Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education онлайн

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ssss1. See files of Public Service Commission, City of Philadelphia.

You may have been puzzled as you read this book to understand why the plutocracy should be so anxious to own universities and colleges; but now you can understand. If you own a university or college, neither you nor your friends can ever be sent to jail, and no matter what crimes you may commit, you can always be made respectable again. This was proven in the case of the gas chief, for shortly afterwards the U. G. I. came back into control of the city, and the gas chief was reappointed to his office! It is interesting to note that the grand duke of Muhlenberg College who arranged this honor for the gas chief is Colonel Trexler, president of a lumber company, a cement company, a trolley company and a telephone company, and author of the wittiest remark now current in the educational world: “I believe that colleges should grow by degrees!”

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Before we go on with this story we should make the acquaintance of the executive head of the University of U. G. I., who bears the title of provost instead of president. From 1911 to 1921 he was Edgar Smith, a former professor of chemistry, who had been all his life an active henchman of the interlocking directorate and its political machine. He attended the Chicago convention in 1912 as a delegate from Pennsylvania, and voted for Taft as a candidate. He was intimate with the contractor-politician who ran the political machine of Philadelphia; he defended this man in public, and freely defended other political crooks, while denying his deans and professors the right to take part in politics in opposition to such crooks. When he took office the trustees promised they would finance the university, but this promise was not kept, so he had to go to the politicians every year and spend weeks begging for a subsidy, and being scolded for the improper activities of his faculty.