CHAPTER LI

THE UNIVERSITY OF STANDARD OIL

Providence arranged it that soon after the University of Chicago was built, the oil king’s digestion gave out, and he retired to the country to live on graham crackers and milk and play golf all day. The job of turning his two hundred million dollars into two billions was left to his efficient subordinates, and they were not so much interested in the old man’s advertising ventures, so that the university was left to run itself. Veblen describes its spirit as “a ravenous megalomania.” For years President Harper followed the plan of buying everything he wanted, and sending the bill to John D. But that was stopped, and now the running of the university is seen to by the usual board of interlocking directors, mostly elderly Baptists. They have had in past times some first-rate scientists; what they have now is a faculty of aged dotards, who set the tone of the place, and the young men try to act dotards to the best of their ability.

They are sensitive on the subject of petroleum at the university; they blush at mention of the word, and do not admit the conventional book-plates showing the lamp of knowledge. Some time ago a wag composed a “doxology” for use by the students, and the young radicals have fun with this—

Praise God from whom oil blessings flow, Praise him, oil creatures here below, Praise him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son—but John the most.

I met one professor at the University of Chicago who insisted that teaching was entirely free. He added, with some asperity: “Of course you will do the Bemis story! We shall never hear the end of the Bemis story.”

“Too bad!” I said, sympathetically. “I haven’t heard that story; what is it?”

“Just a piece of slander,” said the professor. “I know positively that the case of Bemis was not a case of academic freedom at all, and he himself admits it.”

That was something definite. I ascertained that Edward W. Bemis is an economist and engineer, with offices in Chicago and New York, so I wrote and asked him about the matter. I quote his letter, and leave it for you to form your own judgment:

I was called from Vanderbilt University to the University of Chicago to the chair of Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology, at the opening of the University of Chicago in October, 1892. In March, 1895, President Harper informed me that the trustees had dropped me from the faculty the previous December, to take effect in July, 1895. He informed me then and in subsequent conversations that my attitude on public utility and labor questions was the cause, and that if he cared to talk about the reasons for my dismissal, I could not secure any other college position in the country.

A great deal was made of the matter in the newspapers all over this country, under the heading of College Freedom, and many papers took it up. I did teach after that, for two years, 1897-9, in the Kansas State Agricultural College, but, finding no openings in the larger universities, I turned my attention exclusively to the investigation of public utility questions, and to assisting states, cities and commissions in such matters. I found a congenial field as head of the Cleveland, Ohio, Water Department, under Tom L. Johnson, from September, 1901, to 1910, and have since then spent my strength on building up an organization of engineers and accountants devoted to assisting cities and states and other public bodies, including the national government, in appraisals and rate adjustments of public utilities.

I received no calls for teaching, save as above mentioned, since I was forced out of the University of Chicago, and for over twenty years have sought none. I have never been a Socialist, or an extremist along any line, but have investigated and to some degree favored public ownership of public utilities, and have had a friendly relation with the American labor movement.

My opposition to the efforts of certain Chicago utilities to secure lighting and street railway franchises, while I was at the University of Chicago, and the public address which I made during the famous Pullman strike in 1894, wherein I did not endorse the strike but did say that the railroads had often boycotted each other, violated law, etc., as well as had the men, were features assigned by President Harper for the opposition to me, resulting in my dismissal by the trustees of the university.

A professor at the University of Chicago who read this manuscript volunteered to get for me the university’s side of the story, and he wrote me:

At the time of his “dismissal” Bemis was in the extension division. His appointment ran out and he was offered re-appointment, his remuneration to come from the fees of students. This action might, of course, be described in Mr. Bemis’ phrase, “dropped me from the faculty.”

I submitted that statement to Professor Bemis, who answered by wire:

My letter which you quote is absolutely correct. No proposition for continuance of my work, half of which was to advanced students within the university walls, was ever made to me.

Another of the casualties of Mr. Rockefeller’s university was Professor Triggs, as I have told in “The Brass Check,” and I gather they were not sorry when Veblen moved West. I was told that one professor had recently been “on the carpet for excess of radical zeal,” and I wrote to ask him if this was true. He answered that the trouble he had got into was for being away too much. Said he: “I have never known of anyone at Chicago being interfered with in any way ‘for excess of radical zeal.’ To be sure, no such excess exists.” Which I find a charming reply!

