THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CHIMES
We move a couple of hundred miles farther north to Seattle. It may be
difficult to believe that there was ever a time when students in an
American university took an active interest in the people’s rights, and
declined to receive favors from wholesale corrupters of public life; but
such was actually the case ten years ago, at the height of the
Progressive movement in the state of Washington.
The grand duke who ran the higher education of that state was Colonel
Blethen, publisher of the Seattle “Times,” an exceptional old scoundrel
who had manipulated street railways in Minnesota, and then brought his
fortune to Seattle and bought a newspaper, which he used for the rawest
kind of blackmailing, by a “strong arm” advertising department. Colonel
Blethen had been made a member of the board of regents of the
university; and in the effort to rehabilitate himself and his family
name, he spent twelve thousand dollars for a set of chimes, which he
presented to the university with the stipulation that they were to be
known by his name.
The students of the university did not feel grateful; fifty-one of them
composed and signed a letter of protest which was inserted in the
student daily, and put on the presses, when the printer “tipped off”
Colonel Blethen’s university president, and the presses were stopped.
The students took the letter to the city and there printed it and
distributed it. The editor of the college paper refused to publish again
until he could publish the letter. When ordered by the authorities to
issue the paper, he did so with a blank space where the letter had been!
Colonel Blethen’s president was a gentleman named Kane—bear his name in
mind, if you can, as we shall have some adventures with him at the
University of North Dakota. President Kane accepted the chimes, and a
solemn ceremony of dedication was performed—with the students
distributing handbills of protest on the outskirts of the crowd! If you
consider the coincidence of Times, chimes and crimes, you will
understand that the young men were literally driven to writing verses.
The ones they made strike me as exceptionally good, so I quote two
stanzas.
ALL IS WELL
Recommended to friends of the University of Washington as a suitable
Dedication Ode for the Blethen Chimes:
Clang the Chimes—clang the Chimes,
Help to glorify The Times;
And the fame to which it’s heir
—All the sins that “dailies” dare—
Swell aloud from college walls;
Peal through all the college halls.
Slander’s pence and scandal’s dimes
Here transform to silver chimes
That shall tell, as they swell,
All is well; all—is—well....
Champion of the den and sty!
Daily forty-page-long-lie!
Yet, despite its thousand crimes,
Praise The Times; clang its Chimes.
Let them charm the ear of Youth;
Let them swell its jeers at Truth
And in Truth’s own court proclaim
Gold is power; brass is fame;
Watch The Times go on and sell
All the news that’s fit—(for h—).
All is well; All—is—well.
The protest had been orderly and dignified—the only violence being
committed by one of the regents, who had dragged a student about, trying
to tear his papers away from him and denouncing him for what he was
doing. The student body was thoroughly roused, and more than seven
hundred signed a letter endorsing the protest. Blethen had come on to
the campus to make a speech, and the students had heckled him and as one
of them told me “had him on the run.” The university authorities now
barred all save invited speakers, and the president ordained that the
teaching of progressive ideas at the university must cease, and there
was to be no student criticism of president or regents, or their acts.
The whole controversy was reviewed by the regents, who endorsed what the
president had done.
We have spoken of Professor Hart, and how he was dropped from Reed. At
this time Hart was at the University of Washington, and an incident will
illustrate the feeling of all parties. Hart sat at luncheon in the
Faculty Club, when President Kane entered and told of the action of the
regents. Said Hart, “They think they can get away with it?” To which the
president answered: “Aren’t they the authorities?” Said Hart: “Do you
realize that there are a thousand students in this university who have
votes, and may hold the balance of power at the next election?”
