They postponed action until such a time as the committee was ready to report again to a closed faculty meeting giving specific instances of lack of academic freedom, with names and dates. The committee, having decided to present three typical cases in detail to the faculty, asked the president to summon a meeting. He passed the buck to the committee of the deans known as the senate. The deans thought it inopportune to call the meeting at that particular time, it being just prior to the June examinations. Summer vacation ensued. In September, when college re-opened, one of the five committeemen had gone East for a year as an exchange professor; another had been retired as a Carnegie pensioner on account of his age; a third, though still drawing a salary as a member of the faculty, had received notice of his dismissal; and the other two saw the futility of trying to bring the matter up again. Also I ought to add what action the regents took. They kicked out of the university the young instructor who had been most active in preparing the report. He has written me about the circumstances of his dismissal: Nothing specific was sent to me. But, by what chain of circumstances need not be told, I saw with my own eyes a letter from Pierce Butler addressed to President Burton asking for my decapitation. The neatest thing you ever saw—not a direct order, and not even a request for my dismissal, but a carefully worded statement to the effect that it seemed to him (Butler) regrettable that the name of the university had been linked up in the press with the name of myself. That was all. But Burton sent it down the line of officials as a positive decree and my fate at Minnesota was settled. Usually, as you perhaps are aware, the thing is done by word of mouth only. Butler, of course, never imagined that this letter would reach my eyes. Mr. Butler remains grand bully of the university; but here also we are at the “big scene” in the melodrama—the villain has the heroine helpless, but in the distance we hear the galloping hoofs of the rescuer’s horses! The farmers of Minnesota with their Non-partisan League, and the workers of the cities with their unions, have got together into the Farmer-Labor party, and they have just elected their own United States senator. Before long they may also elect a governor of their state, and the University of the Ore Trust may become the University of the people of Minnesota. P.S.—As this book is going to the printer President Harding, wishing to show the public exactly how contemptuous of public opinion it is possible for a public official to be, sends in the nomination of Grand Bully Butler for justice of the United States Supreme Court! CHAPTER XLVI INTRODUCING A UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT