UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #275
HOUGAS, ROBERT W.

HOUGAS, Robert W. (1918- )
Undergraduate and Graduate Student; Professor of Genetics and Horticulture; Associate Dean of College of Agriculture
At UW: 1937-1941; 1946-1983

Interviewed: 1983		
Series: Life Sciences
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 4.25 hours

Background; Undergraduate life; Agriculture curriculum; Draft status; WWII; Graduate work; Issues in Genetics Department; Plant genetics and plant breeding program; Appointment as Hatch Act administrator; Work at Sturgeon Bay Experiment Station; Rudolph Froker as dean; Appointment of Glenn Pound; His contribution to Agriculture; Use of grant overhead; Agriculture faculty salaries; School of Natural Resources and Institute for Environmental Studies; Extension Merger.

Tape 1/ Side 1

00:00:32

LS:	So tell me—you're from Missouri—something about your background, your parents, and your education.

RH: 	My birthplace was in Missouri, a little town called Blythedale, which is  Northern Missouri, twenty-five miles or so from the Iowa border.  My parents moved from Missouri when I was two years old to North Dakota—northern North Dakota.  I went to grade school at a very small town, again, very close to the Canadian border, called Glaston, North Dakota.  I rode my pony—my sister and I rode ponies when the weather was nice—to the school, which was about four-and-a-half miles or something like that from our home; and in the winter, my father would take us in a bobsled—enclosed bobsled—to school.  When I was about ten years old—my father was a farmer there—when about ten years old, my father moved to northern Minnesota—for some reason or other he liked the northern part of the states—as a matter of fact, at International Falls, Minnesota—and lived there for only a few years.  And ultimately, my family moved to northern Wisconsin, and I completed my training in high school there, the grade school and high school both.

LS:	What town?

RH:	Iron River was the nearest town.  I lived on a farm about five miles from the town of Iron River.  

00:02:26

And then in 1936, as I graduated, I had the opportunity through a chance arrangement to—I'd planned to go to Superior State Teachers College, which was at Superior, but I got, by sheer chance, acquainted with one of the faculty here in the College of Agriculture, Dr. G. H. Rieman, and—actually through fishing; I love to fish.  He came up there looking for plots to carry out his research—he was doing plant breeding on potato and also arranging for some plots on alfalfa for a colleague—and my dad was the town chairman, and he was simply looking for—to make some arrangements with the local farmers for space, field space, and I happened to have been out fishing and he saw the fish I had, and said well, he'd like to go along sometime, and so he did.  Anyway, as a consequence of that, he learned that I was planning to go to Superior State Teachers College, and asked, did I plan to be a teacher, is that what I wanted to do, and I said no, not necessarily, but that the times were very tough and with the economy there wasn't much else I could do.  And he didn't say anything at the time, but within a few days he came back and said, “I'm going to go to Madison, and the University down there doesn't open for another couple of weeks.  Why don't you go down with me, and we'll see if we can't find you a job, and they can take a reduced schedule down there and work your way through university.”  And so, make a long story short, that's what happened.

LS:	Did you have brothers and sisters?

RH:	Yes, I had a sister who lived in Superior, and as a matter of fact I was going to live with her, with she and her husband.  

LS:	I'm wondering if it was automatic that all of you went to college?

RH:	No, my sister did not.  I came here through the circumstances I just referred to. My brother later came—he's six years younger—came to the University and took his training in engineering, the School of Engineering.

LS:	And had your father or mother been to college?

RH:	No.  My mother had been a grade school teacher, and she was always anxious that we try to get additional training.  

LS:	Oh I see, that's where it came from then.

RH:	She was encouraging it, yet at the time the economy was so difficult, that it just looked like it wasn't going to occur, but she did want me to go to teachers college.

LS:	I see.  So she must have been thrilled with this.

RH:	Yes, very much.  Very much.  In fact, to help pay my way—the tuition, which was something like, as I remember, $22.50 a semester, as I remember—at any rate, I had a 4-H project and I had a calf, which was by the time probably a year, year-and-a-half old, and I had four sheep, and my parents sold the cow and the sheep in order to get some cash that I could have to pay my costs down here. 

00:06:12

And I worked for my room and board.  As a matter of fact, over the course of the years, I worked for three different professors in their home for room and board—one the gentleman I've just named, I worked with him first, later with R.A. Brink in genetics and then later A. J. Riker in plant pathology.

LS:	Which is a valuable experience in itself, I suppose.

RH:	Oh yes, very much.  It was a learning experience while at the same time of course a very pleasant one because you . . . .

LS:	You ate with them, then.

RH:	Oh yes, in some cases I helped prepare the meals, I usually served them and helped clean up the home, whatever that might entail, and washed dishes and . . . .

LS:	And boys were doing that kind of thing?

RH:	Oh yes, sure.  This wasn't unusual.  Doing it all over.

00:07:13

LS:	And were you also doing the potato-selling job, or was that later?

RH:	Yes, I did that.  That again was a chance situation, but it was one of attempting to get a little more supplemental income, because the other was just you'd work there and get your room and your board.  And of course to earn some money you had to have some other source.  And so I did that for a while.  And then J.C. Penney hadn't, up until 1937, hadn't had a store in the city, and they opened up a store up on the Square.  And somehow I learned about this and applied for a job there, and so I was able to work, particularly during holiday season.  Well, starting around late November or December, as the Christmas rush began to develop, I would work weekends and then sometime later the hours after classes, and then once the Christmas recess occurred I worked up there practically full-time.  And they had a pattern of taking inventory right after the Christmas holidays were completed, so that gave me another week until classes started, and this turned out to be just a very fortunate arrangement in terms of time and also in terms of being able to get money that I would need for books and tuition and things like this.

LS:	Did you have a good record in high school?

RH:	Yes.  My record was—that was one of the reasons—I neglected to mention it, but this Professor Rieman, after he talked with me and my mother and father, went to the superintendent of the school and talked to him—he didn't tell me this until later but he went and talked to him—and then came back later and asked me to come to Madison then.  

LS:	It's really interesting, isn't it?  I mean, I don't suppose that every time he went north he picked up a new student.  You must have impressed him very much in some way.

RH:	Well, he himself had a rural background and had experienced working through college—he went to Iowa State University—and so I think he felt, perhaps had an empathy about this that many might not have because he went through it himself.

00:10:00

LS:	But he must have met lots of high school students in his travels.

RH:	Well, he may have.  I think it probably occurred because of the fishing.  He got interested.  Later he fished with us regularly, and he hunted with us.  My father loved to hunt and every season for deer hunting Professor Rieman and some of the others would go and stay with my parents—they had a big farm house—and there were usually about two or three from the University that would go up, and then there were probably five or six people that lived nearby who would hunt.

LS:	Were Brink or Irwin among those that came up?

RH:	No, neither of those were inclined to do much hunting or fishing.  I got to know them through the department later.  

00:11:03

LS:	So you were an undergraduate on the Ag campus but taking courses in L&S also.

RH:	Well, yes, at that time there wasn't much flexibility in the curriculum of the College of Agriculture, but Professor Rieman was one who had a great deal of insight to science, and he kept advising me to take continuous training in basic sciences.  And in order to do that I was required, and he would have to sign to help—sometimes I went to the departmental chairman in genetics—and in other words, justification for not taking the prescribed courses in the College of Agriculture, and I would have to delay those.  And he said that he used to call them “rope-tying” courses that we were required to take; it was more practical kind of training.  And he kept saying it's important that you just keep taking your mathematics and physics and chemistry continuous and keep moving along in that training. And so he would support this by giving me a statement that he would sign, and then I'd go in and negotiate with the dean of the College, or the associate dean as it was, to get permission to take the additional courses.

LS:	So normally, the Ag College undergraduate wouldn't be getting these basic sciences?

RH:	No, there was more of a cookbook-type curriculum at that time.  If you look at the curriculum today it has extreme flexibility, but back in the '30s there were relatively few options or electives.  You got into some electives by the time you got into your junior year, but during your freshman and sophomore year there weren't many electives allowed.

LS:	I see.  That's why a number of the people who ended up in the biochemistry department majored in chemistry.  I mean, they would have gotten to it that way.

RH:	Yes.  I think that was probably the way a number of people might have gone.  Genetics, and that's where Professor Rieman held his appointment, is, of course, a more basic science department, so he understood this, and he and L. J. Cole—who was the department chairman and who I came to know well over the years—were the two that kept urging me to take the basic science courses.  I can remember a conversation too, about what did I want to major in, and I said well I'd like to have forestry, and I think I told you earlier that the question was said, “Well, would you like to be a forest ranger?  Because that's about all there might be in terms of job opportunities.”  So that he and others in genetics really understood the need to get a good, solid, basic science.

LS:	So they talked you out of that.  

RH:	Yes.  

LS:	That question answered itself.

RH:	Yes, it did.  I mean, after all, back in those days jobs were very scarce.  When the market was as lean as it was for forestry, it was a pretty easy decision to make when you once were aware you probably wouldn't be able to get employment if you did go in that direction.  

00:14:47

LS:	And did you find science congenial to you?

RH:	Oh yes, I enjoyed—in fact at one point, I seriously considered majoring in chemistry or biochemistry—I enjoyed chemistry very much.

LS:	Whom did you study with?

RH:	Well, in those days, Walton was the person who gave the introductory lectures in general chemistry and was a very inspiring teacher.  He was one that just made—his lectures were tremendous.  I think because of that experience I became enthused about it.  Later, of course, I took courses in biochemistry—Professor Elvehjem, I took courses with him. 

LS:	He was thought not to be a very exciting teacher. 

RH:	Well, he wasn't exciting, but he was a very critical teacher.  He had very high standards which he exercised.

LS:	And you appreciated that.

RH:	Oh yes, and he made it very clear to us that there were probably some that weren't going to make it through his course if you didn't really apply yourself, and he was that type of an individual.  Very brusque, even with the students.

00:16:22

LS:	So I'm trying to think if there is anything—you still had to take, in the end, the rope-tiers.

RH:	No, it took me five years to finish my undergraduate training because I was taking a reduced schedule, because of the outside work I had, and by the time I got into those later years there began to—there was a more liberal attitude developing about what one could take, and I benefitted.  So I escaped some of the rope-tying courses because that change in curriculum was beginning to occur.  So I didn't have to take the full measure of them. 

00:17:09

LS:	You spoke of the Union and going to the dances.  All the Ag students came over then, did they, and joined in?

RH:	The University was small at that time.  You see, I can't recall—probably less than 8,000—and there was participation across the whole University.  It isn't like it is now where it's unwieldy—you just can't do those things—and these functions, the rallies for the football games, big turnouts for that.  You stood right out here in Camp Randall, right out here where the library is now.

LS:	You mean it was called Camp Randall?

RH:	Not Camp Randall, excuse me, not this area, the area right out here by the library.

LS:	The Mall.

RH:	And they'd have bonfires at Homecoming—big huge pile of boxes and paper and at the appropriate time they'd set off this thing and the students would be down there having great fun—and the Union was used heavily for all sorts of social events.   The Great Hall was large enough to accommodate a fairly sizeable number of people in terms of student body at that time.  And the St. Patrick Day parade with the engineers was always—the vying for position between the lawyers and the engineers was a great event.  They'd come down and they'd start again right down here and then go all the way up and around the Square, and come back and the parade was put on by the engineers, and all the way along the lawyers were trying to cause some sort of a disruption for the parade.

LS:	I guess the reason I was asking that question was, first, what some people have said about the relationships between Experimental College students—this was way before your time, this was in the 20's—and Ag students, who were living sort of cheek by jowl down in the dorms there, which weren't very cordial.  Of course the Experimental College students weren't . . . .

RH:	By the time I was a student, there was, as I mentioned, the Pan-Hellenic ball where the sororities and fraternities were interacting fairly regularly, and there were by that time—Alpha Gamma Rho was established in the College of Agriculture and Babcock, and so that there was that kind of interchange going on.

LS:	So the fraternity-sorority split from the non-fraternity students didn't affect social life like that?

RH:	Yes, it did some, there were some who didn't become active, but because we were small it was more of a major activity than it is now—at least that's my impression.

LS:	Anyway, it didn't bother you.

RH:	No, I didn't choose to join until I was along a ways, for obvious reasons.  I was working my way through and I just didn't have time.  When I was in my junior year I did join Alpha Gamma Rho. 

LS:	And how did you meet girls?  There couldn't have been many in the Ag College.

RH:	Well, that's where the memories of Great Hall . . . .  There was an effort made to have a week of indoctrination for new students, and the upperclassmen would put on or help carry out the activities, and even as related to the dances and the like in Great Hall.  And this is the way that you got familiar with the females because in that time there were very, very few majoring in our college.

LS:	And a week was enough to meet somebody?

RH:	Well, once you started it, of course, you had contacts; after all, there is a lot of opportunity.  The idea was then that you went to these dances, and people would cut in, and you would meet this, that, and the other one, and once you'd made these initial contacts, if you had any interest there was not much difficulty in falling off.

00:22:13

LS:	[Inaudible.]  And you presumably didn't have any time for sports.  

RH:	No, I took no competitive sports here at all; I did take the required physical training that at that time was mandatory for all freshmen.

LS:	Tell your story about the canoeing.  I think that's pretty funny.

RH:	I took, as a freshman in the first semester, tumbling and stunts, and learned that semester that there would be a course in canoeing offered in the spring, when the ice melted in Lake Mendota.  I had done some boating and canoeing before, but I really wasn't very experienced at it, so I was determined that I would take that training and went to one of the instructors who taught canoeing and told him that I would like to be in his class, and he said he didn't think there would be any problem; it was early enough that I had talked with him.  Later on, because there was limited enrollment in canoeing, they simply didn't have enough  canoes and all that to take care of the total request.  They had to cut the list down, and I found out from Mr. Masley, who was the director of the student athletic program, that my name wasn't on the list.  I asked him why and he said, “Well, you've cut a number of classes that you were scheduled to take in tumbling and stunts,” and I said, “Yes, that's true.” I had cut them, but made them up at another time.  He didn't agree with me and said that he hadn't any evidence of this, and I insisted that I did, and anyway, he said that was a decision that he had made, and so I went to sign up for swimming.

LS:	You said he pushed you out the door.

RH:	Well, he did.  He was a rather fiery-tempered person and he, I think, was bothered.  I don't think that I was trying to be abusive, but I was trying to be firm with him to tell him that I had talked to the instructor for canoeing and that I had done it early enough, and that the only thing that he was disturbed about was apparently that I hadn't taken the required number of sessions in tumbling and stunts.  Anyway, he did—he ushered me out.  And later, I did take steps then to get into a swimming class, and the instructor for canoeing saw me and said that he understood that I'd had a conversation with Mr. Masley, and I said I had, and that I was told that I wasn't going to be able to take canoeing.  He said, “Well, we've had further discussions about this and you will be enrolled in the canoeing class.”

00:25:37

LS:	Justice.  I'd be curious about your awareness of political events at the time and the war—let's see, you came in '36—the peace movement . . . .

RH:	One thing that I recall as being quite an experience in that respect—this was political but of another type.  I was among the student body that—I think the estimates were at that time somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000, and that would have been back in the days when there were 8,000—the student body that marched on the capitol.  And what this was about was that the president of the University at that time—Madison was a free-standing campus—was in trouble.

LS:	Frank.

RH:	Yes, Glenn Frank, and the students got wrought up about this and I thought, well, I can't miss this.  We marched up to the capitol, and ultimately the governor came out and tried to talk to us, but as students often times do, they didn't show him enough respect, so he didn't talk to us very long before he just left.  But we did get enough attention that he did try to explain to us what was going on.

LS:	You yourself didn't feel strongly about it, I gather, from what you said.

RH:	Well, enough so that I wanted to see what was going to happen.  I don't feel that I was one of those that were in the leading edge, I just felt, well, here's something that must have some rather real significance that I'd better look into, so I was along in the crowd. 

LS:	And what about the political situation and the developments in Europe?

RH:	Well, I can only relate to my own experience . . . .

LS:	Yes, that's what I mean.

RH:	Of course it was disturbing to everyone, and when the Draft Act was passed—the Federal Draft Act—all of us were caught up in it; there was no exemption for students.  You could stay in the University, but you were subject to the whims of your local draft board—you had to get a clearance from them.  As I mentioned earlier, I came from northern Wisconsin in Bayfield County, and there are no large cities in Bayfield County.  It's predominantly a farming community, and Dupont at that time had a powder plant at Barksdale.

