Stover at Yale: and the Gridiron Metaphor

STOVER AT YALE AND THE GRIDIRON METAPHOR

By David Lamoreaux

wen Johnson’s Stover at Ya2e (1911) inevitably brings to mind a n image of an energetic young man with tousled hair, lofty brow, 0 sparking eyes and ruddy cheeks, a football tucked securely under

his thick-blue-turtleneck-sweatered arm. l Confining his scholastic activities to the athletic field, he adroitly threads his way through ranks of befuddled adversaries-invariably scoring the game-winning touchdown in the waning seconds of play for the collective glory of God, Country, and Yale (though not necessarily in that order).

While this indeed may have been the story of Frank Merriwell, Young Fred Fearnot, or a host of other less prominent “college novel” heroes, it is not the story-at least not the whole story-of John Humperdink Stover. This popular misconception of Stover at Yale is unfortunate, because it effectively obscures the purpose for which the book was written. In fact, once Stover completes his freshman year at New Haven there is little additional mention of athletics at all, except a couple of brief asides to indicate that, yes, our hero has once again demonstrated his gridiron prowess by leading the Yale eleven on to hitherto unknown pinnacles of greatness. The author’s real intention in writing Stover is suggested by a letter which Theodore Roosevelt sent to Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the then President of Harvard University:

This will introduce to your Mr. Owen Johnson, the son of the editor of the Century, a Yale man. . .who is now writing about Yale a story dealing especially with the club and society problems of which you and I have so often talked, and which have so puzzled us. I really wish you would talk freely with Johnson, who can be entirely trusted, and will not quote you in any way if you do not wish, and who sees us as we do both the evils of the club or society system and the difficulties in the way of doing away with these difficulties. That is, he is what in politics I would call a sane progressive!. . .Johnson i s taking this matter up from the National point of view, the point of view of all the universities and not merely Harvard and Yale.2

STOVER AT YALE AND THE GRIDIRON METAPHOR 331

Contrary to popular impression, then, and despite the fact that his hero is a football All-American, Johnson wrote Stover at Yale not as a sports story for juveniles but as an attack on what he regarded as the growth of snobbery at American universities. As such it shares the general tone of the muckraking exposes which flourished at about the time that Stover was written (although it was perhaps somewhat more reserved than most of them). It also employs all the standard conventions of that genre, including trusts, machines, corruption, and whole-souled reformers. In order to supplement his critique-and to make sure there could be no misunderstanding of his purpose in writing it-Johnson published in May and June of 1912 a series of five articles in Collier’s Magazine entitled “The Social Usurpation of Our Colleges,” in which he documented his charges against the universities.:’ The first of these dealt with snobbery as a general feature of student life, while the remaining four unmasked the agencies of undergraduate exclusiveness--the social clubs and senior societies of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, as well as the nationwide fraternity system. Hence it is not surprising that Johnson’s Stover is more preoccupied with campus politics than he is with intercollegiate football.

The problems with which Stover is obliged to contend are outlined for us immediately upon his arrival at New Haven, where he is befriended by an upperclassman whom he had encountered briefly once before, when they had lined up against each other in a Lawrenceville-Andover game. “‘I’m frankly aristocratic in my point of vie^,"'^ proclaims ex-Andover luminary Hugh Le Baron, who, consistent with both his surname and philosophy, exuded “a certain finely aristocratic quality that won rather than pr~voked.”~ Le Baron’s rationale is based primarily on the inability of the common man to manage his own affairs. “‘This college is made up of all sorts of elements,”’ he explains. “‘And it is not easy to run it. Now, in every class there are just a small number of fellows who are able to do it and who will do it. They form the real crowd. All the rest don’t count.”’6

This “small number of fellows” to which Le Baron referred was composed largely of former prep school students, who tended to be wealthier than their classmates, and came from “better” homes. Their power derived from the monopoly they exercised over the “graduated system of authority”7 which characterized the social organization of the undergraduate community. Specifically, they dominated the senior society system, which technically included only the three senior social fraternities-- Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, and Wolfs Head--but whose influence actually extended to every aspect of student life. In theory these societies existed only as “an honest attempt to reward the best in the college life, a sort of academic legion of honor, formed not on social cleavage, but given as a reward of merit.”s In fact they functioned as a n interlocking directorate, controlling the access to social prestige through feeder groups of junior and sophomore societies, whose membership in each case was determined by those who had been inducted the previous year. They had even managed to convert undergraduate activities into client organizations, since students

