THE BOLSHEVIK HUNTERS
We shall next have a glance at those organizations and foundations which
are frankly propagandist in their purposes, and which conduct
departments of espionage and slander. We have already seen the work of
the Better America Federation of California; there are a number of
similar institutions which are nation-wide in their activities.
You remember, in the story of the University of Wisconsin, the young
instructor whose career was placed in jeopardy by the National
Association for Constitutional Government. This organization has been
active in our educational centers, and among its publications is a
pamphlet by a prominent corporation lawyer of Washington, advocating the
establishment in all American colleges of a compulsory course in
opposition to Socialism. Nicholas Murray Butler has actually established
such a course at Columbia; it is required of freshmen, and is
camouflaged under the name of “Contemporary History.” The students have
embodied their opinion of it in the phrase, “Contemptible History.”
Also, the National Association of Manufacturers has been active. It was
this organization which was exposed, in the famous “Mulhall” letters, as
expending many millions in the bribing of Congress in the interest of
big business. This organization has sent out agents to make propaganda
in favor of commercial training in all colleges, and also to turn our
public school system into an institution for the perpetuating of a class
civilization. They call their scheme “vocational training,” and they
wish to educate the children of the poor as workers, and to exclude them
from general culture.
Also there is the National Security League, a high-up hundred per cent
organization, whose active educational head received a three years’
leave of absence from Princeton University, to carry on propaganda on
behalf of capitalist nationalism. In the beginning it was Hun-hunting,
but later it turned into a Bolshevik-hunt, with Woodrow Wilson waging a
private war in Siberia and Archangel, and Attorney-General Palmer’s
thugs clubbing the heads of men and women who dared to disbelieve in the
divine right of the plutocracy. Just now this organization is carrying
on a campaign in defense of the Supreme Court’s right to annul acts of
Congress, and defeat the will of the people in the interests of
property. It has what is called a program for “economic education”; it
proposes to have “the Constitution” taught in the public schools—meaning
thereby the inviolability of special privilege. It sends out “dope” to
the press of the country—and in this material I note an amusing
concession to the well-known habit of newspapers to falsify. The “date
line” of this press matter begins with the word “New York,” and then a
blank is left, so that newspapers may pretend to have received a long
telegram from the metropolis!
There are such organizations as this in every section of our country.
They call themselves merchants’ and manufacturers’ associations,
chambers of commerce, citizens’ alliances, national protective
associations, home defense leagues. They do not deal especially with
education, but when their attention is called to unorthodox teachings,
or to “outside activities” of college professors, they intervene with
authority. From the “National American Council” I have obtained a list
of seventy-nine such organizations, all pledged to keep the American
people in “blinkers.” Recently a number of them—the National Association
for Constitutional Government, the Public Interest League, the League
for Preservation of American Independence, the Constitutional Liberty
League, the Anti-Centralization Club—have formed themselves into one
super-organization known as the “Sentinels of the Republic.” They intend
to enlist a million patriots, their motto being “Every citizen a
sentinel, every home a sentry-box.” The object of this sentineling is to
smash the Socialists, and among the organizers are of course David Jayne
Hill and Nicholas Murray Butler.
Also, this chapter would not be complete without mention of that
immortal committee of the New York state legislature, which has given to
the English language a new word. The “Luskers” hauled radicals of all
sorts before it, raiding their homes and offices, smashing their
furniture and stealing their papers. It went particularly after the
school-teachers, and we shall meet it again when we come to the schools.
One of its chosen victims was the Rand School of Social Science, which
is really a college, but modestly refrains from calling itself such. It
is an institution in which students are frankly and shamelessly taught
to think for themselves, and the politicians of the state and city of
New York understand that their existence is jeopardized by such a place.
The first steps taken against the Rand School were to raid the place and
throw the typewriters and the teachers down the stairs. As that did not
cause the pupils to stop thinking for themselves, the Lusk committee
recommended, and the New York state legislature passed a bill, requiring
that all institutions which carry on teaching in New York state shall
have a license from the regents of the state education board; the
intention, of course, being that a license shall be issued to all
institutions in the state except the Rand School of Social Science and
the “Modern School,” organized by the followers of Ferrer.
The Rand School has refused to apply for a license under this law, and
the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, has just ruled against the
school, holding the act constitutional. The next step is to carry the
case to the Court of Appeals, and after that to the United States
Supreme Court. It is manifest that if this Lusk law is upheld, there
will be no use talking any more about academic freedom, so far as
concerns the state of New York. Common sense would suggest that the
provision in the United States Constitution, forbidding the passing of
laws interfering with freedom of speech and of the press, should cover
this case; but when you investigate the subject you find that common
sense and the plain words of the Constitution are not what count in
capitalist law. There is a provision in our Constitution forbidding
interference with “the right of the people to bear arms in time of
peace”; but that right has not prevented the courts of New York state
from upholding a law forbidding a citizen to keep a revolver in his
home! It is pleasant to be able to record that Governor Miller, who
signed these Lusk laws, was defeated for re-election in November, 1922,
by a plurality of four hundred and ten thousand votes, the largest
plurality ever cast in the history of an American state.
There are many other organizations watching our colleges. The
interlocking newspapers are vigilant, and do not always confine their
activities to their own locality. The Chicago “Tribune” has exposed and
caused the expulsion of more than one college professor. We have seen in
this book such activities on the part of the “Oregonian” of Portland and
the “Missoulian” of Montana, the Seattle “Times” and the Boston “Evening
Transcript,” the Grand Forks, North Dakota, “Herald,” the Rockford,
Illinois, “Star,” the Fort Worth, Texas, “Searchlight.”