00:28:35
 
Tape 1/Side 2

00:28:43

RH:	So with farming being the predominant activity as far as the residents of that county, plus, then, the very increased activity at Dupont which was manufacturing powder, my chances of getting very good treatment as a student were low, because automatically farmers were being exempted, or had much greater chance at least than a student would have, and then those that went to work at the powder plant certainly were going to be exempt.  So I had practically from the beginning of the draft a continual process of getting a . . . had to make a case each semester, as I remember—maybe it was every year—no, it was semesters—to the draft board, and in this case my man I worked with earlier, Professor Rieman, would help by going to the chairman of the department, and he in turn would go to the associate dean of the college and write a strong letter trying to allow me to continue my education, and so this went on until the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack; and when that occurred I knew that I had had it, that there was no choice and so . . . .

LS:	You were then in your fourth year.

RH:	I was then . . . it took five years for me to finish and so I was in my last year—it was '36—I was in my last year of training, but I of course was nearing my degree, so I had advice and counsel here—although at that time there weren't the recruiting offices and they weren't very well organized in the city—and after looking into it someone suggested, “You'd better go to Chicago and see what you can negotiate down there in terms of using your training, in terms of getting an officers' commission.”  So I did that, as a matter of fact went to Chicago—I think . . . .  Of course Pearl Harbor was on Sunday, and it was either . . . . I don't think I went on Monday but it was probably Tuesday—I went to Chicago and went to the recruiting forces.  I wanted to go into the Air Force very much but at that time I was very much underweight by their standards.  I was thin, and just didn't measure up on that count.  My next choice was the Navy.  I went down to Navy Pier, and by the time I had been interviewed and came back to Madison, I had been sworn in with the opportunity to take midshipman training towards an officer's commission, which occurred later on.  I went to Columbia University in New York.

LS:	But they let you finish here first.

RH:	Yes, that was the understanding.  I told them that I needed to finish up and would get my degree in June.

LS:	Was this politeness on their part or did they feel it was more valuable to them?

RH:	No, it was just more valuable—they were doing this routinely and whoever advised me here knew this, but they weren't set up to do it here, and I knew that I had to move before the draft came.  In other words, just common sense told me that I was going to be drafted, and once I was drafted I wouldn't be able to make any of these moves, so that's why I went to Chicago quickly and was sworn into the service.

LS: 	Well, how many of your friends were going through this same procedure of having a faculty member interest himself and go to the chairman and associate dean?  Sounds as though . . . .

RH:	I think there were—I wasn't an exceptional case.  I think quite a bit of that was going on at that time.  When the war finally broke out, when we were involved, of course it put a different complexion and some of those excuses we had before, or justifications, wouldn't have any impact on the draft board because they simply had to have the bodies, the manpower to do it.  I know of some others—I don't know how many, I have no way of judging that—but it wasn't unusual at that time.  And they needed officers in the military, and those who had had university training or college training were exactly what they wanted, and so the Army and the Navy and the Air Force had all set up these kinds of programs to allow individuals to go on to get their commission.  

00:34:02

LS:	Is there anything in your war career that has an impact on your subsequent career?
 
RH:	Yes.  One thing I hadn't been able to do because I had taken—as I mentioned earlier, a fairly substantial training in the basic sciences, and I had indicated a desire to go on to graduate school—I'd actually taken some courses that could be applied at the graduate level in the course of these five years, because I could have theoretically finished up maybe in four-and-a-half, but I took additional courses and I knew what I wanted to take, and I by this time knew I wanted to go into graduate training . . . .

LS:	Excuse me, in genetics?

RH:	Yes.  And this was on the record and of course my professor—Professor Rieman knew this, the chairman of the department, L.J. Cole, knew it.  At any rate, I went into the military, took my commission, and then went overseas in the Pacific with the Amphibious Forces in early 1943—no '42—and spent all of my military career in the Pacific.  With the Amphibious Forces, the various activities that I had were usually with the Marines.  As a matter of fact, I was usually attached to the Marine headquarters when we made landings.  And we had made our third landing—this one was on Pelolou in the Pallou Islands—and by that time, we had the momentum in the Pacific.  There was still of course a long way to go, but the momentum was apparent by that time, and when we made these landings we of course would be a considerable period of time from the time we went on board ship and loaded to go to wherever the strike was to be staged, so we wouldn't have any mail for weeks—or months, perhaps, in some cases—and then when you did get it, you'd get a great big delivery of mail.  At the first opportunity after you had completed that landing, or even if the landing wasn't completed, if it was reasonably well-secured, you'd get mail.  So I remember we were sitting off the beach; I was on a small patrol craft but within easy visibility of the beach, and the Marines had a beachhead established by that time, and they got mail delivery.  It was a whole series of things—of course family letters were treasures— but a lot of other things—everything from cookies that somebody sent you, or whatever—

00:37:15

--but there was a letter from the Graduate School and it was from Elvehjem, and what it said in essence was that they were offering several of the students who had shown an interest or had started their graduate training an opportunity to come back to Wisconsin and be supported by a WARF [Wisconsin Alumni Research Fellowship] scholarship, and that I would have one year after my release from duty to make up my mind whether I wanted to accept this.  Well, I remember reading that and I thought, “This is really ridiculous.”  It looked like the war was so far away—the end of it—but nevertheless, of course, I put it away.  But it was a major factor, of course, in my decision to come back here.  I had  earlier thought I would like to go to one of three places; take my training at Cornell, or University of Minnesota, or Davis, California.  The fact that I missed almost four years in the military, I just felt here's the way to catch up, is to come back to where I had done a lot of my training because I knew I wouldn't have to repeat a lot of courses, and that I could probably shorten the time in graduate training, and then of course the very attractive feature was I would have some funding.  The GI Bill of Rights was also made available, and as a matter of fact between the GI Bill of Rights and the WARF fellowship, it was easy to support oneself.  

LS:	WARF didn't decrease itself because it knew you were going to get money from the GI Bill?

RH: 	No, no—they understood that by this time and they provided this.  But it was a major factor in my decision, although I probably would have come back in the long run, but this one left no doubt in my mind about coming back.

00:39:29

LS:	Why had you picked those places?

RH: 	Well, they're well known in the area of plant genetics and this was my specific interest, and I had by this time become familiar with other graduate students that were in genetics, and through the professorial people in the department that these were the institutions that were leaders.

LS:	Not particular people?

RH:	No, there just were strong majors in that area, of course tied to individuals too, because that's where the program's strength come from.

LS:	Jim Crow spoke of—is it Muller?

RH:	H. J. Muller?  Yes.

LS:	Somebody that he had wanted to study with . . . .

RH:	No, as I remember I hadn't anyone singled out.  Probably if I had been a little further along I might have, but I really hadn't thought it through to the extent of singling out an individual.  

LS:	And it was plant genetics because of Rieman?

RH:	Yes.

LS:	Are you making a choice at that point between going into plant genetics rather than looking at microorganisms or . . . ?

RH:	Yes, at that time I had had enough experience working.  I didn't mention but during the summers later on in my training as an undergraduate I did work with his program, and he had a potato breeding program.  I did have some work for a period of time—several weeks—with Brink's alfalfa breeding program, and actually as a student just assisted in the pollinations and got familiar with how to handle the plants and knew how to lay out the plots in the field and do the work in the greenhouse, so that was a factor in determining which way I wanted to go.  By the time I was in graduate training some of the things that were being done in microorganism had become apparent, and I remember thinking at one point, “Should I change?  Should I try to redirect?”  But I never really gave it any serious consideration as far as a decision in the sense that I—perhaps because I was intrigued with plant breeding, how to improve crop plants.  But as far as genetic tools, the microorganisms are beautiful to work with for more basic science interests.

LS:	Would you have had to take additional courses in order to go into the . . . ?

RH:	Probably not many, but I would have certainly had to drastically redirect my research.  My doctoral research would have had to be changed because I would have had to work with microorganisms rather than higher plants.

LS:	Was there an element of wanting to do something directly good for humanity?

RH:	Part of it.  I always enjoyed the outdoors.  I mentioned earlier I might have majored in chemistry, but the idea of having to spend day after day after day in the laboratory kind of turned me off, where I knew I could be doing things in the greenhouse or in the field—and this was, from a personal standpoint, much more to my liking.  So that in turn kind of had a bearing on being able to have a more tangible way of feeling that you are contributing something if you could be working on a food crop or . . . .

LS:	 I  mean did that actually enter into your thinking?

RH:	Well, I understood it better, I think.  

LS:	No, I mean the tangible way of contributing.  

RH:	Oh, yes, yes, I think so.  By this time as I said, I had had experience working with potatoes and with alfalfa, and I could relate better, I could understand where the endpoint was with those, I think, better than I could if somebody said, “You are going to work with microorganisms,” and I would have maybe not known where that would take me in terms of application at that point in time.  Now it is much clearer.

LS:	And it wasn't a question of your confidence in your ability.  

RH:	No, I think it was just a personal interest.

LS:	No, I can see the outdoors and how that would enter in.

RH:	No, I don't remember it being anything other than just a personal preference.

LS:	Because presumably that puts you, as you join the department—although maybe we don't want to get that far ahead.  

00:44:56

So you came back and started graduate school, and presumably you didn't have much freedom for picking courses that you'd want to pick.

RH:	Oh yes, at the graduate level.  See, this is years later.  It was the undergraduate level where we were restricted.  At the graduate level this is much more open-ended.  I took the major in genetics and a minor in plant pathology, and there are certain requirements— there always have been certain required courses—but there was a considerable freedom at the graduate level.

LS:	So how did you use it?

RH:	Well, I exercised it by taking, because there was a gap—I had taken some of these courses before—I probably took more plant pathology courses than I would have normally, but it was a good fit because in plant breeding, plant genetics, disease problems are major—one of your goals, anyway, is to work with disease-resistant plants, and from the standpoint of genetics I simply took every course that was offered, I guess, at that time.

LS:	When did you start in Graduate School?

RH:	I came back in the fall of '45 and I got back too late; the University was already in session.  I didn't get back until October, so I started in the next spring semester of the next year.

LS:	And Lederberg arrived in 1947.  Did you take courses with him?

RH:	No, I didn't take courses—of course I knew him quite well in seminars and conversations, this sort of thing, but I didn't take a formal course from him.

LS:	Because that was already enough of a different direction from what you were heading for . . . .

RH:	Yes, I would have had to have been—I think that was fair—that I would have had to get much more oriented toward microorganisms than I was.

LS:	Did he influence your thinking?  People have spoken about how he sort of brought a great wave of excitement around him.

RH:	Well, definitely, he brought—he and the whole idea of working more at the molecular level as it began to develop was very exciting.  Students and faculty alike were very much impressed about it.  Lederberg was a very outgoing  personality, extremely nimble and stimulating in conversation; he just picked things up quickly and absorbed them so that you couldn't have a person around like that without having an impact, a substantial impact.  

00:48:29

LS:	In plant pathology you must have gotten to know Glenn Pound.

RH:	Yes, I did.  I knew him even before I went in the service, and of course when I came back he was on the faculty, and I got to know him much better there.  I took my major with his major professor, J. C. Walker, and so I did know Glenn very well.

LS:	What was he like as a teacher?

RH:	He was a very articulate person.  Very stimulating, tremendous sense of humor, and it was fun to be around him.  I knew him so well that when he was appointed dean—by that time I had been appointed as the assistant director of the station before Glenn came in as the dean, so it was easy to talk to him.  I'd only been in there about a year and a half when he came in, and so I simply offered to resign and go back to research in the department.  And we discussed it and he said no, he'd thought that through—the reason I offered to resign was that he was a plant scientist, and of course I was in plant science, and we didn't at that time have anyone in the administration of the College from the animal sciences, and he said, “I've given this thought and I'm going to add another person.”  And he did, and he said that in the meantime that he had thought it through and would like me to stay on.  

00:50:30

The graduate period after World War II was an interesting one in that most of the graduate students that I was associated with in the College had had military, and they had had a portion of their life in effect cut out, and so when they came back they were, I think, a very serious group.  They realized that they had lost that time and they were probably determined to try to shorten the period as much as possible and to get out on the job, and so it was an interesting group to be with.  I don't mean to infer that we didn't have a lot of enjoyment, but there was business-like in the way of getting things done and get out and see if you couldn't get a place and a job.  And the other thing about it, that I guess we began to sense as time [went] on, that because the war was over, the economy was beginning to build, it was more and more students coming to the universities, there was growth in the federal systems, in the USDA [United States Department of Agriculture], and I guess generally in the federal system.  And because of the growth in the student bodies around the country there was a corresponding need for increase in faculty.  

0051:54

So those of us who came back and had had some training and finished up fairly soon, found that there were jobs; the situation was easy.  There were a number of jobs around for the number of people that were finishing.  There were jobs going begging.  So that was a very opportune situation to finish at that time, in terms of self interest and what you would like to do.  

LS:	Did you think of getting a job elsewhere?

RH:	Well, you didn't even have to think of it, they were searching you out.  There were four different jobs and—I don't know how to put this—simply that there was such a dearth of candidates, I think I could have had any one of those four jobs.

LS:	Where were they?

RH:	One was in Oregon, in hop breeding; one was in Long Island, New York, on potatoes; the third was a bean breeding job that was headquartered out of Beltsville, Maryland, but it was located in Idaho; and the third was one that was just getting under way, which I decided to accept, and that was a federal job on a new program which ended up being located here in Wisconsin—Sturgeon Bay for the field operations, and the academic year here at Madison.

00:53:37

LS:	So these weren't university jobs . . . .

RH:	The ones I mentioned were—as it turned out, all those were federal.  The one in New York would have had a tie in with the university, the one in Oregon you would have, the one in Idaho would not. 

LS:	Did that affect your thinking?

RH:	Yes, very much.  I had made up my mind that I wanted to be associated with a university, if I could.  In fact one of the major factors that—in some ways, in terms of the funding available the job in Idaho was the most appealing if you simply looked at resources, but if you looked at the matter of association with a university there wouldn't have been any possibility because it was not located near a university.

LS:	I see.  So this wasn't like your accepting a departmental—I mean you have got a departmental appointment, as I understand, here.

RH:	Well, yes, but that wasn't unusual.  The federal government, ARS—Agricultural Research Service—has for years had an arrangement with the university, not only here but elsewhere, of having federally salaried scientists located on the campuses of the colleges of agriculture.  And the faculty in the appropriate department have to vote on whether or not they will accept you as a professor, and you have to go through the hoops in terms of the moving up in tenure, but it's understood that even if you get tenure there is no responsibility in terms of providing any salary support at all. 

LS:	And did you teach?

RH:	Well, I taught graduate students, but no formal teaching.  

LS:	So you presumably didn't—how much a member of the genetics department did you feel?

RH:	I felt that I was a full member of the department in that there were others who didn't teach full courses.  I would offer some lectures, and I did participate from very early stages in training graduate students, but genetics at that time was one of those departments that didn't teach a lot of courses so it wasn't unusual that—there were some individuals, my major professor didn't teach courses, the cytogeneticists didn't offer any formal courses.  They were heavily, intimately involved in graduate student training, but there were not the formal classes being offered.

LS:	I wanted to ask you this:  Joe Wilson had said yesterday that he took a course in philosophy, and it struck me as unusual.  I hadn't heard anybody mention this before. 

RH:	I would guess that, at least with those that I was associated with during the period of my graduate training, it would have been fairly atypical.  There would have been, perhaps, a few, but not many.  There was more focus on taking what you had to take in order to get an appropriate training in your particular field of interest and getting on with it.

00:57:32

LS:	Now the Genetics Department — I mentioned to you the correspondence I had seen in the files about the sort of blow-up in about 1951 and the question was how many people in the applied sciences who had joint appointments could vote.  Could you tell me about that, and what were the feelings in the department underlying what was going on?

RH:  Well, at the root of it was the matter of the future direction of the department.

00:58:19

End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 2/Side 1

00:58:22

RH:	The root cause of the problem was one of a redirection that was in the offing or occurring, and this was more an orientation towards molecular biology, as it later came to be known.  There had been a faculty in that department whose work was related to economic plants and animals, a number of them, and they were doing—as I mentioned, a lot of them were doing breeding or physiology on those as related to genetics, or doing genetics studies . . . and with Lederberg coming in he gave it a great deal of momentum, the recognition that there was a tremendous opportunity.  If you are going to be in the forefront of genetics you had to capture that activity in more the molecular level.  What happened, then, was that as opportunities for staffing occurred there was a difference of opinion.  If you took the more traditionally-oriented faculty, they felt that the position ought to be replaced with someone who had interest in economic plants or animals, or higher plants or animals— whichever—whereas the others, molecularly-oriented, felt they must simply try to get heavier staffing in the direction of the new area of interest.  There was no way; it was more and more increasingly apparent.  So what it developed into was that as they came to the point of decision, of deciding where this was going to go—it's done in a democratic way, as you know, faculty governance.  You sit down as the executive committee and vote, and this is where the splits began to occur.  And as a consequence, there was—and I don't know all of the behind-the-scenes that went on and I'm not sure whether that's all that significant—but  there were a lot of high level politics being played.  What I could relate would be second- hand, and for that reason there may be some misinterpretation of it.