332 JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE

participated in them primarily as a means of securing election to a social fraternity. The implications of this development were not lost on Stover’s more sensitive classmates. As one of them complained, “‘We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility.”’g Johnson’s own conclusion was even more emphatic: Yale College, he claimed, was “perhaps the most perfectly organized trust in operation.. . . ”10

Having envisioned the organization of the student body from the top down as a monopoly or trust of the social elite, Johnson proceeded to examine it from the bottom up. What he discovered was a political machine which functioned in opposition to the established system of senior societies, and which was patronized by ambitious undergraduates whose lack of wealth, family background, or productive contacts with upperclassmen precluded any chance of social mobility within the limits imposed by the fraternity system. The embodiment of these nonsociety men-the “spokesman for an unsuspected poletanan opposition”1Lis Ray Gimbel, like Le Baron an Andover graduate, but without his connections and pull. Why don’t I “heel” a society? he asks: “‘I couldn’t make ’em anyway.”’lz With the traditional avenues of power closed off to him, Gimbel organizes the remaining six-sevenths of his class in a determined effort to do away with the society system altogether. He does so (much to Johnson’s consternation) by setting himself up as a political boss, fielding candidates for every class election in opposition to the society candidates and overwhelmingly electing them. I like “‘the organizing, pulling wires, all that sort of thing,”’ he admits, and brags: “‘I’ve got the whole thing organized sure as a steel trap.”’13 Nor is he any more concerned with the merits of the candidates he stands for office than are the leaders of the society crowd. As he tells a couple of potential recruits:

“See here, there’s a combination being gotten up. . . a sort of slate for our class football managers.. . If you fellows weren’t out for football, we’d put one of you up for secretary and treasurer. You can name him if you want. I’ve got a hundred votes already, and we’re putting through a deal with a Sheff crowd for vicepresident that will give us thirty or forty more.”14

Though distressed by Gimbel‘s tactics, Johnson was not altogether unsympathetic to his point of view. His chief concern, however, was the aura of secrecy with which the society system had managed to endow itself, and the morbid fascination which it exercised over the minds of the Yale undergraduates. “The freshman who arrives unprepared is amazed to find the college in the grip of a mystic bugaboo,” Johnson confided. At every step he is confronted by sudden mysterious tomb-like structures, padlocked and without visible windows, with the general atmosphere of a dungeon. He is told that the cabalistic words denoting the different societies must never be pronounced in the presence of a member. If by any unfortunate coincidence he should be passing a tomb when a society member should be coming out, he must avoid a distressing direct confrontation. Returning across the


campus about midnight, he sees a solemn line emerging two by two in impenetrable silence back from the society building. Usually at first he is struck by the ridiculousness of the whole proceeding, but inevitably he yields to the all-pervading awe.I5

Johnson does not want to do away with the society system altogether-- he refers specifically to “the poppycock that has been thrown around a good central idea.. . ” I 6 And he wants to “retain the privilege any club has of excluding outsiders.. . ” 1 7 But he insists the societies “drop the secrecy” which surrounds them, a secrecy of such formidable attractive force that even Gimbel’s undergraduate wardheelers are not entirely immune from its influence.’* Like his fellow muckrakers, Johnson hoped that exposing secrecy in high places would eventually lead to social reform. The society system, which at present served as a n upper-class sinecure, would be transformed under the press of public scrutiny into a “reward of merit” for Yale’s natural aristocrats.

And so the duty of our hero is clear: Stover must discover some way to rejuvenate college life as “a battle in the open where courage and a thinking mind must win.”19 Initially he forages around for an alternative, discovering it in the form of a debating society “drawing from every element of the class, to meet for the sole purpose of doing a little thinking and getting to know other crowds.”Zo The most intriguing aspect of the scheme, however, is how clearly it typifies the New Freedom’s approach to reform: in essence the debating society is little more than a miniature version of the “parliament of the people,” which Woodrow Wilson proposed in order “to restore the processes of common counsel, and to substitute them for the processes of private arrangement.”21 Yet for all Stover’s goodintentions the debating society is only a temporary success, largely because it relies too heavily on the voluntary cooperation of his fellow students. “Once the edge of novelty had worn off, there were too many diverting interests to throng in and deplete the ranks.”22 Its declension impels Stover to lay a n increased emphasis on the necessity for enlightened leadership, a change of heart which established him firmly among the votaries of Teddy Roosevelt’s cult of personality. “‘I’m going out to lead because I can do it,”’ he proclaims, subsequent ot his conversion, “‘and because I believe in the right things.”’23 By the end of his junior year he is well on his way to achieving his goal. How do we know this? Because Stover, who has battled the injustices of the senior society system for the better part of his college career, is ultimately tapped for Skull and Bones.

