STEALING A TRUST FUND
Before we go on with this story we should make the acquaintance of the
executive head of the University of U. G. I., who bears the title of
provost instead of president. From 1911 to 1921 he was Edgar Smith, a
former professor of chemistry, who had been all his life an active
henchman of the interlocking directorate and its political machine. He
attended the Chicago convention in 1912 as a delegate from Pennsylvania,
and voted for Taft as a candidate. He was intimate with the
contractor-politician who ran the political machine of Philadelphia; he
defended this man in public, and freely defended other political crooks,
while denying his deans and professors the right to take part in
politics in opposition to such crooks. When he took office the trustees
promised they would finance the university, but this promise was not
kept, so he had to go to the politicians every year and spend weeks
begging for a subsidy, and being scolded for the improper activities of
his faculty.
In his attitude to his trustees this provost was the ideal of
subservience. He publicly declared that he himself had “no policy”; he
placed the responsibility of action on those who asserted the right and
had the power to act—that is to say, the trustees. He referred to them
always as “the administration,” and in all public matters he took to
them an attitude of touching deference. Thus, speaking at a banquet of
the Pennsylvania alumni in New York, he said: “Tonight you will not
expect me to occupy much of your time, for our trustees are your real
guests, and you desire to hear from them.” Needless to say, such a type
of mind is religious, and wedded to all things dull. Provost Smith never
wearied of telling his audiences that he was a believer in “an old
fashioned education”—with “four years each of Latin, Greek and
Mathematics, and from four to three years of English, French and
German.”
In administering the university, this aged-minded provost made it his
function to carry to the trustees all manner of scandal concerning his
radical professors—such as the fact that one of them was accustomed to
dig in his garden on Sunday! Also he would bring back to the professors
pitiful accounts of the embarrassments to which he was exposed. His
attitude is illustrated by a statement he made to three professors whom
he summoned to his office at the time the U. G. I. was under attack.
“Gentlemen, what business have academic people to be meddling in
political questions? Suppose, for illustration, that I, as a chemist,
should discover that some big slaughtering company was putting formalin
in its sausage; now, surely, that would be none of my business!”
Said one of the professors: “My answer would be that if I were to find
such a condition, I should have no right to go to sleep until something
was done about it.”
As a result of this attitude, the dean who had charge of these
professors was allowed no funds at all; he would have to go to the
provost if he wanted to have a cupboard built in some store-room, and
whenever he went, he would find his boss with newspaper clippings on his
desk. “Now, Young, how can we get any results with this kind of thing
going on?”
It so happened that fate had played upon poor Provost Smith a cruel
prank. Some forty years ago there lived in Philadelphia a truly liberal
capitalist, who in his will left six hundred thousand dollars to found
the Wharton School of Finance at the university. He laid down what the
school was to teach as follows:
The immorality and practical inexpediency of seeking to acquire wealth
by winning it from another rather than earning it through some sort of
service to one’s fellowmen.
The deep comfort and healthfulness of pecuniary independence, whether
the scale of affairs be small or great.
The necessity of rigorously punishing by legal penalties and by social
exclusion those persons who commit frauds, betray trusts or steal
public funds, directly or indirectly. The fatal consequence to a
community of any weak toleration of such offenses must be most
distinctly pointed out and enforced.
And then the shrewd old rascal, evidently knowing his business
associates thoroughly, added this amazing provision.
The grantees covenant that these things shall be done, and that the
failure to comply with these stipulations shall be deemed such a
default as to cause reversion in the manner hereinafter provided.
Now, you understand that the first principle of the interlocking
directorate is never to let go of money on which it gets its hands. It
is accustomed to misappropriating funds, and turning public funds to its
own uses; a little thing like a deed of trust would not stand in its
way. What it failed to realize in the case of this Wharton trust was the
uncomfortable amount of agitation and publicity which would be involved.
If the trustees of the University of U. G. I. had realized what was
coming to them, they would have made up that six hundred thousand
dollars by raising the price of gas in Philadelphia.
For the effect of the deed of trust was to bring in a number of ardent
young teachers who took seriously the words of the dead founder, and
believed they had rights in the place. They shamelessly attacked the U.
