I begin with my own blunders. There exists in our national capital an institution called the Catholic University of America; also, in the same place, a Methodist institution called American University. It so happened that I did not know of the latter institution, but assumed that “American University” was an every-day name for the Catholic University of America. As soon as “The Goose-step” appeared, Father John A. Ryan wrote me a note, calling attention to my error, which was corrected in the second edition. This was my most serious slip—and it is amusing to note that it was not caught in a single one of the several hundred reviews I have read!
The most important error which the critics did catch was that referring to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During a period of a few years there existed an alliance between these two institutions; and in my manuscript I had referred to M. I. T. as “until recently a part of Harvard.” My Harvard chapters were revised by at least a score of Harvard professors, alumni and students, but only at the last moment was this phrase questioned, by an M. I. T. student, Phillip Herrick, son of Robert Herrick, who happened to call upon me. I had him telegraph to the authorities at M. I. T., and get me by telegraph a statement of the exact relationship. Upon that basis I put into the proofs of the book, pages 80-81, a footnote giving the facts.
But, alas, I overlooked the fact that the phrase, “until recently a part of Harvard,” occurred in two places in the manuscript; there were about seven hundred pages of this manuscript, and it was hard to remember every word. I did not correct the other place—and so Harvard and M. I. T. had an error upon which to base a whole indictment of “The Goose-step”! The “Technology Review,” organ of M. I. T., even took up the fact that I put my corrected statement in a footnote; “for a technical reason of Sinclair’s own”—which sounds very mysterious and wicked! The fact was that I was making corrections in the proofs, and it was cheaper to slip in a footnote than to have a paragraph reset.
Mr. John Macy made strenuous use of this slip in his review of “The Goose-step” in the “Nation.” Mr. Macy dealt with the book “as a friend,” and was pained to discover that it was “cluttered with misstatements and sophomoric conceit.” And pray, how many instances of misstatement would you think it takes to make a “cluttering”? It took precisely one—this Harvard-M. I. T. detail!
As to my “sophomoric conceit” Mr. Macy quoted from “The Goose-step” (page 11): “In the course of the next year I read all the standard French classics.” He pictured Brander Matthews answering, with a superior smile: “My dear young man, a born Frenchman could not read all the standard French classics in ten years.” Professor Matthews would love to say something incisive like that; but possibly he would be honest enough to mention, what my context makes plain, that I was referring to “standard French classics” as taught in undergraduate language courses at Columbia, and not to standard French classics as understood by “a born Frenchman.”
Mr. Macy was also troubled by the “pathetically absurd egotism” of my sentence on page 17: “I was as much alone in the world as Shelley a hundred years before me.” Here is a case of suppression of the context, so flagrant as to be beyond excuse. In the passage in question I was criticizing the education I had received from my college and university, on the ground that it had taught me nothing about the modern Socialist movement, to which the rest of my life was to be devoted. I took two whole paragraphs to explain this in detail. The first two sentences were as follows: “Most significant of all to me personally, I was unaware that the modern revolutionary movement existed. I was all ready for it, but I was as much alone in the world as Shelley a hundred years before me.” Is not the meaning of that statement plain—that “I felt myself as much alone in the world,” etc.? Of course, I wasn’t really “alone in the world,” for my millions of Socialist comrades existed, and in the rest of the two paragraphs I tell how I found them. How came it that Mr. Macy, indicting “The Goose-step” for being “cluttered with misstatements,” could bring himself to suppress one half a sentence, and thus obscure its meaning?
Fourth and last of this critic’s specifications: “And even his unverifiable statistics: ‘Eighty-five per cent of college and university professors are dissatisfied with being managed by floorwalkers.’ Why not sixty-nine per cent or ninety-three per cent?” The answer to this is found on page 55 of “The Goose-step,” referring to Professor Cattell at Columbia University: “In 1913 he published a book on ‘University Control,’ in which he demonstrated that eighty-five per cent of the members of college and university faculties are dissatisfied with the present system of the management of scholars by business men.” The same matter is discussed more at length on page 401: “Three hundred leading men were consulted, and out of these, eighty-five per cent agreed that the present arrangements for the government of colleges are unsatisfactory.” Now, if Professor Cattell’s questionnaire had revealed that sixty-nine per cent were dissatisfied, or ninety-three per cent, I should have given this figure. As it was, I gave eighty-five per cent, as Professor Cattell records it in his book.
Also, my respects to Mr. Charles Merz, who gave a page and three-quarters to kidding “The Goose-step” in the “New Republic.” Mr. Merz would be disappointed if I passed him over; he says: “There is a tradition that whoever takes issue with Mr. Sinclair about one of his own books is certain to be pounced upon, in turn, by an eagerly dissenting author.” Mr. Merz has a lot of fun calling me Captain Parklebury Todd:
/* He couldn’t walk into a room Without ejaculating “Boom!” Which startled ladies greatly. */
This is good fun, and the fact that in the course of it Mr. Merz admits my entire contention makes it easy for me to share the laughter. Mr. Merz thinks it natural and inevitable “that able and successful capitalists ordinarily control the universities produced by capitalism.” Of course, Mr. Merz; you know it, and I know it—and a lot of other people know it, since “The Goose-step” has been passed about in colleges.