Evidently the regents thought the same thing; it was the year of the
Roosevelt revolt, and the Progressives were certain of carrying the
state. A few days before the election, the Seattle “Post-Intelligencer,”
owned by the transportation lines and the Seattle National Bank, dug up
a story to the effect that the Progressive candidate had divorced his
wife. They mailed out ten thousand post cards to the women of the state:
“Do you want a divorced man for governor?” As a result, the Democrats
carried the election by eight hundred votes. They threw out two regents
who had supported the students, and later on, as a result of the
controversy, the governor turned out the entire board and put in four
standpat business men, with a Catholic M. D. at the head. This gentleman
made a desperate effort to have a Catholic chosen as president of the
university, but finally compromised upon a High Church Episcopalian of
Catholic extraction, a product of Nicholas Murray Butler’s finishing
machine.
Professor Hart was at this time one of the most popular members of the
faculty with the students, a lecturer widely known throughout the state;
he was now told that his inability to get along with his colleagues in
his department was a reason for his dismissal. They gave him a year’s
leave of absence, though he did not want it; then they set out to find a
substitute, and he applied for the job of substitute! Finally, they let
out all three professors in the department, including Hart; a little
later they took back one of them, the dean! A great many people thought
this was a trick, and Hart’s students protested bitterly, but in vain.
They paid Hart an unusual tribute of appreciation, organizing a
publishing company to finance his book on social service.
Old Colonel Blethen of the “Times” is dead, and the University of the
Chimes now has as its first grand duke a gentleman who is president of a
bank, a commercial company, an investment company, an irrigating
company, and a mortgage and a loan company; he is assisted by a
politician and lobbyist, chairman of the appropriations committee of the
state legislature. In twenty-five years, I am informed, there has never
been a farmer or a labor representative on the board! The university
remains a place of low standards, no academic achievements, and
perpetual cheap advertising by the administration. Three different men
have written me to tell how they have been strangled—but always warning
me not to use their names—not even to tell the details of their
experiences! One writes about another professor, not in any sense a
radical, but who tells the truth about public questions, and as a result
has been an object of attack for twenty-five years:
Most of the time it has been under cover and has consisted in efforts
to bring pressure to bear on the president and board of regents. But a
number of times it has come out into the open. A governor some years
ago in his inaugural address announced his determination to bring
about the removal of Professor ——, and a few times an effort has been
made in the legislature to make elimination of his department a
condition of legislative support for the university. But while a good
deal of publicity was given to these more spectacular assaults on
academic freedom, they had little effect except perhaps to strengthen
the administrative conviction that such departments were a good deal
of a nuisance. Far more effective are the ever active forces which are
working silently without any publicity upon those in control—president
and regents. Nor does the failure to exercise power to remove indicate
necessarily lack of real influence. There are many ways of
disciplining an obstreperous faculty member without actual removal. A
president in his control of salaries, distribution of library and
other departmental funds may withhold from an offending faculty member
opportunities accorded to those who have not incurred his displeasure.
In the course of my experience as a faculty member I have seen a good
deal of the sinister side of university control.
And peace reigns in the country of the Lumber Trust. Last year the big
lumber companies cut wages, and on an investment of three millions they
paid dividends of seven millions. At Port Angeles they are bringing in
ship-loads of Japanese labor, in defiance of the law. The lumber-jacks
and the blanket-stiffs work in hourly peril of life and limb; they sleep
in filthy bunks and eat rotten food, and if they attempt to organize and
better their conditions, their organizations are destroyed and their
meeting halls sacked by mobs of business men. If they appeal to the
public authorities they are laughed at; if they appeal to the public
their voices are unheard; if they exercise the elemental right of
self-defense, as they did at Centralia, they are shot, or beaten to
death, or castrated with pocket knives and hanged, or tried before a mob
jury and sentenced to ten or twenty years in jail. These things are
done, not as acts of primitive barbarism, but as a business system; they
are planned by the interlocking directorate, sitting in padded
arm-chairs around tables in directors’ rooms; they are carried out by
efficient executives telephoning from mahogany desks. Such is the rule
of the Lumber Trust; and at the University of the Lumber Trust the
professors know all about it; they go to their classes and teach what
their masters tell them to teach, and on behalf of justice and humanity
they utter not one single peep.