United States since the Signing of the 
 Armistice" (March, 1921), and another on "The Effects of the World 
 War on Trade" (September, 1926). 
 
 In 1919, one of the bulletins issued by the University of Illinois 
 War Committee contained my article on "The Republic of Ukraine." 
 It was a challenge for me to write about the land of my birth, of my 
 childhood and adolescent years, the land which I left after completing 
 my studies in the School of Commerce in Odessa. The establishment 
 of the Ukrainian People's Republic in November, 1917, was the cul- 
 mination of many efforts to free the country from the control of the 
 czarist regime. With the abdication of the czar, the Ukrainian Council, 
 taking advantage of the weakness of the Provisional Government of 
 Russia, issued a manifesto declaring the Ukrainian people free. In the 
 bulletin, after sketching briefly the history of the Ukraine as a border- 
 land country, I wrote how since the second half of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury Ukraine had "ceased to be the land of wild freedom and stormy 
 strength" and had become an integral part of the Russian Empire; the 
 Ukrainians transformed their land into fields of wheat, rye, and corn, 
 into orchards and vineyards; some of them became prominent in indus- 
 trial and commercial pursuits, some achieved distinction in literature 
 and arts, but the majority remained peasants and shepherds. 
 
 The article considered with misgivings the breaking away of Ukraine 
 from the rest of Russia, which would lead to the setting up of hundreds 
 of miles of artificial boundaries and to the creation of national jealousies 
 and conflicts. I expressed myself in favor of Great Russia and Little 
 Russia becoming parts of a federated republic united by a community of 
 economic interests and by ties of mutual understanding. 
 
 In January, 1918, I received a letter from G. L. Swiggett, Specialist 
 in Commercial Education, in the Bureau of Education, Department of 
 the Interior, asking me to prepare a statement on "Domestic and For- 
 eign Policies" for publication in the contemplated bulletin to be issued 
 by the bureau. I complied with the request, stating what should be the 
 aim of the courses given and what role governmental agencies should 
 play in trade-shaping activities. Many "university specialists," to quote 
 Swiggett, were asked to make contributions and there was some delay 
 in the publication of the bulletin, which did not appear until 1922. It 
 was a worthwhile effort, and, I think, it performed a useful function.
 
 48 
 
 On May 22, 1918, Professor Bogart, who was at the time on the 
 Committee on Public Information in the Division of Civic and Educa- 
 tional Publications, asked me to write a few short articles for a new 
 edition of the War Cyclopedia. I responded favorably. The articles were 
 really short, not more than about 200 words in length, and "they had 
 not only to present the essential statistical facts but also interpret their 
 significance in helping win the war." To what extent the Cyclopedia 
 contributed to the defeat of Germany is anyone's guess. 
 
 The Essentials of International Trade was published in 1923; the 
 second revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1927. It marked the 
 entry of John Wiley and Sons into the field of economics. It was grati- 
 fying to me that this old, well-known firm had selected my book for 
 that purpose. The work was well received by the reviewers and was 
 adopted in a number of colleges as a text. 
 
 Essentials did something which I did not expect it to do. It went on 
 a Foreign Trade Tour organized by the School of Foreign Travel, Inc., 
 New York. The tour was directed by Professor Elmore Peterson. For- 
 tunately it was in good hands. Peterson obtained his master's degree 
 under me at Illinois. I learned to know him well and I liked him. At 
 the time of the trip he was professor of economics and director of the 
 Extension Division of the University of Colorado. The tour covered 
 England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy and was undertaken 
 to give students the opportunity of investigating at first hand the prob- 
 lems of foreign trade and international relations. Essentials was to be 
 used as a text during the travel. My objection to the scheme was that 
 I was not taken along. 
 
 One more reference to the Essentials and I shall be through with it. 
 On March 29, 1929, Professor Ogata, of Osaka University in Japan, 
 wrote that since the publication of the second edition of my book he 
 kept it constantly with him as the best literature of the kind and that 
 he would esteem it a great favor and joy if I would permit him to pub- 
 lish a Japanese translation of the work. 
 
 I forwarded a copy of the letter to the publishers, who wrote that 
 they were favorably inclined towards the proposition. They asked from 
 Professor Ogata a moderate sum for the rights of translation, one-half 
 of which — $50 — accrued to me as the author. I received no copy of the 
 book in its translated form and hope that the translation did justice 
 to the original.
 
 49 
 
 At a meeting of the Foreign Trade Club on September 26, 1926, I 
 spoke on "Credits and Collections in Foreign Trade." Apparently I 
 transferred my interest in credits from domestic to foreign trade. I said 
 that "One of the reasons for our present unsettled condition may be 
 found in the way in which credits have been handled in our foreign 
 trade during the war and since the signing of the armistice ; we have 
 been shipping year after year billions of dollars worth of goods out of 
 the country without giving any serious thought either to the ability or 
 the willingness of foreign customers to meet their obligations ..." I 
 contended that what Europe needed was not short-term mercantile 
 credit, but investment credit. 
 
 In May, 1926, in connection with the dedication of the new Com- 
 merce Building, a conference was held on "Collegiate Education for 
 Business," at which I spoke on the "Growth and Development of Col- 
 legiate Commercial Education at the University of Illinois." I spoke as 
 one who had watched the institution grow from very small beginnings 
 to its then-current state and said. 
 
 Mere gro\vth is not a thing of which one should be proud. An enlarged 
 enrollment of students, a greater number of instructors, a more spacious build- 
 ing, increased appropriations are all indicative of physical expansion but not 
 necessarily of great achievement. Expansion is meaningless unless this expan- 
 sion has been built on a foundation of genuine scholarship, of fixity of pur- 
 pose, unless with material growth there has been an increasing quest for knowl- 
 edge and wisdom, an ever present vision of a goal which means service to 
 humanity. 
 
 Many able teachers of applied economics have succeeded in proving that 
 it is not the subject but the way the subject is taught that determines the 
 cultural value of a course and that the analysis of the complex phenomena of 
 modern industrial life and the ascertainment of the wavs which the world 
 uses in its struggle for necessities and for comforts of life have as much 
 educational value and can attract and challenge the heart and the mind of 
 the student just as much as the teaching of Greek philosophy or English 
 literature. 
 
 In May. 1927, we held a conference on graduate work. Speaking on 
 "The Purpose of a Graduate Course in International Trade," I con- 
 tended that "International Trade is particularly well suited to graduate 
 instruction. Its problems are complex and serious ; they give rise to much 
 controversial discussion and there is a vast amount of material, both 
 primary' and secondary, which may be placed at the disposal of the 
 students."
 
 50 
 
 On October 20, 1927, I received a long-distance call from J. E. 
 Slater, which was followed by a lengthy telegram; the gist of the two 
 communications was that the officers of the American Brown Boveri 
 Electrical Corporation wanted to consult with me concerning the in- 
 auguration of four-day transoceanic service between this country and 
 England and France. With the permission of President Kinley, who 
 congratulated me on the compliment thus paid me, I accepted the oflfer, 
 which required my absence from the campus on a number of occasions 
 during the latter part of 1927 and the beginning of 1928. 
 
 As the chairman of the economics of the project, I presented a report 
 on January 24, 1928, to the United States Shipping Board. It was pre- 
 ceded by a statement made by Laurence R. Wilder, whose brain-child 
 the project was, and C. L. Bardo, vice-president of the American Brown 
 Boveri Electrical Corporation, and followed by reports on the size of 
 the contemplated ships, on their design, and on the power required for 
 their propulsion. There is no place to discuss here why the project was 
 not adopted by the Shipping Board, but to defeat it went, and in the 
 meantime, the British and the French built liners similar to the ones we 
 had in mind. 
 
 In 1930, I participated in the Faculty Religious Forum, leading the 
 discussion on the topic "Have the Major Economic and Political Move- 
 ments of the Present Day Been Motivated by Religion?" I contended 
 that elimination of class warfare and the establishment of industrial 
 peace at home and the abolition of international strife, thus bringing 
 about world peace, were the two most important movements and that 
 they were not likely to succeed unless they were rooted deeply in the 
 religious consciousness of men. In attempting to define what I meant 
 by religion I said that creeds, dogmas, and church have often been iden- 
 tified with religion. This leads to confusion. 
 
 Similar confusion exists with regard to other terms ; a bit of nonsensical 
 verse is often spoken of as poetry and jazz song as music. But just as there 
 can be no poetry and no music unless what is expressed are 3earnings of soul 
 set afire by a divine spark, so there can be no religion unless it expresses the 
 best and noblest that there is in man ; unless it kindles a craving for righteous- 
 ness as a divine command ; unless it makes one realize that there is meaning 
 and purpose in life guided by a Superior Force. 
 
 Referring to the accusation that the Jew is an internationalist with 
 a rather unsavory connotation attached to the word, I said that "We are 
 beginning to realize that there will be no peace in this world unless we
 
 51 
 
 become internationally minded. ..." I called attention to the fact that 
 it was a Jew who organized the first international exhibition ; that an- 
 other Jew founded the International Institute of Agriculture; still an- 
 other attempted to create an international language. Many thoughts 
 which I expressed in the forum I repeated in the talk which I gave 
 over the radio in 1940. It was done under the auspices of the Union 
 of American Hebrew Congregations as a "Call to Youth Broadcast." 
 It was a scathing accusation of those who use economic arguments as an 
 excuse for the crossing of national boundaries to subjugate weaker neigh- 
 bors and an impassioned appeal to old and young, but particularly to 
 the younger generation, 
 
 to join in an earnest, fervent prayer that peace and amity would corae as 
 a benediction to the world torn by dissension and war . . . Let us all join in 
 a praj'er, but let us also remember that as long as militarism and brute force 
 are enthroned in some countries, as long as international fraud and violence 
 are glorified, as long as might is proclaimed to be right, so long must we be 
 prepared to meet the enemies of law, order and humanity with the only 
 weapons which they understand. 
 
 In 1933, the Sinai Congregation and the Hillel Foundation, at the 
 incentive of Dr. A. L. Sachar, held a dinner to honor me on the con- 
 clusion of twenty-five years of my service to the University of Illinois. 
 I spoke of this affair in the memoir for Ray and shall not repeat what 
 I said there except to quote from a letter from Professor E. L. Bogart 
 who spoke of me as the man who 
 
 brought with him a reputation not only for being the most accomplished lin- 
 guist on the faculty but being one of the most erudite among its members. It 
 is altogether to the credit of the science of economics that one of its most 
 scholarly and orthodox exponents on this campus is at the same time a man 
 of culture and aesthetic taste . . . To this middle western institution he has 
 contributed much of the old-world regard for learning, and he has broadened 
 the vision of hundreds of students who have come under his instruction . . . 
 The Department of Economics records the great debt to Dr. Litman — loyal, 
 cooperative, scholarly, hard-working and inspiring teacher, a good citizen 
 and a valued friend . . . 
 
 In May, 1934, I was one of the speakers at a conference of the Illi- 
 nois Academy of Science held at Millikin University, having selected as 
 my topic, "Natural Resources and Standards of Living." I pointed out 
 the difficulty, except in some clearly defined cases, of tracing the rela- 
 tionship between living standards and natural resources. 
 
 One can safely say that the Eskimo surrounded by ice and snow and the 
 Bedouin in the desert of shifting sands are condemned to a life of privation
 
 52 
 
 due to the niggardness of nature . . . But what about the Indians who have 
 been living close to the starvation point east of the Mississippi River, in one of 
 the richest valleys of the world. What about the people who lead a hand to 
 mouth existence in many richly endowed regions of South America ? And how 
 can one account for the misery and squalor which prevail among the in- 
 habitants of "The Pearl of the Antilles'" — Cuba? Fertile soil, balmy climate, 
 presence of minerals will not give abundant life to people who are ineffici- 
 ent, ill-trained, who are weighted down b}' the deadening influence of custom 
 and tradition, who lack initiative, to people who permit outsiders to impose 
 their will upon them and make them work for a pittance while the products 
 of their resources and their labor are shipped out of the land . . . 
 
 On November 1, 1934, speaking in the auditorium on "Our Tariff 
 and National Recovery," I attacked the belief held by many protection- 
 ists that one country's gain is another country's loss, and that a high 
 tariff maintains employment and a high standard of living. "It may be 
 a coincidence," I said, "but it is a fact that when our imports were de- 
 clining, our unemployment was growing at the same time." Discussing 
 the effects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff passed in 1930, I stated that 
 "while it may be of no concern to us whether our tariff imposes hard- 
 ships on other nations, the imposition of such hardships assumes vital 
 significance . . . when it pushes farther and farther away any attempt 
 at an intelligent international cooperation without which no true re- 
 covery is possible." 
 
 When in March, 1936, I spoke at Phi Beta Sigma, freshman-sopho- 
 more honorary for men, at their informal supper meeting, my state- 
 ment that "the real values in life are not measured in dollars and cents " 
 elicited the following remark from one of the members: "I've heard 
 that statement a dozen times, but it came strangely striking uttered by 
 an economist — the type of person we ordinarily regard as thinking in 
 terms of money." Speaking strongly in favor of democracy, I admonished 
 the students to develop the faculty of thinking; thinking people are not 
 the ones who follow a dictator. "Sound thinking is based upon knowl- 
 edge, knowledge of all the facts involved in any given situation, and to 
 acquire that knowledge, one must study, which you apparently are doing 
 and for which I congratulate you." 
 
 I spoke on numerous occasions at luncheons held by the various service 
 clubs of Champaign and Urbana, where in the allotted time of about 
 twenty-five minutes I had to convey what I conceived to be an important 
 message. Whether my talk was before the Rotarians, the Kiwanians, the 
 Lions, or any other group, I often attacked what I called "national-
 
 53 
 
 ism run mad," a policy of self-sufficiency, pointing out that isolationism 
 breeds fears and hates and that one must strive for active, wholehearted 
 cooperation with other nations. 
 
 Again and again, 1 contended that "There can be no military disarma- 
 ment and peace on earth until there is economic disarmament to permit 
 a free flow of commerce." 1 did not believe that permanent peace could 
 be achieved in a world divided into watertight compartments and de- 
 plored the creation in Europe of a number of small, economically ill- 
 conceived states whose frontiers had been drawn in accordance with real 
 or imaginary ethnic, racial, or linguistic lines without any thought of 
 economic realities which these newly established political units would 
 have to face. 
 
