We are told not to look a gift-horse in the mouth, and the saying should perhaps apply to a university. We can hardly expect that a vain old lady, put in charge of an institution of learning for ten or fifteen years, would not busy herself to see that evil ideas were kept out of it. In the Bryan campaign of 1896, there rose up in the university a big bold fellow by the name of Ross, who actively favored Free Silver—which meant the cutting in half of the wealth of all the interlocking directors, except those who owned silver mines. Subsequently this bold bad man made speeches opposing oriental immigration, whereas he knew that Senator Stanford had been an ardent advocate of cheap Chinese labor. Also he said to some of his students in the university that “a railroad deal is a railroad steal!” So Mrs. Stanford served notice on her president that Professor Ross must go; and this at the perilous time when the Catholic cohorts were gathering, with their bells and incense and colored lights and other magic spells! I could appreciate that President Jordan was speaking from the depths of his heart when he said to me: “The best thing that the founder of a university can do is to die and let others run it!”
The radical professor was let out, and there was a terrific uproar, and several others resigned. The controversy lasted all through the academic year. Professor G. E. Howard, head of the department of history, ventured to make a sarcastic reference to the incident in a lecture to a class, and some weeks later received a letter from the president, asking for his resignation; this was followed by a number of other resignations, chiefly in Professor Howard’s department. This series of events caused so much injury to Stanford’s reputation that the authorities made a desperate effort to counteract the effects. The story of what they did is told me by Professor A. O. Lovejoy, now of the department of philosophy of Johns Hopkins, and at that time professor of philosophy at Stanford. I quote from his letter:
Late in the academic year, near the beginning of which Professor Ross was dismissed, a statement addressed to the public and designed for signature by members of the Stanford faculty was drawn—by whom I do not know—and an attempt was made to secure the signatures of all members (I believe) above the rank of instructor. Each teacher was invited to come separately to the office of one of the senior professors, a close personal friend of President Jordan; was there shown certain correspondence between Mrs. Stanford and President Jordan, which had not been made public; and was thereupon invited to sign the statement—which was to the effect that the signers, having seen certain unpublished documents, had arrived at the conclusion that President Jordan was justified in the dismissal of Professor Ross and that there was no question of academic freedom involved in the case. It was perfectly well understood by me, and I think by all who were shown the letters, that we were desired by the university authorities to sign the “round-robin”; and it was intimated that if any, after seeing the correspondence, should reach a conclusion contrary to that in the “round-robin,” they were at least expected to keep silence.
Because of this last intimation I myself for some time refused to have the letters shown me; and consented finally to examine them only after stipulating that I should retain complete freedom to take such action afterwards as the circumstances might seem to me to require. When I read the letters they appeared[appeared] to me to prove precisely the opposite to the two propositions contained in the statement to the public. They showed clearly (a) that President Jordan—-who under the existing constitution of the university was the official responsible in such matters—had been originally altogether unwilling to dismiss Ross, and had consented to do so only under pressure from Mrs. Stanford; (b) that the express grounds of Mrs. Stanford’s objection to Ross were certain public utterances of his, and that, therefore, the question of academic freedom was distinctly involved. I drew up a short statement to this effect, and after the “round-robin” was published, communicated it to the newspapers, at the same time declining the reappointment of which I had previously been notified. I was thereupon directed to discontinue my courses immediately. About the same time another man—-one of the best scholars and the most effective teachers in his department—-who had refused to sign, and was known to disapprove strongly of the administration’s conduct, but who had given no public expression of his opinion, was notified that he would not be reappointed; and it was currently reported in the faculty that the vice-president, then acting president, of the university, Dr. Branner, had announced a policy of (in his own phrase) “shaking off the loose plaster.”
Professor Lovejoy goes on to tell how some years later, when he was visiting Palo Alto, “one of the signers of the collective statement to the public told me that he had signed with great reluctance, and with a sense of humiliation, but, since he had a family of young children, he had not felt that he could afford to risk the loss of his position. I cannot, of course, give this man’s name.” Professor Lovejoy calls attention to the fact that practically all the men who resigned were either unmarried or were married men without children. It might seem as if Francis Bacon, a scholar himself, had foreseen the plutocratic empire of American education when he wrote, three hundred years ago: “He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE WIND OF FREEDOM
The poor old lady died at last, but she did not leave her fortune to be adminstered by an eminent ichthyologist, badly tainted with democracy and pacifism. On the contrary, she left it to a board of fifteen trustees—the usual interlocking directorate. As first grand duke we find none other than Mr. Timothy Hopkins, son of Senator Stanford’s colleague in the “Big Four.” Mr. Hopkins is president of a milling company, and director in a trust company, an ice company, and a telephone and telegraph company. As second grand duke there is Mr. Frank B. Anderson, president of the Bank of California, the great Standard Oil institution of the state. I am told that Mr. Anderson is there to represent the Morgan interests. He is vice-president of another bank, and director in three gas and electric companies, and in numerous other great concerns, including the Spring Valley Water Company, celebrated in the San Francisco graft prosecutions.
Mr. Bourn, the president of this company, is also on the board; and Mr. Grant, described to me by a friend who knows him as “an idle millionaire, the son of an old money grubber”; but he can’t really be so idle, being vice-president of a gas company and an oil company, chairman of a power company, director of the Bank of California, another bank, a trust company, another power company, a gas and electric company, another gas company, and a steel company. Also there is Mr. Nickel, “who married forty million dollars,” and is a director of the Bank of California, president of an irrigation company, a live stock company, and of the greatest land company in California; also Mr. Newhall, the son of an old-time auctioneer, a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary, vice-president of a great land company. In addition to these, there are three prominent corporation lawyers, two judges, both very conservative, a banker, an insurance man, and Mr. Herbert Hoover, than whom the plutocracy has no more faithful servant in these United States. One of the corporation lawyers, T. T. C. Gregory, is that Captain Gregory who was Mr. Hoover’s representative in Hungary, and used his control of the distribution of the relief funds and supplies furnished by the American people, for the purpose of breaking the revolution of the workers of Hungary, and bringing into power the infamous Horthy, who drowned the hopes of the Hungarian workers in a sea of blood. Few blacker deeds have been committed by American class-greed; but such is the state of our public opinion, that Captain Gregory came home and boasted of it in a series of articles in “World’s Work,” and Mr. Hoover stood back of him, and the Stanford trustees elected him to their exclusive board, and made him their secretary!
Such are the men in charge of the Stanford millions. David Starr Jordan has retired, and the great university is governed from the cozy arm-chairs of the Pacific Union Club of San Francisco. As president they have appointed a physician, Dr. Wilbur, who learned the Goose-step at two of the Kaiser’s universities. He aspires to be, like Colonel Barrows, “a man on horseback.” In the days before America entered the war some of the students of Stanford were taking military training, and I am informed by one who was present at the graduating ceremonies that President Wilbur shook hands with all those who were in uniform, and refused to shake hands with those who were not in uniform. More recently, at an alumni reunion, he gave a curious proof of the abject condition of spirit to which the lackeys of the plutocracy have come. He was describing how he went to the dock in New York to welcome Herbert Hoover home from abroad; said President Wilbur: “I saw one of America’s biggest bankers throw his arms around him, and I said to myself: ‘At last Stanford has arrived’!” The gentleman who tells me of this incident, a scholar and a scientist, reports: “He said it in sweet unconsciousness, and at least half a dozen of my friends turned in my direction and gave me appreciative glances.”