Background
George Wheeler Hinman was born on November 19, 1862 in Mount Morris, New York, United States. He was the son of Wheeler and Lydia Kelsey (Seymour) Hinman.
George Wheeler Hinman was born on November 19, 1862 in Mount Morris, New York, United States. He was the son of Wheeler and Lydia Kelsey (Seymour) Hinman.
Hinman attended Mount Morris Academy, entered Hamilton College in 1880, and graduated with honors in 1884. After a little more than a year as a newspaper reporter in Chicago and St. Louis he entered upon advanced studies in economics and public law in the universities of Germany. He studied under Rudolf von Gneist in Berlin and other famous teachers in Leipzig and Heidelberg and received the degree of Ph. D. at Heidelberg in February 1888.
Hinman returned to the United States to begin a long career as a journalist, or publicist, as he preferred to call himself. He joined the staff of the New York Sun (1888), then under the editorial direction of Charles A. Dana, and in time acquired the vigorous, plain-speaking literary style of the elder man.
After nearly ten years with the Sun he became editor-in-chief of the Chicago Inter Ocean (1898) and later president of the company (1902). His editorial ability made his newspaper a powerful influence in the Middle West, but he and his associates never succeeded in placing it on a sound financial basis. In 1912 Hinman disposed of his interest in the Inter Ocean, intending to retire from active editorial work, but in the following year he accepted the presidency of Marietta College. His inaugural address, delivered on October 14, 1913, was a defense of the "representative republic" of the Fathers and a condemnation of the "limitless democracy" which Hinman saw behind the industrial reforms advocated by Presidents Roosevelt and Wilson.
His policy for Marietta College was to secure for its students not only a liberal education, but to give a special education in the problems of the day that every one might know "the verdict of history on such a government as is proposed to us. " Among his own students he fortified his position by teaching in great detail a course in the history of the French Revolution. His policies and his personal methods divided the college body into two antagonistic factions. He did not seek, and likewise did not win, much favor from the alumni body.
On January 1, 1918, he left college administration and returned to Chicago and newspaper work. A life of retirement was foreign to his nature. In 1921 he became head of the association which published the Chicago Herald and Examiner. In March 1923 he resigned this position but conducted a column syndicated in the Hearst papers. His home was at Winnetka, Illinois, and there he died in his sixty-third year, active until the end.
Hinman was always deeply religious.
Quotations: "Education has the imperative duty to prepare men either to fall in with this mighty change intelligently or to resist it intelligently--to let them know just what are these institutions which it is proposed to bring from other ages and peoples and substitute for the institutions that we now have. "
Although Hinman possessed a commanding figure and seemed to enjoy defending his convictions, he was ordinarily gentle and sympathetic.
In 1891 Hinman married Maude M. Sturtevant of New York City. They had had five children.