 After my visit to Russia in 1931, many of my talks dealt with con- 
 ditions as 1 found them in that country at the end of the first five-year 
 plan when all efforts were directed towards the development of heavy 
 industries with little thought of providing people with decent living 
 quarters and consumers goods in general. When 1 came back, from 
 England in 1935, after spending a few months studying the effects of 
 Great Britain's abandonment of her free-trade policy, I attempted to 
 give my audiences a picture of what 1 found there. 
 
 In addition to service clubs, I addressed various religious organiza- 
 tions as they met for their monthly get-togethers; 1 spoke before the 
 Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, and other denom- 
 inational groups as well as in our own Sinai Temple, always finding 
 audiences willing to listen and interested in what 1 had to say. 
 
 Two ladies' clubs, The Art Club and the Social Science Club, did 
 not discover me or did not rate me very highly as a speaker until a 
 rather late date, but they made up for lost time by asking me to ad- 
 dress them, the first in 1941, 1942, and 1944; the other in 1932 
 and then in 1942, 1943, and 1947. My talks were enthusiastically re- 
 ceived but only mildly applauded as was to be expected from ladies; in 
 addition to fine refreshments, I was given as a remuneration a fee of 
 five dollars and a note thanking me for the privilege of having listened 
 to me. 
 
 A more explicit and articulate letter came from Mrs. W. J. Frazer, 
 then the president of the League of Women Voters, when I spoke before 
 that organization in 1935. The letter read.
 
 54 
 
 The League has been favored with many interesting talks but none have 
 excelled that of yours Friday. You held us fascinated, for you made the tarifiF 
 such a vitally interesting subject. The air was full of happy exclamation 
 over the profit and pleasure derived from your contribution and the unanimous 
 verdict was, "We must have him again." We certainly hope we may have the 
 good fortune of hearing you again. Meanwhile, we are tremendously indebted 
 to you for your most stimulating talk. 
 
 At the initiation dinner of Phi Kappa Phi, held in the fall of 1936, 
 I spoke on "Scholars and Scholarship." I started with reminiscences 
 which took me first to czarist Russia seething with unrest, with under- 
 ground activities bent on the overthrow of the despotic regime, where 
 I met students living on bread and tea with an occasional bowl of soup 
 and dried fish, debating far into the night, making and remaking plans, 
 burning with an intense internal fire to free the people of their native 
 land ; from Russia my mind carried me to Paris to the School of Politi- 
 cal Science, where in addition to young Frenchmen. I met men from 
 various parts of Europe, from Belgium and Bulgaria, from England 
 and Turkey, all having come to listen to some of the great social 
 scholars of France; and then to Munich where before my mental vision 
 arose the figure of the great teacher and economist, Lujo Brentano. I 
 then stopped my reminiscing and turned my attention to the topic before 
 me. I said in part, 
 
 The scholar and the mass of humanity stand wide apart. A scholar is essen- 
 tially a thinking being. . . . the mass of the people do not think ... a scholar 
 is seldom emotional, the majority of the people are swayed bj' emotions . . . 
 a scholar seeks and expounds the truth ; the truth is often hard to grasp and 
 unpleasant to contemplate and so the mass of the people turn their backs upon 
 it and prefer living in the world of make-beliefs and outright lies. May a 
 scholar ignore the fact that our institutions, standards, beliefs, values have 
 been in ever increasing degree questioned and in raanj' quarters impugned? 
 May he deal serenely in abstractions, in hypotheses and theories while the 
 world around him is ablaze with doubts, fears, and hates? ... A great 
 calamity has overtaken some of the intellectually more advanced countries of 
 Europe, such as Germany and Itah-; this may be explained partly by the 
 fact that scholars in these countries were too much absorbed in study and re- 
 search while ignorance and lust for power were undermining the very foun- 
 dations of civilized existence of these countries ... If Western civilization is 
 to be saved, the gap must be bridged between the scholar and the crowd ; in 
 expounding truth, he must expound it in terms understandable to the people at 
 large. If lies can be dressed up, can not also the truth be presented attractively 
 so as to arouse interest and become a vital force in shaping the destinies of 
 people? . . .
 
 55 
 
 After the talk, Professor H. F. Moore asked me whether I was advo- 
 cating the sending of Minerva to a beauty parlor, to which I replied, 
 "Why not? If this would help to wrest the supremacy from unscrupu- 
 lous, domineering men under whose spell the world is held." 
 
 I was elected in 1924 an honorary member of Beta Gamma Sigma, 
 the honorary- Commerce fraternity; in 1929, Phi Beta Kappa took me 
 into their inner circle, also Pi Gamma Mu, which has no chapter in 
 Illinois. I was especially gratified by having been made an honorary 
 member of Phi Kappa Phi in 1935, on which occasion Dean Harno 
 read a citation praising me because. 
 
 Into a field where hatred, greed, and extreme nationalism so frequently prevail, 
 Professor Litman brings a spirit of tolerance and humanitarian s\-mpathy which 
 rises above national interests . . . 
 
 His numerous writings in the field of foreign trade are characterized by a 
 steady insistence upon the basic principle that general public welfare is the 
 goal of all sound economic policy. The scientific precision of his research and 
 the vigor of his penetrating but always kindly criticism have on many occasions 
 been brought to bear against those economic fallacies that have wrought such 
 a havoc among the nations of the world today . . . 
 
 At a time when liberalism is in retreat over large sections of the world, 
 when scientific analj'sis of economic and social problems threatens to give way 
 before solutions based on greed and passion, the work of Professor Litman in 
 respect of his teaching and writing stands as a bulwark of intellectual 
 integrity . . . 
 
 While I am dealing with fraternities, let me go back to November, 
 1922, when I was initiated into Theta Delta Pi, foreign trade fraternity 
 which four years later became an Illinois chapter of Pan Xenia and of 
 which I was international president during 1938-40, and to Artus, na- 
 tional economics honorary, whose inaugural ceremonies were held in 
 February, 1939. 
 
 In 1933 Frank A. Fetter came to Illinois and was with us for two 
 years as a visiting professor of economics. I was genuinely sorry to have 
 him go. Speaking at a farewell dinner given to him at the expiration of 
 his stay I said that his coming was the beginning of a great experience 
 for many of our graduate students and members of our staff. I said at 
 that time : 
 
 I do not think that if we searched all through the length and breadth of our 
 country we could have found a better man to join our forces than this pro- 
 found scholar and able, inspiring teacher. Well do I remember the first days 
 of Professor Fetter's on our campus. Time and again he came into my office
 
 56 
 
 with questions pertaining to the wa^s in which we carry on our graduate 
 work here. 
 
 He wished to learn and to conform so as to be of the greatest use- 
 fulness to all concerned. 
 
 My high esteem for Professor Fetter's knowledge, his deep thinking, and his 
 ability to present his thought with utmost clarity is well known. I have ex- 
 pressed it on other occasions. However, I cannot refrain from paying here a 
 tribute to his power of observation, to his intellectual acumen and integrity as 
 well as to his willingness to give of himself freely to all those who come in 
 contact with him in search of scientific advice . . . 
 
 A round-table discussion was held by twenty-five or thirty economists 
 in Chicago in 1934. Professor C. E. GrifHn, of Michigan University, 
 presided at the meeting and great expectations were expressed that Secre- 
 tary of State Hull's program of trade agreements would result in bring- 
 ing peace and prosperity to the world. I disagreed, expressing the opin- 
 ion that while agreements were steps in the right direction, the process 
 was too slow and too cumbersome, that the United States should pro- 
 ceed in liberalizing its commerce, in making imports into the country 
 freer from restrictions imposed upon them, without engaging in give- 
 and-take arrangements. After hearing my arguments the opinion was 
 expressed that those who did not share my views, and this was the ma- 
 jority, were realists; as to Litman, he was an idealist. I got up and 
 said, "It seems to me that it is the realists who have been managing the 
 affairs so far and managing them rather badly. Why not let the idealists 
 try their hands at it? Of one thing I can assure you, they will not do 
 any worse than the realists; this is hardly possible." 
 
 During 1936 I was the acting head of the department during the 
 absence of Professor Bogart, and I learned that being a head may give 
 one headaches. I cannot say that I enjoyed the administrative work with 
 the many details involved in it. This is as good a place as any to express 
 my appreciation to the efficient secretary, Miss McBride, who made 
 it easier for me to carry on, as she had been doing the work for a number 
 of years and was better acquainted than I with the ways of handling 
 some of the troublesome problems. I stayed during the summer in Ur- 
 bana, and what a summer it was — one of the hottest on record, the 
 temperature day after day registering 100 degrees and above. 
 
 One of the outstanding personalities who after the abdication of 
 Czar Nicholas H became the premier of the short-lived Provisional
 
 57 
 
 Government in Russia, Alexander Kerensky, spoke at the university 
 convocation on March 17, 1942. In introducing him to the audience, 
 I paid tribute to him as one of the finest representatives of the Russian 
 people, who embodied a Russia of Tolstoi and Turgenev, of Pushkin 
 and Gorki, a Russia of dreamers who dreamed in the language of free- 
 dom and democracy. In the 3rd and the 4th Duma, as a very young man, 
 he was a member of the Socialist labor group and spoke so eloquently 
 and fearlessly as to incur the hatred of the czarina; he spoke for the 
 common people inhabiting vast stretches of fertile fields and emerging 
 industrial cities; in him was ever present the spirit animating the land 
 of barren wastes and primeval forests and of majestically flowing rivers, 
 a country of which the great people's poet Necrasov wrote : 
 
 Thou are infirm, thou are powerful 
 O Mother Russia. 
 
 I traced briefly the career of Kerensky after the overthrow of the czar. 
 He was successively Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government, 
 Minister of War, then Prime Minister. As the head of the army, he 
 made an attempt to reorganize its shattered remains so as to be able 
 to carry on the war on the side of the Allies against the Central Powers ; 
 it was an honest endeavor to fulfill Russia's obligations but it was 
 doomed to failure. While still in power he shrank from adopting stern 
 measures against his opponents. Not even treachery and sedition led 
 him to resort to proscriptions and executions. This was reserved for 
 Lenin and his cohorts. A moderate in his actions, Kerensky relinquished 
 his post and fled from the country he loved so well. 
 
 When I conveyed to Kerensky A^Irs. Litman's regrets at not being 
 able to attend his address, he asked: "Can I meet her?" He came in the 
 morning to our apartment and we spent an hour in discussing the past, 
 the present, and the future of the Bolshevik-controlled Russia. He was 
 so cordial, so unassuming that it was a pleasure to be with him. 
 
 Two students came in to take him to a luncheon to be given in his 
 honor. "Why are you and Mrs. Litman not going?" asked Kerensky. 
 "Because we are not invited," I replied. "Then I am inviting you." And 
 so we went.
 
 7. THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE AND THE 
 FOUNDING OF HILLEL 
 
 As I wrote in the memoir about Ray, the person in the Jewish com- 
 munity who made us most welcome when we came to IHinois was Isaac 
 Kuhn. I soon discovered Mr. Kuhn's deep concern about the religious 
 life of Jewish students attending the university, his eagerness to build 
 a place of worship to which they would come, to have a resident rabbi 
 who could act as their counselor and bring to them the knowledge of 
 what Judaism and Jewish beliefs stand for. 
 
 In 1909 he brought this to the attention of Rabbi Stolz of Chicago, 
 but nothing came out of it. 
 
 When in 1916 the Jewish people of Champaign-Urbana began to 
 consider the building of a temple, Kuhn asked me to go with him to 
 see Julius Rosenwald in an attempt to enlist his financial assistance. I 
 hesitated to go on what I considered to be a begging expedition and then 
 I said to myself, "It is just as hard on Kuhn," and so I went. Mr. 
 Rosenwald, after having listened to what we had to say, asked us to 
 put in writing what we expected him to do. 
 
 On January' 14, 1916, I wrote a letter setting forth our needs in 
 detail, telling him that we could go on without outside help so far as 
 the community was involved, but that we were confronted with a serious 
 problem which was beyond our means. I told him that we had close to 
 150 students of Jewish faith, most of whom were indifferent to their 
 religion, and that for their own welfare as well as for the welfare of 
 others it was imperative to have a rabbi who could win their confidence 
 and whom they would respect. Such a man could not be obtained for less 
 than $3,000 a year. Assured of such a man we would proceed with the 
 construction, not of a small synagogue for ourselves, but of a larger 
 structure which would cost from $12,000 to -^15,000. According to our 
 calculations the remuneration of the rabbi and the maintenance of the 
 temple would involve a yearly outlay of $4,500, of which we could
 
 60 
 
 supply $1,250; thus $3,250 would have to come from outside. 
 
 At that time Julius Roseiuvald was considering the creation of a 
 fund running into millions of dollars for the purpose of providing 
 better educational facilities for Negroes. Our project was so insignificant 
 from a monetary standpoint that he apparently did not consider it 
 worthy of his consideration. Anyhow it did not catch his imagination. 
 Perhaps the fault was partially ours. We did not think "big enough." 
 We did not envisage what was in store. How large has become the 
 number of Jewish students on the campus and how greatly have 
 changed the values since the letter was written ! 
 
 A year before Ray's and my arrival at Illinois a small group of 
 Jewish students founded a society under the name of Ivrim, one of the 
 objects of which was the acquisition of a broader knowledge of matters 
 pertaining to Judaism. It was the result of spontaneous action on the 
 part of the students. I am emphasizing this fact, as much has been said 
 and written about the desire of our young men and women not to 
 be known as Jews. 
 
 In November, 1948, in an address dealing with pre-Hillel days at 
 Illinois I said : 
 
 It is unfortunately true that some students attempt to conceal the fact of 
 their belonging to the Jewish group. . . . but when the storj' of Illinois Hillel 
 is told and retold hardly ever reference is made to the establishment and 
 functions of Ivrim, subsequently merged into Menorah in 1912, reference to 
 the fine, though necessarily limited work which has been done in order to in- 
 culcate into Jewish students the respect for and pride in their Jewish heritage. 
 
