The Bias of Great Wealth

T"HE BIAS
OF GREAT WEALTH
AN EXAMINATION OF
THE ACTIVITIES OF LEADING
Ai\rE1UCAN FOUNDATIONS
AND THOSE \nlO
DIRECTTHEInAFFAIRS
BY
FRANI( HUGHES
Reprinted/romPREDJ UDICE AND THE PRESS
TIlE D EVlN-AOAJRCOMPANY, Publishers, NewYork
1951
Chapter Ten
THE BIAS OF GREAT WEALTH
(1)
THE "COMMISSION ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS" has brought a
number of undocumented charges against the American news-
paper press, one of which is that all newspapers are biased in
behalf of wealth, "big business," and the large owners of prop-
erty. The reader will recall an echo of this in the "golden age"
argument in the preceding chaptcrs-"Through concentration
of ownership the variety of sources of news and opinion is lim-
ited."! And, in the same argument, "the press must, if it is to be
wholly free, kn_ow and overcome any biases incident to its own
economic position, its concentration, and its pyramidal organ-
ization."2
The "commission" belabors this allegation so heavily that it
becomes necessary to submit it to a detailed and factual exam-
ination. It has, for instance, a three-page section in its general
report entitled "The Bias of Owners," containing statements
such as this:
"The agencies of mass communication are big business, and
their owners are big businessmen. . . . The press is connected
with other big businesses through the advertiSing of these busi-
nesses, upon which it depends for the major part of its revenue.
The owners of the press, like the owners of other big businesses,
are bank directors, bank borrowers, and heavy taxpayers in the
upper brackets.
"As William Allen White put it: 'Too often the publisher of
an American newspaper has made his money in some other call-
ing than journalism. He is a rich man seeking power and pres-
28
5
PREJUDICE AND THE PRESS
tige. He has the country club complex. The business manager
of this absentee owner quickly is afflicted with the country club
pOint of view. Soon the managing editor's wife nags him into it.
And they all get the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth.
''8
Basically this is no diHerent from the lOO-per-cent Com-
munist doctrine as presented by Hewlett Johnson, the "Red"
Dean of Canterbury, in his book, Soviet Power, of which the
Communist party distributed one million copies in the United
States: "Our democracy ... will never reach its fruition till
we follow the Soviet lead and secure for all economic liberty
and equality. It will shrink rather than grow as economic in-
equality increases. The vast fortunes, which enable wealthy
individuals to gain so large a measure of control of the Press,
already and subtly undermined much of our imagined and
vaunted democratic liberty."r;
This is not to say, of course, that William Allen White was a
Communist; only that the charge originally came from the Com-
munists, and the "Commission on Freedom of the Press" had to
reach exceedingly far to get any "dignincation" for it. What was
quoted may even have been a misquotation of the late Emporia,
Kansas, editor, and presented no facts. Mr. White didn't name
any newspaper publishers, business managers, or managing edi-
tors he knew for a fact to have the "unconscious arrogance of
conscious wealth," and he was acquainted with a great many
editors and publishers. If Mr. White really made such a state-
ment he certainly presented DO substantiation of it. Newspaper
editors are not the only ones who like the sound of their own
rhetoric. Scholars, however, are supposed to know how to
distinguish between rhetoric and fact.
This is another instance where the "Commission on Freedom
of the Press," searching around for an opinion which coincided
with its own particular prejudice, used it as a ground for gen-
eralization, and presented that generalization to the public as
scholarly "confinnation" and truth. William Allen White also
said that the "conduct and morals" of the American newspaper
press is much higher than that of the "preachers who guide our
spiritual life" and the "teachers who channel our youth:'6 From
286
this opinion the generalization could be made that the morals
and behavior of university professors is much worse than that
of newspapers and their editors. The "Commission on Freedom
of the Press" did not choose this opinion from William Allen
White nor make any such generalization as that, although,
on the evidence presented, it might be made with equal justice.
"Few editors are in jail or are on their way there," Mr. White
added. "Few editors obviously and shamelessly defend male-
factors of great wealth. The class consciousness of our profes-
sion does not seal our lips when one of our own calling makes a
mistake. Our code does not require us to put the double hush
on charges made against us either as individuals or against our
ca11mg
'
....
"7
Here is still another of Mr. White's opinions, which the
"Commission on Freedom of the Press" did not choose to pre-
sent to the public:
"If any group of bigots should attempt to undermine the liber-
ties of the American people in the blind zeal of noble fanaticism,
what institution would they seek to throttle and discredit? It
would be the American press."8
Any allegation that the American press is 'big business" or
that its owners and managers are characterized by the "uncon-
scious arrogance of conscious wealth" ought to be examined
against the facts. A complete listing of the net worth and
property of American newspapers cannot be made, because
most of them offer no securities on the public market. There-
fore, like other similar businesses, they do not make public Snan
cial reports. There is sufficient public information, however, to
make an adequate sampling of the 'bigness" of newspapers in
the business world.
William Randolph Hearst's properties have always been rep-
resented, particularly by the Socialists and Communists, as the
leading example of "bigness" in American newspaper publish-
ing. In its discussion of "chains," the "Commission on Freedom
of the Press" leads off with Mr. Hearst's newspapers, although
it is constrained to admit that his properties have dropped from
twenty-six to seventeen in number.
9
Hearst Consolidated Pub-
lications, Inc., owns twelve of these newspapers-the largest
28
7
ones-a radio station, and three newsprint companies. These
are the New York Journal-American, the Chicago Herald-Amer-
ican, the Baltimore News-Post and Sunday American, the De-
troit Times, the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, the San Antonio
Light, the Los Angeles Examiner, the Los Angeles Evening Her-
ald and Express, the Oakland Post-Enquirer, the San Francisco
Call-Bulletin, the San Francisco Examiner, the Seattle Post-In-
telligencer, radio station WCAE, the Pejepscot Paper Company,
the Quebec Newsprint Company, Ltd., and the Halifax Power &
Pulp Company, Ltd. The 1947 consolidated balance sheet of
Hearst Consolidated Publications, Inc., showed that it had
property (net fixed assets) of $37,485,979. The net worth of
the company (capital and surplus) was $115,365,820.
