THE LASKI LAMPOON
A more recent test of Harvard University was made by Harold J. Laski, a
brilliant young writer whom President Lowell in an unguarded moment
admitted to teach political science. Laski holds unorthodox ideas
concerning the modern capitalist state; he thinks it may not be the
divinely appointed instrument which it considers itself. Laski raised
this question in his Harvard classes, which caused tremendous excitement
in State Street. The Harvard “drive” for sixteen millions was on, and a
number of people wrote that they would give no money to Harvard while
Laski was on its teaching staff. On the other hand, a Chicago lawyer
wrote that his son had never taken any interest in his studies
previously, but that since he had come under Laski’s influence he had
become a serious student; this lawyer sent fifty thousand dollars to
make up the losses. The controversy got into the Boston newspapers, and
President Lowell stood by Laski; no Harvard professor should be driven
out because of his opinions. “Thank God we are not as Columbia!”
I asked a Cambridge friend about President Lowell’s heroism, and he took
a cynical view of it. Lowell is the author of a book interpreting the
British constitution, and has a reputation in England based on this
book; he has received an Oxford degree, and hopes some day to be
ambassador. In England people really believe in free speech, and
practice their beliefs; and Laski, it happens, is a Manchester Jew, his
family associated with the present ruling group in England. Also, Laski
himself wields a capable pen, and is not the sort of man one chooses for
an enemy. If Laski were to go home and state that he had been expelled
from President Lowell’s university because of disbelief in the modern
state, what would become of Lowell’s English reputation? Said my friend:
“If Laski had been a German Jew, or a Russian Jew”—and he smiled.
As to the overseers and their handling of the case, Professor Laski
writes me that they were very nice to him. “I was simply invited to a
dinner at which we exchanged opinions in a friendly fashion. My only
doubt there was a doubt whether the committee realized how very
conservative my opinions really were in this changing social world. Like
most business men, they had little or no knowledge of the results of
modern social science.”
The climax came with the Boston police strike in the fall of 1919. This
was a very curious illustration of the part which the Harvard plutocracy
plays in the public life of Boston, so pardon me if I tell the story in
some detail. You know how the cost of living doubled all over the
country, while the wages of public servants increased very little. The
policemen of Boston were not able to live on their wages; they begged
for an increase, and the police commissioner promised them the increase
if they would wait until after the war. They waited; and then the police
commissioner tried to keep his promise, and the mayor and the Democratic
administration worked out a settlement. But the Harvard plutocracy,
which runs the government of the state, decided not to permit that
settlement, but to force a strike of the policemen, so that they could
smash the policemen’s union. The late Murray Crane, senator and
millionaire, holder of a Harvard LL. D., planned the job in the Union
Club of Boston, together with Kidder, Peabody & Co., the bankers.
Governor Coolidge, the tool of Crane, upset the arrangements made by the
mayor of Boston, and the mayor was so furious that he “pasted the
governor one in the eye”—the inside reason why Coolidge disappeared so
mysteriously during the strike. But the newspapers of the interlocking
directorate celebrated him as the hero of the affair, and he became
vice-president of the United States on a wave of glory!
The strike came, and according to the standard American technique of
strike-breaking, hoodlums were turned loose at the right moment, to
throw stones and terrify the public. The whole affair was obviously
stage-managed; nothing was stolen, and no real harm was done. Insiders
assured me that all the time the “riots” were going on, there was a safe
reserve of police locked up in the police-station, waiting in case
things should go too far. The Boston policemen were represented as
traitors to society, and a wave of fury swept the country—including
Harvard, which holds hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Boston
city bonds, also securities of Boston public service corporations. These
properties must be protected; so a “Harvard Emergency Committee” was
formed, headed by the professor who had first reported to the overseers
Professor Laski’s too great zeal in outside activities. Needless to say,
no one complained about the “outside activities” of this anti-strike
professor; on the contrary, President Lowell issued a resounding call to
Harvard men to help smash the policemen’s strike.
Incidentally, Harvard men smashed Harold J. Laski, who had the temerity
to interject himself into this class war. Laski went to Boston and made
a speech to the strikers’ wives, expressing sympathy with their cause;
whereat all Boston raged. “I would like to ask you something, Mr.
Laski,” said President Lowell, at a dinner party. “Why did you make that
speech?” “Why, Mr. Lowell,” said Laski, smiling, “I made it because
there is a general impression throughout the labor world that Harvard is
a capitalistic institution, and I wanted to show that it is not true.”
Laski was only twenty-six years old at the time, and it took some nerve,
you must admit. How to get this young incendiary out of Harvard was the
next job of the interlocking directorate.
Meet Mr. James Thomas Williams, Jr., of Boston. Mr. Williams was
graduated from Columbia University in the same year that I quit it; he
then joined the Associated Press, and now serves the interlocking
directorate as editor of the Boston “Evening Transcript,” the paper
which is read by every Tory in New England. You may learn more about
this paper by consulting pages 284, 306, 307 and 379 of “The Brass
Check.” Also, perhaps I should tell you a little incident which happened
after “The Brass Check” came out. Desiring to test the capitalist
newspapers, I made up a dignified advertisement of the book—nothing
abusive or sensational, merely opinions from leading journals of Europe.
