The interlocking directorate of Colorado maintains also a state university at Boulder, on the Colorado and Southern Railroad; which road has a trustee of Williams College for president, and a General Theological Seminary trustee for director. The standards of academic freedom prevailing at the University of Colorado are very interestingly revealed in a case which occurred seven years ago.
During the coal strike of 1914, the operators and their militia set aside the constitution of the United States in the Southern counties of the state, and one professor at the law school took a stand against their action. The operators had burned and suffocated three women and eleven children at Ludlow, and Professor James W. Brewster accepted the chairmanship of a public committee to investigate the strike situation. In peril, not merely of his job, but of his life, he spent several weeks in the coal fields, questioning witnesses and bringing out evidence. He was the means of forcing an investigation by Congress, and he appeared and testified before the Congressional Committee. His subsequent dismissal from the university was investigated by the American Association of University Professors, and their report lies before me. I will state briefly the facts admitted, and the contentions of both parties to the dispute, and leave it for the reader to form his own conclusions.
Professor Brewster was nearly fifty-nine years of age, and the president of the university claims that on this account his appointment to the university had been merely temporary, and that this was fully made clear to Professor Brewster. Professor Brewster denies that he had any such understanding. It was admitted by both the president and the dean of the law school that Brewster’s teaching was “entirely satisfactory.” Says the report:
The testimony of students in his law classes is that Professor Brewster in the class room adhered strictly to the subjects he was teaching and made no allusions whatever to industrial questions. The courses that he was teaching did not in any way involve the issues that were then agitating Colorado. Immediately after Professor Brewster’s testifying in December he was abusively attacked by several Colorado newspapers in unrestrained language and with the most unreasonable distortion and exaggeration of the tenor of his testimony. According to the testimony of President Farrand, E. M. Ammons, then Governor of Colorado, called up President Farrand by telephone soon after Mr. Brewster’s appearance before the Commission in Denver, and urged the immediate dismissal of Professor Brewster because of his testimony.
The president of the university asserts that he refused the governor’s request. That was in December, 1914; in May, 1915, Professor Brewster was invited to come to Washington, to give his testimony before the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. Professor Brewster went to the president of the university, and stated that he had been able to arrange for a colleague to take his classes for the few days of his absence. As to what happened next there is a disagreement. Professor Brewster claims that the president told him that if he went to Washington his connection with the university must cease at once. The president, in his statement to the committee of the association, gives his version of the interview as follows:
I told him that I regarded the publicity which had attended his former testimony as detrimental in its effect upon the university. In the inflamed condition of public sentiment in Colorado at that time it was exploited in a way which I regarded as unfortunate. His connection with the university was made prominent in the inaccurate publicity which resulted and the institution was drawn thereby into a controversy, and an attitude attributed to the university as an institution, which I regarded as unwarranted and unfortunate. In further discussion of this point and in illustrating the prejudice aroused by the testimony, I cited the feeling expressed by members of the Legislature and reported to me during the legislative session of 1915. I used some expression to the effect that his public statements regarding the industrial situation had been an obstacle in the university’s effort to obtain additional support from the Legislature. I did not, as I recall it, lay any stress upon this and mentioned it incidentally as an illustration and matter of interest at the moment. I stated that in view of the inaccurate publicity and the involvement of the university at the time of his previous appearance before the Federal Commission, I thought it would be desirable, in case he decided to go to Washington, that a statement should be issued indicating the temporary nature of his connection with the university and that that connection would naturally terminate at the end of the academic year.
The outcome of the matter was that Professor Brewster decided not to go to Washington; nevertheless, he was dropped from the University of Colorado. It is interesting to note that among those who were retained at the University was Dr. John Chase, who will live in American history as the man responsible for the Ludlow massacre. He was adjutant-general of the Colorado militia at the time, and an unscrupulous partisan of the coal operators. Among the regents at the time was Mr. C. C. Parks, politician, banker, coal company director, and furious opponent of the strikers. Among the law faculty who fought Professor Brewster was Professor A. A. Reed, whose law partner was engaged in prosecuting a number of the former strikers. Professor Reed, a former bank president, was at this time an official of a national bank in Denver, and a director of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, Mr. Rockefeller’s concern which put through the Ludlow massacre. I am interested to note that another member of the faculty who is not objected to is Professor L. W. Cole, director of the School of Social Service, who last summer recommended to the students of his summer school Vice-President Coolidge’s magazine articles on the “Red menace,” a farrago of foolishness gathered by the Lusk committee and their secret agents.
