Rights for this book: Public domain in the USA. This edition is published by Project Gutenberg. Originally issued by Project Gutenberg on 2021-06-03. To support the work of Project Gutenberg, visit their Donation Page. This free ebook has been produced by GITenberg, a program of the Free Ebook Foundation. If you have corrections or improvements to make to this ebook, or you want to use the source files for this ebook, visit the book's github repository. You can support the work of the Free Ebook Foundation at their Contributors Page. The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Goose-step, by Upton Sinclair This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Goose-step A Study of American Education Author: Upton Sinclair Release Date: June 3, 2021 [eBook #65492] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: KD Weeks, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOOSE-STEP *** Transcriber’s Note: Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference. Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup. THE GOOSE-STEP THE GOOSE-STEP A Study of American Education BY UPTON SINCLAIR A UTHOR OF “T HE B RASS C HECK ,” “T HE P ROFITS OF R ELIGION ,” “T HE J UNGLE ,” ETC P UBLISHED BY THE A UTHOR P ASADENA , C ALIFORNIA WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTORS THE ECONOMY BOOK SHOP 33 SOUTH CLARK ST., CHICAGO, ILL. C OPYRIGHT , 1922. 1923 BY UPTON SINCLAIR All rights reserved First edition, February, 1923, 10,000 copies, clothbound. Second edition, February, 1923, 8,000 copies, paperbound. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I NTRODUCTORY ix-x I. The Little Gosling 1 II. The College Goose 4 III. The University Goose 9 IV. The Goose-steppers 15 V. Interlocking Directorates 18 VI. The University of the House of Morgan 23 VII. The Interlocking President 29 VIII. The Scholar in Politics 34 IX. Nicholas Miraculous 40 X. The Lightning-change Artist 44 XI. The Twilight Zone 49 XII. The Academic Department Store XII. The Academic Department Store 54 XIII. The Empire of Dullness 58 XIV. The University of Lee-Higginson 62 XV. The Harvard Tradition 67 XVI. Free Speech But— 72 XVII. Interference 77 XVIII. The Laski Lampoon 82 XIX. Raking the Dust-heaps 88 XX. The University of U. G. I. 91 XXI. Stealing a Trust Fund 97 XXII. Professor Billy Sunday 102 XXIII. The Triumph of Death 107 XXIV. The Tiger’s Lair 111 XXV. Peacocks and Slums 115 XXVI. The Bull-dog’s Den 121 XXVII. The University of the Black Hand 126 XXVIII. The Fortress of Medievalism 132 XXIX. The Dean of Imperialism 137 XXX. The Mob of Little Haters 141 XXXI. The Drill Sergeant on the Campus 145 XXXII. The Story of Stanford 152 XXXIII. The Wind of Freedom 157 XXXIV. The Stanford Skeleton 162 XXXV. The University of the Lumber Trust 168 XXXVI. The University of the Chimes 174 XXXVII. The Universities of the Anaconda 179 XXXVIII. The University of the Latter-Day Saints 184 XXXIX. The Mining Camp University 188 XL. The Colleges of the Smelter Trust 192 XLI. A Land Grant College 197 XLII. An Agricultural Melodrama 203 XLIII. The University of Wheat 206 XLIV. The University of the Ore Trust 209 XLV. The Academic Wink 216 XLVI. Introducing a University President 222 XLVII. Introducing a Board of Regents 227 XLVIII. The Price of Liberty 230 XLIX. The People and Their University 235 L. Education F. O. B. Chicago 240 LI. The University of Standard Oil 243 LII. Little Halls for Radicals 249 LIII. The University of Judge Gary 254 LIV. The University of the Grand Duchess 258 LV. The University of Automobiles 263 LVI. The University of the Steel Trust 271 LVII. The University of Heaven 277 LVIII. The Harpooner of Whales 282 LIX. An Academic Tragedy 287 LX. The Geography Line 291 LXI. A Leap into the Limelight 295 LXII. The Process of Fordization 302 LXIII. Intellectual Dry-rot 306 LXIV. The University of Jabbergrab 313 LXV. The Growth of Jabbergrab 319 LXVI. Jabbergrab in Journalism 323 LXVII. The City Colleges 329 LXVIII. The Large Mushrooms 334 LXIX. The Little Toadstools 339 LXX. God and Mammon 345 LXXI. The Orange-outang Hunters 351 LXXII. The Academic Pogrom 356 LXXIII. The Semi-Simian Mob 363 LXXIV. The Rah-rah Boys 370 LXXV. The Social Traitors 377 LXXVI. Prexy 382 LXXVII. Damn the Faculty LXXVII. Damn the Faculty 390 LXXVIII. Small Souls 395 LXXIX. The World of “Hush” 399 LXXX. The Foundations of Fraud 407 LXXXI. The Bolshevik Hunters 412 LXXXII. The Helen Ghouls 418 LXXXIII. The Shepard’s Crook 424 LXXXIV. Cities of Refuge 428 LXXXV. The Academic Rabbits 436 LXXXVI. Workers’ Education 440 LXXXVII. The Spider and the Fly 445 LXXXVIII. The Workers’ Colleges 450 LXXXIX. The Professors’ Union 454 XC. The Professors’ Strike 459 XCI. Educating the Educators 464 XCII. The League of Youth 470 XCIII. The Open Forum 473 INTRODUCTORY Six hundred thousand young people are attending colleges and universities in America. They are the pick of our coming generation; they are the future of our country. If they are wisely and soundly taught, America will be great and happy; if they are misguided and mistaught, no power can save us. What is the so-called “higher education” of these United States? You have taken it, for the most part, on faith. It is something which has come to be; it is big and impressive, and you are impressed. Every year you pay a hundred