THE UNIVERSITY OF JABBERGRAB
Some fifteen years ago my postman brought me a puzzling communication
from Sweden; a large and expensive linen envelope, carefully sealed with
a great deal of red wax, registered, and addressed:
“Editor, Jabbergrab, Finanz-Lexikon, New York City.” At first I could
not make out why the missive was delivered to me, but then in one corner
I noted “Jabbergrab is mentioned in Upton Sinclair’s ‘Industrie-baron’'”
I recognized “Der Industriebaron” as the German title of my story, “A
Captain of Industry,” written when I was twenty-two years old; it is a
satirical biography of a great financier, and after his ignominious
death the story quotes some eulogies of his career from an imaginary
publication, “Jabbergrab: Heroes of Finance.”
I made so bold as to open the envelope, and found several sheets of
heavy foolscap paper, written in German in an exceedingly fine hand, and
giving the data for a biographical sketch of a wealthy Swedish lumber
magnate and financier. Here, in carefully tabulated and precisely
ordered form, were the minute details of his life—the enterprises with
which he had been connected, the offices he held, the properties he
owned, the names of his children, the college degrees they had earned,
the names of his race-horses and the prizes they had won, the names of
his yachts and the cups they had won—all these items duly attested and
signed by the great man himself.
Gradually it dawned over me what had happened. The man had read my
satirical story, missing the point of the satire. He thought that I
really felt all that admiration for a man of wealth and social eminence;
and reading about Jabbergrab’s “Heroes of Finance,” the desire possessed
him to have his own career immortalized in this biographical directory.
So he had sat himself down, and painfully written out the data for the
proposed sketch, and had sent it by registered mail to “Jabbergrab.”
It is the Jabbergrabs of America who have created a good part of our
“higher” education, and placed upon it the stamp of their crude and
simple faith in material success. I have shown how the spirit of
Jabbergrab has destroyed two shrines of American scientific life, Clark
University and Johns Hopkins; I purpose next to show what that spirit
does, when it has its way from the beginning, unhampered by any
intellectual traditions. I invite you to visit New York University, an
institution whose buildings are scattered about in various parts of the
city, including an office building on Washington Square, in the heart of
the clothing district, and another in Wall Street.
New York University has enrolled no less than thirteen thousand
students, and is described to me by one who works in it as “an
intellectual sweat-shop.” As chancellor it has one Brown, who learned
the Goose-step from the Kaiser, and as treasurer one Kingsley, a Wall
Street banker, interlocked with the United States Trust Company, the
Sixth Avenue Elevated Railroad, and the Union Theological Seminary. Last
year Chancellor Brown published in the New York newspapers a series of
thirty “advertising talks” on education, in the very latest “follow-up”
style. These talks came to me in a little pamphlet, with a cover all
printed over with photographs of newspaper clippings, and accompanied by
a circular, carefully disguised to look like a personal letter, and
beginning: “Dear Mr. Sinclair: You are one of the prominent citizens we
had in mind when we prepared the enclosed advertisement. What we have
learned of you encourages us to believe that this appeal of New York
University must strike a responsive chord in you.”
I may be over-suspicious, but I believe that these statements are not
entirely in accordance with the truth; I believe that if they were made
in accordance with the truth they would read this way: “You are one of
the twenty-two thousand persons whose names we have got from ‘Who’s Who
in America,’ and we are taking a chance on being able to interest you in
our university.” These necessary differences between advertising and
fact are understood and taught to the students in all university schools
of advertising.
Chancellor Brown sets forth the fact that out of his thirteen thousand
students, ten thousand are earning the money to pay for their education.
