THE FORTRESS OF MEDIEVALISM
My first visit to Berkeley was in the winter of 1909-10. I had come to
see a professor—I shall not name him, since he does not welcome
publicity; suffice it to say that he is one of the world’s leading
scientists, and in any country in Europe would be named among a dozen
greatest contributors to advanced knowledge. He was educated in Europe,
and had come to the great California university, thinking he would be
welcomed as at home. Shortly after his arrival came “Charter Day,” and
he was invited to a grand academic banquet, a function which he
described to me with infinite amusement.
There was a table of honor across the front of the room, raised above
the others, and at this table sat the president of the university, and
on his right hand the grand duke of the interlocking regents, and on his
left hand the second grand duke, and all the robber lords and barons of
the state carefully ranged according to their financial standing, looked
up in the latest Moody’s Manual, or Dun or Bradstreet, or wherever it is
that you find these things. At the other tables, tapering away from the
royal presence, were placed the deans and heads of departments, the
professors, the assistant professors, the instructors, all graded
according to the amount of their salaries, and any slightest variation
in the order of precedence jealously looked out for and resented. My
friend the scientist was put in his pecuniary proper place; the fact
that he was a master mind who would have occupied the seat of honor at
any function of any university faculty in Europe, made no slightest
difference; he was not even asked to meet the interlocking regents, nor
were they aware of his existence. The president met such great ones, and
shook hands with them, for he was a fifteen thousand dollar a year man;
but my scientist friend was only a four or five thousand dollar a year
man, and was expected to stay with his own kind.
Also, while on this visit to Berkeley, I talked with the wife of a
professor; the ladies, you know, have an especially acute sense for
social matters, and often have a pungent way of expressing what they
feel. This lady had been walking on the beach at Del Monte, the
exclusive resort of the California plutocracy. Perhaps she wasn’t meant
to be there; anyhow, there came strolling toward her the president of
the university, with two or three of the wives of his wealthiest
regents. They were coquettishly and elaborately got up, and he was
indulging in elephantine playfulness, talking to them about “getting
their tootsies wet”—crude efforts of a man of majesty and learning to
descend to social dalliance. He stopped in front of the wife of his
professor and spoke to her, but did not introduce her to the other
ladies, a grave and intentional discourtesy. Instead of that, he looked
at her sternly and said: “I wish you to know that I have no use whatever
for science.”
This, you must understand, to the wife of a man who was supposed to be
discovering some of nature’s most vital secrets! I asked in bewilderment
just what could have been the motive for such a remark, and the
explanation was that scientists sometimes think themselves of
importance, and it is necessary to academic discipline that they should
be put in their place. This same scientist was instrumental in bringing
to the university half a dozen of the greatest men of Europe as
lecturers—Arrhenius, de Vries, Sir William Ramsay. They were paid
inadequately for their long journey, and my friend suggested that it
might be a good idea to reward them with an honorary degree. Said
President Wheeler, with instant decision: “I give no degrees to
scientists!” “Whom do you give them to?” asked my friend, and the answer
was: “I give them to people of importance—to statesmen, public men,
college presidents.” This was Benjamin Ide Wheeler, ex-professor to the
German Kaiser, and tireless singer of the Kaiser’s praises, holder of a
Heidelberg degree, and of honorary degrees from all the great Eastern
centers of the interlocking directorate, Princeton, Harvard, Brown,
Yale, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Columbia. He called himself a
liberal, but never enough to offend Mrs. Hearst, who gave the university
a Greek theater, with her son’s name carved across the front of the
stage.
While I was in Berkeley there was a scandal at the university, because
of the sudden appointment of a new professor to be dean of the Graduate
School. This was David P. Barrows, now president of the university, and
a person whose career is of interest to us. He is a product of the
University of California, and was finished in Nicholas Murray Butler’s
educational enameling machine. Thence he went to be superintendent of
schools of the city of Manila, and later on director of education for
the Philippine Islands. Having received a thorough training in
imperialism, he came home to proclaim the gospel of the mailed fist in
our empire of raisins and prunes.