10
Gannett Company, Inc., owns twenty-one newspapers in six-
teen cities, fifteen of them dailies, together with six radio sta-
tions. Its balance sheet showed property amounting to $2,561,-
432, and a net worth of $13,593,302Y The Chicago Daily
News reported a net worth of $15,114,341,12 The New York
Times does not publish a balance sheet, none being required,
but does list $13,118,700 in outstanding preferred and common
stockY The Washington Times-Herald, largest daily news-
paper in the nation's capital, was estimated at the death of its
publisher, Mrs. Eleanor Patterson, to be worth $3,000,000 to
$7,000,000.
11
Ivlarshall Field's newspaper, PM, as has been
previously noted, had a book value of $800,000, including
presses, equipment, and a 12-story building, at the time he
transferred it to new owners in 1947. Book value, as also was
noted, means little since Field paid $375,000 additional to
have the property taken away.
Against these figures, leading off with the $115,365,820 re-
ported net worth of Hearst Consolidated Publications, Inc., the
reader is invited to compare what is ordinarily known as "big
business" in America-American Telephone and Telegraph Co.,
Inc. , with a 1948 reported net worth of $9,310,257,409, and
United States Steel, with a reported 1947 net worth of $1,510,-
General Motors, with a net worth of $1,570,575,-
801/
G
Standard Oil of Indiana, with a net worth of $924,870,-
060/
7
General Electric, with a net worth of $412,926,364,18 and
288
General Foods, with a net worth of $132,313,984.
19
The prop-
erty ownership of these corporations compares in about the
same ratio, American Telephone and Telegraph, for instance,
reporting property of $8,668,842,204, against the Hearst Cor-
poration's $37,485,979.
20
The comparison could be carried on
down through banks, insurance companies, department stores,
lumber companies, and almost any line of heavy-goods manu-
facturing, without showing anything except the relatively small
size of daily newspapers in the industrial economy of "big busi-
ness." Two out of 43 national banks in Chicago, for instance,
the First National and the Continental National, have nearly
four-fifths of the city's bank deposits.
This is the type of study that a body of university professors
such as the "Commission on Freedom of the Press," having a
large staff of assistants and a $215,000 grant, was admirably
equipped to do. It made no such study. The "commission"
seems to have begun with the idea that newspapers possess
property and material wealth, therefore they must be "biased"
in favor of wealth. \iVhether consciously or not, this idea fol-
lows the doctrine of economic detenninism, or the materialistic
conception of history, first introduced into politics by Karl
i\larx, who said: "The method of production in material ex-
istence determines social, political, and spiritual evolution in
general. It is not consciousness of mankind that determines
its existence, but, on the contrary, its social existence that de-
termines its consciousness."21
If the possession, management, or direction of large proper-
ties and large sums of money carries an innate poison which
"biases" the individual in favor of "wealth," and if even salaried
employes such as business managers and managing editors get
this virus through association, as the "Commission on Freedom
of the Press" has claimed, it is exceedingly strange that Chan-
cellor Hutchins and his twelve fellow "commissioners" have not
fallen victim to the plague. They are the managers of, stewards
of, or employes of one of the greatest aggregations of private
and untaxed wealth in the history of mankind. Again, the
reader is invited to compare the net worth of newspaper prop-
erties with that of really ''big business":
28
9
NetWorth Property
Harvard University ................... $320,111,832. $100,000,000.
Yale University ....................... 189,500,544. 50,000,000.
Columbia University ......, ,'.......... 157,36.5,581. 62,399,445.
University of Chicago ................. 142,421,646. 43,889,201.
University of Michigan ................ 133,144,677. 84,717,725.
UniversityofCalifornia ................ 124,970,826. 63,959,861.
University of Texas ................... 119,958,622. 25,958,622.
Northwestern University ............... 105,496,132. 30,338,000.
University ofRochester ................ 102,095,259. 34,208,107.
University of Minnesota ............... 97,297,914. 44,587,914.
University of Illinois .................. 89,867,875. 50,626,573.
Cornell University .................... 89,518,909. 30,335,010.
Princeton University .................. 84,137,923. 30,000,000.
0
Massachusetts Institute of Technology ... 84,083,000. 18,346,000.
DukeUniversity ...................... 83,363,605. 31,646,832.
University of Pennsylvania ............. 80,563,922. 36,093,922.
Stanford University ................... 63,896,573. 19,905,145.
University of \Visconsin ............... 57,112,948. 31,854,922. t
OhioStateUniversity .................. 56,523,447. 30,080,941.
Johns Hopkins University .............. 52,702,861. 14,563,423.
NewYork University ...............' ... 58,089,017. 16,474,581.
Washington U. (St. Louis)............. 46,378,551. 16,158,258.
Vanderbilt University ................. 43,272,456. 8,530,480.
Rice Institute ........................ 39,484,096. 5,641,546.
DartmouthCollege .................... 38,750,000. 11,000,000.
(OEstimate-no formal valuation made.)
( t Value of buildings only, land is not included.)22
These are only the twenty-five wealthiest universities and
collegesofthe1,742institutionsofthehigherlearningreporting
to the United States Office of Education, which stated that
1,440 of them, at the last accounting, held apprOximately $4,-
518,000,000investedinpermanentorquasi-permanentfundsor
inphysical property.28
It is worth noting t)lat ten of the thirteen members of the
"Commission on Freedomof the Press,"who profess to find the
"unconsciousarroganceofconsciouswealth"innewspaperpeo-
ple, are or have been connected with the four richest of these
institutions, and Chancellor Hutchins, the chainnan of the
"commission," is the undisputed director of the $142,421,646
fortune belonging to the UniverSity of Chicago, fourth-ranking
institution in amount of wealth.
