The educational affairs of Idaho, both school and university, are in the hands of Dr. E. A. Bryan, chief administrative officer of the State Board of Education. I have before me a very sumptuous pamphlet, printed by this board a few months ago at the expense of the people of Idaho. It contains an address by Dr. Bryan, entitled “The Foes of Democracy,” and has as a frontispiece the portrait of an exceedingly handsome but stern-looking hundred per cent American. Dr. Bryan has discovered four dangerous foes of democracy: first, the “reds”; second, the “radicals”; third, the “profiteers”; and fourth, the “robber barons.” Just what is the difference between a “red” and a “radical” I do not know, and Dr. Bryan does not enable me to find out. Apparently a “radical” is a person who advises labor unions to use strikes to “injure the public.” It is manifest that there can be no strike which does not injure the public; Dr. Bryan is a bit muddled, but it is clear what he means, that as strikes grow more big, they also grow more inconvenient. I find him equally muddled on the subject of the “profiteer”; because, while he tells us not to make “an excess profit,” he does not tell us what “an excess profit” is, nor how there can be such a thing in a competitive world. Apparently it is the same thing as in the case of strikes: profiteering has got too big! But that big strikes might be a consequence of big profiteering has apparently not penetrated Dr. Bryan’s handsome head.
Also I seek in vain to find out the difference between the “profiteers” and the “robber barons.” All I can gather is that there are bad men in the world, and they abuse their power. It is Dr. Bryan’s idea that they will read his pamphlet, and reform, and then all will be well. May I suggest that he send copies of his pamphlet to the Day brothers, and also to the Day wives, who run the mining and the education of Idaho?
The significant thing about the pamphlet, aside from its feebleness of thought, is the amount of space which it gives to the various kinds of evil persons. The “reds” get eleven pages, the “radicals” get four and a half, the “profiteers” get one and a quarter, and the “robber barons” get two and a half. I took the trouble to figure this out, and it appears that the head of Idaho’s educational machine considers that eighty per cent of the perils to present-day American life comes from the poor, and less than twenty per cent from the rich. So I am not surprised to receive a letter from a university professor, telling me that “in Idaho, when a successor to President Lindley of the state university at Moscow was being sought, the state commissioner of education, Dr. Bryan, requested a Stanford professor to come and meet the regents. He did this and was _not_ appointed, because of certain views in reference to the present economic order. Dr. Bryan told me this himself.” I suggest that Dr. Bryan should issue a new edition of his pamphlet, listing a fifth variety of “foes of democracy,” in the shape of university authorities who train the youth of the country to be henchmen and lackeys of the profiteers and the robber barons.