I1

Machines and trusts and the secret dealings by which such institutions are maintained-these are the negative images which inform the novel, and provide the background of Stover’s reform activities. And yet, if people remember Stover at all, they invariably recall him as an athlete rather than as an incipient Progressive. Why should this be?


In order to answer this question, it is necessary to distinguish between the argument (or didactic function) of the book and the narrative (or entertainment function). Stover at Yale was originally conceived as a “novel with a purpose,” a kind of secular tract intended to draw a moral for the reader.24 The argument, in this case, arose from the discussion of issues relating directly to Stover’s political endeavors, while the narrative involved the use of local color (football and other undergraduate activities) which Johnson recorded primarily to amuse his readers. Yet in certain key respects the narrative is often skew, and sometimes even at cross-purposes to the argument itself. For instance, though Johnson considered “overemphasized a factor in the relative decline of the English universities during this period, and cast aspersions on his own alma mater for upholding “the standards of the gladiatorial arena,”26 he himself wrote of football with a relish that belies his reservations. In this sense the narrative may indicate as much about Johnson’s actual convictions as his conscious attempts to state them in the argument. Perhaps the real reason why Stover is remembered as a football player rather than as a reformer was the capacity of the football game, conceived as a metaphor of society as a whole, to express better than Johnson could do himself the social ideals of his readership. The relation between the football game and the Progressive’s utopia was a conjugate one: each embodied a common point of view. This would explain why so many reformers were inclined to exploit the “game” metaphor as a symbolic description of their beliefs--it was a positive counterpart to the images of the political machine and the trust which were so frequently anathematized in Progressive rhetoric.

This is made clear at the outset of the novel, as Stover journeys to New Haven for the start of his freshman year. What excites him most is “the free struggle for leadership that was now opening to his joyful combative nature,” a struggle which he approaches “as if the idea were something that could be pursued, tackled, and thrown headlong to the ground.”27 To Stover, already calculating his chances of captaining the Yale varsity in his senior year, the football team represents this free struggle for leadership in its highest form: it is an aristocracy of talent, selected through the impartial procedure of the intrasquad scrimmage, and its members are among the acknowledged representatives of the school. Membership is prima facie evidence of personal success.

From this perspective, the football metaphor expresses a belief in equal opportunity at a time when it was thought that personal autonomy was being hedged about with institutional confinements and restraints. It reflects a desire to maintain the fluidity of society in order that life might still be envisioned as a contest, the outcome of which was decided according to the ability, training, and determination of the participants. Although a man’s success or failure might be to some extent dependent on the calibre of his associates, the metaphor clearly implies that it did not depend on his social or economic background, but simply on the degree to which he possessed those qualities which the “game” itself elicited. As Theodore


Roosevelt once put it, “Athletics are good. . .because they encourage a true democratic spirit; for in the athletic field the man must be judged not with reference to outside and accidental attributes, but to that combination of bodily vigor and moral quality which go to make up prowess.”28 Success, in short, was not a matter of social ascription but of personal achievement, and therefore a reflection of character.

The aptness of the metaphor was reinforced during this period by the manner in which football was thought to function as a ladder of social mobility for graduates of the public school system.29 As such, it represented “one democratic solution to the increasing number of rich men’s sons on the American campus.” And the spirit which it engendered (in the words of President Hadley of Yale) captured “the emotions of the student body in such a way a s to make class distinctions relatively unimportant.”3Q

Hence the idea of a controlled scrimmage provided a perfect analogue for the selection of those natural leaders who Johnson felt were indispensable to the eventuation of social reform. The individual players, chosen for their ability from among the student body at large, and directed by a captain in whom they reposed absolute trust, comprised a n elite which “carried the ball” for its less vigorous brethren. Significantly, this metaphorical elite was university-trained. Like many other Progressives, Johnson viewed the university as a critically important institution. Its essential function was to sanction his natural aristocracy by transforming members of the “society crowd” into useful citizens while serving as a ladder of social mobility for nonsociety men.3*

