Education: Pupils in Prison

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Last week Professor Alfred Marius Neilsen of New York University gave a lecture in a course on Modern Business. Students laughed long & loud at his jokes. They stayed half an hour after class to ask questions. Scores of them edged up to shake his hand, beg for more.

Professor Neilsen is able and popular but his students at N. Y. U. never behave like that. Last week's pupils were the 210 most intelligent inmates of New York's Sing Sing prison. Professor Neilsen's lecture on Business and the Weather was second in a series of 13 to be volunteered by the faculty of N. Y. U.'s School of Commerce, Accounts & Finance. First lecture last fortnight was on Money. Future subjects: Real Estate Outlook; Plans for Relief of Depression; How to Evaluate Industrial Securities; Corporation Financing.

Ever concerned for his wards' morale and rehabilitation, Sing Sing's Warden Lewis E. Lawes already had a full-fledged prison school supervised by a civil service employe, with educated inmates on the faculty. But looking over his Depression crop of prisoners, Warden Lawes decided some of them needed more advanced instruction. N. Y. U.'s Commerce Dean John Thomas Madden agreed.

Said Dean Madden last week: "This idea is a mighty fine one, especially at this time. There are many men here who would not have been here five years ago. They committed no strange offenses. They merely carried on the business practices they had been used to. But these practices, with the advent of Depression, became criminal."

Though the names of prisoners taking N. Y. U.'s course were kept secret. Sing Sing inmates who could have told the professors something about the practical side of their subjects included Frank H. Warder, onetime New York State Superintendent of Banks; Bernard K. Marcus and Saul Singer, onetime president and executive vice president respectively of New York's Bank of United States.

Sing Sing's lecture room, a long, bare hall set off by iron wickets from its library, was packed last week when fat, jolly Professor Neilsen walked in without a guard. He found his listeners most interested in aviation and weather forecasting. He had to translate "cyclonic and anticyclonic disturbances" into "fair and foul weather,' but went away with the opinion that 20 or 30 of his listeners had "very high college intelligence." Said he: "There was no difference in talking to them and in talking to a group of college freshmen."