 How well do I remember the biweekly meetings held on the fifth 
 floor of the old University Hall. I remember how on one occasion I 
 referred to the tribute which Heinrich Heine paid to Moses who 
 created a nation which he compared to the pyramids and the obelisks. 
 "Like the pyramids and the obelisks withstood the forces of nature — the 
 winds, and the rains, and the storms — so did the Jews withstand the 
 forces of cruel men — the pogroms, the autos-da-fe, the carnage, the 
 horrors without end." This provoked a discussion ; some students 
 argued with much force and feeling. "Passive resistance must end. 
 It is time that the pyramids start moving." 
 
 While in New York in 1906, I sent a lengthy communication to 
 The American Hebrew in which I discussed the dangers of ever growing 
 congestion of Jews in a few parts of the city. I expressed the fear that
 
 61 
 
 unless something is done ... it may become one of the reasons for the 
 passage of a law restricting immigration, of a law closing the doors of our 
 free country to unfortunate brethren across the sea. Such a possibility is not 
 the only reason why a large proportion of the Jews should be removed from 
 the New York ghettos. The close air, the black olives, the smoked fish and the 
 salted cucumbers may have certain charms, but the clanish life of the ghetto 
 ... is not a life conducive to the development of those qualities of inde- 
 pendence, self reliance, and manhood for which we ought to strive and without 
 which we can perhaps excite pity but will never command the respect of our 
 fellow citizens. 
 
 Commenting on my "elaborate" communication, the American 
 Hebrew on its editorial page spoke of an ingenious suggestion made by 
 me. I said that congestion was partly due to the fact that few Russian 
 Jews knew of any other part of America than New York. Why not 
 prepare handbooks in Yiddish telling of the resources of the United 
 States and of the many places where they could find opportunities for 
 work? While lengthy, I do not think that my letter was an "elaborate 
 communication" ; it was really not as bad as that ; as to the ingenuity 
 of the suggestion, I thought that it was something worth while to try 
 though I realized that to find a solution to the problem was not as 
 easy as that. The Jews did not want to leave the city and a booklet 
 would not have induced them to do so. 
 
 A memorable event took place in 1911 when I was elected the 
 president of Grand Prairie Lodge No. 281 of B'nai B'rith. How 
 memorable the event was will transpire from what follows. The sec- 
 retary of the order was Benjamin Bing, one of the early settlers in 
 Champaign County. He was one of the most scrupulous secretaries 
 I have ever met and herein lay my undoing. Mr. Bing would bring 
 to the meeting (we met on Sunday afternoons) all the communications 
 which he received during the month; every paper had to be read. Some 
 of the members would look at me with impatience depicted on their 
 faces. "Can't you do something about it? Do we have to sit and listen 
 when a bridge table or golf links are beckoning so alluringly?" 
 
 I conceived what I thought was a brilliant idea. As one who did not 
 play bridge or golf I was not greatly perturbed, but something had to 
 be done for the captive audience and so I approached the secretary with 
 a proposition. Why not give us the gist of the letters, notes, and other 
 material? This made the matter worse. It took more time to give us 
 the gist of the communications than to read them verbatim. It was a 
 real debacle for me. My undoing was the extra efficient secretary of 
 the lodge.
 
 62 
 
 Ten years went by before the B'nai B'rith members forgot my short- 
 comings and once more made me the president in 1922. This time I 
 lived up to their expectations as I was re-elected for the following year 
 and I think I could have continued in the office but I thought two 
 jears were enough. Much later, in 1952 and again in 1958 I received 
 testimonials given to me "in recognition of the devotion and zeal and 
 the valuable service" which I had rendered to the lodge as the president. 
 
 In May, 1918, I spoke before the Michigan Menorah Society on 
 "The Jew and the Great War." Referring to this talk Henr}' Hurwitz 
 quoted what Miss Rebecca Greenberg, president of the society, wrote 
 to him: "Professor Litman gave a mighty good paper and is an exceed- 
 ingly interesting and delightful man. He was greatly liked here, manj'^ 
 people coming up to me later and congratulating me upon having had 
 this type of person." 
 
 Writing to me Miss Greenberg wondered whether I was conscious 
 of the full measure of thanks they had for me after my talk and ex- 
 pressed the wish that this year's experience might be a strong temptation 
 to accept the Michigan Menorah Society's invitation always and that 
 the next might come very soon. 
 
 My trip home was not conducive to a temptation to return very soon. 
 The students neglected to reserve sleeping accommodations for me. I 
 did not relish the idea of sitting up all night. Two other passengers 
 were in the same predicament. We contacted the Pullman conductor, 
 who told us that all he had free was a drawing room. We decided to 
 take it. When Ray learned that I shared a room with total strangers 
 she was horrified, but I had a good night's rest and this was important. 
 
 I wonder whether T. Raphaelson remembers the address which he 
 gave in Sinai Temple on "What it means to be a Jew." He has spoken 
 so often on different occasions and has written so much that the incident 
 must have been forgotten by him. It was some kind of gala occasion 
 on November 12, 1917 (?), as there were three other addresses to be 
 given, one by Isadore Wise, another by Chancey Baldwin, and a fourth 
 and last, by me. I had a prepared speech but disregarded it in order to 
 challenge Raphaelson's statement that the Jews had no nobility to look 
 back to as was the case with the Gentiles. 
 
 I reminded him that the feudal barons to whom he referred were 
 robbers who descended from their mountain fastnesses to pillage and to
 
 63 
 
 kill the itinerant merchants who were winding their way with their 
 wares from one solitary' center to another, and when some of them 
 reached the exalted position of princes and kings they, like some of the 
 Tudors in England, not to speak of Richard III, had their hands 
 stained by the blood of their victims. I asked what he thought of the 
 Bourbons of France who built luxurious palaces and led a carefree 
 existence, supporting their mistresses in grand style while people bur- 
 dened by a heavy load of taxation were hardly able to keep their souls 
 and bodies together. And then I spoke of Jewish prophets and sages 
 who were every inch as noble as anyone that the Gentiles could point to. 
 
 It was not a pleasant thing to do as Raphaelson was our guest, but 
 I felt that it had to be done so as to get the record straight. 
 
 In February, 1918, I spoke before the Lincoln Women's Club in 
 Lincoln, Illinois, on "Russia." After the talk I had to answer many 
 questions. The ladies were very much interested and wanted to learn 
 more of what had been happening in the far-off land which overthrew 
 the long-established czaristic regime, plunged into a fratricidal struggle 
 and tried to establish a new economic and social order on the ruins of 
 the old one. 
 
 The result was that I missed the last train which would have taken 
 me back to Champaign in the evening and had to stay overnight in 
 Peoria. Lincoln, Illinois ! So far as getting home on time was concerned, 
 it might have been Lincoln, Nebraska. What I should have done was 
 to phone to Ray telling her not to expect me to come until the morning. 
 Why I did not is a mystery. And so Ray spent the night wondering 
 what had happened to me. I decided then and there to reduce my 
 out-of-town engagements to a minimum. 
 
 In 1918 I contributed to a symposium which appeared in the Menorah 
 Journal of October, 1918, on, "Palestine Regained — What Then," 
 in which I said in part, 
 
 No Jew, worthy of the name, whether he is a Zionist or not, can have but a 
 feeling of deep gratitude towards the British Government for its declaration 
 in favor of creating a Jewish home in Palestine. I have no s\-mpathy with the 
 views of those who fear that a legally secured home in the Holy Land for 
 some of our brethren would react unfavorably upon the status of those Jews 
 who might remain where they are ... If in order to be considered loyal 
 citizens we must pursue continually a policy of self-obliteration, then such 
 progress as we have made counts for little; we may just as well face issues 
 squarely and acknowledge to ourselves that we have been living in a Fool's
 
 64 
 
 Paradise . . . The Jew in dispersion stands for fair play, for liberty and con- 
 science, for justice ; such should be the ideals of his state. In its organization 
 should be embodied all that is best in Jewish traditions and all of value that 
 the Jew has learned in the school of bitter experience through centuries of 
 martyrdom and adaptation to various environments. 
 
 Among other events which took place in 1918 was my meeting Miss 
 Nellie Straus in New York ; full of enthusiasm and faith in the future, 
 she was as ardent a Zionist as I ever ran across. She was working on a 
 Palestinian Survey, as the secretary, and wanted me to become one of 
 the contributors, particularly to the part dealing with public utilities, 
 with problems of communication, transportation, and storage. On No- 
 vember 26, she wrote: "Of course up to now storage facilities in Pales- 
 tine are as frequent as snakes in Ireland. However, suggestions for the 
 future are just what we need, and these you will be able to base on an 
 examination of the situation." Lack of time and dearth of material at 
 the university on the subject made it impossible for me to do the work 
 properly and I so informed Miss Straus. In a letter of !March 14, 1919, 
 she wrote that their furniture was removed, the trunks packed, and that 
 she was ready to migrate to Palestine. And so she left "in the hope of 
 the New Zion." 
 
 At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in 
 1918, Professor Davis R. Dewey, the managing editor of the American 
 Economic Review, and I discussed the growth of our foreign trade. In 
 the course of conversation I expressed the opinion that many people, 
 some of whom should know better, had a distorted view of the rise in 
 our exports and imports. Dewey suggested that I put in writing what 
 I was saying. The result was "The Past Decade of the Foreign Com- 
 merce of the United States," which appeared in the June, 1920, issue 
 of the Review. In the article I showed that the phenomenal growth of 
 our foreign commerce in dollars and cents was due to a rapid advance 
 in prices and did not represent an actual increase of either our exports or 
 imports. It was not a normal conquest of markets, a healthy, though a 
 somewhat accelerated development, but, as I said in the paper, a case 
 which required a careful study. 
 
 In the latter part of 1918 a campaign was carried on to obtain money 
 for providing men in the army with facilities for wholesome recreation, 
 for building and equipping huts away from the front where they could 
 relax, for providing those who were interested in doing so with facilities 
 to continue their studies so far as it was possible under rather adverse 
 conditions. Seven organizations were banded together in what was
 
 65 
 
 known as "The United War Work Campaign." When asked to make 
 a statement as one in the university district connected with the raising 
 of funds, I said in part : 
 
 There has never been a time nhen there has been greater need to carry on 
 welfare work than there will be in the near future and I believe that the Jews 
 realize the magnitude of the task and the necessity for making a complete 
 success of this drive, the first effort on the part of various creeds to work 
 jointly for the common good. . . . 
 
 One of my activities after I came to Illinois was the conducting of 
 a few fund-raising campaigns. My first effort to raise money occurred in 
 the latter part of 1914 when in response to a letter from A. B. Seelen- 
 freund, secretary of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, I collected 
 $127 for the aid of war sufferers. 1 have no idea now from whom the 
 contributions came. 
 
 My second fund-raising campaign took place in 1920. In the latter 
 part of that year I received a communication from Henry Hurwitz, 
 who sought to enlist my cooperation in raising funds for the Relief of 
 Students in Eastern European Universities. I spoke at the Menorah 
 meeting on November 1. As a result of this talk and my further efforts 
 I collected $484.75; of this amount $201 came from townspeople and 
 $283.75 from the faculty and the students. 
 
 My third participation in raising funds took place in 1924. It was 
 for the erection of I.O.B.B. Infirmary Building as a part of the Na- 
 tional Jewish Hospital in Denver. The drive brought contributions to 
 the amount of $428. I received a most urgent invitation to attend the 
 laying of the cornerstone of the building. 
 
 I could not account then, nor can I account now, for a most insistent 
 request for me to come to Denver and for the profuse praise bestowed 
 upon me for what was described as my share in making possible the 
 erection of the building. I received two lengthy letters, one from Mr. 
 Harry Lapidus, in Omaha, and the other from Mrs. Pisco, the secre- 
 tary of the hospital. To quote in part from Mrs. Pisco's letter: 
 
 You have done such splendid work in making B'nai B'rith Infirmary Building 
 a real structure; jou are one of the men who turned a dream of many years 
 into a reality; you are one of those true Jews with Jewish heart and Jewish 
 spirit upon whom we counted in this humanitarian service and you did not 
 fail us ... I know from past experience that you always answer where 
 humanity calls. Give us just a little more of your time and celebrate this memo- 
 rable occasion with us in person. Please let me hear from you that you will be 
 here without fail.
 
 66 
 
 The dedication of the building took place without my attending the 
 e\ent. 
 
 The last days of 1918, I spent in the East, first in New York attend- 
 ing a conference of Intercollegiate Alenorah Association, and then in 
 Richmond, Virginia, at a meeting of the American Economic Associa- 
 tion; in both instances, I participated in some of the discussions. 
 
 In New York, I raised objections to propaganda work carried on by 
 Zionists on the campuses of American universities. My attitude towards 
 this phase of Zionist activities was expressed in a letter which I wrote 
 on the matter to Julian A. Mack, then the president of Zionist Organ- 
 ization of America: 
 
 I do not believe that it is right to use campuses of American institutions of 
 learning for nationalistic propaganda work, be it Irish, Hindustani, or Jewish 
 . . . The age of most of our students is such that anything that tends to dis- 
 place their religious consciousness is dangerous; nationalistic aspirations can- 
 not take the place of religious belief, and I find that the Zionist students have 
 as they phrase it "little use for religion." My chief objection to an organized 
 appeal to undergraduate students to become active partisans is found in your 
 letter . . . "generally speaking, they know little if anything about the move- 
 ment . . .," and many of those who assume to lead them know little more. 
 
