Intercollegiate debate: reflecting American culture, 1900-1930.

• Author: Keenan, Claudia J.
• Position: Report

EMORY DEBATERS WIN SEVEN VICTORIES; TEAM CONQUERS RAGING FLOODS, CRIPPLED RAILROADS, AND BRILLIANT SPEAKERS ("Emory Debaters ...," 1927).

If debaters ever were conquering heroes, this would be the moment. On April 3, 1927, Emory University student David A. Lockmiller wrote in his diary: "Work on debates again. Make progress on war debts and prohibition" (Lockmiller, 1927 April 3). Now, sixteen days later, he and his partner, Reginald McDuffee, were back in Atlanta after a debate tour at the height of the Great Mississippi River Flood, during which they defeated Birmingham-South, Arkansas, Southern Methodist, McCurry, Baylor, Louisiana State University, and Tulane. The newspaper headline printed above was as big and bold as the raging river. After years of more defeats than wins, Emory's debate team really did have a "place in the sun" ("Emory is Victor," 1925).

In the late 19th century when intercollegiate debate became widely popular, victories like Emory's generated plenty of hoopla. "The old armory was packed to the rafters with cheering throngs, all in evening clothes [...] torchlight processions formed to welcome teams returning from battles on alien fields," one speech professor would recall (Phifer, 1963). On some campuses, debate contests generated ferocity and fanfare similar to college football rivalries, leading various observers to note that both activities were "sports" with similar features. But the comparison was superficial. Policy debate-a form of speech competition in which teams of two debate the worthiness of a specific policy action-contrasted with the brutal encounters of college football, on one hand, and the frivolity of campus society on the other. A fundamentally serious business, it demanded extensive research and analysis, volumes of reading and many hours of rehearsing and critiquing. If debate was a challenge to the debaters themselves, so it was for observers who found it academic and confusing. Not surprisingly, poor attendance plagued debate events right from the start, and while debate victories fostered school spirit, the real fun lay with athletics and fraternities. In an era when college students giddily sought entertainment and escapades, it is remarkable that an enterprise as cerebral as debate drew the student body's interest at all.

Gazing from the pages of early 20th century yearbooks, debaters appeared in formal dress, clutching their loving cup trophies, perhaps lounging around a library table or sitting stiffly in rows of chairs. Their coaches rarely appeared in these photographs, an absence just a bit ironic because so much of what we envisage as the history of intercollegiate debate is wound up with the coaches, their lore, and the emergence of the discipline of public speaking. Between World War I and World War II, an aristocracy of coaches and academics regularly debated debate, sometimes quite fiercely, in correspondence, at meetings, and in the pages of the Quarterly Journal of Speech. They debated the purposes and goals of intercollegiate debate, the outcomes, protocol, teaching and coaching, philosophy and approach, departmental territory, professional recognition, and much more. To the extent that there is a historiography of early 20th century debate, it has been dominated by the correspondence, oral histories, and records of these notable men, and several women, who published widely and whose voluminous papers have been gathered in college and university archives. If the early debaters' experiences have seemed marginal to the story, it may be because there is scant documentation of how they went about their work on a day to day basis, for few of their recollections and reflections are extant. Typecast as eggheads, largely unaware of the crossfire among their elders, most debaters diligently followed the rituals of research, writing, and revising, their personas reflecting dedication and accomplishment. Debate was hard work; debaters boasted it, coaches decreed it, professors acknowledged it, and editors editorialized it. Debaters were hard workers; everyone knew that. But most people were ignorant about the details of preparation and how students made room for it in their lives- or rather, made room for their lives around it. Inevitably, little historical attention has been given to the debaters' experience during the formative decades of intercollegiate debate.

This paper is a tentative consideration of those early debaters, based on a small sampling of young men who debated at Emory University, New York University, and the University of Chicago between 1900 and 1930. In the first part I describe several debaters, who they were and who they became. Despite the scant information about them, is it possible to discern how debating may have affected their lives? How did they fit into campus culture, particularly at a time when students conventionally scorned academic study and had little interest in the political and economic issues that were the lifeblood of the debaters (Thelin, 2004, p. 158)?