Dean Barrows was a fighting man, and became immediately active in
university politics. You may be startled to hear that anything so
dubious as “politics” exists in a university; but if you believe in
applied imperialism, and start to apply it to those about you, you are
apt to find some of them resisting, and you will have to put them down,
and put up others who are willing to obey you and promote your
interests. So Barrows became a tireless university politician, and he
and his subordinates also became active in the outside politics of their
city and state. As it happens, Berkeley had a large working class
population, and a strong Socialist sentiment, and naturally there is no
higher duty that an imperialist college dean can perform than to crush
Socialism in his home town.
I have described the university as a medieval fortress on a hill. You
thought, no doubt, I was just slinging language; but consider the
situation. The university has nothing to do with Berkeley, it is not a
part of the city, it pays no taxes, either to city or state;
nevertheless, it lays claim to run the affairs of the city, and does so.
If there are any charters or city contracts to be drawn, the university
professors do it, and they do it in the interests of the university, and
of the university’s interlocking regents. If there is a school
superintendent or a mayor to be selected, the university machine is
ready with a university man. It is the established custom that one
member of the school board of Berkeley shall be a university professor,
and you always find this professor voting on the side of reaction and
special privilege. For example, the law provides that insurance on
school buildings be placed with the companies which make the lowest
bids; the school board wished to violate this law, and a Socialist
member of the school board fought for a whole day to prevent the
violation, and was beaten by the vote of the university professor. When
election time comes round, the university goes into the campaign as one
man to “smash the Socialists.” The university machine circulates
slanders against the Socialist administration, and university students
are registered and voted wholesale for the plutocracy. The university
machine selects the local judges, and the Key Route, a street railroad,
puts up the money to elect them—this money being voted by directors who
are university regents. In one campaign Stitt Wilson, Socialist mayor of
Berkeley, read from the platform the affidavit of a student to the
effect that the president of the student body had stated that he had
received five thousand dollars from the Key Route, to be used on the
campus to beat the Socialist ticket.
Of course the Key Route expects to be paid back for this, and presents
its bill whenever there is a strike of its workers. It would be too much
to expect that the interlocking directorate should own and run a
university, and then, in an emergency like a strike, should see eight or
ten thousand young men sitting by entirely idle, except for fool
studies. When strikes occur, the interlocking newspapers paint
terrifying pictures of the public emergency, and the interlocking deans
organize the students and give them special credits for the time they
spend as “great American heroes.” In 1913 came a gas and electric
strike, and the president of the gas company, a member of the board of
regents, called on his university for help, and the boys from the
engineering department were given credit for a full semester’s work for
their services as “scabs.” After that, when the Socialists proposed a
measure to have the regents elected by the people, the labor leaders of
California said they weren’t interested; working men didn’t go to
college, so why should they bother about such matters?
And just as this University of the Black Hand seeks to run the city, so
also it seeks to run the state. Just now there is a bitter struggle
under way, over a bill to enable cities and towns to combine and develop
water power for their own use. The special interests of California are
fighting this measure tooth and nail; and prominent among them are the
ten university regents who are interested in power companies. Do these
gentlemen fail to make use of their university in the struggle? If you
expect such a thing, you do not know our empire of raisins and prunes!
The farmers of this empire are organized into farm bureaus at state
expense. These bureaus are supposed to be run by the farmers themselves,
but the university appoints “experts,” and the state pays them to act as
advisers and guiding lights to the farm bureaus. During this campaign it
was observed that resolutions against the hydro-electric power bill kept
coming in from the farm bureaus; which seemed unaccountable, because in
the state legislature the farmers’ bloc was unanimous for the bill. The
mystery was traced down, and in every case it was discovered that the
treacherous resolution had come from the “experts”—university men,
appointed by university regents in the interest of their privately owned
power plants! And at the same time in San Francisco, Mr. Crocker, grand
duke of the regents, is starting a campaign to get Rudolph Spreckles, a
liberal capitalist, out of control of the First National Bank, because
Mr. Spreckles has committed the crime of supporting this power bill!