 In 1923 the first Hillel Foundation in the United States was estab- 
 lished at Illinois. It came as a culmination of the efforts of Benjamin 
 Frankel, Isaac Kuhn, Professor E. C. Baldwin, and myself. Of these 
 Rabbi Frankel was the main driving force. He became our spiritual 
 leader in 1923, after graduation from the Hebrew Union College. His 
 persuasive eloquence, the eloquence of a dreamer who had the ability of 
 making his dreams come true, succeeded in enlisting the support of Dr. 
 Louis Mann and a few other prominent Jews in Chicago who provided 
 funds to defray the early expenses of the Hillel Foundation. Unfortu- 
 nately the man whose thoughts, energies, and organizing skill brought a 
 vision to fruition died very young. In 1927 Rabbi Frankel passed on at 
 the age of thirty. The person who fitted in the shoes of the big man, big 
 in every sense of the word, was Abram Sachar, and so the work was car- 
 ried on without interruption. Our meetings were held in a rented hall 
 until sufficient funds were provided for the erection of a building to 
 meet the requirements of an ever increasing number of students. Sym- 
 bolic ground-breaking ceremonies took place in 1948. In this connection 
 I said in an address delivered at that time :
 
 67 
 
 I hope that the affair will not remain symbolic for too long. Let us give our 
 boys and girls, your bojs and girls, as soon as possible, a building to which 
 they will be eager and happy to come, to spend some time in its spacious 
 halls, amongst pleasant surroundings, come to study and to pray and to while 
 their time awaj', a building to which we as well as they will be able to point 
 with pride as the home of the first Hillel Foundation in the country. 
 
 In acknowledging the receipt of the check completing my payment of 
 $500 to the Hillel Foundation Building Fund, Dr. Sachar wrote on 
 October 26, 1945: 
 
 You have been one of the oldest and most loyal friends of Hillel through the 
 the years. Its phenomenal growth would never have been possible without 
 sustained encouragement which has come from you and Mrs. Litman. I know- 
 that you will have endless gratification when the new building is up and it 
 fulfills the dream you had when a campus program was projected. 
 
 In recognition of the services rendered by Mr. Kuhn and me to the 
 Foundation he and I received gold keys. One of the subsequent directors, 
 commenting on the event, said that they must have been very lenient at 
 the time. If the reader doubts the accuracy of the statement, I do not 
 blame him; I doubt it also. 
 
 In the summer of 1949 while in San Francisco I attended a meeting 
 held under the sponsorship of the American Jewish Congress. The hall 
 in the Fairmount Hotel was filled by an audience anxious to hear a 
 discussion of the situation in Western Germany since the fall of the 
 Nazi regime. One of the main speakers on the program was Erica IVIann, 
 the fine, capable daughter of the great novelist. She was detained and 
 was the last speaker at the meeting. It began with an address by Pro- 
 fessor Karl Brandt, an agricultural economist who left Germany at 
 the beginning of Hitler's assumption of power because he disagreed with 
 the agricultural policy brought forth at the time. Now a professor at 
 the Food Research Institute, Stanford University, he spoke with a 
 great deal of authority conveying to the listeners the thought that there 
 were always good Germans in his far-of^' homeland and that now good 
 Germans were directing the destinies of the country. "You must know," 
 he said "that the emancipation of European Jewry began in Germany, 
 that it was there that for the first time the walls of the ghettoes were 
 broken down." 
 
 I was attending the meeting as one of the audience supposed to listen 
 but not to speak but when the chairman after Brandt's talk said: "Are 
 there any questions anyone wishes to ask?" I got up.
 
 68 
 
 There are a few questions I want to ask Professor Brandt. The first is this. 
 Does not Brandt know that it was under Napoleon's occupation of Germany 
 and in accordance with his decrees that the so-called emancipation of the 
 German Jewry began ? And the second question is, Does he not know that 
 after Napoleon was defeated the Jews were fenced in again and their lot 
 became for a while even worse than it was before because the Germans re- 
 sented that they had to submit to the dictates of a foreign ruler in their 
 treatment of the Jews? 
 
 Here I was interrupted by the chairman: "I am sorry, but controversial 
 questions should not be brought up here." There was a fear that I may 
 have offended an invited speaker. However, I met Professor Brandt 
 and his wife when he gave a few lectures at Illinois before going to Cali- 
 fornia and when during an intermission he and his wife stopped to 
 shake hands with me and we had a pleasant chat, the chairman's fears 
 were allayed. In describing what she saw and heard in Germany, Erica 
 Mann was far from being as optimistic about the developments there 
 as the good professor.
 
 8. THE TRIP TO RUSSIA 
 
 In the memoir Ray Fran I' Lit/nan I wrote of our trip to Russia and 
 how deeplj' Ray was affected by the unselfishness of the people who 
 took care of my mother and of the way they tried, at sacrifice to them- 
 selves, to make our stay in their home as comfortable as it was humanly 
 possible. 
 
 I wanted to go to Russia in 1929; some of the men whom I knew in 
 the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in Washington when 
 they learned of it advised me to see the Secretary of Commerce before 
 embarking on the trip. I found the Secretary most sympathetic but 
 positive in his advice for me not to go. "Should you run into any diffi- 
 culty," he said, "you will be on your own and will have to do your 
 best to extricate yourself, as we do not recognize present day Russia 
 and have no representatives there." 
 
 I postponed the trip. Letters from Rostov-on-Don where my mother 
 was staying were telling me of the gradual deterioration in her health 
 and in order to see her I decided to disregard the Secretary's advice. In 
 the meantime I learned to know one of the leading Russian agricultural 
 economists. Professor A. Tchaj'anov, with whom I was exchanging let- 
 ters and some of our works. I wrote to him asking him to obtain for 
 me a visa which would permit me to visit Russia, independent of the 
 Intourist arrangements. 
 
 On April 13, 1930, I received a reply in which he informed me that 
 he had sent my request to the Foreign Office "with my explanation, in 
 which I take the liberty to mention you as one of the most important 
 economists in America; I also tell them that it would be ^•ery expedient 
 to give you the possibility to get personally acquainted with our new 
 methods of farming; 1 don't think there will be any difficulties in get- 
 ting a visa." There were none. Soon thereafter a cable came telling me 
 that the visa had been granted. 
 
 And so I went to Russia. I pon my arrival in Moscow there was no
 
 70 
 
 Professor Tchayanov to greet me. During the intervening period he fell 
 in disfavor with the higher ups and disappeared. It was in vain that I 
 tried to contact him. I am pleased to say that his offense was not such 
 as to lead to his liquidation ; it was only a temporary eclipse. 
 
 There I was in Moscow with not a soul that I knew. I started on my 
 pilgrimage in search of a room. I went from one hotel to another; 
 there were not many good hotels to go to. In every case I met with a 
 rebuff. No room available. I knew that they had rooms, but who was 
 I ? They looked at me with suspicion and did not want to get involved. 
 
 I began to feel rather desperate and in desperation phoned to a profes- 
 sor of accounting whom I never met and whose address was given to 
 me by a former colleague in the Odessa School of Commerce. "Come to 
 our home; it so happens that my brother leaves to stay for a few days 
 in Leningrad and you can have his room." What a lucky break it was. 
 
 After two days spent in Moscow, Ray and I left for Rostov. "Too 
 bad that you did not go yesterday w^hen there was a diner attached to 
 the train." Quite a consoling bit of information. No diner! And so when 
 the train stopped at a station I would go out in search of food ; the 
 prospects of finding something delectable were not bright. At one station 
 I bought some cherries. Standing at an open window of our car Ray 
 and I noticed two bedraggled, forlorn-looking urchins. One of them 
 had his legs cut off. 
 
 "Let us give them the cherries," said Ray. No sooner said than done. 
 I could not leave the car and called to the boys, throwing the bag of 
 cherries out the window. The bag broke and the fruit fell pell-mell on 
 the ground. "Too bad," said Ray, as the boy who could walk was pick- 
 ing them up. "Will the other boy get any of the cherries?" He cer- 
 tainly did. The boy who raced to pick them up tasted a few and took 
 the rest to the cripple. Both Ray and I could hardly keep from starting 
 to cry. 
 
 To obtain Russian money I had to go to the State Bank where for 
 a dollar I was given about two rubles, with a slight discount in the 
 case of American Express checks. This made living expenses rather 
 high, but it was safe. Two ladies who were traveling in the same car 
 with us were approached in Warsaw with an offer, if I remember cor- 
 rectly, of ten rubles for each dollar. I was similarly approached but re- 
 fused to engage in black market transactions. The ladies did, with the 
 result that the Russian officials at Nigoreloye asked them to hand over
 
 71 
 
 the rubles which they acquired in Poland. Honesty seems to be the 
 best policy even when dealing with Communists. You never can tell. 
 The rubles were obviously offered by agents provocateurs ; if you bit you 
 had nobody to blame but yourself. 
 
 One of the passengers in our car was the dean of the School of Min- 
 ing, in Golden, Colorado; he was going there for the second time at 
 the invitation of the Russian government. As we left Stolpce and were 
 approaching the border he told me to look. I did and I saw Polish 
 soldiers with bayonets ready to act; next came no man's land and then 
 the Russian frontier; the story repeated itself, only this time it was the 
 Russian military guarding the frontier. 
 
 Charles Lamb's remark came to my mind when he said to a person 
 next to him: "I do not like that man," and he pointed to someone in 
 the corner of the room. "You don't like him, but, as far as I know, you 
 never met him." "I do not know him," replied Lamb, "and this is why 
 I do not like him." Here on the Polish-Russian frontier was a case in 
 reverse. The Poles and the Russians were no strangers; they knew each 
 other too well. 
 
 The apartment house in which my friends hved in Rostov faced a 
 park "of recreation and culture." Here one evening we attended a sym- 
 phony concert under the open skies. In a classless society, which sup- 
 posedly it was, we occupied seats to which the general public was not 
 admitted. It did not seem to bother the public, which consisted largely 
 of factory workers and peasants with a sprinkling of what one may 
 speak of as white-collar men, all rather shabbily dressed, and of young- 
 sters whose behavior was not much different from that of our boys and 
 girls of similar age. They chatted and laughed, and then all was si- 
 lence and attention. 
 
 The conductor took his place before the orchestra (there was no 
 podium), rapped the baton, and the concert began. 
 
 It was hot and the air was full of flies and mosquitoes ; the musicians 
 in addition to devoting their attention to the intricacies of Dvorak's 
 New World Symphony, the main piece on the program, had to contend 
 with pestering winged insects that were no respecters of classical or 
 any other kind of music. 
 
 As I listened to the sj^mphony it occurred to me that the New World 
 Symphony in which Dvorak intended to express in sound how he felt 
 while living in the United States applied more aptly to present-day Rus-
 
 72 
 
 sia. Here was a new world coming into being, where since the October, 
 1918, revolution things had been turned upside down, where the ruling 
 classes were either liquidated, or, if successful, fled abroad, where former 
 intelligentsia, aristocracy, plutocracy, and bourgeoisie gave way to those 
 who were formerly underprivileged, to factory laborers and peasants, 
 soldiers and sailors, all those who helped to overthrow the old regime. 
 They were being taught to read and to write, to abhor religion as an 
 "opiate," to look not to Heaven above but to the State below as the 
 arbiter of their destinies, the State that after all was of their own crea- 
 tion and thus should be willingly and cheerfully obeyed. 
 
 When I revisited the Tretiakov Art Gallery in Moscow, which I saw 
 before the Revolution when it was a place to which polite society used to 
 wend its way in order to look at the treasures assembled there, a diiier- 
 ent kind of public confronted me. 1 was particularly attracted to a 
 group of young school children piloted presumably by one of the teachers. 
 She stopped with them before a large canvas by Repin depicting the 
 carrying of icons. I stopped to listen to what the teacher was to say to 
 her charges. The main point w^hich she brought out was the treatment 
 of the poor whom the Cossacks were driving away with their knouts 
 so that they could not reach the holy pictures. "Look, children; look at 
 the rich proud boyards snug in their fur coats ; look at the priests pre- 
 ceding them oblivious of anything that was going on and look at the 
 miserable shivering creatures who are beaten back; their only crime is 
 their desire to touch the icons. Thus it was under the Czar who was 
 spoken of by many as 'the little father'." 1 did not follow the group any 
 further. I had enough of this display of appreciation of art as exempli- 
 fied by the works of great painters and sculptors and as interpreted by 
 a teacher. 
 
 1 was again a recipient of indoctrination when I went to see a moving 
 picture which purported to acquaint the audience with the life and 
 death of one of the great Russian poets, Lermontov. Because of his 
 somewhat liberal views as expressed in his writings he was disliked by 
 the autocratic regime. The Bolsheviks took the fact of his having been 
 killed in a duel, while still a very young man, to accuse the authorities 
 of having engineered the affair so as to get rid of a troublesome author. 
 It is difficult to distinguish between facts and opinions in this case 
 but according to what one reads in Lermontov's biographies, in addi- 
 tion to his great talent as a fwet he was the possessor of a very sharp 
 tongue, which he used in and out of season, and once too often. He 
 offended an officer. Instead of offering an apology he agreed to have a
 
 73 
 
 duel. His opponent shot him and thus his career came to a premature 
 end. 
 
 Before leaving Russia I went to the Polish Legation to obtain a transit 
 permit to go through Poland. "This we shall give you," I was told, 
 'but how do you expect to get out of Russia? Don't you know that you 
 must have an exit permit?" This I did not know and it was a perturb- 
 ing bit of news. It was too late in the day to do anything about it. I 
 telephoned to the railroad station and changed my room reservation for 
 next ev'ening. Early in the morning I was in the office to get the exit 
 permit. The attendants looked at my passport, then told me to leave it 
 and come back in a couple of days. 
 
 To say that I did not like the arrangement would be an understate- 
 ment. I did not see any reason for the delay and I was reluctant to part 
 with my American passport. "I really must leave this evening; whom 
 would you advise me to see?" After some consultation they ushered me 
 into an inner office where behind a large mahogany desk sat a serious 
 middle-aged man. "Sit down!" I sat down opposite him and we looked 
 at each other. "What is it that you want from me?" he asked. "Not 
 much," I replied, "just an exit permit." He looked at the passport and 
 told me to come back in a couple of days. "This is what I heard in the 
 outer office," I said, "and this is why I came to see you. I had a train 
 reservation for yesterday and changed it for tonight when I want to 
 leave." "Why did you get a train reservation before you obtained the 
 permit to leave the country?" he said rather sternly. This was a fair 
 question and for a few moments I was at loss as to what to say, and 
 then like a flash a proper answer came to me: "Because I was almost 
 certain that 3'ou will grant my request and give me the permit." He 
 started to laugh ; I do not know what was so funny in what I said ; any- 
 how, the ice was broken ; the official became a human being. We chatted 
 for a while ; then he stamped the permit, I paid the fee, and the inter- 
 view was over. I heaved a sigh of relief and so did Ray. who was waiting 
 for me in one of the corridors in the building. It was quite a long wait 
 for her.
 
