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

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I turn over my notes; the people of New York are struggling in the grip of rapacious landlords, and here comes Samuel McCune Lindsay, Professor of Social Legislation at Columbia University, with a pamphlet to demonstrate that there is really no shortage of apartments, but on the contrary a surplus of thirty thousand. The Lockwood Commission puts the professor on the stand and draws out the fact that he was paid five hundred dollars by the Real Estate Board for the writing of this pamphlet. Samuel Untermyer, counsel of the commission, characterizes Prof. Lindsay’s figures as “absurd,” and forces the professor to admit that he made no actual investigation, and has “no practical knowledge.”

I turn to another page. Dr. Albert Shiels is superintendent of the public schools of Los Angeles in the year 1919, and at the height of the White Terror in America he publishes in President Butler’s “Educational Review” an article denouncing the Soviet government. At a mass meeting in Los Angeles the chairman states that he has made count of the errors of fact in this article, and they total one hundred and twenty-four. Louise Bryant, just returned from Russia, is at the meeting, and the audience votes to send a challenge to Dr. Shiels to debate with her. Someone in the audience puts up a two hundred dollar Liberty Bond to pay Dr. Shiels, and the audience contributes over twelve hundred dollars to give publicity to the debate. Dr. Shiels is invited to appear, and his answer is: “I believe it is contrary to good public policy to place Bolshevism and its practices on a par with debatable questions”—an answer which so delights President Butler that he calls Dr. Shiels to New York, to become Associate Director of the Institute of Educational Research of Columbia University!