To the same effect is the testimony of John C. Kennedy, formerly a professor at the University of Chicago. Questioned by Chairman Walsh of the Industrial Relations Commission, Professor Kennedy stated concerning the faculty: “A sincere desire to deal with fundamental conditions does not seem to be there in most cases.... I think they are a poor crowd among which to look for leaders to bring about any fundamental change in social conditions.” The reason for Professor Kennedy’s discontent was that he had been engaged by the University of Chicago Settlement to make a survey of labor and living conditions among the Stockyards workers. He had prepared an elaborate and thoroughly documented report, which several of the packers found satisfactory; but Swift & Company—which has a member of the firm on the board of the University of Chicago—objected that Professor Kennedy had drawn “political conclusions” from his data; that is, he had suggested a remedy for the evil conditions in the Stockyards, for the workers to organize to protect themselves! These portions of the report were cut out before it was published, and the whole matter was hushed up, both by the university authorities and by the newspapers of the interlocking directorate in Chicago.

They have one “renommir professor” at Chicago, and are very proud of him. I don’t think I exaggerate in saying that out of the score of faculty members I talked with on the subject of academic freedom, not one failed to mention Robert Morss Lovett as the university’s certificate of emancipation from Standard Oil. Out of the warmth of his big heart Professor Lovett gives his help to Hindoo revolutionists thrown into jail, and to Russian sweat-shop workers clubbed over the head by the police. I asked him to read this manuscript, and he tells me that he thinks I am too severe upon the university. He wonders what I will have to say about places like Minnesota and Illinois, which are so much worse. To avoid misunderstanding, let me state that I have not been able to find a single one of the great American universities which is truly liberal or truly free; but there are degrees of badness among them, and the University of Chicago is one of the best. I have no desire to deny it due credit, therefore I note Professor Lovett’s comment—that during the early days of the university President Harper stood for liberalism in religion, and thereby lost much Baptist money; also that the university made an enviable record during the war, in that there was no interference with the private views of any professor on this question.

Shortly after the war there developed a strong movement to refuse diplomas to about a dozen of the students who were accused of radical

## activities, but this movement was defeated at the last minute. I talked

with several of these students, and with others who are now struggling to defend ideas of social justice at the university. They had a little paper, called “Chanticleer,” and were so indiscreet as to reprint an article from the Seattle “Union Record” praising the paper. So the student daily hailed them as the “boy Bolsheviks” of the university, and both students and professors joined in a campaign of ridicule and sneering. The climax came with the fourth issue, containing an article by Clarence Darrow; not twenty students could be found to distribute this. Among the most active in attacking the little paper was a dean who has just died; he never lost an opportunity to denounce the radicals, and gave no scholarships or honors to such. I am presenting in this book many cases of college professors “let out” for speaking intemperately about conservatives; I am wondering if anyone will answer me by telling of a single professor “let out” from an American college for speaking intemperately about radicals!

I talked with another professor at Chicago, who does not want his name used. I asked him what he thought about the status of his profession, and he gave the best description of academic freedom in America that I have yet come upon. He said: “We are good cows; we stand quietly in our stanchions, and give down our milk at regular hours. We are free, because we have no desire to do anything but what we are told we ought to do. And we die of premature senility.”

They have another professor at the University of Chicago who is not entirely satisfied with America as it is, and that is Robert Herrick, the novelist. He expressed the fear that I might try to write the same kind of book as “The Brass Check”; that is, to show direct pressure of financial interests upon college professors—whereas the way it is done is by class feeling, by the tradition of academic dignity, the prestige of old and established things, “the tone of the house.” I took the liberty of telling Professor Herrick of a few cases I had collected, and he admitted that he had had no idea there were things like that going on.

Robert Herrick would, of course, never fail in urbanity and graciousness; but fundamentally, I think he is more pessimistic about American education than I am. He said: “Universities can’t get money except by getting great numbers of students; so they dare not set any higher standards than rival institutions in the same neighborhood. So the American soul stays flabby; all that counts is show, and in every department you get by with superficiality. It is a lunch-counter system of education; read a novel and get a credit; then go out into the world, and use your college prestige to make a fortune; and then give your name to a college building. We do absolutely nothing for men and women who come to college, in the way of giving them true culture, higher standards of thought or conduct. I go to any university club and look over the alumni, and I see that we have given them no distinction—in dress, in speech, in morals, in ideas. You cannot tell them from the bathtub salesmen or the agents of barbers’ supplies you meet in the lobby of the Blackstone Hotel.”

The above is from a man who has been teaching for twenty-nine years at the University of Chicago; and you may compare it with the pungent remark of Professor Cattell, who was a teacher for twenty-six years at Columbia: “The average university club in America could more easily dispense with its library than with its bar.”

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