64 JL 100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



Fimc&ng and ControC 



The original trustees tended to have a conservative vision of what was 

 possible or expedient. The group included Hyatt, of course, and several 

 other professors of zoology or botany in Boston (William Farlow, Charles 

 Minot, and William Sedgwick), but also representatives of the Boston Society 

 of Natural History's ancestral links to the MBL (Florence Gushing, Susan 

 Minns, Samuel Wells). At first, this mixture of scientific and nonscientific 

 individuals enthusiastically supported the MBL projects. They raised money 

 by giving lecture series and sponsoring concerts and other popular events 

 of the time, and they circulated announcements of the Laboratory session. 

 Whitman helped with much of the fund-raising as well and gave his own 

 time, potential salary, and additional monies to help the MBL. 



Every year. Whitman presented his expanding plans to the trustees. 

 Sometimes he just went ahead and made commitments and spent money 

 without official permission. Some of the trustees began to rebel. They 

 fretted about the increasingly professional and research-oriented direction 

 of the MBL and about what some saw as Whitman's desire for increasing 

 control, as well as his tendency not to worry very seriously about running at 

 a deficit. At the same time, the number of trustees gradually grew larger. 

 Some were added because of their scientific reputations; others, because 

 they were important people and held the prospects of providing financial 

 support, or because they had particularly endorsed the basic idea behind 

 the MBL summer school. The balance began to shift away from the natural 

 history school plans of the original group and increasingly toward the more 

 expansive and less locally oriented idea of developing a leading research 

 laboratory. 



Major changes came about in 1897, following a minor revolution. After 

 the 1896 session some of the trustees concluded that Whitman had finally 

 overstepped all reasonable bounds in spending funds without official per- 

 mission. They refused to provide further funds and even threatened to close 

 the Laboratory altogether. Eventually, the crisis was resolved at least long 

 enough for the summer session to continue more or less as planned. Fewer 

 students did attend, however, because the trustees' disagreements had 

 delayed the announcements, and people simply did not know whetiier the 

 MBL would even exist in 1897. School teachers had to make plans and often 

 had only limited financial support to attend such a school; they could not 

 afford to wait until the very last minute. This disagreeable state of affairs 

 simply could not persist. So the scientists, with Whitman at tiie helm, staged 

 a quiet revolution. 



At the corporation meeting in Woods Hole in 1897, the group voted for 

 changes. The MBL Corporation has always played a role in directing tiie 

 laboratory and technically ouns the facility, but that role received consid- 



