Now, here is Mr. Clum’s new organization, the kid-gloved Black Hand of California, working in close alliance with the “open-shoppers” and labor union smashers of the state, and holding over school teachers and college professors the lash, not merely of black-list, slander and starvation, but of sentence to fourteen years in prison. For you must understand that we have a “criminal syndicalism” law in California, and this is applied to you, not merely if you belong to a radical labor union, but if you take any action on behalf of the victims of the Black Hand. This organization has a private army of sluggers, called the “citizens’ police,” which maintains a standing offer of fifty dollars for every arrest of a “radical,” and three hundred dollars for every conviction. As I write this book, one J. P. McDonald is arrested at Long Beach, California, for asking signatures to a petition to President Harding for the release of political prisoners—this petition being one which was signed by three hundred thousand American citizens and presented to the President by a delegation of some thirty leaders of liberal thought. Holding over this workingman’s head the threat of prosecution for “criminal syndicalism,” the police persuaded him to plead guilty to vagrancy—though he had money in his pocket and a job. They promised him he would get thirty days, and the judge gave him six months, and grinned at him. Such is California, described by Romain Rolland as “Land of Orange Groves and Jails”; and such is the atmosphere of espionage and terrorism in which is conducted the University of the Black Hand.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FORTRESS OF MEDIEVALISM
My first visit to Berkeley was in the winter of 1909-10. I had come to see a professor—I shall not name him, since he does not welcome publicity; suffice it to say that he is one of the world’s leading scientists, and in any country in Europe would be named among a dozen greatest contributors to advanced knowledge. He was educated in Europe, and had come to the great California university, thinking he would be welcomed as at home. Shortly after his arrival came “Charter Day,” and he was invited to a grand academic banquet, a function which he described to me with infinite amusement.
There was a table of honor across the front of the room, raised above the others, and at this table sat the president of the university, and on his right hand the grand duke of the interlocking regents, and on his left hand the second grand duke, and all the robber lords and barons of the state carefully ranged according to their financial standing, looked up in the latest Moody’s Manual, or Dun or Bradstreet, or wherever it is that you find these things. At the other tables, tapering away from the royal presence, were placed the deans and heads of departments, the professors, the assistant professors, the instructors, all graded according to the amount of their salaries, and any slightest variation in the order of precedence jealously looked out for and resented. My friend the scientist was put in his pecuniary proper place; the fact that he was a master mind who would have occupied the seat of honor at any function of any university faculty in Europe, made no slightest difference; he was not even asked to meet the interlocking regents, nor were they aware of his existence. The president met such great ones, and shook hands with them, for he was a fifteen thousand dollar a year man; but my scientist friend was only a four or five thousand dollar a year man, and was expected to stay with his own kind.
Also, while on this visit to Berkeley, I talked with the wife of a professor; the ladies, you know, have an especially acute sense for social matters, and often have a pungent way of expressing what they feel. This lady had been walking on the beach at Del Monte, the exclusive resort of the California plutocracy. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to be there; anyhow, there came strolling toward her the president of the university, with two or three of the wives of his wealthiest[wealthiest] regents. They were coquettishly and elaborately got up, and he was indulging in elephantine playfulness, talking to them about “getting their tootsies wet”—crude efforts of a man of majesty and learning to descend to social dalliance. He stopped in front of the wife of his professor and spoke to her, but did not introduce her to the other ladies, a grave and intentional discourtesy. Instead of that, he looked at her sternly and said: “I wish you to know that I have no use whatever for science.”
This, you must understand, to the wife of a man who was supposed to be discovering some of nature’s most vital secrets! I asked in bewilderment just what could have been the motive for such a remark, and the explanation was that scientists sometimes think themselves of importance, and it is necessary to academic discipline that they should be put in their place. This same scientist was instrumental in bringing to the university half a dozen of the greatest men of Europe as lecturers—Arrhenius, de Vries, Sir William Ramsay. They were paid inadequately for their long journey, and my friend suggested that it might be a good idea to reward them with an honorary degree. Said President Wheeler, with instant decision: “I give no degrees to scientists!” “Whom do you give them to?” asked my friend, and the answer was: “I give them to people of importance—to statesmen, public men, college presidents.” This was Benjamin Ide Wheeler, ex-professor to the German Kaiser, and tireless singer of the Kaiser’s praises, holder of a Heidelberg degree, and of honorary degrees from all the great Eastern centers of the interlocking directorate, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Columbia. He called himself a liberal, but never enough to offend Mrs. Hearst, who gave the university a Greek theater, with her son’s name carved across the front of the stage.
While I was in Berkeley there was a scandal at the university, because of the sudden appointment of a new professor to be dean of the Graduate School. This was David P. Barrows, now president of the university, and a person whose career is of interest to us. He is a product of the University of California, and was finished in Nicholas Murray Butler’s educational enameling machine. Thence he went to be superintendent of schools of the city of Manila, and later on director of education for the Philippine Islands. Having received a thorough training in imperialism, he came home to proclaim the gospel of the mailed fist in our empire of raisins and prunes.
Dean Barrows was a fighting man, and became immediately active in university politics. You may be startled to hear that anything so dubious as “politics” exists in a university; but if you believe in applied imperialism, and start to apply it to those about you, you are apt to find some of them resisting, and you will have to put them down, and put up others who are willing to obey you and promote your interests. So Barrows became a tireless university politician, and he and his subordinates also became active in the outside politics of their city and state. As it happens, Berkeley had a large working class population, and a strong Socialist sentiment, and naturally there is no higher duty that an imperialist college dean can perform than to crush Socialism in his home town.
I have described the university as a medieval fortress on a hill. You thought, no doubt, I was just slinging language; but consider the situation. The university has nothing to do with Berkeley, it is not a part of the city, it pays no taxes, either to city or state; nevertheless, it lays claim to run the affairs of the city, and does so. If there are any charters or city contracts to be drawn, the university professors do it, and they do it in the interests of the university, and of the university’s interlocking regents. If there is a school superintendent or a mayor to be selected, the university machine is ready with a university man. It is the established custom that one member of the school board of Berkeley shall be a university professor, and you always find this professor voting on the side of reaction and special privilege. For example, the law provides that insurance on school buildings be placed with the companies which make the lowest bids; the school board wished to violate this law, and a Socialist member of the school board fought for a whole day to prevent the violation, and was beaten by the vote of the university professor. When election time comes round, the university goes into the campaign as one man to “smash the Socialists.” The university machine circulates slanders against the Socialist administration, and university students are registered and voted wholesale for the plutocracy. The university machine selects the local judges, and the Key Route, a street railroad, puts up the money to elect them—this money being voted by directors who are university regents. In one campaign Stitt Wilson, Socialist mayor of Berkeley, read from the platform the affidavit of a student to the effect that the president of the student body had stated that he had received five thousand dollars from the Key Route, to be used on the campus to beat the Socialist ticket.
Of course the Key Route expects to be paid back for this, and presents its bill whenever there is a strike of its workers. It would be too much to expect that the interlocking directorate should own and run a university, and then, in an emergency like a strike, should see eight or ten thousand young men sitting by entirely idle, except for fool studies. When strikes occur, the interlocking newspapers paint terrifying pictures of the public emergency, and the interlocking deans organize the students and give them special credits for the time they spend as “great American heroes.” In 1913 came a gas and electric strike, and the president of the gas company, a member of the board of regents, called on his university for help, and the boys from the engineering department were given credit for a full semester’s work for their services as “scabs.” After that, when the Socialists proposed a measure to have the regents elected by the people, the labor leaders of California said they weren’t interested; working men didn’t go to college, so why should they bother about such matters?