G. I., as I have narrated; they attacked other interests of the
interlocking trustees in the same reckless way. For example, Professor
Thomas Conway proved how the street railways were being plundered and
ruined. He was unanimously recommended by his faculty for promotion, but
this recommendation was held up for three years by the trustees. During
these three years the trustees were engaged in selling a street railway
at an inflated valuation to the New Haven, and were putting through
another “deal” of the same sort in Indiana!
Or take the case of Dr. Ward W. Pierson, who showed before the public
service commission how the coal companies were charging $1.70 per ton
transportation charges on coal, whereas the actual cost was only 55
cents; and here was our university, with two-thirds of its trustees
interested in the mining and transporting of coal! Here was a coal
operator about to give a large sum of money to the university, and
withdrawing it! Dr. Pierson also was recommended for promotion, and
waited three years, and meantime the scandal bureau of the interlocking
directorate was put to work on him, and he was charged with a grave
offense. His colleagues investigated the charge, and proved it to be
absolutely without foundation.
Next came the case of Scott Nearing, who had begun his career as
secretary to the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee. At this time
Pennsylvania had more working children than any other state in the
union. For example, there was Helen Sissack, a girl of twelve working in
a silk mill, walking three miles from her home to start work at six
o’clock at night, finishing work at six in the morning, and walking
three miles back. Nearing became an instructor at the Wharton School,
but went on opposing child labor, and the president of the Pennsylvania
Manufacturers’ Association attacked him, and the dean of the Wharton
School was instructed by the provost of the university to instruct
Nearing to stop his child labor talks. The university was scolded by a
newspaper belonging to Joseph R. Grundy, woolen manufacturer and
political boss, and this sent the provost into another panic.
After several years of strife, Nearing promised to be “good” for a year,
and he was “good” for two years; that is, he made no outside speeches;
but it didn’t help him, because what he said in his class-rooms was
reported by the students, and reached the ears of the interlocking
trustees. The standard time for promotion in the Wharton School is five
years, but Nearing waited eight years, and along with his promotion he
got a notice from the provost that the period of his appointment was for
one year at a time! Randall Morgan, vice-president of the U. G. I., and
trustee of the University of U. G. I., remarked to a friend of mine: “He
may stay until he’s bald-headed, but he’ll never get promoted.” Another
trustee said to Nearing: “We’ll give you young fellows rope and you’ll
hang yourselves. There’ll be no dismissals.” This was E. B. Morris,
president of the Girard Trust Company, a Morgan concern, with Mr.
Stotesbury, the grand duke, for a director; also chairman of the Cambria
Steel Company, of which Mr. Stotesbury is a director; also director of
the Pennsylvania Steel Company.
The provost thought he knew how to handle this matter. He said to one of
his henchmen: “Load him with administrative work, so that he can’t
lecture. ‘Squeeze’ him.“ This is a term which they understand at
plutocratic universities; to “squeeze” you is to make changes in your
curriculum, so as to make your courses less important; to take them out
of the required list, or to give required French at the same hour, so
that nobody will be free to come to your courses; or to put them at
inconvenient hours, say at three o’clock in the afternoon, when nobody
likes to come. If you are a professor, they will “squeeze” your young
men; you will be unable to get promotions and proper salaries for your
subordinates, or equipment or proper supplies for your department.
You may find the adventures of Scott Nearing set forth in a book called
“The Nearing Case,” by Lightner Witmer, a professor at the university.
It is interesting to note that Professor Witmer paid for the publication
of this book by being “squeezed” himself, and by having his young men
“squeezed.” Scott Nearing, ring-leader of the agitation, they kept on a
salary of fifteen hundred dollars—and at the same time they delicately
called his attention to an opening which presented itself at another
university, where he might get three thousand dollars! “What a shame
about that nice young Nearing fellow!” said Professor Lingelbach of the
department of history. “He might have been getting seven or eight
thousand dollars now, if he had held his tongue!” But on another
occasion this venerable professor argued in a faculty discussion that
there was no suppression of free speech at the University of
Pennsylvania. Somebody put to him the question, suppose he wanted to
join in municipal research work, to take up gas or street railways. Yes,
everybody present admitted, that might make a difference!