You state the salary of the young instructor, and say: “It has permitted him to marry and to provide for the birth of one or more children.” The question which this suggests to me, and which you do not answer, is how many more children? Manifestly, the salary suggested would not make possible the raising of more than two, or three at the outside; but the young professor is 29 or 30 years of age, and he might have eight or ten children. What I should like to know is, what would happen to him if he did so? It is a fact that most of your professors don’t, and there seems to be in your article the implicit understanding that they mustn’t; so I am forced to assume that you favor what is known as Birth Control, and tacitly recommend it. I am one of those who believe that the methods of Birth Control ought to be made known, not merely to the cultured classes, but to the working classes, and I should like to know the stand of the president of the University of California on this subject. Will you answer for publication these two specific questions: First, do you recognize that your article implies the prevention of conception by the married instructors of your university? Second, would you advocate legislation to permit working class families to obtain a knowledge of these same methods?
President Barrows is usually rather free about taking up controversies, but on this occasion he for some reason thought it best to lie low![[I]]
[I]. When this chapter was published serially, President Barrows was interviewed by a reporter for the San Francisco “Daily News.” He said: “As for Upton Sinclair, I received a lengthy letter from him not long ago asking me to debate on some very stupid subjects. As there seemed to be no sense in the letter, I paid no attention to him.” The reader will be able to judge for himself whether there was any sense in my letter; also of the likelihood that President Barrows really thought there was no sense in it. For my part, I think the above statement puts President Barrows in the classification of those college presidents who do not always tell the truth.
Being devoted to the training of young aristocrats, this school of imperialism has no great fondness for the vulgar modern activities known as “extension work.” “University extension,” be it explained, consists in traveling about, giving education to tiresome common people, who had no leisure to get it when they were young, and so lack those British qualifications of “rank, breeding and traditional influence.” At the University of California was a “regular” professor by the name of Ira Howerth, who was engaged in extension work, and took this work with plebeian seriousness; all over the state women’s clubs and labor unions clamored for his lectures, and his efforts to comply with their demands led to endless conflict with the university authorities. The “consulting committee” did everything to handicap him; he was forbidden to address clubs in the city of Berkeley, and was refused the use of university rooms, and of the library. He could get no appropriations; and when finally the pressure of the people forced the legislature to grant funds, the authorities resented this, and blamed Howerth as the cause of money being “forced upon them.”
In the year 1917, during the Charter Day exercises, Professor Howerth asked that some part of the time be given to the extension work. They gave him Friday night, the end of the week’s activities, and on that night they arranged a big banquet in San Francisco, expecting to take all the people away. But Howerth invited President Van Hise of Wisconsin and Oswald Garrison Villard, and had the biggest meeting of the week. Of course, the university authorities were furious.
I can testify to Professor Howerth’s competence as a teacher, for I had the pleasure of attending some of his lectures in Pasadena. They were given in the Board of Trade rooms, where to a large audience of mature men and women the professor gave intelligent explanations of the sociology of Lester Ward. Here we were on the home ground of the Black Hand, and it seemed to me inconceivable that the regents would permit this kind of thing to go on; and they did not.
In bringing an end to it, they chose the most insulting and humiliating method possible. Professor Howerth had his Sabbatical year, and while he was in Paris, eleven days before the end of his leave of absence, he received a letter from the president of the university, telling him that he was “fired.” He made so bold as to return, and discovered that a report which he had prepared before leaving, describing the development of the extension work, had been taken over by another professor, and signed by that professor’s name, and issued by the university, with no credit given to Professor Howerth. He made every effort to find out what were the charges against him, but could not get one word. He appeared before the finance committee of the regents—five of our interlocking directors, with Mr. Earl, attorney to Banker Fleishhacker, as chairman. Professor Howerth stated his case, asking what wrong he had done. Said Chairman Earl: “Has anybody anything to say on that?” No one had anything to say, and the committee went on with the order of business, leaving Professor Howerth standing there like a whipped school boy.
Such is the dignity of the teaching profession in the University of the Black Hand. And what is the standing of scholarship? On that point hear the weird experience of Professor Kiang, an eminent Chinese scholar, formerly of the University of Pekin, who was invited to teach his native language and literature to Californians for the munificent salary of eighty dollars a month. Professor Kiang presented to the university an extremely valuable library of Chinese books, which collection the university casually accepted. It happened that Witter Bynner was once asked by President Wheeler and Colonel Barrows whom he had found the most interesting man in the place. “Undoubtedly Kiang,” responded Bynner; and the two gentlemen looked disconcerted. “Kiang?” exclaimed Wheeler, “Why he only gets eighty dollars a month!” Within a few days the Oriental professor’s salary was raised to a hundred dollars a month!