Thought News
In the spring of 1892, announcements for a new publication, Thought News,began appearing around Ann Arbor.84 Thought News was the brainchild of Dewey and Franklin Ford, a newspaper man previously affiliated with Bradstreet's commercial publications in New York who had migrated to Ann Arbor. Ford had hit upon the idea of information as a commodity that could be scientifically and systematically organized. He conceived of a newspaper that would make intelligence or "thought" readily available, and ultimately sold for profit. Ford found a sympathetic audience in Dewey, and Dewey found a potential vehicle for applying philosophical ideas to interpret the movement of the currents of life.
Ford's brother, Corydon Lovine Ford, rather philosophically described how the two brothers had come to meet Dewey: "Professor Dewey of Philosophy, sawed with me on the schools and welcomed the proposition of a new economy in the State through the organization of intelligence–he was searching for the State when my brother and I found him."85 Dewey wrote to Henry Carter Adams in 1889 explaining that Franklin Ford's idea "is not that of simply 'telling' the truth–the idea of the independent newspaper–but of findingout what the truth is."86 Dewey also enclosed a two-page memorandum that attempted to explain further Ford's concept. By early 1892, the idea had evolved to the point that a launch date of April 1892 could be set.
Advertisements for the new publication promised a "journal which shall not go beyond the fact; which shall report thought rather than dress it up in the garments of the past"; and will use philosophic ideas as "tools in interpreting the movement of thought; which shall treat questions of science, letters, state, school and church as parts of one moving life of man." The advertisement went on to state that "immediate responsibility for its conduct will be in the hands of John Dewey."87 Newspaperstook note of Dewey's fantastic new idea and Thought News was the subject of several articles as they tried to determine whether it was a new rival or a true revolution.
Sensationalized stories in the newspapers forced Dewey to respond to accusations that "he proposes to get out an 'extra' every time he has a new thought."88 Dewey was interviewed by the Detroit Tribuneand dispelled notions that he was planning a revolution. He admitted that, "at the University we are more or less shut off in our study of psychology and ethics by the facts themselves." The attempt was to introduce "a little newspaper business" into philosophy. Dewey explained, "we would get their facts and the outside inquirers would get our theory and methods?the benefit of system and interpretation."89 But despite the media attention and advertisements, not a single issue of Thought Newswas ever printed. Dewey would later describe the project as "over-enthusiastic," noting, "the idea was advanced for those days, but it was too advanced for the maturity of those whose had the idea in mind."90
Even though Dewey remained at Michigan for two years after the Thought Newsepisode, it seems a fitting epilogue to his time at Michigan. On one hand it suggests the jelling of his philosophy and an eagerness for change and reform. But it also indicated that he was in search of a laboratory in which to put his theories into practice. Thought Newsfound Dewey ready for a larger stage on which to put reform ideas into action.
In 1894, William Rainey Harper and the University of Chicago provided the larger stage for Dewey and a laboratory in where he could test his theories. Well endowed with private funds, the University of Chicago was able to offer salaries far higher than Michigan could. It was a fact President Angell had addressed in 1892 when he lobbied for raises in faculty salaries noting, "some universities west of us are paying salaries much higher than ours," and adding "we are constantly in danger of losing some of our most valuable men."91 Yet it was more than the salary that attracted Dewey to Chicago. The University of Chicago promised the opportunity to develop and operate a demonstration school; University Laboratory School opened in 1896, giving Dewey his important testing ground. In Democracy and Educationhe would later call education "the laboratory in which philosophic distinctions become concrete and tested."92 It would not be until 1924, thirty years after Dewey left, that a demonstration school would open its doors on Michigan's campus.
At Chicago, Dewey would eventually be joined by several Michigan colleagues, including George Herbert Mead and Albert H. Lloyd, and former students Frank Addison Manny and James Rowland Angell. When William James of Harvard University wrote to Dewey in March 1903 praising what he saw as an emerging "new school of thought" in Chicago, Dewey responded, "We have all been at work at it for about twelve years. Lloyd and Mead were at it in Ann Arbor ten years ago."93 Dewey's response to James, acknowledging the work done in Ann Arbor, underscores the importance of the University of Michigan to the development of his philosophy. Michigan provided the opportunity and environment for Dewey to cultivate his ideas that later grew to maturity in Chicago.
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