I am told that in his own line he is a distinguished scientist, and his friends at the university explained that he is accustomed to being treated with extreme deference. I am sorry to say that I missed this point. I considered that I had been attacked in the newspapers entirely without provocation, and I was not willing to be content with polite evasions. In trying to get at the facts, I felt that I was acting in a public cause, and I was not thinking about the personality of a university president, any more than I was thinking about my own.
He is a rather small man, with small dark eyes, and he sat at his big desk, watching me uncomfortably. I asked him what reasons he had for pronouncing the ban upon me, and he could only say it was my reputation. I asked him where he had got his impression of my reputation, and of course he had to admit that he had got it from the capitalist newspapers. I asked if he had read any book of mine, and at first he said he had not, then he thought he had read “The Jungle,” but had forgotten it.
“Oh, no, President Birge,” I answered. “Nobody that has read ‘The Jungle’ has ever forgotten it.” And I could see that this was not the answer he had expected.
I asked him on what he based his impression that I had exaggerated in “The Brass Check.” He admitted that he had not read the book; whereat I remarked: “You have spoiled my score!” I explained that I had traveled from Pasadena to Madison, and stopped at nine cities on the way, and in each place I had talked to from ten to twenty educators—school teachers and college professors—and so far every person had read “The Brass Check.” “I thought I was going to get to New York with a hundred percent record!” President Birge murmured sympathetically.
“You will realize,” I added, “that it strikes me as significant that the one person who thinks the book isn’t true is the person who hasn’t read it.”
I went on to tell about the many and various efforts I had made to lure the Associated Press into the arena. Before publishing the book I had submitted to Mr. Melville E. Stone, then general manager of the Associated Press, four questions for him to answer. He had previously written that he would be glad to answer any questions, but he fell silent when he read the questions I sent. I had written to Mr. Stone’s assistant, now general manager, calling his attention to the book, and asking for an answer on various points. At the annual convention of the Associated Press, held in New York in April, 1921, after “The Brass Check” had been out more than a year, it was officially announced in the “Editor and Publisher,” and also in the New York “Evening Post,” that the Associated Press had a committee investigating “The Brass Check,” and was shortly to issue a complete report upon the book. A couple of months later, when this report failed to appear, I wrote the Associated Press asking what had become of it, and when they failed to reply, I published my letter and sent a copy of it to the managing editor of every Associated Press newspaper in the United States—but without getting a reply from a single one!
Only a couple of weeks before I met President Birge, another annual convention of the Associated Press took place in New York, and I repeated my challenge to this gathering, and sent a copy to every managing editor, and also every publisher, of the thirteen hundred Associated Press newspapers in the United States. No attention was paid to these communications, and not one single Associated Press newspaper was willing to demand that the Associated Press should produce the report on “The Brass Check,” which it had officially announced it was preparing.
I showed President Birge also how the students of his own Social Science Club had tried in vain to get the Associated Press to answer me. Their first request, that the Associated Press should send a representative to meet me on a university platform, had met with no reply; a second and very sharp letter had brought the response that no responsible newspaper man would be willing to meet me on a platform. Any newspaper man will realize the absurdity of this statement. The A. P. could find a man in any city—if they could furnish him with the facts!
Then I set forth to President Birge my qualifications as an orator in university halls; as it happened, I came within his specifications, in that I had supported the government during the war. I came of a long line of American ancestors; my grandfather and my great-grandfather had been captains in the United States Navy, and my great-great-grandfather had commanded the frigate “Constitution.” I had had nine years of college and university life, and was a married man of good moral character. Also, I mentioned that it was not my intention to discuss the newspapers, but to lecture on “The College Student and the Modern Crisis.” All these facts the elderly zoologist politely received, and told me that if I would embody them in a letter to him he would oblige me by a reply not later than noon of the next day.
I wrote the letter, and received the reply, which was that President Birge would not change his decision, but that if the board of regents saw fit to grant my request, they would be at liberty to do so. Thereupon I gave to the press my letter to President Birge and his reply, and also an interview in which I stated that the president had afforded me an exceedingly good example of my thesis “that educational institutions are controlled by special privilege,” and that I would give up my intention of lecturing on “The College Student and the Modern Crisis” in Madison, and instead would discuss the subject of free speech in universities. The effect of which announcement was that the superintendent of the high school took fright, and withdrew permission for me to speak in his auditorium!