Of course, to such a man there was no person so irritating as a “reformer” of any sort, and he never wearied of pouring out ridicule upon the man who imagined he could do anything to make society better. “Society does not need any care or supervision,” decreed the all-wise professor, and that settled it; the hard young Roman rulers thronged to his classes, and absorbed his gospel of the wolf-pack, and went out with their minds encased in a triple-plated Harveyized steel armor of prejudice, ready to commit any crimes that might be necessary to the preserving of their privileges. Today the pupils of Professor Sumner are walking upon the faces of labor and stamping out the hopes of mankind in hundreds of the leading industries of the country, and in the highest posts of the government, from the United States Supreme Court down. Such a man is worth many billions of dollars to the plutocrats; they pay him a few thousand a year, and tickle his vanity with solemnly conferred degrees and an academic robe to wear, and at the end of his thirty years of service the editors of the “Yale Review” celebrate him in a series of articles as “Pioneer—Teacher—Inspirer—Idealist—Man—and Veteran.”
Professor Sumner’s place is now ably taken by one of his pupils, Professor Albert G. Keller, author of “Societal Evolution,” which a well-known American sociologist describes to me as “a lengthy example of secondary rationalization to prove the immorality of social reform.” In case you do not understand these scientific technicalities, let me explain that Professor Keller is employed by the New England plutocracy to act as intellectual night-watchman for their property; and that having got his orders what to teach, he then invents an elaborate set of reasons to convince himself and the world that this is the right thing to teach, and that in so teaching he is protecting society.
Meantime, what of the men at Yale who happen to have some vision of social service and human sympathy? I managed to find one who had been there, and for a while thought he was going to make a success in the great university. He invented during the war a device to destroy submarines, and the United States government took it up. Word came to the interlocking trustees, and the secretary of the corporation, Mr. Anson Phelps Stokes, sent for the professor in haste. There was a story in this—some advertising for Old Eli! Simon Lake, a Yale man, had invented the submarine, and now another Yale man was to wipe it out! “For God, for country, and for Yale!” Mr. Stokes with eager fingers began turning the pages of an encyclopedia, to find out the date of Simon Lake’s invention, and the date of his sojourn in the university!