INTELLECTUAL DRY-ROT
There are a few other universities, which in past times have established
reputations in America; for example, Cornell University, located at
Ithaca, New York, on the Lackawanna Railroad, with a Cornell trustee, a
Columbia trustee, and a Princeton trustee; also on the Lehigh Railroad,
with a trustee and recent president of Lehigh College, a trustee of the
University of Pennsylvania, and a trustee of Lafayette College for
directors. Cornell today has some six thousand students, and as choice
an outfit of trustees as a plutocratic imagination could invent. The
grand duke is Mr. George F. Baker, reputed to be, next to Rockefeller,
the richest man in America. I might take a page of this book to list all
the various institutions of which Mr. Baker is an interlocking director.
He is president of the First National Bank of New York, one of the three
great institutions of the Money Trust, and also a trustee of the Mutual
Life Insurance Company, a great treasure-chest. He is director in a
dozen railroads, and his son is director in many more.
Next to Mr. Baker stands Mr. Charles M. Schwab, president of Bethlehem
Steel, and H. H. Westinghouse, chairman of the Westinghouse Company. It
will suffice to indicate a few of the others—the head of the biggest
bank in Ithaca; the head of a great machinery company, president of a
national bank; a corporation lawyer and bank director; a metal
manufacturer, director of many railroads; an ex-governor and prominent
Republican politician; the chairman of the Bankers’ Trust Company of
Buffalo, president of a steamship company, a lumber company and a
railroad company; the vice-president and counsel of the New York Central
Railroad; a prominent corporation lawyer; a judge, ex-mayor of Ithaca,
and director of a national bank; the president of a national bank and
director of half a dozen others; the president of the Ithaca Trust
Company, director of many other banks; an official of Mr. Schwab’s
shipbuilding corporation; the chief justice, and another justice, of the
New York Court of Appeals; and, finally, that Major Seaman whose heroic
defense of the Chicago packers you may read about in Chapter IV of “The
Brass Check.”
Not so very long ago Cornell had a famous president, Schurman, who had
studied the Goose-step in three of the Kaiser’s universities. I received
an interesting account of him from Mr. W. E. Zeuch, who was on the
Cornell faculty, when the Bolshevik-hunters got hold of some letters,
written to him by another professor. This other professor was quite a
“red,” and Zeuch was trying to “tame him down”; the letters of Zeuch
were not published, but he was represented as a Bolshevist, and his
scalp was demanded. Cornell at this time was in the midst of a “drive”
for ten millions, and a lumber magnate wrote to President Schurman that
so long as Zeuch remained he would not lead the “drive.” The economics
department of the university appointed a committee, which endorsed Zeuch
and declared that a contract had been made, and that the university
should stand by a competent man. In twenty-five years the university had
never rejected the decision of such a faculty committee; nevertheless,
President Schurman proposed that Zeuch should resign from the faculty,
and accept a position as a “fellow,” to do the same amount of work and
receive the same salary!
Also they had a flurry at Cornell over Thorstein Veblen three or four
years ago. He had been scheduled for appointment; his courses had been
listed, and the members of the economics department had sent out to
various colleges a circular letter calling attention to the fact that
Veblen was to come to Cornell, and that graduate students could get work
with him there. But the interlocking trustees got busy, and the call was
countermanded. Nevertheless, in the interest of discrimination it must
be specified that Cornell is to be numbered among our less illiberal
universities. One professor made so bold during the war as to advocate
the financing of the war by taxation rather than by bonds. This would
have meant that the plutocracy would have to pay at least a part of the
costs instead of collecting it all by installments from you and me. The
trustees of the university heard this professor explain his ideas; they
did not take action to recommend this policy to the country—but they
refrained from firing the professor. Also there is another professor, an
elderly gentleman, who is a great favorite with the students, who take
his liberal ideas with playful good humor. Several of this old
gentleman’s friends assured me that he would tell me the story of his
twenty-five years’ struggle for the right to think for himself; but
apparently the old professor decided that he did not want to have any
more struggles!
