William Henry Maxwell

The place of William Henry Maxwell among the really great American educators was long ago assured. Had it needed official confirmation, the special act of the New York legislature, creating for him at the time of his physical disability the position of Superintendent of Schools Emeritus, and the vote of the City Board of Estimate to continue his full salary on his retirement to that office would notably have served the purpose. This unusual action was spontaneous. It was the sense of both those political bodies, as of the army of instructors and the general public, that Dr. Maxwell had not merely displayed in rare degree the executive and organizing quality, and had not inspired the New York teachers with his own ideas of wholesome progress in educational methods, but that he had stood firmly against the fantastic notions which obtained a hearing in so many circles of primary instruction. Against the idea of using New York’s children for the experimentum in corpore vili after every new proposal of the sort, the Superintendent successfully opposed the whole force of his robust intellect.

What made the political tribute to his service more remarkable was the fact that political control over the school system’s personnel was resisted quite as successfully. The influence exercised by Dr. Maxwell upon his executive colleagues and the political machine was very remarkable. If, as was often said, he was himself no ordinary politician, it was because he had mastered political strategy of the highest sort, and because his firmness and sincerity brought him the public’s unvarying support. How sane and sensible his ideas of his special problems were, and how complete his own confidence in his power to translate them into action, was well known in the Century, where he used to describe, with easy frankness and with that humorous twinkle of the eye, his collision with his occasional political antagonists.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1921 Century Association Yearbook