Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1920 [PAGE 183]

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1918]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

179

farm. Mr. Regal is now negotiating with him for taking charge of the McHarry estate. With us he has long had charge of labor on the experimental fields. He finds men and he sees to it that the actual hour-by-hour work on the fields is such as to carry forward and not to destroy the various investigations. He is in every way as good a man and occupies in every way as responsible a position as Mr. Atkinson, for example. We know them both very well, having had them in our employ for many years, and both are men whom the University can ill afford to spare. There are others in the list of those recommended for increases who are not at all in this class as to ability and reliability, but they are the best that we can get under the present circumstances. They occupy responsible positions, but are ready at any time to leave. We speak not without experience at this point because there has never been a time when so many men have left us for higher wages, and any one of our men here can go tomorrow for more money. So true is this that it has been almost impossible for the department to hold the affairs of the University together during the past year. They certainly are not proposing to spend any more money than is absolutely necessary, because every one of them is poor and every one of them is sacrificing money in this direction which it needs for other and what are to it more important purposes, and it is the determination of the departments to replace as rapidly as possible all but the very best of these men with others at a lower figure. In the case of Mr. Chapman, however, I think we have a man whom we could not afford to replace. The same may be true of a few others but of a considerable number it is decidedly not true. The whole matter is so complicated and withal so delicate in its possible consequences that I have this to suggest for your consideration; namely, that you meet with our Labor Committee and our heads of departments before finally deciding the matter, in order to get into details that cannot be discussed upon paper. The situation is extremely difficult, but we are living under conditions that border on the perilous and I think they call for the very best deliberation it is possible to give. If the matter were not so serious I should not propose so much reconsideration, but it is very much more serious than can be expressed in writing. We have more than twelve hundred animals, for example, which may be left some morning with nobody to care for them. If this is to happen it should be only after the whole subject has been given the most exhaustive consideration. Very truly yours,

E. DAVENPORT

P. S. Since dictating the above the Chairman of our Labor Committee has come to my office, and, not knowing the recommendation I have just made, urged me to ask the President to join our Committee on Labor in a discussion of the whole situation. Our people are very nervous about the matter, much more so than I have ever known them to be, and I think with every reason, you should know also in this connection that delegates of the laborers have been visiting our departments for weeks.