I sent this advertisement, with a perfectly good check, to the Boston
“Evening Transcript,” and the check was returned to me, with the
statement that the “Transcript” thought it best not to publish the
advertisement, because of the possibility of being sued for libel.
I was puzzled at first, wondering what paper might sue the Boston
“Evening Transcript” for publishing an advertisement of “The Brass
Check.” Then I remembered that in the book I had accused a Boston
newspaper of having shared in the slush funds of the New York, New
Haven, and Hartford Railroad; also of having suppressed reports of
Justice Brandeis’ exposures of the Boston Gas Company, at the same time
publishing page advertisements from this gas company; also of having
published advertisements of “Harvard Beer, 1,000 Pure,” at the same time
suppressing news of the fact that the federal government was prosecuting
the manufacturers of Harvard Beer for violation of the pure food laws.
So I understood that the Boston “Evening Transcript” was afraid of being
sued by the Boston “Evening Transcript.”
Now behold the editor of this fine old Tory newspaper rushing to the
defense of his interlocking directorate. Mr. Laski must be driven from
Harvard, and Mr. Williams knows exactly how to do it. He interviews the
editors of the Harvard “Crimson” and “Advocate;” finally in the editors
of the “Lampoon,” he finds a group who will carry out his ideas. The
result is an issue of that paper, January 16, 1920, known to history as
the “Laski Lampoon.” If ever there was a fouler product of class venom,
it has not yet come under my eye.
I have never had the pleasure of meeting Harold J. Laski, but I form an
idea of him from a score of pictures in this publication. From a
painting on the cover I gather he is a short, thin, naked young skeleton
with a paunch; he wears large glasses, and has a fringe of whiskers, or
long hair, and a red dawn behind him, serving as a halo. From another
picture, a piece of clay modelling, I am puzzled about the whiskers, or
hairs, because I do not know whether they are little worms or pieces of
spaghetti. From other cartoons I gather that Professor Laski sometimes
wears clothes, and does not wear them entirely in the Harvard manner;
that is, his clothes do not fit him, and his hat has too broad a brim,
and is not worn entirely straight on his head. I gather that he
sometimes smokes cigarettes, a vice entirely unknown in refined
undergraduate circles.
Also Mr. Laski is described to me in a hundred or so sketches, verses
and witticisms. He is “the great indoor agitator”; he is “a member of
the firm of Lenin, Trotski and Laski.” This evil young man, you must
understand, holds the idea that the people of Russia should be permitted
to work out their own revolution in their own way, and that American
troops should not be sent in to attack them in Archangel and Siberia
without a declaration of war. This makes him a “Bolshevik”; this makes
him “Laski de Lenin,” and “Ivan Itchykoff,” and the author of “The
Constitution of the Russian Itchocracy,” and of the “Autobiographia
Laskivia.” “Love had to go. One love was bad enough, but thirty or forty
were insupportable. I had tried it and I knew.” He is invited to “sing a
song of Bolsheviks,” and he tells us that “Comrade Lenin has a hundred
and forty-eight motor cars, and Comrade Trotsky has fifty-two.” He is
“Cataline,” and again he is “Professor Moses Smartelikoff”—the “Moses”
meaning that he is a Jew, and the rest that he thinks differently from
Harvard. Such thinking must not be allowed to get a start, say our
cautious young undergraduates:
The moral, oh ye masters, is, without a doubt,
Stop infection early; kick the first one out.
And here are more verses, addressed to our unpopular professor:
As you sit there, growing prouder,
With your skillful tongue awag,
As your piping voice grows louder,
Preaching Socialistic gag—
Stop a moment, let us warn you,
Nature’s freak,
That we loathe you and we scorn you, Bolshevik!
Harold Laski was scheduled to give a lecture at Yale, and when he got
there he found this copy of the “Lampoon” on sale all over town,
together with a reprint of an editorial in the “Transcript” denouncing
him. He was young, and rather sensitive, and naturally it occurred to
him that he was wasting his talents upon Harvard. He would be allowed to
stay there, he told a friend of mine, but he would never be promoted, he
would have no career. On the other hand, the University of London
offered him a full professorship at a higher salary, in a part of the
world where men may think what they please about the capitalist state.
Laski resigned; and so cleverly the job had been managed—he had quit of
his own free will, and the great university could go on boasting that
its professors are not forced out because of their opinions! As a
commentary on this story, I am sure you will be interested in an extract
from a letter from Laski, dated August 16, 1922:
The results of the American atmosphere are quite clear.
1. Many men deliberately adopt reactionary views to secure promotion.
2. Many more never express opinions lest the penalty be exacted.
3. Those who do are penalized when the chance of promotion comes.
I am very much impressed by the contrast between the general freedom
of the English academic atmosphere and the illiberalism of America.
Three of my colleagues at the London School of Economics are labor
candidates; business men predominate on the governing body; but
interference is never dreamed of. At Oxford and Cambridge the widest
range of view prevails. But alumni do not protest, and if they do,
they are told to mind their own business. In America, one always feels
hampered by the sense of a control outside; in England you never feel
that it is necessary to watch your tongue. No ox treads upon it.