 9. TRIP TO PALESTINE AND ENGLAND 
 
 In 1935 I went to England on a semester's leave of absence in order 
 to study the effects of Great Britain's abandonment of her age-long free- 
 trade policy. Before settling in London, with visits to Manchester, Liver- 
 pool, and a few other places in the British Isles. Ray and I took a 
 Mediterranean trip with Palestine as our final destination. Unfortunate- 
 ly, on the fourth day at sea Ray fell and, as we learned upon arrival at 
 Haifa, suffered a broken knee cap. This made it impossible for her to 
 move freely, as her injured leg had to be incased in a plaster cast, but 
 it did not prevent her from riding in a car and seeing many parts of the 
 countrj-. 
 
 I learned in connection with her mishap what I knew before — how 
 dangerous it is to generalize. The relation between the Arabs and the 
 Jews could not have been more tense and yet in the boarding house in 
 Jerusalem where we stayed, one of the employees, an Arab, could not 
 have been more solicitous in helping Ray. He was very strong and he 
 carried her from one place to another and up and down the steps as if 
 she were a child entrusted to his care. And the physician who attended 
 to Ray in Haifa was a German, a most considerate and conscientious 
 individual, who was most painstaking in his efforts to be of assistance. 
 
 On the way to Palestine the "Exeter" of the American Export Lines, 
 on which we had our passage, stopped at a few Mediterranean ports. 
 
 Of some assistance in this connection was the European director of 
 the Lines who learned from J. E. Slater, then the manager of the com- 
 pany, that we were aboard the "Exeter" and directed the agents in 
 Naples, Genoa. Alexandria, and Haifa to meet us. Ray could not be 
 met until her return trip as she was confined to bed. I was the sole 
 beneficiary and had my first glimpse of the beautiful Bay of Naples and 
 a number of other sights in Italy as a guest of the company. When we 
 were leaving Palestine a somewhat ludicrous situation developed. The 
 agent in Haifa asked me whether I would like to take along some 
 Palestinian wine. I expected to be the recipient of a couple of bottles
 
 76 
 
 but instead of that found two dozens greeting me in front of my cabin 
 when I went on board ship. What to do? I knew mj' capacity; I was 
 aware that my own consumption would not ehminate much and so 
 bottles of wine went with my compliments to the captain, to the doctor, 
 and to the purser. Then Ray suggested that I should take three or four 
 bottles for use in London. This seemed sensible and so when we came 
 to Marseilles I presented to the customs authorities in addition to my 
 other possessions Palestinian wine. They told me that admitting wine 
 was outside of their jurisdiction and directed me to a place where this 
 could be done. From that place I was sent to another and then to still 
 another. I decided that the best thing for me to do was to get rid of 
 the beverage. I went back to the ship ; all was peaceful and quiet there ; 
 I did not see anyone, so I went to what was my cabin during the trip, 
 deposited the bottles in front of the door, and heaved a sigh of relief. 
 
 In Palestine the harbinger of things to come confronted one at al- 
 most every step. In Haifa and Tel Aviv and outside the walls of ancient 
 Jerusalem, streets were being widened and new ones laid out. New 
 structures were rising, put up by Jewish carpenters and bricklayers, 
 many of them former professional men in the lands from which they 
 came; they worked with determination and zeal if not with the skill 
 one would expect from seasoned workers. It was a thrilling experience 
 and as I listened at night in a seashore hotel in Tel Aviv to the waves 
 of the Mediterranean Sea hitting gently but relentlessly against the 
 coast, I felt as if it were destiny knocking at the doors of a nation to be 
 reborn in the travail of her dedicated sons and daughters. I could not 
 go to sleep. I envisaged a speck of land surrounded by hostile neighbors 
 ready to knife those whom they considered as intruders. Hostile neigh- 
 bors resented not the Jews ("Oh, no, they were Semites like our- 
 selves") but the Zionists who were coming to upset the well-established 
 feudal order, who were bringing with them a Western outlook on life, 
 who were bent on raising the standards of living, not of the tew rich 
 Arabs who were satisfied with their lot, but of the people at large. 
 
 One thing I did not approve; this was the selection of Mount Scopus 
 as the sight of the university. I thought the location to be too vulnerable. 
 How right I was in my fears the future has shown. 
 
 On the way from Haifa to Alarseilles we stopped at Alexandria. Here 
 the West with wide, well-paved, tree-lined streets and modern buildings 
 meets the East of narrow, crooked alleys, of dirt roads, and cobble- 
 stones and wooden shacks. We were invited to a luncheon to be given
 
 77 
 
 by the representative of the American ExpwDrt Lines; the affair in a 
 hotel, where we ate on a terrace overlooking the sea, was in a European 
 setting and the meal was not different from any that one could get in 
 Paris or in Rome. 
 
 When we came to Naples I saw an Italian passenger ship with soldiers 
 on deck, young men from countrysides and urban communities who 
 were being sent to Abyssinia to civilize the natives of that far-off land 
 by means of modern weapons of destruction. There was a large portrait 
 of Mussolini in a conspicuous place on the vessel, dominating the scene. 
 The young men looked carefree and were laughing and singing, while on 
 the shore their parents, wives, and sweethearts were hardly able to keep 
 tears from rolling down their cheeks. 
 
 I came to London provided with letters of introduction recommend- 
 ing me as "one of the few most prominent American authorities on in- 
 ternational trade in the United States," as "a thorough scholar in his 
 field," and as an influential teacher and writer. 
 
 The person whom I found most useful in helping me to meet British 
 public officials, journalists, and men of affairs was Harold Laski. 
 Though he did not occupy any post in the British Labor Party, he was 
 very influential in political and economic circles. An outspoken socialist, 
 he had little use for social reformers. He considered me as belonging to 
 this group, but this did not deter him from doing all he could to make 
 my stay in London more profitable than it might have been otherwise. 
 
 Laski possessed a quick, versatile mind and I would have been tempted 
 to call him a stimulating conversationalist if it were not for the fact 
 that most of the conversations with him would quickly turn into solilo- 
 quies. He had very definite opinions and there was no use trying to 
 shake them ; it could not be done. One had to resign oneself to being 
 a listener or else removing oneself from his orbit, and this one hated 
 to do because what he was saying was usually worth listening to. 
 
 Most of the persons whom I contacted were interested in what I at- 
 tempted to do and were willing to go out of their way in sharing their 
 knowledge with me. They were successful in various walks of life and 
 as I was conversing with them I felt that their success was based on the 
 solid ground of integrity and fair play. When answering my questions 
 and providing me with relevant data, not once did they show that I was 
 intruding upon their time. I was invited for lunch in some of London's 
 social and literary clubs and can subscribe to what Baedeker wrote about
 
 78 
 
 the food served there: "The cuisine is admirable, attaining a pitch of 
 excellence unequalled by the most elaborate and expensive restaurants." 
 I was somewhat worried when I was asked to come at teatime. I was 
 not able to make my hosts understand what I meant by weak tea; the 
 tea that was served was a tower of strength and to dilute it too much 
 was almost tantamount to sacrilege. A couple of times I attended the 
 meetings of the London Rotary Club and found them a somewhat more 
 dignified affair than luncheons in most of our Rotary Clubs; they cul- 
 minated with a toast to the king and only after this toast could those in 
 attendance indulge in smoking. 
 
 The Rotary meeting which I found most interesting took place in 
 Manchester. There Sir Walter Preston spoke on "The Cotton In- 
 dustry Machineiy." What he said struck a responsive chord in me, but 
 not in most of his other listeners. The textile industry, along with coal 
 mining and shipbuilding, was in a state of distress; it was confronted 
 with the problem of dismantling surplus spindles so as to bring produc- 
 tion and consumption into greater accord. The competition of Japan in 
 world markets was looming large and the reason assigned for her suc- 
 cess in conquering markets previously supplied by the British was her 
 cheap labor. While agreeing that the laborers were paid smaller wages 
 in Japan than the laborers in the British Isles, Preston contended that 
 this was not a satisfactory explanation, that this was not the whole and 
 not even the main story. Manufacturers of modern textile machinery 
 were not able to sell their products in England to any considerable de- 
 gree whereas a ready market existed for them in Japan. He emphasized 
 again and again the point which I have used so often ; it is not the cheap- 
 ness but the efficiency of labor that counts, and the laborer provided 
 with superior equipment is more productive than the one who lacks it. 
 
 Later I discussed Preston's address with Mr. W. Wiggins, the presi- 
 dent of the Federation of Master Cotton Spinners Association ; in the 
 course of our conversation he said something that took me aback. He 
 told me that some of his equipment was thirty years old and he did not 
 see any reason for discarding it as it was still going strong. I countered 
 this remark by suggesting that it was not a question of going strong 
 that was to be taken into account but whether there were not machines 
 that were going stronger. Here was a veiy intelligent, highly educated 
 man who clung tenaciously to the past which made England the leading 
 industrial nation in the world but which was no longer good enough 
 as new forces were challenging the older order.
 
 79 
 
 From father to son, or to a nephew or a cousin, but always to some- 
 one in the family was the sequence of British ownership and manage- 
 ment; there was no Carnegie arising from the ranks of labor to blaze 
 a new trail. 
 
 From Manchester I went to Liverpool; there I called on Professor 
 Ernest R. Dewsnup, who was at Illinois when I came here in 1908 and 
 with whom I became well acquainted. I was sorry to have him leave 
 at the beginning of the first World War. At Illinois he was in charge 
 of the work in railway administration and was called back by the 
 British government to act as a coordinator in the movement of troops 
 from various parts of England to the seaboard. Besides railways he was 
 interested in housing, having published in 1907 a work on The Housing 
 Problem in England. It was this problem that occupied part of his at- 
 tention when I saw him. Building operations were carried on partly to 
 give employment to the jobless in depressed areas, partly to move the 
 laborers from the slums into better living quarters with, according to 
 Dewsnup, sometimes unexpected results. People who were moved did 
 not want to stay; they were not comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings 
 and wanted to go back to the places from which they came, or if they 
 did stay they changed things to suit themselves. Thus a bathtub would 
 be used as a receptacle for coal or some other necessity. 
 
 When I visited England Professor Dewsnup was the head of the 
 economics department at the University of Liverpool. The time we 
 spent together went by too quickly because we had so much to talk 
 about; he wanted to know how we were getting along in our Midwest 
 and being with him brought back to me memories of my early years 
 there. One of the things that came to my mind was his thoughtfulness ; 
 our classes were conducted in the old University Hall and there was 
 a shortage of office space; as soon as he found out my difficulty he 
 suggested my using part of his office until other quarters could be 
 found for me. 
 
 We stayed in London in Carlton Mansions, a boarding house lo- 
 cated not far from the British Museum; it was mansions in name only, 
 but we were quite comfortable in it. We had a large room with two 
 radiators which did not behave as self-respecting radiators should ; in 
 cold weather they would just turn lukewarm and throw ol? a small 
 amount of heat, but as Ray used to say, it was better than nothing; 
 that it was better than nothing could be attested by the fact that 
 some of the dwellers in the house who had rooms without radiators
 
 80 
 
 would come to pay us a visit when they felt like warming up. More 
 or less palatable breakfasts and dinners were provided by the pension ; 
 for lunches we were on our own and took them in the vicinity of the 
 place where we happened to be at the time. 
 
 In 1935 Dr. Kinley received a letter from Mr. M. Lissner. the chair- 
 man of the Shipping Board, asking for an expression of opinion con- 
 cerning the desirability of extending discriminatory treatment to our 
 merchant marine, then very much under discussion. Kinley referred this 
 letter to me. 
 
 Later Lissner wrote that my comments were in accord with the 
 statements made by most of the other economists to whom the letter 
 was sent (they were against discrimination), but that I expressed them 
 in so many fewer words. I took it as a real compliment. 
 
 Roth in my talks and writings, I have persistently advocated the 
 lowering of trade barriers which impede the movement of goods from 
 one country to another. 
 
 In a public lecture given on December 7, 1933, in the University of 
 Illinois Auditorium on "Economic Nationalism and International Rela- 
 tions," I made an attempt to clarify my attitude towards the kind of 
 nationalism which I considered objectionable. I am quoting from this 
 address because nothing that I can say now could throw any better 
 light on the subject. I said then : 
 
 I wish to make it clear at the outset that the majority of those who insist 
 that international cooperation is an essential requisite for world recovery from 
 political and economic ills are not denying that many advantages have ac- 
 crued from the division of the world into national units; they admit that such 
 a division was a step in advance over the conditions as they existed in the 
 days of local economy, in the days of the supremacy of feudal barons and of 
 the ecclesiastics; they admit that national consciousness while it may be only a 
 myth, as some Frenchman has put it, it is a myth that has a cultural and 
 spiritual value. National patriotism has inspired some of the finest and deep- 
 est emotions and has given rise to some of the noblest sacrifices. What the so- 
 called internationalists are decrying is the spirit of narrow selfish nationalism 
 which has been gaining ascendency in this and in other countries ; they are 
 decrying nationalism fanned into flames by predatory interests, by fear, hate 
 and jealousy or by a sense of arrogant superiority ; they see clearly that unless 
 such nationalism is checked it is bound to plunge the world into another war, 
 far deadlier, far more destructive than the one which preceded it. It is 
 fallacious to assume that the considerations for the welfare of one's countrj' are 
 opposed to sane internationalism. Coordination between enlightened national 
 and international interests is possible and highly desirable.
 
 81 
 
 Thus having made clear, at least to my own satisfaction, my griev- 
 ances against ultra-nationalism, I proceeded to attack the protagonists 
 of narrow nationalism who think that sources of intertiational friction 
 may be removed and wars eliminated by each country isolating itself 
 and striving to achieve self-sufficienc\' and self-containment. I pointed 
 out that while each nation has a right to regulate its afifairs in the 
 way it considers most satisfactory for itself, it cannot escape the con- 
 sequences of its acts so far as they afiect other nations which may be 
 affected adversely by its self-containment activities and may retaliate 
 accordingly. 
 
