We have no help, do our own washing and my wife makes all the children’s clothes, etc.
Neglecting necessary repairs; inferior clothing, butter substitutes, etc. Almost no theatres, entertainments, travel or books.
Small apartment, clothing below standard of position, entertainment almost eliminated, etc.
General retrenchments (food, clothing, medical services, etc.) and the discontinuing of newspapers, magazines, all amusements, concerts, etc., that are not free. Am unable to subscribe to worthy causes (relief funds, etc.).
No vacation trips. Postponed dental attention. Inferior grades of clothing. Cannot wear as good clothes as I did when in high school and college. Have not spent as much on entertainment.
We use butter substitutes; I run a garden and sole the family’s shoes; my wife makes all her own clothing.
Unable to take vacations or trips to relatives who live at distance. Buy no books, only clothing absolutely necessary. Self-denial in almost everything imaginable.
There you have nine little family tragedies, out of ninety I might have quoted from the article, out of one or two hundred thousand that exist in our country. So the poor professors and their wives and children live; and above them is the world of prominence and power into which they dream of climbing. The way of success is the way of toadying and boot-licking, of conformity and reverence for the gods established. Do you wonder that, as Harold Laski says, some men deliberately adopt reactionary ideas as a means to promotion, while others, whose brains do not permit them to be reactionary, conceal their real opinions? Do you wonder that the young instructor comes like the chameleon to take the color of the environment which surrounds him? However much he may be absorbed in his books, his wife knows about the world outside, and their children have to be reared in this world.
To show you how college professors are tempted, let me tell you an anecdote, the experience of a teacher of political science at one of our leading Eastern universities. I will call him Smith; and he was invited to meet the head of one of the largest universities of the Middle West, whom I will call Jones. President Jones had suggested that Professor Smith should come to his institution as head of a big department, and while Jones was in the East they met to talk it over. Said Smith, telling me the story: “This was a big chance, and I was disposed to accept it; but first I wanted to find out what would be my status. Of course, I could not ask the man directly: ‘Shall I be free?’ I might as well have asked: ‘Shall I be allowed to commit rape?’ What I did was to set a trap; I said: ‘You know I teach a ticklish subject, public service work; the question is, should my teaching be administrative, or should it be policy-determining? My conception of the matter is that I should get the data, but not determine policies.’ And you should have seen the man’s face light up! ‘That’s it exactly!’ he said. ‘I’m so glad to have you make the distinction! That makes the matter perfectly clear.’ And he went home and told his faculty that I was the best man they could possibly get!” While Professor Smith told me this story we were sitting at dinner in a restaurant, and he added: “It happened right in this room—at that table over there. I declined the appointment, of course. But you see how it is; when men face temptations such as that, it breaks down their characters in the end.”
How much direct bribery of college professors there may be, I cannot say. A dean at the University of Wisconsin told me how a wealthy father had offered him money to “pass” his deficient son; and I suspect that kind of thing happens more often than it is told. But most of the time the thing is done through what I call the “dress-suit bribe.” A college professor is human like the rest of us; he likes a good dinner and a good cigar; he likes to be invited to “nice” homes—and his wife likes it still more. I know a professor at a state university who “flunked” the son of a trustee—and this in spite of all kinds of pressure from those above him. But the average man can hardly be expected to jeopardize his career in a case like that. Where such temptations exist, it is a psychological axiom that many will fall.