million dollars of public funds to help maintain it, and half that amount in tuition fees for your sons and daughters. You take it for granted that this money is honestly and wisely used; that the students are getting the best, the “highest” education the money can buy. Suppose I were to tell you that this educational machine has been stolen? That a bandit crew have got hold of it and have set it to work, not for your benefit, nor the benefit of your sons and daughters, but for ends very far from these? That our six hundred thousand young people are being taught, deliberately and of set purpose, not wisdom but folly, not justice but greed, not freedom but slavery, not love but hate? For the past year I have been studying American Education. I have read on the subject—books, pamphlets, reports, speeches, letters, newspaper and magazine articles—not less than five or six million words. I have traveled over America from coast to coast and back again, for the sole purpose of talking with educators and those interested in education. I have stopped in twenty-five American cities, and have questioned not less than a thousand people—school teachers and principals, superintendents and board members, pupils and parents, college professors and students and alumni, presidents and chancellors and deans and regents and trustees and governors and curators and fellows and overseers and founders and donors and whatever else they call themselves. This mass of information I have turned over and over in my mind, sorting it, organizing it— until now, I really know something about American Education. I do not intend in this book to expound my ideas on the subject; to argue with you as to what education might be, or ought to be; to persuade you to any dogma or point of view. I intend merely to put before you the facts; to say, this is what American Education now is. This is what is going on in the college and university world. This is what is being done to your sons and daughters; and what the sons and daughters think about it; and what the instructors think about it. Here is the situation: make up your own mind, whether it suits you, or whether you want it changed. THE GOOSE-STEP A Study of American Education CHAPTER I THE LITTLE GOSLING Once upon a time there was a little boy; a little boy unusually eager, and curious about the world he lived in. He was a nuisance to old gentlemen who wanted to read their newspaper; but young men liked to carry him on their shoulders and maul him about in romps, old ladies liked to make ginger cakes for him, and other boys liked to play “shinny” with him, and race on roller skates, and “hook” potatoes from the corner grocery and roast them in forbidden fires on vacant lots. The little boy lived in a crowded part of the city of New York, in what is called a “flat”; that is, a group of little boxes, enclosed in a large box called a “flat-house.” Every morning this little boy’s mother saw to his scrubbing, with special attention to his ears, both inside and back, and put a clean white collar on him, and packed his lunch-box with two sandwiches and a piece of cake and an apple, and started him off to school. The school was a vast building—or so it seemed to the little boy. It had stone staircases with iron railings, and big rooms with rows of little desks, blackboards, maps of strange countries, and pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Aurora driving her chariot. Everywhere you went in this school you formed in line and marched; you talked in chorus, everybody saying the same thing as nearly at the same instant as could be contrived. The little boy found that a delightful arrangement, for he liked other boys, and the more of them there were, the better. He kept step happily, and sat with glee in the assembly room, and clapped when the others clapped, and laughed when they laughed, and joined with them in shouting: Oh, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, The—ee home of the Bra—ave and the Free—ee! The rest of the day the little boy sat in a crowded classroom, learning things. The first thing he learned was that you must be quiet—otherwise the teacher, passing down the aisle, would crack your knuckles with a ruler. Another thing was that you must raise your hand if you wanted to speak. Maybe these things were necessary, but the little boy did not learn why they were necessary; in school all you learned was that things were so. For example, if you wanted to divide one fraction by another, you turned the second fraction upside down; it seemed an odd procedure, but if you asked the reason for it, the teacher would be apt to answer in a way that caused the other little boys to laugh at you— something which is very painful. The teacher would give out a series of problems in “mental arithmetic”— tricks which you had been taught, and you wrote the answers on your slate, and then marched in line past the teacher’s desk, and if you had done it according to rule, you got a check on your slate. You learned the great purpose of life was these “marks.” If you got good ones, your teacher smiled at you, your parents praised you at home, you had a sense of triumph over other little boys who were stupid. You enjoyed this triumph, because no one ever suggested to you that it was cruel to laugh at your weaker fellows. In fact, the