24
Another "commissioner," George N. Shuster, is in charge of
an institution which has a more modest fortune, being presi-
dent of Hunter College, New York City, which reported a net
worth of $21,912,604, with property valued at $16,608,971,
29
THE BIAS OF GRAT WEALTH
current income of $5,055,393, and a 1947--48 budget of $4,943,-
674.
25
This, as a "big business," is considerably larger than the
entire operation of Gannett Company, Inc., with its twenty-one
newspapers and six radio stations. The twelfth "commissioner,"
Professor Niebuhr, is an employe of Union Theological Semi-
nary, which has close relations with Columbia University, third
richest of the institutions of higher learning.
26
The thirteenth
"commissioner," Professor John Dickinson, teaches at the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, which has a net worth of $80,563,922.
More than four and a half billion dollars of property tell only
a part of the story of the "big business" nature of the higher
learning from which come the members of the "Commission on
Freedom of the Press." During 1943-44, for instance, 1,563 in
stitutions spent a total of $1,001,545,068, according to the
United States Office of Education.
21
During the same year,
1,650 such institutions employed a teaching staff of 150,980
persons.
28
Said the "Commission on Freedom of the Press":
"The agencies of mass communication are big business....
The press is a large employer of labor. With its total wage and
salary bill in the same [pre-war] year nearly a billion dollars, it
provided about 4 per cent of the country's total salary and wage
expenditures. The newspapers alone have more than 150,000
empIoyees....
"29
The reader may contrast this picture of the alleged ''big busi-
ness" character of the American newspaper press with the
folloWing statement by John Dale Russell, writing in American
Universities and Colleges, 1948, the publication of the Ameri-
can Council on Education:
"Another striking tendency in the financing of higher educa-
tion is the increased dependence on govemment funds and the
increased willingness of govemment to provide funds for higher
education. A hasty calculation indicates that in the budget year
1947--48 the federal government alone is paying in the neighbor-
hood of $1,500,000,000 for services in higher education, exclu-
sive of grants for research, but including maintenance grants to
students as well as payments for their instruction. Most of the
state legislatures have been relatively generous in the post-war
years in providing appropriations for higher education."80
29
1
It is little wonder, with this degree of largess, institutions of
the higher learning exhibit pro-government bias in their cunic-
ulum and teaching. Billions seem to be piling in upon billions
in the industry with which all the members of the "Commission
on Freedom of the Press" are affiliated, either as directors and
managers or as employes or former employcs. To all this
wealth, of course, must be added the estimated $2,000,000,000
to $4,000,000,000 in capital asscts of the 700 philanthropic
foundations in the United States,:l1 which are disbursing in the
neighborhood of $100,000,000 a year, 32 virtually every cent of
it through educators or former educators allied with the higher
learning. The spending of these foundation millions is done by
university professors and former professors who are cxC'cutive
officers or members of the professional staff of the organizations,
and it is idle to claim that the business men who arc on the
foundation boards of trustees have much to do with it. Even
such sympathetic commentators as Shelhy M. Harrison and
F. Emerson Andrews of the Russell Sage Foundation admit
that:
"The primary function of a board of trustees is the broad de-
termination of policies in harmony with the foundation's char-
ter. However completely authority has been vested in the
board, it has neither the time nor usually the special knowledge
required for detailed administration of the work of the larger
founda tions. . . . "33
Still another proof of the 'big business" nature of the higher
learning, which is the business of the members of the "Commis-
sion on Freedom of the Press," is the extent to which colleges
and universities actually have gone into competitive business
enterprises in the last few years. A recent New York Tin/,es sur-
vey showed that 455 such instihltions earned $150,492,583 from
operating commercial ventures in 1947, including large scale
real estate and big factories. Chancellor Hutchins' University
of Chicago, for instance, is one of the richest single landlords
in Chicago, collecting rents from many commercial properties,
and it also owns the preferred stock in Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica, Inc. , a commercial publishing venture. New York Uni-
versity owns a spaghetti factory which earns $600,000 to $800,-
29
2
TIlE BIAS OF GREAT WEALTH
000 a year, on which the firm, in private hands, used to pay
$240,000 to $300,000 taxes.
fH
"Educational funds," of course,
are tax-exempt. It would be difficult to find an American news-
paper o\>mer so greedy for profit he added spaghetti presses to
printing presses to compound a fortune.
From these facts the following points would appear to be ob-
vious: 1) If control of, the spending of, and association with
great sums of wealth produce a 'bias" in favor of wealth, as the
:Marxians insist, then Chancellor Hutchins and the other mem-
bers of the "Commission on Freedom of the Press," on a quan-
titative basis, should be much more prejudiced by the "uncon-
scious arrogance of conscious wealth" than any American
newspaper; 2) Newspapers are producers, and what wealth
they have, they, themselves, have created; educators are the
spenders and produce very little material wealth; granting full
credit to their invaluable contribution to the society and to
every citizen, educators still depend on others to produce the
wealth which they spend; 3) the funds which Chancellor
Hutchins and his fellow "commissi.oners" spend are tax-exempt;
in addition, they take other funds directly from the pockets of
the taxpayer; newspapers not only create new wealth for the
whole of society, they pay taxes upon it.
The "Commission on Freedom of the Press," without present-
ing facts, denounced. the American newspaper press for 'bias"
concerning its alleged "concentration and its pyramidal orga-
nization."3G From this, one would expect the facts to show that
great groups of newspapers are owned by large corporations,
which in turn are O"wned by each other, with interlocking di-
rectorates and common direction from the top. Actually nothing
is further from the truth. The "commission," as has been pre-
viously noted, was forced to admit that "the number of papers
controlled by national chains has actually declined in recent
years.":lG The seventeen Hearst newspapers, the eighteen
Scripps-Howard newspapers, the fifteen Gannett dailies, and the
three McCormick-Patterson dailies out of a total of 1,873 daily
newspapers in the nation were the only "chains" the "commi;-
sion" could find to Single out by name.
