James Hyslop gave me a course in what he called “practical ethics,” and this was a curious affair. In the first part he discussed abstract rules of conduct—regardless of the fact that there can be no such things. In the second part he attempted to apply these rules to New York City politics, explaining the methods by which Tammany politicians got their graft, and devising elaborate laws and electoral arrangements whereby these politicians could be kept out of office, or made to be good while in. The professor was a frail and ascetic-looking little man with a feeble black beard. It was painfully clear to me that the politicians were more clever than he, and would devise a hundred ways of countering his program before he had got it into action.
Now, as I look back upon this course, the thing which strikes me as marvelous is that never once in a whole year of instruction did the professor drop a hint concerning the economic basis of political corruption. The politicians got money—yes, of course; but who paid them the money, and what did the payers get out of it? In other words, what part was Big Business playing in the undermining of American public life? I took an entire course in “practical ethics” at Columbia University in the year ’99 or 1900—two hours a week for nine months—and never once did I hear that question mentioned, either by the professor or by any of the graduate students in that class!
You would have thought that this would have made James Hyslop safe for life; but alas! the poor man became too anxious concerning the growth of Socialism throughout the world, and decided that the way to counter it was to renew the faith of the people in heaven and hell. You may find his ideas on this point quoted in “The Profits of Religion,” page 224. He took to studying spiritualism, and the newspapers took him up, and the university authorities, who tolerate no sort of eccentricity, politely slid him out of his job.
After his recent visit to the United States, H. G. Wells wrote that the most vital mind he had met was James Harvey Robinson, author of “The Mind in the Making.” Twenty-two or three years ago I took with Professor Robinson a course in the history of the Renaissance and Reformation. It was a great period, when the mind of the race was breaking the shackles of mediæval tyranny in religion, politics, and thought. I read with eagerness about John Huss and Wyckliffe, Erasmus and Luther. I still hope for such heroes and for such an awakening in my own modern world; meantime, I observe that Professor Robinson, unable to stand the mediævalism of Columbia, has handed in his resignation.