At the same time the football metaphor redefined the relationship between the leaders and the led. It implied that the actual physical participation in public affairs by the great mass of citizens was either unnecessary or not to be expected. This mirrored the shift of political attention from the local to the national level which occurred at the turn of the century, a shift of which Theodore Roosevelt’s accession to the presidency was the most conspicuous symb01.3~ As a result, politics became a far more “spectatorial” form of activity, since individuals could not hope to have the same political impact on national affairs as they had in their own communities. The spectator, furthermore, was conscious of the contest being waged before his eyes; as such, he was in a position to evaluate the actions of his representatives on the field. There was no allowance for secrecy here: the leaders’ abilities (or lack of them) would be clearly apparent to everyone.33

But there is another sense in which the “game” is used by Johnson, as when Le Baron admonishes Stover to “‘Play the game as others are playing it.”’34 To make a senior society and emerge as aleader of his class, Le Baron counsels him, Stover must abide by the rigid pattern of behavior which the society system imposes on those who compete for membership. This, Stover discovers, is no less true on the football field. What he finds there is not only “the joyful shock of bodies in fa i r combat,” but a “stern discipline. . . subordinating everything to the one purpose, eliminating the


individual factor, demanding absolute subordination to the whole, submerging everything into the machine-that was not a machine only, when once accomplished, but a n immense idea of sacrifice and self- abnegation.” This, too, becomes a metaphor of his relationship to the college. “Directly, clearly visualized, he perceived, for the first time, what he was to perceive in every side of his college career, that a standard had been fashioned to which, irresistibly, subtly, he would have to conform; only here, in the free domain of combat, the standard that imposed itself upon him was something bigger than his own.’135 Football, obviously, was not merely the personal drama to which Stover had initially looked forward. It was a matter of social accommodation as well.

The corresponding emphasis on the proper functioning of the team, and on team spirit, is perhaps the most important aspect of the football metaphor. For by the time Johnson matriculated at Yale (1869), team play had become the essence of the game. Though football was opened up somewhat by the legalization of the forward pass in 1906 (five years before Stover at Yale was published), it is clear from his descriptions of the game that Johnson had in mind the close-ordered formations characteristic of the sport in the 1890’s, when he himself was a studentS3G At that time the line of scrimmage, which previously had extended the entire width of the field, had been “contracted until the players stood shoulder to shoulder as they do today. The backs were drawn in and also stationed close to the line.”37 As a result, open field running had virtually disappeared, to be replaced by a heavy-handed, unimaginative mass and momentum attack characterized by line plunges executed behind heavy interference.38 As a player of the time noted, the most important feature of the game was “clock-like regularity.” It was far better, he added, “to expect moderately rapid work with system, than fast play which savors of individuality and is confused.”39 Johnson himself seemed to share something of this attitude, as he revealed in the following observation: “about the big tackle was always a feeling of confidence, of rugged, immovable determination that perhaps in its steadying influence had built up the team more than his own [Stover’s] individual b r i l l i a n ~ y . ” ~ ~ “‘That’s grandstand playing, my boy; good for you, rotten for the team,”’ barks a coach after Stover has performed a spectacular feat of personal heroics. “‘You’re one of eleven men, not a newspaper phenomenon--get that in your head.”’41

In football, then, each player must submit his own ego to the will of the team. He does not have to repress his aggressive impulses, however, but merely redirect them. This was perhaps why football was so attractive to Progressives: it glorified purposeful activity and social restraint at the same time. Indeed, American educators clearly promoted the sport as a means of sublimating the anti-social tendencies of their budding scholars.42 Its appeal reflects an increased concern with the mechanics of law and order in an era saturated with the worship of brute strength, and thus unwilling to abandon the putative moral influence of competitive strife. Competition, in fac tboth within groups and among them-became more intense, because


individual self-assertion is less restrained where it can be rationalized as a contribution to the welfare of others. Stover, for instance, is a little appalled by the ferocity of his first football practice. “Something sharp went through him at the thought of the man for whose position, ruthlessly, fiercely, he was beginning to fight.” Victory, he sensed, “was built on the broken hopes of a comrade.”43 This tendency becomes even more pronounced as the team prepares for the big game against Princeton, when the substitutes become mere cannon fodder for the first string:

No one paid any attention to the scrubs, fighting desperately with the same loyalty against the odds of weight and organization, without hope of distinction, giving every last ounce of strength in futile, frantic effort, rejoicing when flung aside and crushed under the victorious rush of the varsity, who alone counted. . . The first feeling of sympathy [Stover] had felt so acutely for those who bore all the brunt of the punishment, unrewarded, was gone. He no longer felt any pity, but a brutal joy at the incessant smarting, grinding shock of the attack of which he was part and the touch of prostrate bodies under his rushing feet.“

Stover’s competitive instincts are proportionally liberated as he submerges his own identity in that of the group. To win a starting berth, i.e., to achieve a position of leadership on the team, becomes not a manifestation of self- love but a grave responsibility, recognized even by the scrubs, who rejoice at their own pu l~e r i za t ion .~~

This emphasis on the importance of team work is comprehensible only in terms of the burgeoning attack during these years on the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism, and on its philosophical counterpart-- individualism. Conversely, it must also be understood as a response to the various challenges to personal liberty which arose in the late nineteenth century. On the one hand, rapacious competition seemed to threaten the very fabric of society; on the other, the monopolistic power of social institutions--especially the trusts and the political machines--appeared as a permanent restriction on human freedom. In this situation, as William Appleman Williams has pointed out, “Americans came increasingly to see their society as one composed of groups--farmers, workers, and businessmen--rather than of individuals and sections.”46 What is significant here is that the group as a n aspect of social theory emerged in the form of a compromise between unregenerate individualism and unrestrained collectivism. This involved little deviation from the traditional norms by which most Americans conceived of social dynamics-- what had previously been thought of as the province of the individual was now identified with the group. Americans, in short, merely extended the mental habits associated with laissez faire into a corporate milieu. Where competition (which was still regarded as contributing ultimately to the public good) had previously been envisioned as a pitting of one man against his fellows, it was now understood as a contest of one group against all other groups. Where success had once been regarded as the culmination of a “race” in which victory went to the fleetest of foot, it was now a “game” in


which one’s own activities were circumscribed not merely by the members of opposing groups but by members of one’s own group as well. (It was no accident that G. Stanley Hall observed at this time that games of chase had given way to team By the same token, leadership was also conceptualized as a team effort, and thus redefined as a manifestation of social responsibility rather than of personal ambition. Here we have the basis for the ideology of social service which became the rallying cry of the Progressive movement, as well as of succeeding generations of liberals.

For the individual, this shift in emphasis implied a need for social adjustment: it is the ability to respond to the demands of a common enterprise that signifies one’s own true worth. Hence football is described as a school for character, much as it is today. “The test [Stover] had gone through,” Johnson writes, “had educated him to self-control in its most difficult f0rm.”4~ Though Johnson heartily despised the disciplined, self- controlled personalities who spent their time heeling a social fraternity, he is drawn to football in good measure because it evokes these same traits. Football, however, is never a matter of pure self-interest. While self-control-- subordinating every impulse to one overriding purpose-is of fundamental importance, it is no longer exclusively tied to the pursuit of private ambition.49 This is clearly reflected in the development of Stover’s own character under the impact of collective necessity: he sacrifices his chances of making the All-American team when his services are required at a position for which he is less well suited, and relinquishes the captaincy when his opposition to the society system threatens to undermine the unity of his team. In each case the self-discipline he has learned on the field contributes to the good of the whole. Once again the social dynamics of laissez faire-the rational pursuit of self-interest through self-control--have been modified in order to advance the cause of the group rather than the individual.

Progressive social ideals based on group conflict are inherent in the very structure of the game. At a time when the frontier’s viability as a safety valve was being widely questioned, national consolidation became the animating vision of the reformers. This is why Progressives placed so much emphasis on the rule of law, and devoted so much energy to the problem of defining the values and purposes of their society: hence the appeal of football, where boundaries and objectives were clearly marked out beforehand. While individuals might contend against each other, might strive toward entirely different goals, each was expected to adhere to a prescriptive code of personal behavior, a code which, like the rules of a football game, could not be abrogated without incurring a penalty of some sort. The concept of society as a game, then, conditions the ends sought by establishing preclusive goals and defining the boundaries of the contest; it conditions the manner in which they are pursued by subjecting them to rules and regulations. The responsibility for enforcing the rules did not devolve on the participants themselves, however, for society was no longer regarded as self-regulating. Instead, Progressives tended to agree with


Teddy Roosevelt that “we must have government s u p e r v i s i ~ n , ” ~ ~ though the state was only to function as a “referee” or “umpire,” as a neutral third party whose purpose it was to resolve the various claims among the conflicting interest groups. As such it would serve to maintain social stability in the absence of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” That political organization should be construed in this manner reflects a certain distrust of concentrated authority which had always been characteristic of liberalism-the government’s function would be essentially a negative one, and power (at least in theory) would still be juxtaposed against equal and opposite power in order to maintain an equilibrium of force.

