THE AGGRESSIONS OF AMERICAN WEALTH. D IMING the Presidential campaign last
year a remarkable letter written by one of the Professors in the Stanford University of California was given to the public by the Literary Bureau of the party who supported Mr. Bryan for the Presidency. The writer of this letter asserted that none of the instructors in the Colleges of the Eastern States were free to speak on the financial ques- tion. He cited by name several instances of academic teachers who had been silenced by the wealthy men who rule the Colleges, or at least who rule many of them, and he went on to specify Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, the President of the Brown University, who has been for years a very strong bimetallist, and who was, we believe, the sole academic teacher or official in the Eastern States who supported the candidature of Mr. Bryan. According to the writer we are quoting, it was privately asserted by a well-known Professor of Political Economy that "President Andrews must certainly be forced out of the Presidency of Brown University." What was pre- dicted nine months ago has apparently come to pass, for it seems that Dr. Andrews has been forced into a resignation that could scarcely have been voluntary, and which has made such a stir that expressions of indigna- tion were heard even in so uncongenial an atmosphere as that of the Senate Chamber of the United States. It may be said that Brown University is situated in Providence, the capital of Rhode Island, which, by a strange freak of fortune, is the State founded by Roger Williams to secure that mental freedom denied by the stern Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. The University is an old foundation, but it has recently made great strides, and it has come to the front largely through the able administration of the very man who is now forced to sever his connection with it. Dr. Andrews is so important and recognised an autho- rity on finance that he was appointed by President Harrison a delegate to the Brussels Monetary Conference, and his work in favour of bimetallism has been regarded as the best exponent of that side of the currency controversy in the United States. He is also a man of wide learning, powerful intellect, and the very highest character. If the case of Dr. Andrews stood alone, if it had not been heralded by the striking document issued during the Presidential campaign, if it were at all probable that a very successful administrator had voluntarily resigned, in the prime of life, a position which he had been filling with singular success, nothing more need be said. But the case of Dr. Andrews does not stand alone. During the last ten or a dozen years many rich men have secured no little renown by endowing either new or existing Colic gee and Universities in the United States. The American College Year Book gives a presumably accurate account of the income and resources of the numerous seats of learning in the United States, and from its pages we discover that immense gifts by wealthy men have raised some of the leading American Universities to heights of affluence which might well excite the envy of Oxford and Cambridge. Among others, the new University of Chicago is conspicuous. Its chief benefactors are Mr. Rockefeller, head of the Standard Oil Corporation, and another gentleman less known to those who watch the American millionaires. The benefactors of the University of Chicago are largely interested in gas com- panies. Among the teachers in the University was Professor Edward W. Bernis, who vigorously denounced certain private monopolies, and who advocated the municipalising of gas and all other public services in the hands of private corporations. Though no fault had been found with him as a teacher, he was, nevertheless. summarily dismissed ; and as he had been threatened before the bolt fell, it was assumed in Chicago and all over the United States (the case attracting general attention) that the advocacy of municipal gas and the dismissal of its advocate were related as cause and effect. If, there- fore, we connect the cases of Dr. Andrews and Professor Bernie, and if we still further recall the prediction made last year, we can scarcely escape the conclusion that a conspiracy exists in America to interfere with freedom of teaching in the Universities, so far as economic questions are concerned. We may add that in the University of Wisconsin the charge of "Anarchist" was brought against so well-known a writer and teacher as Professor Richard T. Ely, who, so far from being an Anarchist, is a leading member of the Christian Social Union connected with the Episcopal Church, and whose head in England is Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham. The absurd charge was solemnly investigated by the Regents of the University and dismissed. There is thin: good prinul-facie ground for believing that the heads (A the Trusts in the United States have determined to lay their hands on the Universities and to control the economic teaching given there, so that nothing shall be uttered which has not the hall-mark of monopolist approval.