I believe that every college student in the country should do this—my
own son is doing it—so I should be the last man to sneer at New York
University’s lack of academic and social prestige. But here is the
point: self-supporting students who go to night-school in New York go in
order to increase their money-making capacity, and they judge the
education they get by that criterion, and they irresistibly mold the
educational standards of the institution they attend. So the spirit of
education becomes that of Jabbergrab—ravenous greed, veiled by buncombe
and hypocritical pretenses. That is what you have at New York
University, and the fact is made clear in Chancellor Brown’s own
pamphlet. Talk Number Sixteen is headed: “Welcome to the Advertising
Men.” Says our Chancellor of Jabbergrab:
New York University is host today to members of the National
Association of Teachers of Advertising, who are holding a sectional
conference in this city while a similar conference for Western members
is held at the University of Wisconsin. I am glad to welcome the
members of this Association. Since I have been writing these little
talks I have gained a feeling of warmer sympathy with all advertising
men and their work. I have learned something of the fascinations—as
well as the difficulties—of the profession.
So you see, our University of Jabbergrab has discovered advertising to
be a “profession”; it takes its place alongside chiropody, palmistry and
fox-trotting. If you want to know what these new “professors” are doing
to American journalism, I invite you to read Chapters XLIII-XLVII of
“The Brass Check”; I invite you to study the samples of advertising
there quoted—one of which occupied a full page in all the most popular
and respectable American magazines—and then come back to Chancellor
Brown’s pamphlet and read his statement: “Many advertising men, I am
told, were formerly teachers. The two professions seem to me to have a
great deal in common.”
I should be sorry indeed to believe that about all American teachers,
but I know it is true of some of the teachers who have been selected by
the University of Jabbergrab. For example, consider Professor William E.
Aughinbaugh, an editor of the New York “Commercial,” a director in
sixteen corporations, and for seven years “Professor of Foreign Trade”
in New York University. He boasts of having crossed the equator
thirty-six times on commercial missions, and he publishes through one of
our most esteemed publishing houses, the Century Company, an elaborately
got up book, entitled, “Advertising for Trade in Latin America.” The
price of this book is three dollars, and if you will study its maxims
and apply them, you will find it worth all that. For example:
Latin-American advertisements are replete with the nude female form,
which appeals strongly to all classes of readers. Due to the fact that
a majority of the inhabitants are brunettes, or have Negro or Indian
blood in their veins, the blonde exerts a stronger appeal to their
imagination and for that reason should be employed when necessary or
advisable to use such an illustration.
And so we know what the Chancellor of Jabbergrab means when he writes:
Advertising men have it in their power to educate millions of people
not only in an intelligent use of commodities but in well-considered
habits of thought and action.
Let us hear Professor Aughinbaugh again:
Reproductions of famous holy or religious paintings or scenes from the
Bible may also be profitably used.... It occurred to me that if a
saint could be found whose special duty was to prevent loss of life
during seismic disturbances, much might be done through his aid to
bring calm into these regions of terror. I selected my second name,
“Edmund,” as the cognomen for the new assistant deity, added the
prefix “Saint” to it, and wrote an appropriate earthquake prayer which
was printed beneath the picture of the home-made saint. Of course each
card contained our advertisement (of a patent medicine) which the
supplicant for protection must have seen as he prayed.
And so we learned what the Chancellor of Jabbergrab means when he
writes:
I can appreciate the reasons that impel any manufacturer to spread
abroad through the columns of our newspapers and magazines the
information about his worthy products. I can believe, too, that this
information is often of real service to the public in guiding them to
wise decisions regarding their expenditures and investments.
And again let us hear Professor Aughinbaugh on the subject of how to
deal with the custom-laws of the countries with which you trade:
When I have decided upon an advertising campaign in any given
Latin-American country, the requisite amount of cards, hangers,
booklets, posters, banners, and other materials are boxed and shipped
to the various ports, consigned to some man of straw. Upon their
arrival at the local port they will be stored in the customs warehouse
to await claim by the alleged consignee. At the expiration of sixty or
ninety, or one hundred and twenty days, in accordance with the local
laws, these goods will be advertised for sale to the highest bidder.
By previous arrangement with your agent, or some merchant, who has
been advised of the dispatch of these goods to his port, they can be
bid in very cheaply and delivered to the person most concerned with
their use. In Venezuela, for instance, on one shipment alone the
duties would have amounted to much more than one thousand dollars, yet
the local wholesale druggist bought the entire consignment at auction
for eighty-five dollars.
