Professor Swain lays out “principles” for the doing of this ticklish “valuation work.”[[C]] One of his “principles” is that when anything has increased in value, the increased valuation shall be allowed the corporations, but when anything has decreased in value there shall be no corresponding decrease in the valuation! (We used to play this game when we were children; we called it “Heads I win and tails you lose.”) Another of Professor Swain’s “principles” is that when states, counties or cities have helped to pay the cost of grade crossings, the railroads shall be credited with the full value of these grade crossings. (We used to play that game also when we were children; we called it “Findings is keepings.”) Needless to say, a man who is so clever as to get away with things like that regards himself as superior to the rest of us, who let him get away with it. So, as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Professor Swain voices his distrust of democratic ideals, and informs the engineers that “present-day humanitarianism leads to race degeneracy.”
[C]. See record of hearing, May 3, 1920, at State House, Trenton, N. J., before Governor Edwards, on motion of City of Jersey City for removal of Public Service Commission.
And then I turn on to page 35 of the pamphlet, and stumble on still more tactless conduct on the part of this dreadful Mr. Cooke. He tells us about Dugald C. Jackson, professor of electrical engineering at Harvard University,[[D]] who also does this fancy “valuation work.” Says Mr. Cooke: “Professor Jackson has never really been so much a university professor as a corporate employe giving courses in universities. While he probably receives five thousand dollars from his present teaching post he must receive at least four times this amount from his corporate clients—charging as he does one hundred dollars a day for his own time and a percentage on the time of his assistants!”
[D]. Professor Jackson, in qualifying as an expert before the Pennsylvania Public Service Commission, introduced himself by the single statement that he was “professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and professor of electrical engineering at Harvard University.” It should be explained that he held the last two positions only ex-officio, by virtue of the affiliation of the two institutions which existed for a few years.
Mr. Cooke goes on to show that before taking up teaching, Professor Jackson was a chief engineer for the Edison General Electric Company. In 1910, while a professor at Harvard, he rendered a report showing that the Chicago Telephone Company was running behind over eight hundred thousand dollars per year; but two years later it was proven that the company could afford a reduction in rates of seven hundred thousand dollars per year! Again, Professor Jackson rendered a report showing that the Buffalo General Electric Company had a valuation of $4,966,000; but the state commission subsequently fixed the valuation at $3,194,000. He valued three thousand municipal arc lamps at $21.70 each, but the New York commission showed that the actual cost of these lamps was $13.53. Says Mr. Cooke:
“What constitutes being employed by a corporation? Professor Jackson is to all intents and purposes consulting engineer in chief as to rates and valuations to the entire electrical industry in the United States. He has made inventories of the Boston Edison Company and the New York Edison Company. He is now engaged in doing similar work for the Philadelphia Electric Company. These three companies have a combined gross annual income of thirty-five million dollars.”
Do you see the “nigger in the woodpile” now? If you are a mine guard or strike-breaking gunman, experienced in shooting up the tent-colonies of striking miners, the corporations will pay you five dollars a day and board for your services. If you are a “prominent technical educator,” with a string of university degrees and titles, who can enable the great corporations to swindle the public out of tens of millions of dollars every year, then you can command a salary of a hundred dollars a day, with a percentage on the time of your assistants. That is what a college education is for; and if you think that an over-cynical statement, I ask you to read the whole of this book before you decide!