THE UNIVERSITY OF JUDGE GARY
There is another great ruling class munition-factory in the vicinity of
Chicago, Northwestern University, at Evanston, Illinois. It is one of
those terrible places, of which there are scores in the United States,
which began as little church institutions, and by the grace of graft
have grown to enormous size. Northwestern is Methodist, and has some ten
thousand strictly pious students, and over six hundred instructors, and
not a rag of an idea to cover its bare bones. The man who was until last
year its president fitted himself for that office by being the
university’s “Director of the Bureau of Salesmanship Research.” The
first vice-president of the university is the general counsel of the
Illinois Steel Company; the third vice-president is vice-president of
the Illinois Steel Company; while the grand duke is the very grandest of
all grand dukes in the United States—that prince of open shoppers and
potentate of reaction, Judge Gary, chairman of the United States Steel
Corporation!
For many years previously the leading grand duke was James A. Patten,
the grain speculator, whose million dollar corner in wheat was the
sensation of my boyhood. Mr. Patten began life as a clerk in a country
store, and his claim to direct a great educational institution is based
upon his acquaintance with the grain commission business, one of the
most thoroughly organized of American swindles. Mr. Patten is director
of two national banks, a trust company, a grain company, and an Edison
company. He is a malignant “open shopper,” and during his reign at
Northwestern waged incessant war upon two or three liberals who got into
the place.
One of these men was Professor Gray, whom we have already met at the
University of Minnesota. Gray managed to stick at Northwestern for
sixteen years. He taught economics; a liberal colleague taught
psychology, and the president of the university remarked to a friend of
mine that these were the two hardest departments he had to administer,
because one touched on religion and the other on the pocket-book! Gray
was handicapped in the usual way by low salaries and lack of promotion
for himself and his assistants. For many years he tried to get Harry
Ward as assistant, but could never manage it.
Mr. Patten was twice elected mayor of Evanston, and when he ran again,
Professor Gray, who was a Progressive, talked against him, and led the
Progressive forces in the legislature that drove Patten’s chairman out.
Naturally, that caused Mr. Patten intense annoyance. He had given the
university a gymnasium, and a generous share of the millions he had
extracted from the bread supply of the American people. So he demanded
that the president should support him; and the president sent for Gray,
and proceeded to administer a rebuke. Gray asked: “Are you speaking
officially or as an individual?”
The climax of the affair was that Gray asked to meet Patten and thresh
the matter out face to face. They met at luncheon, and Patten presented
his complaint. He was sore because Gray had quoted him as saying with
regard to the pious students of the university—“it had cost more to get
out the Bible vote than any other.” “But,” said Gray, “you did say that,
didn’t you?” Patten admitted that he had said it, so Professor Gray
finally offered to settle the matter by writing a letter to both the
Evanston newspapers, stating exactly what Mr. Patten admitted he had
said, and exactly what he denied; but Patten was not satisfied with this
settlement of the difficulty!
A little later Professor Gray was appointed by the National Civic
Federation as one of a committee of economists to investigate municipal
ownership in Europe. They were all supposed to be reactionaries, and
their findings were supposed to be what they knew the National Civic
Federation wanted; but Professor Gray had the wretched taste to become
converted to the doctrines of municipal ownership by the facts he
observed in Europe, and he so stated in his report. When he got a proof
of this report he found that it had been doctored in the office of Mr.
Ralph Easley, the very ardent “open shopper” and hundred per cent
plutocratic secretary of that organization. The professor had to
threaten a law-suit against the National Civic Federation in order to
force them to correct the report.
Also, Gray had a “run-in” with Charles Deering, Harvester Trust magnate,
the second grand duke of the board. Deering asked Gray to speak against
a strike of the Harvester Trust workers, and said that he purposed to
put this strike down with guns. “Yes, Mr. Deering,” said the professor,
“but suppose the day comes when you are under the sod and the other
fellow has the guns.” Needless to say, the authorities of Northwestern
were glad when this too popular professor received an offer from the
University of Minnesota, which had come for the moment under a liberal
administration. A friend of mine was present at a private luncheon, at
which Mr. Patten made the statement that he had got rid of Gray, and was
now going to get rid of another man.