Henrik Willem Van Loon, author of “The Story of Mankind,” was also a
member of this Cornell faculty, and gave me an amusing account of the
atmosphere of the place. President Schurman was selling four hundred
thousand dollars worth of education per year, “training boys to become
superintendents of sewage disposal plants and presidents of Rotary
clubs.” Van Loon was gravely rebuked by Schurman, because of a humorous
remark which created a scandal; he had been writing on the blackboard,
when a thunderstorm had come up, and he playfully compared himself to
Moses writing the Ten Commandments amid the thunders of Sinai. Van Loon
swears it is true, and I am compelled to believe him—that when he asked
to see the Dante collection they took him to inspect an electric manure
sprayer!
Or take Brown University, located at Providence, Rhode Island, on the
familiar New Haven Railroad. Here is an extremely wealthy institution,
catering to the sons of the plutocracy, and almost as snobbish as
Princeton. It was built in part out of Rockefeller money, and the man
who has been its president for the last twenty-three years is a Baptist
clergyman, for ten years pastor of Rockefeller’s Fifth Avenue church in
New York. For “chancellor” the university has an extremely wealthy
cotton manufacturer, president of a bank; for treasurer it has the
president of the Providence Banking Company, also treasurer of the
United Traction and Electric Company, and of the Rumford Chemical Works.
The three most active grand dukes of the board are Mr. Bedford, chairman
of the Standard Oil Company, who represents the Rockefeller interests;
Mr. Sharpe, head of the Brown & Sharpe Company, the largest
manufacturers of tools in the United States; and Mr. Metcalf, a big
textile manufacturer, president of the Providence “Journal” Company.
Also there is the manager of the Brown & Sharpe Company; the president
of the Cadillac Motor Car Company; the head of a big New York banking
company, president of a railroad and a coal company, director of three
railroads, three trust companies, a milk company, a patent medicine
company, and a brick company; a very wealthy manufacturing chemist; an
influential New England textile manufacturer; a steel magnate; a lawyer,
who is president of a land company and secretary of several railroads
and trust companies; the treasurer of the largest textile manufacturing
company in New England, who is director in half a dozen others, and in
half a dozen of the largest financial institutions; another Providence
banker; and, finally, Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes. Mr. Hughes
first came under my observation when I studied the life insurance
scandals in New York City. I noted that he sternly carried these
investigations to the point necessary to put Morgan and his group in
control, and stopped exactly at that point. For this service he was
awarded a national reputation and the governorship of New York State. He
has since occupied the Supreme Court bench, and come within a few votes
of being president, and is now guiding the foreign affairs of our
country, making a desperate and almost a successful effort to exceed the
futility of the Wilson administration.
What happens to a great and wealthy university under such a regime?
Brown has a high tradition, derived from Roger Williams, most famous of
New England’s religious rebels. But in 1899 its president, Andrews, was
ousted, because he had dared to back Bryan in the campaign of 1896.
Quite recently occurred a similar case, when William MacDonald,
professor of history, was forced out, to become one of the editors of
the “Nation.” Brown in its day had such outstanding men as Lester F.
Ward and Meikeljohn, now president of Amherst; but those days have
passed, and there has followed a regime of intellectual dry-rot. It is a
League of the Old Men, maintaining a caste system, based upon seniority;
any young instructor who arises to suggest a new idea is quickly taught
his place. A professor who knows the situation intimately writes:
In the fields of history, political science, economics and sociology
the policy under Faunce has been silent and safe decay. These
departments were once among the most eminent in the country. Now they
are absolutely dead. Except for some formal texts by Professor Dealey
no important publication has come from these departments in over a
decade. The economics department is now being made over into a
business school to train men to make more money. The general
educational policy throughout the institution under Faunce has been
that of comfortable quiescence. With the exception of one man in
physics and three biologists there has been practically no
intellectual activity or scholarly productivity at Brown for the last
fifteen years. This situation cannot be excused on the ground of lack
of resources. Brown has plenty of money and pays very high salaries.