 In another public address soon thereafter, I deprecated the situation 
 in Europe where a number of economically ill-conceived states were 
 created whose boundaries ran across the highways of commerce, whose 
 frontiers were drawn in accordance with real or imaginary ethnic, racial, 
 or linguistic lines without any thought as to the economic realities these 
 newly established political units would have to face. Six thousand 
 miles of additional frontiers had been added to the many miles which 
 already existed. Wheat fields were in some instances separated from 
 flour mills, iron ore deposits from steel plants. Perhaps the most striking 
 example of how frontiers were established may be seen in Teshen, a 
 city on the border between Czechoslovakia and Poland. Both countries 
 claimed it and in order to satisfy the demands of both claimants the 
 city was divided, with the result that manufacturers who lived in the 
 part of the city assigned to Poland had to procure passports in order 
 to be able to reach their factories in Czechoslovakia and milkmen in 
 order to deliver milk on both sides of the divided street had to provide 
 themselves with export licenses to reach their old customers. 
 
 I was particularly pleased when an article of mine appeared in the 
 protection-inclined Chicago Tribune. In 1934 this paper ran a series of 
 articles by professors of economics who were still working on the cam- 
 puses of Midwestern universities after a number of their colleagues 
 had gone to Washington to join the brain trust. On its editorial page 
 the Tribune (March 14, 1934) paid a compliment to "the stays at 
 home" describing them as men of academic standing with inquisitive 
 minds and the background of history. 
 
 My inquisitive mind led me to say that trade revival among nations 
 was the recovery key. 
 
 I wrote in the Chicago Tribune: 
 
 Remedial measures under our National Recover}- Act have not gone to the
 
 82 
 
 roots of the trouble. Our own depression is closely related to the depression of 
 other lands and our recovery is not likely to be either lasting or complete on 
 the basis of economic self-sufficiency and self-containment . . . Humanity 
 divided against itself is sinking more and more deeply into a morass not only 
 of economic difficulties but of moral and social degradation. Not less than 
 any other nation we have been responsible for the tragedy. We, the richest 
 nation in the world, passed the Fordney-McCumber and Smoot-Hawley tariff 
 acts which made it impossible for debtor nations to meet their obligations to 
 us, which drained many of them of their gold reserves and led them to pass 
 retaliatory measures against us. The United States must assume leadership 
 in the breaking down of trade barriers, so that our country and the rest of 
 the world should begin the rebuilding of their shattered economic machinery 
 not by makeshifts, by strangulation of individual freedom, by curtailment of 
 outputs but by the re-establishment of peaceful international relations which 
 would permit each country' to develop to the full its resources and the poten- 
 tialities of its people.
 
 10. MY WORK ON COMMITTEES 
 
 I served on many committees during my active work at the university. 
 Of these the one which brought me in close contact with the repre- 
 hensible aspects of students' conduct was the Committee of Student 
 Discipline. In 1931 the University Senate decided that disciplining of 
 students should be vested not in the deans, as had been the case there- 
 tofore, but in the Senate. Of course, the Senate as a body could not 
 undertake the task and it appointed a committee which consisted of 
 five members, with W. E, Britton, professor of law, as chairman. I 
 was selected as one of the members and remained so for two years; 
 this was as long as the committee functioned. After that we folded up 
 and it was with a sense of relief (at least so far as I was concerned) 
 that we transferred the task back to the deans. In both instances sub- 
 committees were and are now the ones to whom the cases were and are 
 originally referred and who pass judgment on them. 
 
 Dishonesty in connection with academic work, such as cheating at 
 examinations, tearing out charts or plates from library books, violations 
 of the university motor vehicle regulations, and last but not least 
 gambling, drinking, stealing, and other acts which could be construed 
 as detrimental to the best interests of the university were first considered 
 by a subcommittee. 
 
 Our work consisted in reviewing cases which were brought before us 
 by students dissatisfied with the findings and the disciplinary measures 
 imposed by the subcommittee. The setting up of an appellate committee 
 was an innovation and, as conceived by our chairman, it afforded the 
 committee an opportunity to weigh carefully all the factors in the situa- 
 tion so as to be able to defend its final action should the case be brought 
 by the student before a court. It seemed to me that the latter considera- 
 tion was overemphasized at times and resulted in a number of reversals 
 of the subcommittee's decisions and letting the culprits go free. 
 
 A situation developed which gave our committee a headache and sub-
 
 84 
 
 jected it to criticisms; it was the smoking by the students in the univer- 
 sity buildings and on the campus walks. H. W. Chase, then the presi- 
 dent, wanted to smoke whenever and wherever he was and he did not 
 see anything objectionable in students indulging in it with the result 
 that the "no smoking" regulation which had been in force since the 
 founding of the university went overboard. Spent matches and cigarette 
 stubs polluted our hitherto smokeless institution. "Why does not your 
 committee do something about it?" was the query, and our reply was: 
 "What can we do when the situation is condoned by the president? We 
 have no mandate to stop it." 
 
 I was a member of the library committee when, in addition to the 
 problems falling within the regular jurisdiction of such a committee, 
 plans were being considered in connection with the construction of the 
 new library building which graces our campus now. It meant that meet- 
 ings were held more frequently than otherwise would have been the 
 case and that they often lasted longer, but it was an interesting 
 experience. 
 
 One item which was brought forward. I do not remember now by 
 whom, dealt with the main reading hall ; it was suggested that the hall 
 should have a low ceiling. "Why?" I asked. The reply was that it would 
 involve a smaller expense than a high ceiling and would make it easier 
 to heat the room. I did not like the idea. "What about the light, the 
 air, and the appearance of the room?" I asked, and I am pleased to 
 report that the hall looks fine with a high ceiling as an asset. 
 
 As a member of the executive faculty of the Graduate College 
 I participated in a number of worthwhile discussions. One of them, 
 which I remember, was whether a professor who has done no other 
 writing except publishing one or a number of textbooks should be en- 
 titled to supervise a graduate student's work leading to a doctor's de- 
 gree. The decision, in which I concurred, was "No." After all, writing a 
 text is not a scientific endeavor. On another occasion I combated, and I 
 am pleased to say successfully, another decision because I thought that 
 there were extenuating circumstances in this case. The ruling was not 
 to permit a student a third language examination if he failed in two 
 previous ones; this, of course, meant that he could not obtain his doc- 
 tor's degree from our university. 
 
 I spent some time as a member of the fellowship and scholarship 
 committee, not an exciting committee to be on. The undergraduate and 
 graduate record of the applicant is considered and the fellowship or
 
 85 
 
 scholarship is awarded in accordance with this record. There was one 
 case which I am sorn,- to say met with the disapproval of Professor J. W. 
 Garner, whom I most highly respected and whose friendship I valued. 
 There was only one fellowship that we could give in political science 
 and there were two applicants for it — a young man recommended by 
 the department and a young woman whose academic record was su- 
 perior to that of the man. After a lengthy deliberation we gave it to 
 the woman. A few days later I met Garner, "Simon," he asked, "why 
 does your committee ask for the department's recommendation and then 
 disregard it?" "I will tell you something," I replied, "if it were not 
 for your recommendation we would have decided the case in a couple 
 of minutes, but due to it we spent a great deal of time before we arrived 
 at the decision." "Well," said Garner, "You know what will happen 
 next ; we are losing the young man who has all the makings for becoming 
 a good political scientist; as to the lady, she will graduate and then get 
 married." 
 
 As I look back and consider the meetings of the University Senate, 
 I remember the time when records of attendance were kept, when ab- 
 sences were carefully noted, and when it was deemed more or less 
 obligatory to be present and to participate in the deliberations of this 
 august body. While seldom absent myself, I felt that it was not a 
 dignified procedure and I was pleased when it was abandoned. 
 
 Twice I did something that gave me satisfaction. Twice I stopped 
 the proposed adjournments of the meeting, first to move that the Sen- 
 ate before doing so go on record as expressing sympathy to Dr. David 
 Kinley on the loss of his wife in China and the second time to convey 
 to President H. W. Chase the Senate's sorrow on the passing of his 
 mother. Why no one else thought of it I do not know. Some of the 
 senators told me afterwards that they were pleased that I did it. I felt 
 that it was the right thing to do. 
 
 In discussing the students' use of poor English in their written work 
 I spoke of being a member of the educational policy committee of the 
 Senate for quite a while, of our grappling with the problem, and of 
 our attempts to find ways which would lead to improvement. 
 
 The committee also had jurisdiction over the professional colleges — 
 medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy — which are located in Chicago. This 
 gave me an opportunity to visit the well-equipped buildings on the Chi- 
 cago campus and also to learn something of the way they were being 
 administered. In one instance it led to a conflict between Dr. Allen,
 
 86 
 
 then the chief executive officer of the professional colleges, and me. He 
 submitted for our approval a request that applicants wishing to enter 
 the School of Medicine should appear in person before a body represent- 
 ing it. I did not see any reason for such a requirement; no such request 
 was being made by other colleges. As one who led the opposition I am 
 pleased to say that the plan was defeated at the time. 
 
 In 1935 Mrs. George F. Frazer established a foundation as a memo- 
 rial for her father, the late President Edmund Janes James. Under the 
 terms of the gift the lecturers are chosen by a committee selected from 
 professors of political science and economics; the invited men are dis- 
 tinguished for their scholarly work and for their experience in public 
 affairs. 
 
 During the first few years with Professor John A. Fairlie as chair- 
 man I represented the department of economics on the committee. This 
 was one committee which gave Mrs. Litman an opportunity to partici- 
 pate, first by attending dinners given by the President and Mrs. Willard 
 for the lecturers and then listening to the addresses. I think Ray en- 
 joyed being among those present. 
 
 The executive committee of our college is the one on which I served 
 longer than on any other. I was voted to be one of its six members 
 again and again by my colleagues on the faculty and I tried to do my 
 best to justify the confidence thus placed in me. We had many, often 
 rather lengthy meetings presided over by C. M. Thompson, then the 
 dean of the college. 
 
 When I was granted a semester's leave of absence in 1935, one of the 
 professors suggested that since I would be absent someone else should be 
 elected for the year, but the proposition was voted down, as most of 
 those present wanted me to rejoin the committee automatically upon 
 my return. 
 
 Long before the Russians launched their Sputnik, thus leading us to 
 a re-examination of our educational endeavors, I fought successfully for 
 retention of mathematics as a required course for freshmen in our college. 
 
 The matter of requiring such a course or substituting for it one in 
 science was brought up unexpectedly at one of the faculty meetings with- 
 out having been considered by the executive committee. It was a sur- 
 prise to me. I knew of the students' desire to take a course easier than 
 mathematics but why some members of the faculty wanted to go along 
 surprised me. I pointed out the desirability of pinning students down to
 
 87 
 
 exact thinking, required in mathematics but not to be found in botany 
 or zoolog}', however interesting those courses might be. I am pleased to 
 report that I won out the case at the time. 
 
 For a number of years it fell upon me to select books for language 
 examinations to be taken by students in economics. One day I conceived 
 what seemed to me a reasonable plan of assigning to students, not a 
 general book on economics as had been done theretofore, but a volume 
 dealing with a particular field in which they were interested, such as 
 banking, foreign trade, labor, or public finance. The result was not 
 exactly what I expected it to be. I selected the books but the people in 
 the language departments were the ones who selected the passages to be 
 translated, and so in the book on labor problems, the passages to be 
 translated dealt with banking, and in the treatise on banking passages 
 covered the field of foreign trade. I went back to the books on general 
 economics as it was the easier thing to do. 
 
 In the early part of 1934 a special committee of six faculty men was 
 named by W. C. Noel, the president of the Urbana Association of 
 Commerce, to investigate the reports of engineers and accountants 
 regarding a proposed municipal electric light plant for Urbana. Pro- 
 fessor H. T. Scovill was made the chairman of the committee, three 
 members of which represented electrical and mechanical engineering. 
 Professor E. R. Dillavou, of the department of business organization, 
 and I, of the department of economics, completed the membership. 
 
 The reports of engineers and accountants showed such a variance 
 that it was impossible for the association to give unbiased and correct 
 answers to the questions raised. The faculty committee was asked to 
 analyze the reports and submit its own findings, which were to be 
 as complete and accurate as possible. I was not able to form any definite 
 conclusions as to the right and the w^rong between the contending parties 
 and refrained from signing the submitted document. 
 
 The last committee of which I was a member was named in 1943. 
 Its purpose was to cooperate with the pastors and the YMCA in 
 connection with the chaplain service for the trainees on the University 
 of Illinois campus. 
 
 From 1938 to 1944 I was one of the editors of the Illinois Studies 
 in the Social Sciences, representing on it the department of economics ; 
 the other members were Professor John A. Fairlie, of political science, 
 and F'rofessor A. H. Lybyer, of the department of history. In 1942
 
 Professor C. A. Berdahl took the place of Professor Fairlie as chairman. 
 The works published covered a great variety of topics, such as "The 
 French in the West, 1740-50," "The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs," 
 "Economic Planning," "The History of the Social Democratic Party 
 of Milwaukee, 1897-1910," and "The United States and the Material 
 Advance in Russia, 1861-1906." 
 
 Although there is some difference between scrutinizing a manuscript 
 submitted for publication and reviewing a work already published, there 
 was one general rule to which I attempted to adhere. I felt that it was 
 wrong to approach the author's treatment of the subject with precon- 
 ceived notions and criticize him because he did not do what the reviewer 
 expected him to do. 
 
 Again and again I admonished graduate students whom I guided to 
 approach the topic which they selected for their theses with an open 
 mind, which, of course, did not mean with a vacuum in their heads, 
 to examine all (so far as it was possible) that had been written or said 
 about it, distinguishing between facts and opinions, and then to proceed 
 to handle it in accordance with an evolved plan. 
 
 ]VIy task, as I conceived it to be, was to try to put myself in the 
 writer's place, to ascertain whether he had accomplished what he set 
 himself to do, how far short of the mark, if at all, he fell, and whether 
 there were any errors of judgment and any inconsistencies in what he 
 had written. 
 
