The subject of Judge Gary’s address is “Ethics in Business,” and he begins by making some curious admissions. There was a time, “not many years ago, perhaps not much more than a score,” when in American business “the rule of might over right prevailed.... Competition was tyrannical and destructive. Weaker competitors were forced out of business, often by means not only unethical but severe and brutal. The graves of insolvents were strewn along the paths of industrial development and operation. The financially strong grew stronger and richer.”
Of course you understand what all this means; it is an amiable preliminary to the statement which Judge Gary is going to make, that now all these evil things have changed, this wicked time has passed! But I would like to put to Judge Gary the question: how did it happen to pass? Who brought it about, and what were you, Judge Gary, doing at the time? Were you going about the country, telling boys and girls in colleges about the need of business reform? The question answers itself. At that time Judge Gary was head of the Federal Steel Company, and busily engaged in organizing the Steel Trust, the most perfect illustration in America of the evils he refers to. Also he was engaged in denouncing as agitators and disturbers of the public peace the very men, from Theodore Roosevelt down, whose labors on behalf of reform he now pretends to justify and accept.
In those wicked days, he tells the students, the masters of industry “did not give to employes just consideration. The wage rates were adjusted strictly in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. The welfare of the workmen was decided almost entirely from the standpoint of utility and profit.” But now, all that is over. “The large majority of business men now conduct their affairs” on the basis “that employes are associates rather than servants, and should be treated accordingly.... Conscientious treatment of employes which secures their respect and confidence will tend to increase their loyalty and efficiency.” And this from the man who continues to maintain throughout the greatest industry in America a twelve-hour day, with a twenty-four-hour day once a week! Who uses all the power of his colossal organization to deny to his employes the most essential of all industrial rights—the right to organize for their own protection! Who, as an incident to this policy, maintains the most widespread and most infamous system of espionage and terrorism that has ever been known in an Anglo-Saxon country! This man, who pays more money to spies and provocateurs in one year than the czar of all the Russians paid in ten—this man, whose hands are slimy with the blood of union organizers shot down in cold blood, whose lips are foul with ten thousand lies, told about his wage-slaves during the last steel strike—this man has the insolence to stand up before a commencement audience at a “Christian” university, and declare that justice and kindness now prevail in American big business, and that wage rates are no longer “adjusted strictly in accordance with the laws of supply and demand!”
Such is the state of social conscience in the greatest educational institution of the Methodist church in America; but, thank God, the entire church no longer applauds this re-crucifixion of Jesus. The Inter-church Federation has issued a report on the steel strike; and if you want to know just how honest a man Judge Gary is, take the trouble to read their account of the handling of this strike by his Pittsburgh newspapers. After that you will be able to get the full humor of the comment of Bishop McConnell of the Methodist church upon the giving of the degree to Gary. At the “Evanston Conference” the bishop said that the conferring of this degree did not mean any intellectual attainments on the part of the recipient; “it merely means that for certain specific and well-known purposes you are giving him a degree.” In other words, you are selling your soul for the price of a building!
CHAPTER LIV
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE GRAND DUCHESS
We take the Illinois Central Railroad, with its Columbia trustee, a recent University of Chicago trustee, a Knox College and a Rockford College trustee, and an Armour Institute trustee, and one First National, one Guaranty Trust, and two National City Bank directors, and find ourselves in the town of Urbana, where the state university is located. Here is another of these terrible mushroom places, with a thousand instructors, and ten thousand students exposed to all the ravages of commercialism. I first heard of this university after the publication of “The Jungle,” when the Chicago packers flew to their interlocking regents for protection, and a committee of the university faculty was appointed to inspect the stockyards and report that everything was all right. In return for this, Mr. Armour gave some money for a veterinary college, and Mr. Armour’s partner, Arthur Meeker, was made a regent, and his portrait now hangs in the Sanhedrim where the interlocking regents meet.
This University of Illinois has made itself conspicuous in the glorification of trade; they have a whole college devoted thereto, with an especially large building, and ten years ago they had a solemn ceremonial in which they dedicated this temple to Mammon. The affair was known as a “Conference on Commercial Education and Business Progress,” and doubtless it caused great progress in the business of getting contributions from the plutocracy and its politicians. It lasted two days, and was addressed by such dignitaries as the president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the president of the Chicago Association of Commerce, the dean of the College of Commerce and Administration of the University of Chicago, and the President of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, who was, and still is, chief operating engineer of Edison Electric. There was an invocation to the God of Commerce by the Reverend President of Knox College, and an address by the President of the Illinois Bankers’ Association, who opened the Hall of Fame of the University by presenting a portrait of a lately deceased banker; then there was a prayer of dedication to the God of Bankers by the Reverend President McClelland; and on the evening of the last day there was a banquet tendered by the Commercial Club of Urbana, with all the big business potentates above-mentioned listed as “honored guests,” and preceded by an invocation to the God of Gastronomy.
The university traditions thus established have been reverently cherished. In 1916 the college put on three lectures, under the auspices of the Chicago Board of Trade, dealing with the art of gambling in the staff of your life and mine. A gentleman living in Urbana writes me:
These lectures were illustrated by lantern slides, conspicuous among which was one giving the signals used on the Board of Trade in the rapid gambling when the Board is in session. This was minutely dwelt upon and the manual code of signs fully explained. After the close of the lecture I went to a fine old professorial acquaintance. I said: “I know now where my children are taught grain-gambling. If they are to be gamblers I want them to be first-class gamblers. Where do you teach poker, baccarat and other games?” He said: “Upon my word, I never knew any such thing was carried on by the University of Illinois.” He appeared much disconcerted, blushing greatly.
Needless to say, such an institution is profoundly and reverently religious. It is at this place that the various sects have been able to get credits for their teachings. The laws of the state prohibit religious instruction in public institutions; nevertheless, you can go to the University of Illinois and study in the Bible classes of the Baptists, or the Methodists, or the Lutherans, or the Campbellites, or the Seventh Day Adventists—and some day, no doubt, the Holy Rollers; you may learn about how Jonah swallowed the whale, and how David killed Cock Robin with his little bow and arrow; and as a reward for these labors you may receive a university degree—having just as much cultural significance as if it were conferred by the king of Dahomey.