Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education - Upton Sinclair - Страница 18

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Harvard has a tradition, which is a part of the tradition of New England; it is one of scholarship, of respect for the dignity of learning. Money counts in New England, but money is not enough, so you will be told; you must have culture also, and the prestige of the intellectual life. More than that, in New England is found that quality which must necessarily go with belief in the intellectual life, the quality of open-mindedness, the willingness to consider new ideas.

Such is the tradition; and first, it will pay us to ask, how did the tradition originate? Was it made by Harvard University? Or was it made by Charles Sumner, anti-slavery senator from Massachusetts, who was found unfit to be a professor in the Harvard Law School, and wrote to his brother: “I am too much of a reformer in law to be trusted in a post of such commanding influence as this has now become.” Was it made by Harvard, or by Wendell Phillips, who, according to his biographer, Sears, denounced “the restraint of Harvard, which he attributed to affiliation with the commercial interests of Boston, and the silence they imposed on anti-slavery sentiments.” Was it made by Harvard or by William Lloyd Garrison, who was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope about his neck, by a silk-hatted mob of State Streeters, many of them of course from Harvard?

Sumner, Phillips and Garrison were extremists, you may say; and the best traditions are not made by such. They are made by scholars, who lead retired lives and guide others by the power of thought. Very well; New England has had no more revered scholar, no more keen thinker than Emerson. Emerson was gentle, Emerson was dignified, and you will find Emerson a part of the Harvard tradition—one of its halls bears his name. So let us see what Emerson had to report about the Harvard of his time; how much credit he gives it for progress in the anti-slavery days. Writing in 1861, in “The Celebration of the Intellect,” Emerson said: “Harvard College has no voice in Harvard College, but State Street votes it down on every ballot. Everything will be permitted there, which goes to adorn Boston Whiggism—is it geology, astronomy, poetry, antiquities, art, rhetoric? But that which it exists for, to be a fountain of novelties out of heaven, a Delphos uttering warning and ravishing oracles to lift and lead mankind—that it shall not be permitted to do or to think of. On the contrary, every generosity of thought is suspect and has a bad name. And all the youths come out decrepit citizens; not a prophet, not a poet, not a daimon, but is gagged and stifled or driven away.”

And precisely that is what we have to report about the Harvard of the time of capitalistic reaction, which is 1922. For thirteen years Harvard has been under the administration of a cultured corporation lawyer of Boston, who has generally carried out the politics of his State Street associates in all essential matters, and has preserved just as much reputation for liberalism as can be preserved—safely.

A. Lawrence Lowell is not, like Nicholas Murray Butler, a climber and a toady; he could not be a climber, because he was born on a mountaintop, and there was no place to climb to—he could only stay where he was or descend. He belongs to the Lowell family, who are among the Boston Brahmins, and it would not occur to him that any millionaire could confer a favor upon Harvard University, or upon the president of Harvard University. On the other hand, it does occur to him that Harvard is a close corporation, a family affair of the vested interests of New England, which cover an enormous financial power with a decorous coating of refined exclusiveness.

Before the days of President Lowell, Harvard was presided over by Charles W. Eliot, a scholar who believed to some extent in a safe and reasonable freedom of opinion—using his own freedom to glorify the “great American hero” known as the “scab.” President Lowell has inherited the Eliot tradition, and in my travels about the country I heard many rumors as to how he had stood by his professors in time of stress. When I got to Harvard, and turned these rumors into fact, I found an amusing situation. No circus rider who keeps his footing on two horses has ever done a more deft and delicate feat of balancing than President Lowell, with one foot on the Eliot tradition and the other foot on the House of Lee-Higginson.

They will tell you proudly that professors are not let out of Harvard because of their opinions; and that is sometimes true. One reason is, because the Harvard teaching staff is selected with meticulous care, and because, when the new man comes to Harvard he comes under the influence of a subtle but powerful atmosphere of good form. It is not crude materialism, as in Columbia; it is cleverly compounded of high intellectual and social qualities, and it is brought to the young educators’ attention with humor and good fellowship. A friend of mine, a Harvard man who knows the game, described to me from personal experience how the State Street pressure operates. Somebody in Lee-Higginson calls President Lowell on the telephone and says: “How can we get So-and-so to put up the money for that chair, if young This-or-that gets his name in the newspapers as lecturing to workingmen?” President Lowell smiles and says he will see about it, and the young instructor is invited to dinner and amiably shown how the most liberal university in America cannot run entirely without money. The young instructor sees the point, and the president goes away, thinking to himself: “Thank God we are not as Columbia!”

