I take these facts concerning the Harvard investments from a paper by Harry Emerson Wildes, a Harvard graduate. It is interesting to note that Mr. Wildes at the time he made this study was doing voluntary publicity work for the alumni group which was raising Harvard funds in Philadelphia; and Mr. Wildes was “dropped” immediately after this study saw the light!
We have seen how Columbia owns stocks and bonds in American railroads, public service corporations, and industrial corporations of all sorts. Exactly the same thing is true of Harvard. Says Mr. Wildes:
Twelve separate cities feed the Harvard purse from their traction lines, and more than half a hundred pay tribute from their lighting, heating, gas and power plants. Harvard has two million dollars in the traction game. The two-cent transfer charge on New York City trolleys goes to pay the interest on three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of traction bonds in Harvard ownership, and Boston ten-cent fare goes partially to Harvard’s third of a million in Boston traction bonds.
Mr. Wildes goes on to study the effect of these investments upon Harvard, and the effect which Harvard, through the power of these investments, might have upon the industrial life of the country. I cannot present the subject better than he has done, so I quote his words:
With rapid transit lines throughout the nation in a state of rising fares, and continual labor strife taking place, the intervention of a conciliatory investor holding any such amounts might aid in bringing better harmony between the companies on the one hand and the public and the workmen on the other. But nothing has been done by Harvard University, nor by any educational body in the land, to work for the friendship of either public or labor towards the transit lines....
How strenuously the influence of Harvard will be thrown on the side of limitation of armaments and the ending of war may be gauged by the total of more than a million dollars’ worth of ordnance bonds and munitions stock owned by the corporation. And, as these are largely in great steel corporations such as Bethlehem, Midvale and Illinois, the attitude of the college heads towards the move for unionizing workers can be clearly understood.
When railroad brotherhoods put forth a plan for guild operation of the lines, they face a mighty opposition from security investors. The eight million dollars which Harvard holds in railroad stock and bonds would be affected by victory for the Plumb Plan. The professors of economics and particularly of railroad operation and finance can scarcely be expected to imbue their scholars with a holy zeal for the securing of the Brotherhood aims....
Evidence of the patriotic ardor of the financiers directing Harvard’s investments may be readily seen in the fact that only one per cent of the funds of the university is invested in the Liberty Loans. The total of United States bonds held is less than half of that spent for bonds of five foreign nations. Intervention in Mexico would perhaps be pleasing to the authorities, since they hold a total of nearly one hundred thousand dollars in Mexican government bonds. So, also, is the pacification of Central America through the stationing of American marines and blue-jackets in those lands. Meddling of our State Department in the internal affairs of Costa Rica, Honduras, San Salvador and the rest helps to uphold the value of another one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of United Fruit Company bonds.[[B]] This company notoriously controls entire nations in Central America and sets up or deposes presidents at its whim. There is scarcely a large community north of Panama that is not in some degree tapped by the Harvard treasury. The American college is becoming the strongest single force in the world. Its management is almost entirely in the hands of international bankers or men dependent upon that group.
[B]. These bonds have just been paid off, but the ability to pay them off was of course assured by American intervention.