THE HARVARD TRADITION
Harvard has a tradition, which is a part of the tradition of New
England; it is one of scholarship, of respect for the dignity of
learning. Money counts in New England, but money is not enough, so you
will be told; you must have culture also, and the prestige of the
intellectual life. More than that, in New England is found that quality
which must necessarily go with belief in the intellectual life, the
quality of open-mindedness, the willingness to consider new ideas.
Such is the tradition; and first, it will pay us to ask, how did the
tradition originate? Was it made by Harvard University? Or was it made
by Charles Sumner, anti-slavery senator from Massachusetts, who was
found unfit to be a professor in the Harvard Law School, and wrote to
his brother: “I am too much of a reformer in law to be trusted in a post
of such commanding influence as this has now become.” Was it made by
Harvard, or by Wendell Phillips, who, according to his biographer,
Sears, denounced “the restraint of Harvard, which he attributed to
affiliation with the commercial interests of Boston, and the silence
they imposed on anti-slavery sentiments.” Was it made by Harvard or by
William Lloyd Garrison, who was dragged through the streets of Boston
with a rope about his neck, by a silk-hatted mob of State Streeters,
many of them of course from Harvard?
Sumner, Phillips and Garrison were extremists, you may say; and the best
traditions are not made by such. They are made by scholars, who lead
retired lives and guide others by the power of thought. Very well; New
England has had no more revered scholar, no more keen thinker than
Emerson. Emerson was gentle, Emerson was dignified, and you will find
Emerson a part of the Harvard tradition—one of its halls bears his name.
So let us see what Emerson had to report about the Harvard of his time;
how much credit he gives it for progress in the anti-slavery days.
Writing in 1861, in “The Celebration of the Intellect,” Emerson said:
“Harvard College has no voice in Harvard College, but State Street votes
it down on every ballot. Everything will be permitted there, which goes
to adorn Boston Whiggism—is it geology, astronomy, poetry, antiquities,
art, rhetoric? But that which it exists for, to be a fountain of
novelties out of heaven, a Delphos uttering warning and ravishing
oracles to lift and lead mankind—that it shall not be permitted to do or
to think of. On the contrary, every generosity of thought is suspect and
has a bad name. And all the youths come out decrepit citizens; not a
prophet, not a poet, not a daimon, but is gagged and stifled or driven
away.”
And precisely that is what we have to report about the Harvard of the
time of capitalistic reaction, which is 1922. For thirteen years Harvard
has been under the administration of a cultured corporation lawyer of
Boston, who has generally carried out the politics of his State Street
associates in all essential matters, and has preserved just as much
reputation for liberalism as can be preserved—safely.
A. Lawrence Lowell is not, like Nicholas Murray Butler, a climber and a
toady; he could not be a climber, because he was born on a mountaintop,
and there was no place to climb to—he could only stay where he was or
descend. He belongs to the Lowell family, who are among the Boston
Brahmins, and it would not occur to him that any millionaire could
confer a favor upon Harvard University, or upon the president of Harvard
University. On the other hand, it does occur to him that Harvard is a
close corporation, a family affair of the vested interests of New
England, which cover an enormous financial power with a decorous coating
of refined exclusiveness.
Before the days of President Lowell, Harvard was presided over by
Charles W. Eliot, a scholar who believed to some extent in a safe and
reasonable freedom of opinion—using his own freedom to glorify the
“great American hero” known as the “scab.” President Lowell has
inherited the Eliot tradition, and in my travels about the country I
heard many rumors as to how he had stood by his professors in time of
stress. When I got to Harvard, and turned these rumors into fact, I
found an amusing situation. No circus rider who keeps his footing on two
horses has ever done a more deft and delicate feat of balancing than
President Lowell, with one foot on the Eliot tradition and the other
foot on the House of Lee-Higginson.
They will tell you proudly that professors are not let out of Harvard
because of their opinions; and that is sometimes true. One reason is,
because the Harvard teaching staff is selected with meticulous care, and
because, when the new man comes to Harvard he comes under the influence
of a subtle but powerful atmosphere of good form. It is not crude
materialism, as in Columbia; it is cleverly compounded of high
intellectual and social qualities, and it is brought to the young
educators’ attention with humor and good fellowship. A friend of mine, a
Harvard man who knows the game, described to me from personal experience
how the State Street pressure operates. Somebody in Lee-Higginson calls
President Lowell on the telephone and says: “How can we get So-and-so to
put up the money for that chair, if young This-or-that gets his name in
the newspapers as lecturing to workingmen?” President Lowell smiles and
says he will see about it, and the young instructor is invited to dinner
and amiably shown how the most liberal university in America cannot run
entirely without money. The young instructor sees the point, and the
president goes away, thinking to himself: “Thank God we are not as
Columbia!”
