Needless to say, there are no liberal movements of the students at this university, and no “outside speakers” bringing them improper ideas. A recent graduate writes to me:
One cannot describe the stupidity and ignorance of the students. Most of them could never see beyond themselves; most of them attended school to avoid working, for the sake of the diploma which at least would give them more pay, if not secure them a better job, and some even because they could not think of a better, easier, and happier way to spend four years. The professors and instructors were even worse, there being hardly one who could inspire a student.
Also needless to say, there is no organization of the professors; the university has the “open shop” as well as “open plumbing.” At the time of the Scott Nearing affair at Pennsylvania, there was a strong movement for faculty representation, and several of the men who stood for this movement were charged with insubordination and fired; others, who stood by the authorities in order to curry favor, got promotions. A University Council was established, but it proved a tender plant, and did not survive in the smoke-laden atmosphere of the steel country. Chancellor Bowman has now laid down the law, that all appointments are subject to annual renewal; teachers are no different from other employes, and he intends to run the university like a business concern. This is the sort of talk that brings satisfaction to steel kings!
I was told about a professor who was brought before the chancellor, upon the charge of having destroyed the religious faith of one of his students. The boy’s father had complained, and it developed that the professor, in a private talk with the boy, had been asked and had answered questions about the divinity of Jesus. There was a solemn council of the chancellor, the dean, and all the professors in this department, and the chancellor drew up a statement for the professors to sign, to the effect that they would do everything in their power to avoid tampering with the religious faith of the students. They refused; the utmost they were willing to sign was an agreement that they would not go out of their way to tamper with the religious faith of their students.
These men, of course, are teaching the scientific method, which is incompatible with revelation; they know it, and the chancellor knows it; all he asks is to avoid trouble with parents and interlocking trustees who are making money out of the system of private monopoly, and wish to keep the thoughts of their wage-slaves upon their future heaven and off their present hell. A friend of mine tells me that, at the time of the Braddock shootings the Pittsburgh professors “talked like Bolsheviks”—but only among themselves! When it comes to public talking, that is attended to by people like Mayor Garland, a former trustee, who at a big meeting of faculty, students and alumni declared that “in a community like Pittsburgh, which depends upon a high tariff for its prosperity, it would be very wrong for any professor to advocate free trade.” A friend of mine asks: “Was he joking?” I answer that one might as well expect to hear a convocation of Catholic prelates joking about the Immaculate Conception.
And while we are in this neighborhood we ought to make note of the curious experience of Prof. G. F. Gundelfinger, author of “Ten Years at Yale,” who was assistant professor of mathematics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and wrote a personal letter to the president protesting against an indecent orgy of the students, publicly conducted and led by the president. The letter was sent to the president’s home, and was opened by his wife; Professor Gundelfinger was fired a few days later. He made a public fight, and the trustees dismissed the president—but they did not take Professor Gundelfinger back!
CHAPTER LVII
THE UNIVERSITY OF HEAVEN
We travel to Buffalo by the Pennsylvania Railroad, and from Buffalo we continue our journey by way of the New York Central Railroad, which has a Columbia trustee and a Cornell trustee and a Rochester trustee for directors, a recent Yale and New York University trustee for director, a Lake Erie College trustee for vice-president, a Guaranty Trust director and two National City Bank directors; and so we arrive at the University of Heaven, which has God Almighty for a director.
Thirty years ago there was nothing here; now there are a score of elaborate buildings, and six thousand students. Never has there been such a series of grand dukes and duchesses as at this university; Mr. John D. Archbold, president of the Standard Oil Company, and Huyler, the candy king, and Samuel Bowne, the cod liver oil king, and L. C. Smith, the typewriter king, and Mrs. Russell Sage, the charity queen, and E. L. French, head of Crucible Steel and the Halcombe Steel Company. At present they have as their chief duke Horace S. Wilkinson, steel magnate, one of the leading powers in the steamship lines of the Great Lakes. As assistants there are half a dozen prominent business men of the town, including the two leading merchants; a former brewer of New York, who is head of a great asphalt company and a sugar company; Mrs. Bowne, the widow of Samuel Bowne; Mr. Childs, the coal tar king; Mr. Flaccus, the Pittsburgh glass magnate; the Honorable Louis Marshall, millionaire lawyer of New York; the Honorable Edgar T. Brackett, leading politician of Saratoga Springs, headquarters of New York state’s gambling and political conventions; and the Reverend Ezra Squier Tipple, D.D., Ph.D., president of Drew Theological Seminary, professor of practical theology, and author of the “Drew Sermons, Series One and Two,” and of the “Drew Sermons on the Golden Texts, Series One, Two and Three.”
All this has grown out of the genius of one man, the Reverend James Roscoe Day, D.D., Sc.D., LL.D., D.C.L., L.H.D., chancellor of the University of Heaven. He made it, unassisted save by God.