As this manuscript goes to the printer, “The Goose-step” has been before the public nine months. Approximately twenty-two thousand copies have been sold, and many of them have been going the rounds in colleges. I have a letter from one school teacher, who tells me that her copy has been read by forty others. In the “Bookman” for December, 1923, “The Goose-step” is listed third among non-fiction books most in demand in public libraries. I was told by an instructor at Stanford that some students had torn out the Stanford chapters from a dozen copies of the book, and had pasted these pages, elaborately marked in red ink, upon bulletin boards and upon the doors of their dormitories. A lecturer, who visited many colleges in all parts of the country, tells me that he found “The Goose-step” the principal topic of argument in faculty clubs; as he phrased it, the member would sit and debate: “Are we like that?”

A number of universities replied, directly or indirectly, to the book. The most emphatic of all was Harvard. Said President Lowell and his deans and his corporation: “Go to, we will show this varlet how much we care about him! Let us tell the world how proud we are to be the University of Lee-Higginson, with J. P. Morgan connections!” What happened then was reported in the Boston “American”:

Also the University of California made answer to “The Goose-step”; there was a vacancy on the board of regents, and the governor appointed the chief of the Black Hand, Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles “Times.” The alumni of the university also took action; they engaged as their secretary, an agent of the Power Trust, at a salary of ten thousand a year! There are thirty-five thousand alumni, you understand, and to be able to control them means to control the state. This new agent was formerly editor of the “Electrical World,” and was on the list of the kept speakers of the Power Trust during the recent campaign against public ownership; he was put in his new job by Attorney Earl, who runs the board of regents for Banker Fleishhacker and Publisher Chandler.

I have pointed out in “The Goose-step” that an actual majority of the regents of this university are Power Trust officials or attorneys; and the same is true of the council which controls the alumni. I have nothing more important to tell you than this, because hydro-electric power is the issue of our time; the Power Trust is today what the railroads and Standard Oil were a generation ago, the chief active corrupter of our public life. At the last meeting of the National Electric Light Association they brought up an elaborate program for “getting the university professors, holding “institutes” for them, employing them to write literature, and giving them jobs in local public utilities. This report was not formally adopted—it was thought not to be “tactful”; they would just put it through without saying anything!

Professor Vladimir Karapetoff, of the College of Engineering at Cornell, sends to a friend of mine samples of the poison dope which is being fed to college professors. This particular dose comes from Philip Torchio, a high-salaried engineer for a number of electrical companies; it is sent free, and for no particular reason that the recipient knows. The subject is “depreciation,” the substance of the argument being that public utilities never depreciate, and so dividends should be collected on the basis of the original cost! This argument is signed by two supposed-to-be public officials, both of whom turn out to be on the pay-roll of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, a Standard Oil concern. One of them began his life as an active “reformer” in New York, then became counsel for the Public Service Commission at fifteen thousand dollars a year, and prepared a case for the people against the Consolidated Gas Company. On the very day that the case came to trial he went over to the gas company, and became their chief counsel, and carried over to their side every particle of the evidence which he had prepared for the benefit of the public!

That is just one incident, to show you how the dice are loaded against you in the world of education. In every great university throughout the United States today there are rascals of this sort, posing as scientists, and carrying on intrigues against the public welfare. And every instructor in high school, and every professor in colleges who touches on such subjects meets these intriguers with the dice loaded against him; that is, he knows that to oppose the rascals means to forfeit promotion, and perhaps his job.

How beautifully the Black Hand has got the professors frightened in the universities of California was proven by George P. West, who formed an organization to work for the repeal of the criminal syndicalism law. He got the backing of the Episcopal bishop and the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, and it was proposed to have some university professor prepare an entirely disinterested study of the actual workings of this law. Mr. West wrote to the professor of economics at Stanford, asking him to name a competent man; he received in reply a cold letter, declining his request. He went to talk with the economics men at the University of California, and not one of them was willing to meet him in the faculty room; they asked him to take a walk! Not one of these young instructors or research men was willing to take the job, even with a good salary attached, and with the backing of two bishops!

Another instance: I don’t want to indicate the identity of this informant, so will call him professor of Chinese metaphysics at a large California university. He gave me some information for “The Goose-step,” and because of the nature of this information he fell under suspicion, and the Black Hand set out to punish him. This eminent specialist has a standard text-book on Chinese metaphysics, in use everywhere in colleges and universities throughout the United States. It is the most up-to-date book on the subject, there is no other as good, or anywhere near as good; nevertheless, this book has been thrown out of the three biggest institutions in the state of California!

