[Rarebooks] F/S Edith Bolling Wilson Two Als and related material regarding Woodrow Wilson's Princeton Quad Proposal

[Garry R Austin]

We offer for your consideration the following net to all and postpaid @ 
$195.00
from
Austin's Antiquarian Books
PO Box 730
Wilmington VT 05363
802 464-8438
mail at austinsbooks.com

Edith Bolling Wilson. Former First Lady Of The United States. Autograph 
letter signed: Washington D.C., Sept. 29, 1946. On stationery embossed 
with her "S. Street NW" address, three pages, measuring 4.35" x 6.25". 
and written to Luther Eisenhart, the noted mathematician and Dean of 
Princeton. She is answering him regarding his inquiries to revisit and 
write about Woodrow Wilson's controversial "Quad Proposal" from 1907. 
This letter is accompanied by the original franked envelope;
Quad proposal, See below;
Also there is a copy of a letter to Mrs. Wilson from Katherine Brand in 
the manuscripts department at Princeton, dated August 14, 1946, 
answering EBW's inquiry about the letter sent by Woodrow Wilson 
outlining his proposal. Brand has done the research and answered EBW's 
questions. Mrs. Wilson has written a six line note to the Dean regarding 
this letter at the bottom of the copy and signed it in full.
Finally there are four typed pages reproducing Wilson's Memoranda to the 
Clubs, preceded by an explanation of the plan that appeared in the 
Princeton Alumni Weekly of 1906. Overall condition is very good. These 
pieces were housed in a scrapbook and there is residue from the 
scrapbook on the verso of the envelope and the last page of the 
typescript only. A nice tidy package.

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (1872-1961), second wife of U.S. President 
Woodrow Wilson, was First Lady of the United States from 1915 to 1921. 
She met the President in March 1915 and they married nine months later. 
President Wilson suffered a severe stroke in October 1919. Edith Wilson 
began to screen all matters of state and decided which were important 
enough to bring to the bedridden president. In doing so, she de facto 
ran the executive branch of the government for the remainder of the 
president's second term, until March 1921.

The Quad Proposal;
"Administration, curriculum, and teaching methods had been brought into 
organic unity by 1906. However, in Wilson's view the social life of the 
undergraduates remained not only beyond university control but also 
detrimental to the intellectual life and social democracy of the 
University. The social life of about two-thirds of the upperclassmen 
centered in the eating clubs on Prospect Avenue. Wilson said that they 
were the sideshows that were swallowing up the main tent. Worse still, 
the clubs encouraged snobbishness and elitism, and the one-third of 
excluded upperclassmen lived in isolation and, frequently, ostracism and 
humiliation.

In the early months of 1906, Wilson resolved to move against the clubs, 
but he well knew that it might take years to effect any significant 
change. A severe stroke in May 1906 threatened his life, and he decided 
to act while time was left to him. He presented a plan to the trustees, 
tentatively in December 1906 and in mature form six months later. It 
proposed the creation of quadrangles, or colleges, in which 
undergraduates of all four classes would live, with their own 
recreational facilities and resident faculty masters. Membership would 
be by assignment or lot, and the clubs would either be absorbed into the 
quads or abolished.

The trustees approved the quad plan in principle and Wilson announced it 
at commencement in June 1907. Alumni, particularly in New York and 
Philadelphia, were soon up in arms against a plan that they said would 
deprive undergraduates of freedom of social choice and destroy class 
spirit. Wilson responded patiently, but to no avail. Opposition grew, 
annual giving declined. Bowing in October 1907, the trustees withdrew 
their approval of the quad plan. One wealthy trustee and donor, M. 
Taylor Pyne 1877, threatened to withdraw his support if Wilson resumed 
his campaign for the plan.

Wilson did not give up the fight. It sensitized him to glaring social 
injustice for the first time and transformed him into a radical social 
democrat by 1909. By then, however, he was embroiled in another 
controversy, over a residential graduate college."

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