The gentleman who was appointed by Mr. Carnegie to run this Foundation, and who worked out the scheme, is Dr. Henry Smith Pritchett; I look him up in “Who’s Who,” and find amusing evidence of what it means to have a strangle-hold over American institutions of learning. Dr. Pritchett goes about like an Indian war-chief with scalps at his belt—no fewer than eighteen honorary degrees from American colleges and universities! What the professors think of his administration you may guess from the comments on his last statement made by Joseph Jastrow, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin. “There is the same copious shuffling of the issues, the same lack of frankness, the same assumption of benevolence of motive, the same disregard of accepted principle as of actual opinion, the same aspersions and evasions.”
The next great benefactor of our educational system was Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who has given one or two hundred millions of dollars to a foundation for the purpose of improving our schools and colleges according to Standard Oil ideals. The General Education Board has millions to give to those educational institutions which conform, and it holds over the head of every college and university president a perpetual bribe to sell out the interests of the people. Great numbers have accepted, a few have refused, and these have been the object of continual intrigue. Turn back to the chapter on North Dakota, and read the statements of Dr. W. J. Spillman of the United States Bureau of Agricultural Economics, concerning the efforts of these Rockefeller “educators” to dominate the land grant colleges. And let me call your attention to a speech delivered by this courageous public servant before the semi-annual conference of the National Board of Farm Organizations, February 11, 1919.
In order that you may understand Dr. Spillman’s charges, I will first make plain the economics of the situation. After the war there was a frightful slump in values; the Federal Reserve Board, which controls our banking system, gave unlimited credit to the Wall Street banks, which they passed on to the big corporations, to enable them to get by the crisis without dropping the prices of their products. The farmers were left to “hold the sack,” and they were ruined by millions—on my trip through the Northwest I was told of whole counties in which every single farm was for sale for taxes. The farmers wanted to know why the price of farm products should drop to nothing, while the price of manufactured articles was not affected. They wanted to know the cost of producing farm products, and they looked to the experts of the Department of Agriculture to get these figures. On the other hand, of course, big business decreed that the figures should not be got.
Their agent in carrying out this decree was the Secretary of Agriculture, David F. Houston, Harvard graduate, ex-president of the University of Texas, ex-chancellor of Washington University, and holder of seven honorary degrees; a member of the Southern Education Board, a subsidiary of the Rockefeller General Education Board; later chairman of the Federal Reserve and Farm Loan Boards, and now president of the Bell Telephone Securities Company. Dr. Spillman portrays Dr. Houston as lying, cheating and intriguing, resorting to every device in order to keep the facts about farming costs from being collected. Says Dr. Spillman:
I cannot give you the full facts about this matter without exposing honest and honorable men to the fury of this brutal autocrat, under whom they unfortunately have to serve.... Early in his administration there was circulated through the department a typewritten sheet said to have been written by a member of Mr. Rockefeller’s General Education Board, and which was said to represent Mr. Rockefeller’s views, in which Secretary Houston concurred. This sheet purported to outline the duties of the department. It stated that the department should make no investigations that would reveal the profits made by farmers, or that would determine the cost of producing farm products. No representative of the department should ever under any circumstances even intimate that it is possible to overproduce any farm product. The entire business of the department was to teach farmers how to produce more than they now produce.
The General Education Board, you understand, possesses unlimited funds, it pays no taxes, and renders no accounting to anyone. Professor Cattell stated in “Science” that it “keeps for its own private use the information that it collects, and does not even publish the financial statements that should be required by law from every corporation, and first of all from those exempted from taxation.” And these funds are used in paying fancy salaries to experts in all subjects, especially intrigue and wire-pulling. Dr. Spillman tells how this board got charge of the farm demonstration work in the South, and how he kept them from getting charge of the same work in the Northern and Western states. In order to hamper Spillman’s work, “Mr. Houston issued orders to demonstration workers in the department not to co-operate with any outside agency except Mr. Rockefeller’s General Education Board.”
Soon after Mr. Houston became secretary he established an office in the department, known as the Rural Organization Service. The funds for the initiation of this work were furnished by the General Education Board. The important work of the Bureau of Markets was placed under this office, and Professor T. N. Carver of Harvard was invited to become head of the new bureau. He came to the department with real enthusiasm for his work, and at once proceeded to outline a series of important investigations on marketing of farm products, rural credits, and similar subjects. But when his plans were laid before the General Education Board by Secretary Houston they turned him down flat, with no explanation for their action. Professor Carver was much puzzled at this, and sought an interview with certain members of the board, for the purpose of finding out, if possible, why they had decided to discontinue their support; but he could get no information of any kind. He then told them in very plain language just what he thought of the General Education Board. Soon after this the newspapers carried a brief notice to the effect that Professor Carver had not found his work in the Department of Agriculture entirely congenial and would probably return to Harvard at the end of the year. He did return to Harvard soon thereafter. You will appreciate the gay humor of the fact that Professor T. N. Carver of Harvard University is named by Woodworth Clum, of the Better America Federation, the Black Hand of California, as one of two college professors who are heroically battling against Socialism in the colleges, and are deserving of the ardent support of all patriotic and liberty-loving Americans!
CHAPTER LXXXI
THE BOLSHEVIK HUNTERS
We shall next have a glance at those organizations and foundations which are frankly propagandist in their purposes, and which conduct departments of espionage and slander. We have already seen the work of the Better America Federation of California; there are a number of similar institutions which are nation-wide in their activities.
You remember, in the story of the University of Wisconsin, the young instructor whose career was placed in jeopardy by the National Association for Constitutional Government. This organization has been active in our educational centers, and among its publications is a pamphlet by a prominent corporation lawyer of Washington, advocating the establishment in all American colleges of a compulsory course in opposition to Socialism. Nicholas Murray Butler has actually established such a course at Columbia; it is required of freshmen, and is camouflaged under the name of “Contemporary History.” The students have embodied their opinion of it in the phrase, “Contemptible History.”