To bolster its argument, the "commission" invented a term-
293
"regional chain"-which consists of any publishing company
owning newspapers in different localities. This is something
like calling the University of Chicago a "chain university" be-
causeithasacampusontheMid.wayandacollegeinChicago'S
Loop. Even so, the "commission" could find only seventy-six
"chains-national, regional, and local,":J7 in the nation. The
term"pyramidalorganization"wouldimplyan interlockingbe-
tween these ownership groups. Actually, the newspaper busi-
ness,becauseof itshighlycompetitivenature, is one of thefew
industries in America where there has never been so much as
a hint of such interrelationship. No man ever served as a di-
rector of the Hearst companies and of the Scripps-Howard
Company, for instance, at the same time. Such an alliance
would be intolerable to any publishing company, although it
is commonpracticeinsomeotherfields, particularlyamongthe
trustees, directors, and regents of universities and the great
foundations. Itis ill thefield ofthehigher learning that"pyra-
midal organization" today reaches its zenith.
Infact, the "Commission on Freedom of the Press"seems to
haveblamedtheAmericannewspaper press for virtually every
sin of which the members of its own profession appear to be
guilty. Newspapers,for instance, neverhave handedbackand
forth large sums of money betweeneach other, or given finan-
cial assistance to each other. Such a practice would be con-
sidered a public scandal, although itis indulged in as a matter
of coursebythelargeso-calledphilanthropicfoundations, even
though some of them have charters forbidding it.
The$189,000,000RockefellerFoundation,in 1946,gave$21,-
000 to the $810,000 WoodrowWilson Foundation;38 the $166,-
000,000 Carnegie Corporation, in 1947, gave $4,000 to the
$1,068,000 World Peace Foundation;39 over a period of years
it gave $200,000 to the $20,000,000 Julius Rosenwald Fund;40
in1942,itgave$86,000to the$17,000,000CarnegieFoundation
for the Advancement of Teaching;41 in 1942, it appropriated
$450,000forthe$44,000,000CarnegieInstitution;between1941
and 1947itgave $505,000 to the $11,000,000 Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace, directed from 1945 to 1949 by
Alger Hiss.42 Inthe former year the Carnegie Corporation in-
294
creased its usual gift of $75,000 to $100,000.f3 The corporation
frankly admitted the restrictions in its charter:
"The charter of the Corporation does not permit it to share
in the international program of the Endowment, but the sum of
$75,000 was granted toward support of the educational program
of the Endowment for the promotion of the advancement and
diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of
the United States."H
In spite of this pious declaration, the Carnegie Corporation
did "share in the international program of the Endowment."
The gift of $75,000 to the Endowment released that much of
the Endowment's own funds for the "international program,"
and any statement to the contrary is pure fiction.
As to "concentration," every major foundation in America,
with only two exceptions-the American Council of Learned
Societies and the Guggenheim Foundation-gives money only
to projects which are under "supervision:'45 This means that
the projects are uncler control of the great universities or of out-
right propaganda agencies, such as the Foreign Policy Associa-
tion, the Institute of Pacific Relations, and the Council on
Foreign Affairs, which have university professors on their
boards. It also means that very little money is available for fos-
tering individual and independent thought and research unless
the top authorities in the higher learning approve. A more tight
and monopolistic control of great wealth would be hard to find
in any other segment of the American economy.
Adding to this concentration of power in the higher learning
and foundation realm is an interlocking of directorates which is
never found among American newspapers. Henry Allen Moe,
for instance, was a member of the selection committee of the
Rosenwald Fund; a hustee of the Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation; a member of the Social Science Research Council,
which spends both Carnegie and Rockefeller money; and a
trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation.
40
John Foster Dunes is
a trustee of both the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation.
47
Alger Hiss was presi-
dent of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and
at the same time trustee of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.'8
295
PREJUDICE AND nIE PRESS
There is an enormous concentration and interlockingamong
the multi-million-doBar foundations and the large universities
which have the most wealth. John Sloan Dickey, for instance,
is a former State Departmentpublicitymanwho is nowa trus-
tee oftheRockefellerFoundation, theWoodrowWilson Foun-
dation, the Brookings Institution, and Dartmouth College, of
whichheis alsopresident.
49
GeneralDwightD.Eisenhoweris a
trusteeoftheCarnegieEndowmentfor InternationalPeaceand
president of Columbia University, around which a great
amount of the spending of Carnegie public money revolves.
50
HaroldL. Swift, trusteeof theRockefellerFoundationwas, for
twenty-six years, chairman of the board of the University of
Chicago.
G1
DavidRockefeller, whosebrotherandfatherareon
the Rockefeller Foundation board, is a trustee of the Carnegie
Endo'wmentandoftheUniversityofChicago.52 MarshallField,
donoroftheFieldFoundation, is a trustee of the University of
Chicago and of the Julius Rosenwald Fund."3 Laird Bell, the
new chairman of the board of the University of Chicago, is
also chairman of Carleton College and a member of the Har-
vard University boardof overseers.
Thelist is almostlimitless. Onerecentstudyfoundthatfifty-
four trusteeships in twenty-ninefoundations wereheldby men
whowerealsotrusteesofuniversities,includingthreeuniversity
boardmemberswhoweretrusteesoftheGeneral (Rockefeller)
Education Board, three in the Carnegie Endowment for Inter-
national Peace, and five in the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching.'H If the American newspaperpress
ever presented any such interlocked control or directorate the
"Commission on Freedom of the Press" and other pedantic
critics might be somewhat warranted in talking about "pyra-
midal organization," "monopoly," and "concentration." On the
contrary, the press is free from it, a fact that careful scholars
wouldhavenoted.