It could get some of the best and most productive men in any line of
research and teaching if it cared to do so. The decline of scholarly
interests at Brown has been accompanied by a parallel growth of
interest in and expenditures for the safer field of physical outlet,
namely, athletics.
Under such a regime what becomes of the students? Exactly the same thing
as we found happening to students at Harvard, Wisconsin, and California;
they get drunk. In “The Book of Life,” Chapter XXX, I discussed the
morals of our young people, as set forth in an editorial in a student
paper of Brown University. Said this student editor:
The modern social bud drinks, not too much, often, but enough. She
smokes unguardedly, swears considerably, and tells “dirty” stories.
All in all, she is a most frivolous, passionate, sensation-seeking
little thing.
Let us move on to Wesleyan University, located at Middletown,
Connecticut, also on the New Haven Railroad. Here is an institution with
an old-time Methodist foundation and traditions of liberalism, and the
usual board of interlocking trustees, the grand duke being a
Philadelphia manufacturer of gas meters who is most versatile, being
director in four large gas companies, two street railways, a bank, a
trust company, four insurance companies, a publishing company, a sugar
company, and a transfer company. Nine years ago his university began its
downward course, with an especially notorious case of invasion of
academic freedom. Willard C. Fisher had been a member of the faculty for
twenty years, and professor of social economics for fifteen. He was one
of those college professors who insist upon being a citizen; he served
two years as councilman in the Middletown city government, and four
years as mayor. He was not a Socialist, on the contrary, an active
opponent of Socialism; but he considered himself a servant of the
people, and did not hesitate to warn them of the economic waste and
social peril of extreme inequality of wealth and the oppression of
labor.
As a teacher in a Christian community, he considered it his duty to
assert that industrial relations should be moralized. He organized the
Consumers’ League of Connecticut, and served it for many years as
president. He developed the habit of attending legislative hearings at
the capital, and speaking in support of progressive measures, such as
workmen’s compensation, income tax, industrial sanitation, factory
inspection, and prison reform. And there, of course, he came into
conflict with the interlocking trustees and the interlocking alumni. One
influential alumnus, a wealthy manufacturer, was always a member of one
House or the other, in order to watch out for the interests of
industrial employers; and naturally it vexed him to be opposed by a
professor of his own college. He declared this vexation openly; and also
a group of Wesleyan lawyers declared their vexation, when the
legislature employed Professor Fisher to write a workmen’s compensation
measure!
Also there arose an embarrassing situation, when Professor Fisher, as
mayor of Middletown, discovered a trustee of the college to be
delinquent with public school funds of which he was the custodian.
(Memo. for Brander Matthews!) Mayor Fisher exposed this situation; nor
did he consider it necessary to suppress his disapproval of President
Shanklin’s well-known habit of taking the thoughts and utterances of
other writers and giving them to the world as his own. This president,
who has been at Wesleyan for thirteen years, got his degree from the
Garrett Bible Institute at Evanston, Illinois; but apparently a number
of other college presidents have sympathized with his lack of
distinction, because no less than ten of them have showered honorary
degrees upon him!
Matters came to a head when President Shanklin started a drive for a
million dollars. In a public discussion the president of a Hartford
trust company asked Professor Fisher if he expected to go about the
state speaking as he did, and have trust company presidents contribute
to the support of the college in which he taught. It was widely rumored
at Wesleyan that President Shanklin got contributions upon the condition
that Fisher should be kicked off the faculty. A number of men of wealth
refused to contribute on other terms; and so the president cast about
for a handy pretext.
He found one. In the course of a public address, widely reported in
Connecticut newspapers, Professor Fisher made the playful suggestion
that it might be a good idea to close all the churches for a while, to
give the people a chance to find out the difference between true
religion and church formalities. Very soon thereafter Professor Fisher
was asked to resign, and the president gave the reason—not the
suggestion of the closing of the churches, but the broad publicity given
to this suggestion by the newspapers! Professor Fisher might have stayed
and made a fight, but he had been so humiliated by the changed spirit
and atmosphere of Wesleyan, that he quit; and now the university is on
the intellectual level of the Garrett Bible Institute of Evanston,
Illinois!