Likewise, of course, it is easy to find excuses for seeking the safest way, and holding on to our jobs. The psychoanalysts have a useful word for mental processes of this sort—they are “rationalizations”; and the masters of our educational system have provided an elaborate set of “rationalizations” for college professors who wish to avoid the painful duty of being heroes. They will be loyal to the institution and to their colleagues. They will be scholars and not propagandists. They will be judicious, instead of being “emotionally unbalanced, like Scott Nearing.” They will argue that their specialty is one of unusual importance, and they are privileged beings, set apart to work at that. Or they will plead that social evolution takes a long time, and that every man’s first duty is to look out for his wife and children. These, too, are phrases which I heard over and over again, and they reveal the psychology of the academic rabbits. You will perhaps be interested to meet one of these rabbits, so here is part of a letter written by a professor in a large college in New York City:

I do not believe that there is a single group of “special privilege.” The human race is made up of people who are looking after their own interests first—some with energy and ability, some with weakness and folly, but not with less singleness of purpose. All such groups, in so far as they have ability enough, want to control education and all other group activities in their interest. This is perfectly natural.... Of course the big book corporations work for the promotion of their friends just as you and I do. If they put bad people into the schools and colleges it is the fault of the employing agencies.

Before I conclude this chapter I ought to mention one hopeful incident which happened at Lafayette College, a religious institution located at Easton, Pennsylvania. The president of this institution, MacCracken, is a product of the University of Jabbergrab; he was professor of politics there for twelve years, and has five honorary degrees. He has as the grand duke of his trustees the president of the Hazleton National Bank and the Hazleton Iron Works; and as first assistant he has Mr. Fred Morgan Kirby, president of the Woolworth stores, also of a bank and a railroad; a high-up interlocking director in railroads, lumber, insurance, gas and electricity. Mr. Kirby decided that he did not like modern ideas, so he gave a hundred thousand dollars to Lafayette, to furnish a salary of seven thousand a year for the teaching of “civil rights”; very carefully laying down his definition—“those absolute rights of persons, such as ... the right to acquire and enjoy property as regulated and protected by law.” Also he declared his purpose:

That the fallacies of Socialism and kindred theories and practises which tend to hamper and discourage and throttle individual effort, and individual energy, may be exposed and avoided ... with a firm belief that the protection of the civil rights of individuals has contributed greatly to the advancement of the nation and that the encroachments, and threatened encroachments on these rights will imperil the country, and destroy the prosperity and happiness of our people, I, Fred Morgan Kirby, give to Lafayette College, etc.

These are high-sounding legal phrases, and we shall understand the situation better if we put them into plain business English, as follows:

I, Fred Morgan Kirby, having become owner of a chain of hundreds of stores throughout the United States, and wishing to have my descendants own these stores forever, seek to provide that the wage-slaves who work in these stores shall never organize, but shall come to be hired as individuals under the competitive-wage system. To this end I wish to hire a man to teach in a college that any proposition to have the Woolworth stores owned by the public, or democratically run by the people who work in the stores, will imperil the country and destroy the prosperity and happiness of America.

Mr. Kirby thought that seven thousand a year ought to buy a real high-up professor of political science, and his college president invited a young professor of a leading university, who asks me to omit his name in telling the story. This professor boldly asked for an opportunity to discuss the question with Mr. Kirby himself, so they sat down to luncheon, the grand duke and his university president and this young supposed-to-be rabbit. The supposed-to-be rabbit suggested that it might not be quite fair to lay down to a man of science exactly what he should teach forever after; which surprised Mr. Kirby, and rather hurt his feelings. He said that when he hired a salesman, he told him what to say and how to say it. Mr. Kirby is a nice, amiable old business gentleman, and he asked, plaintively: “Why can’t I employ a college professor to sell my opinions?” The professor, who is a lawyer, said that he should be very glad to become Mr. Kirby’s attorney if invited. He would give up teaching work and advocate Mr. Kirby’s ideas—only the fee which Mr. Kirby offered was insufficient for a lawyer, and he would regard that merely as a retaining fee. Then the professor turned to President MacCracken, asking him if he did not think that possibly the terms of the bequest might have a tendency to control the opinions of the professor who accepted the chair. President MacCracken answered naively that he had never thought of that. Such a dear, innocent college president—he had given an honorary degree to A. Mitchell Palmer only a year before this!

The deal with this professor did not go through, and—here is the significant part of the story—President MacCracken asked one university after another to recommend a man for that chair, and not one would do it; not one economist of standing could be found who would accept seven thousand dollars a year to become the salesman of Mr. Kirby’s ideas! In the end they had to take an obscure lawyer from Washington, whom no one had ever heard of before, or has ever heard of since. That is encouraging—except for the poor students at Lafayette, who are innocently swallowing Mr. Kirby’s poison!

CHAPTER LXXXVI
WORKERS’ EDUCATION

We come now to one of the most important aspects of American education, the movement of the workers to take charge of their own minds. We have surveyed the field, and seen that our great universities and small colleges, with negligibly few exceptions, represent education of the people by the plutocracy for the plutocracy. As the class struggle intensifies, it naturally occurs to the exploited classes to have an educational system of their own, to be run by them for their own benefit. This is the movement known as Workers’ Education.