The University of California has a large branch in Los Angeles, and this also made reply to “The Goose-step.” A young lady presented a copy of the book to the library, and a few days later was requested to come and take the contaminating thing away. (But the demand grew so pressing, they had to let it in!) Then came their professor of education, a gentleman by the name of Woellner, before the American Civil Liberties Union, stating that “The Goose-step” was “full of vicious lies.” I wrote him a courteous note, saying that I never wilfully made a false statement, and would appreciate his pointing out the specific “lies” he had noted. The professor in his reply gave no specifications, but explained that I “state but half the truth.” He went on to put me in my precise place:

I will make you a bet—that this flag-waving professor becomes a dean inside two years!

Also Stanford makes answer; just as the last of this manuscript is going to the printer, a new regent is appointed, Mr. Paul Shoup, vice-president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and perhaps the most active union smasher in the state. Ten or fifteen years ago we were told that Hiram Johnson had driven the Southern Pacific out of California politics. Today the Better America Federation openly controls the state legislature, and everybody takes it for granted that Mr. Shoup should dictate both nominations and legislation.

Nicholas Miraculous also made his answer to “The Goose-step”; and this is one of the funniest stories I have to tell you. You know that for six years our pious government has refused recognition to Soviet Russia, because it isn’t “democratic.” We always did business with the czar—he was “democratic,” but Lenin isn’t! Now, to test our sincerity, a ruffian rises in Italy, and his thugs beat and murder the Socialists of that country, and set up a castor-oil dictatorship. Does our pious government refuse to recognize him? Our pious government falls on his neck. He sends us an ambassador, and our great universities rush forward to do him honor, and testify their devotion to the dictatorship of the capitalist class. A string of American plutocrats, headed by Judge Gary, go over to Italy and make obeisance before him, and come back to tell us what a great man he is, and what a fine example he has set us.

So the young snobs of Columbia proceed to organize a castor-oil society for their own university, and they make the assistant professor of Latin the head of their organization. Arturo Giovannitti writes to President Butler in protest: and what do you think Butler answers? He “has no power to discipline a professor for his ideas,” and his university “has through a long and honorable history lived up to the highest ideals of freedom to seek the truth and freedom to teach.” After that, pick up “The Goose-step” and read the half dozen chapters which tell how Nicholas Murray Butler kicked out professors for holding and teaching pacifist or radical ideas. Then you will understand what Alexander Harvey meant when he wrote in the “Freeman”:

To complete the story you must hear how President Butler’s students proceeded to apply his “highest ideals of freedom to seek the truth and freedom to teach.” Some members of the Students’ Reserve Corps were doing the goose-step on the campus, and some other students jeered at them from the dormitory windows. There was a fuss about it, and the commandant of the Reserve Corps wrote a letter to the “Spectator,” denouncing this disrespectful action. A graduate student of the university, by the name of William L. Werner, a veteran of the Argonne fighting, wrote to the “Spectator” in reply, stating that “someone should inform the major that the war is over.” That was “freedom to seek the truth and freedom to speak it,” according to President Butler’s formula; and seven students of the university applied the formula by coming to Werner’s room at midnight, blindfolding and binding him, taking him out into the country, beating him with sticks and barrel staves, and putting him through a cross-examination on “loyalty to the nation.” And while this was going on in New York, the new ambassador from Mussolini was being marched in the commencement procession at Yale University, alongside Chief Justice Taft of our Supreme Court, receiving the honorary degree of doctor of laws, and proceeding to teach to the assembled college men a lesson in elementary Fascism.

I have told how Clark University made answer to “The Goose-step,” by firing a dozen professors and getting an alumni whitewash. Also Syracuse University made answer through its new chancellor, whose baccalaureate sermon I find published in the “University Bulletin” for July, 1923. Talking confidentially with members of his faculty, Chancellor Flint admitted that I had “got Syracuse just about right”; after which he proceeded to mount the rostrum before the assembled booboisie of the city, and deliver a eulogy of Chancellor Day occupying twenty-four pages of the bulletin, and starting with the sentence: “Nor am I willing to allow Upton Sinclair’s clownish caricature to stand as the last message,” etc. One of the professors sends me this bulletin, with the comment: “This shows what a Methodist will do for a dollar!”

Also Amherst came forward to make its answer. I stated in “The Goose-step” that this college had a liberal president, Alexander Meiklejohn, who was making a brave fight against the interlocking directorate. “He is still in office, for how long I do not know.” This was published in March, and in June President Meiklejohn was fired, and a dozen of his graduating students had the courage to defend him by refusing their diplomas. It is amusing to notice that the grand duke of this board is Dwight L. Morrow of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Company. A friend of Mr. Morrow’s wrote to me, assuring me that he was really a liberal, working hard for academic freedom; so I forebore to list him among my interlocking directorate. Now I learn that he was the prime mover in the ousting of Meiklejohn! It is worth noting that the president of these trustees is the head of Ginn and Company, school-book publishers; and among the other board members is Cal Coolidge, our strike-breaking president, and Mr. Stearns, his department-store millionaire “angel”; also Chief Justice Rugg of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, who is interlocked with Clark University and Ginn and Company’s Mr. Thurber.