Simon Guggenheim had no more claim to represent Colorado in the Senate at Washington than John D. Rockefeller has—or Baron Rothschild. He was the head of the Smelter Trust, and he had been financially interested, of course, in the election of Peabody in 1904, and the defeat of the eight-hour law and the suppression of the eight-hour strike. These things entitled him to the gratitude of the corporations only. He was unknown to the people of Colorado. He had never been heard of by them except in a newspaper interview. He had not, as far as I know, ever spoken or written a word publicly on politics. “I don’t know much about the political game,” he told one of his campaign managers, “but I have the money. I know that game.” He does.
That was fifteen years ago, and they did their bribery in the old-style way. Guggenheim paid the campaign expenses of a majority of the Colorado legislators. At present the State of Colorado is run by Phipps, the steel king, and they do not have to buy the legislators, for it is the people who elect the United States senators, and they have bought up all the institutions upon which the people depend. They have bought the Y. M. C. A. and the churches by “donations,” and they have bought the universities in Colorado by giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. Because Lindsey exposed this new style of bribery, the Phipps machine ordered all of Lindsey’s child welfare bills killed by the state legislature.
And of course in their university they watch incessantly to make sure that no dangerous ideas reach the students. Last summer there was a meeting of all the clergymen of Denver on the campus of the university to listen to Dr. Harry Ward, general secretary of the Social Service Commission of the Federated Council Churches of America. The chancellor intervened at the last minute and forbade Ward to speak, denouncing him as “a menace to the present social order.” Instead, he got copies of a report on the steel strike, which Judge Gary had had prepared by one of his kept clergymen, as a reply to the attack by the Inter-Church World Movement. Every member of the graduating class of 1921 received a copy of this report, being solemnly called in to receive it personally from the hands of the chancellor. A professor at the university, who had been scheduled to speak at the church of a Socialist clergyman in Denver, was called up and warned that if he wished to have a career at the university he must avoid that kind of thing. Shortly after this a representative of the Rockefeller education fund was invited to luncheon at the university, and the chancellor made a public appeal to him for funds, on the ground of his services in barring Dr. Ward. This was a trifle too raw, and the chancellor did not get his money!
The old man has just been retired; but the same gang still rules the board of trustees, with Evans the infamous as grand duke. As assistant he has an attorney for the “Big Four” corporations which run the city of Denver, who spends his spare time leading crusades against the “reds”; also a prominent banker, a corporation lawyer, a real estate speculator, a capitalistic preacher, a corporation lawyer from Pueblo, a millionaire oil man and lawyer, a millionaire miner and banker—and finally, as Grand Duke junior, “Boss” Evans’ son, John.
CHAPTER XL
THE COLLEGES OF THE SMELTER TRUST
The interlocking directorate of Colorado maintains also a state university at Boulder, on the Colorado and Southern Railroad; which road has a trustee of Williams College for president, and a General Theological Seminary trustee for director. The standards of academic freedom prevailing at the University of Colorado are very interestingly revealed in a case which occurred seven years ago.
During the coal strike of 1914, the operators and their militia set aside the constitution of the United States in the Southern counties of the state, and one professor at the law school took a stand against their action. The operators had burned and suffocated three women and eleven children at Ludlow, and Professor James W. Brewster accepted the chairmanship of a public committee to investigate the strike situation. In peril, not merely of his job, but of his life, he spent several weeks in the coal fields, questioning witnesses and bringing out evidence. He was the means of forcing an investigation by Congress, and he appeared and testified before the Congressional Committee. His subsequent dismissal from the university was investigated by the American Association of University Professors, and their report lies before me. I will state briefly the facts admitted, and the contentions of both parties to the dispute, and leave it for the reader to form his own conclusions.
Professor Brewster was nearly fifty-nine years of age, and the president of the university claims that on this account his appointment to the university had been merely temporary, and that this was fully made clear to Professor Brewster. Professor Brewster denies that he had any such understanding. It was admitted by both the president and the dean of the law school that Brewster’s teaching was “entirely satisfactory.” Says the report:
The testimony of students in his law classes is that Professor Brewster in the class room adhered strictly to the subjects he was teaching and made no allusions whatever to industrial questions. The courses that he was teaching did not in any way involve the issues that were then agitating Colorado. Immediately after Professor Brewster’s testifying in December he was abusively attacked by several Colorado newspapers in unrestrained language and with the most unreasonable distortion and exaggeration of the tenor of his testimony. According to the testimony of President Farrand, E. M. Ammons, then Governor of Colorado, called up President Farrand by telephone soon after Mr. Brewster’s appearance before the Commission in Denver, and urged the immediate dismissal of Professor Brewster because of his testimony.
The president of the university asserts that he refused the governor’s request. That was in December, 1914; in May, 1915, Professor Brewster was invited to come to Washington, to give his testimony before the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. Professor Brewster went to the president of the university, and stated that he had been able to arrange for a colleague to take his classes for the few days of his absence. As to what happened next there is a disagreement. Professor Brewster claims that the president told him that if he went to Washington his connection with the university must cease at once. The president, in his statement to the committee of the association, gives his version of the interview as follows: