I am not tilting at Universities, but against Respectability in every guise. With the growth of power in the _bourgeois_ class, the Universities have, to a large degree, degenerated from halls of knowledge into mere forcing beds of the disease of Respectability. The case seems even worse in "free America." Plutocracy has taken the colleges under its ægis, and knowledge has been cramped to suit the whims of millionaire patrons. Just as happened in the case of the academic professors who protested against slavery, so are they now threatened when they advocate new economic doctrines, which do not fit in with the ideas of big capitalists. Sensational light was thrown on this matter by a letter written by one of the professors of the Leland Stanford University of California, and given to the public by the chief of the Literary Bureau of the Democratic Bryan Party, though its language seems to suggest that its writer did not expect its publication. This professor states that college professors enjoy no freedom of expression on the money question. "I know," he says, "there are many who wish to champion national bi-metallism, but I am very sure if there were such, they would be compelled to surrender their present livelihoods." He cites by name several instances of instructors who have been placed under duresse for teaching views that are considered heterodox by the wealthy men who rule the Board of some of our principal colleges, and rule them in orthodox obedience to the gospel of self-interest.[7] The same writer informs us that for advocating the passage of a Bill by the Illinois State Legislature to give the City of Chicago the option of becoming the owner of a municipal gas plant, and for some other exhibitions of a spirit of economic freedom, Professor Bemis was dismissed from his position in the University of Chicago, an institution created and largely maintained by a great millionaire, part of whose fortune is in gas stock. Wisconsin has a university supported by the people of that State, and there learning has a chance to flourish. But wherever the influence of the patron is found, there progress is blocked by plutocracy. "A most competent professor of political economy, in one of the greatest of our universities, allowing himself to become an advocate of the ownership and operation of our telegraphs by the Government, was compelled to give up his place by the influence of one of the trustees, who happened to be a large owner of telegraph stock.... The victorious trustee carries about with him in his pocket-book a little printed slip, containing the offensive views of the discharged professor, and it is his pleasant habit to read this when occasion offers, to instructors or students who may, he thinks, need bracing up, and he accompanies the reading with cheering comments on the fate which befel the heretic who uttered such doctrines."