Also we ought to have a glance at Colorado College, located at Colorado Springs; a co-educational institution started by the Congregational Church, and now conducted by the interlocking directorate. They had a first-class business man for president, but there were brought against him “serious charges of indiscreet and improper conduct toward two women employed in the college offices.” Now, of course, the business men who run the government of Colorado, in conjunction with the brothels and wine-rooms, understand that college presidents have to have their little pleasures in off hours; but some of the faculty thought that college presidents ought to have these pleasures somewhere off the campus. They endeavored privately to force the resignation of the president; whereat the trustees became furious, and fired a dean who had been active in the matter. When the students organized and protested, they contemptuously rejected the students’ demands.
This matter likewise was investigated by the American Association of University Professors, and it happened that I studied their report before I knew anything about the trustees and their financial position. It was rather funny; I read what the trustees said to the professors, and how they behaved in the various conferences; I read their letters, and found myself thinking: this must be a rich man, and so must this; here must be the grand duke, the fellow who runs the place! Then I looked them up in “Who’s Who,” and, sure enough, there they were—Mr. Philip B. Stewart, mining and public utility magnate, an active Republican politician; and Mr. Irving Howbert, president of a bank, a gold mining company and a railroad, also an active Republican politician!
Would you like to hear one of these grand dukes addressing his college professors, gathered together to be taught their place? Listen to the affidavit of Professor George M. Howe:
The meeting was opened by Mr. P. B. Stewart, chairman of the executive committee of the Board. Mr. Stewart berated us soundly for what we had done.... His mains points were that we had been guilty of sending libelous matter through the mail, for which we might well be sent to the penitentiary; that we had given the slanderous charges against Dr. Slocum into the hands of persons who should know nothing of them, since our letters would come into the hands of private secretaries of the men to whom they were sent; and that we had made the completion of the five hundred thousand dollar fund for the College impossible, since the Trustees, who were large contributors, would now withhold their subscriptions. His purpose was apparently to make us feel that our conduct had been thoroughly idiotic and ill-advised in every respect.
And then hear the summing up of the American Association of University Professors:
“The committee feels constrained to remark, further, that the attitude of the majority of the members of the Board of Trustees and of the Board as a body towards the faculty has been characterized by grave discourtesy, a lack of openness and candor, and an habitual disregard of the fact that the administrative officers and teaching staff of a college have large and definite moral responsibilities in relation to the internal conditions and standards of the institution with which they are connected.”
The outcome of the whole matter was that the graduating class of the college fell off from eighty to twenty-six; but the interlocking trustees waited. They held the purse-strings, and they knew that the incident would be forgotten, and the students would come back—which they did.
Also the plutocracy of Colorado maintains an institution for training its engineers and mining experts; this is the Colorado School of Mines, located at Golden. Here also there was trouble, because on “Senior Day” some of the students got drunk and beat up a member of the faculty at a baseball game. Naturally, the president and the faculty resented this, and they suspended five of the students, and there was a great uproar, culminating in a student strike. This incident also was investigated by the Association of University Professors, and I studied the report before I knew anything about the various trustees. Here again I was able to pick out the grand duke by his bad manners, and by the way everybody cringed before him when he came down from Cripple Creek to deal with the row. He is Mr. A. E. Carlton, president of four banks and of several mining companies.
Naturally, so great a man realized the absurdity of suspending the sons of the plutocracy, merely for the beating up of a college professor! With the help of Captain Smith, another member of the board, he settled the strike by reinstating the suspended students and forcing the resignation of the protesting president. The board put in a former president of the college, who had been dismissed for cause, but who was exactly the sort of fellow they wanted, as you can see from the sworn testimony of seven different professors, to the effect that he had lowered the teaching standards of the college by insisting again and again that the sons of the plutocracy should be given passing marks after they had failed. The committee of university professors states that “Professor H. B. Patton, for twenty-four years a member of the faculty, informed the Committee that President Alderson condoned cheating on the part of a son of an influential Denver citizen.” Says Professor Albert G. Wolf: “Many students at the school during Alderson’s administration were allowed to pass, after having failed in their studies, because they were either athletes or relations of influential men of Colorado.” Says Professor Stephen Worrell: “President Alderson arbitrarily raised the grades of some of the men I had either conditioned or failed.... Subsequent investigation revealed that the men whose grades had been raised were relatives of prominent politicians in the State. I found on inquiry that the same thing had happened to other members of the faculty, but that they had all accepted the situation as inevitable.”
This controversy was settled by the dismissal of several of the protesting professors, and by the appointment of a committee of the state legislature, which investigated the situation and reported in the following apposite words:
In conclusion, your Committee finds that the management and administration of the School of Mines is efficient, the trustees, officers, and faculty competent, well qualified, and trustworthy, and that the institution, members, officers, faculty, and trustees are entitled to the support, respect, and encouragement of the citizens of this State, the alumni of the institution, and the general public. Your Committee is of the opinion that the institution will flourish and its excellent reputation be maintained if it receives the encouragement and patronage to which it is so justly entitled.