Even down to the humblest freshman such pressure is conveyed. There are things that “are not done” at Harvard; and you would be surprised to know how minute is the supervision. You might not think it was a grave offense for a student, wearing a soft shirt in summer-time, to leave the top button unfastened; but a student friend of mine, who had ideas of the simple life—going back to nature and all that—was coldly asked by Dean Gay: “Is the button of your shirt open by mistake, or is the button missing?” And when he did not take this delicate hint, Professor Richard C. Cabot told another student that he might help the young man by advising him to close the top button of his shirt. I am advised that Harvard men will call this story “rot”; therefore I specify that I have it in writing from the man to whom it happened.

And if they are so careful about shirt-buttons, they would hardly be careless about public speeches. A couple of years ago the Harvard Liberal Club made so bold as to invite Wilfred Humphries, a mild little gentleman who served with the Y. M. C. A., to tell about his experiences in Russia; whereupon the president of the Liberal Club received a letter from the secretary to the Corporation of Harvard, politely pointing out that there was likely to be embarrassment to the university, and would the president of the club kindly call upon the secretary, in order to provide him with arguments, “in case the press takes the thing up in a way which might embarrass the progress of the Endowment Fund Campaign.” Just as deftly as that, you see!

I found that Harvard’s reputation for liberalism was based upon the custom of President Lowell to take into his institution men who had been expelled from other colleges. I was impressed by this, until Harvard men explained to me how it is managed. The basis of it is a painstaking inquiry into the character and opinions of those men, to make sure there is nothing really dangerous about them. In some cases they are men who have offended local interests, with which “State Street” has little concern. Others are men of ability who have offended religious prejudices in the provinces; the tradition of Harvard is Unitarian, and nobody is shocked by the idea that his ancestors swung from the tree-tops by their tails. The State of Texas has just passed a law providing for the expulsion of professors who teach that idea, so in due course you may hear of Harvard taking over some Texas scholar.

How men are investigated before they are taken into Harvard is a matter about which I happen to know from a man who underwent the ordeal. I will call my informant Professor Smith, and he was head of a department in a leading university. Appointed on a public service commission, he discovered that the local gas company was engaged in swindling the city. The facts got into the newspapers, and this public spirited professor was on the verge of being expelled by his trustees, several of whom were “in gas.” Some friends of his put the matter before President Lowell, and Lowell made inquiry, and ascertained that Smith was a liberal of the very mildest sort, well connected and affable, in every way worthy to associate with the best families, and to train their sons; so Professor Smith received a letter, asking him if he would come to Cambridge and make the acquaintance of President Lowell. He made the journey, and found himself a guest at a dinner party in the home of one of the interlocking directorate. President Lowell was seated next to him, and they chatted on many subjects, but only once did they touch on the subject of Smith and his qualifications.

“By the way,” said Lowell (I reproduce the conversation from careful notes). “I understand you had some little unpleasantness in your home city.”

“Quite a good deal of it,” replied Smith.

“I’m not quite clear about it,” said Lowell. “It had something to do with the gas company, did it not?”

“Yes,” replied Smith.

“It was merely gas? It had nothing to do with electricity?”

“Oh, no,” said Smith. “Nothing whatever.”

“You are sure the electric light company was not involved?”

“Quite sure. They are separate concerns.”

“I see,” said Lowell, and talked about the European situation.

So Professor Smith went home, and told a friend about the matter; the friend made him repeat it over, word for word, and then burst out laughing. “Don’t you see the point?” he asked; but Smith saw no point whatever.

“Don’t you know that gas companies and electric light companies are sometimes rivals?” inquired the friend. “You can light your house with either gas or electricity; you can cook with either gas or electricity, you can heat with either gas or electricity.”

“Yes, of course,” said Smith, still unenlightened.

“Well, you attacked the gas company,” said the friend. “You did not attack the Edison Electric Company of your city, which happens to be a part of the electric trust which covers the entire United States. Harvard is all tied up with this electrical trust, and Massachusetts Tech still more so, and Lee, Higginson & Company are its bankers. President Lowell was perfectly willing for you to fight your local gas company, but he wanted to make sure that you hadn’t trod on the toes of Harvard’s leading industry! You will get your invitation to Harvard, I’ll wager.”

And, sure enough, the invitation came a few days later! To complete the humor of the story, the fact of the invitation became known at once among the faculty of Professor Smith’s university, and had the effect of instantly killing the talk of Professor Smith’s being asked to resign!

I tell this incident as it was told to me. Standing by itself it might not mean much; but before we finish with Harvard we shall have plenty of evidence to prove that when the electric men play a tune, the Lee-Higginson university dances. President Lowell, I am told, did not know the difference between a mathematician and an astronomer; when Pickering died, he proposed to put in a mathematician, and was naively surprised when it was explained to him that modern astronomy has gone so far that an observatory cannot be run by a mathematician, however expert. But ignorant as our Boston Brahmin may be about the stars of the milky way, it is certain that he knows all about the stars of State Street, he has them carefully charted and plotted, and neither he nor any member of his faculty ever bumps into them.