In Rhode Island is the Providence “Journal,” whose publisher we have met
as one of the three leading trustees of Brown University. The editor of
this paper is a super-patriot, Mr. John Revelstoke Rathom, who is
tireless in war upon “radicalism” in the colleges, not merely of his own
state, but throughout New England. I find Mr. Rathom lecturing before
the Liberal Club of Clark University—the same organization which was so
bitterly denounced by the Worcester “Telegram” as Bolshevist! Mr. Rathom
put no restraint upon his contempt for the parlor Socialists; he
denounced them as “unsexed brains,” and declared that he “would not pay
them twenty-five dollars a week” on his newspaper—this being the final
test of excellence in human brains. “Still,” says Mr. Rathom, “they are
permitted to teach our young students all this filth, this infidelity to
country, this bestial doctrine.” He declared that in many places “our
public schools have become hot-beds of anarchy, instead of shrines of
liberty.”
Mr. Rathom’s title to hundred percent Americanism is secured by his
Australian birth and English education. In the days before America
entered the war, this multiple patriot took up the task of bringing us
in, and published in his paper an elaborate series of exposés of German
intrigue in our country. It read like Sherlock Holmes, and was taken up
by the interlocking press, and created an enormous sensation. Then Mr.
Rathom started a series of articles in the “World’s Work”—tales about
German spies and bomb plots, and how Mr. Rathom with his host of secret
agents had penetrated even into the German embassy at Washington! But
something happened, nobody knew what. Mr. Rathom’s narrative came to a
sudden stop, and the “World’s Work” said no more about it. It was not
until several years later that the truth was revealed; the United States
Secret Service authorities had objected to being represented as a
collection of “boobs,” and had forced Mr. Rathom to a showdown. Not
merely had they made him stop the publication of his articles; they had
made him sign an elaborate document, in which he admitted that a good
part of his material was the product of his own imagination, and the
rest had been furnished him by the Bohemian National Alliance, and the
Croatian and Serbian national societies, and other anti-German and
anti-Austrian groups in America! I quote you just one sentence of this
document, in order that you may observe the nature of a worm when it
wriggles:
I feel that the general public opinion, which has rather unfortunately
credited us with the actual bringing to justice of German spies and
malefactors, has been misdirected to the extent that our only possible
claim to valuable constructive work in the past three and one-half
years ought in fairness to be restricted to the educational value of
our combined efforts, and the newspaper enterprise which produced a
great number of stories printed in our newspapers.
And then follow twenty-eight long paragraphs, in which Mr. Rathom admits
in detail the falsehoods in the “stories” he published, and winds up by
agreeing to make no more public addresses during the war! Also, one
ought not deny the honor of mention to Mr. James M. Beck, corporation
lawyer and amateur patriot. Mr. Beck holds three honorary degrees from
American universities, and is described to me by a university professor
as “the most notorious high-brow ass in the country.” He travels about
making commencement orations in our colleges, and clamoring for the
casting out of professors who fail in loyalty to the plutocracy. If you
want to know just how foolish one of these hundred percenters can make
himself in public, read the controversy of Mr. Beck with Professor
Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School concerning the Mooney case,
published in the “New Republic” for January 18, 1922.
Another hundred percenter who is much concerned with our education is a
leading corporation lawyer of Denver, Mr. Charles R. Brock, one of the
grand dukes of Denver University, where we studied the career of
Chancellor Buchtel. Mr. Brock is attorney for the “Big Four” utility
corporations, which have run the city government of Denver for a
generation; his partner was for a long time chairman of the infinitely
corrupt Democratic party of Colorado. So Mr. Brock is terribly afraid of
Socialists, and last spring I find him delivering a tirade against them
to the young ladies of the most exclusive finishing school in Denver.
Also he published in the Denver “Post” an attack upon President Thomas
of Bryn Mawr, because of her radicalism. We shall have an inside glimpse
at Miss Thomas’s activities before long, and discover the truly comical
cautiousness of her “radicalism.”
It seems to trouble these corporation gentlemen especially that women
should be venturing to think; they get after the women’s colleges again
and again. Thus, some years ago, the president of Vassar received a
letter from a high-up interlocking trustee, informing her that it had
been discovered that twenty girls in that institution had formed a
Socialist group, and that the trustee proposed to take action unless
this group was broken up. The president of Wellesley received a letter
from a prominent successful son, stating that he had learned that two
members of the faculty had voted for Debs! At Vassar they pretend to
permit freedom of discussion, but they limit the Socialist organization
to two speakers a year, while they place no restriction upon the number
of speakers brought in by the Y. M. C. A. and other groups. A lecture by
Albert Rhys Williams was canceled, upon action of the trustees, after
that friend of the Russian people had given his testimony before the
Overman committee of the United States Senate. A professor at another
woman’s college—she will not permit me to name the place—told me a funny
story of how the president was visited by a hundred percent banker, who
frightened her with the tidings that he had unearthed “radical
activities” among the faculty, and proposed to take action about it
before the trustees. He had the “goods” in his pocket, he said; and
after some persuasion, he consented to produce the “goods”—which proved
to consist of a letter from a parent, reporting one of the professors as
advising a girl to read “those Bolshevist and Anarchist magazines, the
‘Survey’ and the ‘New Republic’!”