system appeared to be designed to bring out your superiority, and to increase the humiliation of the others. In this school everything in the world had been conveniently arranged in packages, which could be stowed away in your mind and made the subject of a “mark.” Columbus discovered America in 1492; the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776; Switzerland was bounded on the north by Germany. This business of “boundings” appeared in little diagrams; Switzerland was yellow and Germany pink, and no one burdened your mind with the idea that these spots of color represented places where human beings lived. At this same time the little boy was going to Sunday school, where he learned something called “the creed,” with a sentence declaring that “from Thency shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” The little boy pondered hard, but never made sure whether “Thency” was the name of a person or a place. Some thirty-five years have passed, but the little boy still remembers the personalities of these teachers. There was a middle-aged lady, stout and amiable, and always dressed in black; then one who was angular and irritable; then one who had pretty brown eyes and hair, but to the puzzlement of the little boy had also the beginnings of a mustache. Next came a young man with a real mustache, and pale, washed-out eyes and complexion; but he was dreadfully dull. The novelty had worn off the school by this time, and the boy had got tired of stowing away packages of facts in his mind. He had become so expert that he was able to do two years’ work in one, and at the age of twelve was ready for what was called the City College. But he was judged too young, and had to take one year in the grammar school all over. The fates took pity on him, and gave him as teacher for that year a jolly Irish gentleman, so full of interest in his boys that he did not keep the rules. If you wanted to ask him questions you asked, and without first raising your hand; you might even get into an argument with him, as with any boy, and if he caught you whispering to your neighbor, his method of correcting you was novel, but highly effective—he would let fly a piece of chalk at your head, and you would grin, and the class would howl with delight. In this strange, happy group the little boy went by the nick-name of “Chappie”; for the school was located on the East side of New York, and most of the boys were “tough,” and had never before heard the English language correctly spoken by a boy. “Chappie” owned a collection of one or two hundred story-books which had been given him by aunts and uncles and cousins at a succession of Christmases and birthdays. The priceless treasure, when he left the school, became the foundation of a class library, to the vast delight of the other boys and of the Irish teacher. So the boy ended his grammar-school life in a blaze of glory, and went away thinking the public school system a most admirable affair. CHAPTER II THE COLLEGE GOOSE The College of the City of New York at that time occupied an old brick building on Twenty-third Street and Lexington Avenue. It gave a five years’ course, leading up to a college degree; but the first two or three years were the same as high school years at present. The boy went there, not because he knew anything about it, nor because he knew what he wanted, but because that was the way the machinery was built; he was turned out of the grammar school hopper, and into the city college hopper. In his earliest days it had been his intention to become the driver of a hook-and-ladder truck; later on he had decided to follow his ancestors to Annapolis; now he had in mind to be a lawyer; but first of all he wanted to be “educated.” Most of the students in this college were Jews. I didn’t know why this was; in fact, I hardly knew that it was, because I didn’t know the difference between Jews and Gentiles. They came from poor families, and most of them worked hard; they lived at home, so there was little of what is called “college life” about our education. There were feeble attempts made to get up “college spirit”; now and then a group of lads would run about the streets emitting yells, but their efforts were feeble, and struck me as silly. In the course of time one of the better dressed members of my class came to me with mysterious hints about a “fraternity.” I didn’t know what a “fraternity” was, and anyhow, I had no money to spare; I was living on four dollars and a half a week, and earning it by writing jokes and sketches for the newspapers. I took six or eight courses each half year at the college, and as I recall them, my principal impression is of their incredible dullness. For example, the tired little gentleman who taught me what was called “English”; I remember a book of lessons, each lesson consisting of thirty or forty sentences containing grammatical errors. I would open the book and run down the list; I would see all the grammatical errors in the first three minutes, and for the remaining fifty- seven minutes was required to sit and listen while one member of the class after another was called on to explain and correct one of the errors. The cruelty of this procedure lay in the fact that you never knew at what moment your name would be called, and you would have to know what was the next