 In dealing with presented data it was important in my opinion to 
 ascertain whether they were brought forward by an unbiased observer 
 (of which they are a few) or by a partisan or an opponent. When one 
 reads that a certain ruler died at such and such a date, one can usually 
 accept it as an incontrovertible fact ; but when this is followed by a 
 statement that with his death a wise ruler went to his reward, it is 
 an opinion which requires looking into before being accepted. 
 
 I was often unfamiliar with the facts presented in the submitted 
 manuscript. I scrutinized the way they were handled by the writer, 
 pointing out discrepancies in the manner of treating them, the reliance 
 on insuflficient testimony, and the arrival at times at too-hasty con- 
 clusions. The manuscript would then be turned back to the author for 
 corrections before its admission for publication. 
 
 The determining factors in accepting a manuscript for publication may 
 be made clear by quoting from a letter I wrote to Professor M. H. 
 Hunter:
 
 89 
 
 This study of the labor movement in Great Britain, France and Germany is 
 a brief, well-written, but somewhat one-sided and poorly documented account 
 of the labor movement in the countries under consideration. Most of the ma- 
 terial contained in the study may be found in the secondary sources of informa- 
 tion and there are altogether too few references to such sources used by the 
 author. The work is not well adapted for publication in the Studies in 
 Social Sciences, whose chief purpose is bringing out the results of careful 
 original research. 
 
 One of the most interesting groups of students that I had to teach 
 came to Illinois in 1943; it was a heterogeneous body sent by the 
 government to brief them on the conditions which they were likely 
 to meet when sent abroad. 
 
 They were naturalized citizens with various backgrounds, outlooks 
 on life, and educational status. One was a graduate with a gold medal 
 from Mukden in Manchuria and another was a banker from Vienna 
 with years of experience. It was a challenge to meet them in the seminar 
 and to direct their discussions of the problems which I presented to 
 them. At times there was a clash of diverse opinions, which I attempted 
 to bring into a proper focus. 
 
 Each student had to write a paper on an assigned topic and I met 
 them in private conferences to guide them in their work. As their stay 
 was a comparatively short one, we had to compress months of study 
 into weeks and I must say that most of them did very well. 
 
 A number of students wrote to me telling me of their activities after 
 they left. Letters came from Belgium and French North Africa, from 
 camps in Maryland and in Pennsylvania, from New York and from 
 Minneapolis. I was pleased that they remembered me and the time we 
 spent together. One of the students sent me a photograph of himself, 
 his wife, and their little baby; another sent Passover greetings. All 
 seemed to have enjoyed the peaceful life in Champaign-Urbana and 
 the intellectual stimulus which they received while here. 
 
 At the end of the Army and Navy Specialized Training Programs, 
 all those who taught received a letter, dated September 5, 1945, from 
 Professor C. R. Griffith, the coordinator of the programs, stating that 
 by our support of these programs we played an important role in the 
 total war effort of the University of Illinois. To quote from this letter: 
 
 With scarcely a day of vacation, the training of young men for the various 
 branches of the armed services has gone steadily forward. There have been 
 difficult times, and we all remember problems which seemed impossible to settle
 
 90 
 
 to the satisfaction of everyone ; but I think each staff member has a right to 
 feel proud of his share in the final victor>- . . . For several months, -words of 
 praise for what we and other universities have accomplished have been mount- 
 ing . . . Now that we undertake to complete ^vhat we began and have carried 
 through so steadily, I hope you will accept my thanks for patience, for con- 
 tinued cooperation and for sustained good will. The task has not been easy, 
 but I'm sure that each of you must feel a deep sense of inner satisfaction in 
 knowing that the task has been done well. 
 
 It was with "a deep sense of inner satisfaction" that I read this 
 letter. I expressed my appreciation for it at the time, and I want to 
 thank Professor Griffith again for it. 
 
 In a letter written on Januan.- 24, 1944, addressed to Professor 
 Ralph Blodgett. who was the chairman of a committee on good teaching, 
 I attempted to define my position with regard to what should be the 
 consideration in recommending members of the staff for advancement 
 in rank and salary. I said in part: 
 
 Excellence in teaching should be considered as being on a par with general 
 usefulness to the university ... As to the relative value of excellence in teach- 
 ing on the one hand and scholarly research and writing on the other, the 
 answer is not so simple. I am taking it for granted that a man engaged in 
 research and writing is a good teacher, otherwise he should not be on a 
 teaching staff of a university . . . there is no reason for inflicting a poor 
 teacher on students, however great the scholastic achievements of the man 
 may be. A comparison should be made, then, between a good teacher who does 
 research and writing and an excellent teacher who does nothing of the kind. 
 The question arises, what does such an excellent teacher do in his spare time. 
 He doubtless spends some of it in a more careful preparation for meeting the 
 classes than a man absorbed in research, but after all, he is in a different 
 position from a teacher in a grammar school who spends long hours each day 
 in the routine of teaching — and he has long vacations. Supposedly he has ob- 
 tained his Ph.D. degree so that he is familiar with the methods and the aims 
 of productive work in his particular field of scientific endeavor. While an 
 excellent teacher deser^-es promotion in rank and an increase in salarj', I do 
 not think that he is entitled to the same consideration as a good teacher who 
 in addition to teaching does productive work. 
 
 How can those who decide on promotions ascertain who is and who 
 is not a good teacher? I thought that opinion of students, alumni, and 
 colleagues was one of the sources of information, later achievements 
 of students was another source, and then course outlines and syllabi 
 may be one of the objective tests in measuring good teaching. In the 
 latter connection I added: "but well do I remember that tu'o of the 
 greatest teachers that I have ever had, the ones who produced the
 
 91 
 
 most indelible impression upon me, did not supply students with outlines 
 and syllabi." 
 
 Professor E. L. Bogart asked me to join him in the conduct of the 
 seminar leading to the master's degree, which I did. Then one fine day 
 Professor Nathan Weston approached me with a question: "Litman, 
 what is the matter; why don't you attend the seminar where we consider 
 the theses leading to the Ph.D. degree? We need you." "The reason 
 is very simple, I am attending the master's seminar and I really do 
 not have enough time to attend both. I did not think that my participa- 
 tion in your seminar was very important." Weston looked at me and 
 said: "You know better. Ask Bogart to relieve you from the other 
 seminar," which I did. 
 
 When Weston became ill. the question arose who should assume his 
 duties as the man in charge. The decision came soon. Upon learning 
 w^hat was going on Weston indicated that he was only temporarily 
 disabled and the person that he designated to act in his place was Litman. 
 And so his mantle fell upon me, first acting for him and then upon his 
 untimely death as the one who continued to direct the meetings.
 
 11. MY MEETING RACHEFF 
 
 In 1933 while walking on Lake Shore Drive on the Near North 
 Side I ran into Ivan Racheff, or, shall I say, we ran into each other. 
 I had not seen him since he graduated from the University of Illinois 
 in 1917. It was a rather brief encounter and I did not meet him again 
 until 1949 when we renewed our acquaintance in earnest. 
 
 When he came to Illinois with only a scant knowledge of the English 
 language and unburdened by any earthly possessions he was directed to 
 see me. A Bulgarian by birth, he spoke Russian and we could converse 
 with each other. He was badly in need of work and so he proceeded to 
 cut our lawn, to beat our rugs, and to do any other chores in and around 
 the house. Ray took a liking to him, which was easily explained; who 
 would not? He was so likable. Racheff would come in to spend an 
 evening at our home and he would sing some of the folk songs of his 
 native land and of southern Russia. As he possessed a fine voice it was 
 a pleasure to listen to him ; to me it brought a feeling of nostalgia 
 taking me back to the days of long ago. 
 
 By passing proficiency tests, he succeeded in obtaining a degree in 
 two and a half years and went to Gary, Indiana, to enter one of the 
 iron and steel plants there. Owing to his ability, he rose in a compara- 
 tively short time from the ranks into a position of responsibility. 
 
 Our meeting bridged over decades and was the beginning of a friend- 
 ship which I value most highly. It brought the professor together with 
 one of the most interesting persons, with a man who by dint of his 
 intellect, his knowledge, and hard work advanced from poverty to riches 
 and yet remained almost the same as when he struggled to keep his 
 soul and body together and acquire an education. Almost the same, with 
 the same smile that used to light up his face and with the same modesty, 
 almost bordering on self-effacement. Of course, there were many changes. 
 He had problems to solve both of personal and of scientific import. 
 As a consulting engineer he evolved different kinds of steel to meet
 
 94 
 
 specific requirements and was most successful in his work. Eighty 
 volumes of his research bear testimony to this. I am proud to say that 
 forty or more of these volumes are now in the vaults of the University 
 Librar3% which is partly due to my efforts. But this is anticipating the 
 events. 
 
 Now the owner and manager of the Knoxville Iron Works in 
 Tennessee, Racheff is a mature individual of many accomplishments. 
 When he acquired the plant, the grounds surrounding it were full of 
 debris where rats found a congenial place to lead an undisturbed 
 existence. Racheff transformed the place into magnificent gardens with 
 thousands upon thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of jonquils, 
 tulips, and other flowers. Visitors are invited to see the fascinating 
 display and they come from near and far to do so. Besides vast stretches 
 of flowers there is a patch of luscious strawberries near the house and 
 farther away all kinds of vegetables furnish fresh products for the table. 
 There are also some fruit trees on the grounds. All these challenge the 
 culinary ability of Irene, the Racheff housekeeper and cook, and I 
 must say, as one of the beneficiaries, that she meets the challenge most 
 successfully. 
 
 Racheff loves to consort with nature and he does much of the work 
 on the grounds. As we ascend from the gardens into the apartment over 
 the plant's offices we enter into a realm of art. Here original paintings 
 grace the walls of the rooms and many books on art may be picked up by 
 anyone interested in the creative work of past and present generations; 
 a large collection of long-playing records of classical and semiclassical 
 music is also at one's disposal — Rachef^f likes to relax after a long day's 
 work listening to what Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Verdi, or 
 Puccini had to convey by means of divine melody and harmony in sounds. 
 
 In 1951 I had a brilliant idea. "Why not go to Florida for a vacation? 
 You have seen the country from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, 
 from New York and Baltimore to San Francisco and Los Angeles, from 
 New Orleans to Duluth. What is the matter with Florida?" Not that 
 I was anxious to imitate those who engage in conspicuous consumption 
 by staying in luxurious hotels in Miami Beach where a letter is brought 
 to you on a silver platter and where a doorman is likely to tell you when 
 you want to give him a tip and ask him whether he has change for a 
 dollar: "Sir, a dollar is change here." No, not that. I wanted to learn 
 what the state had to ofifer to a man not overburdened with money. 
 Knowing that RacheflF made many business trips South, I wrote to him.
 
 95 
 
 asking him to recommend a suitable place where a retired professor of 
 moderate tastes and means could stay in Florida. In reply I received in 
 addition to a note from him a letter from Aileen Marshall, on his 
 office force. Mrs. Marshall, soon known to me as Connie, wrote: "I 
 understand that you plan to skip California and have chosen Florida 
 instead. If you only promise to come to Knoxville we promise that you 
 shall see all points South." 
 
 I accepted the invitation and thus started one of the most restful, 
 satisfying vacations in my life. I came, I saw, and I was conquered. I 
 must have been also somewhat of a conqueror as I was asked to continue 
 my visits each successive year. 
 
 As Racheff was leaving for the South he installed me at the Grey- 
 stone Hotel in Gatlinburg. It was very early in the season ; as a matter 
 of fact it was outside of the season, and the entrance to the Smokies 
 without tourists was a delightful place. With green-clad mountains 
 looking upon it and a stream running through it, the quiet city reminded 
 me of small towns in Switzerland. It is becoming more and more com- 
 mercialized, with more and more hotels, restaurants, and curio shops 
 lining its main street and to me it is losing some of its charm. 
 
 On February' 22, while I was in Gatlinburg, I received a letter from 
 Racheff that he had found the right kind of place for me in Orlando. It 
 was in the newly opened Eola Plaza Hotel on Lake Eola, only three 
 blocks from the center of town. I went to Orlando and spent the month 
 of March there. The hotel has beautiful walks along the lake, which 
 abounds in ducks, geese, and other kinds of birds ; it was my privilege to 
 feed them with crumbs of bread taken from the dining room. Two white 
 swans navigated the lake and completed the picture. The picture was 
 somewhat darkened, so far as I was concerned, by the arrival on the 
 scene of screeching, arrogant seagulls who often made it impossible for 
 other birds to partake of the food ; the seagulls were so much quicker. 
 
 But let us turn our attention to the books. RachefT told me that he 
 thought of donating the valuable collection to Yale. Why Yale? Well, 
 he knew some of the men who were on the Board of Directors of that 
 university and when he was in New Haven he was shown a copy of 
 Newton's book, wonderfully preserved in the vaults of the library. 
 
 I did not like the idea of a graduate from Illinois giving the results 
 of his scientific endeavors to an Eastern institution and I told him so: 
 
 Yale has a fine reputation in many branches of learning, but engineering is
 
 96 
 
 not one of them. Illinois is much superior in this respect. I can assure }'ou 
 that your volumes will be just as well preserved in the vaults of Illinois' 
 library as they are likely to be at Yale, with this difference; in Yale they will 
 be just preserved; here a number of the volumes %vill be used for research 
 purposes with benefits that maj- accrue from it. 
 
 I allayed Racheff's fears that the books with their charts, plates, and 
 other illustrative material would be mutilated by telling him that photo- 
 static copies and not originals would be put into the hands of the 
 students. 
 
 And so I turned the attention of Racheff to his Alma Mater. On 
 August 1, 1941, he wrote a letter to President Willard telling him that 
 I had suggested he might be interested to learn of Racheff's activities 
 in the steel industry, including many research problems, and that he 
 would like to have Mr. and Mrs. Willard and me pay him a visit at 
 Knoxville with subsequent trips to the Great Smokies or to the Blue 
 Ridge Mountains. It was a very friendly letter. President Willard re- 
 plied that he and Mrs. Willard were in Furnington, Maine, and could 
 not come. To my disappointment nothing came out of this initial effort. 
 
