ABSTRACT

President James McCosh had considerable authority to make minor appointments. He presented the candidate’s credentials to the trustees along with a faculty recommendation that usually was accepted. Thomas Winpenny’s study of Lancaster permits a direct comparison between the salaries at Franklin and Marshall College and those of local industrial workers. The growth of denominational and interdenominational organizations, churches, academies, and colleges offered hope that one’s religious and intellectual calling could lead to a profession. College faculty in the mid- to late nineteenth century were part of a larger intellectual life that centered around scientific organizations, the lyceum movement, professionalized clergy, and journalism. Most faculty at Franklin and Marshall, Princeton, and Bucknell in 1865 had been trained in theological seminaries. Most faculty made long-term commitments to college teaching and to a single college. The older professors who dominated the faculties in the 1870s and 1880s were products of the denominational theological seminaries and the broader literary and scientific world.