THE GROWTH OF JABBERGRAB
Modern industry is an enormously complicated thing, and specialized
teaching of industrial processes is just as necessary as any other kind
of education. I would not give anyone the impression that I object to
the teaching of advertising or foreign trade or finance, any more than I
object to the teaching of plumbing or manicuring fingernails. My point
is that all these arts should be taught in trade schools, and they
should be taught _as trades_. For example, the International Harvester
Company maintains an excellent school for training its employes; it does
not pretend that this school is a “university,” it does not call the
turning out of harvester machines a “profession,” and it does not
constitute a high-speed steel worker a “doctor of science.” It is when
these schools of commerce and departments of trade crowd into
universities, and take to themselves academic honors and dignities, and
exploit themselves with high-sounding phrases of religion and social
idealism, that I am moved to protest; as when I see some parasitic vine
climbing a beautiful shade-tree, spreading out over the surface of the
tree, blocking its light and air and choking it to death.
That is what is happening in the field of American higher education; it
is happening not merely at New York University and other great
“intellectual sweat-shops,” it is happening at practically every one of
our state universities and at most of our great endowed institutions. It
was Harvard which started this vile business, with a College of Commerce
and Administration; Columbia followed suit, and the plague has spread
from Maine to California. I consult a few college catalogues at random,
and I find that at the University of Illinois they are teaching
millinery, also at the University of Nebraska and the University of
Southern California. At the University of California they have a
“costume laboratory,” also a course in “jewelry.” At Boston University,
made out of the millions of Isaac Rich, the merchant, and Lee Chaflin,
the shoe manufacturer, they will teach you how to collect tips at summer
hotels. The commercial men and women who specialize in such subjects
come into the universities, and they bid against the professors of
liberal arts for power and prestige and pay—and how much chance do you
think a scholar or lover of belles-lettres stands against such people?
You understand that the president of a university, making up his salary
budget, is like all other business men, he pays what he has to pay. And
here is the Professor of Department-store Advertising pointing out that
at Goldberg & Isaacstein’s, in the shopping district, he can get fifteen
thousand a year, and he has a letter in his pocket to prove it. He will
come to the university for twelve thousand, because of his love of the
higher things of life, but he won’t take a cent less, and the president
tries once or twice and finds out that he is not bluffing. For a year
the president has been trying to get a first-class Professor of
Commercial Correspondence, who understands the three varieties of
“follow-up letters”; and the Director of his School of Business keeps
telling him that any man who really commands that precious knowledge can
get ten thousand a year. But who is there in the outside world that will
pay anything to a professor of archeology, or to a man who can explain
the Einstein theory, or a man who knows more about the life of Dante
than anyone else in America? Such men have to take what they can get,
and their salaries remain stagnant while the value of the dollar is cut
in half.
At the University of Minnesota I was told about a discussion at a
meeting of the regents. The president of the university was very anxious
to get Professor Stuart P. Sherman, well known as a conservative
literary critic. Some one remarked that Sherman would want six thousand
dollars; whereupon the grand duke of the board put down his fist on the
table. “There’s not an English man in America worth six thousand
dollars!” he declared. I am sorry I cannot state exactly what value this
gentleman sets upon the services of a grand duke of the plutocracy, but
it is at least a score of times the sum of six thousand a year. But you
see, this gentleman has all his life been buying men at their market
price, and he knows that market price, and has no idea that they have
any other value.
At the University of Chicago they have a School of Commerce, which is
growing like the weed that it is, and in their advertising literature,
with its variety of “follow-up letters,” they tell you that after two
years’ training you can command a salary of twelve thousand dollars.
This, of course, is the kind of talk that brings the business; these are
the courses which the “he-men” take. And after they have got a degree,
they become professors, and perhaps deans, and they run the university.
If it is a question of starting a drive for funds, they are the ones who
know how to get out the “literature,” they are experts in the psychology
of mendication. They understand the newspapers, and how to get favors
from them; they understand the politicians and the big business men who
run the politicians; they are the fellows after the trustees’ own
hearts, and when the time comes for the old president to be shelved, it
is one of these “go-getters” who is in line for the place. We have seen
that happen at one university after another; at the University of
Illinois President Kinley was Director of the School of Commerce, and at
Northwestern University President Scott was Director of the Bureau of
Salesmanship Research.
Let us return to our University of Jabbergrab, where these new
educational tendencies “rule the roost.” Chancellor Brown sets forth
that the “School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance” of his university
contains six thousand students, and that from it has sprung a “Graduate
School of Business Administration,” also in the last three years a
“School of Retailing.” Twenty-two department-stores and other retail
establishments in New York “have made direct connection with the
university, and thirty-seven college graduates are each morning pursuing
their studies in retailing in our class-rooms, and in the afternoon of
the same day are receiving practical experience in the various
operations of the stores themselves.” I have not attended these classes,
but I do not need to inquire what these students are learning; I can go
to the New York department-stores, and see them displaying “marked-down”
goods, which were marked up before they were marked down. I have only to
read their imbecile advertisements in the New York newspapers, setting
forth the latest fads and foibles of “Milady,” and the latest
“importations” of the latest “creations” of the keepers of French
mistresses.
New York University’s catalogue lists three professors of marketing,
five professors of finance, four professors of accounting, four of
business English, three of management, one of salesmanship, one of
merchandising, one of foreign trade, one of life insurance—and a
Director of the Wall Street Division!
Of course, this new kind of education is yet in its infancy, and we must
not expect perfection. Pick up this university catalogue ten years from
now, and you will find its deficiencies made up; you will find a
Professor of Stock-watering and an Instructor in Political Manipulation.
You will find an eloquent statement setting forth the fact that the
handling of labor has now become an enormous American industry; that
there are hundreds of large agencies for the putting down of strikes,
and salaries as high as twenty and thirty thousand dollars a year are
paid to competent masters of such work; therefore the university is
establishing a Department of Strike-Breaking, with a Professor of
Gunmanship and a Demonstrator of the Third Degree. Also there will be
eloquent “advertising talks,” explaining that business men now spend
most of their time keeping agitators out of their factories, and that
the secret service departments of great corporations have come to be the
most important part thereof; so the university is now establishing a
Department of Espionage, with a Professor of Varieties of Bolshevism,
and a Dean of Deportation Proceedings, and a Special Lecturer on
Attorney-Generalship.