THE RESULT.
What is the result? The president of a large private university, knowing that his reputation for success or failure depends upon the growth of his university as compared with that of neighboring universities, continually trims his sails to secure favors of those who have money to dispense. It is a common thing for a college president to make what he calls a "begging tour." He endeavors to show to those who are supposed to have money to bestow that his university is in great need, and can make the best possible use of "sound" money in propagating "sound ideas."
A good illustration of this is the tour which Brooker Washington, the famous colored orator, the President of the Tuskegee Institute, made in 1896, through the North and East. He is a man of intellectual power. He is, no doubt, thoroughly devoted to the enlightenment of his race; but the way he flatters and cajoles the rich, advocates the gold standard, overlooks and keeps silent about their corruption and crimes, and assents to their plans for further aggrandizement, is a lesson which every patriot can study with profit. He has become a pet and fad among the wealthy classes of New York and New England. Even Harvard in 1896 conferred upon him an honorary degree. He has doubtless gotten heavy endowments for his college, but he has had to fawn and flatter and stultify his manhood to do it. And he has given a striking example of what almost every college president must do to a greater or less extent.
The fact is, that PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES, DEPENDING AS THEY DO UPON THE CHARITY AND CONSCIENCE MONEY OF THE RICH FOR SUPPORT AND GROWTH, LIKE ALL THOSE WHO LIVE BY CHARITY, HAVE ACQUIRED THE FAWNING SPIRIT OF SERVITUDE AND DEPENDENCE, AND FAITHFULLY LICK THE HAND THAT FEEDS THEM. "Verily the ox knoweth his master's crib."
Many college presidents dare not use any but "orthodox" gold standard text-books, and professors who dissent from the views of these books are forced to swallow their own opinions and propagate error.
Many of "our great authorities" are mere sycophants of wealth, creatures of the millionaire, placed by him in the same category as his musician, his ballet dancer or chaplain, all valuable dependents. The money lord of creation often builds the college (Chicago University, for example), places the poor book-worm in the position that makes him a "recognized authority," and the "authority" must dish up statistics as a cook dishes up his delicacies to suit the taste of his master. If he refuses he loses his job, and is no longer a "recognized authority."
Young men are not only taught in many instances that the rights of monopoly and money are more sacred than the rights of men and women, but are shown frequently that if they want to make a success in life, and be an honor to their family and their college they must ally themselves with the powerful corporations and trusts and keep their skirts clear of all popular and reform movements.
The recent action of the Yale students who brutally attempted to insult the honored guest of their city, Mr. Wm. J. Bryan, is not without significance.
The authorities and the respectable element among the students were no doubt, deeply humiliated by such a disgrace. Yet it is fairly plain that the dogmatic, uncharitable and violent opposition to Free Silver indulged in by the professors, has contributed its part toward causing this exhibition of anarchy and puppyism.
There is a wide distinction however, between professors and professors.
There are numerous truly great men who are aristocrats at heart, who love luxury and culture and refinement, whose friends are principally among the rich, whose sympathies are with the rich, and whose interests in life are bound up with the prosperity of the wealthy classes. These men oppose popular rights as conscientiously as did the old Feudal Lords. They all oppose the New Democracy.
There are many others—men of splendid intellect, but utterly without principle—who are mere dishonest, mercenary tools of the highest bidder, willing to distort and manufacture history, tamper with statistics, and lie like "shyster lawyers."
As, for instance, the learned professor of the Chicago University, who declared with brazen effrontery that whatever might be charged against Mr. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Trust, no one could say that he had accumulated his millions in any way that interfered with the accumulations of others.[9]
Again there are a few university "authorities" who, at the risk of their living and the success of the institutions they represent, have told the truth fearlessly. They oppose monopoly and the gold standard. But their testimony is buried beneath the overwhelming mass of prejudice, sophistry and misinformation supplied by their colleagues.
Very distinct from any of these classes is that swarm of cowardly pusillanimous book-worms, who, as underlings in the large universities, and as full-fledged professors in the small colleges, retail at second-hand with stupid pertinacity and pig-headed bitterness, all the errors of the "authorities," together with new ones of their own special brew.
It is by the prejudiced and purchased testimony of such men as these that the monopolies of the country try to prove that empty stomachs are full, bare backs clothed, and that a constantly growing and appreciating dollar is an honest one. It is with such untrustworthy witnesses that they attempt to prove to us that the men who have stolen our property are more honest than we.
The teacher witness for the defense may be more "respectable and learned" than the witnesses of the prosecution, but when we see that the universities are built and professors' salaries paid from the booty wrung from the people—in other words, "that the teacher rides to court on one of the very horses taken from Farmer Hayseed's stable" it does not take us long to decide that this testimony is misleading and false.
