Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education - Upton Sinclair - Страница 24

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Before we go on with this story we should make the acquaintance of the executive head of the University of U. G. I., who bears the title of provost instead of president. From 1911 to 1921 he was Edgar Smith, a former professor of chemistry, who had been all his life an active henchman of the interlocking directorate and its political machine. He attended the Chicago convention in 1912 as a delegate from Pennsylvania, and voted for Taft as a candidate. He was intimate with the contractor-politician who ran the political machine of Philadelphia; he defended this man in public, and freely defended other political crooks, while denying his deans and professors the right to take part in politics in opposition to such crooks. When he took office the trustees promised they would finance the university, but this promise was not kept, so he had to go to the politicians every year and spend weeks begging for a subsidy, and being scolded for the improper activities of his faculty.

In his attitude to his trustees this provost was the ideal of subservience. He publicly declared that he himself had “no policy”; he placed the responsibility of action on those who asserted the right and had the power to act—that is to say, the trustees. He referred to them always as “the administration,” and in all public matters he took to them an attitude of touching deference. Thus, speaking at a banquet of the Pennsylvania alumni in New York, he said: “Tonight you will not expect me to occupy much of your time, for our trustees are your real guests, and you desire to hear from them.” Needless to say, such a type of mind is religious, and wedded to all things dull. Provost Smith never wearied of telling his audiences that he was a believer in “an old fashioned education”—with “four years each of Latin, Greek and Mathematics, and from four to three years of English, French and German.”

In administering the university, this aged-minded provost made it his function to carry to the trustees all manner of scandal concerning his radical professors—such as the fact that one of them was accustomed to dig in his garden on Sunday! Also he would bring back to the professors pitiful accounts of the embarrassments to which he was exposed. His attitude is illustrated by a statement he made to three professors whom he summoned to his office at the time the U. G. I. was under attack. “Gentlemen, what business have academic people to be meddling in political questions? Suppose, for illustration, that I, as a chemist, should discover that some big slaughtering company was putting formalin in its sausage; now, surely, that would be none of my business!”

Said one of the professors: “My answer would be that if I were to find such a condition, I should have no right to go to sleep until something was done about it.”

As a result of this attitude, the dean who had charge of these professors was allowed no funds at all; he would have to go to the provost if he wanted to have a cupboard built in some store-room, and whenever he went, he would find his boss with newspaper clippings on his desk. “Now, Young, how can we get any results with this kind of thing going on?”

It so happened that fate had played upon poor Provost Smith a cruel prank. Some forty years ago there lived in Philadelphia a truly liberal capitalist, who in his will left six hundred thousand dollars to found the Wharton School of Finance at the university. He laid down what the school was to teach as follows:

The immorality and practical inexpediency of seeking to acquire wealth by winning it from another rather than earning it through some sort of service to one’s fellowmen.

The deep comfort and healthfulness of pecuniary independence, whether the scale of affairs be small or great.

The necessity of rigorously punishing by legal penalties and by social exclusion those persons who commit frauds, betray trusts or steal public funds, directly or indirectly. The fatal consequence to a community of any weak toleration of such offenses must be most distinctly pointed out and enforced.

And then the shrewd old rascal, evidently knowing his business associates thoroughly, added this amazing provision.

The grantees covenant that these things shall be done, and that the failure to comply with these stipulations shall be deemed such a default as to cause reversion in the manner hereinafter provided.

Now, you understand that the first principle of the interlocking directorate is never to let go of money on which it gets its hands. It is accustomed to misappropriating funds, and turning public funds to its own uses; a little thing like a deed of trust would not stand in its way. What it failed to realize in the case of this Wharton trust was the uncomfortable amount of agitation and publicity which would be involved. If the trustees of the University of U. G. I. had realized what was coming to them, they would have made up that six hundred thousand dollars by raising the price of gas in Philadelphia.

