THE UNIVERSITY OF LEE-HIGGINSON
There is a saying that when you go to Philadelphia they ask you who your
grandfather was, and when you go to New York they ask you what you are
worth, and when you go to Boston they ask you what you know. We are now
going to the hub of America’s intellectual life, and make ourselves
familiar with our most highly cultured university.
We shall begin, as before, by investigating those who run it; and
straightway we shall get a shock. We shall find not merely the
interlocking directorate—the princes, and the dukes, and the barons; we
shall find the emperor himself, none other than J. Pierpont Morgan! I
was puzzled when I studied the affairs of Columbia, for I knew that the
elder Morgan had been on the board until his death, and I could not
imagine how President Butler managed to overlook his son and heir. When
I came to study Harvard I discovered the reason; the younger Morgan was
graduated from Harvard in 1889. The purpose of such interchanges of
royalty is, of course, to cement the bonds of empire.
The house of J. P. Morgan & Company is closely allied with the Boston
banking house of Lee, Higginson & Company. Mr. Morgan was reelected to
the Harvard board in 1917, along with Francis Lee Higginson, Jr., of
Lee, Higginson & Company; Eliot Wadsworth, representative of Stone &
Webster, an allied banking house; Howard Elliott, then president and now
chairman of the New Haven, a Morgan railroad; and, finally, a prominent
corporation lawyer in San Francisco, representing the interlocking
directorate in that city.
In his discussion of the Pujo report Justice Brandeis wrote that
“Concentration of banking capital has proceeded even farther in Boston
than in New York.” He goes on to tell of three great banking concerns,
with their interlocking directorates, controlling ninety-two per cent of
Boston’s money resources. These concerns competed in minor and local
matters, said Mr. Brandeis, but they were all allied with Morgan.
“Financial concentration seems to have found its highest exemplification
in Boston.” And exactly the same thing is true of the concentration of
control of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and the group of smaller colleges located in Eastern
Massachusetts. They are all “State Street”—this being the Boston
equivalent of “Wall Street.”
In 1916 the New York Evening Post, at that time in rebellion against the
House of Morgan, published an interesting study of the financial
connections of the governing board of Harvard. There are six members of
the Harvard corporation, known as the “fellows,” and these are appointed
for life. In addition, there are thirty “overseers,” elected by the
whole body of graduates. The New York “Evening Post” examined these
latter, and found eleven capitalists and seven lawyers, a generous
majority for the plutocracy. Nor was there much danger to the plutocracy
from some of the others; those classified as “public men” including
Senator Lodge and F. A. Delano, ex-president of several railroads.
A year later the “Evening Post” made a further examination, considering
not merely the fellows and the overseers, but the nine directors of the
Harvard Alumni Association, the nine members of the Association’s
nominating committee, twenty candidates for overseers who had just been
called, and six who had just been called as candidates for directors of
the Association. That made a body of eighty Harvard graduates, forty of
them Boston men, and twenty-nine of these forty being financial men, or
attorneys for the State Street houses. All but six were connected with
the three interlocked financial institutions; twenty were connected with
Lee, Higginson & Company or its institutions—nine with the Old Colony
Trust Company, the great Lee-Higginson bank, five with Lee, Higginson &
Company itself, four directors in another Lee-Higginson bank, six
directors in a Lee-Higginson savings bank, six in another Lee-Higginson
savings bank, four in a Lee-Higginson insurance company, and six
attorneys for these. “State Street,” you see, is like Virginia; the old
families have been intermarrying for so long that everybody is related
to everybody else.
A Harvard graduate wrote to the New York “Evening Post,” “Harvard has
assets to be invested of about thirty-four million dollars. Is that the
reason why practically five-sixths of the Boston business representation
(of Harvard) is affiliated with investment banking concerns, or is it
because they wish to use Harvard as a knighthood for their friends?” The
“Evening Post” went on politely to say that it did not believe this was
the case; the financial domination of Harvard had resulted by accident!
But this bit of humor did not save the “Evening Post” from the wrath of
the interlocking directorate. The paper offended also by opposing
America’s entry into the war—and so the valuable advertising business of
Lee, Higginson & Co. was withdrawn, and shortly afterwards the owner of
the paper was forced to sell out to Mr. Lamont, a partner of the House
of Morgan. This story is in “The Brass Check,” page 248. To complete it
we should note the part played by Harvard in the swallowing. It was a
Harvard overseer who bought the “Evening Post”; another overseer is now
president and trustee of the “Evening Post” company, and a third
overseer is also a trustee of the “Evening Post” company!
Also, it will be worth while to notice the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, until recently a part of Harvard. This is one of the most
marvelous collections of plutocrats ever assembled in the world; it
includes the president of the Powder Trust, and his cousin Mr. Coleman
du Pont, who is emperor of the State of Delaware; also Mr. Eastman, the
kodak king; two of our greatest international bankers, Mr. Otto Kahn and
Mr. Frank Vanderlip; Mr. Howard Elliott, chairman of the New Haven, Mr.
