And just as this University of the Black Hand seeks to run the city, so also it seeks to run the state. Just now there is a bitter struggle under way, over a bill to enable cities and towns to combine and develop water power for their own use. The special interests of California are fighting this measure tooth and nail; and prominent among them are the ten university regents who are interested in power companies. Do these gentlemen fail to make use of their university in the struggle? If you expect such a thing, you do not know our empire of raisins and prunes!
The farmers of this empire are organized into farm bureaus at state expense. These bureaus are supposed to be run by the farmers themselves, but the university appoints “experts,” and the state pays them to act as advisers and guiding lights to the farm bureaus. During this campaign it was observed that resolutions against the hydro-electric power bill kept coming in from the farm bureaus; which seemed unaccountable, because in the state legislature the farmers’ bloc was unanimous for the bill. The mystery was traced down, and in every case it was discovered that the treacherous resolution had come from the “experts”—university men, appointed by university regents in the interest of their privately owned power plants! And at the same time in San Francisco, Mr. Crocker, grand duke of the regents, is starting a campaign to get Rudolph Spreckles, a liberal capitalist, out of control of the First National Bank, because Mr. Spreckles has committed the crime of supporting this power bill!
We return to David P. Barrows to follow his career as he rises to the heights of academic prominence and power. For seven years he stumped the state of California, proclaiming the destiny of the Stars and Stripes to float from the North Pole to the South. The world was to be divided up, it was our business to get our share; we should win because we were better organized, more efficient; the world would not tolerate small nations; strong men must rule. And presently came a chance for strong men to rule in Mexico; but the strong men had at their head a weakling by the name of Woodrow Wilson, who refused to act. You might think there would be some impropriety, some violation of military precedence, in a university dean’s attacking a former university president, who had become President of the United States; but when Woodrow Wilson took Vera Cruz, and then refused to take the rest of Mexico, Dean Barrows rushed to the front, denouncing him before chambers of commerce, and being reported in the interlocking newspapers.