For the effect of the deed of trust was to bring in a number of ardent young teachers who took seriously the words of the dead founder, and believed they had rights in the place. They shamelessly attacked the U. G. I., as I have narrated; they attacked other interests of the interlocking trustees in the same reckless way. For example, Professor Thomas Conway proved how the street railways were being plundered and ruined. He was unanimously recommended by his faculty for promotion, but this recommendationrecommendation was held up for three years by the trustees. During these three years the trustees were engaged in selling a street railway at an inflated valuation to the New Haven, and were putting through another “deal” of the same sort in Indiana!

Or take the case of Dr. Ward W. Pierson, who showed before the public service commission how the coal companies were charging $1.70 per ton transportation charges on coal, whereas the actual cost was only 55 cents; and here was our university, with two-thirds of its trustees interested in the mining and transporting of coal! Here was a coal operator about to give a large sum of money to the university, and withdrawing it! Dr. Pierson also was recommended for promotion, and waited three years, and meantime the scandal bureau of the interlocking directorate was put to work on him, and he was charged with a grave offense. His colleagues investigated the charge, and proved it to be absolutely without foundation.

Next came the case of Scott Nearing, who had begun his career as secretary to the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee. At this time Pennsylvania had more working children than any other state in the union. For example, there was Helen Sissack, a girl of twelve working in a silk mill, walking three miles from her home to start work at six o’clock at night, finishing work at six in the morning, and walking three miles back. Nearing became an instructor at the Wharton School, but went on opposing child labor, and the president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association attacked him, and the dean of the Wharton School was instructed by the provost of the university to instruct Nearing to stop his child labor talks. The university was scolded by a newspaper belonging to Joseph R. Grundy, woolen manufacturer and political boss, and this sent the provost into another panic.

After several years of strife, Nearing promised to be “good” for a year, and he was “good” for two years; that is, he made no outside speeches; but it didn’t help him, because what he said in his class-rooms was reported by the students, and reached the ears of the interlocking trustees. The standard time for promotion in the Wharton School is five years, but Nearing waited eight years, and along with his promotion he got a notice from the provost that the period of his appointment was for one year at a time! Randall Morgan, vice-president of the U. G. I., and trustee of the University of U. G. I., remarked to a friend of mine: “He may stay until he’s bald-headed, but he’ll never get promoted.” Another trustee said to Nearing: “We’ll give you young fellows rope and you’ll hang yourselves. There’ll be no dismissals.” This was E. B. Morris, president of the Girard Trust Company, a Morgan concern, with Mr. Stotesbury, the grand duke, for a director; also chairman of the Cambria Steel Company, of which Mr. Stotesbury is a director; also director of the Pennsylvania Steel Company.

The provost thought he knew how to handle this matter. He said to one of his henchmen: “Load him with administrative work, so that he can’t lecture. ‘Squeeze’ him.“ This is a term which they understand at plutocratic universities; to “squeeze” you is to make changes in your curriculum, so as to make your courses less important; to take them out of the required list, or to give required French at the same hour, so that nobody will be free to come to your courses; or to put them at inconvenient hours, say at three o’clock in the afternoon, when nobody likes to come. If you are a professor, they will “squeeze” your young men; you will be unable to get promotions and proper salaries for your subordinates, or equipment or proper supplies for your department.

You may find the adventures of Scott Nearing set forth in a book called “The Nearing Case,” by Lightner Witmer, a professor at the university. It is interesting to note that Professor Witmer paid for the publication of this book by being “squeezed” himself, and by having his young men “squeezed.” Scott Nearing, ring-leader of the agitation, they kept on a salary of fifteen hundred dollars—and at the same time they delicately called his attention to an opening which presented itself at another university, where he might get three thousand dollars! “What a shame about that nice young Nearing fellow!” said Professor Lingelbach of the department of history. “He might have been getting seven or eight thousand dollars now, if he had held his tongue!” But on another occasion this venerable professor argued in a faculty discussion that there was no suppression of free speech at the University of Pennsylvania. Somebody put to him the question, suppose he wanted to join in municipal research work, to take up gas or street railways. Yes, everybody present admitted, that might make a difference!