Academic and Scholastic Socialist Activities

It is not easy to know how deeply Socialism has penetrated the majority of our colleges and universities, how much of the teachings of economics and sociology is purely scientific, and how much has a tinge of propaganda.

As early as 1909, in an address to college alumni, a former Secretary of the Treasury, also a banker, said:

"I am alarmed at the trend towards Socialism in this country today. If there is any power in this country to stem it, it ought to be the trained minds of college men. Four out of five commencement day orations are purely Socialistic. I have met many of the teachers of sociology in our schools and universities. With few exceptions these teachers are Socialists, though they hesitate to admit it and most of them will deny it. Unconsciously there is a great deal of Socialism being taught in these days from the pulpit. The Chautauqua is also full of it. I do not recall a Chautauqua popular speaker who is not talking and teaching Socialist doctrine. The trend of the newspapers is towards Socialism, and, I repeat, the trend is dangerous to this country."

The work from which this quotation is taken is "Christianizing the Social Order," by Walter Rauschenbusch, then professor of history in Rochester Theological Seminary. The author was an eminent and popular writer and lecturer before seminaries and universities. His books have a wide circulation and influence. His attitude towards Socialism can be easily understood by two or three quotations (p. 404):

"The Socialists found the Church against them and thought God was against them, too. They have had to do God's work without the sense of God's presence to hearten them. Whatever the sins of individual Socialists, and whatever the shortcomings of Socialist organizations, they are tools in the hands of the Almighty. Whatever tares grow in the field of Socialism, the field was plowed and sown by the Lord and He will reap it. Socialism is one of the chief powers of the coming age. God had to raise up Socialism because the organized Church was too blind, or too slow, to realize God's ends."

He advises the weekly reading of the "Survey," and says that if a man reads the Bible and the "Survey," he ought to find salvation.

It is a commentary on the increasing prevalence of revolution ary Socialist ideas among university men, that in 1917 and 1918 there did not exist in the United States a single purely literary weekly review that was not of this character. The "Nation " and the "New Republic" were its exponents. So was the "Dial." The situation called for immediate remedy. A group of patriotic university men planned a new weekly, the "Review," to present to the public and patriotic view of every current issue and event. connection with this question it is interesting to publish a letter written by a professor of sociology at the Ohio State University, Arthur W. Calhoun, written July 29, 1919, to an instructor in sociology at the University of Minnesota, named Zeuch, who since then has gone as instructor in sociology to Cornell University, and who also lectures at the Rand School. The letter reads:

In

DEAR ZEUCH. I think I accept all you say about the condition of the proletariat and the impossibility of the immediate revolution. But I am less interested in the verbiage of the Left Wing than in the idea of keeping ultimates everlastingly in the center of attention to the exclusion of mere muttering reforms. One of the things that will haster the revolution is to spread the notion that it can come soon. If the Left Wing adopt impossibilist methods of campaign, I shall stand aloof, but if they push for confiscation, equality of economic status, and the speedy elimination of class privilege, and keep their heads, I shall go with them rather than the yellows. If Gras is doing what he says and I am doing what he says, he is right in saying that he is doing the better job. I wonder, however, how many of his students draw the necessary" conclusions: and I wonder whether I do all my students' thinking for them.

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Ellery is feeling at Columbus and also at Illinois. I had a letter from Hayes about him.

"I have accepted the professorship of sociology at De Pauw University. The job pays $2,200 this year with assurance of $2,400 if I stay the second year. The president has been here three times and had long interviews with me. Besides we have written a lot. I told him I belonged to the radical Socialists. I expounded my general principles

on all important points. He knows also of the circumstances of my leaving Clark and Kentucky. He says he is in substantial agreement with most of what I have said and that he sees no reason why I cannot get along at De Pauw. He says he feels confident it will be a permanency. Ross had some hand in the game. President Grose interviewed him at Madison last week and Ross wrote encouraging me to take the place. I did not make any great effort.

Grose

He

knows that I did not care much one way or the other.
took the initiative almost from the start and I sat back and
waited. I am afraid Greencastle is too small to do much
with the Co-Op. Population 4,000, 30 miles north of Bloom-
ington, 800 students, mostly in college, a few in school of
music, a few graduate students. Hudson is professor of Ec.
(economics) there.

"Beals was here last week. He is pushing the "Nation." Says the circulation has quadrupled since they became Bolshevists.

