CHAPTER LXIV
THE UNIVERSITY OF JABBERGRAB
Some fifteen years ago my postman brought me a puzzling communication from Sweden; a large and expensive linen envelope, carefully sealed with a great deal of red wax, registered, and addressed:
“Editor, Jabbergrab, Finanz-Lexikon, New York City.” At first I could not make out why the missive was delivered to me, but then in one corner I noted “Jabbergrab is mentioned in Upton Sinclair’s ‘Industrie-baron’'” I recognized “Der Industriebaron” as the German title of my story, “A Captain of Industry,” written when I was twenty-two years old; it is a satirical biography of a great financier, and after his ignominious death the story quotes some eulogies of his career from an imaginary publication, “Jabbergrab: Heroes of Finance.”
I made so bold as to open the envelope, and found several sheets of heavy foolscap paper, written in German in an exceedingly fine hand, and giving the data for a biographical sketch of a wealthy Swedish lumber magnate and financier. Here, in carefully tabulated and precisely ordered form, were the minute details of his life—the enterprises with which he had been connected, the offices he held, the properties he owned, the names of his children, the college degrees they had earned, the names of his race-horses and the prizes they had won, the names of his yachts and the cups they had won—all these items duly attested and signed by the great man himself.
Gradually it dawned over me what had happened. The man had read my satirical story, missing the point of the satire. He thought that I really felt all that admiration for a man of wealth and social eminence; and reading about Jabbergrab’s “Heroes of Finance,” the desire possessed him to have his own career immortalized in this biographical directory. So he had sat himself down, and painfully written out the data for the proposed sketch, and had sent it by registered mail to “Jabbergrab.”
It is the Jabbergrabs of America who have created a good part of our “higher” education, and placed upon it the stamp of their crude and simple faith in material success. I have shown how the spirit of Jabbergrab has destroyed two shrines of American scientific life, Clark University and Johns Hopkins; I purpose next to show what that spirit does, when it has its way from the beginning, unhampered by any intellectual traditions. I invite you to visit New York University, an institution whose buildings are scattered about in various parts of the city, including an office building on Washington Square, in the heart of the clothing district, and another in Wall Street.
New York University has enrolled no less than thirteen thousand students, and is described to me by one who works in it as “an intellectual sweat-shop.” As chancellor it has one Brown, who learned the Goose-step from the Kaiser, and as treasurer one Kingsley, a Wall Street banker, interlocked with the United States Trust Company, the Sixth Avenue Elevated Railroad, and the Union Theological Seminary. Last year Chancellor Brown published in the New York newspapers a series of thirty “advertising talks” on education, in the very latest “follow-up” style. These talks came to me in a little pamphlet, with a cover all printed over with photographs of newspaper clippings, and accompanied by a circular, carefully disguised to look like a personal letter, and beginning: “Dear Mr. Sinclair: You are one of the prominent citizens we had in mind when we prepared the enclosed advertisement. What we have learned of you encourages us to believe that this appeal of New York University must strike a responsive chord in you.”
I may be over-suspicious, but I believe that these statements are not entirely in accordance with the truth; I believe that if they were made in accordance with the truth they would read this way: “You are one of the twenty-two thousand persons whose names we have got from ‘Who’s Who in America,’ and we are taking a chance on being able to interest you in our university.” These necessary differences between advertising and fact are understood and taught to the students in all university schools of advertising.
