The Goose-Step

by Upton Sinclair

Chapter X - The Lightning Change Artist

President Butler’s career at Columbia has been like that of a drunken motorist in a crowded street; he has left behind him a trail of corpses. In the course of twenty years of office he has managed to expel or force to withdraw some two score men, including most of the best in the place. The cases of MacDowell and Woodberry occurred in 1902, the cases of Peck and Spingarn in 1910 and 1911. Beginning in 1917 there was a sudden series of casualties; but before these can be clearly explained, it is necessary that the reader should be made acquainted with another aspect of the career of Nicholas Miraculous—as pacifist and prophet of the Capitalist International.

45Butler’s friend, Carnegie, put up ten million dollars to establish a foundation in the cause of universal peace; and Butler became a trustee. The pointed question has been asked whether the Carnegie Peace Foundation pays for the elaborate banquets which President Butler serves to peace delegates in his home. Needless to say, when you have half a million dollars a year to administer, you can hire a great many secretaries, and print a great deal of literature, and give a great many champagne banquets, and make a great splurge in the world. Butler engaged a young man, Leon Fraser, to organize a peace movement in the colleges, and had him made an instructor in the department of political science at Columbia. We shall see in a minute what happened to this young man.

In the summer of 1914 Butler went to Europe to continue his peace work—but not with entire success. He came home in September, very much horrified at what had happened in Europe, and to the students at the opening of the university he made a speech in which you find him at his best, with his clear, keen mind and driving energy. He denounced the war-makers in language which left nothing to be desired. One thing this war had done, he said; it had “put a final end to the contention, always stupid and often insincere, that huge armaments are an insurance against war and an aid in maintaining peace. This argument was invented by the war-makers who had munitions of war to sell.... Since war is an affair of governments and of armies, one result of the present war should be to make the manufacture and sale of munitions of war a government monopoly hereafter.... How anyone not fit subject for a madhouse, can find in the awful events now happening in Europe a reason for increasing the military and naval establishments and expenditures of the United States is to me wholly inconceivable. Militarism—there is the enemy!”

Good for Nicholas Miraculous, you say! That is the sort of college president we want in America! But in the cold light of the morning after our pacifist orator thought it over. Perhaps he remembered his interlocking directorate—the grim-visaged, growling wild boar, old Pierpont Morgan, preparing to make his billion dollars out of the British government; young Marcellus Hartley Dodge, chairman of Remington Arms and Union Metallic Cartridge, 46getting ready to clean up his millions by cornering the market in munitions machinery! How awkward to meet Marcellus Hartley on the board, after talking about “the contention, always stupid and often insincere ... invented by war-makers who have munitions of war to sell!” Also, Butler was expecting to be Republican candidate for president two years from date; and it would not be easy to carry Elihu Root and Bill Barnes and Jim Wadsworth for a government monopoly of Remington Arms and Union Metallic Cartridge, to say nothing of Bethlehem and Carnegie Steel!

So President Butler sat himself down and edited his eloquence. The passages I have quoted are from the speech as given to the newspapers, September 24, 1914; but now see how it reads as published in Butler’s book, “America in Ferment.” “The contention, always stupid and often insincere,” is softened to “the contention, always made with more emphasis than reasonableness.” The argument which was “invented by the war-makers who have munitions of war to sell” now becomes an argument which was “invented by those who really believe in war and in armaments as ends in themselves.” That lets out Marcellus Hartley, you see; in fact, it lets out Butler’s friend the Kaiser, and everybody in the world since Genghis Khan. The proposed plank for the Republican party’s presidential platform, providing for a government monopoly of the manufacture and sale of munitions of war, has been dropped overboard and lost forever; while the phrase about “increasing the military and naval establishments and expenditures of the United States” has been deftly turned into “asking the United States to desist from its attempts to promote a new international order in the world!” Let nobody expect that Nicholas Miraculous will abandon his charge of that half million dollars a year of Carnegie money!

After this you will be prepared for any amount of hedging. President Butler had for ten years been conducting with President Wheeler of the University of California an ardent rivalry for the affections of the Kaiser; but now the interlocking directorate is going to “can the Kaiser,” and their university president is going to enlist in the speech-making brigade. Wheeler of California is three thousand miles away from the seat of authority, 47but Butler gets the “tip” in time, and saves himself by climbing out on the faces of those who took seriously his belief in universal peace.