LS:	Brink was chairman at the time.

RH:	He was, yes I think he was, but Irwin—yes, I think that's right.

LS:	I have it, but I can't find my chart.  Anyway, which side were they on?

RH:	Well, Brink and Irwin were supporting the idea of moving more towards fundamental biology, and the others were insisting that they felt there was a place for both— that we couldn't neglect either of these areas.  But of course there was only limited faculty resources in terms of positions, and as positions opened up something had to be done in terms of resolving this matter.  It was a close enough situation so that simply shifting one or two votes would determine the day, what would happen, and this occurred, and as I said, through some very high level politics that were played. 

LS:	And it moved to the side of the molecular work?

RH:	Yes.  In retrospect, at the time I personally was very disturbed, in the sense that I felt then and I feel now there was a place for both, but in view of the need to get on with it, and recognizing that you couldn't really move in it, it was probably the only thing to do.  Otherwise, we as a department in genetics probably would have found ourselves lagging in contrast to some of the other leading institutions around the country.  What we tried, to go a little further with this, we as a group that were in opposition to this kept saying, “Yes, there is a place for it, but there is a place for the more traditionally-oriented work,” and we wanted to explore the possibility of having some sort of a structure, some sort of an organizational structure that would allow both to have visibility.  This didn't work out.

LS:	The analogy occurs to me of the history department when some people mean there was a bitter fight against this.  But finally they were allowed in.

RH:	I don't know enough about that one.  This one was bitter enough. 

LS:	But I mean in the sense that it wasn't that therefore there would no longer be American history, but in this case, in the case of genetics, it seemed to be that there would no longer be the applied people.

RH: 	Well, at that point in time that was the concern.  And as a matter of fact, I could elaborate a little on what happened later so that at least that wasn't quite as big a blow as it might have been.  Because sometimes when you are close to the scene of a fray it's not easy to see the broader aspects, and as time goes on you can look back and observe it more objectively.  But at the time there was genuine concern that it simply was going to destroy the more traditionally-oriented—they called it applied, but I don't agree with that.  It's not in the same area of rapid advance of molecular biology, but nevertheless the tools are being used in the other area too, so I guess I would argue some with the term.

LS:	What term would you use?

RH:	Well, I would think that you could use basic plant genetics just as easy as you could say basic molecular biology, but that's probably not important—but anyway that was a concern about the group that were trying to defend the need for the more traditionally- oriented plant and animal genetics.

LS:	So the individual would say, “Well, if I'm not to be replaced by somebody like me, then when I am finished there'll be nothing of what I am doing, they'll no longer be anyone doing it.”

RH:	Yes, I think that was the fear.  I think it was the general feeling that well, attrition will just mean that you will find gone from the scene.  You once get the momentum going, then it will just be a matter of time before the next person—whether he is plant or animal-oriented geneticist—retires and that position will be taken and moved into molecular biology.

LS:	Well, how did the molecular biologists—because they presumably weren't trying to get rid of plant genetics . . . .

RH:	No, I don't think they were in that sense.  They were simply trying to build into the genetics department an increased capacity at the molecular level.

LS: 	But I mean how did they answer the argument that if this plant geneticist isn't replaced, there won't be another one?  Did they say, “Well, it can be done in some other department?”

RH:	Yes, that was the way their reasoning was running . . . .

LS:	So was it they who pushed for stronger affiliation with the department of the other appointment?  I mean most of these people were people who had joint appointments, is that right, the ones in plant and animal genetics?

RH:	No, some did, but not most.  Several did, but not many.

LS:	So they went about establishing them.

RH:	Yes, that's the way it evolved.  In order to provide a more compatible arrangement, it seemed that association with departments such as agronomy, horticulture, dairy science, or meat and animal science would be the way to go for those that were more traditionally-oriented.  

LS:	Well, what actually they decided was that anybody who was more than 50% with another department shouldn't vote.  

RH:	That was done.  There was a special meeting where this occurred.  

01:08:57

But that's only part of the high-powered politics that went on.  This was a factor, but even with that change, there was—as I said, this is secondhand—but there was pressure from the top level of the University . . . .

LS:	You're talking about the president.

RH:	Yes.  On a few of the critical faculty members.  In fact, one in particular that I am aware of.

LS: 	Fred, that's President Fred.

RH:	No.

LS:	No, excuse me, I mean that the President was E.B. Fred.

RH:	No.

LS:	It's '51 that this is happening—no '61.  It's Elvehjem.  So he just put pressure—he didn't say if you vote this way then I will . . . .

RH:	As I say, I'll paraphrase it the way I heard it, and after all, it's only as good as the source I obtained it from; I didn't hear it firsthand.  But we had had conversations in both camps, and we went to what was the final decisive meeting within the department, as everyone does, with some fair discussion before the meeting and anticipating what was going to happen, and we felt that we had a reasonable chance—we the traditional-oriented group—of making our point of some sort of an organizational structure that would allow both to have a place in the sun.  At that meeting many of us, and perhaps—I'm not sure if all, many, and certainly I think the majority—were absolutely stunned when one of our stalwarts who was our leader shifted his position.  

LS:	Was this Casida?

RH:	Casida.  And he had—I had taken the position with him earlier of saying, when we were into this, I said, “I don't see the point of fight just for the sake of the fight.  There is no point, unless we think we have a reasonable chance of obtaining what we stand for.  If we are defeated from the beginning my philosophy is one of saying, 'Let's just accept it and that's it.'  If we think we are right and we think we have a reasonable chance of winning, then we should take a stand.”  He chastised me for this, and he said, “Well, he wasn't one . . . ” and that really bothered me, because I was a young faculty member at that time and he did it in the presence of some of the others of about my age group, saying he questioned my principle.  If you had a principle you stood for, win or lose you should still stand for it.  And I said I didn't agree with that.  I said this is the sort of situation, at least as I view it, where there is no point in having a fight just for the fight. Well, at any rate, when we got to the meeting the swing vote was conditioned by him, and I literally couldn't believe it was possible, because—I relate this other incident of his chastising me because one of my colleagues who was there and heard me say this came racing to me—well, the meeting was soon over, once the vote was taken it was soon over—racing to me and he said, “You go right down and tell Cas off after what he did to you and then to take the opposite position.” I said, “I don't intend to ever raise the question with him.  I am relying on one thing, he must have a conscience.”  And I said, “Anyone is privileged to change their opinion and change their vote.  But this thing was so crystallized at this stage, that the very least he could have done was to come to us and tell us that he was going to do this.”  At any rate, the story that I heard—to get back to specifics, and this may be truth, half truth or whatever—but that he was called, he, Casida, was called in—because he was the pivot figure—called into the president's office and it was put to him that, “I have three National Academy of Science winners that told me such and such, this is the way to go.  I'd like to hear your defense of why you think you'd go in a contrary direction.”  That's the word I've picked up, second- hand.  

LS:	It's still surprising he changed his vote.

RH:	Well, it was to me, because I thought I knew Irwin as a personality and I would have—I was more surprised that he changed it but didn't tell us.  In other words, he was such a man of principle that I thought he would have said, “I've had  something . . . .”  He might have said, “I can't tell you what it is,” but he might have come to us and said, “I'm going to have to change my vote,” or he hopefully would have gone beyond that and said, “Here's what happened and I think you ought to understand it.”  All of you.  Not just me.  Having lived in the University community for a long time, that kind of experience has had an impact on me well beyond the issue of what occurred, but impact in terms of what do people do?  Because once you are tenured, you have permanent position and it has puzzled me to this day why he wouldn't have communicated with us.  I can understand his feeling the pressure to the point where he would change his vote, but I can't understand why he would not have communicated back to those he had been closely associated with in a common cause.

LS:	Well, presumably his whole side.

RH:	In so far as I know, he didn't tell anyone.  Now he may have, that I didn't know about—there is one person possibly, Dr. Chapman, who he was much closer to in age grouping and he might have discussed this.  I have never heard it, but I don't know whether he did or didn't.

LS:	I would somehow have thought that at the meeting he would have explained his reasons because the others must also have expected him to vote in his own way and been extraordinarily surprised when he changed.  

RH:	I would have thought so too, and I didn't ever bring the issue up; but he brought it up with me one day, several weeks later.  He actually went to the hospital for a while.  Some weeks later, maybe several weeks, he just in a very oblique way said that he had been very troubled by what had happened, and that it had bothered him so much that he had had to have some medical counsel and he started to lead into it, and I said, “Cas, the water's over the dam.  The decision's made.  I don't see any point of our pursuing this discussion any further.”  And that was it.  I never talked to him about it again.  I don't know if others did or not, but . . . .

LS:	So you were really angry . . . .

RH:	Well, I was angry to the extent that—we had not shown good faith with one another.  As I say, in retrospect I really believe it was best for the department to have gone this direction.  But at the time, I wouldn't have been convinced of this.

LS:	And was the pivot vote on the question of whether people with less than 50 percent affiliation with the department because . . . .

RH:	No, that was a factor—you see, in an attempt to bring the whole thing into focus there was a combination of things done.  You see, there weren't very many people that were actively moving toward molecular biology, and if you look at the total—you'd have to go back and look at names.

LS:	Well there's Hitt, Shakelford, Weiman, Casida, and then Irwin and Brink and Crow.

RH:	So you would have had all of that—you see this thing of taking the votes that were split.  You had appointments like Norman Neale, and Smith in agronomy.  Those were the ones that were eliminated by this half vote.  

LS:	So they already did have joint appointments?

RH:	Oh yes, some of those did.  And by this movement that was made to restrict them, if they didn't have the major appointment in the department, that took care of them.

LS:	But it was still a split vote?

RH:	Yes, right.

LS:	And so what was the pivotal question?  

RH:	Well, the pivotal question was one of staffing.  

LS:	It was an appointment?  A particular appointment?

RH:	Yes.  It was a matter of whether or not we were going to go—I don't remember if we had one open at that time or were about to—I guess it was a matter of moving to tenure, something like that, I'm vague—I'd have to go back and check notes.  Do you have something there that indicates what the . . . .

LS:	Well . . . .

RH:	What we were attempting to do, as I remember, at that particular meeting that I referred to, was to get the acceptance of the idea that there would be two groups recognized within the department.  In other words, with some sort of a visibility, some sort of a status— like there would be a section for molecular biology, or molecular genetics, and a section for more traditional.  As I remember, that's what we were hassling about.

LS:	So a candidate whose appointment would have been . . . .

RH:	No, it wasn't turning on that, but that was so directly impinging on it because we knew that everyone, both sides, it was going to affect it.

LS:	No, all I saw was a letter from Froker to Elvehjem outlining what had happened, and at one point I know Jim—I looked this up in connection with him—he had abstained from voting on some particular . . . .

RH:	You have a copy of that letter, then?

LS:	No, I was reading that in Steenbock where there isn't a xerox machine.  

RH:	I have a copy of that letter too.  Well, it was a very critical time, and as I say at the time I don't think I would have been convinced it was the right direction, obviously, because I was so involved in it, and in retrospect—and I still think there would have been a very good probability that something could have been done.  As flexible as we are in this University, there's a dozen different ways to do anything you want to name, and all of them may have strengths, and they may all work, but what we were battling for was a position of trying to maintain a hard core of what we would call basic plant and animal breeding research in genetics in the department.  

01:22:20

Once that situation occurred that we have been talking about, it was clear that the decision had been made.  Froker had his conversations with Elvehjem and wrote the letters you referred to, and as a consequence of that some of us moved out.  

LS:	That was when you went to horticulture?

RH:	I mean I talked with one of my colleagues and said, “That's what I'm going to do.”  I said, “I think that for what I need to have in terms of my own self esteem and in terms of an opportunity to move in the area that I think I'm trained to handle, I think it's the best decision.”  Because we tried the other approach of trying to get two groups.  And I think over time that's what would have happened—in other words, the need for additional staffing in molecular biology was so apparent and so needed that I don't think there was any doubt in my mind that at each turn of the wheel as someone retired there would have always been the question, “Well, do we staff in the new area of molecular biology and phase out the other?” And this was what was haunting all of us.

LS:	You know that's very strange.  This is '61 when Elvehjem is also coping with the Med School problem.  The simple solution that suggests itself is that he just make extra positions available.  It's a time when there is money.  Many departments—zoology has the two sides, botany has the two sides, and so it should have been perfectly simple to do it, I should think.

RH:	I think that's why I felt so keenly with Casida.  My own feeling is if Casida would have held tight we would have ended up having that sort of arrangement.  I really do, I think we would have; we might have slowed a little bit the area of the development of molecular biology in genetics, but it would have had a place for each, and I think what we were so apprehensive about was that it was just going to be an erosive process on the group that were more traditionally-oriented.  It was that we were trying to hold for.  

01:24:59

Now maybe we'll get on a more positive development that came later that bears on this matter.  There were, as you know, shifts made then—three in the animal science area, two in the plant science area—into other departments, but on the plant side, as we become more aware of the critical need—particularly as far as attracting graduate students from outside the state to the programs that those of us in plant genetics and plant breeding were involved in—that we had to have something more than just a scattering into several departments.  You see there is plant breeding and plant genetics going on in agronomy, horticulture, plant pathology, forestry and a little still in genetics and to a more limited degree in botany, and so as we sort of stewed about this, and tried to decide what to do, ultimately it became apparent that we ought to make a determined attempt to get a plant genetics, plant breeding major for graduate students, and this took some doing over time, but it did occur.  There is now a formal program; I think there is something like between forty-five and fifty students have been trained under it.  To me, that satisfies the concern that I would have had in terms of losing the strength and the visibility for those faculty that later were dispersed into other departments.  It brought them back together under a canopy of a group major.

LS:	You wouldn't have needed, however, to do that if the other solution . . . .

RH:	No, because the other way there were so many cross appointments.  It was a standard kind of arrangement that anyone who had plant breeding, plant genetics background would have a joint appointment—or an animal breeding with genetics—and genetics was the hub and that's where you would draw more attention.  In other words, if a student wrote and said, “I'm interested in doing work in genetics in higher plants,” he'd go to genetics.  Now once they sluffed this off, where would they go?  It would be spread around to several departments.

01:27:35	End of side. 

Tape 2/Side 2

01:27:38

RH:	With respect to this matter of a plant genetics/plant breeding major, it took some doing.  Well, actually there are in total, in terms of present faculty—I should have counted them up before I came over here—but I think it's in round figures about twenty-five faculty spread among the five departments, essentially, including a couple from genetics, and when we began to make the drive to support the idea of a major, a plant genetics/plant breeding major . . . .

LS:	Could you tell me about what year that was?

RH:	Oh boy, I should have written a lot of this down.  That would have been, well— I could tell you what's happened first.  Because there wasn't enough momentum and there certainly wasn't enough—no way of getting support for, as you know, the committee majors that had been possible for many, many years, so several people started arranging for committee majors in the area of plant breeding/plant genetics through the Graduate School in order to kind of blaze a trail to support the concept, to show that we had graduate students who wanted to take this kind of training and have that kind of a tag when they finished that they were trained in plant genetics/plant breeding, and then with the long-range goal of beginning a full-fledged major on the record.  

01:29:19

When we reached the stage of beginning to have enough student numbers to show that it was one that was being sought by students, we recognized that we had to be able to have convincing arguments within our own college and certainly then up at the level of the Graduate School; and the point I want to stress is that Jim Crow was extremely helpful in this move.  He understood and had appreciation for both sides of this argument that I have been talking about.  He is a very exceptional person in being able to understand and bridge these kinds of things and see the strengths, and he was, in my judgment, one of the pivots in having this thing move through because he said yes, he saw the point for it; was I willing to attend some meetings, make statements about it?  I'm sure he spoke to the Graduate School administration, and as a consequence, the formal plant genetics/plant breeding graduate program was established.

LS:	He was chairman at the time?

RH:	I don't think he probably was.  Anyway, he was a high-quality supporter, and you know, people would respect his point of view in that they would recognize he wasn't biased in favor of something like this because he himself is a population geneticist.  

LS:	Yes, that's right.  He wasn't one of the molecular geneticists.

RH:	But he was certainly one of the key figures in terms of being able to move that program.

