Now came Governor Nestos, accusing the professors of “undermining the faith of the students”; and President Kane wrote letters to three of the liberals, O. G. Libby, A. J. Ladd, and Dean Willis of the Law School—several pages of virulent abuse, culminating in the announcement of their dismissal. Under the constitution, this matter should have been taken up by the dean, and the professors had the right of appeal to the university council. This council appointed a committee, consisting exclusively of Kane supporters; nevertheless, after hearing the evidence, this committee unanimously exonerated the professors, and the board of administration did the same. The board tried to settle the matter by requesting both Kane and the professors to resign, but the railroad attorneys who are now running the university will not permit that. The struggle is still on, and the outcome uncertain as I write. One man who has got away tells me how it feels to teach under the control of big business in North Dakota: “It means the surrender, not merely of your mind, but of your character; a man who stands it for two or three years becomes wholly unfit to influence the young. It has been less than a year since I left, yet I have had letters from probably twelve men at the university, asking me to help them to get positions elsewhere!” Finally, in justice to the liberal professors, I think I should state that no person now at the university has furnished me any information about it. Several were asked to do so, and declined. CHAPTER XLIV THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ORE TRUST Let us continue East on the Northern Pacific Railroad, which has Mr. Morgan and two of his partners for directors, a recent Harvard overseer and Massachusetts Tech trustee for chairman, a Harvard overseer and Smith College trustee, a Cornell trustee, an Amherst trustee, a Hampton trustee and a Union Theological Seminary trustee for directors, also three First National Bank directors; and we come to the “Twin Cities,” from which the Northwestern grain country is run. Here we are in one of the strongholds of the Steel Trust, also of the Lumber Trust and the grain speculators. Minnesota contains a great part of the iron ore of the United States, and the Steel Trust owns it all, and in alliance with the millers and the lumbermen, it runs the government of the state, and of course the state university. The university had a most wonderful endowment of government land, covered with the finest white and Norway pine. The Lumber Trust wanted this timber, and they got practically all of it. Likewise the Steel Trust wanted the ore that was under the land, and they got it; and sometimes it happened that the officials who sold this land at bargain prices were also trustees of the university.