INTERFERENCE
We have seen President Lowell’s behavior when a group of Wall Street
lawyers attempted to dictate to his university. We have next to
investigate his attitude when it is his own intimates and financial
supporters who are being attacked; when it is, not Wall Street, but
State Street, which calls to him for help. Here again our Boston Brahmin
has put himself on record, with exactly the same self-will and
decisiveness—but, unfortunately, on the other side! We were promised
some more evidence on the subject of Harvard in relation to
Lee-Higginson and Edison Electric. Now we are to have it.
I am indebted for the details of the incident to Mr. Morris Llewellyn
Cooke, an engineer of Philadelphia who was Director of Public Works
under a reform administration. For a series of five years Mr. Cooke had
been a regular lecturer at the Graduate School of Business
Administration of Harvard University. He prepared two lectures on the
public utility problem in American cities, which he gave at a number of
universities, and was invited to give at Harvard. Mr. Cooke took the
precaution to inquire whether he would be free “to discuss conditions
exactly as they exist in the public utility field.” The reply was, in
the magnificent Harvard manner: “I am desirous that your lectures be
both specific and frank. I am anxious for the students to see clearly
the real relation of local public utilities to the municipalities, and
vice versa, and am not considering whether your remarks may hurt any
one’s feelings.”
Mr. Cooke came and delivered his two lectures, and was announced to give
them again; but four months later came a letter from the dean of the
Graduate School, saying: “Mr. Lowell feels, and I agree with him, that
in view of the use you made of your invitation to come here this last
year, we cannot renew the invitation.” Mr. Cooke then wrote to President
Lowell to find out what was the matter, and was told that he had
violated academic ethics by giving to the press an abstract of his
lectures. In answering President Lowell, Mr. Cooke pointed out that six
weeks prior to giving the lectures he had written on three separate
occasions to the Graduate School, giving notice of his intention to
publish an abstract of his remarks, because officials in other cities
wished the information on public utilities which he had accumulated.
“Trusting that if this is not entirely satisfactory to you, you will so
advise me at your convenience,” etc. The reply from the Business School
had been: “I note that you intend to publish these two lectures later,
which will be perfectly satisfactory to us.”
President Lowell now condescended to explain to Mr. Cooke wherein he had
offended; he had violated “academic customs ... not in the least
peculiar to Harvard, but true in all universities.” Mr. Cooke thereupon
wrote to universities all over the United States; he obtained statements
from a score or two of university professors, deans and presidents,
showing that not only was there no such custom, but that it was a quite
common custom for lecturers at universities to make abstracts of their
lectures and furnish these to the press. The authorities quoted include
the president of the University of Wisconsin, and a dean who is now
president; Professor Dewey of Columbia, Hoxie of Chicago—and Frankfurter
of President Lowell’s own university! Theodore Roosevelt wrote:
Until I received your letter, I knew nothing whatever of any rule
prohibiting the remarks of academic lecturers from being published in
the periodical press or in other ways being quoted as material used in
the lecture room.
If you really want to test the sincerity of President Lowell’s
statement, here is the way to do it: Imagine Theodore Roosevelt,
distinguished Harvard alumnus, coming to his alma mater to deliver a
lecture on “The Duties of the College Man as a Citizen,” and preparing a
summary of his lecture and giving it to the press; and then imagine him
receiving from President Lowell a letter rebuking him for his action,
and informing him that because of it he would not again be invited to
speak at Harvard!
No, we shall have to examine Mr. Cooke’s lectures, for some other reason
why his career as a Harvard lecturer was so suddenly cut short. Mr.
Cooke has printed the lectures in pamphlet form under the title
“Snapping Cords.” On page 9 I find a statement of the over-valuation of
public utilities in Philadelphia, and note that the Philadelphia
Electric Company has securities to the amount of over fifty million
dollars upon an actual valuation of less than twenty-five million. And
this is an Edison concern, allied with Boston Edison and Lee Higginson!
I turn to page 12, and learn how the National Electric Light
Association, the society of electrical engineers, is being used as a
dummy by the electric light interests. I turn to page 14, and find the
American Electric Railway Association shown up as planning to corrupt
American education, creating a financed Bureau of Public Relations for
the self-stated purpose of “influencing the sources of public education
particularly by (a) lectures on the Chautauqua circuit and (b) formation
of a committee of prominent technical educators to promote the formation
and teaching of correct principles on public service questions in
technical and economic departments at American colleges, through courses
of lectures and otherwise.”
