Seventy Years Of The Worcester Polytechnic Institute: Page 280

caused Mr. Howe to withdraw from all activities, his wisdom and judgment had been of inestimable value to the Institute. He was a man of commanding presence, and he had been most generous to the college in the expenditure of time and money. Mr. Garver, a quiet and kindly clergyman, had made his influence felt not only in the faithful discharge of his ex-officio duties as a trustee but in his contacts with the faculty and students. News also reached the Institute of the death, January 16, 1918, of its fourth president, Dr. Edmund A. Engler, at the age of sixty-one. Mrs. Engler's death occurred just a year later.

The problems of the trustees were predominantly financial. Taking into account the substantial drop in tuition income, and excessive costs of coal and other supplies, it is noteworthy that the 1917 and 1918 deficits were not large. In this practice of economy, however, several innovations that were planned just before the war, including a course in Commercial Engineering, as well as hopes of increasing teachers' salaries, had to be abandoned.

Small increments of endowment had raised the level of invested funds slightly over the $1,000,000 mark by June, 1917. The two most substantial additions were a gift of $25,000 from Mabel Knowles Gage, Frances Knowles Warren, and Lucius James Knowles, and a bequest of $30,000 from Richard Black Sewall. The Francis Bangs and Hester Ann Knowles Fund, named in honor of the donors' parents, was designated as a student loan fund, only the interest to be used for loans. The Sewall Fund, unrestricted and wholly unanticipated, probably was an outgrowth of a long friendship between Elmer P. Howe and Mr. Sewall, who was a trustee in Boston for extensive real estate holdings.

In November, 1917, the Institute was dealt a staggering blow. The voters of Massachusetts ratified an amendment to the State Constitution that within five years was to deprive the college of its annual $50,000 grant, which then constituted a third of its total annual income. This deprivation had been

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Last Modified: Fri Jul 30 11:15:25 EDT 1999