 Later, when Lloyd Morey became president, it was possible to re- 
 sume my efforts to obtain these volumes for the university. Lloyd IVIorey 
 and I came to Illinois at about the same time and the friendliest of 
 relations exist between him, his wife Edna, and myself. Here I saw my 
 chance. I arranged a meeting between him and Racheff in Chicago. 
 
 After this meeting W. L. Everitt, the dean of the College of Engi- 
 neering, and Professor Thomas A. Read, the head of the department of 
 metallurgical engineering, saw Racheff and his works; they recommend- 
 ed their acceptance by the university. Thus the matter was satisfactorily 
 closed and I felt that my task was accomplished, except for one more 
 step. When Dr. David Dodds Henry became the president I saw to it 
 that the two men should meet. They met when Dr. Henry called upon 
 Racheff at Lonsdale; later he and Mrs. Henry were Racheff's guests 
 in his apartment in Chicago.
 
 12. THE DEATH OF TWO FRIENDS 
 
 A difficult task confronted me on October 5, 1953, when at the re- 
 quest of my friend Professor J. T. Tykociner I had to speak at the 
 funeral services of his wife. At first I wanted to refuse, but then I 
 thought it would be an act of cowardice unworthy of our close relations 
 and I acceded to his wish. I spoke as I felt, with a deep sorrow in my 
 heart. 
 
 A day before her death Helena asked me to have dinner with them. 
 I had had many meals in the Tykociners' home during the past few 
 years, highlighted by tastily prepared food and interesting conversations. 
 Helena was endowed with a keen, understanding mind, a fine sense of 
 humor, and a warm sympathy to those who were in need. She also had 
 a cheerful disposition, but not so on this last day. I saw that she was in 
 pain which she tried to conceal. 
 
 I spoke of the desirability of her going to Chicago to consult a heart 
 and stomach specialist whom I knew and as I was leaving I took both 
 her hands into mine and said: "Helena, I know that you are brave, but 
 be sensible, please, go and see the doctor." How little did I realize 
 that I was not to see her alive again. 
 
 The death of Brash (A. E.) Epstein on December 7, 1958, was a 
 severe blow. A few days before his passing, he and his wife Janet spent 
 the Thanksgiving weekend in Champaign-Urbana and it was fine to 
 see him relax in the quiet atmosphere of the Twin Cities away from his 
 busy life in Chicago. He looked rather tired but there was nothing to 
 foretell the tragedy which was to follow so soon. 
 
 Well do I remember the evenings which I used to spend after Ray's 
 death in the Epsteins' home in Chicago. Brash would pick up a poem by 
 Pushkin or some other Russian poet and read it aloud. He loved to do 
 it. And then he would bring out a book of clippings and go over some 
 of his early days in Russia. We both graduated in Odessa, but while 
 I obtained my degree from the School of Commerce, he received his
 
 98 
 
 from a Gymnasium. Both of us were A students. As such he had re- 
 ceived a gold medal and I an honorary citizenship of Russia. 
 
 I considered the latter of greater importance and I used to tell him 
 so, which he took good naturedly. He w^as always good natured in his 
 relations with me. This was not always true of his attitude towards 
 others. When the occasion demanded it, he was forceful in his quiet 
 way. He knew what he wanted and one could not deter him from his 
 objective. 
 
 Epstein was a member of the University of Illinois Foundation, and 
 its Board of Directors in recording with sorrow his death spoke of the 
 tremendous amount of important engineering work in various cities 
 which he and his sons, all graduates of the University of Illinois, had 
 done. In addition to being one of the leaders in his profession, he was 
 very active in civic and philanthropic work, which took much of his 
 time, thought, and energy. 
 
 When I donated my collection of the works of Russian authors, poets, 
 and novelists to the University Library, I found that I had a duplicate 
 copy of the works of Lermontov. I gave it to Brash at his last visit 
 here and he seemed pleased to receive it. 
 
 It was chilly at the time of their visit — chilly but not cold enough 
 for me to wear gloves. "What is the number of gloves you wear?" asked 
 Janet rather casually. Instead of asking her why she wanted to know I 
 gave her the number. Two or three days later a registered special de- 
 livery package came from Epstein's office. You guessed it right; it con- 
 tained a pair of gloves. It was not really what I needed as I was the 
 possessor of three pairs and a couple of single ones, but I guess Brash, 
 who in addition to his other qualifications had a sense of humor, thought 
 it would be a good joke to play on me. 
 
 Replying to my expression of sympathy Janet wrote: "A cruel blow 
 and I'm broken hearted but trying to bear up as I don't want the boys 
 to suffer more than necessary." Poor thoughtful, kind-hearted Janet. 
 Dazed by the sudden passing of Brash, her soul torn by anguish and 
 despair, she was thinking of Raymond and Sidney. 
 
 The doctor recommended that she travel for a while, thinking that 
 the change of scenery would be good for her and would permit her to 
 bridge over the period of readjustment less painfully. At first it did not 
 seem to be effective; she wrote that she found that one could not leave 
 sorrow behind and then again that she could not realize that it was
 
 99 
 
 final. Her last communication, an air-mail card from the Beverly Hilton 
 Hotel in California, seemed to indicate that the tension has eased some- 
 what. 
 
 When I wrote to her on December 31, 1958, I told her that in doing 
 so I was taking advantage of the many years of our knowing each other 
 and of my admiration for her as a kindly, warm-hearted soul in whose 
 house I always felt at home. I wrote in part: 
 
 My own bereavement and my awareness what a loss of a life's companion 
 means to one is another compelling force which urges me on to write. And yet, 
 I really do not know what to say. There are moments when words seem so 
 empty, so meaningless. Often when overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness I 
 sit down and play the tender part of Chopin's Funeral March and it seems 
 to have a soothing effect. I remember many years ago a rabbi in New York 
 whose services I attended gave a sermon on "Life and Death" . . . He con- 
 tended that people die so as to give room on earth ... to generations to follow. 
 You, dear Janet, have the consolation of having your children and grand- 
 children close to you and, of course, the knowledge that Brash led a full and 
 useful life and that he was highly respected by all who knew him, not the 
 least of whom is the Professor. 
 
 When I was in Chicago in the early part of June I spoke on the 
 phone to Sidney's wife and was under an impression that Janet was 
 still in California but on June 7, as I was going to have my breakfast 
 at the Pearson Hotel I was handed a phone slip from Janet Epstein 
 which came in the evening. I immediately contacted her. "I under- 
 stand that you are leaving soon. When?" was one of her first questions. 
 "On Monday at 6 p.m." I replied. "Too bad that I have an engage- 
 ment," but she added quickly: "I shall cancel it because I want to see 
 you. We shall have luncheon together." We usually had luncheons at 
 the Standard Club, but she did not feel like going there as it was there 
 that Brash would come in to join us. And so we ate at Jacques. From 
 there James (the chauffeur) took us to the Loop. We parted on the 
 main floor of Marshall Field's. I felt very bad as I shook her hand and 
 looked into her soft kind eyes. She was leaving for England to spend 
 some time with her brother, an international lawyer, and her sister-in- 
 law. I was glad for her sake, though it meant that she will not be in 
 Chicago through July and August when I shall be there ; I was glad 
 for her sake because I met her brother and her sister-in-law and I know 
 that they are fine people to be with. Both of them fiew to the United 
 States, first Bob and then Irene, to be with Janet when the calamity 
 struck. As to the professor — where shall we meet again? Will we meet 
 again at all? Who knows? "James will call for you to take you to the
 
 100 
 
 train," said Janet. It was Brash that used to send the car and now it 
 was Janet. Life and death — how intertwined they are; and Hfe goes 
 on. James came and took me to the depot. 
 
 Of the thousands of students whose hves I touched as an instructor 
 and (as some of them told me) as a counselor, a number achieved posi- 
 tions of responsibility and influence in public and private enterprises, 
 some entered the teaching profession and became respected members of 
 the faculties in the institutions of higher learning, and still others entered 
 governmental service in the Departments of State and of Commerce. It 
 was a source of satisfaction for me to learn that the way I taught was 
 appreciated by the officials in Washington under whom they worked. 
 To quote from a letter written in 1936 by Phil Crawford, who ob- 
 tained his master's degree under me and who was promoted from his 
 post in the District Office of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Af- 
 fairs in Seattle to a position in San Francisco: 
 
 The promotion is as much due to you as to my work here. When the District 
 Office Manager from Washington was here last fall he asked me of my train- 
 ing and found I was from the University of Illinois and had done most of my 
 work under your guidance ; he spoke some very kind words for you and your 
 other students and said he knew that training under Dr. Litman had worked 
 Avonders in other cases as well as mine. Consequently I am again grateful to 
 you not only for having let me stay with you for several years and permitted 
 me to graduate but also because the mere mention of you as a tutor brings a 
 promotion . . . 
 
 For a number of years one of the men on the stafi of the Bureau 
 District Office in Chicago was an Illinois graduate, largely a product 
 of my educational efforts. He was a fine, likable individual, for which 
 I do not claim any credit. I enjoyed visiting the office to see him in 
 action answering various questions propounded by exporters and im- 
 porters. Never perturbed, he was deliberate and quick at the same time. 
 We used to go out to have luncheon together in a nearby restaurant. It 
 was a year before he died that I learned that not all was well with him. 
 I could not attend Davidson's funeral. His brother wrote to me how 
 much he was eulogized by those who knew him and his work and added 
 something which brought tears to my eyes. The gist of what he said was: 
 "If my brother were able to hear the praises, he would have transferred 
 a large part of them to you, his teacher whom he admired so much." 
 
 I have been asked on a number of occasions whether I was ever regret- 
 ful of having chosen teaching and research as my life's work and I al- 
 ways replied with a definite "no." I really cannot imagine what else I
 
 101 
 
 could have done that could have given me more satisfaction, would have 
 brought me in contact with more worthwhile people and with young 
 men and women trying to find themselves. Young people often came to 
 me with their trials and tribulations, not only in their studies but often 
 in their private lives, because they knew that they would find in me 
 someone who would listen sympathetically to what they had to say and 
 who would try to counsel them to the best of his ability. 
 
 It was a challenge to come in contact with thousands of young men 
 and women on the threshold of the great adventure which they were 
 going to meet on leaving college. It was a challenge, while supplying 
 them with skills which would make it easier for them to make a living, 
 to imbue them at the same time with ideas and ideals which stand for 
 good citizenship, to teach them not only how to make a living but how 
 to live. My advice to them was: "Forge with all that is in you towards 
 an honorable goal but on the way keep your eyes and your ears open to 
 the beauties of nature, to the great works in literature and in arts, try 
 to understand what the immortals expressed in their poems and novels, 
 in their paintings and statues, in their symphonies and in their violin or 
 piano concertos." As I look back I remember also some other advice I 
 used to give them. "Think well of yourself; if you do not, no one else 
 will; but be careful, do not exaggerate." And then: "Aim high com- 
 mensurate with your capabilities. Hitch your wagon to a star, but see 
 to it that the star should not prove to be a comet!" As the years have 
 rolled by, I have followed the careers of some of them and it has been 
 a source of satisfaction for me to meet well-adjusted personalities whom 
 I could call my friends, who seemed to welcome meeting their old pro- 
 fessor. 
 
 Reluctantly, but I think wisely, I have decided to bring to an abrupt 
 end the story of my various acts of commission and omission. I came to 
 Chicago to continue my narrative in the peaceful surroundings and the 
 air-conditioned atmosphere of the Pearson Hotel, when on the night of 
 July 23 a summons came from Above telling me in the midst of ex- 
 cruciating pains that something was wrong with the professor. In the 
 early morning hours an ambulance took me to the Michael Reese Hospi- 
 tal where my good friend Dr. William Brams was waiting for my ar- 
 rival. An examination by him and by Dr. Parker, who as I learned later 
 is one of the best surgeons in Chicago, brought me to the operating 
 room a few hours later. It was an emergency operation on a hernia 
 which started to misbehave so badly that it had to be repaired as soon 
 as possible.
 
 102 
 
 Then for two weeks I stayed in the hospital pending the healing of 
 the cut and in the meantime being subjected to various kinds of tests to 
 determine whether anything else was wrong with me. Never in my 
 life, so far as I can remember, was I pricked so many times and gave 
 up so many driblets of my blood. 
 
 The worst test came when an X-ray examination put me on the re- 
 ceiving line. My kidnejs were under scrutiny and some kind of a liquid 
 was injected into the veins of my left arm. For a few moments I thought 
 that one of Hitler's henchmen had come to life to perform on me, so 
 severe was the pain. Then and there I realized how wise was the man 
 who said that it is better to give than to receive. 
 
 My stay in the hospital gave me an opportunity to observe the serious 
 and not so serious aspects of one's life where one is more or less at the 
 mercy of nurses, nurses' assistants, and young students aspiring to earn 
 their caps, all well meaning, but whose performances are not always up 
 to the mark. I could write a chapter on this subject but shall desist. 
 When the time came for me to leave the place, my good friend Benjamin 
 F. Goldstein sent his emissary from the Pearson, Wilda (the kindly 
 Mrs. Carsten, the housekeeper in the hotel) who brought me to the 
 South Shore View Hotel where I have been recuperating for a few 
 days in the home of my friends, the Gluskoters, before returning to my 
 temporary quarters at the Pearson. 
 
 Recovery is a slow process, but I am getting along as well as is to 
 be expected, even better, as my good acquaintances and friends in the 
 hotel are telling me, and so I shall soon go back to Urbana. 
 
 I see myself at 1108 South Lincoln Avenue, in my apartment, re- 
 suming my daily routine and looking forward to this routine being 
 broken by Sundays to be spent in the hospitable home of the Simons, at 
 502 W. Oregon Street, who, since the Gluskoters left Champaign, have 
 adopted me; or did I adopt them? It really does not matter as long as 
 the relationship exists. For how long? Who knows? And now let the 
 curtain fall, and as it comes down shall I say as Canio does in Leonca- 
 vallo's Pagliacci, "The comedy is finished," or are we confronted with 
 Liszt's Preludes? 
 
 Anyhow here I rest my case.
 
 7200-sis 
 
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