These professors were charming fellows in their social life; but when they were offended in their class prejudices, they became vindictive. They were incensed against Professor William E. Bohn, who was a candidate on the Socialist ticket, and made a speech at Kalamazoo, which was taken up by the capitalist press. Professor Bohn’s manuscript showed that he did not say what the papers accused him of saying, and many members of the audience substantiated his statement, nevertheless he was fired. About this same time they barred Jane Addams from speaking in a college building; she was arguing for woman suffrage, and that was a contentious political question, unfit for student ears!
For thirteen years Smithfield was in perpetual hot water, being “called up” and cautioned and pleaded with by the authorities. “What is the matter?” he asked of his dean. “Can’t I teach?” The answer was, “You teach too God-damned well.” This was Mortimer E. Cooley, a high-up authority in the engineering world, one of those valuation wizards about whom we learned in our study of Harvard. Dean Cooley has been interested all his life in privately owned public utilities, and he stated his point of view to one of his professors: “An engineer owes his first duty to the man who employs him.” In the pamphlet, “Snapping Cords,” by Morris L. Cooke, of Philadelphia, it is narrated how Professor Cooley serves his masters; he went to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and told these students that “in 1911 the average rate of return on all the capital (of all utility corporations) was but 2.3 per cent.” Mr. Cooke cites a circular of Henry L. Doherty & Company, New York investment bankers, giving a table of net earnings of such corporations for the ten years from 1902, to 1912, and they amount to: gas and electric, 8.45; industrials, 7.79; railroads, 4.25 per cent. Mr. Cooke adds the important note that the securities of such utility corporations are from fifty to one hundred per cent in excess of invested capital!
Dean Cooley was troubled, because he could not get his engineering students to take any interest in ideas. They ought to have a little more culture than the average business men, he thought; so he tried to get them to read Shakespeare and Milton, but in vain; he tried to get them to read Darwin and Huxley, but in vain. Chemistry and physics they got in the laboratory, but they had no biology and wanted none. Smithfield tried them on the social sciences, introducing them to Bertrand Russell and Bernard Shaw; and these hustling young engineers suddenly discovered that literature had something to do with life. In six semesters this teacher had eight sections, over two hundred students. But every bit of this was abolished by the university authorities, under pressure of the plutocracy of automobiles, railroads and banks.
It was then that Smithfield’s students took matters into their own hands. They asked if he would meet with them for talks, and they started an open forum, renting some rooms above a drug store, and doing all the work themselves. They cut out smoking and drinking, and took to debating social problems. As one of them phrased it to me, “We let loose a spirit of real knowledge, and if we could have gone on, we should have changed the social order in ten years.” But, of course, that is exactly what the plutocracy of Michigan did not intend to have happen; they are going to keep the present social order—which means that we are going to have civil war in America, with the horrors we have seen in Russia and Ireland.
Some boys came to Smithfield, saying they would like to meet on Sunday mornings and study religion. Smithfield thought he would like to know something about religion himself; so they got together and began to read the Bible. Of course they read it with their eyes open; they studied the class struggle in ancient Judea, the Hebrews enslaved by the plutocracy of Rome, the Hebrew proletariat enslaved by their own exploiters, with the help of priests and preachers of institutionalized religion. You can see the same thing in Ann Arbor and Detroit, so Professor Smithfield’s boys discovered the Bible to be “live stuff.”
Presently came the Y. M. C. A. hand-shakers, seeking to introduce Bible study into the fraternity-houses. They would select some fraternity man to read the Bible between five and six o’clock in the afternoon; and then it was the Alpha Deltas, who boast themselves the toughest bunch in town, came to Smithfield and asked him to read to them. All the other classes petered out, and came to nothing; and naturally the “Y” people were sore, because a radical was able to hold his classes while they could not.
Professor Smithfield’s attitude toward the war was about the same as my own; that is, he swallowed the allies’ propaganda sufficiently to think there might be a greater hope for democracy if the allies were to win. He made speeches, and sold Liberty Bonds, and his enemies could not get him on this issue. So the scandal bureau was put to work. Professor Smithfield’s wife was a teacher of swimming in the public schools of Detroit, and presently it began to be rumored that she had had a red-headed baby. One of the students told me the origin of this red-headed baby story, but I forget it; maybe the wife had been seen to pat a red-headed baby on the street, or maybe she had taken care of a red-headed baby for some friend—any little thing like that will do for the scandal bureau. It happens that the wife is likewise a Socialist, and in 1919 she answered some questions which students asked her about the Newberry case. As we have seen, the superintendent of schools in Detroit is a brother to Newberry’s leading henchman, so Mrs. Smithfield lost her position as a teacher of swimming.
Shortly afterwards her husband lost his position as a teacher of modern ideas. They did not notify Smithfield himself, but the newspapers got hold of it, and the reporters interviewed his dean, and also Regent Beal, and both declared the report was untrue, it was a mistake. The dean told Smithfield it was a mistake; but shortly afterwards Smithfield discovered that it was the truth. And if you want to know why college teaching is dull, and why college students drink and smoke and gamble and go to “petting-parties,” you have the whole answer in this experience of one live and interesting teacher.
They have a newspaper at the university, the “Michigan Daily,” and on Sunday they publish an eight-page literary supplement of very excellent quality. In October, 1922, a senior student, G. D. Eaton, published in this supplement a review of John Kenneth Turner’s book, “Shall It Be Again?” an exposure of the dishonesties of the late war, based upon documents, and therefore not to be answered. The student who reviewed it had been an ardent patriot, and had endeavored to enlist; being rejected as under weight, he managed to get in by a trick, and performed his military duties competently. He was invalided, and is at the university as a ward of the Federal Board of Vocational Rehabilitation. Immediately on the appearance of his review, President Burton summoned the faculty members of the Board of Control of Student Publications, and directed this board to dismiss Eaton at once, the declared reason being one sentence in the review: “Most history professors are senile, simple and misguided asses.” A faculty member visited the offices of all three student publications, and not merely forbade that Eaton should contribute to any of these papers, but forbade that the papers should mention his dismissal in any way. The Dean of Students endeavored to have the government withdraw support from Eaton, so that he would have to quit the university. Extraordinary efforts were made to keep the case from getting into the newspapers; but a month later the Detroit “Free Press” got hold of the story, and gave young Eaton a little course in practical journalism. They got an interview with him, and from this interview they cut everything that might be favorable to his case; as the rest was not unfavorable enough, they embellished it with fourteen distinct falsehoods, which Mr. Eaton lists in a letter to me. Also I ought to mention that this returned soldier was mobbed and badly beaten by the students for an article in the “Smart Set,” discussing the university. His successor as editor has been forbidden to publish an article proving that freedom of opinion among the students is not desired or permitted.