Only a couple of weeks before I met President Birge, another annual convention of the Associated Press took place in New York, and I repeated my challenge to this gathering, and sent a copy to every managing editor, and also every publisher, of the thirteen hundred Associated Press newspapers in the United States. No attention was paid to these communications, and not one single Associated Press newspaper was willing to demand that the Associated Press should produce the report on “The Brass Check,” which it had officially announced it was preparing.
I showed President Birge also how the students of his own Social Science Club had tried in vain to get the Associated Press to answer me. Their first request, that the Associated Press should send a representative to meet me on a university platform, had met with no reply; a second and very sharp letter had brought the response that no responsible newspaper man would be willing to meet me on a platform. Any newspaper man will realize the absurdity of this statement. The A. P. could find a man in any city—if they could furnish him with the facts!
Then I set forth to President Birge my qualifications as an orator in university halls; as it happened, I came within his specifications, in that I had supported the government during the war. I came of a long line of American ancestors; my grandfather and my great-grandfather had been captains in the United States Navy, and my great-great-grandfather had commanded the frigate “Constitution.” I had had nine years of college and university life, and was a married man of good moral character. Also, I mentioned that it was not my intention to discuss the newspapers, but to lecture on “The College Student and the Modern Crisis.” All these facts the elderly zoologist politely received, and told me that if I would embody them in a letter to him he would oblige me by a reply not later than noon of the next day.
I wrote the letter, and received the reply, which was that President Birge would not change his decision, but that if the board of regents saw fit to grant my request, they would be at liberty to do so. Thereupon I gave to the press my letter to President Birge and his reply, and also an interview in which I stated that the president had afforded me an exceedingly good example of my thesis “that educational institutions are controlled by special privilege,” and that I would give up my intention of lecturing on “The College Student and the Modern Crisis” in Madison, and instead would discuss the subject of free speech in universities. The effect of which announcement was that the superintendent of the high school took fright, and withdrew permission for me to speak in his auditorium!