There was a young social worker, Nell Vincent by name, who was called to act as secretary to the charity organization society of the town. Some common laborers, working on the college buildings, went on strike and began picketing. It was a spontaneous strike, by Italians and other foreigners, and Miss Vincent, who knew their wives and children, tried to organize them, and spoke to them at a meeting, urging them to refrain from violence and abide by the law. The news of this came to the charity organization trustees, and there was a terrible fuss; some of the prominent members of the faculty summoned Miss Vincent to appear before the board, and challenged her for stirring up trouble in the town. One charge they brought against her was that she had never been to church; another was that while living on a “good” street, she had invited the poor to visit her, and the wives and families of Italian laborers trailing up to her door had “lowered the social tone of the street.” She had brought into Princeton a critical sentiment, which was most distressing to the authorities of a fashionable university. One professor’s wife reported that the attitude of the Italians had entirely changed; she no longer had any pleasure in distributing charity to them, they did not love her any more. President Hibben finally succeeded in patching up the trouble; but he told Miss Vincent, referring to some of the university trustees who are members of the charity board, “You have no idea how I had to argue with them!” In a letter to me Miss Vincent uses the phrase, “the exquisite lie that is Princeton.”
In connection with this strike Evans Clark tells an anecdote which throws a bright light on Princeton education. He was invited by a student to lunch on Prospect avenue, where all the rich clubs are. The strikers had quit work on a club building, and were picketing this building, riding up and down on bicycles. “What are those men doing?” asked the student, and Clark explained—they were pickets. “What are pickets?” was the next question. They went inside, continuing their conversation at the club dining-table; here were a score of college men, and all asked questions, and hardly one knew what the word “picket” means, and hardly one knew there was a strike of the laborers working on Princeton’s exclusive new club!
[H]. “Some Unsolved Social Problems of a University Town,” by Arthur Evans Wood, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan; a thesis of the University of Pennsylvania, published by C. W. Graham, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1920. This document gives a detailed study of Princeton slums. On page 32 it appears that the infant mortality rate of Princeton in 1916 was 150 per thousand, as against 96 per thousand in New York City.
Six or seven years ago we had a chance to make war on Mexico; and the former president of Princeton took us part way in, while the then president of Princeton tried furiously to get us all the way in. It happened that Norman Angell, the English writer and pacifist, was invited to Princeton to lecture, and made some casual reference to the militarist propaganda against Mexico—and so got himself into a bewildering experience. Picture him, a foreigner from a land of politeness, an invited guest at a university supposed to represent culture and urbanity; and the president of this university, a clergyman of Jesus Christ, springs up in the audience and challenges him. “Do you believe in murder? Do you believe in allowing American citizens to be murdered in Mexico?”
The lecturer tries politely to answer, but is not allowed to finish. “Answer me, yes or no!” cries the president of Princeton. “Do you believe in murder?” And when the Englishman still fails to answer yes or no, the shepherd of Jesus shakes his finger at him, trembling with rage and screaming again and again, “Answer me, yes or no! Do you believe in murder?” Both Evans Clark and his wife were witnesses of this extraordinary scene, and described it to me in detail, not resenting my incredulity, but patiently assuring me that they were not exaggerating, it happened just so. And a letter from Mr. Angell substantiates it.
In the year 1916 arrangements had been made to have President David Starr Jordan of Stanford speak in a hall on the campus; but President Hibben, a life-long friend of Jordan’s, refused him the use of the building, and he had to speak in the Presbyterian church. Two or three students had organized an anti-war society, and they invited Professor Henry Mussey of Columbia, but could not get either a college hall or a church of Jesus Christ; they rented an obscure room in the labor quarters of the town, and here the lecture took place. It had not gone very far before Frank Jewett Mather, professor of art—sixty years of age, and old enough to know better, you would think—stuck in his head, and then slammed the door with a loud noise. Apparently he went off for reinforcements, for ten minutes later he flung the door open, and entered with a professor of French and another professor. These three stamped over the hall, up one aisle and down another, shouting comments on the lecturer’s remarks, and not stopping at personal insults. In order to appreciate the scene you would have to know Henry Mussey—so gentle and charming, rosy-faced, smiling like a cherub just arrived from heaven. And here was Evans Clark, a young preceptor, presiding, and he had to get up several times and ask three full professors of his university to behave themselves like gentlemen! Finally, they marched out, shouting “Vive la France!” “Was this before we went into the war?” I asked, and the answer was: “It was after Princeton went into the war, but before the rest of the United States did.”
Also Mr. Clark’s wife told me some of her adventures. She is Frieda Kirchwey, daughter of a former dean of the Columbia University Law School; she is one of the editors of the “Nation,” and as lovely a person as you will find. But you know how it is with these proper society people, their imaginations always run to foulness concerning people who differ with them; they cannot see how anybody who refuses to believe in class privilege and wage slavery can lead a decent life. Before the Clarks had been at Princeton a few months, a head of one of the departments asked if it was true, as reported, that their marriage was a trial one! Then, in a railroad train, sitting behind two socially exclusive professors’ wives, Frieda Kirchwey became acquainted with Princeton ideas about herself. At this time she had a job in New York and commuted every day; the trip takes an hour and a half each way, and you must admit that a woman who stands that all the year round must love her husband a good deal. But here sat the two ladies, gossiping about pacifism, and the moral obloquy attendant thereon. “My dear,” said one, “they say he’s married, but nobody ever sees her; she doesn’t live with him—except maybe on vacations, of course. Nobody knows where he picked her up.”
To balance this, you should have a glimpse of the morals of Princeton’s chosen ones. Let me remind you that President Hibben is a clergyman, and that Dean West of the Graduate School, who makes the students wear academic gowns at dinner, is a clergyman’s son. Now read the following paragraph from a letter of Miss Vincent: