All we can say about that is, how fortunate that so few Bolsheviks take part in athletics!
CHAPTER LIII
THE UNIVERSITY OF JUDGE GARY
There is another great ruling class munition-factory in the vicinity of Chicago, Northwestern University, at Evanston, Illinois. It is one of those terrible places, of which there are scores in the United States, which began as little church institutions, and by the grace of graft have grown to enormous size. Northwestern is Methodist, and has some ten thousand strictly pious students, and over six hundred instructors, and not a rag of an idea to cover its bare bones. The man who was until last year its president fitted himself for that office by being the university’s “Director of the Bureau of Salesmanship Research.” The first vice-president of the university is the general counsel of the Illinois Steel Company; the third vice-president is vice-president of the Illinois Steel Company; while the grand duke is the very grandest of all grand dukes in the United States—that prince of open shoppers and potentate of reaction, Judge Gary, chairman of the United States Steel Corporation!
For many years previously the leading grand duke was James A. Patten, the grain speculator, whose million dollar corner in wheat was the sensation of my boyhood. Mr. Patten began life as a clerk in a country store, and his claim to direct a great educational institution is based upon his acquaintance with the grain commission business, one of the most thoroughly organized of American swindles. Mr. Patten is director of two national banks, a trust company, a grain company, and an Edison company. He is a malignant “open shopper,” and during his reign at Northwestern waged incessant war upon two or three liberals who got into the place.
One of these men was Professor Gray, whom we have already met at the University of Minnesota. Gray managed to stick at Northwestern for sixteen years. He taught economics; a liberal colleague taught psychology, and the president of the university remarked to a friend of mine that these were the two hardest departments he had to administer, because one touched on religion and the other on the pocket-book! Gray was handicapped in the usual way by low salaries and lack of promotion for himself and his assistants. For many years he tried to get Harry Ward as assistant, but could never manage it.
Mr. Patten was twice elected mayor of Evanston, and when he ran again, Professor Gray, who was a Progressive, talked against him, and led the Progressive forces in the legislature that drove Patten’s chairman out. Naturally, that caused Mr. Patten intense annoyance. He had given the university a gymnasium, and a generous share of the millions he had extracted from the bread supply of the American people. So he demanded that the president should support him; and the president sent for Gray, and proceeded to administer a rebuke. Gray asked: “Are you speaking officially or as an individual?”
The climax of the affair was that Gray asked to meet Patten and thresh the matter out face to face. They met at luncheon, and Patten presented his complaint. He was sore because Gray had quoted him as saying with regard to the pious students of the university—“it had cost more to get out the Bible vote than any other.” “But,” said Gray, “you did say that, didn’t you?” Patten admitted that he had said it, so Professor Gray finally offered to settle the matter by writing a letter to both the Evanston newspapers, stating exactly what Mr. Patten admitted he had said, and exactly what he denied; but Patten was not satisfied with this settlement of the difficulty!
A little later Professor Gray was appointed by the National Civic Federation as one of a committee of economists to investigate municipal ownership in Europe. They were all supposed to be reactionaries, and their findings were supposed to be what they knew the National Civic Federation wanted; but Professor Gray had the wretched taste to become converted to the doctrines of municipal ownership by the facts he observed in Europe, and he so stated in his report. When he got a proof of this report he found that it had been doctored in the office of Mr. Ralph Easley, the very ardent “open shopper” and hundred per cent plutocratic secretary of that organization. The professor had to threaten a law-suit against the National Civic Federation in order to force them to correct the report.
Also, Gray had a “run-in” with Charles Deering, Harvester Trust magnate, the second grand duke of the board. Deering asked Gray to speak against a strike of the Harvester Trust workers, and said that he purposed to put this strike down with guns. “Yes, Mr. Deering,” said the professor, “but suppose the day comes when you are under the sod and the other fellow has the guns.” Needless to say, the authorities of Northwestern were glad when this too popular professor received an offer from the University of Minnesota, which had come for the moment under a liberal administration. A friend of mine was present at a private luncheon, at which Mr. Patten made the statement that he had got rid of Gray, and was now going to get rid of another man.
This especially pious university is the one we mentioned as having established a rule that only bachelors are to be accepted as teachers; also the one which we found officially declaring that excellence in a college professor lies, not in his being able to teach, but in his diligence in raking in the dust-heaps of history. Last spring they gave their grand duke the usual honorary degree, and took occasion to have him instruct their ten thousand students in the principles of American piety. A copy of the address lies before me, one of those beautifully but mysteriously printed pamphlets which bear the name of no publisher and no purchase price, but manage to get circulated by hundreds of thousands of copies all over the country.