Therefore, the workmen, merchants and tax-payers who compose the jury, which is to hand in its verdict in 1900, must refuse to consider the testimony of these collegiate, pulpit and editorial witnesses, who are proven to be sharers in the tribute forced from the people by that gigantic and almost sublime system of world exploitation carried on scientifically and persistently by those powerful "trusts" which have cornered the world's gold and monopolized nearly every necessity and comfort of life.
The pivotal point in this campaign is the question of the reliability of witnesses. Not only do opinions differ, but the history, statistics, and facts, advanced by the defenders of monopoly and the gold standard contradict the history, statistics and facts discovered by the champions of the people. There can be only one truthful history of the crime of seventy-three, and the seventy-three other crimes of the shirkers against the workers. Figures do not lie. Only one set of statistics, as to the rise in the value of the gold dollar, can possibly be correct. Facts do not conflict. When men contradict each other upon a question of fact, one side is wrong.
Whose history and statistics are we to believe in this campaign?
Are we to believe the interested, prejudiced, purchased witnesses of corrupt wealth, or are we to believe the testimony of the witnesses of the people—men who have sacrificed and suffered in order to tell the truth.
It is because the classes who have the advantages of culture and leisure, always care more for their own comforts than for truth and justice, that these problems, my reader, must be worked out, by the millions made of the same identical common mud that you and I are.
As William E. Gladstone has said, all the reforms brought about in England during the last century, and of which all her citizens now boast, "were at first merely impossible ideals in the minds of the ignorant and fanatical poor," and were carried through by the working people "in opposition to the cultured and leisure class."
It is because those who possess the power and the learning to lead mankind aright have always proven recreant to the trust imposed upon them, that God, in directing the course of human history, has invariably swept this class aside and accepted as His instruments the poor, the simple-minded and uncorrupted. From the birth of the primitive church among the poor fishermen of Galilee to the abolition of chattel slavery by an agitation instituted by social and political outcasts, the hand of God moving in the world has invariably brushed aside the rich and powerful with the intellectual parasites that swarm about them, and in building nations, religions, or instituting great reforms, has uniformly chosen the normal, healthy material at the base of society still uncorrupted by luxury.
CHAPTER XII.
VOTE YOURSELVES RICH.
Those who have been voted rich, not by their own votes, but by our votes, the votes of the common people, are now engaged in proving to us THAT WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE FOR THEM WE CAN BY NO POSSIBLE MEANS DO FOR OURSELVES.
Having accumulated immense fortunes by means of vote enacted legislation, THEY PREACH TO US THE UTTER FOLLY OF OUR HOPING FOR ANY GAIN FROM THE SAME SOURCE.
So interested are they in our proper economic education, that they are willing to supply both text-books and teachers. They love learning and from purely philanthropic motives seek to make us wise.
But what is their wisdom so willingly imparted? From what follies are they so anxious to guard us?
TO VOTE OUR ENEMIES RICH: THIS IS WISDOM.
TO ATTEMPT TO VOTE OURSELVES RICH: DANGEROUS FOLLY.
Their science teaches that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE INSTRUMENT WHICH IS THE SOURCE OF THEIR WEALTH TO BE OF ANY EFFECT IN BEHALF OF THOSE WHO WIELD THE INSTRUMENT.
Text-book in hand they say to the people, "It is impossible for you to vote yourselves rich."
Strictly speaking, it is unnecessary for the people to "vote themselves rich." WE, THE PEOPLE, ARE ALREADY RICH. We are rich by the gift of nature and the will of God. Each scientific discovery and invention, wrung by toil, genius and martyrdom from the strange earth and firmament that greeted primeval man, has added to our riches. We are now rich, but are debarred by force from the possession of our own. We are heirs, not only to the riches of the earth as originally created, but to all those opportunities for utilizing these natural treasures, resulting from the accumulated knowledge and skill of the centuries. But we are kept from our inheritance.
We have been deprived of our wealth by vote-enacted legislation, and it is vote-enacted legislation that will again give us possession.
Our enemies say contemptuously that government can no more increase wages by legislation than it can increase the size of your foot or the length of your arm, for the increase or decrease in both cases is governed wholly by natural law.
"Let the poor," they say, "stop agitating and hoping to become prosperous through legislation, and instead let every man go to work building his own home and fortune, and all will be well."
"The Government cannot legislate a single dollar into existence."
"The remedies for poverty are industry, frugality and temperance."
These are the things they say. But suppose we watch their acts instead of listening to their words. Then we learn that, while for us they point in one direction to the road that leads to fortune they seek this road themselves by going the opposite way. We, who have followed their advice, have been impoverished; they, who imitated their acts, have been enriched.