THE LIGHTNING-CHANGE ARTIST
President Butler’s career at Columbia has been like that of a drunken
motorist in a crowded street; he has left behind him a trail of corpses.
In the course of twenty years of office he has managed to expel or force
to withdraw some two score men, including most of the best in the place.
The cases of MacDowell and Woodberry occurred in 1902, the cases of Peck
and Spingarn in 1910 and 1911. Beginning in 1917 there was a sudden
series of casualties; but before these can be clearly explained, it is
necessary that the reader should be made acquainted with another aspect
of the career of Nicholas Miraculous—as pacifist and prophet of the
Capitalist International.
Butler’s friend, Carnegie, put up ten million dollars to establish a
foundation in the cause of universal peace; and Butler became a trustee.
The pointed question has been asked whether the Carnegie Peace
Foundation pays for the elaborate banquets which President Butler serves
to peace delegates in his home. Needless to say, when you have half a
million dollars a year to administer, you can hire a great many
secretaries, and print a great deal of literature, and give a great many
champagne banquets, and make a great splurge in the world. Butler
engaged a young man, Leon Fraser, to organize a peace movement in the
colleges, and had him made an instructor in the department of political
science at Columbia. We shall see in a minute what happened to this
young man.
In the summer of 1914 Butler went to Europe to continue his peace
work—but not with entire success. He came home in September, very much
horrified at what had happened in Europe, and to the students at the
opening of the university he made a speech in which you find him at his
best, with his clear, keen mind and driving energy. He denounced the
war-makers in language which left nothing to be desired. One thing this
war had done, he said; it had “put a final end to the contention, always
stupid and often insincere, that huge armaments are an insurance against
war and an aid in maintaining peace. This argument was invented by the
war-makers who had munitions of war to sell.... Since war is an affair
of governments and of armies, one result of the present war should be to
make the manufacture and sale of munitions of war a government monopoly
hereafter.... How anyone not fit subject for a madhouse, can find in the
awful events now happening in Europe a reason for increasing the
military and naval establishments and expenditures of the United States
is to me wholly inconceivable. Militarism—there is the enemy!”
Good for Nicholas Miraculous, you say! That is the sort of college
president we want in America! But in the cold light of the morning after
our pacifist orator thought it over. Perhaps he remembered his
interlocking directorate—the grim-visaged, growling wild boar, old
Pierpont Morgan, preparing to make his billion dollars out of the
British government; young Marcellus Hartley Dodge, chairman of Remington
Arms and Union Metallic Cartridge, getting ready to clean up his
millions by cornering the market in munitions machinery! How awkward to
meet Marcellus Hartley on the board, after talking about “the
contention, always stupid and often insincere ... invented by war-makers
who have munitions of war to sell!” Also, Butler was expecting to be
Republican candidate for president two years from date; and it would not
be easy to carry Elihu Root and Bill Barnes and Jim Wadsworth for a
government monopoly of Remington Arms and Union Metallic Cartridge, to
say nothing of Bethlehem and Carnegie Steel!
So President Butler sat himself down and edited his eloquence. The
passages I have quoted are from the speech as given to the newspapers,
September 24, 1914; but now see how it reads as published in Butler’s
book, “America in Ferment.” “The contention, always stupid and often
insincere,” is softened to “the contention, always made with more
emphasis than reasonableness.” The argument which was “invented by the
war-makers who have munitions of war to sell” now becomes an argument
which was “invented by those who really believe in war and in armaments
as ends in themselves.” That lets out Marcellus Hartley, you see; in
fact, it lets out Butler’s friend the Kaiser, and everybody in the world
since Genghis Khan. The proposed plank for the Republican party’s
presidential platform, providing for a government monopoly of the
manufacture and sale of munitions of war, has been dropped overboard and
lost forever; while the phrase about “increasing the military and naval
establishments and expenditures of the United States” has been deftly
turned into “asking the United States to desist from its attempts to
promote a new international order in the world!” Let nobody expect that
Nicholas Miraculous will abandon his charge of that half million dollars
a year of Carnegie money!
After this you will be prepared for any amount of hedging. President
Butler had for ten years been conducting with President Wheeler of the
University of California an ardent rivalry for the affections of the
Kaiser; but now the interlocking directorate is going to “can the
Kaiser,” and their university president is going to enlist in the
speech-making brigade. Wheeler of California is three thousand miles
away from the seat of authority, but Butler gets the “tip” in time, and
saves himself by climbing out on the faces of those who took seriously
his belief in universal peace.
For example, Leon Fraser, the young instructor who has been set to work
organizing peace societies in American colleges, including Columbia!
