University of Virginia Library

Our Universities

Lincoln Independent, November 8, 1895

People do not seem to realize to what an extent our universities are being run to suit the views of the millionaires and corporations of the country. It is a subtle danger and it is to be regretted that the trustees and presidents of these institutions should think it necessary to curry favor with and cater to the views of such men as Rockefeller, Carnegie and Russell Sage in the fear that they may withhold pecuniary favors for endowments to the institutions under their charge.[1]

This leads them to discriminate in their choice of professors and teachers and those are likely to be chosen who lack the faculty of original thinking and full intellectual development and highest culture. Men subservient enough to regulate their utterances and smother their convictions of righteousness and truth to suit the views of a multi millionaire are not apt to be of a very high order and we need the very highest and best material in teachers for the coming generation if the nation is to be saved from the consequences of past and present mistakes in the management of affairs. There is no need of any starvation in a country teeming with plenty, or of striking workmen or of men out of work in a country full of undeveloped resources such as this. These things are not inevitable as so many people seem to imagine. These things can be prevented, together with the existence of multi millionaires by right management.

To discharge a professor from a university, one acknowledged to be a man of culture and whose talents as a teacher were recognized by his associates in the university work and by the students and the president himself to be of a very high order, because his views on the subject of a railroad strike and municipal ownership of public needs did not coincide with the views held by the president of a railroad corporation and manager of a gas trust company, is an outrage on the intelligence of the nineteenth century.

Prof. Bemis,[2] the teacher in question was not only all that we have described but also a man of high personal character and yet he was discharged from the Chicago university.

Prof. Bemis is not a socialist; he is not even advanced enough to be a populist, but he thinks it would be wise that our cities should gradually come to own in the interests of the people the street car lines, water works and gas works as is done in the cities of Glasgow and Birmingham. For this utterance "the then president of the so called gas trust refused in 1893 to render a financial favor to the university because Prof. Bemis was on the faculty."

For writing a monograph on this subject in the Review of Reviews the manager of the largest aggregation of gas works said to him "If we can't convert you we are going to down you."

When Prof. Bemis asserted that "the university ought to be in close touch with the labor question and monopoly problems." President Harper replied: "Yes, it is valuable work, and you are a good man to do it, but this may not be. This is not the institution where such work can be done." [3]

Prof. Bemis gave an address in the First Presbyterian church of Chicago July 15, 1894 and in that address occurred the following:

"If the railroads would expect their men to be law abiding they must set the example. Lot their open violation of the interstate commerce law and their relations to corrupt legislatures and assessors testify as to their part in this regard. I do not attempt to justify the strikers in their boycott on the railroads; but railroads themselves not long ago placed an offending road under the ban and refused to honor its tickets. Such boycotts on the part of the railroads are no more to be justified than is a boycott of the railroads by the strikers. Let there be some equality in the treatment of this things."

The rest of the address was a criticism on the strikers.

A prominent railroad president who was present said "It is an outrage. That a man in your position should dare to come here and imply that the railroads cannot come into court with clean hands is infamous."

President Harper wrote to Prof. Bemis that this address had caused him (Harper) much annoyance and that in the future he must be more careful in public utterances on questions that were agitating the minds of the people.

President Harper also said, "It is all very well to sympathize with the workingman, but we get our money from the other side, and we can't afford to offend them."

A wealthy and leading trustee of the university spoke on one occasion of "our side". When asked as to his meaning, he answered, " Why the capitalists' side of course."

Are our universities adopting the policy of barting out the best thought, moral character and intellectual development of the Nineteenth century because they clash with the ideas of men of such doubtful character and morality as the multi millionaires of our country who have made their money through dishonest speculation and gambling on change?

Rockefeller has given to the university of Chicago $3,000,000.

The intellectual advantages that the students may gain through the money will not offset the detriment to moral character, and the object lesson taught the students in the affair of Prof. Bemis and the Chicago university. It is humiliating.

Notes