The chancellor of the university up to last year was Edward C. Elliott, and he had to handle not merely this board, but the politicians of the Anaconda who run the state legislature; he had to go to them every year to beg for appropriations, and he had the bright thought that he would try to have an annual tax provided for higher education in the state. He suggested to Louis Levine, his professor of economics, to make a study of the whole tax problem in Montana. Professor Levine set to work—beginning with the subject of mining companies and their contributions, or lack of contributions, to the state taxes! In the course of the year 1918 occurred a state tax conference, and Professor Levine addressed it, and was furiously attacked by a representative of the Anaconda Copper Company, which had packed the conference with its lawyers and lobbyists. Toward the end of the year Professor Levine completed his report on mine taxation, in which he proved that the great corporations paid only a small percentage of the taxes they owed the state. He submitted this report to the chancellor, who read it and had a desperate case of “cold feet.” His contract was about to come up for renewal, and he decided that he had better shift the responsibility to the State Board of Education, which governs the university. Professor Levine agreed to this, but on the stipulation that if the board declined to publish the document, he should be free to publish it himself. He took the position that if he submitted to pressure in this issue, he would lose the moral right to lecture to classes of young people. Now began a bitter struggle behind the scenes, with the governor of the state and a senator-henchman of the Anaconda striving frantically to keep the report from appearing. Finally the poor chancellor wrote to Levine, forbidding him to publish the report; Levine answered that there had been a definite understanding, made in the presence of President Sisson of Montana State University, that Levine was to be free to publish the report if he so desired. Accordingly he published it,[L] and the chancellor, in a rage, immediately “fired” him. ----- Footnote L: Taxation of Mines in Montana: B. W. Huebsch, New York. The book won the commendation of Professor Seligman of Columbia, America’s leading conservative authority on taxation. ----- This was about as clear a case of the violation of academic freedom as had ever occurred in America. The matter created a great scandal, and this scandal caused pain to the faculty of the university. A committee of professors took the matter up, and reported, somewhat plaintively: