Another hundred percenter who is much concerned with our education is a leading corporation lawyer of Denver, Mr. Charles R. Brock, one of the grand dukes of Denver University, where we studied the career of Chancellor Buchtel. Mr. Brock is attorney for the “Big Four” utility corporations, which have run the city government of Denver for a generation; his partner was for a long time chairman of the infinitely corrupt Democratic party of Colorado. So Mr. Brock is terribly afraid of Socialists, and last spring I find him delivering a tirade against them to the young ladies of the most exclusive finishing school in Denver. Also he published in the Denver “Post” an attack upon President Thomas of Bryn Mawr, because of her radicalism. We shall have an inside glimpse at Miss Thomas’s activities before long, and discover the truly comical cautiousness of her “radicalism.”
It seems to trouble these corporation gentlemen especially that women should be venturing to think; they get after the women’s colleges again and again. Thus, some years ago, the president of Vassar received a letter from a high-up interlocking trustee, informing her that it had been discovered that twenty girls in that institution had formed a Socialist group, and that the trustee proposed to take action unless this group was broken up. The president of Wellesley received a letter from a prominent successful son, stating that he had learned that two members of the faculty had voted for Debs! At Vassar they pretend to permit freedom of discussion, but they limit the Socialist organization to two speakers a year, while they place no restriction upon the number of speakers brought in by the Y. M. C. A. and other groups. A lecture by Albert Rhys Williams was canceled, upon action of the trustees, after that friend of the Russian people had given his testimony before the Overman committee of the United States Senate. A professor at another woman’s college—she will not permit me to name the place—told me a funny story of how the president was visited by a hundred percent banker, who frightened her with the tidings that he had unearthed “radical activities” among the faculty, and proposed to take action about it before the trustees. He had the “goods” in his pocket, he said; and after some persuasion, he consented to produce the “goods”—which proved to consist of a letter from a parent, reporting one of the professors as advising a girl to read “those Bolshevist and Anarchist magazines, the ‘Survey’ and the ‘New Republic’!”
CHAPTER LXXXII
THE HELEN GHOULS
I have reserved for a separate chapter our most active anti-socialist organization, the National Civic Federation, a combination of class-conscious capitalists such as Elbert H. Gary and Alton B. Parker, with high-salaried labor leaders who have sold out their class. Once a year these labor leaders are honored with an elaborate banquet in New York City, where they listen to patriotic speeches from the wholesale corrupters of our public life. This National Civic Federation has a special department, headed by Condé B. Pallen, a Catholic lecturer, the “Committee for the Study of Revolutionary Movements.” It runs an elaborate system of espionage, and is perhaps the greatest single agency for the brow-beating of college professors.
I had special opportunity to observe the workings of this enterprise, because I served for ten years on the executive committee of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which used to receive the special attention of Mr. Ralph M. Easley, secretary of the Federation. This gentleman subscribed for six copies of our little monthly magazine, and used to quote extracts from it as a means of terrifying his backers into parting with their cash. He would list the names of the professors and students whom we mentioned, and would stir up college presidents and trustees and local business men and newspaper editors against them. Some tragedies resulted from this; and often it happened that professors and students lost interest in our work, and offered no explanation.
The most prominent of the backers of this Federation has been Mrs. Finley J. Shepard, née Helen Gould; one of the half dozen children of Jay Gould, the old-time railroad wrecker and Wall Street gambler. His other children turned out wasters and wantons, but Helen was a woman of kind heart, who gave much money to charity, and was the darling of the New York newspapers in the days of my childhood. She married a corporation lawyer, an official in the Gould railroads, and now she has swallowed whole the goblin stories of those who live by scaring rich people into putting up their money for class propaganda.
I do not mean to say that there are not men and women among the “reds” who would be glad to overthrow the American government and abolish the constitution, but I say that such people can only be met and overcome by free discussion, based upon an honest resolve to bring social justice into the world. Also, I say that the peril to our land which these “reds” represent is not one per cent of that represented by the big business criminals who run the National Civic Federation. I say furthermore that the constitution of the United States and the good name and credit of our country will not suffer as much damage from the propaganda of Lenin and Trotsky in a hundred years as they have suffered from the system of corruption and terrorism instituted by Ralph M. Easley and Condé B. Pallen with the money of Helen Gould Shepard.
When I was in New York I met a man who declared that he had been present at a luncheon-party, at which Mrs. Shepard stated that she had pledged her entire fortune to the stamping out of radicalism from our colleges. She was maintaining an organization for the carrying on of “investigations” into the teaching of social questions, and the ousting of those who taught unsound ideas. Within the last year Mrs. Shepard herself had caused the ousting of two such men. I did not want to repeat these statements without giving Mrs. Shepard an opportunity to confirm or deny them, so I wrote her a polite note, asking for an interview. This note was not answered, and a couple of months later I wrote a detailed letter, in which I stated what I had learned from several sources, and asked her to correct the statements if they were false. I pointed out that when persons of great wealth spend their money for propaganda, they enter a field which is of public concern, and the public has a right to be informed as to what they are doing. This letter likewise remained unanswered, so I take it[it] as fair to assume that Mrs. Shepard admits the truth of the statements quoted above.
In these activities she is earnestly supported by her husband, who is a trustee of the University of Jabbergrab, and last spring was serving on a committee appointed by the state superintendent of education to browbeat the school teachers of the city who were suspected of unorthodox ideas. The sessions of this committee were secret, so I was not able to observe Mr. Shepard functioning. I have, however, a pretty good picture of the Shepard family life, in a letter from a well-known Methodist clergyman, who was invited to a dinner-party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. Their conversation was devoted almost exclusively to “the intellectuals,” whom Mrs. Shepard “held responsible for the present disturbance in the social order.” She gave her guest the Lusk committee report—six large volumes, in the index of which the author of “The Goose-step” is listed as “a violent literary Socialist.” Also, she gave him two books attacking modern ideas in religion—which books are published and distributed upon her bounty. Said Mr. Shepard: “It is the business of the preacher to preach salvation and let industry alone. When men are converted they will apply the gospel to business. My father was a preacher. What did he know about business?” Mr. Shepard characterized Judge Gary as “the savior of the country”; and Mrs. Shepard declared that “the Union Theological Seminary is the greatest menace to New York City today.” Says the clergyman: “I came away with the idea well driven home, that the social Gospel is Socialism; that Socialism is Bolshevism; that Bolshevism is Atheism; and that nothing but the pure individualistic Gospel can save the nation and the world.”
You may judge from this that it is not a diverting experience to be invited to a dinner-party at the home of the Shepards. I have before me another document, which indicates that it is a still less diverting experience to be invited to a cemetery with Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. This document is a four-page leaflet, containing an address signed, “Helen Gould Shepard,” and headed as follows: