After a few questions relative to the “Hunger” incident, President Burton and the members of the board proceeded to ask numerous questions as to my opinions on many topics, social, political and economic, all of which were none of their business, the more so since I was teaching Drawing, Descriptive Geometry, and Machine Design, and was never called upon to address the students on any other subject.

I cannot, of course, remember all their questions but some of them were as follows

Are you a Socialist? Do you belong to the Socialist Party? Have you attended any of the meetings at Commonwealth Hall? Have you ever belonged to the I. W. W.? Have you ever attended any of the I. W. W. meetings? Do you favor Trade Unionism or Industrial Unionism? Are there many Industrial Unionists in the A. F. of L.? Do you believe in bringing about the social change you advocate by education or violence? Do you believe in the confiscation of property? Have you read the constitution of Soviet Russia? Do you think it right that the employers of labor in Russia should be denied the right to vote? Are there many men of the faculty who believe as you do, etc.?

There is nothing to add to this, except that Mr. Bentley was not reappointed to the university—and was left to learn this fact by accident, from a friend! He had worked for three years at a very low salary, upon the promise that he would soon be made a professor; but now they dropped him—and so late in the year that he could not apply for a position elsewhere.

CHAPTER XLV
THE ACADEMIC WINK

They have had a series of presidents at the University of the Ore Trust. The old president was Northrop, an amiable gentleman, much liked by the faculty because he did not understand the modern card-filing system. Then came Vincent, one of the “go-getters.” A professor whom he “got” writes me: “He apparently felt that he held a mandate to break the hearts of the men who had served under Northrop.” As a result of faculty clamor, an “advisory committee” was established, but the method of appointing this was ingeniously contrived so that Vincent had the power to keep off any liberals. This committee met in secret, and my correspondent describes to me its operation:

A poor devil, Professor A, who had been teaching for a small salary in hopes of promotion, would receive some fine morning a notice from headquarters that his contract was terminated at the end of the year. Professor B would be advised that he had one year more to serve, during which time he had better be looking for a new place. Professor C would be notified that his salary would not be increased. Smothered with rage, disappointment and despair, he would rush to the president of the university to know in what particular he had erred or sinned. The president in his unctuous way would inform the professor that he was sorry for what had been done but could do nothing, because the matter lay in the hands of the advisory committee, with which he could not interfere. Our victim would then set out to find the advisory committee, but as it was made up of nine members and had adjourned, he could not locate it. He would continue his search, and perchance find one of the members of the illustrious committee. Upon his making inquiry as to why and to what purpose he would be assured of the member’s sympathy, but would be told that there was an understanding among the members of the advisory committee that nothing should be said as to what was done in the sessions or how the members voted. The disappointed pedagogue could get nothing from anybody; there was no one responsible; he had been sandbagged in a dark alley, but who did the job he could not learn.

Vincent was called to become head of the Rockefeller Foundation. Then came Marion LeRoy Burton, a former clergyman, and president of Smith College for young ladies, a “booster” from way back, an inspirationalist of the Chautauqua school; the university gave him a grand reception, with bands and torches. He said in the hearing of an acquaintance of mine that he was going to make Minnesota a gentleman’s school of the Yale type. What actually exists is a great academic department-store. Sinclair Lewis described it to me—“They sell you two yards of Latin and half a yard of Greek, and a bored young instructor hands it out over the counter.” Lewis heard President Burton addressing a meeting of the plutocracy to raise funds, and telling the touching story of his life—he was a little boy who carried newspapers on cold mornings, and now he had fifteen thousand dollars a year, and a big house, and a retiring pension—a wonderful country is America!

Another friend of mine heard President Burton make a speech in Denver, before a gathering of business men called the “Mile High Club.” He said that at his university the students were allowed to think, but they were “guided in their thinking”; and the business men got the point and chuckled. His speech was a series of cheap jokes and hackneyed utterances, delivered with fervid eloquence. His type of scholarship you may judge from the titles of some of the books which he has produced: “The Secret of Achievement”; “The Life Which Is Life Indeed”; “On Being Divine.”

Last year President Burton got tired of his regents, and accepted a higher salary at the University of Michigan, where we shall meet him again. His place has been taken by one of the university’s own professors, who was supposed to act as a rubber-stamp to the interlocking regents, but is now behind the scenes engaged in the usual struggle with Grand Bully Butler. President Coffman is not even allowed to make appointments to the university—to say nothing of allowing the heads of departments to do so. The names are brought up before the board of regents, and these wary gentlemen go over the man’s list of degrees and his record, and then Grand Duke Snyder says: “That seems good, but is he all right generally?” meaning, of course, has he any “dangerous ideas.”