THE FOUNDATIONS OF FRAUD
I have taken you about from college to college and shown you the
interlocking trustees, using the institution for the protection of their
money-bags; also the successful sons, guarding the prestige and good
name of their alma mater. To complete the picture I now draw your
attention to the many organizations, national in their scope, which have
been formed for the purpose of keeping our educational system in the
capitalist fetters.
I begin with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,
which was started seventeen years ago with a gift of ten million
dollars. Its purpose was to provide pensions for superannuated college
professors, and in his letter to the trustees Carnegie announced that
“according to expert calculation” the revenue would be ample “to provide
retiring pensions for the teachers of universities, college and
technical schools in our country, Canada and Newfoundland.” This
statement was speedily shown to be absurd; the total cost of the system
for Columbia University alone would have been twice the income of the
Foundation, and the cost for all the country would have been two hundred
times the income of the Foundation. So very speedily the Foundation was
compelled to limit the institutions included in its list, and it began
laying down rules for colleges, and assuming control of higher
education. It refused pensions to professors in the University of
Illinois unless the university would alter the conduct of its medical
school at Chicago. In like manner the governor of Ohio was informed that
the universities of the state must be “reconstructed” on lines laid down
by the Foundation. Becoming still more embarrassed for lack of funds,
the Foundation discovered that it was bad for teachers “to have the risk
of dependence lifted from them by free gifts,” and it proposed to have
the professors begin paying for their own insurance.
Now, in the first place, a slight knowledge of economics will enable
anyone to realize that a free gift of life insurance to professors at
certain institutions would not permanently benefit the professors,
because, under the stimulus of competition, this benefit would at once
be taken into account in the salaries paid by the institution. So, what
the Foundation amounts to is an endowment to certain privileged
universities, with a highly autocratic control accompanying the gift.
Under the plan as modified to compel the professor to pay for his
insurance, the plan becomes a method of binding him to the institution
and subjecting him to the administration. A part of the professor’s
salary is held out, to be repaid to him later on as a reward for good
behavior. Says Professor Cattell: “The professor who does not see eye to
eye with Wall Street and Trinity Church may be compelled to sacrifice
either his intellectual integrity or his wife and children. He is under
heavy bonds to keep the peace; but it will be the peace of the desert.”
If you are interested in this shrewd device for the enslavement of
college professors, you are referred to Professor Cattell’s book,
“Carnegie Pensions,” published in 1919. The new insurance organization
is headed by Elihu Root and Nicholas Murray Butler, a sufficient
guarantee of its character. That the sheep have learned to recognize
these wolves in shepherd’s clothing is shown by the fact that a
questionnaire sent out by “School and Society” to a great number of
college professors, asking for their opinions, brought a vote of
thirteen in favor of the scheme and six hundred and thirty-six against
it! The American Association of University Professors appointed a
committee of twenty-four to study the scheme, and this committee
submitted two elaborate reports condemning it.
The gentleman who was appointed by Mr. Carnegie to run this Foundation,
and who worked out the scheme, is Dr. Henry Smith Pritchett; I look him
up in “Who’s Who,” and find amusing evidence of what it means to have a
strangle-hold over American institutions of learning. Dr. Pritchett goes
about like an Indian war-chief with scalps at his belt—no fewer than
eighteen honorary degrees from American colleges and universities! What
the professors think of his administration you may guess from the
comments on his last statement made by Joseph Jastrow, professor of
psychology at the University of Wisconsin. “There is the same copious
shuffling of the issues, the same lack of frankness, the same assumption
of benevolence of motive, the same disregard of accepted principle as of
actual opinion, the same aspersions and evasions.”
The next great benefactor of our educational system was Mr. John D.
Rockefeller, who has given one or two hundred millions of dollars to a
foundation for the purpose of improving our schools and colleges
according to Standard Oil ideals. The General Education Board has
millions to give to those educational institutions which conform, and it
holds over the head of every college and university president a
perpetual bribe to sell out the interests of the people. Great numbers
have accepted, a few have refused, and these have been the object of
continual intrigue. Turn back to the chapter on North Dakota, and read
the statements of Dr. W. J. Spillman of the United States Bureau of
Agricultural Economics, concerning the efforts of these Rockefeller
“educators” to dominate the land grant colleges. And let me call your
attention to a speech delivered by this courageous public servant before
the semi-annual conference of the National Board of Farm Organizations,
February 11, 1919.