Football, moreover, was a perfect expression of the pragmatic temperament which had fastened itself upon the country. The very image of corporate instrumentalism, football was emblematic of a society in which the individual was increasingly defined in terms of his functional relationship to a group or series of groups within it. The goal of the individual is indistinguishable from the goal of his team; the mobility of the individual up and down the field is a function of the mobility of those with whom he is playing. Even the procedure of the game reflects an instrumental approach to the problems faced by the group. The goals of the team are implicit, and there is a consequent emphasis on technique. Once a modus operandi has been decided upon, it is executed in the form of a play. The team’s decision is then reassessed in the light of experience, the validity of which is determined by reference to its practical consequence. Based on this reassessment a new modus operandi is arrived at, and the team returns to the line of scrimmage in order to experiment on the strength of its latest conclusions. The parallel to the development of pragmatic philosophy is clear. Ideas were merely plans of action. And in the reformulation of pragmatist thinking by Progressives like John Dewey, action was admissible only insofar as it accorded with the general interests of the group.

These plans of action encompassed both long- and short-range goals, an aspect of play embodied primarily in the down system, which allows a team to retain possession of the ball if it can make a limited number ofyards in a finite number of plays. Hence the game encourages not only concern with an ultimate purpose (the touchdown) but with a series of intermediate steps as well (first downs). Even the touchdown is in a sense an intermediate goal, since it does not in and of itself bring victory; and victory is merely the prelude of another fray. Such a n arrangement is an exact representation of what Teddy Roosevelt meant by “practical idealism,” by his injunction not “to put your ideals so high that you feel that there is no use in trying to live up to them, because you cannot do it.”51 Not only was idealism limited to the concrete and the credible by the structure of the game’s objectives; it did not extend beyond the group itself.

Clearly, then, the emotional thrust of Johnson’s rhetoric as reflected in the narrative rather than in the strictly didactic portions of the novel indicates that he was far more ambivalent about the social situation at Yale


than he would have cared to admit. Though he defended the autonomy of the individual against the imperatives of organization as embodied in the trust and the political machine, he was equally alive to the possibilities inherent in mechanization and efficiency, and to a purely functional view of the individual as a member of a “team” or social group. A determined critic of the anti-intellectualism which flourished on the Yale campus, he admired the man of action who accepted the premises of the contest in which he participated. In short, though Johnson was an avowedopponent ofwhat he called “over-organization” in all its various guises, he was simultaneously searching for a concept which would reconcile the advantages of organization with traditional values of personal freedom. Football became for him the very image of this synthesis. When Johnson claimed that football at Yale had been undermined by “the business ideal,” that it was “one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result--success,” he indicated how well the development of football mirrored the growth of corporated o r g a n i z a t i ~ n . ~ ~ Nevertheless, football was fundamentally different from trusts and political machines, where individuals used organization for their own selfish purposes. Football was idealistic--there were no material rewards involved, and efficiency was a natural result of group loyalty achieved through the emotional involvement of its individual members. Defeats invariably resulted from a lack of team spirit, and in fact the Princeton varsity, whose efficient, well-coordinated attack resembles nothing so much as the “perfected, grinding surge of the complete m a ~ h i n e , ” ~ ~ is hard pressed by an inferior Yale squad spiritually welded together beyond thought of their separate selves. Nothing much has happened to change their relationship with each other except in their own minds--but that is all-important.

It is apparent that Johnson and his readers resented the growth of a n organized society yet simultaneously understood its advantages and accepted its inevitability. In this situation football had an immense appeal to them, for it caricatured the highly structured activity which increasingly defined American life, while it denied the sense of estrangement which so many people feared would result from it. Above all else, it was the “spirit of the game” which appealed to them, the subjective aspect of voluntary personal sacrifice in the interest of group harmony. The fact that Stover’s audience would recall his football exploits rather than his reform activities attests not merely its imperviousness to serious argument, but to the irrelevance of many of Johnson’s arguments. Only in the narrative was he able to capture something of the new spirit which was overtaking the nation. And it was that, of course, which his readers remembered.