For example, Leon Fraser, the young instructor who has been set to work organizing peace societies in American colleges, including Columbia! President Butler had sent a dean to ask Professor Beard to take Fraser into his department; now he sent the dean to ask Beard to drop Fraser again. Professor Beard, who has a capacity for indignation, told the dean that Fraser had done what he had been employed to do, and had done it sincerely and capably, therefore it was his intention to propose Fraser for a full professorship; and then Beard showed the dean to the door. Beard took the matter to the members of his department, and they agreed unanimously that Fraser should be promoted.

Knowing Butler as you now do, you will understand that he marked two more victims on his blacklist. One was Fraser and the other was Beard. Fraser was got rid of quickly; as soon as America entered the war, Butler announced that Columbia would not need so many professors, so he dropped three, Fraser among them. Subsequently he took back the other two; but Fraser meantime had enlisted. The dean remarked to a friend of mine, a Columbia professor, how fortunate it was that Fraser had gone to the war, so that a scandal over the question of his dismissal had been avoided. “Yes,” replied my friend, “and wouldn’t it be fortunate if he were shot to pieces, so that he could never come back and tell how Columbia treated him?”

The next experience in order of time is that of Professors Cattell and Dana; but since we have seen Beard put on the blacklist, perhaps we had better finish his story. Charles A. Beard is a sincere and determined fighter; incidentally, he is one of America’s leading economists and scholars. There was an uproar in the newspapers over the charge that a labor leader, speaking at a civic center in a New York public school, had said: “To hell with the stars and stripes.” He didn’t really say it, as you may read in “The Brass Check,” page 344. But the New York papers reported that he said it, so it was proposed to close all the civic centers in the schools. Professor Beard at 48a public meeting stated that he did not think it was wise to close all the schools to the public, just because one labor leader was reported to have said, “To hell with the stars and stripes.” So next morning one of the New York newspapers reported that Professor Beard of Columbia University had defended a labor leader for saying “To hell with the stars and stripes.”

So now behold our professor summoned before the interlocking trustees in solemn conclave! They demanded to know what he had said, and he told them, and then, thinking that the incident was closed, he started to leave the room. But one of them called to him, and to the consternation of this leading economist and scholar, he was grilled for half an hour concerning his beliefs and teachings, by two members of the board—Frederick R. Coudert, lawyer, and director of a trust company, a safe deposit company and a surety company; and Francis S. Bangs, lawyer, and director in five express companies, a trust company, a savings bank, and a water power corporation. They demanded his views on war and peace, on Americanism and the constitution, on capitalism and the rights of property; and when they had satisfied themselves that he did not believe anything for which he could be arrested, they dismissed him, with orders to warn all others in his department “against teachings likely to inculcate disrespect for American institutions.” Professor Beard went back to his colleagues, and reported this extraordinary scene, and the members of his department burst into roars of laughter; asking whether among the “American institutions” for which they were to “teach respect” the trustees included Tammany Hall and the pork barrel!

Shortly after this it was announced that the trustees had appointed a special committee to investigate the ideas which were being taught at Columbia. “The Committee on the State of Teaching,” it was called, and its members were four lawyers and one banker. The response of the faculty was to meet and protest, and appoint a committee of nine to defend themselves. The Faculty Council adopted a very strong resolution on the subject of academic freedom—which resolution, be it noted, was afterwards suppressed.

49The Columbia faculty at this time was preparing for real action, and Butler had his hands full smoothing them down. He sent one of his deans to see Professor Beard, and plead with him not to push the issue; the trustees had learned their lesson, said Butler, the incident would never be repeated. Also, if Beard forced the matter he would greatly inconvenience Butler, who was just then in trouble with his trustees because of his pacifist activities. No more professors would be dismissed from Columbia, except with the consent of their departments, so Butler promised; but he kept this promise no more than he kept others. Soon afterwards he got rid of Leon Fraser, and after that of another member of the faculty. Butler had promised that all nominations for promotion should come from the faculty; but soon afterwards he sent an ambassador to Beard, to say that a certain man whom the department proposed to promote would be refused promotion by the trustees; so the man was not named for promotion—and Butler was able to go on saying that all moves for promotion in Columbia came from the various departments! Professor Beard had had enough, and handed in his resignation, in which he paid his respects to “the few obscure and willful trustees who now dominate the university and terrorize the young instructors.” Discussing the subject of academic tenure, he said: “The status of a professor in Columbia is lower than that of a manual laborer.”