The Goose-step: A Study of American EducationSinclair, Upton
History
The Goose-step: A Study of American Education
Sinclair, Upton
Education -- United States; Universities and colleges -- United States
How this organization puts pressure on university professors is a matter
about which you do not have to take my word; you may have the word of
Mr. Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation. In the
San Francisco “Call” for January 20, 1922, I find an article occupying
the top of seven columns, “Aims of Better America Body Told Business Men
of San Francisco.” This is a report of a luncheon at the St. Francis
Hotel, in which Mr. Haldeman explained his work to the president and
vice-president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and a group of such
leading interlocking directors. Said Mr. Haldeman: “Through the children
of the best business families throughout the land, who are attending
universities, we are having students of radical tendencies watched. We
are receiving reports of what is going on, both as to students and
teachers that uphold radical doctrines and views.”
So here is the spy system in our universities; college boys and girls
set to tale-bearing on their fellows and on their teachers! On such
ignorant and garbled reports professors in the University of California
are black-listed for promotion; or they are quietly let out without
explanation—or with just a lie or two. When they apply for jobs in other
places, letters are written to keep them from getting those jobs. School
teachers are black-listed over the entire state; students in the
university who graduate with honors are unable to get teaching
positions, because the employment system maintained by the university is
under the control of this kid-gloved Black Hand.
The active manager of this organization until a few months ago was Mr.
Woodworth Clum, a lawyer, author of a pamphlet, “America Is Calling,”
the substance of which is that America is calling her school children to
mob their fellow students with whose opinions they do not agree. Mr.
Clum was formerly secretary of the Greater Iowa Association, at a salary
of ten thousand dollars a year; also secretary to the Iowa Commission to
the Panama-Pacific Exposition. He left the state after a three years’
controversy over the fact that this Commission had failed to file a
proper statement of its expenditure of public funds with the state
accountant, twenty thousand dollars being missing; also after a
typewriter belonging to the Commission had been traced to the office of
the Greater Iowa Association; also after Mr. Clum had walked across the
street and brutally struck in the face a Civil War veteran, wearing a
Grand Army button, because this old man was deaf and did not hear a band
playing the Star-Spangled Banner some distance away, and therefore had
failed to remove his hat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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