And so we know exactly what the Chancellor of the University of
Jabbergrab means when he says to the “Sectional Conference of Teachers
of Advertising”:
I believe, also, that the teachers of advertising can make a valuable
contribution to the education of our future business men by teaching
them how to use the force of advertising intelligently, effectively,
and for the human benefit.
It happened that I saw Professor Aughinbaugh mentioned also as
“Professor of Foreign Trade at Columbia University.” Wishing to get the
record straight, I asked my brother-in-law, who has been helping me get
material for this book, to write Professor Aughinbaugh a note asking him
where he was a professor. Thinking that possibly he might be away, or
ill, or for some other reason might fail to reply, I asked my
brother-in-law to write also to New York University for the information.
The result was two letters: one from Professor Aughinbaugh stating that
“for two years past I have held the same position in New York University
and Columbia University. The work became too hard for me and I was
obliged to resign my professorship at New York University, now devoting
my time to Columbia University.” The second letter was from the
registrar of New York University, and stated: “Dr. William E.
Aughinbaugh was, from October 11, 1915, to June 13, 1922, Lecturer on
Foreign Trade at New York University. He did not, at any time, have
professorial status.”
Here was, obviously, a contradiction. Professor Aughinbaugh is listed in
“Who’s Who” as Professor of Foreign Trade; and “Who’s Who” states that
it publishes no information except that furnished by the person
concerned. Also, in a circular of his book, Professor Aughinbaugh is
shown as “Chairman of Foreign Trade.” Wishing to make certain about this
matter, I dictated to my secretary a formal note, calling Professor
Aughinbaugh’s attention to the discrepancies, and asking him to state
which title was correct. This note was signed by my brother-in-law and
mailed, and no reply to it has ever been received.
But some three weeks after it was mailed, there called at my office in
Pasadena a man who announced himself as an agent of the Department of
Justice, and gave the name of “A. J. Taylor.” He interviewed my
brother-in-law, a young man of twenty-one, and stated that my
brother-in-law had been writing letters of a “scurrilous and defamatory
nature” to Professor Aughinbaugh; that he had asked questions such as he
had no business to ask, that he had made “improper statements” about the
wife of Professor Aughinbaugh, and that he was to “stop writing
letters,” or he would get into serious trouble. Subsequent inquiry of
the Department of Justice in Los Angeles, of the United States Attorney
for this district, Attorney-General Daugherty in Washington, and Post
Office Inspectors of New York, Washington and Los Angeles, brought the
positive statements that no such person as “A. J. Taylor” was known, and
no investigation of any such matter had been undertaken. The Postmaster
at Pasadena stated that he had received letters from private parties in
New York, complaining of “blackmailing” letters written by my
brother-in-law; and some ten days later there came a letter from
Professor Aughinbaugh to me stating that he had learned from the postal
authorities in California that I had written to him, under my
brother-in-law’s name, and asking what was the purpose of my inquiry. I
replied, stating to Professor Aughinbaugh exactly what was my purpose,
and asking him if he would in return answer some questions of mine, as
follows:
1. Did you send this A. J. Taylor to see my brother-in-law?
2. Did you tell him to represent himself as an agent of the Department
of Justice?
3. Did you make to him any statement which would have justified him in
the wholly false and absurd assertion that my brother-in-law had ever
mentioned your wife?
4. If you did send this “A. J. Taylor,” who is he, and where can he be
located?
5. If you did not send him, can you offer any suggestion as to how he
learned about the correspondence between my brother-in-law and
yourself, and what interest he had in troubling himself about the
matter?
To these questions Professor Aughinbaugh made no answer, except to send
me in an envelope three circulars of his book, in one of which he is
described as “lecturer,” in another as “instructor,” and in another as
“chairman.” I wrote again, calling his attention to his failure to
answer, but no further response came. From the publishers of “Who’s Who”
I learn that the lecturer-instructor-chairman-professor himself
furnished them with the information concerning his status; also that he
has recently written to them asking to be recorded as no longer
“professor” but as just plain “lecturer!”