John Hanson Thomas Main

Background

John Hanson Thomas Main was born on April 2, 1859, in Toledo, Ohio, and was the son of Hezekiah Best and Margaret (Costello) Main. His father was a farmer, a descendant of early seventeenth-century settlers in Maryland.

Education

John Main attended Moore's Hill College (now University of Evansville), Indiana, and received the degrees of Bachelor of science in 1876, Bachelor of Arts in 1880, and Master of Art in 1883. John Main then went to Johns Hopkins University as a senior fellow in Greek and took seminars with the great classicist Basil Gildersleeve, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy in 1892.

Career

From 1880 to 1889, John Main served in Moore's Hill College (the now University of Evansville) as professor of ancient languages. Main’s idealism was needed at Grinnell in 1892. The college’s physical plant had been destroyed by a tornado 10 years earlier. The college also was on the eve of a crisis of leadership: trustees were questioning President George Gates’s Social Gospel, a gospel fervently preached by the charismatic professor of Applied Christianity George Herron, who arrived on campus in 1893 and the next year gained publicity as a "polished anarchist" for his commencement address at the University of Nebraska. The trustees criticized Herron’s "intemperate exaggeration and violent condemnation of persons and institutions." Eventually, in 1899 his radical ideas on society, concerns about his teaching, and rumors about his personal life forced Herron to resign. Gates, whose resignation soon followed, wrote to John Main, "I wish the Faculty could run Iowa College; then I could leap for joy." Gates had gathered a new and talented faculty, and John Main, a tall and commanding figure, was recognized as one of its leaders, becoming secretary of the faculty and a key figure in a curricular reform that created a group system of requirements, ironically slighting the traditional classics in favor of the modern sciences. He was a steadying influence during the Herron affair and was appointed acting president when Gates resigned. The trustees hesitated to appoint him president and asked for his "attitude toward Mr. Herron and his teachings." John Main replied with a defense of academic freedom. The trustees chose a "safe" clergyman, Dan Bradley, who did not last.

In 1889-1890, John Main became an assistant in Greek and Latin at the Baltimore College for Women. He then became a professor of Greek in Iowa College, served as acting president from 1900 to 1902, and as dean of the faculty from 1902 to 1906, when he was elected president. He began his presidency with a successful campaign to raise $500,000. He quickly started another, and continuing campaigns brought a provincial Iowa college to national rank and some of its 1911 and 1912 Iowa graduates - Harry Hopkins, Chester Davis, Joseph Welch, Paul Appleby, Hallie Flanagan, and Oliver Buckley - to significant national service. Main secularized Gates’s Social Gospel to give Grinnell a distinctive ethos. John Main also gave Grinnell its distinctive architectural form. Opposed to fraternities and sororities, he built separate women’s and men’s quadrangles. Main’s ambitious building program included a chapel, an alumni recitation hall, a heating plant, and an athletic field and grandstand. John Main was responsible for other innovations as well. A Harvard exchange relationship brought distinguished visitors; an endowed Gates Lecture Series brought leading interpreters of the Social Gospel to the campus. In 1913 a Grinnell-in-China program began. World War I brought a halt to programs and plans: male students became members of a Student Army Training Corps; and John Main went to Syria and Armenia in 1918-1919 to investigate famine conditions as a member of a Commission on the Near East.

In 1917 John Main had started another endowment campaign. But the war and its aftermath had diminished the million dollars in pledges that had been the basis for a grant of $500,000 from the General Education Board. He labored tirelessly in the 1920s to secure the pledges.

In 1924, John Main was appointed a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Learning. During his twenty-five years as president of Grinnell College, Main brought about far-reaching changes in the life of that college. The college doubled the number of students to 785 in 1925, but the advent of the Great Depression in 1929 prevented the completion of his last campaign.

Always a scholar, John Main likewise became an effective administrator and man of affairs. He sought to pattern Grinnell somewhat after Oxford University and therefore built extensive and beautiful dormitories, both for men and women. He also added a large recitation hall and a president's house. These building projects and the improvement of the faculty necessitated frequent campaigns for funds which were usually successfully carried out.

His enthusiasm for the Grinnell-in-China program kept it alive through the financial crisis and waning interest. When John Main died in 1931, Grinnell-in-China lost its biggest supporter and the official Grinnell-China connection was severed.

John Main died on April 1, 1931, on the eve of his seventy-second birthday, having literally by overwork laid down his life for the college during his last years. He was remembered by a faculty member as personifying "the driving force of ideals."

Achievements

• John Main headed the Home Board for the Grinnell-in-China program, securing funds and teachers for the Porter-Wyckoff schools. Main was deeply interested in international affairs and urged the entry of the United States into the League of Nations.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Locative Expressions in the Attic Orators

    (French Edition)

  • Inaugural Address: The College, its Ideals and its Problems by President John Hanson Thomas Main
  • Baccalaureate Addresses: Delivered on Commencement Day 1906-1930

Religion

An idealist of a deeply spiritual nature, Main drew his inspiration chiefly from Plato and the New Testament.

Views

A leader of great vision, John Main believed in youth, brought out the best in them, and in the college established a system of student self-government. A firm believer in the English ideal of education, he was zealous in trying to build character in his students. Through his chapel and vesper talks, John Main exercised great influence over them and commanded from them a rare loyalty. They were greatly impressed by his intellectual powers and his idealism.

John Main believed wholeheartedly in the creative education of the liberal-arts type and also incomplete academic freedom. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the English-Speaking Union. In his inauguration address, John Main emphasized the duty of service. A practical idealist, he knew that colleges needed more than ideals. John Main was also rather autocratic.

Quotations: "If the end of life is service, as we believe, it is the duty of the college to do more than hold up the ideal of service."

"Women’s work as a homemaker, as spiritual leader and guide of the rising generation, has received scant notice in the classroom or in the general life of the College."

"Nothing can be more important in the education of our youth than to give them admission to their heritage as social beings, to liberate them from enslavement to themselves as individuals."

Membership

At the close of the First World War, Main became a member of the American Relief Commission in the Near East.

Personality

Naturally shy, John Main, nevertheless, became a very effective public speaker. One of his notable qualities was his ability to adjust his outlook to changing conditions. In consequence, he revised the curriculum, shifting the emphasis from the classics to modern languages, the natural and social sciences, and the fine arts. In this move, he was bitterly opposed by a minority of his faculty. Perhaps his greatest weakness was that he was not always wise in his selection of new faculty members. To bring Grinnell into close contact with the outside world, he established the Gates Memorial Lectureship and annual exchange of professorships with Harvard University. These became a great stimulus to the spiritual and intellectual life of the college.

John Main possessed great courage and persistence, even against the heaviest odds. Behind an apparent reserve lay a warm-hearted, affectionate nature, and a sensitive spirit which was quickly responsive to beauty, love, and sympathy.

Quotes from others about the person

• John S. Nollen, his colleague and presidential successor at Grinnell: "Like the good Greek that he was, he remained a follower of Plato, an uncompromising idealist...and his clear eyes were unwaveringly fixed on...the Good, the True, and the Beautiful."

Connections

John Main was married to Emma (Myers) Main on January 18, 1881.

Father:

Hezekiah Best Main

Mother:

Margaret (Costello) Main

Spouse:

Emma (Myers) Main

colleague:

John S. Nollen

References

• Hudson, D., Bergman, M., & Horton, L. (Eds.) The biographical dictionary of Iowa
  2009