How serious is the condition thus created for the American people is apparent to every one. The nation which, like Brutus, worshipped "Liberty," like him finds it but a shade. The nation which started on its great career with Republican formulas taken almost direct from the " Contrlit Social," is reduced almost to the situation in which Russia finds herself. In one case academi, censorship is exercised by public officials, in the other by wealthy magnates who have " cornered " all the chief necessaries of daily life. To be sure, American "liberty" has always been found consistent with not a little of practical tyranny. In the old slavery days not a single church or College south of "Mason's and Dixon's lints," and only a few north of that boundary, dared utter a word of protest against the traffic in human flesh. Even to-day theological thought is far less free than in Western Europe, and some recent prosecutions of able and devoted scholars have been a, scandal alike to culture and religion. Everything in America, from the written Federal Con- stitution downward, seems exacting, clear-cut, inviting antagonism, and providing for no easily reached modus vivendi between the contending parties. The American people have been, it seems to us, too content to worship the forms of liberty, and to let the substance often slip from their grasp. But since the overthrow of slavery amid a human holocaust terrible to contemplate, no form of substantial freedom has been so little regarded there as economic freedom. It may, of course, be said that the economic conditions of the United States are only those of the world at large carried to a logical issue. The right of accumulation within the law is, it will be said, the foundation of our present economic order, and that right has been exercised by the fittest in America, by the Goulds, Rockefellers, Mackays, and they have survived : that is all.
But so far as our own country is concerned, this con- tention is scarcely true. Wealth here has been mainly created (we are not speaking of the old landed families) under conditions either of fair competition, or with the odds somewhat against us by reason of foreign tariffs. But in the United States, Congress and the State Legis- latures have been parties to the accumulation of private wealth, tariffs being elaborately devised in obedience to outside interested dictation. The railway monopolies a the West have received as sheer gifts hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, which were supposed to be held by public authority for the benefit of actual settlers. The Treasury is in the banking business, and it has more than once—notably in the last public loan of Mr. Cleveland— played into the hands of the great bankers, so that one firm coined millions in a few hours. All through we see the phenomenon of Government partnership with private monopolies, or, as Mr. Lowell put it in "The Pious Editor's Creed," of converting public trusts into very private uses. We do not say there is no case of a bad and rotten monopoly here ; we know that swindling companies and their dishonest " promoters " are even more general here than in the United States. But here the victim is usually the gull who believes in lying prospectuses and newspaper paragraphs ; in the United States the whole public is made a victim by public official participation in what ought to be a purely private enterprise,—i.e., a "natural" evolution of capital. The outcome of this, in a word, has been to create an economic despotism which the masses in America, especially in the West, are beginning to see is entirely at variance with the professed ideas on which the American Republic rests. On the one hand we have the supposed "free and equal" citizens ; on the other hand Mr. Rockefeller, with his tens of millions, and the victims of an artificial and " protected " corporation. Now, just as soon as this monopoly has reached out its hand to destroy economic freedom, it finds itself compelled to meet public criticism. Being audacious beyond any recent Old World experience, the great capitalists of America are determined to capture free opinion and to prevent criticism. They subsidise pulpits, they buy the Press, they seat their well-paid attorneys in the United States Senate, and at length they stretch their hands over the Colleges, which it is easy to capture by examples of generosity. Thus their design is to prevent any effective action which shall in any way weaken their authority or undermine their position. Their object cannot be mere wealth-making, for they already enjoy wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Apparently their intention is first to convert the United States into a powerful oligarchy, and then to extend the sway of that oligarchy over other lands.
Now we need not say that we do not find in bimetallism any solution of the economic problem of America or any other country. But we readily admit the existence of respectable authorities on that side. The present British and French Cabinets contain bimetallists of standing, and in not a few of the leading European Universities the Professors of Economics advocate the silver cause. Men like the late M. de Litveleye, like the late M. Cernuschi, like the late Dr. F. A. Walker, like M. MOine, Mr. Balfour, Professor Fox well, take the bimetallist view. But think of Mr. Fox well being dismissed from the chair of Political Economy at University College because of his views on currency ! Think of Professor Marshall being dis- missed from the chair of Political Economy at Cam- bridge because he favours municipal ownership of public services ! Even the German Emperor leaves Professor Wagner alone at Berlin University, while Dr. Schaeffie, a semi-Collectivist, was Finance Minister in Austria. The late Mr. Thorold Rogers was notoriously elected to his chair at Oxford by men who avowedly disbelieved in his political, and largely disbelieved in his economic, opinions. It is reserved for the " free " West to dismiss from academic service tried and competent teachers at the bidding of rings of millionaires who will not hear one single criticism or questioning of the justice or necessity of their doings, or of the character and tendency of the Trusts they have built up with the aid and at the expense of the public. The divine right of Kings is to be succeeded by the divine right of millionaires, who are to run everything, including the American Senate and the conscience and intellect of University Professors ! It is none of our duty to say how the American people should deal with the portentous growth of that money power which overshadows the institutions of the Republic. But we think that the rich men of America are revealing such a deadly plot against all genuine public freedom that, unless we are mistaken, the opening years of the new century will witness an outburst in the West which will amaze the civilised world.
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