01:31:31

	And as a consequence—now that it's in place—I think everyone—if you talk to any one of those that had a direct involvement in the whole sequence of events that occurred in genetics at that time—at least those on the plant side, I think, would tell you that some of their concerns, or most of them, are dispelled by the fact that we have a formal mechanism for it.  In other words, you could send out this brochure that describes it around the country when someone applies, and they say, “Yeah, I'd like to go to Wisconsin because they have a good strong program.”  Before that, without that, you would have to try each person—if you were in agronomy you'd have to try to do it within agronomy, if you were in horticulture you try to do it within horticulture, forestry, so you wouldn't have a core—a group—and so this was a very positive move.  

LS:	But how did it happen with the vote?  I mean when you had a part-time appointment in horticulture that still didn't . . . .

RH:	I didn't have a part-time appointment there.  

LS:	Oh, you didn't?  You still could vote in genetics?

RH:	Yes, I was one of those that moved out after the decision was made that we talked about. 
LS:	But you didn't move out permanently?

RH:	No.

LS:	You only moved half out?

RH:	No, I moved out so the majority of my appointment was—well maybe it was split 50-50—but at any rate, I went personally, to the Department of Horticulture, to the chairman . . . .

LS:	So it had to be 50 percent or more of the salary couldn't vote, so if you had even 50-50 you couldn't vote.  So you didn't vote.

RH:	No.  So Casida, Chapman—yes, I did at that time, on this issue that I described.

LS:	No, but I mean after that.  

RH:	No, that's right, I did not.  See, Peloquin and myself moved out into horticulture and later Chapman, Casida and Shakelford, or . . . . I don't know the sequence; I think Shakelford first, and then later Casida and Chapman.

LS:	And horticulture said yes, come ahead?

RH:	Yes.

LS:	But the money was coming from the federal government, so from their point of view it didn't matter.  

RH:	Well, they had to take it up as a faculty in their discussions.

LS:	That's great.  But of course, there would be grant money coming to molecular biologists that hadn't started coming—oh yes, it had.

RH:	Some, but not much.  The floodgates of grant money were open but the tide wasn't high.

LS:	So they probably couldn't picture the fact that it would in fact be easy for them to get funds.  It's really quite an interesting story.

RH:	Yes it is, and at the time a very intriguing one.

LS:	Well, you can see, for people to leave the department is a very radical step to take.

RH:	Well, I can tell you why—Dr. Peloquin and I talked about this particularly, because we were both plant scientists, plant geneticists.  We reasoned we were young enough at that time in our careers, and because of the faculty governance that goes on within a department, our reasoning was along this line:  if genetics moved—and it was then apparent they were going to move—in the direction of molecular biology, we asked ourselves a rather simple question that gave us the answer of what we had to do—not what we could do but what we had to do.  We said, “Let's imagine that we did the most exciting thing that we possibly could in terms of our training and background in plant genetics, just the most exciting thing you could imagine, and then you have a majority of faculty who are molecularly-oriented, they've got the majority of the vote and this is probably going to be an increasing portion of the faculty.”  In other words, in time that is what's happened.  What do you think those people would say, our peers would say about the work?  In our judgment, they would say, “It's very nice work but it's not very exciting, and it's not very important as far as the frontiers of science.”  So once we asked ourself that question and faced the answer—it was in our judgment the real answer—it was an easy decision—well, it wasn't easy to carry out, but was an easy decision in terms of what we had to do, because we couldn't imagine ourselves staying there for another fifteen or twenty years and having a group that we were daily associated with who would say—they might not tell us in the words I would, but that's the way they would almost have to feel—that you're kind of in a plodding area, that you're not in that fast-moving field of science.  And they would be right.  So, we said that this being the case, that we simply explore for a different setting.  

01:36:48

Now by contrast, you see, if you go to a department, it's always interesting when you try to define basic or applied science.  Here was a group who were saying that ours was very mundane applied.  When we once made the move to horticulture, it was just the reverse.  They felt our work was very, very basic.  And we felt under that circumstance, that looking at our own future and maybe your self esteem, that you'd rather be associated with a group that would somehow be able to relate to and understand what your ambitions were and what you hope to accomplish a little better than you would any other group.

LS:	Did you think of the fact that zoology and botany were both in the same spot?

RH:	No, I don't remember any thought of it.

LS:	Because it's very obvious there—their department meetings used to be so bitter that Mark Ingraham had to go and stand in the doorway.

RH: 	Yes, I know.  I heard about it, but I didn't give this any thought.  I think it was a matter—it was fairly self-contained.  This didn't occur over night;  it was evolving.

LS:	And this wasn't a problem in biochemistry or bacteriology?

RH:	Probably not, because—well I don't know, I was going to say I thought I knew but I'm not sure.  I think that there might have been a little of it.  But they're not tied to—you see if you look back to what we were involved with as animal and plant breeders and geneticists, you're oriented towards a particular organism—in other words, higher plants or high animals—and that has its impact in all sorts of ways.  I mean you do your work because you hope to contribute something that can be used better for more productive crop production or animal production or whatever.  I don't think that's a factor in bacteriology and genetics.  They have relatively little of that commodity orientation in any permanent way.  They may be for a while involved, and there were a few in the early days who worked on nitrogen-fixing bacteria, still are, but they weren't—there was more breadth and not the sharper focus in terms of orientation towards the needs of industry or anything like this.  

LS:	Actually it reminds me that their Ph.D. dissertation had a practical section applied to a particular, which might be an industrial problem, and then the theoretical section.  So in fact each person maybe combined . . . .

RH:	Combined it routinely.

LS:	I wonder if that was the case.

RH:	Could be.  That might be the reason.  No, as far as I know that sort of thing was not a factor in those departments.

LS:	I mean Bob Burris working with Red Dot Potato Chips.  

RH:	True.  They've all had, from time to time—Frank Strong had his associations with the DNR [Department of Natural Resources] and the materials that he developed for killing rough fish, you know, and things like this, but theirs is not one where there is a continued focus in a single direction.

LS:	They don't have to grow crops, I suppose.

RH: 	Well, they move around more—depending upon what particular problem or opportunity at the time seems intriguing to them.  Karl Paul Link, you know when he was working on—his interests in part at least were focused by the clover breeder in agronomy coming to him and asking him for help to get a diagnostic test for the presence of coumarin.  That's I think one of the early things that attracted his attention, which he did do and helped with, and they did develop a biochemical method.  

LS:	I gather Brink feels that he too had something to do with that.

RH:	As a matter of fact, I was staying with Brink in his home at the time as an undergraduate when this thing was developing.

LS:	This was 1938, that's right.  So he was ticked off at that, I expect.  

RH: 	Karl Paul Link was one of those that did move around.  I guess you cited him as an example because he got interested in this, and of course his interest was more basic science; he didn't stick with it in terms of following the development of sweet clover any further, and low coumarin in sweet clover, but what he did do though was got very intrigued with dicoumarol and what it was doing.  And of course the story is well recorded what went on there.  But what I am saying is that kind of contact helped direct their interest for a while, but it didn't necessarily focus them in the same direction over a long period of time, as I think the plant breeding or the animal breeding people were.  

01:42:48

LS:	How long did you go on being engaged in research?

RH:	Until 1962.

LS:	So you did stop once you got—but that was when you went to the experiment station.  

RH:	I did a little after that.  I had some graduate students that had to finish up.  And I did for a while attempt to try to keep something active in terms of research, but it wasn't practical in the sense that—with particularly field operations and the like—that there are periods when you've simply got to be there, but there might also be that same day in administration something that you've simply got to be there for, too.  It just doesn't work.  It isn't like Elvehjem; at least he was always extremely effective at being able to keep things going in his lab.  But as I try to analyze that—because I've done some laboratory work too in the course of my training and a bit of it later on—some of those things, if you don't get there that day it isn't all that critical, particularly if you have good lab help who can make the transfers, or make the readings, or whatever it is.  That's not the case for things that come when—the flowering season for example, on crops or on plants.  They usually come on for a burst and then they're gone, and you've lost a year or lost six months or whatever.

LS:	And you have to be there and can't leave it to your graduate students.

RH:	Yes, right.  So that not many people have been able to—Elvehjem I think was an exceptional individual who carried a very effective research program and still had his administrative duties.

01:44:44

LS:	But your work, Brink spoke of it as being significant.  That would be up to the late '50s then . . . .

RH:	Yes, well right up to '62.  Until I went into administration, which was September '62, I didn't . . . .

LS:	1958 you came out with a paper.

RH:	Yes.  That was one of those that later turned out to be a fairly significant one, in terms of—it's significant in the world of plant breeding/plant genetics but if you—just use that as an example—showed that to someone in molecular biology, they would say it was very passé.  And to me it was an exciting thing; I've because of it gotten wide recognition nationally, and for that matter internationally—

01:45:47

 --but it illustrates the point.  And that's what we reasoned, that there just wasn't any way to maintain your own self esteem if you were with peers who would say, “Yours is fine, but it isn't really all that important.”

LS:	Yes, I guess there's no question but that the glamour in science is in the microscope.

RH: 	Well, everybody's ego has to be stroked some and I think that's the point that we faced, and it made an easy decision what to do.  We had some trepidations about whether or not it would happen.  I remember having some real concerns of going over begging to a department and saying, “How would you like to have me?”  I knew the chairman of the department pretty well so on that count I could talk to him easier, but he didn't make the decision.  He would have to take it before the full department.  I guess I felt that the odds were in favor of it because we had enough momentum with the work, so that I felt that the likelihood of getting acceptance was pretty good.

LS:	That was like jumping over a chasm, wasn't it?

RH:	Well, you crossed a bridge, and if you have to face the fact that there was the chance he'd say, “No, we're not interested,” you'd have to face that as what the next step is.

01:47:27

LS:	Well, we're moving ahead, and you're gone to Sturgeon Bay and were doing research there in the experiment station, and then you were appointed . . . .

RH:	When you say I went ahead, you have to correct that a bit.  From day one of my appointment we had a field location at Sturgeon Bay and that was used during the growing season, but most of my time was spent here at Madison, so that was . . . .

LS:	I see, I wondered how that worked.

RH:	And later, the change that we've talked about in the Department of Horticulture, but that didn't really change the way I operated in terms of my research.  The big transition was when I moved from research into administration in the College as assistant director of the Experiment Station.

LS:	And that was in 1962 to administer the Hatch Act.

RH: 	Yes.

01:48:26

LS:	Why were you appointed for that?

RH:	Well, I don't know exactly what went on.  I think when we discussed this before, I was surprised that I was a candidate for it—I didn't ask for it at all.  I was approached and asked if I'd like to be considered.

LS:	Excuse me, what did you say?

RH:	I was approached by administration and asked if I'd like to consider it.

LS:	By Froker, or somebody else . . . .

RH:	Well, by Muckenhirn, who was working with him, and I hadn't even thought about getting into administration at all.  My work at that time had good momentum, and I was really enjoying it very much.  I began to have, as I said, the national and international recognition of things.  At any rate, I don't know what prompted them to ask me.

LS: 	You must have some idea.

RH:	I expect if I had to speculate, and I guess that's what I would have to do, is that they had seen me build a program.  The project that I was assigned—more correctly, in 1949 when I finished—was just an idea of not mine but others, and I was given the opportunity to take it on, to build it, and it's one that's supported by the fifty states cooperatively under the Regional Research Act of 1946, where federal monies then are made available.  It was supported, of course, in a fairly substantial way from the University here, who agreed that they would provide space here and at Sturgeon Bay, and it was supported by the federal government, by the USDA, and I think all of that took a lot of interaction with different people, different groups, and it was a period of building that went on.  When we started, as I said, it was an idea.  It had ups and downs.  We finally got the first inter-regional project, the title that carries IR1.  It was the first one in the country that had ever been established under that Research and Marketing Act.  This is a federal act of 1946 which provided the framework for cooperation between states at the regional level, and then as a corollary to that they said all states can cooperate under an inter-regional canopy, and so a lot of learning process had to go on for everyone and particularly for me, since I was in charge of this program.  It's a long process to describe, but because it's funded from off the top funding—in other words, each state and each region has to agree that they will contribute something before they begin to allocate to their own needs—it created all kinds of differences of opinion.  Not that they weren't necessarily in favor of the project, but they were bothered by what could happen if you had too many of these kinds of things siphoning off from the top.  So we went through a whole period of rather intense discussions about the concept, and at one time the directors—a committee of nine which is the purse strings committee, it's one with two people from each region and one at large, which is a home economist, or in those days was—they control the funds by law.  And there was a vote within that committee, and they worked at the direction of their respective regions, and I remember this one, in the early days, in the formative years, saying—I think it was the second year that we were established and there were no others at that time—saying there will be no more IR projects.  And the reason was very apparent.  They didn't want these funds to be siphoned off.  They were fearful.  Well, time went on and the program began to gain momentum; it had national objectives in terms of supplying germplasm and eventually got enough momentum so that it gave me a great deal of, what do I say, not pride, more a feeling of satisfaction, because they were a different committee of nine, different people, but they went on record as encouraging more inter-regional projects, and obviously the reason they did is because we had shown that we could do a job.  The reason I relate this is that I think that kind of process—I could give you incidents of some very—at one point, Noble Clark, who—we in the meantime got some of this momentum, and he was the person who was the associate director of the Experiment Station, called me and said he would like to have me come to his office.

00:54:43

End of side.  End of tape.
Tape 3/ Side 1

01:54:45

RH:	What I am trying to provide is some insight to, maybe with more examples than you really would care to have, on why I was asked to get into administration, and I mention this situation with the IR projects, and I remember one time Noble Clark calling me at my office and asking if I'd come to see him, and I went to his office and he very quite abruptly said, “What would you do . . . ?” By this time we had gained some momentum, but the project had at that time some twenty thousand dollars of funds from the IR source—and he was very supportive and did a lot to really get it moving at the state level here at the University and also at the national level, and deserved a great deal of credit not just for that project but for the whole concept; he was one of the originators per se of this concept of [the] Research and Marketing Act of 1946.  But he said to me, “What would you do if you learned that the Committee of Nine said they were going to cut your budget in half?”  I said, “Close the project.” He said, “Are you sincere about that?,” and I said, “Absolutely, we don't have enough money to do what we need to do right now.”  He said, “Would you be willing to go to North Carolina and talk to the chairman of the Committee of Nine?,” who was the director, and I said, “If that's what it takes, yes I will.”  Well, he said, “That's what it takes; it's that serious.”   So, that's what I did, and this man was open-minded even though he was one of those that was confronted with this thing at that particular point in time of reducing and taking money off the top.  Well, you know, to make a long story short, that action was never taken, and I relate it simply to show that I think these kinds of experiences were known of course to the administration, and they knew that I had experiences with the broader scene in terms of administration.  There's a national committee that I had to—at that time, and the project leader still does—that convened at least once annually, and they mold the program, or they have the decisions and you've got  to make a budget with them and defend it—and that's the first step—and then it's got to go through the next step, the North Central directors and the directors at the other regions, and so my kind of experience was one of perhaps giving me a broader exposure to administration than perhaps many of the faculty might have simply because what I have related is just a routine.  It goes on with that kind of project.  So I think because of that I was asked.  

01:58:41

I was astounded when I was asked because I'd had an experience—and that was one of the growing pains of the project where I had had enough—no heated words, but had difference of opinion that had occurred because of the interaction with some of the programs at Sturgeon Bay that fed back to the dean, and they were serious enough that it was a matter of how much space would be used by the project and . . . .

LS:	With whom were you competing for space?

RH:	Well, this was the way it was presented by other parties, but it wasn't all that serious.  It was a matter of someone's interpreting—the project was growing and we were getting more money, and we got money to build some facilities, and so the availables were moving out, and some of those at the Sturgeon Bay level were not getting that kind of growth.  

LS:	Was this Extension?

