With Professor Cattell there went out Professor H. W. L. Dana, a grandson of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and of Richard Henry Dana; his crime was that he had belonged to the People’s Council—with the knowledge of President Butler. Shortly after this went Beard, and Henry Mussey, one of Columbia’s most loved professors; also my old teacher, James Harvey Robinson.
I write the above, and then the door-bell of my home rings, and there enters another man who went out—Leon Ardzrooni, an Armenian with an irrepressible sense of humor, who for two years was a professor of economics. I do not have to ask Ardzrooni about his success as a teacher, because his reputation has preceded him. He brought Columbia twelve thousand dollars a year in tuition fees, of which they paid him three thousand to lecture on labor problems; and every now and then they would send for him and make anxious faces over the fact that he taught the realities of modern industry. Professor Seligman, his dean, heard the distressing report that he made some of his young ladies—graduate students out of Barnard—“unhappy.” “It would be all right for older people,” said Professor Seligman; “but not for the young, who are so impressionable.” Said Ardzrooni; “What’s the use of teaching them when they’re so old that I can’t make any impression?”
The students asked him about an I. W. W. strike, and he told how such a matter appeared to the strikers. “Don’t they get enough to eat?” asked one, a young army officer. “Yes, I suppose so,” said the professor; “but so do the owners get enough to eat. That isn’t the only issue.” Professor Ardzrooni gave that answer at ten o’clock in the morning, and at twelve he went to the Faculty Club for lunch, and there on the faces of his colleagues he saw written the dreadful tidings—he had been reported! The busy telephone system of the university had informed the whole campus that the genial Armenian had been discovered to be a member of the I. W. W.; he had boasted to his classes of carrying a red card, and all his colleagues were so sorry for him!
Ardzrooni was summoned before Butler, and instead of taking it meekly, he demanded a showdown. Who was it that accused him of belonging to the I. W. W. and of carrying a red card? Butler refused to tell him, evading the issue, so the professor went on the warpath. It happens that he is a rich man, not dependent upon anybody’s favor, so he went to Woodbridge, dean of the faculty, announcing that he was going to bring suit against[against] the university that very day; he would put Butler on the witness stand, and find out whether a college professor has any rights, or can be slandered at will!
Instantly, of course, the whole machinery of intimidation collapsed; it had never occurred to anyone that a college professor might act like a man! They would drop the whole matter, say nothing more about the red card, give Ardzrooni promotion and increase his salary—anything to keep out of court! The professor of labor problems laughed at them, and following the example of all other self-respecting men, went out into the free world.
CHAPTER XIII
THE EMPIRE OF DULLNESS
Those who have stayed in the great academic department-store have stayed under the shadow of disgrace; branded as men who love their pitiful salaries more than they love their self-respect and dignity as scholars, more than they love the cause of democracy and justice throughout the world. They stay on the terms that the voice of democracy and justice is silent among them, while the voice of reaction bellows with brazen throat.
I have shown you the plutocratic president storming the banquet halls of merchants and manufacturers and bankers, pouring out what Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor, described as “his sweeping intolerance of free speech and of organization by those not of his belief.” And everything in Columbia or connected with Columbia has been stamped with the impress of Butler’s hard materialism, his cold and calculating snobbery. He uses the prestige of his university to confer honors on reaction both at home and abroad. In 1912 he honored Senator Underwood, praising him to the skies as the leader of democracy—this in the hope of keeping Woodrow Wilson from getting the Democratic nomination for president. In 1922 we find him glorifying an Episcopal bishop, the rector of Trinity Church, the governor of the Federal Reserve Board, a Belgian baron, a Portuguese viscount, the Chinese ambassador, and Paderewski, apostle of Polish militarism!
With the help of his millionaire trustees Butler has built up an alumni machine, and the alumni paper is the organ of his personal glory. He has built up a faculty machine, of men who understand that they are free so long as they agree with their president, and who go forth to carry out the president’s will wherever the Columbia influence reaches—which is throughout the entire school and college system of our plutocratic empire.
Butler, you understand, was head of the department of education at Columbia; he fixed the policy of this department, making it a machine for the turning out of “educational experts,” trained to see life as a battleground of money-ambition, and to run the schools as efficient factories. Butler edited the “Educational Review,” and the present editor is a Columbia man, and his puppet. I shall take you with me before long for a trip over the United States, and show you the Tammany Hall of education; the league of superintendents, and the politicians of the National Educational Association, financed by the book companies and other big grafters, and combining with the chambers of commerce and professional patriots to drive out liberalism in education as in politics, and resist every new idea in every department of human thought and activity. They are backed by the political machines of special privilege, and protected and glorified by the “Brass Check” press; and everywhere you find Columbia men the leading advocates of routine, red tape, and reaction.