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Getting Yale on The Right Track
Town
and gown rode the rails together when Yale and New Haven held joint
festivities to honor the University's first leader of the 20th century.
November
1999
by Judith Ann Schiff
On October
18, 1899, Yale inaugurated its new President, Arthur Twining Hadley,
in a celebration unique in the University's history. There was,
of course, a traditional formal ceremony held in the daytime, but
that evening, the students and townspeople got together to produce
an extravaganza which heralded a new Yale for the new century.
The highlight
of the event was the appearance of the 90-foot-long "Hadley Railroad
Transportation Company" train, which was manned by students and
accompanied by large posters that proclaimed, "A new train of thought,"
and "Yale is on the Right Track." The railroad imagery was fitting
for both Hadley and Yale.
Hadley's
preparation for the Presidency involved a mixture of academic and
worldly experience that set him apart from his predecessors. The
son of James Hadley, an eminent Yale professor of Greek, Arthur
graduated as valedictorian of the Class of 1876. After graduate
study at Yale and the University of Berlin, he joined the Yale faculty
as a tutor, but after four years gave it up because there were no
positions available in his field, political science. Hadley then
became a freelance writer for financial and industrial journals,
particularly the Railroad Gazette.
After
returning to Yale in a part-time position, Hadley published his
lectures on railway management in 1885. Railroad Transportation,
Its History and Its Laws, became the authoritative book in the
field. The following year Yale appointed Hadley to a new professorship
of political science, and his course became the most popular in
the college. From 1892-95, he served as the first Dean of the Graduate
School.
In 1899,
at the age of 43, Hadley was elected President. As Yale's first
lay leader (all of his predecessors had been men of the cloth),
he was a popular choice and represented the desire of most graduates
to have a larger voice in the clerically dominated Yale Corporation.
And, for the first time in 200 years, the emphasis shifted from
Yale as a world in itself to Yale as part of the outside world.
The events
of the evening inauguration made that point brightly. Every room
on the Old Campus was lighted with "redfire" lanterns that turned
the sky a deep red, and as the parade units assembled by class,
every man carried a flaming oil torch.
When
the students emerged from Phelps Gate they were stunned by the brilliant
illuminations downtown. The Edward Malley store on Chapel
Street was covered with Edison globes resembling daisies blooming
in a field of green grass. Over Temple Street was a large "Y" crafted
of blue bulbs against a background of white lights. And, to the
delight of the crowd gathered on the Green, fire balloons were cut
loose from the roof of the store every few minutes.
The hit
of the student parade was the "Hadley R.R. Transportation Company"
train. The locomotive moved on wheels, and it belched smoke and
steam at every stop. The windows of the three cars, lighted from
within by lanterns, contained portraits of prominent professors
and graduates, and at the end of the baggage car a likeness of railroad
magnate and senator Chauncey M. Depew, Class of 1856, was caught
in the act of throwing out a trunk with Hadley's initials on it.
After
cheering the new President at his home on Whitney Avenue, the students
proceeded to Hillhouse Avenue where a stash of fireworks was launched.
At midnight, a large bonfire on the campus concluded the program
as "The Old Yale was finally rung out, and the New Yale rung in." 
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