Categories of Election

The last sentence of the constitution reads: “The Senate Committee shall determine an appropriate classification of citizens by vocation or achievement, and shall assign each name chosen for the Hall of Fame to its proper class.”

In 1900 Dr. MacCracken announced fifteen classes, listed alphabetically. At the last election under NYU (1973) there were still fifteen listed numerically. Thus:

• Peter Cooper, who monopolized the making of glue and isinglass, who became rich from the manufacture of heavy iron structures, and famous for founding Cooper Union, was elected as a Businessman in 1900. With him was George Peabody, who founded Peabody Institute of Music, Peabody museums at Yale and Harvard, and an Academy of Science in Salem. He had been a merchant/financier.

Seventy-three years later, Peabody and Cooper were still the only Businessmen in the Hall of Fame. By then just about every well-known captain of business and industry had become wealthy and made large public benefactions, and the class had been relabeled Businessman and Philanthropists — hand had become Class 13. But not a single one of the 70 nominees had been admitted to the Hall of Fame in the interim of seven decades. One of the losers was Helen Gould, who got no votes.

• Philanthropists had in 1900 been defined as “lovers of mankind” rather than as generous rich men, and had been closeted in Class 6 with Reformers. In 1973, Reformers, now Class 4, had moved in with a large, heterogeneous collection of so-called Humanitarians containing four electees, all women, and 66 rejects such as: Madame Blavatsky, world-roving Spiritualist with insight into divine revelation; Johnny Appleseed; abolitionist Wm. Lloyd Garrison; Sojourner Truth, a freed slave who heard heavenly voices and traveled widely preached abolition with great success; Edward Bok, immigrant who made the Ladies Home Journal the leading women’s magazine and wrote a widely-read autobiography, long considered a minor classic; Carrie Nation, notorious temperance agitator and smasher of whiskey bottles in saloons; Dolly Madison, yes; Samuel Gompers, tireless labor leader; Martha Washington — and many more.
• We wonder which “Rulers” Ruler MacCracken had in mind when at the founding he put them with Statesmen. When things were straightened out and Rulers barred from the Hall, there were 145 Statesmen — 163 nominated and 18 elected — in Class 12. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, thought by many to be a benevolent Ruler, president for life, was the last one chosen.

The classification had doubtless been created as a convenience to maintain coherence of presentation rather than invidious distinction. Nevertheless they seem to have been now arbitrary, now calculated, now troubling. By Constitution, “names of the chosen for the Hall of Fame” were to be assigned to classes after election. However, in accordance with rules governing elections, names of preliminary nominees were to be assigned to one of the classes before the voting. Classes could in effect be starting gates in horse race, the gate assigned having some bearing on the order of finish.

In the final analysis, since the University Senate did the screening, classification was what the University Senate said it was.

A Walk With A Patriarch