RH:	No, this would have been within the framework of the Experiment Station.  And—but the pressures were then placed on the project, and you asked earlier about Ahlgren—they have a committee, and the first time I was aware of this it occurred there was a meeting of—they call it the Experiment Station Committee.  This is made up of administration, and Ahlgren was on that committee at that time—he was in agronomy, along with a number of other, usually chairmen of departments—but they were meeting at Sturgeon Bay and they took up this matter of the contention of space.  And as I remember it, I had no advance warning that there was a problem, but I was asked to sit with them along with some of the others that—and I remember being taken aback when it was led into the field space and Dean Froker said to me, after some discussion about what we used in terms of space, “But I have heard you one time said you needed such and such amount of space, I remember five acres, but now you need three times that amount.”  I said, “I've never said that but [inaudible].”  But he just kept pressing me.  But he said, “I have good information that you have done this.”  Well, I knew what he was asking about, but I knew someone had fed him the wrong information, so I just sat there and denied it.  I said, “I have never asked for more than five acres of land for the wild species.”  And Henry Ahlgren finally spoke up—in my support, as it turned out—and he said, “Well, could it be that, isn't it standard practice that those who grow potatoes rotate the fields, you don't use the same fields year after year after year, you rotate, and isn't this right, it's usually a three-year rotation?”  I said, “That's correct, but that doesn't mean fifteen acres of potatoes, that means five acres of potatoes but not on the same site.”  Well anyway, I simply related that because that was a beginning of a sequence where the pressure didn't stop but it kept on, and it was not well-based in terms of the real competition for the land at all.  It was just someone's concern who really—I don't know why they were so upset about it.  At any rate, to put it in its place so it wasn't one that just kept nagging—I remember having stewed about it enough—I made a special trip from Sturgeon Bay to Madison, in the meantime having called the dean's secretary and asking if I could have an appointment.  And he was aware of this, but he sat there and asked me questions.  It was later, and he had gotten more information than he obviously had before, with what Ahlgren said.  But I came to Madison and said that I was bothered by this because it seemed like the pressure still was on, that I was absorbing too much space, and I said—and I thought this through and was very sincere about doing it—I said, “With one year's advance notice I am confident that I can move off the station completely.  The area's the right area, but I am sure I can lease land in that area from some farmer on a longer-term lease and that I am prepared to move off the station with my operations.  I would like to maintain an office because there is someone there to answer the phone,” and that I would have that located there on the station, and that I would have storage for my equipment, and that with the rest of it I could move off.  And he said, “Well, are you sincere?”  And I said,  “Absolutely I'm sincere.  I've tried and I thought we had reached some understanding, but it apparently hasn't occurred, and I am proposing this to you and prepared to do it.”  So he said, “Well, let me think about it.”  Well, that's some of it, because then he looked—I don't know what happened, but all I know was it was [inaudible].  Anyway, it was because of these situations I was amazed when they asked me if I would be interested in working with him, because I felt that I hadn't had all that good a relationship with him.  I didn't confront him, there was never any heated feelings, but I certainly wasn't one that was conforming easily into the pattern.  So anyway, I was asked, but I think part of the reason I was asked was because of these kinds of experiences, and they knew I had a broader exposure, particularly at the national level, than many people have had because of being with the committee.

LS:	I'm just curious about that situation at Sturgeon Bay.  The Experiment Station has the land and you're not part of the Experiment Station?

RH:	 It was a federal program and the arrangements—there was a memorandum of understanding which was entered into before the person . . . .  The person who was causing the problem was the superintendent of the station, who was Bob Edman, who was an ambitious person, and he didn't understand.  Even though I tried to enlighten him, he wouldn't accept what I was saying, and that's why eventually I had to go down and discuss it with the dean, and the dean, when I talked with him—I don't know what happened, but from that time on there wasn't any problem.

LS:	But he saw you as an interloper that had federal funding, separate federal funding, and wasn't part of a network. 

RH:	Yes, because he was about my same age and he was trying to build a program.  He worked on fruits, but he wasn't—he didn't have anywhere near the resources in terms of budget or personnel that this national program that I was in charge of had.  We were the same age group; we were sort of competing, in a sense.  He had the unique position that he was in charge of the station which I had offered.  At the same time, I had resources far beyond what he had in terms of budget, so there was just a little . . . .

LS:	And both of you were under the dean.

RH:	Sure.  And he had entree to the dean, he was brought in.  It was a real fracas up there.  The growers actually came down to Froker's office and threatened him, told him that if they didn't get satisfaction from him in terms of the previous superintendent, who was a fellow who could get himself in trouble without even trying—and I'd never had any real problems with him, I only had come in there about a year when this thing came to focus— that they were going to go to the president and, if necessary, to the governor.  There was a signed petition of practically all of the major growers, the cherry growers up there, and as a consequence of that program moved quickly to appoint a man from the outside—this fellow, Gilbert, who was a very capable man—brought him here from New Jersey.

LS:	So he was not on the faculty, then?

RH:	Yes, he had an appointment in horticulture but was superintendent of the station up there.

LS:	I was just wondering if there were other sources of friction besides the one you had.  You were on a different budget and were better funded.  I mean whether there was . . . .

RH:	No, as near as I can tell, that was the major problem.  We had a new project that was growing and had resources that from the standpoint of what was available to him were far beyond what he . . . .

LS:	I guess I was wondering if other experiment stations had problems like this where one's empire would seem to be invaded by somebody else.

RH:	That's an atypical station, Sturgeon Bay, in that most of the others—the people who use it, the faculty—are only there for short times.  They drive up for the day or two, or a week, to do what planting and harvesting.  We were actually located there during the whole season, and we were co-equals in the sense of faculty appointments and things like this.  So that we—there is no other station in the system of the other ten who have that kind of situation.  So it wouldn't be as likely to occur.  The in-fighting would  probably go on down here, in Madison, rather than at the outlying station.

02:09:26

LS:	Well, did you have any qualms about accepting this appointment?

RH:	Yes, I did, in the sense of wondering, and I asked—I started with Muckenhirn and Noble Clark—and I remember asking Noble Clark the question, I said, “I can understand and evaluate my own progress in research to my own satisfaction by the graduate students I've trained, by the papers I've published and how well received the papers are, and how well students do on the job, but,” I said, “how do you measure the progress in administration?”  And he gave me an answer which I think was right on target.  He said, “Well, there are no precise measures.  You simply have to take on the responsibility, have some objectives you'd like to attain and then work at it for a while, probably several years, and then turn around and look back and say, `Well, how successful was I?  Did I achieve what I wanted or not?' ”  And second he said that you will find that most of your problems are people problems, that you'll be working and the satisfaction you get won't always be with what you've done, it's what they've done, but you, even though you may never get any credit for it, you've helped them do something that later turns out to be significant in terms of their research advance.  And so it was very good counsel, and I think he was dead right.  He suggested I go and talk to Elvehjem, and I did, and had a conversation with Elvehjem to try to get a feeling of his concept—he knew that Froker was not a strong dean and that was one of my main concerns.  I told him that I had reservations—apprehensions, rather—about accepting and having to work with a person—at that time it turned out—was probably one of the reasons—Froker was ill.  He later died, as you know, from cancer, and he had not been a strong dean, and I knew this.  Elvehjem was very forthright as he always was.  He just said, “Well, after all you're taking it for a longer term and that there'll undoubtedly be turnovers,” and he didn't say . . . .  No one knew Froker would have to leave the job because of illness, but it wasn't long before he did leave.  But I did talk to him about those things and that was my concern at his level.  I didn't discuss this with Noble Clark or Muckenhirn, but I did discuss it with Elvehjem, and he was very sure in saying that what I was taking on was for a longer term and there would undoubtedly be a change, and of course Glenn Pound then came in within about a year and a half or so.

LS:	What did your wife think about it?

RH:	She's always been a person that says, that's my career, and I make my own decisions on it.  She's very understanding that way, usually says, “Are you sure you know what you are doing?”  But once done, she's very supportive.  

LS:	And so you knew this was permanent.

RH:	Well, I knew that it was going to be difficult, if I stayed in it very long, to go back.  I didn't know that I was going to stay here.  I just knew that it's like crossing the bridge, and if you once got in, you've committed yourself to administration, whether I stayed here or go somewhere else, and of course that's usually the opportunity.

LS:	This wasn't like becoming associate dean where you can always carry on a course or two and have graduate students.  This was really a full-time change.

RH:	That's right.  And that part of it I had to weigh in terms of [inaudible] opportunity to interact with graduate students in a direct fashion.  I wouldn't be doing research that you take pride in as being your own, so it was a matter of trying to decide what you did want to do.  

02:13:58

One of—the primary reason I did it was very simple.  I had an opportunity through Folke Skoog to get involved fairly early in getting support from the National Science Foundation and—just met him on the street and talked to him one day and he said—and he knew about some of the things I was doing—and he said, “Have you ever applied to NSF for funds?”  I said, “I don't know anything about it.”  “Well, you should,” he said.  “I've been on some of those panels, and the area that you are in, I think you could get support.”  So I said, “Where can I find out more about this?”  He gave me some information, and I later went and talked to—turned out there were two sources, and the most important of those was J. G. Dickson, who'd always been a person—I'd taken his course in plant pathology, and he had an NSF grant.  Well, I found out who had NSF grants.  Brink had one and Dickson had one.  Brink didn't give me all that much help.  Dickson was just the opposite.  When I went to him he said, “Sure, I'll give you my copy of my proposal so you can look at it, and when you've had a chance to read that come on back and I'll discuss it with you.”  Anyway, because of that experience in getting into support from NSF,  I felt that our faculty in the college, or many of them, who probably weren't as active as they should be in seeking competitive grant money . . . .  And it was already apparent by that time that it wasn't just NSF, it was NIH [National Institutes of Health] and the other—AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] and all the rest—that they're just an upswing, and all you had to do was read these articles come up in Science and all the rest, and that was the new trend.  And I talked with some of my colleagues and said, “You ought to try it.  You know there is a chance to get some money.”  In the pre-grant days people were conditioned to a totally different system of funding.  You got what was made available through the experiment station, from state funds, or you got some HATCH money; a little was coming at that time, and some few were able to get some industry money, but by and large you were—once you joined the faculty in research somebody provided your funds for your research and we were able to get them in agriculture, and you didn't have to compete for them.  Well, I'd had enough experience in talking to some of the people and getting kind of a lukewarm—some would respond, some didn't, and I thought, “My gosh, that's so important that I would like to have that as a mission, a kind of major assignment,” and when I talked to Froker, that's one of the things I asked, and to Muckenhirn.  I said if I would be chosen that I would like to have an understanding that I would try to push as hard as I can to get the faculty to recognize that here's a chance for outside support.  That is one of those things that I thought, you have got to have some goals and that's one thing I'm going to try to do, if I did get into administration.

LS:	That's an interesting point, because I think it was Harrington who remarked that one of the advantages of E. B. Fred's involvement in work in the national level was that they got used to thinking in terms of grants from the national—this was the 1940's.  And biochemistry was getting grants.  So maybe those two departments had already set off this . . . .

RH:	Yes, and there was some preconditioning.  You see, one of the things that preconditioned all of our faculty that have ever applied for WARF money—if you think about our institution compared to other institutions, you do have to—it is competitive.  Now it's usually a friendly kind of competition, and if you come here as a new faculty member you probably are going to get it pretty easy the first time around.  If you don't show some results you probably aren't going to get it so easily the second time around.  So that our people were conditioned; they had to apply, and they could probably get some support, and they had to show some results.  So that even with that kind of experience we could give them some condition to be more amenable to seeking money.

LS:	You got an NSF grant in 1963.

RH:	No—no, I think I had one before that.  The date is, that must be, before that.  I was on one later with Peloquin and I think that's the one they're—but that is the renewal I think you're looking at.  

LS:	Oh, I see.  

RH:	I think that would be about right.  Because I think the first one would have been 19—about three years—about 1960.  It would have been '60.

LS:	So you still did have that amount . . . .

RH:	Yes, but that's the part that was carried along and closed out by—as I said, we had some graduate students and we were able to carry that long enough—and I was jointly with Dr. Peloquin.  But, anyway, one of the major reasons that I thought I would like to try administration, was to try to encourage—and it was an interesting period to do that.

LS:	It's ten after twelve now.  Maybe we should stop.

RH:	I'd like to make just a few comments that are not related to this at all.  If you have time.

LS:	Yes—no.  Well, I think we'll have another session.  You understand that.

RH:	Oh.  One of the things I would like to comment on to give my point of view—we were talking about grants at the present time, and that is on overhead on grants, which I have very strong feelings about.

LS:	Oh, Joe Wilson wanted to talk about that too.

RH:	That's one that I do have some very strong feelings on, and the other perhaps would be to say a little, not too much, on the merger of higher education, the system—I don't know how broad you want to make it, but I particularly want to say something about overhead.  

LS:	I guess I would like to stop now.

RH: 	Okay.

02:20:51	End of side.  End of interview session.
 
Tape 3/Side 2

00:00:12

LS:	I'll start off with the question of how much you knew of the appointment of Pound and the pressure that was put on by people in the state to appoint Ahlgren.  

RH:	I don't think I know a great deal.  I recall, of course, that there were those out in the state who were attempting to get Ahlgren appointed, but I had no way of knowing how much momentum it might have had.

LS:	How would Ahlgren have been as dean?

RH:	I think he would have made a good dean.  His type of leadership is quite different than Pound's.  Pound is a very dynamic person, very positive.

LS: 	You must have seen the newspaper articles about him.  Some called him a curmudgeon.

RH:	Yes, but Ahlgren, I think, would have done a fine job.  He knew the University, he knew the state, he knew the industry.  He would have provided good leadership, but it would have been a different type of leadership—probably more low-key than Pound.

LS:	So less pushing for the College, which is Pound's reputation.

RH:	Yes.  I think that's right.  Pound also had a very deep understanding, a high respect for fundamental and basic research.  And this came through again and again.  I don't know how to measure that with Ahlgren.  I wouldn't suggest that he doesn't understand this, but I don't know how much he would have actively promoted in the way that Pound did. 

00:02:42

 I observed many times Pound's position on all sorts of things—most frequently I expect in relation to faculty appointments.  He was always urging the departments to be sure that the individual had a good solid science background, basic science background, regardless of what department they were in.

LS:	Ever to the point of rejecting appointments by departments?

RH:	Yes, I recall more than one occasion when he would simply send back—they would send up the c.v.'s of candidates that they thought they'd like to invite for an interview—and more than once he would simply send them all back and say, “These just, in my mind, aren't worthy of your consideration.  They aren't the qualities you should be looking for.”  He exercised very high standards.  In my judgment, although he'll be remembered for perhaps the building program because it was a substantial increase in the buildings on the agricultural campus during his tour of office, my own feeling is his contributions to maintaining very high standards in expecting the best from the faculty and expecting, in recruiting, that they really seek the top flight, and I think he frequently used the word "blue ribbon" type, probably was one of his major contributions.  He had a solid impact on maintaining very high standards.

LS:	Froker wouldn't have been doing that?

RH:	Well, of course, I was only with Froker for a short time, relatively, and I don't recall his ever—anything that would give me that kind of impression.

00:05:08

LS:	Well, you expressed yourself on the subject of overhead after we turned off the tape last time.  I hope you'll say substantially what you said then. 

RH:	Yes.

LS:	Could you go at it chronologically and when you began to think about it?

RH:	The first concern that I recall having with respect to overhead was within a year or two after I was in administration.  At that time there weren't a great many faculty who had grant support, but it was growing, and growing rapidly.  And . . . by the time I was in the administration it was clearly understood that the overhead was not something that the faculty or the college administration could expect to have anything to say about.

LS:	When did you start—do you remember how you noticed that?

RH:	Yes, I do, very distinctly, because we had a young member of the faculty who had more or less inherited an Atomic Energy Commission grant and he came to  me . . . .  He had inherited it from Dr. Brink—when I say inherited, when Brink retired this Dr. Kermicle was a co-investigator with him, and then he took over and continued with it, and it was rewritten for renewal.  Dr. Kermicle came in to discuss it with me to get any suggestions I might have and particularly to discuss the budgetary aspects.  Well, almost as he was leaving, as I remember, he made the statement, this is his words, “I assume I will have access to the overhead,” and I said, “No one has access to the overhead.”  He said, “We haven't signed it.”  I said, “That's information that I have never had before, and I've been in the office for about”—that is, the office of administration—“I expect about a year and a half or something like that.”  Well, you can be sure when he left my office I quickly began to ask questions that apparently I hadn't realized should have been asked before, because I went back to our business office and told them what had happened—to our college business office—and told them I had just had this conversation with Professor Kermicle and—just what I related—and I said, “I thought there was no overhead made available to anyone,” and they said, “Oh, there is an exception.”  And I said, “Well, I'd like to know more about that exception.”  Well, as it turned out, there were five—no, six—faculty at that time in various departments in our college who had support from the Atomic Energy Commission.  And all of them got all of the overhead back, personally—I mean, to their accounts.  More importantly, or I should say more interestingly,  where most of the funds, practically all of the funds that come from the direct cost in a grant are listed within budget lines—that is, salaries and wages, supplies, capital—the use of the overhead was open-ended.  They could use it as they saw fit.  This just amazed me.  I couldn't understand; it didn't make any sense, and I said, “Well, what does this amount to?”  Well, it turns out, as I remember, it was over $26,000 annually that was parceled out and prorated based on the overhead that was being generated by these six grants.  So I attempted within our office to find out why, how that had happened.  I said, “Now look, we've got a number of AEC-supported faculty that don't have that overhead.  Why are these people getting it?”  “Oh, they came early.”  And since then they've said, “No more of this,” but they've grandfathered in these six people.  And I said, “I'm just mystified. I don't understand this.  Well, is there any NSF like this?”  “No.”  “Any NIH?”  “No.”  