President Butler had sent a dean to ask Professor Beard to take Fraser
into his department; now he sent the dean to ask Beard to drop Fraser
again. Professor Beard, who has a capacity for indignation, told the
dean that Fraser had done what he had been employed to do, and had done
it sincerely and capably, therefore it was his intention to propose
Fraser for a full professorship; and then Beard showed the dean to the
door. Beard took the matter to the members of his department, and they
agreed unanimously that Fraser should be promoted.
Knowing Butler as you now do, you will understand that he marked two
more victims on his blacklist. One was Fraser and the other was Beard.
Fraser was got rid of quickly; as soon as America entered the war,
Butler announced that Columbia would not need so many professors, so he
dropped three, Fraser among them. Subsequently he took back the other
two; but Fraser meantime had enlisted. The dean remarked to a friend of
mine, a Columbia professor, how fortunate it was that Fraser had gone to
the war, so that a scandal over the question of his dismissal had been
avoided. “Yes,” replied my friend, “and wouldn’t it be fortunate if he
were shot to pieces, so that he could never come back and tell how
Columbia treated him?”
The next experience in order of time is that of Professors Cattell and
Dana; but since we have seen Beard put on the blacklist, perhaps we had
better finish his story. Charles A. Beard is a sincere and determined
fighter; incidentally, he is one of America’s leading economists and
scholars. There was an uproar in the newspapers over the charge that a
labor leader, speaking at a civic center in a New York public school,
had said: “To hell with the stars and stripes.” He didn’t really say it,
as you may read in “The Brass Check,” page 344. But the New York papers
reported that he said it, so it was proposed to close all the civic
centers in the schools. Professor Beard at a public meeting stated that
he did not think it was wise to close all the schools to the public,
just because one labor leader was reported to have said, “To hell with
the stars and stripes.” So next morning one of the New York newspapers
reported that Professor Beard of Columbia University had defended a
labor leader for saying “To hell with the stars and stripes.”
So now behold our professor summoned before the interlocking trustees in
solemn conclave! They demanded to know what he had said, and he told
them, and then, thinking that the incident was closed, he started to
leave the room. But one of them called to him, and to the consternation
of this leading economist and scholar, he was grilled for half an hour
concerning his beliefs and teachings, by two members of the
board—Frederick R. Coudert, lawyer, and director of a trust company, a
safe deposit company and a surety company; and Francis S. Bangs, lawyer,
and director in five express companies, a trust company, a savings bank,
and a water power corporation. They demanded his views on war and peace,
on Americanism and the constitution, on capitalism and the rights of
property; and when they had satisfied themselves that he did not believe
anything for which he could be arrested, they dismissed him, with orders
to warn all others in his department “against teachings likely to
inculcate disrespect for American institutions.” Professor Beard went
back to his colleagues, and reported this extraordinary scene, and the
members of his department burst into roars of laughter; asking whether
among the “American institutions” for which they were to “teach respect”
the trustees included Tammany Hall and the pork barrel!
Shortly after this it was announced that the trustees had appointed a
special committee to investigate the ideas which were being taught at
Columbia. “The Committee on the State of Teaching,” it was called, and
its members were four lawyers and one banker. The response of the
faculty was to meet and protest, and appoint a committee of nine to
defend themselves. The Faculty Council adopted a very strong resolution
on the subject of academic freedom—which resolution, be it noted, was
afterwards suppressed.
The Columbia faculty at this time was preparing for real action, and
Butler had his hands full smoothing them down. He sent one of his deans
to see Professor Beard, and plead with him not to push the issue; the
trustees had learned their lesson, said Butler, the incident would never
be repeated. Also, if Beard forced the matter he would greatly
inconvenience Butler, who was just then in trouble with his trustees
because of his pacifist activities. No more professors would be
dismissed from Columbia, except with the consent of their departments,
so Butler promised; but he kept this promise no more than he kept
others. Soon afterwards he got rid of Leon Fraser, and after that of
another member of the faculty. Butler had promised that all nominations
for promotion should come from the faculty; but soon afterwards he sent
an ambassador to Beard, to say that a certain man whom the department
proposed to promote would be refused promotion by the trustees; so the
man was not named for promotion—and Butler was able to go on saying that
all moves for promotion in Columbia came from the various departments!
Professor Beard had had enough, and handed in his resignation, in which
he paid his respects to “the few obscure and willful trustees who now
dominate the university and terrorize the young instructors.” Discussing
the subject of academic tenure, he said: “The status of a professor in
Columbia is lower than that of a manual laborer.”