But rather mourn the apathetic throng—
The cowed and meek—
Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak!
CHAPTER XCI
EDUCATING THE EDUCATORS
There is another group in the colleges which must help to reform them, and that is the students. I have already shown that the student-body alone cannot dominate a college for any length of time; but in the student body is always a little group of thinking men, and these constitute a leaven which can work mighty changes in a great mass of solid dough.
The first organized effort of college students to educate themselves, and incidentally to educate their educators, was the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which was founded by the writer some eighteen years ago. That was after I had come out from nine years of college and university life without knowing that the modern Socialist movement existed; I resolved to do what I could to make it less easy for the plutocracy to accomplish that feat in future. Some twenty or thirty people got together in New York City, and elected Jack London as president, and he delivered his famous address, “Revolution,” within the shuddering walls of the Universities of California, Chicago, Harvard and Yale. We were careful to specify our purpose: “to promote an intelligent interest in the study of Socialism”; but even with that moderate statement, only a few institutions would let us in under our own evil name, and we had to disguise ourselves as liberal societies, and open forums, and social science clubs.
The name Socialism became so unpopular during the recent flood-tide of patriotism, that the organization has now called itself the League for Industrial Democracy. It has as its directors the Reverend Norman Thomas, editor of “The World Tomorrow,” and Harry Laidler, author of an excellent text-book, which ought to be used in every college, “Socialism in Thought and Action.” The purpose of the league is declared to be “education for a new social order, based on production for use and not for profit.” It undertakes “research work, the development of pamphlet literature, and the thinking through of concrete problems of social ownership.” The president is Professor Robert Morss Lovett of the University of Chicago, and the vice-presidents are Charles P. Steinmetz, Evans Clark, Florence Kelley and Arthur Gleason. The league holds a winter convention in New York and a summer conference lasting a week, at Camp Tamiment, belonging to the Rand School. The address of the league is 70 Fifth Avenue, New York.
Recently another student organization has entered the field, the National Student Forum, product of the labors of a group of young Harvard liberals, with John Rothschild as secretary. They publish a fortnightly paper, “The New Student,” at 2929 Broadway, New York; they have drawn up a “preamble,” which is so much to the point that I quote it in full:
“Realizing that these are times of rapid social change, the liberal spirited students of America are building this organization as an instrument of orderly progress.