00:10:23

And I said, “Who would know something about this?” And one of our people in the business office said, “Well, why don't you call George Everson?”  So I called George Everson and described this to him and said, “Can you enlighten me on what happened?” And he laughed, and as I remember, he said, “Well, what I'm going to tell you, you will hardly believe.”  And then he proceeded to unravel what is a very interesting background.  And the essence of this, without going into all the details, was that in the very early days of competitive grants, apparently the decision was made by the top administration that overhead would not be filtered back, that it simply would be used for—well, it was one where as far as I know the deans were never consulted, the faculty were never consulted—it was just used as a fund by top administration.  This would be the president's office at that time.  

LS:	When you say the very early days . . . .

RH:	Well, because from the outset this policy was placed—from the outset of grants, there was never as far as I knew, there was never on this campus any allocating back to the generating units in the way that other campuses had.  

LS:	I guess I was trying to find out, whether this was first done under E. B. Fred.  Because I think there must have already been . . . .

RH:	It could have been.  It could have started there.  I guess I was under the impression it was when Harrington was president.  But in any event it was—the part I'm going to relate now in relation to these exceptions occurred during Harrington's office.  There was a group of faculty, as I understand it, in the Department of Physics, and at that time of course physics would be getting fairly substantial amounts of money from AEC.  I don't know the background except—and I don't know that Everson gave me much detail—except that somehow they were determined that they were going to get some of that overhead and they went—and some of them apparently were quite well-recognized nationally, and whether they talked to AEC officials or what I don't know.  But at any rate, it was brought to the point where apparently it was almost explosive, and there was an agreement made that all those who had AEC money would get their funds, but it was done very, very quietly.  No one, very few people knew this and in order to be consistent, they gave it not only to the Department of Physics, but to all others that had AEC money.  Well, apparently once taken care of—and I don't know what happened that made this situation where they didn't continue it, because that was the part that puzzled me—why wasn't all AEC money treated in the same fashion?  As it turned out it was in that time frame when those people raised the matter and were willing to try to take it further that agreements were made, and that was kind of built in from that point on.  

00:14:28

Well, the only reason for getting into it is that as far as I know, that's the only time that departments or individuals were receiving any of the overhead in any direct fashion.  And as I pointed out earlier, a good many institutions do have an arrangement where, say, 25 percent is taken at the administrative level—let's say at the chancellor or president's level—and then 75 percent might go back to the college, and the college would take 25 percent at their level, and then 50 percent would go back to the department or something like that, so that of course the amount of overhead generated is very large.  It's now 43 percent of the direct cost and the part—my point for bringing it up is that simply one of not understanding how anyone could have, who had spent time on this campus and knew the value of the WARF money and what it does to promote research, how they would not have recognized that a great deal more could have been done in terms of productivity to enhance research if some policies had been set up that encouraged the faculty to be more aggressive in seeking funds.  To be more specific, it's not unusual that even a successful grant getter might come at a period of time—let's say he's had a grant and maybe it's been renewed once or twice and in the meantime he's built it up to where he might have some technicians on it, post-doctorates perhaps, some graduate students on it—and even though the agency might agree it's a quality proposal that he sent in for renewal, but at that particular point in time they simply didn't have the money so they would say, “You get a higher ranking in terms of the peer review of your proposal but we just can't fund it at this time.”  So it seems to me that with the previous experience we'd had with WARF it would have been—quite independent of filtering it back, as I indicated many institutions do, to the point where it's generated—it would have seemed to me to be a very good investment to set up an insurance fund out of overhead so that those individuals on the faculty who were scrambling to keep their grant support program alive would know that within reason—they couldn't go on ad infinitum, but if they were “popped” for three months or six months they wouldn't have to dismiss their technician, or close out the post-docs, or whatever.  The Graduate School does some of this, but it seems to me that within our college where more than 43 percent of the money comes from competitive sources for research, it would make good sense to try to reason through how you promote and how you try to enhance that kind of program at the grass roots, namely the individual professor, so that he knows that instead of . . . .  I think it's very common now, if you just took at random ten individuals from anywhere in the University that had grants and asked them about overhead, you'd find they're very unhappy about it.  Even though they're told repeatedly, “Well, if you get it back, you get this and you get that,” and I'm sure they do to some extent.  But it's a very tangible thing, and the part that I think was missed in that decision not to set something up was that they somehow didn't—they might be an individual or group of individuals—simply weren't recognizing the kind of the treadmill that most of our faculty are on in order to get grants and to hold them, and the anxiety that they have to go through in order to wonder if they are going to get a renewal on time, if they do get the renewal whether it will cover all their costs.  

00:19:26

As I leave the University, this is one of the things that just, first of all, mystifies me that it ever happened.  Secondly, the fact that it happened just astounds me because I can't understand how anyone could not, particularly—and I keep going back to WARF, because we had that as an experience, we knew what we could do by investing with the faculty and here was a sum of money . . . .  And I'm not arguing that there aren't real costs that need to be covered by overhead, there definitely are.  But even if you look at that cost—most of the cost, most of the cost of most projects is located at the laboratory where it's going on, not somewhere else.  So that even if there needed to be a certain percentage used to cover administrative overhead, cover the paper work, cover the secretarial work, and all this, which clearly needs to be covered, and let's say the servicing of the building—yet in the end the major cost, and I don't know what percentage this might be but I would say it's well above 50 percent—must be at the level where the work's being done.  And by that I mean the heat, the light, and everything else.  Somehow, even if it had been [a] matter of a paper budget, it would have had a very stimulating effect and certainly morale would have been much higher.  Even if you handed it to them at this end and took it away from this end, they would have said, “Yes, now I know and I feel it, I can relate to it” and so . . . .  Well, anyway, it's one of those things that I have found.  

00:21:06

Let me go further, though, and give credit to Chancellor Shain, because as I remember during his vice-chancellorship, he, I think, probably because he came from a department where he chafed under this situation too, began to try to feed some of it back, and there has been a pattern of that occurring—now, or I think it must be more than ten or twelve years.  But it's only a small portion, it's a relatively small portion that gets back, simply because—I have no way of knowing where else it's been committed, but it's been committed to other things that make it impossible to give more than a small amount. 

00:21:55 

LS:	You did speculate last time as to where it might have gone.

RH:	That is speculation.

LS:	Well, it's interesting,

RH:	I think—the rumors have it that it was spent even off this campus.  

LS:	For Milwaukee, and . . . .

RH:	That's the rumors, I don't know whether that's fact or fiction, but there were large sums of money that—something happened to it.  I think there was considerable expansion of faculty that occurred on soft money that later had to be picked up in one way or another.  Programs, I think, were established—new programs on the overhead money.

LS:	The Institute for Research in Humanities was established about that time.

RH:	Well, these type of things might very well be where it went, but again, it's speculation.

LS:	You said something about the Medical School.

RH:	Well, at one time I know that—I remember hearing a remark when, and this was quite early—by that I mean it could have been fifteen, twenty years ago—by Jim Crow, and I think it was at a biological division meeting.  And I don't know why the subject was brought up, but he pointed out that an amazing number in percent, at least to my ears it sounded like an amazing number, of the [Medical School] faculty were salaried in part or—well, I guess he put it in part, on grant money.  And of course, obviously this was probably not a direct cost, but if faculty obtain tenure and they don't renew their grant, it's got to come from somewhere.  And there was a considerable expansion—well, there was a lot of expansion going on—and my guess is that some of it went into brick and mortar and some of it went into new positions, both faculty and administrative; some probably went into support staff.  These are again speculations, but with the huge amount of money that's involved it had to go somewhere, and that's probably where it is. 

00:24:19

LS:	I did find a sheet that would have illustrated this quite well.  It showed the overhead, the income from overhead; it added it up, this was the one year and then the next year and the next year, and from the total it deducted the Physics Department's return and then the president's—I think the term was "special funds" or something like that—which was also deducted, and then it left a certain sum of overhead, and that, when you say physics, there it was.

RH:	Well, anyway, it's one that I've always felt there were very poor decisions made. I'm not arguing that some of the new programs that are established, and even not arguing that some of the faculty, maybe all the faculty, who were hired are excellent.  That's not the point.  I think, though, that if we recognize that in order to drive the research machine of this university it's absolutely essential that competitive grant money be obtained, and most of it's obtained by the individual faculty, then it seems to me we ought to be very businesslike in terms of how we help those faculty—assist them and encourage them, and recognize them, instead of the reverse.  As I said, I think if we picked at random any ten people and asked them, “Are you happy with the overhead situation?”  The grant getters—now I'm not talking about the non-grant getters, because they might be very happy—the grant getters, I would wager, you will find either all or a strong majority will say no, they are not. 

LS:	Well, it would be particularly, I should think, dissatisfying to have it go out of the [inaudible].  

 RH:	Because at the other universities I don't pick this up.  It varies, but I have seen the information summarized in the North Central region.  Something in the order of about half gets back to the department that's generating, as I remember. 

LS:	Is Wisconsin the only one . . . ?

RH:	Well, I don't know—I don't think so, there are others.  But I think there are a number that have set up some sort of an agreement in terms of this.

LS:	Do you have any examples of programs that had to be stopped because the grant wasn't renewed for a period of time?

RH:	Well, I know in our own college, it wouldn't have been necessarily a program because most of these . . . .  Well, the projects, yes, we've had to, with our own resources in the College, pick up appointments and simply provide the money necessary to carry them over.  

LS:	You've done that? 

RH:	Yes, out of rich funds.  

LS:	So that when the Graduate School did it, it would have been from WARF funds?

RH:	The Graduate School did this for a while, and they may still do it to some extent, but they began and they have situations where they have a very rigid kind of program that they will pick up under certain circumstances, but it's much more rigid than I personally feel is justified.  I think that there needs to be more flexibility than they had in that program.

00:28:25	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 4/Side 1

00:28:32

LS:	Did you ever get together with other people who were handling grant money [inaudible] in L&S and any of the other colleges and discuss this question of overhead?

RH:	Not as a group.  We had individual discussions about it.  I never participated in any group discussion.  I have often wondered if these kinds of discussions went on in the chancellor or president's administrative group, the group where the chancellor—well, now the chancellor, then the president—had the deans come in, and I often wondered whether or not there wouldn't have been some discussion about the policy on overhead and its usage, but I have no recollection of any meeting where we as administrators at the college level met with other college people to discuss this situation.

LS:	Did it ever occur to you [inaudible]?

RH:	Yes, I did.  I thought it would be worthwhile and as a matter of fact, we took some action recently.  Our college established a principal investigator committee college- wide, and then began to look at various things, including the overhead and other grant-related problems or needs, and that was at the broad—in the broad sense.  Ultimately it was proposed from our college through the Faculty Senate that a principal investigator committee be established for the campus.

LS:	What happened to it?

RH:	I wish I knew.  We submitted names from our college, and I think names were submitted from other colleges, for establishment of a principal investigator committee.  We had a meeting with the chancellor—members of our faculty, that is our college principal investigator, he and his staff—to discuss it, prior to the time it was introduced into the Senate.  He at that time indicated—as you know Chancellor Shain is a very straightforward, outspoken person—he didn't agree with that concept.  The reason that we pursued it is that this University is known nationwide for its faculty governance, and it seemed absolutely certainly not in keeping with that kind of faculty governance not to have a faculty committee that had something to say about one of the major activities—research—on the campus.

LS:	This committee of Joe Wilson's is different.

RH:	That was an ad-hoc, one-time committee.

LS:	And that was a different problem anyway.

RH:	This wasn't necessarily the purpose of the recommendation, and later the Senate's acceptance of a campus principal investigator committee was simply to have an orderly way in which the faculty could talk about their concerns.  Not just overhead, but everything related to the problem and the needs and the opportunities in relation to grant-getting on a competitive basis.

00:32:51

LS:	I'm just surprised Glenn Pound didn't make this an issue.  I should think he might.

RH:	I don't know . . . .

LS:	Did you ever talk to him about it?

RH:	Yes, we had numerous conversations about it.  I think Glenn would be confident, took it up with the chancellor's office probably before that, where it was the president—I don't recall off hand.  But I know that over time, we recognized—we the administration recognized—that if there was a concern at the faculty level that that was probably—and we tested it by simply asking about it. 

00:33:44

Then it would be far more effective to have a grass roots kind of a concern expressed rather than we as administrators.  We were active with them in the sense of talking to them about these things.  I virtually established the principal investigator committee initially as an ad-hoc group, and I met with them at their meetings, ex officio.

LS:	Did they have somebody from biochemistry on it?

RH:	Yes.

LS:	Do you remember who it was?

RH: 	Yes.  John Suttie.  And he was one of the co-—we had two people who served as the chairmen, co-chairmen.  One, Dale Norris from entomology, was one of the co-chairmen, and the other was John Suttie.  The committee simply carried it along to the point—they talked, when it once got some experience and some momentum—they began to talk to some of their friends and colleagues in other colleges to simply acquaint them with what we were doing.  So, it's in limbo.

LS:	I'd have almost thought you'd have kind of a revolution.  There's a very poignant letter from Hector DeLuca to Chancellor Young about saving the biochemistry department and he outlines all the grand things that they've done and said, “We've got the poorest lab and the poorest amount of space practically on campus . . . .”

RH:	Talking about Hector DeLuca, he points out—and I think it's year in, year out probably close to almost a regular event—that the overhead generated by that department pays for, in terms of dollars brought in—will offset all of the dollars that are paid to their faculty from the state.  He liked to argue that in order to influence someone if he can, because in at least our college they are one of the major grant givers.

LS:	But they don't get any of it.

00:36:05

RH:	They get—yes, as I indicated earlier, Chancellor Shain did begin to put things in motion so that money does come back.  There's been money provided that's built into the base, in some years—that's not very frequently, but some years that has been done—and more prominently there is money provided for one-time expenditures, primarily capital, but occasionally some can be used for supplies, but it's got to be spent in that fiscal year, and it's been a significant amount of money.  We're duly appreciative of having it.  It runs, as I remember, in the order of 10 to 12 percent of what's generated that's given back, and it's very important money.  My reason for bringing this topic up is that I think it's nowhere near in keeping with what should have been done in an institution of this type.

LS:	Sounds to me like a very good point to be made.  

00:37:19

Were you aware of the consolidating rates for the Milwaukee campus and Madison campus so that they were given the same percentage . . . .

RH:	Of WARF money?

LS:	No, this is from outside grants.

RH:	No, no.

LS:	I showed you a letter there from Halvorson to, let's see, who was it . . . .

RH:	It's addressed to Bob Clodius.  Well, Halvorson is expressing concern about having salaries of the investigator on indirect cost of the grant.  And I think I'd agree with what he's saying.  First of all, this would take a great deal more money because you would have to carry a substantial amount in salary for the faculty people.  And that's his argument—you simply reduce the amount of research.  But he, and his point is, that ideally the institution should be covering salary costs and that the grants then can be used for covering the operational needs and the additional personnel to carry the research.

LS:	And Clodius's answer, which is that we are trying to get as much money out of the government as we can so we should get our salaries on soft money.  It's the statement of what happened I guess in the mid-60s that led to so much trouble later on, unless I'm misinterpreting it.

RH:	Well, I recognize it would depend on the institution.  You simply in some cases have got to pay the salary in order to free up time.  In other words, if a person had a full-time teaching load and wanted to do research, then it may be necessary to put some of the faculty salary on the grant so that his state dollars can be used to hire a teaching assistant, or something like that.

LS:	Oh, I see—yes, that's true.  So that as the enrollment was increasing, that would be an important consideration.  So this isn't really quite the same thing that you're talking about.

RH:	No.

LS:	 I did come across, let's see—“To all deans and directors”—this statement that the faculty was disturbed about the use of overhead.

RH: 	There have been numerous letters like this, and some of them going into considerable detail.  Finding out how, trying to justify or justifying perhaps the expenditure on everything from the administrative costs, to service costs, to building maintenance—the whole range. There have been a whole series of letters and they started out like this one, fairly general and later on they began to get percentages, and percentages would be changed a little the next year, and all because the faculty were expressing concern.  So you will find those.  

00:41:36

Just for your own information, I remember pressing on the point myself with I think Bob Clodius, of saying, “We don't get any overhead.”  He said, “Yes, you do.”  I said, “Well, where is it?”  He said, “It's in your budget.”  I said, “Well, that's news to me.  I'll go check it out.”  At that time Mr. Klagos, Harley Klagos who is now with Extension, was our business officer, and I told him that I had a visit with Bob Clodius and that Clodius said, “You get it, it's in your budget,” and I said, “Harley, how come I never knew about this?”  And he just laughed, and he said, “Let me show you how it's in the budget,” and the people—this is at year end where they are showing where the expenditures were.  Well indeed there were, there was money in several departments, thousands of dollars, and I said, “How does this happen?”  Well, and I—particularly when we were running through, our Department of Agronomy had a very substantial amount, seems to me between $20,000 and $30,000 showing as built into their budget by expenditure—and I said, “How in the world can they be showing that if it has any relationship at all to the cost?” because at that particular point in time the Department of Agronomy faculty had not a single grant, there wasn't a grant in that department at all, and yet there were the figures.  But anyway, I was puzzled by this, and Harley said, “Well, I can clear it up for you in a hurry.”  And I said, “Well, do it, I'm anxious to know.”  He said, “Well, here's what we were budgeted for at the beginning of the year out of our regular allocations from the state, and just look at one thing, look at the totals.”  He said, “Now look at the totals over here where it says that we've got all this overhead.”  And he said, “What you'll quickly see is that they are the same, even though we had the budgeted state dollars,” and I said, “Where did the state dollars go?”  And he said, “Who knows?”  In other words, what was happening is that it's a bookkeeping kind of a  process, and this just unraveled like a ball of yarn.  You kept getting just a little bit more information, a little more information, and anyway --

00:44:22

--at one point in time if you went back in the so-called red books they would have the details on appointments in other funds.  There was a time when the overhead—not just the overhead, yes the overhead, because the other still carries the number—but the overhead had a number.  

LS:	A grant number.

RH:	An identifiable number, like 144, but it wasn't that it was some number you could trace, so you could indeed trace it.  If you were persistent and wanted to spend the time, you could find out where it was and where it went.  As this thing began to heat up, all of a sudden you couldn't find it anymore.  It was treated—overhead money in terms of that particular portion or that particular aspect—is treated just like state funds.  And I don't know where this—if you ask this question of George Everson he might give you a different answer, but at least at one time I could go or anybody else could go and track down—and you can't do it anymore, with the information you can get out of the . . . .  And the reason that they gave us was that the legislature simply mandated that overhead be built into the budget, and that when they were mandated to do this, then they said, “Why treat it any different than state government?”

LS:	So, I see; this was a legislative decision to begin with.

RH:	There was apparently a period of time where the legislature really wasn't following or recognizing that there were substantial amounts of money coming to the University for these purposes, and when they finally recognized it they said, “Well, fine, and from now on that'll be built into your budget so that as we look at your needs you will have that as one piece”—the overhead.  Whereas before it was sort of an unknown to them, and in fact an add-on that allowed more flexibility.  The flexibility—in part at least, probably considerably—was cut back when the legislature said you now have x millions of dollars, but we say that they built in, and we know it and you know it as we build a budget.

LS:	When did this happen?

RH:	I think that too occurred in Harrington's period.  There was a real flap that you remember if you were around here with Harrington and some of the hearings before the Joint Finance.  I don't have the details in mind, but there was some major commitment made, and I think it was when we first got into large computers, and there was a commitment made that somehow had to come out as a consequence of the discussions that went on because it was such a large chunk of money.  I don't remember all the details, but it was something on the order of how could you have made that big a commitment if you didn't have the money?  Indeed he did have the money or they were going to get the money just with the overhead, as I recall.  Well, anyway, I don't remember the details, however, but it was precisely—there was a period and a time when the legislature were really upset because they hadn't been briefed, appraised rather, of the overhead and the quantity of it, and maybe what it was being used for and all this.

LS:	But it sounds to me as if that would put an end to the overhead as something the University could use the way it wanted to.

RH:	That's right.  That's precisely, I think, what happened.  That's true.

LS:	Have you ever thought you'd like to go back and see if you could track it all down?

RH:	I think it would be fun, because some of the bits and pieces that I picked up starting from that day when a very simple statement by one of our younger faculty who said, “Well, I presume I'll get all the overhead,” and I said, “You don't know what you're talking about.”  He did know what he was talking about because he was getting it then.  And then George Everson's statement, “What I'm going to tell you, you'll hardly believe,” because there must be  some very interesting aspects there.

00:49:30

LS: 	Still, it would be interesting to see if anybody would talk about it if you asked them.

RH:	Well, I expect it's a sensitive issue.  I bring it up because I was concerned enough about it.

LS: 	You were on the losing end, so naturally . . . .

RH:	Well, all colleges are.

LS:	That's what I meant, but the people who were making these decisions . . . .

RH:	And we had some rebuffs of what we asked for.  To show you [an] example of the kind, I'll give you one very specific thing that shows the kind of attitude, even though it's a minor item.  We had—I think this occurred under Froker, it was either Froker or the very early days of Pound—we had a situation where—and we were one of the colleges that did not put many people, not the faculty salaries, on grant money; we just had a very few.  But one of those in our Department of Entomology, who now, incidentally, is a full professor, had a substantial portion of his salary—and as I remember it was around $8,000, maybe it was all of it, because this was years ago—and the grant wasn't renewed.  And I don't think at that time the individual was tenured, but nevertheless they had hopes of tenure; he was coming along fine in terms of productivity, and so we'd been—this is the early days of this stewing about the overhead—and we said, well—Bob Muckenhirn, who was the associate director, and myself—we were talking about this situation after the department chairman had come up and told us he was in a jam.  We said, “Well, that's fine, this is a perfect place for the overhead.  That's what it's for, in our judgment.”  So Bob Muckenhirn wrote a letter—he was the associate director—to Bob Clodius and simply outlined the problem and asked for funds from the overhead to cover this emergency.  Muckenhirn never got a response to the letter, but our financial officer, Bob Hughes, got a response.  What it was, was the letter Muckenhirn wrote to Clodius with a scrawl right across the face of it, “Bob—Mr. Bob Hughes—take care of this out of your own resources.”

LS:	Oh!

00:52:13

RH:	So, in other words, this, I think—I tell this incident because in my judgment it correctly demonstrates the attitude that top administration had about overhead.  It's none of your business, just keep your hands off of it.  And he was telling us even if you are in trouble, you're not to ask for it.  You'll have to find your own way out.  Well, I come back to the point that I want to repeat because it bears repeating, because I have feeling for it having done some of it myself.  If you expect to have the faculty scramble and hustle for competitive grant money and they are successful, and they get it built up so they have a good program—it's productive, it's training students, it's training post-docs and punching out good research—and then they come on some hard times and you say, “Well, tough, you just work it out the best way you can,” that's not the way to create an atmosphere that's conducive to a faculty wanting to continue to hustle.  We have had discussions.  One time I did mention this, we did have the discussion of some of the general principles of overhead, and at that particular time several of the top administrators came to a meeting over in our college—this is where some of the faculty came.

LS:	By top administrators you mean people like Clodius, and . . . .

RH:	Clodius didn't come.  Let's see, we had Everson, and Reuben Lorenz, and I think Van Ess was there.  And I remember faculty then trying to get a feeling for what might be done or could be done in terms of more direct identifiable usage of the overhead, the way that they thought it should be used; and Dave Berman, who had had grants and has had grants regularly, and has had multiple grants—you know, some of those people are really on a merry-go-round trying to keep those all together and keep it coming in—I remember him speaking up and saying, after he listened to what had gone on, and in effect saying, “But I don't understand why I should continue to try to press so hard for grants if there is no more appreciation for what's being done by the faculty in terms of bringing in these dollars than there appears to be.”  And then he went on to say, “I could just cut back to one grant and my life would be a lot simpler.”  I think this is the reason I brought the subject up to begin with—because I really feel it is so out of keeping with what this institution has stood for in terms of faculty governance and in terms of the support they have had through the benevolence of the funds that were generated out of Vitamin D by Steenbock.

LS:	What did people say in response to him?

RH:  Well, the answer you get is that it's now built in.  That the flexibility is not there anymore.

LS:	Did they say, “I'm sorry”?

RH:	No, I don't think they're likely to say that.  I think that it's just that they point out that—they keep referring to the legislature, once the legislature were aware of it, and demanded it be put into the budget that created restriction.  But that's only part of the story.  Because you take a simple, maybe an absurd example, if all of the money that had been used for overhead had been used only for one-time capital needs, major buildings, then the next—once you've paid that building off, the next year you had all that money free.  But what we keep hearing is it's not available.  Well, then where is it?  It's built into fixed and continuing costs of various kinds.

LS:	And they can count on those people like Dave Berman in fact wanting to go on having lots of grants.  Has anybody actually said, “Well that's it, I'm not going to bother anymore”?

RH:	I don't know.  I hope there hasn't been too much of that.  I think some of them have not been as aggressive as they might be in terms of trying to keep too many grant- supported projects because it means between writing new proposals and conforming to the regulations on how you spend the money and make use of it, and writing the annual reports, I think some of them obviously say, well, there's a point of diminishing returns in terms of their own time.

LS:	But you don't have any dramatic examples of that?

RH:	No.  Berman said this, but as far as I know, no one has reached the stage yet where they just said they were not going to continue to compete.  So fortunately that's not happened.  

LS:	So the state must have said, “They'll go on getting the grant money.  We don't need to worry.”

00:58:20	End of side.

Tape 4/Side 2

00:58:21

RH:	You could go to people who've been here long enough; they went through that transition that I described, where at one time if it had been left as an item, identifiable item in the budget, it would be easy.  Once that change was made so you couldn't track it anymore, then the only way you could track it is in books that somebody keeps in terms of how much money comes in, and then since you can't identify it by number you would  remember it, I expect—somebody's memory of this program, that program . . . .

LS:	As I say, there are these charts of the overhead coming in.

RH:	But where it goes, you see that's the part you can't identify.

LS:	You can't pin this down to any—you can't think of a year, you can't associate it with Froker or Pound?

RH:	I think the policy was made—I am sure the policy was made pre-Pound, it was made in the Froker years.  

LS:	Because Harrington came in in 1962, but there already had been large grants. 

RH:	The policy, the part when I first began to be aware of it, and to this extent related—involved in some incidents, were only after '62 because I had simply been in research before that and had no way of knowing.

LS:	Bill Young is somebody who is said to know a great deal about what went on at the legislature.  I wonder if he'd be somebody who would know.  

RH:	He could.  Might be the person.  

01:00:05

Let me just change subjects, and I'm not going to spend much time on this one.  But it's one that I wanted to comment on—that is, the merger. I think it was a real fiasco; it was sold to the public on the basis of being more efficient and more cost-effective, and yet everyone who watched it and listened to it knew in the early stages, it was probably doomed to being very ineffective, as it has, and probably if anything maybe even more cost because you built in another administrative level.  And the part that I think that's hard to understand, because I don't think this was done deliberately, obviously, by the governor and the group that supported it, but the move that they made early on—see, there were discussions and things that were being reported about that they wanted to be sure that there was not overlapping, that if there were some institutions that weren't really needed that they would be cut back.  All that discussion went on, and yet the governor made a move that just practically eliminated that possibility of ever happening by the way he handled the new Board of Regents.  Because he made it a political—it had politics in it before, all of them do, but they were not state-wide so much because each of the institutions had their own—we had our own identity and they weren't in the group.  And I've never been able to understand how—and I guess not just me—how Lucey as governor reasoned that he could get what he wanted, and I think he was sincere in wanting to get more effective administration of the System, and if that entailed cutting something out, then he wanted that; and I would guess the taxpayer would want it, and I would expect most of us would want it.  But he promptly proceeded to appoint a much enlarged Board of Regents, and the way it was done was to make it so political from one end of the state to the other.  It's the logical thing to do in the end, but it's not the thing to do in the beginning.  In other words, I don't understand why he didn't say, “Here are the things that are the essentials to make it effective, and I would accept nothing less than a very thorough study and recommendation that embraced those points.”  Instead of that, he did just the reverse.  He appointed the Board of Regents, and as we all know the minute you put your finger down on any institution and say, “Well, that one isn't needed,” there's a hue and cry that goes up from those that represent that area.  So the thing was, I think, really doomed to a poor success right from the beginning.  I think it was extremely unfortunate, and I remember a remark that I thought was so apt and it just flew around the campus.  Someone said, “Well, they didn't know what the merger would entail in overall aspects, but one thing you could be sure of, that it would trim off the pinnacles of excellence and dump them into the valleys of mediocrity.”  At any rate, I feel that somehow—and I'm getting to the point—I think somehow, hopefully, the two doctoral institutions, Milwaukee and Madison, need to break out; not get independent, because I don't think that's politically possible, but they must, if we are going to survive and compete at the level we have been over the years past, get more flexibility in terms of our own resources, namely the budget and in terms of faculty rewards and things like this, than the System allows.  If we don't do it, I would sign a statement with every assurance and seal it, and say, “Twenty to twenty-five years from now we will no longer be a front-running University because we can't compete, and we're locked into a system that won't allow anything else.”  So, somehow, and I give a great deal of credit to the attempts that are going on right now, for the chancellor and his staff—and I know less about what's going on in Milwaukee—of trying to find ways of accomplishing that.  You see it in the newspapers, and I think it must occur.  If it doesn't, it's going to essentially mean—in other words there won't be any abrupt, in my judgment—the momentum that we have, the high recognition of the institution, the faculty, just won't change overnight; it's got enough momentum, it'll keep right on going.  But you can't continue to have major discrepancies in rewards, that—you've seen it in the newspaper.  In our college, for example, we're ranked in the very top in rankings, and if we just take some of our neighbors, or in some of the top rank, the average salary of a professor at Cornell Univeristy is $8,000 higher.  And you've seen the figures—Minnesota is $5,000 higher; even Michigan, with all their problems—I'm talking about our college—is nearly $5,000 higher.  It's not that our faculty are up for the monetary rewards; if they were, they wouldn't be at the University.  They'd be somewhere else.  But they certainly are not going to be content to be far below comparable institutions and colleagues there, and I think it's hurting us in two ways, as the chancellor's pointed out.  First of all, we lose some of our very outstanding people.  But more than that, it's affecting recruiting.  You can't hope to recruit—and the recruiting in the next few years, simply because of the large turnovers that are occurring in the colleges and universities across the country because of a clumping of ages due to World War II principally, and all the rest—that the competition for top people is exceedingly keen and every candidate who comes here is going to know, probably before they come, if they don't they'll know before they leave, what we can compete at.  It's one of those things that I admire, the efforts that are being made, but I don't think, at least any way I've been able to reason it—there is no way that you can do it and stay within the formal guidelines of the total UW System.  Absolutely can't do it.  Because you can't make the distinction between those that are carrying on an active research program, as our faculty here are, and those that are carrying on primarily a teaching program.  Yet the way that it was handled by the legislature is that they're equal.  So I think that's one of the really great challenges that the chancellor and the president, of course, faces too.  The president's in a very difficult spot.  How can—he's the president of the system.  He's got to have something that he can use to justify that kind of distinction, and the initiative, seems to me, simply has to come from Madison and Milwaukee.  He isn't going to say to Madison and Milwaukee, “Look, I'll give it to you.”  He can't do that.  He's going to have to have some pressure, but I think he understands it, and is very anxious to try to do something about it if that pressure can be brought to bear, but the pressure has to be at the legislative level because they simply put you under a common set of rules, and it doesn't allow for the distinction between the faculty in the doctoral cluster as contrasted to those that are not.

01:09:59

LS:	Were you in on the letter Pound wrote to Chancellor Young about salaries in the Ag College?  It's a very long letter; I xeroxed just the first page.

RH: 	Very definitely.  As far as I know Dean Pound never got an answer to that letter.  Or if he did it was non-committal.  That was one of the things that disturbed him very much.  I'd be interested in having you check it and see, because I don't think there was ever an answer.

LS:	I didn't see an answer.

RH:	There might have been something discussed, but I know Glenn was very disappointed about its having any impact on anything, of even opportunity to try to cope with that problem.

LS:	I wondered if one response might have been that Ag faculty only had half the teaching load.  I mean, I was just wondering if that would have entered into it.

RH:	Well, I expect there may have been several things coming out.  That, plus the fact that they are on an annual basis and things of that order would have had to be considered if you had a discussion looking at the pros and cons, but I don't think anything ever happened.

LS:	The note on the letter says to “Take to”—it looks like “I.S.”—but maybe . . . . .

RH:	It says “Hold.”

LS:	And then that's crossed out and it says “Hold.”

RH:	And that's what apparently happened.

LS: 	'75.  Well, it wasn't that Young was just becoming president or anything, is it.  You can't do anything about that, when the letter goes off and you don't get an answer.  

RH:	No.  Well, that's a difficult one.  

LS:	You thought Pound was justified.  You must have helped him.