In the second part of this paper, I describe how the work of intercollegiate debaters became entwined with emerging research technology. During the first few years of the 20th century, with the popularization of debate, the market for handbooks, yearbooks, and manuals began to expand. These books enabled debaters to become highly skilled researchers by teaching them how to locate evidence within the growing literature. Such proficiency put them in the vanguard as information became an essential commodity in many fields. In this way, while intercollegiate debate may have been perceived as a relatively obscure enterprise it intersected in several important ways with changing American culture.

ANTECEDENTS

The earliest intercollegiate debate occurred between Illinois College and Knox College in 1881 (Reid, 2000). Debates grew out of rhetorical competitions sponsored by the literary societies that flourished on campuses during the early nineteenth century. While the term "literary society" evokes the study of literature, it more accurately refers to a widening command of knowledge (Graft, 1987, p. 44). The societies, which were exclusive, provided a forum for students to discuss and declaim outside of the classroom. In this way, many students made an intellectual transition from the interpretation of the ideas of others to the formulation of their own ideas. Through the nineteenth century, debaters depended upon several well-known guides to speaking and argumentation; these contained long lists of topics tending toward philosophy and morals. For example, The American Debater (McElligott, 1882) suggested these two questions: Which is better for the development of character, riches or poverty? Is childhood the happiest time in human life? Students who argued these topics invoked ethics buttressed with references to classical works, as they were told to do. For example, the author of The Debater proposed the topic, "Do titles operate beneficially in a community?" along with suggested readings: "Paley on Honour, Bentham on the Rationale of Reward, MacIntyre's Influence of Aristocracies, and Hamilton on Rewards" (Rowton, 1850, p. 296). Over time, the literary societies produced debates that stressed evidence over opinion; for example, "Which helps the world most, capital or labor?" During Jane Addams' years at Rockford Seminary (1877-1881), topics included whether French women "have more influence through literature than politics" (Knight, 2005, p. 87). Eventually the debates expanded beyond the confines of the individual societies, with most campuses boasting at least two competing groups.

While interest in intramural rivalries continued apace, after 1890 several colleges branched out to organize regional leagues with set schedules and topics. In 1892, Harvard and Yale formalized an annual debate. In 1896, a University of Michigan elocution professor, Thomas Trueblood, formed the Central Debating League comprised of Northwestern and the universities of Michigan, Minnesota, and Chicago while Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell established a triangular league in 1904. The first debate between women's colleges occurred in 1902 with Wellesley competing against Vassar, and in 1906 the New England schools Brown, Dartmouth, and Williams formed a triangular league (Vassar Miscellany, 1915; Mitchell, 1993). By 1912, 41 of the existing 47 states boasted colleges and universities with debate teams. So many colleges fielded teams that it is impossible to give a sense of the range and complexity of participation without offering a few examples. In Minnesota, Carleton debated Coe and Ripon while Gustavus Adolphus debated Hamline; Macalester debated St. Olaf; the University of Minnesota debated the universities of Nebraska and Wisconsin (Nichols, 1913, Appendix). The Arkansas Pentagonal League comprised the universities of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Tennessee (Nichols, 1913, Appendix). Historically black colleges committed to intercollegiate debate in 1909 when Howard, Fisk, and Atlanta University formed a triangular league, and the western and southern states pursued myriad arrangements (Nichols, 1913, Appendix). Soon enough, intercollegiate debate constituted a sweeping national system that gained structure and oversight each year, more participants and greater expenses. The expansion of debate is evident in the appendices of debate "year books" edited by the legendary debate coach Egbert Ray Nichols between 1912 and World War II. Over time more coaches, managers, club officers, and professors appeared in the descriptions of teams (Nichols, 1912, Appendix; 1917, Appendix).

As debaters maneuvered into the world, they visited places that were completely new to them, college towns and big cities where they were greeted by marching bands, feted at buffet luncheons and smokers, and occasionally even received an offer to have their clothing...