In order that you may understand Dr. Spillman’s charges, I will first
make plain the economics of the situation. After the war there was a
frightful slump in values; the Federal Reserve Board, which controls our
banking system, gave unlimited credit to the Wall Street banks, which
they passed on to the big corporations, to enable them to get by the
crisis without dropping the prices of their products. The farmers were
left to “hold the sack,” and they were ruined by millions—on my trip
through the Northwest I was told of whole counties in which every single
farm was for sale for taxes. The farmers wanted to know why the price of
farm products should drop to nothing, while the price of manufactured
articles was not affected. They wanted to know the cost of producing
farm products, and they looked to the experts of the Department of
Agriculture to get these figures. On the other hand, of course, big
business decreed that the figures should not be got.
Their agent in carrying out this decree was the Secretary of
Agriculture, David F. Houston, Harvard graduate, ex-president of the
University of Texas, ex-chancellor of Washington University, and holder
of seven honorary degrees; a member of the Southern Education Board, a
subsidiary of the Rockefeller General Education Board; later chairman of
the Federal Reserve and Farm Loan Boards, and now president of the Bell
Telephone Securities Company. Dr. Spillman portrays Dr. Houston as
lying, cheating and intriguing, resorting to every device in order to
keep the facts about farming costs from being collected. Says Dr.
Spillman:
I cannot give you the full facts about this matter without exposing
honest and honorable men to the fury of this brutal autocrat, under
whom they unfortunately have to serve.... Early in his administration
there was circulated through the department a typewritten sheet said
to have been written by a member of Mr. Rockefeller’s General
Education Board, and which was said to represent Mr. Rockefeller’s
views, in which Secretary Houston concurred. This sheet purported to
outline the duties of the department. It stated that the department
should make no investigations that would reveal the profits made by
farmers, or that would determine the cost of producing farm products.
No representative of the department should ever under any
circumstances even intimate that it is possible to overproduce any
farm product. The entire business of the department was to teach
farmers how to produce more than they now produce.
The General Education Board, you understand, possesses unlimited funds,
it pays no taxes, and renders no accounting to anyone. Professor Cattell
stated in “Science” that it “keeps for its own private use the
information that it collects, and does not even publish the financial
statements that should be required by law from every corporation, and
first of all from those exempted from taxation.” And these funds are
used in paying fancy salaries to experts in all subjects, especially
intrigue and wire-pulling. Dr. Spillman tells how this board got charge
of the farm demonstration work in the South, and how he kept them from
getting charge of the same work in the Northern and Western states. In
order to hamper Spillman’s work, “Mr. Houston issued orders to
demonstration workers in the department not to co-operate with any
outside agency except Mr. Rockefeller’s General Education Board.”
Soon after Mr. Houston became secretary he established an office in the
department, known as the Rural Organization Service. The funds for the
initiation of this work were furnished by the General Education Board.
The important work of the Bureau of Markets was placed under this
office, and Professor T. N. Carver of Harvard was invited to become head
of the new bureau. He came to the department with real enthusiasm for
his work, and at once proceeded to outline a series of important
investigations on marketing of farm products, rural credits, and similar
subjects. But when his plans were laid before the General Education
Board by Secretary Houston they turned him down flat, with no
explanation for their action. Professor Carver was much puzzled at this,
and sought an interview with certain members of the board, for the
purpose of finding out, if possible, why they had decided to discontinue
their support; but he could get no information of any kind. He then told
them in very plain language just what he thought of the General
Education Board. Soon after this the newspapers carried a brief notice
to the effect that Professor Carver had not found his work in the
Department of Agriculture entirely congenial and would probably return
to Harvard at the end of the year. He did return to Harvard soon
thereafter. You will appreciate the gay humor of the fact that Professor
T. N. Carver of Harvard University is named by Woodworth Clum, of the
Better America Federation, the Black Hand of California, as one of two
college professors who are heroically battling against Socialism in the
colleges, and are deserving of the ardent support of all patriotic and
liberty-loving Americans!