The tactless Mr. Cooke goes on to examine the activities of “prominent
technical educators” who have lent themselves to this program. Among the
names I find—can such a thing be possible?—George F. Swain, professor of
civil engineering in the Graduate School of Applied Science of Harvard
University! Professor Swain, it appears, has done “valuation work” for
Mr. Morgan’s New Haven Railroad—our interlocking directorate, you
perceive! You may not know what “valuation work” consists of; it is the
job of determining how much money you shall pay for your water, light,
gas and transportation, and needless to say, the utility corporations
want the valuation put as high as possible. Mr. Cooke, since the
incidents here narrated, put through a rate case whereby the
Philadelphia Electric Company collects from the city and the people of
that city one million dollars _less_ per year. So you see just what an
ornery cuss Mr. Cooke is!
Professor Swain lays out “principles” for the doing of this ticklish
“valuation work.”[C] One of his “principles” is that when anything has
increased in value, the increased valuation shall be allowed the
corporations, but when anything has decreased in value there shall be no
corresponding decrease in the valuation! (We used to play this game when
we were children; we called it “Heads I win and tails you lose.”)
Another of Professor Swain’s “principles” is that when states, counties
or cities have helped to pay the cost of grade crossings, the railroads
shall be credited with the full value of these grade crossings. (We used
to play that game also when we were children; we called it “Findings is
keepings.”) Needless to say, a man who is so clever as to get away with
things like that regards himself as superior to the rest of us, who let
him get away with it. So, as president of the American Society of Civil
Engineers, Professor Swain voices his distrust of democratic ideals, and
informs the engineers that “present-day humanitarianism leads to race
degeneracy.”
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Footnote C:
See record of hearing, May 3, 1920, at State House, Trenton, N. J.,
before Governor Edwards, on motion of City of Jersey City for removal
of Public Service Commission.
And then I turn on to page 35 of the pamphlet, and stumble on still more
tactless conduct on the part of this dreadful Mr. Cooke. He tells us
about Dugald C. Jackson, professor of electrical engineering at Harvard
University,[D] who also does this fancy “valuation work.” Says Mr.
Cooke: “Professor Jackson has never really been so much a university
professor as a corporate employe giving courses in universities. While
he probably receives five thousand dollars from his present teaching
post he must receive at least four times this amount from his corporate
clients—charging as he does one hundred dollars a day for his own time
and a percentage on the time of his assistants!”
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Footnote D:
Professor Jackson, in qualifying as an expert before the Pennsylvania
Public Service Commission, introduced himself by the single statement
that he was “professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and
professor of electrical engineering at Harvard University.” It should
be explained that he held the last two positions only ex-officio, by
virtue of the affiliation of the two institutions which existed for a
few years.
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Mr. Cooke goes on to show that before taking up teaching, Professor
Jackson was a chief engineer for the Edison General Electric Company. In
1910, while a professor at Harvard, he rendered a report showing that
the Chicago Telephone Company was running behind over eight hundred
thousand dollars per year; but two years later it was proven that the
company could afford a reduction in rates of seven hundred thousand
dollars per year! Again, Professor Jackson rendered a report showing
that the Buffalo General Electric Company had a valuation of $4,966,000;
but the state commission subsequently fixed the valuation at $3,194,000.
He valued three thousand municipal arc lamps at $21.70 each, but the New
York commission showed that the actual cost of these lamps was $13.53.
Says Mr. Cooke:
“What constitutes being employed by a corporation? Professor Jackson is
to all intents and purposes consulting engineer in chief as to rates and
valuations to the entire electrical industry in the United States. He
has made inventories of the Boston Edison Company and the New York
Edison Company. He is now engaged in doing similar work for the
Philadelphia Electric Company. These three companies have a combined
gross annual income of thirty-five million dollars.”
Do you see the “nigger in the woodpile” now? If you are a mine guard or
strike-breaking gunman, experienced in shooting up the tent-colonies of
striking miners, the corporations will pay you five dollars a day and
board for your services. If you are a “prominent technical educator,”
with a string of university degrees and titles, who can enable the great
corporations to swindle the public out of tens of millions of dollars
every year, then you can command a salary of a hundred dollars a day,
with a percentage on the time of your assistants. That is what a college
education is for; and if you think that an over-cynical statement, I ask
you to read the whole of this book before you decide!
And what is a college president for? A college president is paid by the
interlocking directorate to take their “consulting engineers” and
“valuation experts” and cover them with a mantle of respectability,
enabling them to do their dirty work in the name of education and public
service. And if any freak individual comes along, trying to break in and
spoil the game, the function of a college president is to furnish what
the college football player knows as “interference“—tripping the fellow
up, slugging him, maiming him. In football there are strict rules
against fouls; but in this game of plutocratic education “everything
goes.”