2. Secrets of the "Tomb"
The Order flourished from the very beginning in spite of occasional
squalls of controversy. There was dissension from some professors, who
didn't like its secrecy and exclusiveness. And there was backlash from
students, showing concern about the influence "Bones" was having over
Yale finances and the favoritism shown to "Bonesmen."
In October of 1873, Volume 1, Number 1, of The Iconoclast was
published in New Haven. It was only published once and was one of very
few openly published articles on the Order of Skull and Bones.
From The Iconoclast:
"We speak through a new publication. because the college press is
closed to those who dare to openly mention 'Bones'....
"Out of every class Skull and Bones takes its men. They have gone out
into the world and have become, in many instances, leaders in society.
They have obtained control of Yale. Its business is performed by them.
Money paid to the college must pass into their hands, and be subject
to their will. No doubt they are worthy men in themselves, but the
many, whom they looked down upon while in college, cannot so far
forget as to give money freely into their hands. Men in Wall Street
complain that the college comes straight to them for help, instead of
asking each graduate for his share. The reason is found in a remark
made by one of Yale's and America's first men: 'Few will give but
Bones men and they care far more for their society than they do for
the college....'
"Year by year the deadly evil is growing. The society was never as
obnoxious to the college as it is today, and it is just this
ill-feeling that shuts the pockets of non-members. Never before has it
shown such arrogance and self-fancied superiority. It grasps the
College Press and endeavors to rule it all. It does not deign to show
its credentials, but clutches at power with the silence of conscious
guilt.
"To tell the good which Yale College has done would be well nigh
impossible. To tell the good she might do would be yet more difficult.
The question, then, is reduced to this -- on the one hand lies a
source of incalculable good -- on the other a society guilty of
serious and far-reaching crimes. It is Yale College against Skull and
Bones!! We ask all men, as a question of right, which should be
allowed to live?"
At first, the society held its meetings in hired halls. Then in 1856,
the "tomb", a vine-covered, windowless, brown-stone hall was
constructed, where to this day the "Bonesmen" hold their "strange,
occultish" initiation rites and meet each Thursday and Sunday.
On September 29, 1876, a group calling itself "The Order of File and
Claw" broke into the Skull and Bones' holy of holies. In the "tomb"
they found lodge-room 324 "fitted up in black velvet, even the walls
being covered with the material." Upstairs was lodge-room 322, "the
'sanctum sanctorium' of the temple... furnished in red velvet" with a
pentagram on the wall. In the hall are "pictures of the founders of
Bones at Yale, and of members of the Society in Germany, when the
chapter was established here in 1832." The raiding party found another
interesting scene in the parlor next to room 322.
From "The Fall Of Skull And Bones":
"On the west wall, hung among other pictures, an old engraving
representing an open burial vault, in which, on a stone slab, rest
four human skulls, grouped about a fools cap and bells, an open book,
several mathematical instruments, a beggar's scrip, and a royal crown.
On the arched wall above the vault are the explanatory words, in Roman
letters, 'We War Der Thor, Wer Weiser, Wer Bettler Oder, Kaiser?' and
below the vault is engraved, in German characters, the sentence; 'Ob
Arm, Ob Beich, im Tode gleich.'
The picture is accompanied by a card on which is written, 'From the
German Chapter. Presented by D. C. Gilman of D. 50'."
Daniel Coit Gilman ('52), along with two other "Bonesmen," formed a
troika which still influences American life today. Soon after their
initiation in Skull and Bones, Daniel Gilman, Timothy Dwight ('49) and
Andrew Dickinson White ('53) went to study philosophy in Europe at the
University of Berlin. Gilman returned from Europe and incorporated
Skull and Bones as Russell Trust, in 1856, with himself as Treasurer
and William H. Russell as President. He spent the next fourteen years
in New Haven consolidating the order's power.
Gilman was appointed Librarian at Yale in 1858. Through shrewd
political maneuvering, he acquired funding for Yale's science
departments (Sheffield Scientific School) and was able to get the
Morrill Land Bill introduced in Congress, passed and finally signed by
President Lincoln, after being vetoed by President Buchanan.
This bill, "donating public-lands for State College for agriculture
and sciences", is now known as the Land Grant College Act. Yale was
the first school in America to get the federal land scrip and quickly
grabbed all of Connecticut's share at the time. Pleased by the
acquisitions, Yale made Gilman a Professor of Physical Geography.
Daniel was the first President of the University of California. He
also helped found, and was the first president of, John Hopkins.
Gilman was first president of the Carnegie Institution and involved in
the founding of the Peabody, Slater and Russell Sage Foundations.
His buddy, Andrew D. White, was the first president of Cornell
University (which received all of New York's share of the Land Grant
College Act), U.S. Minister to Russia, U.S. Ambassador to Berlin and
first president of the American Historical Association. White was also
Chairman of the American delegation to the first Hague Conference in
1899, which established an international judiciary.
Timothy Dwight, a professor at Yale Divinity School, was installed as
president of Yale in 1886. All presidents since, have been either
"Bonesmen" or directly tied to the Order and its interests.
The Daniel/Gilman/White trio was also responsible for the founding of
the American Economic Association, the American Chemical Society and
the American Psychological Association. Through their influences on
John Dewey and Horace Mann, this trio continues to have an enormous
impact on education today.
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