Needless to say, the University of the House of Morgan is completely provided with funds; its resources are estimated at over seventy-five million dollars and its annual income is over seven million. A considerable part of its endowment is invested in stocks and bonds, under the supervision of the interlocking directors. I have a typewritten list of these holdings, which occupies more than twenty pages, and includes practically all the important railroads and industrial corporations in the United States. Whoever you are, and wherever you live in America, you cannot spend a day, you can hardly spend an hour of your life, without paying tribute to Columbia University. In order to collect the material for this book I took a journey of seven thousand miles, and traveled on fourteen railroads. I observe that every one of these railroads is included in the lists, so on every mile of my journey I was helping to build up the Columbia machine. I helped to build it up when I lit the gas in my lodging-house room in New York; for Columbia University owns $58,000 worth of New York Gas and Electric Light, Heat and Power Company’s 4 per cent bonds; I helped to build it up when I telephoned my friends to make engagements, for Columbia University owns $50,000 worth of the New York Telephone Company’s 4½ per cent bonds; I helped to build it up when I took a spoonful of sugar with my breakfast, for Columbia University owns some shares in the American Sugar Refining Company, and also in the Cuba Cane Sugar Corporation.
The great university stops at nothing, however small: “five and ten cent stores,” and the Park and Tilford Grocery Company, and the Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company. I have on my desk a letter from a woman, telling me how the Standard Oil Company has been dispossessing homesteaders from the oil lands of California; Columbia University is profiting by these robberies, because it owns $25,000 worth of the gold debenture bonds of the Standard Oil Company of California. Recently I met a pitiful human wreck who had given all but his life to the Bethlehem Steel Company; Columbia University took a part of this man’s health and happiness. Crossing the desert on my way home, in the baking heat of summer I saw far out in the barren mountains a huge copper smelter, vomiting clouds of yellow smoke into the air. We in the Pullman sat in our shirt-sleeves, with electric fans playing and white-clad waiters bringing us cool drinks, but even so, we suffered from the heat; yet, out there in those lonely wastes men toil in front of furnace fires, and when they drop they are turned to mummies in the baking sand and their names are not recorded. Not a thought of them came into the minds of the passengers in the transcontinental train; and, needless to say, no thought of them troubles the minds of the thirty thousand seekers of the higher learning who flock to Columbia University every year. With serene consciences these young people cultivate the graces of life, upon the income of $49,000 worth of stock in the American Smelters Securities Company.