All we can say about that is, how fortunate that so few Bolsheviks take part in athletics!
CHAPTER LIII THE UNIVERSITY OF JUDGE GARY
There is another great ruling class munition-factory in the vicinity of Chicago, Northwestern University, at Evanston, Illinois. It is one of those terrible places, of which there are scores in the United States, which began as little church institutions, and by the grace of graft have grown to enormous size. Northwestern is Methodist, and has some ten thousand strictly pious students, and over six hundred instructors, and not a rag of an idea to cover its bare bones. The man who was until last year its president fitted himself for that office by being the university’s “Director of the Bureau of Salesmanship Research.” The first vice-president of the university is the general counsel of the Illinois Steel Company; the third vice-president is vice-president of the Illinois Steel Company; while the grand duke is the very grandest of all grand dukes in the United States—that prince of open shoppers and potentate of reaction, Judge Gary, chairman of the United States Steel Corporation!
For many years previously the leading grand duke was James A. Patten, the grain speculator, whose million dollar corner in wheat was the sensation of my boyhood. Mr. Patten began life as a clerk in a country store, and his claim to direct a great educational institution is based upon his acquaintance with the grain commission business, one of the most thoroughly organized of American swindles. Mr. Patten is director of two national banks, a trust company, a grain company, and an Edison company. He is a malignant “open shopper,” and during his reign at Northwestern waged incessant war upon two or three liberals who got into the place.
One of these men was Professor Gray, whom we have already met at the University of Minnesota. Gray managed to stick at Northwestern for sixteen years. He taught economics; a liberal colleague taught psychology, and the president of the university remarked to a friend of mine that these were the two hardest departments he had to administer, because one touched on religion and the other on the pocket-book! Gray was handicapped in the usual way by low salaries and lack of promotion for himself and his assistants. For many years he tried to get Harry Ward as assistant, but could never manage it.