CHAPTER LXXXV
THE GOOSE-STEP MARCH
As this manuscript goes to the printer, “The Goose-step” has been before the public nine months. Approximately twenty-two thousand copies have been sold, and many of them have been going the rounds in colleges. I have a letter from one school teacher, who tells me that her copy has been read by forty others. In the “Bookman” for December, 1923, “The Goose-step” is listed third among non-fiction books most in demand in public libraries. I was told by an instructor at Stanford that some students had torn out the Stanford chapters from a dozen copies of the book, and had pasted these pages, elaborately marked in red ink, upon bulletin boards and upon the doors of their dormitories. A lecturer, who visited many colleges in all parts of the country, tells me that he found “The Goose-step” the principal topic of argument in faculty clubs; as he phrased it, the member would sit and debate: “Are we like that?”
A number of universities replied, directly or indirectly, to the book. The most emphatic of all was Harvard. Said President Lowell and his deans and his corporation: “Go to, we will show this varlet how much we care about him! Let us tell the world how proud we are to be the University of Lee-Higginson, with J. P. Morgan connections!” What happened then was reported in the Boston “American”:
Harvard University today flung a defi in the face of Upton Sinclair. Today Harvard, at its commencement exercises, presented an honorary Doctor of Laws degree to Mr. Morgan. In presenting the degree to Mr. Morgan, Dr. Eliot said: “To John Pierpont Morgan, a son of Harvard, heir to the power and responsibility of a great financial house. He has used them with courage in a dark crisis of the World War and at all times with uprightness, public spirit and generosity.” In effect, Mr. Morgan gets his honorary degree for multiplying dollars through his international banking house. Sinclair could not possibly have wished for a more definite, clearer verification of the charges that he made.
Another degree—this one a Master of Arts degree—was presented to Eliot Wadsworth, assistant secretary of the treasury. Mr. Wadsworth is a member of the firm of Stone and Webster, which is allied with the Morgan firm. In his book, Sinclair charges that State Street, a suburb of Wall Street, absolutely owns and controls the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The president of Tech is Samuel Wesley Stratton. Mr. Stratton today was presented with an honorary LL.B. degree. Sinclair charged that Morgan’s control of American colleges extended not only to the college presidents, but to the clergy which exercises much influence over these colleges. Charles L. Slattery, Episcopal Bishop Coadjutor of Massachusetts, referred to by Sinclair as “Mr. Morgan’s Bishop”—received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity.
Also the University of California made answer to “The Goose-step”; there was a vacancy on the board of regents, and the governor appointed the chief of the Black Hand, Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles “Times.” The alumni of the university also took action; they engaged as their secretary, an agent of the Power Trust, at a salary of ten thousand a year! There are thirty-five thousand alumni, you understand, and to be able to control them means to control the state. This new agent was formerly editor of the “Electrical World,” and was on the list of the kept speakers of the Power Trust during the recent campaign against public ownership; he was put in his new job by Attorney Earl, who runs the board of regents for Banker Fleishhacker and Publisher Chandler.
I have pointed out in “The Goose-step” that an actual majority of the regents of this university are Power Trust officials or attorneys; and the same is true of the council which controls the alumni. I have nothing more important to tell you than this, because hydro-electric power is the issue of our time; the Power Trust is today what the railroads and Standard Oil were a generation ago, the chief active corrupter of our public life. At the last meeting of the National Electric Light Association they brought up an elaborate program for “getting the university professors, holding “institutes” for them, employing them to write literature, and giving them jobs in local public utilities. This report was not formally adopted—it was thought not to be “tactful”; they would just put it through without saying anything!
Professor Vladimir Karapetoff, of the College of Engineering at Cornell, sends to a friend of mine samples of the poison dope which is being fed to college professors. This particular dose comes from Philip Torchio, a high-salaried engineer for a number of electrical companies; it is sent free, and for no particular reason that the recipient knows. The subject is “depreciation,” the substance of the argument being that public utilities never depreciate, and so dividends should be collected on the basis of the original cost! This argument is signed by two supposed-to-be public officials, both of whom turn out to be on the pay-roll of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, a Standard Oil concern. One of them began his life as an active “reformer” in New York, then became counsel for the Public Service Commission at fifteen thousand dollars a year, and prepared a case for the people against the Consolidated Gas Company. On the very day that the case came to trial he went over to the gas company, and became their chief counsel, and carried over to their side every particle of the evidence which he had prepared for the benefit of the public!
That is just one incident, to show you how the dice are loaded against you in the world of education. In every great university throughout the United States today there are rascals of this sort, posing as scientists, and carrying on intrigues against the public welfare. And every instructor in high school, and every professor in colleges who touches on such subjects meets these intriguers with the dice loaded against him; that is, he knows that to oppose the rascals means to forfeit promotion, and perhaps his job.
How beautifully the Black Hand has got the professors frightened in the universities of California was proven by George P. West, who formed an organization to work for the repeal of the criminal syndicalism law. He got the backing of the Episcopal bishop and the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, and it was proposed to have some university professor prepare an entirely disinterested study of the actual workings of this law. Mr. West wrote to the professor of economics at Stanford, asking him to name a competent man; he received in reply a cold letter, declining his request. He went to talk with the economics men at the University of California, and not one of them was willing to meet him in the faculty room; they asked him to take a walk! Not one of these young instructors or research men was willing to take the job, even with a good salary attached, and with the backing of two bishops!