A professor at North Dakota, who got to know President Kane very well, describes him to me in these words: “He has less sense of honor than any man I ever knew.” It was not long before he had proved his incapacity in North Dakota, and there was a storm of protest concerning him; by way of defending himself he set up the claim that the opposition was due to his refusal to appoint nominees of the Non-partisan League to posts as teachers. The statement was absurd on the face of it, because all nominations were made by the heads of departments; but it served to bring the support of the reactionaries. I am told on good authority that President Kane made a deal with the I. V. A.—“Independent Voters’ Association,” camouflage for big business—that he was to be retained and allowed to “swing the axe,” in return for his using the university influence against the Non-partisan League.
The president had an organization all ready-made, in the fraternities and sororities; and in 1920, when the faculty petitioned for his removal, he and his reactionaries went to these groups for support. They incited a student rebellion—and I find this especially significant, in view of the insistence of all interlocking trustees and newspapers upon academic order and authority. What could be more shocking to a believer in propriety than for college students to organize and try to force the hands of their superiors? But of course that does not apply in a case where the sons of bankers and railroad attorneys and public utility magnates are endeavoring to cripple a political movement of “rubes” and “hicks” and “hayseeds.”
The active agent in this student rebellion was the wife of an employe of the Grand Forks “Herald,” whose owner, Mr. Jerry Bacon, represents the Twin City milling and railroad interests in North Dakota. Mr. Bacon had fought the movement for faculty control, calling it “sovietism in the university.” I am told by one of his friends that in this matter of the student uprising he went up to Minneapolis and got his orders from Louis Hill, son and heir of “Jesse James.” Whether he got the money from Mr. Hill I do not know, but I do know that the presses of his newspaper printed cards, supposed to be voicing the students of the university, urging the student-body to refuse to attend classes of those professors who demanded the president’s resignation. A student strike to keep President Kane in office! It must have been much pleasanter for him than that other strike, back in Washington, when the students made rhymes denouncing the crimes and rejecting the chimes of the Seattle “Times”!