Chancellor Brown sets forth the fact that out of his thirteen thousand students, ten thousand are earning the money to pay for their education. I believe that every college student in the country should do this—my own son is doing it—so I should be the last man to sneer at New York University’s lack of academic and social prestige. But here is the point: self-supporting students who go to night-school in New York go in order to increase their money-making capacity, and they judge the education they get by that criterion, and they irresistibly mold the educational standards of the institution they attend. So the spirit of education becomes that of Jabbergrab—ravenous greed, veiled by buncombe and hypocritical pretenses. That is what you have at New York University, and the fact is made clear in Chancellor Brown’s own pamphlet. Talk Number Sixteen is headed: “Welcome to the Advertising Men.” Says our Chancellor of Jabbergrab:
New York University is host today to members of the National Association of Teachers of Advertising, who are holding a sectional conference in this city while a similar conference for Western members is held at the University of Wisconsin. I am glad to welcome the members of this Association. Since I have been writing these little talks I have gained a feeling of warmer sympathy with all advertising men and their work. I have learned something of the fascinations—as well as the difficulties—of the profession.
So you see, our University of Jabbergrab has discovered advertising to be a “profession”; it takes its place alongside chiropody, palmistry and fox-trotting. If you want to know what these new “professors” are doing to American journalism, I invite you to read Chapters XLIII-XLVII of “The Brass Check”; I invite you to study the samples of advertising there quoted—one of which occupied a full page in all the most popular and respectable American magazines—and then come back to Chancellor Brown’s pamphlet and read his statement: “Many advertising men, I am told, were formerly teachers. The two professions seem to me to have a great deal in common.”
I should be sorry indeed to believe that about all American teachers, but I know it is true of some of the teachers who have been selected by the University of Jabbergrab. For example, consider Professor William E. Aughinbaugh, an editor of the New York “Commercial,” a director in sixteen corporations, and for seven years “Professor of Foreign Trade” in New York University. He boasts of having crossed the equator thirty-six times on commercial missions, and he publishes through one of our most esteemed publishing houses, the Century Company, an elaborately got up book, entitled, “Advertising for Trade in Latin America.” The price of this book is three dollars, and if you will study its maxims and apply them, you will find it worth all that. For example:
Latin-American advertisements are replete with the nude female form, which appeals strongly to all classes of readers. Due to the fact that a majority of the inhabitants are brunettes, or have Negro or Indian blood in their veins, the blonde exerts a stronger appeal to their imagination and for that reason should be employed when necessary or advisable to use such an illustration.
And so we know what the Chancellor of Jabbergrab means when he writes:
Advertising men have it in their power to educate millions of people not only in an intelligent use of commodities but in well-considered habits of thought and action.
Let us hear Professor Aughinbaugh again:
Reproductions of famous holy or religious paintings or scenes from the Bible may also be profitably used.... It occurred to me that if a saint could be found whose special duty was to prevent loss of life during seismic disturbances, much might be done through his aid to bring calm into these regions of terror. I selected my second name, “Edmund,” as the cognomen for the new assistant deity, added the prefix “Saint” to it, and wrote an appropriate earthquake prayer which was printed beneath the picture of the home-made saint. Of course each card contained our advertisement (of a patent medicine) which the supplicant for protection must have seen as he prayed.
And so we learned what the Chancellor of Jabbergrab means when he writes:
I can appreciate the reasons that impel any manufacturer to spread abroad through the columns of our newspapers and magazines the information about his worthy products. I can believe, too, that this information is often of real service to the public in guiding them to wise decisions regarding their expenditures and investments.
And again let us hear Professor Aughinbaugh on the subject of how to deal with the custom-laws of the countries with which you trade:
When I have decided upon an advertising campaign in any given Latin-American country, the requisite amount of cards, hangers,
## booklets, posters, banners, and other materials are boxed and shipped
to the various ports, consigned to some man of straw. Upon their arrival at the local port they will be stored in the customs warehouse to await claim by the alleged consignee. At the expiration of sixty or ninety, or one hundred and twenty days, in accordance with the local laws, these goods will be advertised for sale to the highest bidder. By previous arrangement with your agent, or some merchant, who has been advised of the dispatch of these goods to his port, they can be bid in very cheaply and delivered to the person most concerned with their use. In Venezuela, for instance, on one shipment alone the duties would have amounted to much more than one thousand dollars, yet the local wholesale druggist bought the entire consignment at auction for eighty-five dollars.