NOTES

’The writer would like to thank Louis Galambos, Naomi R. Lamoreaux, William R. Taylor, and R. Jackson Wilson for their help in formulating this essay.


”lting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Rooseuelt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), VII, 433-434.

,’The five articles appeared on May 18, May 25, June 8, June 15, and June 22. Each article will hereafter be cited by Roman numeral in the order of its appearance in the series.

4Owen Johson, Stover at Yale (191 1; rpt. New York: Collier-Macmillan,

“Ibid., p.7. “bid., p.20. 71bid., p.14. XIbid., p.269. gIbid., p.196. The student who makes this statement (he is called

“Brockhurst” in the novel, and is the spokesman for many of Johnson’s ideas) is modeled after Henry T. Hunt, reform mayor of Cincinnati, and one of Johnson’s classmates at Yale. It was Hunt who as county prosecutor in the spring of 1911 succeeded in returning the indictments which ended the political career of Boss Cox.

l(]Johnson, “Social Usurpation,” 111, 13. Though Johnson had been elected chairman of the Yale Literary Magazine, and had been admitted to a junior fraternity, he had missed out in his bid for Skull and Bones. Whether this had anything to do with the publication in the Yale Literary Magazine of an editorial mildly critical of the society system one month prior to elections is, of course, impossible to say, but it would help to explain a good deal about Johnson’s attitude toward the system. In any event, Johnson claimed that “Forty years ago the senior society membership was preponderatingly intellectual; the orators, scholars, writers--the intellectual leaders--were almost certain of election. To-day this element has dwindled, constantly yielding to a social note.” (New York Times, May 1, 1913).

i96a), p.20.

llJohnson, Stouer, p.41. 12Ibid. ‘“Ibid., p.40 I4Ibid., p.32. “Sheff’ refers to the Sheffield Scientific School, foundedin

15Johnson, “Social Usurpation,” 111, 23. IfiJohnson, Stouer, p.275. 17Ibid., p.274. 1RThis is the conclusion to which Johnson leads Stover by the end of the

novel. “‘ . . .I’ve come to the point where I believe secrecy is un-American, undemocratic, and stultifying; and, as I say, totally unnecessary,”’ he declares. “‘I should always be against it.”’ (p.300).

1854 in order to provide an undergraduate program in science.

1gJohnson, Stover, p.5. ”Ibid., p.253. Johnson himself formed an organization very similar to

ZlWoodrow Wilson, The New Feedom (1913; rpt. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

Z2Johnson, Stover, p.261.

this during his undergraduate days, called the Wigwam.

Spectrum-PrenticeHall, 1961), p.65.


”Ibid., p.252. Johnson, for instance, specifically criticized both the nature and handling of the reforms which Wilson attempted to introduce as President of Princeton, though he sympathized with Wilson’s intentions.

24Q~oted in Current Literature, July 1912, p.95. According to Johnson, “The novel with a purpose may not be the best kind of novel, but it is the best vehicle for the expression of ideas.”

25Johnson, “Social Usurpation,” I, 10. 26Johnson, “Social Usurpation,” 111, 25. 27Johnson, Stover, p.4. 28Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life,” in Citizenship, Politics

and the Elemental Virtues, ed. Hermann Hagedorn (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), p.484.

2gThis theme (with particular reference to immigrant groups) is stressed in David Riesman and Reuel Denney, “Football in America: A Study in Cultural Diffusion,” American Quarterly, 3(Winter 1951), 309-325. For a dissenting, “Marxist” view, see Paul Hoch, Rip Off the Big Game (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor-Doubleday, 1972).

jOFrederick Rudolph, The American College and University (1962; rpt. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1965), p.378. Johnson himself admitted that athletics, “whatever may be urged against it for over-accentuation, at least serves as a democratic leaven. . . ” (“Social Usurpation,” 11, 36).

“Far from being an expression of rank anti-intellectualism, Johnson is quite clear that football is as much a game of “brains” as it is of force. This is perhaps best indicated by the fact that Stover weighs in at only 141 pounds for the Big Game. For a similar judgment, cf. Walter Camp and Lorin F. Deland’s Football (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896), pp.iii- iv: “The great lesson of the game may be put into a single line: it teaches that brains will always win over muscle!”

”The best description of this development is in Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order: 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).

