This, you must understand, to the wife of a man who was supposed to be discovering some of nature’s most vital secrets! I asked in bewilderment just what could have been the motive for such a remark, and the explanation was that scientists sometimes think themselves of importance, and it is necessary to academic discipline that they should be put in their place. This same scientist was instrumental in bringing to the university half a dozen of the greatest men of Europe as lecturers—Arrhenius, de Vries, Sir William Ramsay. They were paid inadequately for their long journey, and my friend suggested that it might be a good idea to reward them with an honorary degree. Said President Wheeler, with instant decision: “I give no degrees to scientists!” “Whom do you give them to?” asked my friend, and the answer was: “I give them to people of importance—to statesmen, public men, college presidents.” This was Benjamin Ide Wheeler, ex-professor to the German Kaiser, and tireless singer of the Kaiser’s praises, holder of a Heidelberg degree, and of honorary degrees from all the great Eastern centers of the interlocking directorate, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Columbia. He called himself a liberal, but never enough to offend Mrs. Hearst, who gave the university a Greek theater, with her son’s name carved across the front of the stage.
While I was in Berkeley there was a scandal at the university, because of the sudden appointment of a new professor to be dean of the Graduate School. This was David P. Barrows, now president of the university, and a person whose career is of interest to us. He is a product of the University of California, and was finished in Nicholas Murray Butler’s educational enameling machine. Thence he went to be superintendent of schools of the city of Manila, and later on director of education for the Philippine Islands. Having received a thorough training in imperialism, he came home to proclaim the gospel of the mailed fist in our empire of raisins and prunes.
Dean Barrows was a fighting man, and became immediately active in university politics. You may be startled to hear that anything so dubious as “politics” exists in a university; but if you believe in applied imperialism, and start to apply it to those about you, you are apt to find some of them resisting, and you will have to put them down, and put up others who are willing to obey you and promote your interests. So Barrows became a tireless university politician, and he and his subordinates also became active in the outside politics of their city and state. As it happens, Berkeley had a large working class population, and a strong Socialist sentiment, and naturally there is no higher duty that an imperialist college dean can perform than to crush Socialism in his home town.