And so we know exactly what the Chancellor of the University of Jabbergrab means when he says to the “Sectional Conference of Teachers of Advertising”:
I believe, also, that the teachers of advertising can make a valuable contribution to the education of our future business men by teaching them how to use the force of advertising intelligently, effectively, and for the human benefit.
It happened that I saw Professor Aughinbaugh mentioned also as “Professor of Foreign Trade at Columbia University.” Wishing to get the record straight, I asked my brother-in-law, who has been helping me get material for this book, to write Professor Aughinbaugh a note asking him where he was a professor. Thinking that possibly he might be away, or ill, or for some other reason might fail to reply, I asked my brother-in-law to write also to New York University for the information. The result was two letters: one from Professor Aughinbaugh stating that “for two years past I have held the same position in New York University and Columbia University. The work became too hard for me and I was obliged to resign my professorship at New York University, now devoting my time to Columbia University.” The second letter was from the registrar of New York University, and stated: “Dr. William E. Aughinbaugh was, from October 11, 1915, to June 13, 1922, Lecturer on Foreign Trade at New York University. He did not, at any time, have professorial status.”
Here was, obviously, a contradiction. Professor Aughinbaugh is listed in “Who’s Who” as Professor of Foreign Trade; and “Who’s Who” states that it publishes no information except that furnished by the person concerned. Also, in a circular of his book, Professor Aughinbaugh is shown as “Chairman of Foreign Trade.” Wishing to make certain about this matter, I dictated to my secretary a formal note, calling Professor Aughinbaugh’s attention to the discrepancies, and asking him to state which title was correct. This note was signed by my brother-in-law and mailed, and no reply to it has ever been received.
But some three weeks after it was mailed, there called at my office in Pasadena a man who announced himself as an agent of the Department of Justice, and gave the name of “A. J. Taylor.” He interviewed my brother-in-law, a young man of twenty-one, and stated that my brother-in-law had been writing letters of a “scurrilous and defamatory nature” to Professor Aughinbaugh; that he had asked questions such as he had no business to ask, that he had made “improper statements” about the wife of Professor Aughinbaugh, and that he was to “stop writing letters,” or he would get into serious trouble. Subsequent inquiry of the Department of Justice in Los Angeles, of the United States Attorney for this district, Attorney-General Daugherty in Washington, and Post Office Inspectors of New York, Washington and Los Angeles, brought the positive statements that no such person as “A. J. Taylor” was known, and no investigation of any such matter had been undertaken. The Postmaster at Pasadena stated that he had received letters from private parties in New York, complaining of “blackmailing” letters written by my brother-in-law; and some ten days later there came a letter from Professor Aughinbaugh to me stating that he had learned from the postal authorities in California that I had written to him, under my brother-in-law’s name, and asking what was the purpose of my inquiry. I replied, stating to Professor Aughinbaugh exactly what was my purpose, and asking him if he would in return answer some questions of mine, as follows:
1. Did you send this A. J. Taylor to see my brother-in-law?
2. Did you tell him to represent himself as an agent of the Department of Justice?
3. Did you make to him any statement which would have justified him in the wholly false and absurd assertion that my brother-in-law had ever mentioned your wife?
4. If you did send this “A. J. Taylor,” who is he, and where can he be located?
5. If you did not send him, can you offer any suggestion as to how he learned about the correspondence between my brother-in-law and yourself, and what interest he had in troubling himself about the matter?
To these questions Professor Aughinbaugh made no answer, except to send me in an envelope three circulars of his book, in one of which he is described as “lecturer,” in another as “instructor,” and in another as “chairman.” I wrote again, calling his attention to his failure to answer, but no further response came. From the publishers of “Who’s Who” I learn that the lecturer-instructor-chairman-professor himself furnished them with the information concerning his status; also that he has recently written to them asking to be recorded as no longer “professor” but as just plain “lecturer!”
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