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

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These ferocious old men who had conscripted themselves to make money out of the war were not content to get rid of a too-independent professor; they wished to brand him for life, so they rushed to the press with a statement charging him with “treason,” “sedition,” and “obstruction to the enforcement of the laws of the United States.” And this although Professor Cattell was actively engaged in psychological work for the army, and his only son who was of war age had already volunteered! Professor Cattell, in his counter-statement, referred to the trustees as “men whose horizon is bounded by the two sides of Wall Street with Trinity Church at the end.” He described the university as a place “overrun with intrigue and secret diplomacy.” He said of President Butler: “He has run the university as a department store, playing the part of both proprietor and floor walker to the faculty, while an errand boy to the trustees.”^[A] Cattell brought suit for libel and threatened to sue for the pension to which he was entitled. The trustees waited several years, until the libel case was about to come up for trial, and then admitted their guilt by paying forty-five thousand dollars of the university’s money.money.