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
You will appreciate this even more when you learn that one of the
underground charges laid against Scott Nearing was that he, when asked
privately by a student for his opinion of the Episcopal Academy, had
said that he would rather send a son of his to hell than to the academy.
This shocked a trustee, Mr. Bell, Republican machine politician and
ex-attorney general, who had never heard such language used in political
life. But Mr. Bell did not object to the Rev. Sunday stating that
ex-President Eliot of Harvard University was a man “so low-down he would
need an aeroplane to get into hell.” Poor President Eliot, it should be
explained, is a Unitarian—that is the reason he gets cussed![G]
-----
Footnote G:
Ordinarily a man’s domestic misfortunes are not proper basis for
attack upon his ideas; but when a man sets himself up as a teacher of
the young, when he claims that he has the one true and valid moral
system, and pours out virulent abuse upon all who differ with his
ideas—then it seems reasonable to call attention to the fact that the
son of the evangelist, William A. Sunday, Jr., has been arrested in
the city of Los Angeles twice within the past fortnight. The first
time he was fined two hundred dollars for reckless driving of an
automobile; the second time his home was raided, and he and seven of
his guests were arrested upon complaint of the neighborhood that they
have been conducting drunken debauches for many weeks.
-----
Mr. Bell is not the only pious politician on this pious board. Senator
George Wharton Pepper is a devout Episcopalian, leader of the church of
J. P. Morgan and Company in the City of Brotherly Love. Mr. Pepper is so
pious that he does not believe in education, he believes only in
religion. In his book, “A Voice From the Crowd,” he says: “Subtract God
and you get—not secular education, but no education at all.” Again he
says: “The teacher who interprets all of life in terms of brotherhood is
responsible for leading the students to forget God.” So, needless to
say, Mr. Pepper was annoyed when Scott Nearing caused to be published in
the Philadelphia “North American” a letter addressed to Billy Sunday,
advocating the godless idea of brotherhood. Read Nearing’s evil words:
You have declared your interest in the salvation of Philadelphia.
Look around you and ask yourself what salvation means here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account