There are many things in this letter that make it more than the expression of one man's opinions. In the first place, the president of De Pauw University at Greencastle, Indiana, offers the professorship of sociology to a man whom he knows to be a radical Socialist, a teacher of revolutionary Socialism and a member of the Left Wing. The Gras who is mentioned in the letter is Professor N. S. B. Gras of the University of Minnesota, who evidently is teaching revolutionary Socialism as well, if not better than Calhoun, and leaving his students to draw the "necessary conclusions. Professor Ellery evidently belongs to the same group, as he is "feeling" at Columbus and Illinois universities; and E. C. Hayes also is professor of sociology at Illinois University. Another member of the group is Professor E. A. Ross, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin and advisory editor of the American Journal of Sociology. The Beals who is mentioned as pushing the "Nation," was previously a university professor and an open Bolshevist. One of the side activities of Professor Calhoun, which explains his reference to the "Co-Ops." in his letter, is his position with the Tri-State Cooperative Society of Pittsburgh, which promotes the production and distribution of Red propaganda. It would seem as if there was

a pretty wide circle of revolutionary Socialist professors in western faculties. How deeply rooted the teaching is in the minds of the phalanxes of students who pass year after year under the instruction of these men, would be impossible to calculate, but it goes even further back in certain sections into the school system. In a certain state library the following books were selected to send around to country schools:

"Socialism and Modern Science," by Ferri (leader of one of the Socialist groups in Italy).

"Evolution of Property," by LaFargue. (A revolutionary Socialist propagandist.)

(Ellen Key is an out

"Love and Marriage," by Ellen Key. "Love and Ethics," by Ellen Key. spoken advocate of free love and of the dissolution of marriage.) "The Bolsheviki and World Peace," by Leon Trotzky.

"The Profits of Religion," by Upton Sinclair. (A violent literary Socialist.)

"Anarchism and Socialism," by Harris.

"Anarchism and Free Love," by Harris. (Harris is a professional Bolshevist.)

See for the above the "Iowa Magazine," February 5, 1920. Prof. Calhoun has finally found his proper place among the teachers of the Rand School.

Quite a number of the university men have given their adhesion to the Rand School: such as Prof. Wm. I. Hull of Swarthmore, who speaks from the same platform as Trachtenberg, Algernon Lee and Hillquit.

In a recent address (Feb. 21, 1920) by W. A. Atterbury, vice-president of the Penn. R. R., to the alumni of the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Atterbury deplored the prevalence of the diffusion of Socialist ideas of a revolutionary character at our universities, and their invasion of the select ranks of the American Economic Association and the American Sociological Society.

There are two dangerous centers of Revolutionary Socialist teaching of a university type in ecclesiastical institutions. One is the Union Theological Seminary of New York, where Christian Ethics are taught by Dr. Harry F. Ward; the other is St. Stephens College at Annandale, N. Y., where the president is the Rev. Iddings-Bell, and the professor of economics the Socialist, Dr. Edwards. The latter especially will be spoken of here more fully than in the following chapter.

Dr. Ward is the author of "The New Social Order," in which he shows a decided sympathy for Socialist social forms and is friendly to Bolshevism in Russia. He also wrote "The Labor Movement," which contained addresses delivered before the Boston School of Theology, when he was professor of social science at that institution. He expressed in it approval of the I. W. W. It is reported in a recent issue of the National Civic Federation Review that he gave his endorsement to the new gospel of Bolshevism which he considers a spiritual movement replacing the outworn Christianity of the Russian Orthodox Church. He characterized the cognate I. W. W. "philosophy" as the most ideal and practical Christian philosophy since the days of Jesus Christ, and as expressing the ideas of Christ much more closely than any church of the present day.

The activities of Dr. Ward, as shown in other parts of this report, are entirely consistent with this point of view. He is chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union, which champions the I. W. W., and presided over the I. W. W. meeting of Feb. 9, 1920, held at the Rand School, to raise money for the defense of the I. W. W. murderers of the four members of the American Legion at Centralia. He has also been prominent in numerous pacifist and radical societies such as the "Fellowship of Reconciliation," the "Emergency Peace Conference" 'People's Council," the "Liberty Defense Union.”

and

The pro-Bolshevik articles which Dr. Ward contributed to "The Social Service Bulletin" of the Methodist Federation for Social Service were considered particularly objectionable because the Bulletin was circulated not only by the Methodist Church but by the Congregational, Northern Baptist and other organizations. They called attention to Dr. Ward's textbooks circulated by the Graded Sunday School Syndicate. Dr. Ward is also connected with the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A. and the Inter-Church World Movement.

The Philadelphia Annual Conference of the Methodist Church protested against the pro-Bolshevism of Dr. Ward being circulated in the name of the denomination. Such specialists in Bolshevism as Lieutenant Klieforth and Wm. English Walling have characterized Dr. Ward's statements as downright falsehoods or distorted facts, and as a kind of Bolshevism far worse than the Bolshevism of Russia.