This especially pious university is the one we mentioned as having
established a rule that only bachelors are to be accepted as teachers;
also the one which we found officially declaring that excellence in a
college professor lies, not in his being able to teach, but in his
diligence in raking in the dust-heaps of history. Last spring they gave
their grand duke the usual honorary degree, and took occasion to have
him instruct their ten thousand students in the principles of American
piety. A copy of the address lies before me, one of those beautifully
but mysteriously printed pamphlets which bear the name of no publisher
and no purchase price, but manage to get circulated by hundreds of
thousands of copies all over the country.
The subject of Judge Gary’s address is “Ethics in Business,” and he
begins by making some curious admissions. There was a time, “not many
years ago, perhaps not much more than a score,” when in American
business “the rule of might over right prevailed.... Competition was
tyrannical and destructive. Weaker competitors were forced out of
business, often by means not only unethical but severe and brutal. The
graves of insolvents were strewn along the paths of industrial
development and operation. The financially strong grew stronger and
richer.”
Of course you understand what all this means; it is an amiable
preliminary to the statement which Judge Gary is going to make, that now
all these evil things have changed, this wicked time has passed! But I
would like to put to Judge Gary the question: how did it happen to pass?
Who brought it about, and what were you, Judge Gary, doing at the time?
Were you going about the country, telling boys and girls in colleges
about the need of business reform? The question answers itself. At that
time Judge Gary was head of the Federal Steel Company, and busily
engaged in organizing the Steel Trust, the most perfect illustration in
America of the evils he refers to. Also he was engaged in denouncing as
agitators and disturbers of the public peace the very men, from Theodore
Roosevelt down, whose labors on behalf of reform he now pretends to
justify and accept.
In those wicked days, he tells the students, the masters of industry
“did not give to employes just consideration. The wage rates were
adjusted strictly in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. The
welfare of the workmen was decided almost entirely from the standpoint
of utility and profit.” But now, all that is over. “The large majority
of business men now conduct their affairs” on the basis “that employes
are associates rather than servants, and should be treated
accordingly.... Conscientious treatment of employes which secures their
respect and confidence will tend to increase their loyalty and
efficiency.” And this from the man who continues to maintain throughout
the greatest industry in America a twelve-hour day, with a
twenty-four-hour day once a week! Who uses all the power of his colossal
organization to deny to his employes the most essential of all
industrial rights—the right to organize for their own protection! Who,
as an incident to this policy, maintains the most widespread and most
infamous system of espionage and terrorism that has ever been known in
an Anglo-Saxon country! This man, who pays more money to spies and
provocateurs in one year than the czar of all the Russians paid in
ten—this man, whose hands are slimy with the blood of union organizers
shot down in cold blood, whose lips are foul with ten thousand lies,
told about his wage-slaves during the last steel strike—this man has the
insolence to stand up before a commencement audience at a “Christian”
university, and declare that justice and kindness now prevail in
American big business, and that wage rates are no longer “adjusted
strictly in accordance with the laws of supply and demand!”
Such is the state of social conscience in the greatest educational
institution of the Methodist church in America; but, thank God, the
entire church no longer applauds this re-crucifixion of Jesus. The
Inter-church Federation has issued a report on the steel strike; and if
you want to know just how honest a man Judge Gary is, take the trouble
to read their account of the handling of this strike by his Pittsburgh
newspapers. After that you will be able to get the full humor of the
comment of Bishop McConnell of the Methodist church upon the giving of
the degree to Gary. At the “Evanston Conference” the bishop said that
the conferring of this degree did not mean any intellectual attainments
on the part of the recipient; “it merely means that for certain specific
and well-known purposes you are giving him a degree.” In other words,
you are selling your soul for the price of a building!