RH:	Oh yes, we discussed this and had a hand in trying to put together the comparisons which were made and which were very carefully prepared, and in fact before they were submitted to Young we asked the people in the chancellor's business office to look at them to be sure we had made no incorrect assumptions or no incorrect interpretations.  And we had their counsel on that before it ever went.  Because we thought there possibly might be something we didn't interpret correctly or that the basic assumptions were wrong, but we didn't get anything that would bear on that problem, so we assumed that these were sound.  But we didn't get a response.

LS: 	Is this really the case then, that relatively speaking the salaries are lower?

RH: 	Yes, that's true.  Historically, the reasons for it I'm not sure, but part of it obviously is that—maybe the major part is—that our faculty were hired at too low rates.  Beginning rates.

LS: 	So, as they got raises, it didn't bring them up.

RH:	They couldn't keep up.  If there was a substantial differential between the initial salary of an appointment in our college versus some of the others, you never could make that up, because it's always—well, some individuals might—but across the board you can't because everything is calculated against your base salary.  When the legislature makes any money available for salary adjustment it's against your base, and if your base is low per faculty in contrast to someone else you can't make it up.  And so that apparently was a mistake someone made way back; I think it was a collective mistake that went on.  I know that Pound began to urge hiring at higher rates, and certainly Walsh has continued to do that in terms of starting, so the younger faculty are coming in at a better rate than others. 

01:14:58

 The problem that creates, though, is the compression because of the way you've seen the competition—that is, our sister institutions—moving this beginning salary up for new assistant professors.  That rate is moving faster than the money you've been getting from the legislature.  So here you've got somebody you hired three years ago, and you hire at a rate that is equal to or maybe even a little bit higher than he is now at, because the percent increases, the additive percent increases, haven't equalled the change in the beginning salary.  And what we do, and I assume everybody does it, we just call around and ask, “What are you starting people at this year?”  What it does, is it increases compression within and of course causes a fair amount of dissatisfaction among the faculty.  They say “Oh my God, I was here three years ago and I've been forgotten.  I'm getting less money than this new Ph.D. that's just come in.” 

01:16:11

LS:	Could I get you to talk about the School of Natural Resources.  Their files are very lively and of course it moves over into IES [Institute for Environmental Studies].  And I know you were the acting associate dean for a while in the School of Natural Resources.

RH:	I can answer that quickly.  Maybe you want more detail.  It was a great idea because we did need, and much—even in retrospect we needed more visibility for this type of thing, not just here, but around the country.  I think there was a need.  We were—the College of Agriculture—we didn't have that.  Even though there was a fair amount of activity in what could well have been called natural resources, the visibility wasn't there, and in terms of attracting students and in terms of attracting staff, in terms of attracting program money, it was needed.  It was a good recommendation that came out of the Pound study that Ahlgren chaired, within a couple of years after Pound was dean.  That was one of the recommendations, to establish a school.  What happened is, it was never nurtured very well.

LS:	After it was formed?

RH:	Right.  It never received high enough priority in terms of the modest resources that were available to put it on track.

LS:	By Pound?

RH:	Well, collectively by Pound—and any attempt to get money by the normal sequence of sending it up the line to request new program money just didn't—it didn't occur. Pound would have only done it—unless he could get new funds through the route of competition that goes on through the chancellor's office and through—he would have to carve it out of existing resources, and the priorities for it, although they were considered to be worthy, weren't high enough to close out something else and redirect the money.  So it was a constant—although it's been reasonably effective, it's stagnated over what it,  where it probably should have gone.  It should simply have had more resources, more faculty, and more program.

LS:	People in other colleges thought that it would have been better to wait and have it become, didn't they, become a whole campus program like Environmental Studies?

RH:	Yes, that's correct.  

LS:	And was it really in relation to the other agricultural campuses, or did Pound hope that maybe the UW effort in environmental studies would be this school?

RH:	I think they simply recognized there was almost a vacuum there, in that there was a need, so critical that one could probably see it move.  I think that's what happened.  

LS: 	But I mean did he consider waiting [to] see whether he might work in on a bigger program?

RH: 	No, the move was made very quickly after the study group made their report.  In fact, even before the report was finally printed there was agreement that there would be an attempt to move to establish a school.

LS:	So when there would be various committees studying what to do about a campus-wide environmental [program] and they said, “Well, we might as well let the school start, and give our approval because it's already under way.”  I mean, how did you all, how did you look on this?  When one looks at the files, one gets the feeling of two groups that each want something very much.

RH:	I think probably if one could look at it from outside our college, one could argue that we were opportunistic; we moved on it as a college.  One can also argue, though, that to move on it at the campus level is much slower and unwieldy, because if you could imagine that it was so attractive and had so much sex appeal that the legislature would  say, “Great, we'll give you x million dollars to set it up,” that's another matter.  But I think most people, practically everyone, said, “Well, there's some risk to this because if we start it it is going to take something out of our present programs.”  One school after another would have had to do some of that same sort of reasoning, to say, “Well, if you start it you can't get new money.  Where's it going to come from?” And I think that the experience with IES demonstrates that it's very unwieldy; it's tough to get something going.  When you've got well-entrenched colleges and schools, and where they're doing an effective job, whatever now pops up—unless it's very independent of what's been going on, and that's not likely and certainly not true for Environmental Studies or for Natural Resources—there's some apprehension of saying, “Well, that's our camp.  We've really been doing that.  We haven't been getting much visibility or credit for it; but that's ours, we're doing some very good work there.”  L&S had this, and we had some, and Engineering had some, and so if you make a move now . . . .  It might have been done at the chancellor's level or the president's level, and mandated, said, “Okay, here's what we're going to do . . . . ” But that's out of keeping with most things we do around here.  It's got to start the other way.  And as soon as you start it at the grass roots level you run into these things I've just described.  The IES thing struggled and struggled and struggled to get underway for some of those same reasons.  

01:22:48

LS:	How much were you in on that?  Because one of the complaints made in a letter, I think it was from Reid Bryson to Young, is that he—a group, I imagine it was the group that Van Potter was associated with—had been studying getting such a program going but that Young had appointed a different committee altogether.  

RH:	I knew about this, and apparently they were doing some of this.  Reid talked with us about it.  Our part of it started with Champ Tanner and in soils, who came and presented the case, and, as I remember, after listening to him we said, “You really do have a good case.  Let's appoint a committee.”  That's a typical thing.  And that committee was appointed.  And that committee was active enough and got some momentum and got it to the stage where they—and I have no recollection or reason to believe that we were in any way trying to upstage Reid Bryson in what he was talking about, but we got our momentum came along faster, I think, than theirs did in terms of getting it to the chancellor, primarily, I think, because we maybe just took it on as a challenge and decided we would try to have enough meetings and get enough ideas of what ought to be done and get a report together and see where it would go.  

LS:	I was really thinking—after that, this was perhaps '68 or '69, the School of Natural Resources was already formed, but Bryson is saying—this is in connection with, they were going to get a Rockefeller grant if money was available and how it should be organized —and Bryson was saying, “You haven't paid any attention to what we've been talking about.”  Do you know anything about that?

RH:	I thought that came up not so much in relation—maybe some of it came in relation to Natural Resources—but I thought it came up in relation to the move that we had on IES; in other words, that Champ Tanner-oriented thing where we began  to . . . .  John Ross and Champ Tanner and a group like this began to move it.  That's the part that Bryson began to be bothered about.

LS:	So Champ Tanner then—I don't remember seeing his name.  John Ross figures pretty much.

RH:	Champ is not that type of person.  He's one of those where a solid . . . .  He's not a promoter.  He's a very deep thinker and is not likely to, on his own, move out on anything, but he was the one that really got us in our college to begin to give the first thoughts to, and to do something about, the environmental studies program.

LS:	In the late sixties, then?  So you think it's coming from two different directions? 

RH:	Yes, as I remember the way Bryson's group, they had had—instead of having a program like we did, an approach like we did, getting a committee and really sitting down and trying to put something together and draft it—theirs is one of having lectures and inviting people to come in and look at this, that, and the other.  And I presume they were doing that in terms of trying to create more faculty interest and concern about it, and then they were going to move into something of an action program.  I guess, as I said, perhaps our approach might have upstaged them in the sense that we went at it  in a different way.  We simply tried to find a critical mass of people that were interested and would take the time to meet and talk about it, and we didn't attempt to educate the masses, so to speak.  We tried to see if there weren't enough people to get it going and did.  I've forgotten how many; twenty-some-odd or whatever it was were involved, and from different backgrounds.  

LS:	You weren't in on a meeting at Carl Runge's house, were you?  This would be something like 1969. 

RH:	No, I don't recall ever meeting at his house.

LS:	It was quite interesting, because when people were recommending a director for the new IES, nobody, with one exception, recommended Reid Bryson. They recommended McCames, who was in political sciences, John Ross and somebody Falks . . . .

01:28:44	End of side.  End of tape. 

Tape 5/Side 1

01:28:44

RH:	Yes, I've forgotten who [inaudible] his background.  That's right.  Oh, there was a lot of pulling and hauling . . . .

LS:	So apparently Reid Bryson wasn't a popular candidate for this.  

RH:	That's correct.

LS:	But do you know why?  Do you know him at all yourself?

RH:	Oh sure, know him quite well.  Personally, I don't know for sure.  I think personality-wise he's not one that perhaps endears himself easily.  But I don't know.  Again, this is speculation, but I knew very definitely there were others that were looked at.  Well, and the other fellow that—from Water Resources, in the Engineering School [inaudible]— went to Texas and now is deceased.  He was one that [inaudible] two of the possible.  And as a matter of fact, I think he acted for a while . . . . 

LS:	Well, there was Loucks, and Magnuson, and Falks, [inaudible].   And these are just people who recommended.

RH:	Well, I don't know that he was recommended, but he actually helped steer it for a while.

LS:	And Rohlich was . . . .

RH:	Rohlich, Rohlich!

LS:	Oh, Rohlich.  Oh, I see, yes.  He was the director for a while, wasn't he?

RH:	Yes, this is the one.

LS:	Oh, I see.  And he went to Texas?

RH:	Yes, he had another job offer from from the university [inaudible].

[Tape turned off.]

RH:	. . . right there in one office.  In other words, when I came to know Ahlgren, our morning coffee was a common place where we discussed things.  

LS:	The morning coffee that Pound put an end to, you mean.

RH:	Yes.

LS:	Did he completely?

RH:	No, not really.  But he himself wasn't a coffee drinker.  

01:31:19

No, I imagine Ahlgren must have had some insight into the [Extension] merger.  I have always wondered—I have great admiration for Glenn Pound, but I have always wondered if a condition of his appointment—and this is again sheer speculation—would have been that he would accept the merger idea.  Because this idea of merger is so contrary, looking at it from the self- interest of the college, and I know that  the faculty were by and large upset about this, and Ahlgren definitely was upset about it in terms of the early stages of the merger.  Later on, of course, he was brought in, as you know, as the chancellor, but I'm talking about the formative stages, when we met in Birge Hall.  As I recall, Harrington said it wasn't a matter of whether or not there would be a merger; it was a matter of when the merger would occur, or words to that effect.  And I know that this created an enormous amount of discussion in the college, among the faculty, and not only there but out in the state.  And there was consideration of taking it to the state, in other words, creating a pressure that would stop it, and I think Ahlgren has a much better feel for that.  My own feeling again, is if Ahlgren had been told, “Go out and rally the troops in the state,” he'd havedone it.  That's my own feeling about it.

LS:	I saw—I can't remember where I saw this statement, I think it's in my notes somewhere so I must have read it somewhere or somebody said it—that it was a way of getting Extension out from under the control of Pound. 

RH:	Well, that may be one way of looking at it.  I don't know that I remember hearing . . . .

LS:	Maybe Ahlgren out from under the control of Pound.

RH:	That might make—to me that would be much more likely.

LS:	Why?  In what way did Pound control or have influence over Ahlgren?

RH:	The administration at many institutions in the colleges of agriculture around the country—going back to the way they were structured through federal legislation, the dean also holds the title of director of the Experiment Station and director of Extension.  In other words, one person holds all of those, and he simply appoints associates to carry out the work.  Well, that's been true here up until the merger, and so Henry Ahlgren was the associate director of Extension under Pound, so that the way you interpreted that in your second remark I think is probably more likely.  

LS:	But Ahlgren wasn't made director.

RH:	No, they chose a fellow—McNeil.

LS:	And Ahlgren was an associate director still.

RH:	And people were very—again, that one created a lot of storm when they brought him in.

LS:	Where did he come from?

RH:	He was from somewhere out East—I don't recall just where.  It slips my mind.  He left here and went to Maine and really got a baptism.  But anyway, it was a very controversial thing.  My own feeling is that although I understood what they were trying to accomplish in terms of improving General Extension, looking at it selfishly from the standpoint of what Extension does in terms of rounding out the total program and the effectiveness of our college—that is, research and extension and instruction all tied so closely together—it was a major setback and still is.  I think the effectiveness of the Extension program is as it relates to the College.  Now if you step back further and look at what happens as a consequence of making this merger and what it has done for General Extension, then you have to recognize that there were things there that were positive.  But viewed from our standpoint, it was a setback.

LS:	And how is the state affected by it; I mean people?

RH:	Well, I think the state lost something in that move as it relates to agricultural production.  They probably gain something in terms of the broader activities that occur under General Extension.  Because the organizational structure is one that was in place for agriculture, where it's tied so closely into every county, is bound to have been a tremendous advantage for General Extension, to be able to—just overnight, to have, even though there were a lot of growing pains on how you make it work.  But they just—with the stroke of a pen, they had a structure that permeated right into every single colony in the state.  And so it was a gain, definitely; many of the programs that General Extension had before, that had probably difficulty in really being able to get into the well-organized network in the state, were vastly improved by this merger.

LS:	I think that about exhausts  what I have to ask you.  Do you have something else?

RH:	No, I think I've given you points of view, and that's what you're asking for.

LS:	Yes, very much so.  Thank you.

RH:	Thank you.

01:38:00	End of side.  End of tape.  End of interview session.

END

Index

Ahlgren, Henry Lawrence	50, 51, 60, 88, 95-97
Berman, David T. 	79-81
Brink, Royal Alexander	3, 5, 17, 25, 26, 32, 43, 44, 56, 62
Bryson, Reid A.	91-94
Burris, Robert Harza	42
Casida, Lester Earl	29-32, 35, 39
Chapman, Clinton Joseph.	31, 39
Clark, (William) Noble	48, 49, 54, 55
Clodius, Robert L.	73-75, 78, 79
Cole, Leon J.	6, 15
Crow, James F.	17, 32, 37, 38, 67
DeLuca, Hector F .	72
Dickson, James Geere	56
Edman, Bob	52
Elvehjem, Conrad Arnold	7, 16, 29, 30, 34, 35, 44, 54, 55
Everson, George	63, 64, 76, 77, 79
Frank, Glenn	11
Fred, Edwin Broun	29, 57, 64
Froker, Rudolph Knugaard	34, 46, 50, 51, 53-56, 61, 78, 82
Halvorson, Harlow Waldron	73
Harrington, Fred Harvey	56, 57, 64, 76, 82, 95
Hitt, Robert George	32
Hughes, Robert	78
Ingraham, Mark H.	41
Irwin, Malcom Robert	5, 25, 26, 31, 32
Kermicle, Jerry L.	62
Klagos, Harland R.	74, 75
Lederberg, Joshua	20, 25
Link, Karl Paul	43
Lorenz, Reuben H.	79
Loucks, Orie L	94
Lucey, Patrick	83
Magnuson, John J	94
Masley, Arpad L.	10, 11
Muckenhirn, Robert John	46, 54-56, 78
Muller, H. J.	17
Neale, Norman	32
Norris, Dale M., Jr.	72
Peloquin, Stanley J.	39, 40, 41, 57, 58
Potter, Van R.	91
Pound, Glenn Simpson	20, 21, 55, 60, 61, 71, 78, 82, 85-89, 95, 96
Rieman, Gustav Herman	1-6, 13, 15, 17
Riker, Albert Joyce	3
Rohlich, Gerard A.	94, 95
Ross, John Elton	91-93
Runge, Carlisle P.	92
Shain, Irving	66, 70, 71, 73
Shakelford, Richard Max.	32, 39
Skoog, Folke.	55, 56
Steenbock, Harry	79
Strong, Frank Morgan	42
Suttie, John W.	72
Tanner, Champ B.	91, 92
Van Ess,  Len L.	79
Walker, J. C.	21
Walsh, Leo M..	87
Walton, James Henry	7
Wilson, Joe Bransford	24, 58, 71
Young, Bill	82
Young, H. Edwin.	72, 85-87, 91