Another instance: I don’t want to indicate the identity of this informant, so will call him professor of Chinese metaphysics at a large California university. He gave me some information for “The Goose-step,” and because of the nature of this information he fell under suspicion, and the Black Hand set out to punish him. This eminent specialist has a standard text-book on Chinese metaphysics, in use everywhere in colleges and universities throughout the United States. It is the most up-to-date book on the subject, there is no other as good, or anywhere near as good; nevertheless, this book has been thrown out of the three biggest institutions in the state of California!
The University of California has a large branch in Los Angeles, and this also made reply to “The Goose-step.” A young lady presented a copy of the book to the library, and a few days later was requested to come and take the contaminating thing away. (But the demand grew so pressing, they had to let it in!) Then came their professor of education, a gentleman by the name of Woellner, before the American Civil Liberties Union, stating that “The Goose-step” was “full of vicious lies.” I wrote him a courteous note, saying that I never wilfully made a false statement, and would appreciate his pointing out the specific “lies” he had noted. The professor in his reply gave no specifications, but explained that I “state but half the truth.” He went on to put me in my precise place:
Your scholarship is atrocious, your literary style is pitiful, your social attitude unwholesome and your recommended cure, Socialism, worse than any of the diseases you diagnose. American political and social institutions are remarkably fine. They can only be made better by those who love them and work for them from the inside. Bury the hammer, pick up the flag and wave it over consecrated effort for the perpetuation of all its glories.
I will make you a bet—that this flag-waving professor becomes a dean inside two years!
Also Stanford makes answer; just as the last of this manuscript is going to the printer, a new regent is appointed, Mr. Paul Shoup, vice-president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and perhaps the most active union smasher in the state. Ten or fifteen years ago we were told that Hiram Johnson had driven the Southern Pacific out of California politics. Today the Better America Federation openly controls the state legislature, and everybody takes it for granted that Mr. Shoup should dictate both nominations and legislation.
Nicholas Miraculous also made his answer to “The Goose-step”; and this is one of the funniest stories I have to tell you. You know that for six years our pious government has refused recognition to Soviet Russia, because it isn’t “democratic.” We always did business with the czar—he was “democratic,” but Lenin isn’t! Now, to test our sincerity, a ruffian rises in Italy, and his thugs beat and murder the Socialists of that country, and set up a castor-oil dictatorship. Does our pious government refuse to recognize him? Our pious government falls on his neck. He sends us an ambassador, and our great universities rush forward to do him honor, and testify their devotion to the dictatorship of the capitalist class. A string of American plutocrats, headed by Judge Gary, go over to Italy and make obeisance before him, and come back to tell us what a great man he is, and what a fine example he has set us.
So the young snobs of Columbia proceed to organize a castor-oil society for their own university, and they make the assistant professor of Latin the head of their organization. Arturo Giovannitti writes to President Butler in protest: and what do you think Butler answers? He “has no power to discipline a professor for his ideas,” and his university “has through a long and honorable history lived up to the highest ideals of freedom to seek the truth and freedom to teach.” After that, pick up “The Goose-step” and read the half dozen chapters which tell how Nicholas Murray Butler kicked out professors for holding and teaching pacifist or radical ideas. Then you will understand what Alexander Harvey meant when he wrote in the “Freeman”:
I have rolled over and over on the floor in my struggles to keep from laughing at Nicholas Murray Butler—the Nicholas Murray Butler one encounters in the works of Upton Sinclair. I wonder if there exists on the planet any such person as he who, in the writings of Upton Sinclair, is referred to by the name of Nicholas Murray Butler. Whenever I am so melancholy as to think only of suicide I exhilarate myself with this reflection: “The Nicholas Murray Butler of Upton Sinclair exists!” Then my heart goes dancing with the daffodils.
To complete the story you must hear how President Butler’s students proceeded to apply his “highest ideals of freedom to seek the truth and freedom to teach.” Some members of the Students’ Reserve Corps were doing the goose-step on the campus, and some other students jeered at them from the dormitory windows. There was a fuss about it, and the commandant of the Reserve Corps wrote a letter to the “Spectator,” denouncing this disrespectful action. A graduate student of the university, by the name of William L. Werner, a veteran of the Argonne fighting, wrote to the “Spectator” in reply, stating that “someone should inform the major that the war is over.” That was “freedom to seek the truth and freedom to speak it,” according to President Butler’s formula; and seven students of the university applied the formula by coming to Werner’s room at midnight, blindfolding and binding him, taking him out into the country, beating him with sticks and barrel staves, and putting him through a cross-examination on “loyalty to the nation.” And while this was going on in New York, the new ambassador from Mussolini was being marched in the commencement procession at Yale University, alongside Chief Justice Taft of our Supreme Court, receiving the honorary degree of doctor of laws, and proceeding to teach to the assembled college men a lesson in elementary Fascism.
I have told how Clark University made answer to “The Goose-step,” by firing a dozen professors and getting an alumni whitewash. Also Syracuse University made answer through its new chancellor, whose baccalaureate sermon I find published in the “University Bulletin” for July, 1923. Talking confidentially with members of his faculty, Chancellor Flint admitted that I had “got Syracuse just about right”; after which he proceeded to mount the rostrum before the assembled booboisie of the city, and deliver a eulogy of Chancellor Day occupying twenty-four pages of the bulletin, and starting with the sentence: “Nor am I willing to allow Upton Sinclair’s clownish caricature to stand as the last message,” etc. One of the professors sends me this bulletin, with the comment: “This shows what a Methodist will do for a dollar!”