Elisha Lee, vice-president of the Pennsylvania; both members of the firm
of Stone and Webster, with all of its enormous electrical interests;
also nine other electrical bankers, two officials of the General
Electric Company, one big electrical manufacturer, and six others who
are interested in electric railways. Make particular note of this mass
of electrical connections, because in succeeding chapters you will find
several amusing instances of the influence of electric light and
electric railway interests upon the policy and teaching of both Harvard
and Massachusetts Tech.
As we have seen, the endowment of Harvard was estimated at thirty-four
millions of dollars in 1917, and since then there has been a campaign in
which nearly fifteen millions was raised. This money is under the
direction of the Morgan-Lee-Higginson directorate, and needless to say
is largely invested in Morgan-Lee-Higginson enterprises. We are told by
some friends of Harvard that Harvard stands for “liberalism” in American
education; do you suppose that Harvard stands for “liberalism” in
American industry? Do you suppose that the votes of Harvard
administrators are cast for policies of justice and democracy in the
enterprises it exploits? If you suppose that, you are extremely naive.
The Harvard votes are cast, just as any other votes of any other
business concerns are cast, for the largest amount of dividends for
Harvard. For example, Harvard owns twenty-five hundred shares in a
Boston department store; has Harvard done anything to humanize the
management of that store? It has not. Harvard likewise operates a mine.
Harvard has a graduate business school and trains executives to run
mines—on the basis of getting the maximum production at the lowest cost,
and maintaining the present system of industrial feudalism.
I take these facts concerning the Harvard investments from a paper by
Harry Emerson Wildes, a Harvard graduate. It is interesting to note that
Mr. Wildes at the time he made this study was doing voluntary publicity
work for the alumni group which was raising Harvard funds in
Philadelphia; and Mr. Wildes was “dropped” immediately after this study
saw the light!
We have seen how Columbia owns stocks and bonds in American railroads,
public service corporations, and industrial corporations of all sorts.
Exactly the same thing is true of Harvard. Says Mr. Wildes:
Twelve separate cities feed the Harvard purse from their traction
lines, and more than half a hundred pay tribute from their lighting,
heating, gas and power plants. Harvard has two million dollars in the
traction game. The two-cent transfer charge on New York City trolleys
goes to pay the interest on three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth
of traction bonds in Harvard ownership, and Boston ten-cent fare goes
partially to Harvard’s third of a million in Boston traction bonds.
Mr. Wildes goes on to study the effect of these investments upon
Harvard, and the effect which Harvard, through the power of these
investments, might have upon the industrial life of the country. I
cannot present the subject better than he has done, so I quote his
words:
With rapid transit lines throughout the nation in a state of rising
fares, and continual labor strife taking place, the intervention of a
conciliatory investor holding any such amounts might aid in bringing
better harmony between the companies on the one hand and the public
and the workmen on the other. But nothing has been done by Harvard
University, nor by any educational body in the land, to work for the
friendship of either public or labor towards the transit lines....
How strenuously the influence of Harvard will be thrown on the side of
limitation of armaments and the ending of war may be gauged by the
total of more than a million dollars’ worth of ordnance bonds and
munitions stock owned by the corporation. And, as these are largely in
great steel corporations such as Bethlehem, Midvale and Illinois, the
attitude of the college heads towards the move for unionizing workers
can be clearly understood.
When railroad brotherhoods put forth a plan for guild operation of the
lines, they face a mighty opposition from security investors. The
eight million dollars which Harvard holds in railroad stock and bonds
would be affected by victory for the Plumb Plan. The professors of
economics and particularly of railroad operation and finance can
scarcely be expected to imbue their scholars with a holy zeal for the
securing of the Brotherhood aims....
Evidence of the patriotic ardor of the financiers directing Harvard’s
investments may be readily seen in the fact that only one per cent of
the funds of the university is invested in the Liberty Loans. The
total of United States bonds held is less than half of that spent for
bonds of five foreign nations. Intervention in Mexico would perhaps be
pleasing to the authorities, since they hold a total of nearly one
hundred thousand dollars in Mexican government bonds. So, also, is the
pacification of Central America through the stationing of American
marines and blue-jackets in those lands. Meddling of our State
Department in the internal affairs of Costa Rica, Honduras, San
Salvador and the rest helps to uphold the value of another one hundred
thousand dollars’ worth of United Fruit Company bonds.[B] This company
notoriously controls entire nations in Central America and sets up or
deposes presidents at its whim. There is scarcely a large community
north of Panama that is not in some degree tapped by the Harvard
treasury. The American college is becoming the strongest single force
in the world. Its management is almost entirely in the hands of
international bankers or men dependent upon that group.
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Footnote B:
These bonds have just been paid off, but the ability to pay them off
was of course assured by American intervention.
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Such are the business facts underlying Harvard University; such are the
roots of the plant, and we shall now examine its flowers.