Even down to the humblest freshman such pressure is conveyed. There are
things that “are not done” at Harvard; and you would be surprised to
know how minute is the supervision. You might not think it was a grave
offense for a student, wearing a soft shirt in summer-time, to leave the
top button unfastened; but a student friend of mine, who had ideas of
the simple life—going back to nature and all that—was coldly asked by
Dean Gay: “Is the button of your shirt open by mistake, or is the button
missing?” And when he did not take this delicate hint, Professor Richard
C. Cabot told another student that he might help the young man by
advising him to close the top button of his shirt. I am advised that
Harvard men will call this story “rot”; therefore I specify that I have
it in writing from the man to whom it happened.
And if they are so careful about shirt-buttons, they would hardly be
careless about public speeches. A couple of years ago the Harvard
Liberal Club made so bold as to invite Wilfred Humphries, a mild little
gentleman who served with the Y. M. C. A., to tell about his experiences
in Russia; whereupon the president of the Liberal Club received a letter
from the secretary to the Corporation of Harvard, politely pointing out
that there was likely to be embarrassment to the university, and would
the president of the club kindly call upon the secretary, in order to
provide him with arguments, “in case the press takes the thing up in a
way which might embarrass the progress of the Endowment Fund Campaign.”
Just as deftly as that, you see!
I found that Harvard’s reputation for liberalism was based upon the
custom of President Lowell to take into his institution men who had been
expelled from other colleges. I was impressed by this, until Harvard men
explained to me how it is managed. The basis of it is a painstaking
inquiry into the character and opinions of those men, to make sure there
is nothing really dangerous about them. In some cases they are men who
have offended local interests, with which “State Street” has little
concern. Others are men of ability who have offended religious
prejudices in the provinces; the tradition of Harvard is Unitarian, and
nobody is shocked by the idea that his ancestors swung from the
tree-tops by their tails. The State of Texas has just passed a law
providing for the expulsion of professors who teach that idea, so in due
course you may hear of Harvard taking over some Texas scholar.
How men are investigated before they are taken into Harvard is a matter
about which I happen to know from a man who underwent the ordeal. I will
call my informant Professor Smith, and he was head of a department in a
leading university. Appointed on a public service commission, he
discovered that the local gas company was engaged in swindling the city.
The facts got into the newspapers, and this public spirited professor
was on the verge of being expelled by his trustees, several of whom were
“in gas.” Some friends of his put the matter before President Lowell,
and Lowell made inquiry, and ascertained that Smith was a liberal of the
very mildest sort, well connected and affable, in every way worthy to
associate with the best families, and to train their sons; so Professor
Smith received a letter, asking him if he would come to Cambridge and
make the acquaintance of President Lowell. He made the journey, and
found himself a guest at a dinner party in the home of one of the
interlocking directorate. President Lowell was seated next to him, and
they chatted on many subjects, but only once did they touch on the
subject of Smith and his qualifications.
“By the way,” said Lowell (I reproduce the conversation from careful
notes). “I understand you had some little unpleasantness in your home
city.”
“Quite a good deal of it,” replied Smith.
“I’m not quite clear about it,” said Lowell. “It had something to do
with the gas company, did it not?”
“Yes,” replied Smith.
“It was merely gas? It had nothing to do with electricity?”
“Oh, no,” said Smith. “Nothing whatever.”
“You are sure the electric light company was not involved?”
“Quite sure. They are separate concerns.”
“I see,” said Lowell, and talked about the European situation.
So Professor Smith went home, and told a friend about the matter; the
friend made him repeat it over, word for word, and then burst out
laughing. “Don’t you see the point?” he asked; but Smith saw no point
whatever.
“Don’t you know that gas companies and electric light companies are
sometimes rivals?” inquired the friend. “You can light your house with
either gas or electricity; you can cook with either gas or electricity,
you can heat with either gas or electricity.”
“Yes, of course,” said Smith, still unenlightened.
“Well, you attacked the gas company,” said the friend. “You did not
attack the Edison Electric Company of your city, which happens to be a
part of the electric trust which covers the entire United States.
Harvard is all tied up with this electrical trust, and Massachusetts
Tech still more so, and Lee, Higginson & Company are its bankers.
President Lowell was perfectly willing for you to fight your local gas
company, but he wanted to make sure that you hadn’t trod on the toes of
Harvard’s leading industry! You will get your invitation to Harvard,
I’ll wager.”
And, sure enough, the invitation came a few days later! To complete the
humor of the story, the fact of the invitation became known at once
among the faculty of Professor Smith’s university, and had the effect of
instantly killing the talk of Professor Smith’s being asked to resign!
I tell this incident as it was told to me. Standing by itself it might
not mean much; but before we finish with Harvard we shall have plenty of
evidence to prove that when the electric men play a tune, the
Lee-Higginson university dances. President Lowell, I am told, did not
know the difference between a mathematician and an astronomer; when
Pickering died, he proposed to put in a mathematician, and was naively
surprised when it was explained to him that modern astronomy has gone so
far that an observatory cannot be run by a mathematician, however
expert. But ignorant as our Boston Brahmin may be about the stars of the
milky way, it is certain that he knows all about the stars of State
Street, he has them carefully charted and plotted, and neither he nor
any member of his faculty ever bumps into them.