sentence. If you didn’t know, you were not “paying attention,” and you got a zero. I tried all kinds of psychological tricks to compel myself to follow that dreary routine, but was powerless to chain my mind to it. Then there was “history”; first the history of the world, ancient and modern, and then the history of England. I remember the tall, stringy old gentleman who taught us lists of names and dates, which we recited one hour and forgot the next. Here, if you were caught not paying attention, it was possible to use your wits and “get by.” I remember one bright moment when we were discussing the birth of the first prince of Wales. Said the professor: “How did it happen that an English prince, the son of an English king, was born on Welsh soil?” The student, caught unawares by this singular question, stammered, “Why—er—why —his mother was there!” Also there were the physics classes; rather less dull, because they included “experiments,” which exhibited the peculiarities of natural forces—sparks and smoke, and noises of explosions major or minor. But why these things happened, or what they meant, was never understood by anyone, and whether an explosion was major or minor was entirely a matter of luck. I remember composing a poem for the college paper, dealing with the effect of physics upon a poet’s mind: He learned that the painted rainbow, God’s promise, as poets feign, Was transverse oscillations Turning somersaults in rain. And then there was drawing. We sat in a big studio, in front of plaster casts of historic faces, and we made smudges supposed to resemble them. On this subject, also, I wrote some verses, portraying the plight of a student who forgot which cast he was copying, and paced up and down before them, exclaiming: “Good gracious, is it Juno or King Henry of Navarre?” I studied a number of complicated technical subjects—perspective and mechanical drawing and surveying—though now, thirty years later, I could not survey my front porch. I studied mathematics, from simple addition to differential calculus. The addition I still remember; but if I were asked to do the simplest problem in algebra I should not have an idea how to set about it. I remember with vividness the men who put me through these various torments; young men, some feeble, some impatient, but always uninterested in what they were doing; old men, kind and lovable, or irritable and angry, but all of them hopeless so far as concerned the task of teaching anybody anything of any use. Every morning we spent half an hour in what was called “chapel,” and the old men, the members of the faculty, were lined up on the platform, and remain to this hour the most vivid line of human faces stored in my memory. It was their duty to listen to student oratory; and so perfect had been the discipline of their lives that they were able to sit without moving a muscle, or giving the least sign of what they must have felt. Sooner or later we came into the class-rooms of these old men, and each in turn did what he could for us. I remember the professor of German, lovable, genial, highly cultured. During the two years that I studied with him, I learned perhaps two hundred words—certainly no more than I could have learned in two days of active study under an intelligent system. Little things he taught me that were not in the course, for example by a slight frown when he saw me trimming my finger-nails in class. And then the professor of Greek, a white-whiskered old terror. For three years he had me five hours per week, and today I could not read a sentence from a child’s primer in Greek, though I still know the letters and the sounds. I suppose there are Greek words which I have looked up in the dictionary a thousand times, yet it never occurred to any human being to point out to me that I might save time and trouble by learning the meaning of the words once for all. I marvel when I realize that it was possible for me to read “The Acharnians” of Aristophanes, line by line, and hardly once get a smile out of it, nor have it occur to me that there was any resemblance between what happened in that play, and the fight against Tammany Hall and the Hearst newspapers which was going on in the world about me. And then the professor of Latin; he also was a terror, though his whiskers were brown. He was a prominent Catholic propagandist, editor of “The Catholic Encyclopedia,” and conceived a dislike for me because I refused to believe things just because they were told me. I can see this old gentleman’s knitted brows and hear his angry tones as he exclaims: “Mr. Sinclair, it is so because I say it is so!” Five hours a week for five years I studied with that old gentleman, or his subordinates, and I read a great deal of Latin literature, but I never got so that I could read a paragraph of the simplest Latin prose without a dictionary. I look at a page of the language, and the words are as familiar to me as my own English, but I don’t know what they mean, unless they happen to be the same as the English. And then the professor of chemistry; an extremely irascible old gentleman with only one arm. There was a rumor to the effect that he had lost the other through the misbehavior of chemicals, but I never investigated the matter. I learned that chemistry consists of mixing liquids in test-tubes, and seeing that