THE MINING CAMP UNIVERSITY
We continue our journey on the Union Pacific Railroad, and come to the
metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, a city entirely surrounded by gold
mines, silver mines, coal mines and copper mines, and entirely
controlled by hard-fighting piratical gentlemen who have seized these
hidden treasures. Denver is only a generation removed from the mining
camp stage of civilization, and mining camp manners and morals still
prevail in its financial, political and educational life. In other
portions of the United States you find the great captains of industry
hiring politicians to run the state and city governments for them; but
in Colorado up to quite recently they did their own dirty work—you would
find the grand dukes of the interlocking directorate, Evans of traction,
Doherty of gas and electric, Field of telephones, Cheesman of water,
Guggenheim of copper, themselves the political bosses, hiring their
thugs and repeaters and ballot box stuffers, and paying their own cash
to their newspaper editors, clergymen and college presidents. These
mighty chieftains used to fall out and quarrel and turn their
scandal-bureaus loose on one another, so it was always easy to learn the
insides of Denver finance, politics and education.
The leading prejudice factory of the State of Colorado has been the
University of Denver, founded by the father of William G. Evans,
traction magnate and Republican boss. Mr. Evans made himself president
of the board of trustees of the university, and selected to run the
institution an extremely venomous and abusive Methodist clergyman by the
name of Buchtel. In running the government of Denver, Mr. Evans worked
in alliance with the gamblers and the keepers of brothels and wine-rooms
for the seducing of young girls; the violations of law became so
flagrant that the political gang operating under Evans found its power
threatened, and cast about for some candidate for governor to take the
curse off them, and selected the Reverend Henry Augustus Buchtel, D.D.,
LL.D., chancellor of their university. As the Denver “Post” delicately
phrased it, “They reached up in the House of God and pulled down the
poor old chancellor to cover up the rottenness of their machine.”
There was a meeting of the chancellor with Mr. Evans and his political
henchmen. One of the purposes of his nomination was that his candidacy
might aid Simon Guggenheim, head of the Smelter Trust, to buy his way
into the United States Senate. The chancellor accepted the nomination,
and invited all present to rise, join hands and sing: “Blest Be the Tie
That Binds.” You may find this anecdote in “The Beast,” by Ben B.
Lindsey, Judge of the Children’s Court of Denver—that is, you may find
it if you can find a copy of the book, which its publishers mysteriously
ceased to push. Says Lindsey:
The tie that binds the Beast and the Church? Yes, and the Beast and
the College! During the Peabody campaign (according to the “Rocky
Mountain News”) a young student named Reed had been practically driven
from the Denver University because he criticized the corporation
Governor. Later a university professor was sent to Europe to gather
data which was used in the campaign against municipal ownership in
Denver; and the professor was “exposed but not forced into
retirement.” Later still, Buchtel reprimanded a student named Bell for
volunteering as a worker in one of our Juvenile Court campaigns. Mr.
Evans was president of the Board of Trustees of the University, and
the Reverend Henry Augustus Buchtel was his Chancellor.
The use of Buchtel in the campaign that followed was a huge success.
Everywhere people said to me: “Why, the Chancellor will never stand
for the sale of the senatorship to Guggenheim!” Or the “dear
chancellor” will never permit this or that undesirable thing in
politics. But Buchtel had already admitted to a ministerial friend
that he believed Guggenheim ought to be elected—though he said nothing
of it from the platform, you may be sure. After he was Governor, he
not only endorsed Guggenheim but vigorously defended the Legislature
for electing Guggenheim, honored Evans with a place on the
gubernatorial staff, and gave a public dinner to the corporation heads
who had most profited by the rule of the System in the state. They
reciprocated by sending the Denver University handsome donations;
Evans led with $10,000, and Guggenheim, Hughes and others followed
with fat checks.
The keeper of a gambling hell, whom I summoned to my court and forced
to make restitution to one of his victims, said to me: “I have some
respect for Mayor Speer. He tells these preachers that he believes in
our policy of open gambling. But I have nothing but contempt for that
old stiff up in the State House who talks about ‘the word of God,’ and
gets his nomination from a boss who protects _us_, and gets elected on
money that _we_ contributed to the organization!” It is one of the
saddest aspects of this use of the Church that The Beast gains
respectability thereby, and the Church contempt....
Buchtel was elected. His candidacy proved a successful disguise for
the Guggenheim “deal,” and the “church element” was used as well as
“the dive element.” A corporation legislature was put in power. It
only remained for the corporations to deliver the United States
senatorship to Guggenheim “for value received,” and to betray the
nation as they had betrayed the state.
Simon Guggenheim had no more claim to represent Colorado in the Senate
at Washington than John D. Rockefeller has—or Baron Rothschild. He was
the head of the Smelter Trust, and he had been financially interested,
of course, in the election of Peabody in 1904, and the defeat of the
eight-hour law and the suppression of the eight-hour strike. These
things entitled him to the gratitude of the corporations only. He was
unknown to the people of Colorado. He had never been heard of by them
except in a newspaper interview. He had not, as far as I know, ever
spoken or written a word publicly on politics. “I don’t know much
about the political game,” he told one of his campaign managers, “but
I have the money. I know _that_ game.” He does.
That was fifteen years ago, and they did their bribery in the old-style
way. Guggenheim paid the campaign expenses of a majority of the Colorado
legislators. At present the State of Colorado is run by Phipps, the
steel king, and they do not have to buy the legislators, for it is the
people who elect the United States senators, and they have bought up all
the institutions upon which the people depend. They have bought the Y.
M. C. A. and the churches by “donations,” and they have bought the
universities in Colorado by giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to
them. Because Lindsey exposed this new style of bribery, the Phipps
machine ordered all of Lindsey’s child welfare bills killed by the state
legislature.
And of course in their university they watch incessantly to make sure
that no dangerous ideas reach the students. Last summer there was a
meeting of all the clergymen of Denver on the campus of the university
to listen to Dr. Harry Ward, general secretary of the Social Service
Commission of the Federated Council Churches of America. The chancellor
intervened at the last minute and forbade Ward to speak, denouncing him
as “a menace to the present social order.” Instead, he got copies of a
report on the steel strike, which Judge Gary had had prepared by one of
his kept clergymen, as a reply to the attack by the Inter-Church World
Movement. Every member of the graduating class of 1921 received a copy
of this report, being solemnly called in to receive it personally from
the hands of the chancellor. A professor at the university, who had been
scheduled to speak at the church of a Socialist clergyman in Denver, was
called up and warned that if he wished to have a career at the
university he must avoid that kind of thing. Shortly after this a
representative of the Rockefeller education fund was invited to luncheon
at the university, and the chancellor made a public appeal to him for
funds, on the ground of his services in barring Dr. Ward. This was a
trifle too raw, and the chancellor did not get his money!
The old man has just been retired; but the same gang still rules the
board of trustees, with Evans the infamous as grand duke. As assistant
he has an attorney for the “Big Four” corporations which run the city of
Denver, who spends his spare time leading crusades against the “reds”;
also a prominent banker, a corporation lawyer, a real estate speculator,
a capitalistic preacher, a corporation lawyer from Pueblo, a millionaire
oil man and lawyer, a millionaire miner and banker—and finally, as Grand
Duke junior, “Boss” Evans’ son, John.