5. If you did not send him, can you offer any suggestion as to how he learned about the correspondence between my brother-in-law and yourself, and what interest he had in troubling himself about the matter?
To these questions Professor Aughinbaugh made no answer, except to send me in an envelope three circulars of his book, in one of which he is described as “lecturer,” in another as “instructor,” and in another as “chairman.” I wrote again, calling his attention to his failure to answer, but no further response came. From the publishers of “Who’s Who” I learn that the lecturer-instructor-chairman-professor himself furnished them with the information concerning his status; also that he has recently written to them asking to be recorded as no longer “professor” but as just plain “lecturer!”
CHAPTER LXV
THE GROWTH OF JABBERGRAB
Modern industry is an enormously complicated thing, and specialized teaching of industrial processes is just as necessary as any other kind of education. I would not give anyone the impression that I object to the teaching of advertising or foreign trade or finance, any more than I object to the teaching of plumbing or manicuring fingernails. My point is that all these arts should be taught in trade schools, and they should be taught as trades. For example, the International Harvester Company maintains an excellent school for training its employes; it does not pretend that this school is a “university,” it does not call the turning out of harvester machines a “profession,” and it does not constitute a high-speed steel worker a “doctor of science.” It is when these schools of commerce and departments of trade crowd into universities, and take to themselves academic honors and dignities, and exploit themselves with high-sounding phrases of religion and social idealism, that I am moved to protest; as when I see some parasitic vine climbing a beautiful shade-tree, spreading out over the surface of the tree, blocking its light and air and choking it to death.
That is what is happening in the field of American higher education; it is happening not merely at New York University and other great “intellectual sweat-shops,” it is happening at practically every one of our state universities and at most of our great endowed institutions. It was Harvard which started this vile business, with a College of Commerce and Administration; Columbia followed suit, and the plague has spread from Maine to California. I consult a few college catalogues at random, and I find that at the University of Illinois they are teaching millinery, also at the University of Nebraska and the University of Southern California. At the University of California they have a “costume laboratory,” also a course in “jewelry.” At Boston University, made out of the millions of Isaac Rich, the merchant, and Lee Chaflin, the shoe manufacturer, they will teach you how to collect tips at summer hotels. The commercial men and women who specialize in such subjects come into the universities, and they bid against the professors of liberal arts for power and prestige and pay—and how much chance do you think a scholar or lover of belles-lettres stands against such people?
You understand that the president of a university, making up his salary budget, is like all other business men, he pays what he has to pay. And here is the Professor of Department-store Advertising pointing out that at Goldberg & Isaacstein’s, in the shopping district, he can get fifteen thousand a year, and he has a letter in his pocket to prove it. He will come to the university for twelve thousand, because of his love of the higher things of life, but he won’t take a cent less, and the president tries once or twice and finds out that he is not bluffing. For a year the president has been trying to get a first-class Professor of Commercial Correspondence, who understands the three varieties of “follow-up letters”; and the Director of his School of Business keeps telling him that any man who really commands that precious knowledge can get ten thousand a year. But who is there in the outside world that will pay anything to a professor of archeology, or to a man who can explain the Einstein theory, or a man who knows more about the life of Dante than anyone else in America? Such men have to take what they can get, and their salaries remain stagnant while the value of the dollar is cut in half.
At the University of Minnesota I was told about a discussion at a meeting of the regents. The president of the university was very anxious to get Professor Stuart P. Sherman, well known as a conservative literary critic. Some one remarked that Sherman would want six thousand dollars; whereupon the grand duke of the board put down his fist on the table. “There’s not an English man in America worth six thousand dollars!” he declared. I am sorry I cannot state exactly what value this gentleman sets upon the services of a grand duke of the plutocracy, but it is at least a score of times the sum of six thousand a year. But you see, this gentleman has all his life been buying men at their market price, and he knows that market price, and has no idea that they have any other value.
At the University of Chicago they have a School of Commerce, which is growing like the weed that it is, and in their advertising literature, with its variety of “follow-up letters,” they tell you that after two years’ training you can command a salary of twelve thousand dollars. This, of course, is the kind of talk that brings the business; these are the courses which the “he-men” take. And after they have got a degree, they become professors, and perhaps deans, and they run the university. If it is a question of starting a drive for funds, they are the ones who know how to get out the “literature,” they are experts in the psychology of mendication. They understand the newspapers, and how to get favors from them; they understand the politicians and the big business men who run the politicians; they are the fellows after the trustees’ own hearts, and when the time comes for the old president to be shelved, it is one of these “go-getters” who is in line for the place. We have seen that happen at one university after another; at the University of Illinois President Kinley was Director of the School of Commerce, and at Northwestern University President Scott was Director of the Bureau of Salesmanship Research.
Let us return to our University of Jabbergrab, where these new educational tendencies “rule the roost.” Chancellor Brown sets forth that the “School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance” of his university contains six thousand students, and that from it has sprung a “Graduate School of Business Administration,” also in the last three years a “School of Retailing.” Twenty-two department-stores and other retail establishments in New York “have made direct connection with the university, and thirty-seven college graduates are each morning pursuing their studies in retailing in our class-rooms, and in the afternoon of the same day are receiving practical experience in the various operations of the stores themselves.” I have not attended these classes, but I do not need to inquire what these students are learning; I can go to the New York department-stores, and see them displaying “marked-down” goods, which were marked up before they were marked down. I have only to read their imbecile advertisements in the New York newspapers, setting forth the latest fads and foibles of “Milady,” and the latest “importations” of the latest “creations” of the keepers of French mistresses.
New York University’s catalogue lists three professors of marketing, five professors of finance, four professors of accounting, four of business English, three of management, one of salesmanship, one of merchandising, one of foreign trade, one of life insurance—and a Director of the Wall Street Division!