CHAPTER LIII

THE UNIVERSITY OF JUDGE GARY

There is another great ruling class munition-factory in the vicinity of Chicago, Northwestern University, at Evanston, Illinois. It is one of those terrible places, of which there are scores in the United States, which began as little church institutions, and by the grace of graft have grown to enormous size. Northwestern is Methodist, and has some ten thousand strictly pious students, and over six hundred instructors, and not a rag of an idea to cover its bare bones. The man who was until last year its president fitted himself for that office by being the university’s “Director of the Bureau of Salesmanship Research.” The first vice-president of the university is the general counsel of the Illinois Steel Company; the third vice-president is vice-president of the Illinois Steel Company; while the grand duke is the very grandest of all grand dukes in the United States—that prince of open shoppers and potentate of reaction, Judge Gary, chairman of the United States Steel Corporation!

For many years previously the leading grand duke was James A. Patten, the grain speculator, whose million dollar corner in wheat was the sensation of my boyhood. Mr. Patten began life as a clerk in a country store, and his claim to direct a great educational institution is based upon his acquaintance with the grain commission business, one of the most thoroughly organized of American swindles. Mr. Patten is director of two national banks, a trust company, a grain company, and an Edison company. He is a malignant “open shopper,” and during his reign at Northwestern waged incessant war upon two or three liberals who got into the place.

One of these men was Professor Gray, whom we have already met at the University of Minnesota. Gray managed to stick at Northwestern for sixteen years. He taught economics; a liberal colleague taught psychology, and the president of the university remarked to a friend of mine that these were the two hardest departments he had to administer, because one touched on religion and the other on the pocket-book! Gray was handicapped in the usual way by low salaries and lack of promotion for himself and his assistants. For many years he tried to get Harry Ward as assistant, but could never manage it.

Mr. Patten was twice elected mayor of Evanston, and when he ran again, Professor Gray, who was a Progressive, talked against him, and led the Progressive forces in the legislature that drove Patten’s chairman out. Naturally, that caused Mr. Patten intense annoyance. He had given the university a gymnasium, and a generous share of the millions he had extracted from the bread supply of the American people. So he demanded that the president should support him; and the president sent for Gray, and proceeded to administer a rebuke. Gray asked: “Are you speaking officially or as an individual?”

The climax of the affair was that Gray asked to meet Patten and thresh the matter out face to face. They met at luncheon, and Patten presented his complaint. He was sore because Gray had quoted him as saying with regard to the pious students of the university—“it had cost more to get out the Bible vote than any other.” “But,” said Gray, “you did say that, didn’t you?” Patten admitted that he had said it, so Professor Gray finally offered to settle the matter by writing a letter to both the Evanston newspapers, stating exactly what Mr. Patten admitted he had said, and exactly what he denied; but Patten was not satisfied with this settlement of the difficulty!

A little later Professor Gray was appointed by the National Civic Federation as one of a committee of economists to investigate municipal ownership in Europe. They were all supposed to be reactionaries, and their findings were supposed to be what they knew the National Civic Federation wanted; but Professor Gray had the wretched taste to become converted to the doctrines of municipal ownership by the facts he observed in Europe, and he so stated in his report. When he got a proof of this report he found that it had been doctored in the office of Mr. Ralph Easley, the very ardent “open shopper” and hundred per cent plutocratic secretary of that organization. The professor had to threaten a law-suit against the National Civic Federation in order to force them to correct the report.

Also, Gray had a “run-in” with Charles Deering, Harvester Trust magnate, the second grand duke of the board. Deering asked Gray to speak against a strike of the Harvester Trust workers, and said that he purposed to put this strike down with guns. “Yes, Mr. Deering,” said the professor, “but suppose the day comes when you are under the sod and the other fellow has the guns.” Needless to say, the authorities of Northwestern were glad when this too popular professor received an offer from the University of Minnesota, which had come for the moment under a liberal administration. A friend of mine was present at a private luncheon, at which Mr. Patten made the statement that he had got rid of Gray, and was now going to get rid of another man.

This especially pious university is the one we mentioned as having established a rule that only bachelors are to be accepted as teachers; also the one which we found officially declaring that excellence in a college professor lies, not in his being able to teach, but in his diligence in raking in the dust-heaps of history. Last spring they gave their grand duke the usual honorary degree, and took occasion to have him instruct their ten thousand students in the principles of American piety. A copy of the address lies before me, one of those beautifully but mysteriously printed pamphlets which bear the name of no publisher and no purchase price, but manage to get circulated by hundreds of thousands of copies all over the country.

The subject of Judge Gary’s address is “Ethics in Business,” and he begins by making some curious admissions. There was a time, “not many years ago, perhaps not much more than a score,” when in American business “the rule of might over right prevailed.... Competition was tyrannical and destructive. Weaker competitors were forced out of business, often by means not only unethical but severe and brutal. The graves of insolvents were strewn along the paths of industrial development and operation. The financially strong grew stronger and richer.”

Of course you understand what all this means; it is an amiable preliminary to the statement which Judge Gary is going to make, that now all these evil things have changed, this wicked time has passed! But I would like to put to Judge Gary the question: how did it happen to pass? Who brought it about, and what were you, Judge Gary, doing at the time? Were you going about the country, telling boys and girls in colleges about the need of business reform? The question answers itself. At that time Judge Gary was head of the Federal Steel Company, and busily engaged in organizing the Steel Trust, the most perfect illustration in America of the evils he refers to. Also he was engaged in denouncing as agitators and disturbers of the public peace the very men, from Theodore Roosevelt down, whose labors on behalf of reform he now pretends to justify and accept.

In those wicked days, he tells the students, the masters of industry “did not give to employes just consideration. The wage rates were adjusted strictly in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. The welfare of the workmen was decided almost entirely from the standpoint of utility and profit.” But now, all that is over. “The large majority of business men now conduct their affairs” on the basis “that employes are associates rather than servants, and should be treated accordingly.... Conscientious treatment of employes which secures their respect and confidence will tend to increase their loyalty and efficiency.” And this from the man who continues to maintain throughout the greatest industry in America a twelve-hour day, with a twenty-four-hour day once a week! Who uses all the power of his colossal organization to deny to his employes the most essential of all industrial rights—the right to organize for their own protection! Who, as an incident to this policy, maintains the most widespread and most infamous system of espionage and terrorism that has ever been known in an Anglo-Saxon country! This man, who pays more money to spies and provocateurs in one year than the czar of all the Russians paid in ten—this man, whose hands are slimy with the blood of union organizers shot down in cold blood, whose lips are foul with ten thousand lies, told about his wage-slaves during the last steel strike—this man has the insolence to stand up before a commencement audience at a “Christian” university, and declare that justice and kindness now prevail in American big business, and that wage rates are no longer “adjusted strictly in accordance with the laws of supply and demand!”

Such is the state of social conscience in the greatest educational institution of the Methodist church in America; but, thank God, the entire church no longer applauds this re-crucifixion of Jesus. The Inter-church Federation has issued a report on the steel strike; and if you want to know just how honest a man Judge Gary is, take the trouble to read their account of the handling of this strike by his Pittsburgh newspapers. After that you will be able to get the full humor of the comment of Bishop McConnell of the Methodist church upon the giving of the degree to Gary. At the “Evanston Conference” the bishop said that the conferring of this degree did not mean any intellectual attainments on the part of the recipient; “it merely means that for certain specific and well-known purposes you are giving him a degree.” In other words, you are selling your soul for the price of a building!

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