331n a sense, however, football does make provision for secrecy: this is what happens every time members of a team huddle and accede to a course of action unknown to anyone but themselves, though the agreed-upon strategy (communicated by recourse to a secret code, or signals) quickly becomes apparent once the play gets under way. On the one hand, football is conspiratorial; on the other, the “plot” is always speedily and completely revealed. Hence football substantiated the image which Progressives had of their society, yet simultaneously exploded it--a comforting image. For a description of the use of signals and the huddle in the early game, see Amos Alonzo Stagg and Wesley Winans Stout, Touchdown! (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927), pp.119, 127.

“Johnson, Stover, p.22. ““bid., pp.535. “The one contest which Johnson describes in any detail is clearly

based on the Yale-Princeton game of 1896. Cf. Stover, pp. 102-111 with Caspar Whitney’s weekly “Amateur Sport” column in Harper’s Weekly, 28


November 1896, p.1182. The parallel suggests that Stover’s football exploits are modeled after those of Frank Hinkey, Yale’s great All-American end.

’7Parke H. Davis, “Walter Camp, Father of American Football,” in Oh, How They Played the Game: The Early Days of Football and the Heroes Who Made It Great, ed. Allison Danzig (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p.20.

’*The innovation which apparently prompted this change was the low tackle, originated by Walter Camp in 1888. As described by Parke Davis: “from the fall of 1876, tackling had been of the classic Rugby fashion, waist high ... In the convention of March 3, 1888, Mr. Camp introduced a resolution allowing tackles to be made as low as the knees. Prior to that year formations had found the line of scrimmage stretching widely across the field, with the backs far out, the ball being passed to them always by a long pass. This was the beautiful old open game, so loved and lamented by the oldtimers. And now came the low tackle. It apparently was only a slight change in the rule, but a slight change in the rule can make a profound alteration in the practice of play. Against the sure and deadly low tackle the best of backs no longer could gain consistently in an open field.” (“Walter Camp,” pp.19-20). Hence the logic of the mass play.

’9James R. Church, “Foot-Ball Generally Considered,” in University Foot-Ball: The Play of Each Position Treated by a College Expert, ed. James R. Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), p.9.

““Johnson, Stover, p.177. “‘bid., p.62. “Oscar and Mary F. Handlin, Facing Life: Youth and the Family in

4 ‘Johnson, Stouer, pp.60, 63. -‘41bid., p.91. lSThis celebration of the primitive is in part an attempt by Progressives

such as Johnson to dissociate themselves from the genteel reformers of the late nineteenth century, who (as Roosevelt was later to recall them) were “very nice, very refined, who shook their heads over political corruption and discussed it in drawing-rooms and parlors, but who were unable to grapple with real men in real life.”(Autobiography, ed. Wayne Andrews [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 19581, p.56).

(Cleveland: World, 1961), p.358. Johnson, for example, placed heavy emphasis on the autonomy and cohesion of the college class. One of his chief objections to the society system was that it undermined class unity.

d7G. Stanley Hall, Youth (New York: D. Appleton, 1906), pp.84-85. 4 H J ~ h n ~ ~ n , Stover, p.115. The transformation of football into a school

for character is well described by Donald B. Meyer in his “Early Football,” which he delivered in Boston on April 17,1975, at the Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Professor Meyer was kind enough to make a copy available to me.

49This is evident in the structure of the game. Players are assigned to specific positions whose tasks are defined by reference to the purpose of the

American History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), p.202.

4hWilliam Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History


team as a whole. There is also a formalized division of labor between the backfield and the line, which clearly subordinates the latter to the former. All this is vastly different, say, from the freer and more open style of Rugby.

“Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism (1910; rpt. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Spectrum-Prentice-Hall, 1961), p.28.

”Ibid., pp. 140-14 1. 52Johnson, Stouer, pp.192,195. It is interesting to note that the reforms

of the game which Theodore Roosevelt demanded in 1905 were essentially attempts to suppress the less savory aspects of this “ideal” as they manifested themselves on the playing field: football was coming too closely to resemble the trusts and political machines for which it was supposed to provide a moral equivalent. Thus Roosevelt resolved: 1) to modify the mass brutality of the sport at the same time that he strove to protect the average citizen from the power of the trusts; and 2) to discourge the ranker forms of professionalism (“graft”) that had crept into the game.

53Ibid., p.105.

Documents

Stover at Yale: and the Gridiron Metaphor