Still funnier was what happened in the case of Professor Lee’s demand that some one should name a newspaper which had suppressed the name of a department-store in connection with a discreditable news item. Professor Lee, reading “The Brass Check,” observed that most of my anecdotes of this kind dealt with newspapers in Philadelphia, Boston, Milwaukee and other cities. Therefore, he phrased his challenge at the Brownsville Labor Forum so that it referred only to New York newspapers; he called for names, places and dates—and of course nobody at the Brownsville Labor Forum could supply such data. In the New York “Globe” he repeated this challenge, very proudly and very confidently. But, alas, right in the middle of the controversy, his friends on the kept press threw him down! On June 27 he published in the “Globe” his article headed, “Lee Calls on Sinclair for Names, Dates, Places”; and nine days later the New York “Evening Sun,” in its baseball edition, Wednesday, July 6, 1920, page two, column eight, published a story about a man who had sued a department-store and collected money from it—and nowhere in the article was the department-store named!

Also I ought to mention the behavior of this professor of Jabbergrab in connection with the New York “Times.” This controversy, with all the documents, is given in a pamphlet, “The Crimes of the ‘Times,’” which you may have for the asking. I will here mention only one or two details. The “Times” reported Professor Lee’s Brownsville address to the extent of two columns, quoting mainly his defense of the “Times.” I replied in a letter, and the “Times” did to this the most dishonest thing a newspaper can do—it refused to publish the letter, but discussed it in an editorial, and falsified its contents! I sent the “Times” a telegram, calling attention to the falsifications, but they refused any sort of redress. These falsifications stand in the files of the paper; they are listed in its index, found in every large library in the country. Students of “The Brass Check” will come upon those falsehoods; but they will know nothing about my answer, for my humble little pamphlet is not catalogued in libraries. I trust therefore that the reader will pardon me if I take two paragraphs of this book to state the facts; especially since every step of the controversy was a test, not merely of the “Times,” but of the Director of Journalism of New York University.

The incident in dispute is told on page 77 of “The Brass Check,” dealing with the publication of my novel, “The Metropolis.” The New York “Times” had prepared a front-page news story about this novel, and the story was killed at the last minute by Mr. Ochs, publisher of the “Times.” Professor Lee, in his Brownsville speech, declared that this narrative of mine was absurd upon its face. In my letter to the “Times,” I put it up to the “Times” to say whether my narrative was true or false. The “Times,” refusing to publish the letter, declared editorially that no such incident had occurred. Said the “Times”: “Mr. Sinclair refers to this tale in his letter to the ‘Times,’ but with a shifting of ground. For his own positive statement in ‘The Brass Check’ he now substitutes the alleged statement of a ‘publicity agent’ of a publishing house,” etc.

Now the facts were as follows: “The Metropolis” had been published in serial form in the “American Magazine”; and in “The Brass Check” I had stated that it was this magazine which had arranged for the story in the “Times.” Subsequently I recalled that it was Moffat, Yard & Company, the publishers of the book, who had made the arrangements, and this correction I noted in my letter to the “Times.” Manifestly, this made no difference, so far as concerned the “Times”; but you see what use they made of this “shifting of ground”! Their assertion, that I “relied upon the alleged statement of a publicity agent of a publishing house” was a flat falsehood; for in my letter to the “Times” I told them that “I saw the proofs of the proposed story with my own eyes.” A day or two later I was able to telegraph them statements from the two gentlemen who had composed the firm of Moffat, Yard & Company, Mr. W. D. Moffat and Mr. Robert Sterling Yard, both declaring that they plainly remembered the preparing of the story by the “Times,” and their disappointment when they found it did not appear as promised. The “Times” received this testimony, but refused publication to it, and paid no attention to my telegrams of protest!

And now, where was Professor Lee during this controversy? Professor Lee had furnished the “Times” with the ammunition to attack me; he had defended their journalistic practices, and they had published his defense. Here he saw them committing a piece of the baldest journalistic rascality—and what did he do about it? I telegraphed him again and again, asking him to take steps to induce the newspaper to correct its published falsehoods. Later on, I challenged him again and again to withdraw his published endorsement of the newspaper’s ethical code. His reply was to go before the University Settlement, and repeat his attack upon “The Brass Check” and his defense of the “Times”—and the “Times” once more featured his address! To the manager of my New York office Professor Lee made the smiling statement that he was publishing a magazine for business men, and he did not care how much I attacked him in public—it would only help him with his business clients!

You have heard me protesting against the practice of covering commercialists and servants of privilege with the mantle of academic dignity; and here you see what it means, and why it is done. The New York “Times” did not dare to answer “The Brass Check” itself; for a year it had ignored the book—save to post in its editorial rooms a statement that anyone found with a copy in the office would be summarily discharged! But then came forward a personage with the high-sounding title of “Director of the Department of Journalism of New York University”; and the “Times” made itself into a megaphone, to carry this hitherto negligible voice to the farthest ends of the earth!

CHAPTER LXVII
THE CITY COLLEGES

There is another crowded institution in the great metropolis, the College of the City of New York, where I got the one degree of which I boast. I went back there this spring, after twenty-five years, and it was a curious experience. They have their new buildings, all in the venerable Gothic style, with arrow-proof windows; and in the faculty room I inspected a row of oil paintings of those old professors who had been the chief torment of five years of my youth. They were so lifelike it gave me a chill; I expected to see the old red-whiskered professor of Latin, or the old white-whiskered professor of Greek, come down from his frame and denounce me for my twenty years of socialistic agitation.

This college has grown to enormous size, with some sixteen thousand students, and all the regulation “Main Street” courses; also there is Hunter College for women, with four thousand more. These are the only colleges in New York to which Jews can now get admission on their merits, and the student membership of “C. C. N. Y.” is eighty-five percent Jewish; the Anglo-Saxons who constitute the interlocking trustees have a difficult time to keep down the active-minded East-side boys. One of them, Leon Samson, ventured to ask a question of General Webb at a “preparedness” meeting, and for this he was expelled. (He moved on to Columbia, from which he was expelled on the basis of garbled newspaper reports of a speech in opposition to the draft.) The students have not been allowed to have an open forum, and the list of speakers is sternly censored. Scott Nearing was barred, also the Reverend John Haynes Holmes, and a lecture by Bouck White was forbidden very dramatically an hour before it began. Incredible as it may seem, Glenn E. Plumb was not permitted to debate the “Plumb plan” before these students!

I found here all the regular methods for holding down the faculty. Said one young professor: “Our president commands a cruel form of torture; he sets you to teaching freshmen for the rest of your life.” Promotion depends upon conformity, and dark secrets are whispered, and suffocation befalls those upon whom suspicion lights. I talked with one professor, a bit of a liberal, who gave me a curious picture of the operation of the academic terror. He had been recommended by the head of his department for promotion, but had been passed over; he went to his dean, and tried to drag out of him what was the matter. “Do you know?” Yes, the dean knew. “Will you tell?” No, the dean shook his head. “Will you tell me this, then? Does this reason, whatever it is, operate next year?” No, the dean wouldn’t tell that. But for three years it did operate, and a live man was deprived of his right to advancement, and kept upon a dead routine until his spirit should be broken.