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
One could not get a more plutocratic board than this; and the
significant thing about it is that they are nearly all of them active,
hard-fighting plutocrats; no retired bandits fattening on their
accumulated loot, but hard campaigners, living in the saddle, riding day
by day to combat. They are the banking men, the coal men, the gas men,
the railroad men, who are robbing the public and crushing labor hour by
hour, and the control they exercise over their educational system is of
the instant, vigilant, smashing kind which you would expect from
military men on hard service.
It is a little difficult to find a satisfactory name for a university in
which so many plutocratic interests are so completely represented. I
might call it the University of Morgan-Drexel, or I might call it the
University of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and be entirely just and exact.
After studying its management and history, I realize that its most
active single interest is the United Gas Improvement Company of
Philadelphia, known as U. G. I. You must not think of this as a local
gas company; it is a great chain of corporations, ruling over three
hundred cities and towns, and with a total investment of five hundred
millions of dollars. Of the seven directors of this concern, Mr.
Stotesbury and two others are on the board of the university, and a
fourth left only last year; also an attorney for the U. G. I. is on the
board. Mr. Randall Morgan, vice president of the U. G. I., is chairman
of the finance committee of the university, the all-powerful position.
Some eighteen years ago Lincoln Steffens described the City of Brotherly
Love in an article entitled “Philadelphia Corrupt and Contented.” He
told how the political ring voted dead dogs and Negro babies at
elections, and how they played poker in hotel rooms for the franchises
and public privileges of the city. Philadelphia was corrupt in those
days, but it was not really contented; for the people had assembled with
ropes in their hands, to mob their city councilmen who were giving away
a franchise to the U. G. I. But since those days the war has come, and
taught our rulers how to handle social discontent. There was a general
strike in the City of Brotherly Love, and it was smashed; the little
Socialist bookstore was raided, the books burned and everybody who sold
them jailed, and now Philadelphia is truly contented, and where the
interlocking directorate used to plunder in tens of millions it now
plunders in hundreds.[E]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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