Thereareotherwaysbesides thefinancial andorganizational
ones in which the universities and institutions of the higher
learning exhibit a monopolistic and unassailably tight concen-
tration of power in the society. They "accredit" each other.
They vouch for each other's scholastic standing and merit.
29
6
For the most part, organizations which have been set up for
accreditation of schools, colleges, and universities are composed
of educators drawn from these institutions and having direct
and binding ties to them, so that few outsiders have a chance.
The universities grant honorary degrees and honors to members
of each other's administrative staff, faculty, and boards extend-
ing the practice, of course, to the directors of the money-giving
foundations.
05
The possibilities which this tightly organized group of insti-
tutions, combined with enormous untaxed wealth, offer for
dictatorial thought control and rule by cliques of oligarchs will
be discussed as the facts develop. Because of its monopolistic,
plutocratic nature it offers an ideal opportunity for dedication
to fixed political and economic ideologies and the stifling of
minority disagreement. What Harvard has ever criticized what
University of Chicago, for instance, for loading its social sci-
ence faculty with a group of socialists and turning its cOurse
syllabi into a collection of propaganda leaflets resembling noth-
ing so much as a bound volume of Karl Marx' New Rhenish
Gazette?5G And when, some fourteen years ago, Chancellor
Hutchins' institution faced public charges of "teaching com-
munism," who came through with $3,000,000 to help him de-
feat "Hearst and the rest of the nightshirts"?-why, of course,
the \Vas there then any denial of or outcry
against Communism from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia,
Dartmouth, or any of the other institutions of the higher learn-
ing, or from the manifold foundations or other public trusts?
Such unanimity of opinion, of course, is impossible in the
American newspaper press, where totalitarian '1iberals" and real
liberals take sides on every public question, and where indi-
vidual ownership and freedom from financial concentration and
interlocking directorships permit free discussion. As William
Allen White said, the unwritten code of the press does not re-
quire newspapers "to put the double hush on charges made
against us either as individuals or against our calling."
These remarks would have little pOint, however, if it were
not for the fact that the "Commission on Freedom of the Press"
and every member of it, ranging from the original sponsors
297
down through the salaried members of its staff, are so closely
identified with the big-university, big-foundation oligarchy
which seems to suffer from so many of the social deficiencies and
irresponsibilities the "commission" has attributed to newspapers.
It can be argued that university professors, ~ a rule, do not
have much to say about the management or disposal of the
multi-million-dollar funds their institutions possess or about the
spending of the great foundation fortunes.
But the professors and former professors selected by Chan-
cellor Hutchins to form the "Commission on Freedom of the
Press" are of a special kind. They number some of the most
important directors and spenders of this entrenched wealth,
held in "public trust," and others in the same company are
among the most skillful and persuasive in obtaining thousands
and even hundreds of thousands of dollars from this huge tax-
free satrapy to finance their personal academic projects and
endeavors. If there is a commOn denominator among them,
aside from predilection for left-wing social philosophy and a
distaste for facts, it is their identification with the management
or the spending of huge sums of public money. The story of
their associations is intricate and detailed, but it is interesting
enough to lay, in at least outline form, before the readers.
In the first place, four members of the "Commission on Free-
dom of the Press" come directly or originally from the Univer-
sity of Chicago (net worth $142,421,646), four from Harvard
($320,111,832), and one each from Yale ($189,500,544), Co-
lumbia ($157,365,581), and the University of Pennsylvania
($80,563,922). Of the remaining two, President Shuster's iden-
tification with Hunter College ($21,912,604) already is in the
record, while Professor Niebuhr's connection with Columbia's
$157,365,581 through Union Theological Seminary, which has
affihations with Columbia, also is in the record. If there was
any truth in the doctrine that possession of wealth creates a bias
in favor of the wealthy class, then there ought to be a great
deal of such bias in this aggregation of educators, spending or
directing all these millions. This, truly, is the well-fed aristoc-
racy of the higher learning, the academically wealthy, with
millions at their command. vVe will find, as the investigation
29
8
progresses, that they have a great deal of bias. But it is not the
bias of "economic detenninism" that Karl Marx talked about.
Instead of bias in favor of the wealthy class, their bias is against
wealth and toward the direction of socialism, a fact that merely
adds more evidence that Marx was wrong.
Beginning with the financing of the "Commission on Freedom
of the Press," only two sources gave it money. One was Time,
Inc., which is owned by Henry Luce, and the other was Ency-
clopaedia Britannica, Inc. This is a publishing house, dealing
in encyclopedias, text books, films, and other ventures, which
was rescued from financial straits by Sears, Roebuck & Co., and
"given" to the University of Chicago. Chancellor Hutchins, as
head of the universitv, has assumed editorial control over it and
,
a place on the board.
William Benton, fOlmer head of the advertising firm, Benton
and Bowles, and former Assistant Secretary of State, took part in
the deal which transferred the encyclopedia to the univerSity.
He was a vice-president of the UniverSity of Chicago at the
time. fig Not all of the stock of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Inc., was given to the university, and part of that which was
not was purchased by Benton. He thereby became a part
owner of the encyclopedia, and is chaiIman of its board of
directors, on which both Henry Luce and Mr. Hutchins serve.
The Britannica is "big business," having an annual budget of
about $28,000,000.
Luce, Hutchins, and Benton are old friends. Luce is said to
have been instlUmental in getting Benton appointed as Assistant
Secretary of State in 1945. The story told by State Department
insiders is that James F. Byrnes, then Secretary of State, sought
Luce's advice on the appOintment of an assistant secretary for
"information" and public affairs, and sent him a list of names.
The list came back with a check-mark before the name of Wil-
liam'Benton, so it is said, and Benton got the job.
Alger Hiss,s9 formerly head of the State Department's office of
special political affairs, preSident of the $125,000,000 Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, and convicted for perjury
on two counts, one for denying he passed State Department
documents to a Communist spy, said in an iuterview
60
that Ben-
299
ton was responsible for the appointment of Professor Zechariah
Chafee Jr. as the American delegate to the United Nations sub-
commission on freedom of information and of the press. Ac-
cording to Hiss, Benton was the first to suggest Professor
Chafee's name. Professor Chafee was vice-chairman of the
"Commission on Freedom of the Press."
John Sloan Dickey, now president of Dartmouth College, was
an assistant in the State Department office of public information
which was under the direction of Assistant Secretary Archibald
MacLeish and was taken over from him by Benton. Dickey
never held a teaching job before becoming president of the col-
lege in 1946. He is now a member of the board of the Rocke-
feller Foundation. In his first year at Dartmouth, Dickey estab-
lished a course, required of all seniors, called "Great Issues of
the Modern World." He financed this by obtaining a $75,000
grant from the Carnegie Corporation, a "public tlllSt." The
course used cuttings from current metropolitan newspapers,
and taught students to judge the truth of these newspapers by
the manner in which they followed, both in news columns and
editorials, the foreign policy line of the Roosevelt-Truman ad-
ministration, in which Dickey formerly had worked. Newspa-
pers which deviated from this political doctrine were exhibited
to the students on a bulletin board in ridicule.
G1
This was sup-
posed to be "education" and direction as to how the student
should conduct himself in a "democracy."
The man who helped Dickey establish this course at Dalt-
mouth, and who was one of the most frequent lecturers on its
curriculum was Archibald MacLeish, a member of the "Com-
mission on Freedom of the Press."G2 MacLeish, who preceded
Benton as Assistant Secretary of State, was also head of the
Library of Congress. The Rockefeller Foundation has given the
Library of Congress more than $300,000 in cash grants
G3
and in
1942 alone, when i\IacLeish was at the helm, gave the library
approximately $90,000.G4
In the same year, the Rockefeller Foundation completed a
three-year grant of $81,800 to the Library of Congress "toward
a study of communication trends in war time, under the direc-
tion of Dr. Harold D. Lasswell."B5 Lasswell was a member of
3
00
the "Commission on Freedom of the Press." He also served as
a consultant to 'William Benton in the State Deparhnent and had
an office there.
GO
In addition, he was a consultant for the De-
partment of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission,
and the Office of War Information.o
7
Conducting analyses of "the press" similar to Lasswell's were
three men on the payroll of the Federal Communications Com-
mission: Professor Frederick L. Schuman, formerly of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, who belonged to one of the most extensive
groupings of Communjst-front organizations in the government
indexes of persons connected with that type of activity,
and more recently was a member of the platform committee
of Henry A. Wallace's "Progressive" party; Goodv.rin B. Watson.
and William E. Dodd Jr. The latter two were fired from gov-
ernment service by an act of Congress on the recommendation
of the House appropriations committee, which found them
unfit for government service because of association with men
and groups "whose aims and purposes were subversive to this
govemment. "68
The boss of this program and "war time director of the foreign
broadcast intelligence service of the Federal Communications
Commission"G9 was Robert D. Leigh, who was director of the
"Commission on Freedom of the Press," in charge of its staff.
Leigh, who was a visiting professor at the University of Chi-
cago some years ago, currently is the director of the "Public
Library Inquiry" of the Social Science Research Council, in
charge of spending a $75,000 annual grant from the council.
70
During the first ten years of its life, the Social Science Re-
search Council received more than $4,000,000 from the Car-
negie Corporation, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advance-
ment of Teaching, the Commonwealth Fund, the Falk Founda-
tion, the General Education (Rockefeller) Board, the Spelman
(Rockefeller) Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Julius
Rosenwald Fund, and the Russell Sage Foundation.71
One of the most important men in the spending of foundation
money was Beardsley Ruml, chairman of the board of R. H.
Macy & Co., New York, fonner chairman of the New York
Federal Reserve Board, and a member of the "Commission on
3
01
Freedom of the Press." Ruml formerly was a professor at the
University of Chicago and dean of the university's social science
division under Chancellor Hutchins. He is on the board of En-
cyclopaedia Britannica Films, headed by Benton and Hutch-
ins.
72
He is a director of Muzak Corporation, another of Benton's
ventures.
73
He was an official of the Carnegie Corporation, a
trustee of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and directed the giving
of the Laura Spelman (Rockefeller) Memorial when it donated
millions to the so-called "social scicnces."74 Horace Coon, in his
book, Money to Burn, wrote that "wherever the Rockefeller in-
terests have made contributions to the social sciences, Beardsley
RumI's name is usually to be found."'r, Ruml, along with George
Shuster, president of Hunter College, another member of the
"Commission on Freedom of the Press," was a member of the
American National Commission for the United Nations Educa
tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization.'G Archibald Mac-
Leish, another member of the "commission," was chairman of
the American delegation of UNESCO. William Benton, who
foHowed MacLeish into the State Department, followed him
likewise into this chairmanship. Shuster also was chairman of
the Institute of International Education, president of which
was Lawrence Duggan, who plunged to his death mysteriously
after his name came up in the congressional investigation of the
Communist spy ring in which Alger Hiss, head of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, testified
Shuster, in addition, is president of the World Student Service
Fund, a foundation with capital assets of $576,533.'7 Chairman
of this fund is Reinhold Niebuhr, another member of the "Com-
mission on Freedom of the Press."78 Niebuhr was the beneficiary
of a Rockefeller Foundation exchange of professors in 1943
which sent him to England and brought to the United States
Sir William Beveridge, author of the English "cradle to the
grave" social security plan.
79
Another member of the "Commission on Freedom of the
Press" is Professor Charles E. t>,/Ierriam of the University of Chi-
cago, who was a hustee of the Spelman (Rockefeller) Fund at
the time Beardsley Ruml was directing the spending of Rocke-
feller millions in the "social sciences,"8o was president of the So-
3
02
THE BIAS OF CHEAT WEALTH
cial Science Hcscarch Council,sl and was one of the fathers
of the National Resources Planning Board, which was headed
by Louis Brownlow, a friend of Merriam's, to which $3,953,000
in Spelman and Hockefellcr funds has beeJl contributed for
"public planning"
Professor John Clark of Columbia University was a con-
sultant of the Nferriam-Brovmlow National Resources Planning
Board.
s3
He was also a member of the "Commission on Free-
dom of the Press." He served, along with Chancellor Hutchins,
chairman of the "commission," as an official of the National Re-
covery Administration, the first true attempt to introduce a
Fascist business regime into the American economy.SI Professor
Clark also was a frcquent lecturer in economics at the Uni-
versity of Chicago, and spent a full seven years there.
85
Still another member of the "commission" was Professor
Hocking of Harvard, the "philosopher." I-Ie is an associate of
the Institute of Pacific Relations, on the board of which were
Henry Luce and Henry A. Wallace.
AG
This "institute" receives
from $130,000 to $230,000 a year from the Rockefeller Founda-
tion, and about $30,000 a year from the Carnegie Corporation.
87
The Carnegie Corporation gave it $262,000 from 1941 to 1947.
88
The 1948 California legislative investigating committee listed
the Institute of Pacific Helations as among "typical mass organi-
zations that are the victims of Communist domination."80
The only members of the "Commission on Freedom of the
Press" not accounted for so far in this listing are Professors
Dickinson, Redfield, and SchleSinger. Professor Dickinson of
the University of Pennsylvania is listed as a "member of the
corporation" of the Social Science Research Council
90
and so
is Professor Hedfield of the University of Chicago, who also
held office in this organization as a member of the "committee
on fellowships," which gives out the money, and the "commit-
tee on social scicnce personnel."nl Professor SchleSinger of
Harvard likewise was a member of the Social Science Research
Council, representing the American Historical Association.
o2
It
is also interesting to note that in their younger days Professor
Redfield and Professor Lasswell of the "Commission on Free-
dom of the Press," and Professor Schuman, their old colleague
3
0
3
at the University of Chicago now identified with Henry Wal-
lace's platform committee, all got fellowships from the Social
Science Research
All of these activities, very possibly, are legal and there are
some people, no doubt, who would consider them praiseworthy.
They do, however, place every single mcmber of the "Commis-
sion on Freedom of the Press" with feet or hands or both in
one of the greatest troughs of untaxed wealth in the history of
mankind. The fact that they may not own this wealth in the
sense is of little importance, for they and their friends
have full and free access to it and direction of it, and owner-
ship, in the practical sense, means precisely that and nothing
else. Furthermore, they repeat and give credence to the opin-
ion that men in private industry, business managers and man-
aging editors, who are employes and not owners of ncwspapers,
are biased by contact with wealth.
(2)
The question naturally arises whether the gigantiC, multi-
million-dollar "public business" in which these critics engage is
so clean and selfless that they are morally entitled to cry "bias"
upon a smaller, private industry, such as the newspapers. The
readers are entitled to know what these professors have been
doing with the public money, which they never earned, and
which has been placed beyond reach of the tax collector. The
facts which follow will bring out a few examples, although
a thorough analysis of the matter would require a separate book
in itself, or probably three or four volumes.
Our first case study concerns a top-ranking alien, deported as
a Communist, who walked off with $20,160 of Rockefeller Foun-
dation money which was virtually pushed into his hands by a
professor, Dr. Alvin S. Jolmson, then preSident of the New
School for Social Research in New York. He was Johannes or
Hanns Eisler, Austrian composer of the "Comintern March" and
other tunes in the Red Song Book, and brother of Gerhardt Eis-
ler, named as Comintern agent for the United States and chief
of Communist spy activities.
94
The Eisler story, as it came out
3
0
4
in congressional committee hearings, embarrassed not only the
foundations and the '1iberal" cult in the higher learning, but
the state department and the New Deal administration right up
to the White House.
Dr. Johnson, who is now director emeritus of the New School
for Social Research, was the managing editor of the Encyclo-
pedia ot the Social Sciences, on the board of editors of which
was Professor ~ i e r r i a m of the "Commission on Freedom of the
Press." This was another venture heavily supported by the
foundations, particularly the Carnegie Foundation.
95
It is re-
garded as an ultimate source in many phases of the social sci-
ences and is a work to be found in every school library with
pretensions to adequacy. The "Commission on Freedom of the
Press" insists that private newspapers ought to be "common
carriers" of ideas and be objective. Surely, encyclopedias ought
to be objective, particularly when they are published with
grants of public funds. But here is how the professors "accept
the responsibilities of common carriers of information and dis-
cussion"90 when they have charge of the editing.
Dr. Ludwig von Mises, the famous economist, has correctly
noted the article on laissez taire, or free, competitive economy,
in this encyclopedia is Wl'itten by a violent British socialist.
That is not all. The article on Communism is written by Max
Beer, one of the most devoted apostles of Karl Marx and his
doctrines in the whole history of Communism.
97
The article on
socialism. is written by Oscar Jaszi, a prominent Hungarian So-
cialist. The articlc on liberty is written by Harold J. Laski, late
British Socialist and fonner chairman of the Labor party, in
whose lexicon "liberty" and "tyranny" were virtually synonyms.
As if this werc not enough, the article on capitalism was turned
over to the late vVemer Sombart, a former Marxist who man-
aged to get himself so closely identified with the Nazis that
anything he might say in defense of the subject is very nicely
tainted.!)S
Ordinarv honestv
.I
and lack of bias, which educators are sup-
.I
posed to possess, would dictate that if tI1e encyclopedia was
going to contain articles on socialism and Communism written,
respectively, by a Socialist and a Communist, then the articles
3
0
5
on liberty and capitalism ought to be written by a true believer
in liberty (not a Socialist) and by a true believer in capitalism
who was an American and beyond the touch of any militant
European ideologies.
Dr. Johnson, who was managing editor of this encyclopedia,
was associated with numerous otber foundation-financed proj-
ects, not the least of which was the Common Council for Amer-
ican Unity, where he served on the editorial hoarcp9 Benveen
1913 and 1922, the Common Council for American Unity re-
ceived grants of $203,787 from the Carnegie Corporation,
and from 1941 to 1947 it got $283,000.
100
The organization
published a magazine called Common Ground, the editor of
which was Louis Adamic. Another member of the editorial
board was Langston Hughes, the r\ egro poet. Both Hughes and
Adamic are "well known Communists," according to official gov-
ernment reports/01 and the latter hoasts a medal received from
Marshal Tito, the Communist dictator of Yugos]avia.
1
0
2
Some
of the Carnegie grants \-vere specifically for "support
of Common Ground."103
Langston Hughes presents an interesting case study of the
way the big foundations, in the hands of the educators, spend
their money. He has been living off foundation fellowships for
a good part of his life. Hughes is described in congreSSional re-
ports as a "card-holding member of the Commllnist party,"104
and his best-known poem is entitled Goodbye Christ. Among
other things, it urges Jesus to 'beat it on away from here now,"
and to "make way for . . . Marx, Communist Lenin, Peasant
Stalin, Worker Me."10o
Reports of the $20,000,000 Julius Rosenwald Fund disclose
that Langston Hughes got at least two fellowships, said to
average around $1,500, one prior to 1938, and one in 1940-42.106
Chancellor Hutchins of the "Commission on Freedom of the
Press" was a trustee of the Julius Rosenwald Fund during this
period and its reports disclose his name as being listed in the
same volumes with tllat of Langston Hughes. Hughes also got
a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. Professor Red-
field of the "Commission on Freedom of the Press" was a mem-
ber of the advisory board of this fOlmdation until May, 1946.
107
3
06
The Rosenwald Fund, which has disbursed its major assets,
according to the terms of the founder's will, and is now in
process of liquidation, has a record of contributing preponder-
antly to pcrsons and projects far to the left, politically. Careful
examination of the slender reports it has chosen, from time to
time, to make public fails to disclose any notable exceptions of
people and projects definitely and militantly non-Communist
and non-Socialist getting any of its millions. This bias is ex-
tremely interesting in light of the criticism of ''bias'' which has
been directed toward newspapers by Chancellor Hutchins, who
was a Rosenwald trustee for at least six years. The fund was
supposed to be expended for "education and betterment of race
relations," but in the hands of the leftists and the left-wing
propagandists a distressingly large portion of the millions has
gone to the cause of fanning class and racial hatred rather than
brotherly love. Dr. J. W. Holley, Negro educator, author, and
founder of Albany (Ga.) State College for Negroes, named the
Rosenwald Fund as one of the principal agencies through which
members of his race are being taught to '11ate the white man."I08
The Rosenwald Fund has helped to disseminate books or
pamphlets by Carey :McWilliams, dubbed "a hammer-and-sickle
on ... any new front"; 1 ~ hy Howard Fast, former associate edi-
tor of the Communist weekly, New Masses, who was given a
jail term and fined for contempt of Congress for refusing to tum
over records of the joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee;l1O by
Maxwell Stewart, propagandist for the Public Affairs Committee
who taught in MOSCOW, lll and hy the aforementioned Common
Council for American Unity.u2
The Rosenwald Fund also has contributed money to the
American Veterans Committee, which it defends in glowing
words of b'ibute, as having a "program which recognizes a
democratic America as the continuing goal of those who fought
to defend democracy."us The facts tell a very different story
about the American Veterans Committee. It contained a mili-
tant minority of young radicals, some leaders of which formed
the Communist core of the O.S.S., Stars and Stripes, and other
branches of the army during World War II. One of them was
John Gates, member of the central committee of the Com-
3
0
7
munist party and editor of the Daily Worker, convicted with
other party leaders for conspiracy to advocate overthrow of
the United States government by force and violence.
lH
In the post-war enthusiasm, many young veterans joined the
American Veterans Committee, unaware of its political preju-
dices-which led it to give official endorsement to Henry A.
Wallace in the 1948 political campaign-and of its leadership.
From a top enrollment of about 100,000, its membership
slumped to fewer than 30,000 by 1949. The University of
Chicago has a very active A VC post. It is worth noting that
the Rosenwald Fund has never contributed any money to
the American Legion or to the Veterans of Foreign 'lI,Tars,
both of which have well-established educational and civic
programs.
Another Rosenwald project, to which it contributed an undis-
closed sum of money, is the Southern Conference for Human
Welfare.
u5
Official government citations describe this as "a Com-
munist front which received monev from the Robert Marshall
Foundation, one of the principal 'sources of funds by which
many Communist fronts operate" and "a Communist front or-
ganization 'which seeks to attract Southern liberals on the basis
of its seeming interest in the problems of the South> although
its 'professed interest in Southern welfare is simply an expedient
for larger aims serving the Soviet Union and its subservient
Communist party in the United States.' "116
Still another Rosenwald Fund enterprise is Bethune College,
a Negro institution at Daytona Beach, Florida, to which it gave
$9,000.117 The General Education Board, a separate Rockefeller
Foundation capitalized at $16,000,000, also gave this institution
$40,000.11
8
There are many worthy Negro schools in the South
but this particular one is distinguished chiefly by the name of
its founder and preSident, now emeritus, Mrs. Mary McLeod
Bethune, another of those people officially listed in government
reports as among "well known Commuuists."llD. In describing
its grant, the Rosenwald Fund reported it was very selective
about gifts to "private colleges," supporting "only those institu-
tions which gave promise of exceptional service in setting stand-
ards and in continuing to influence the general stream of public
3
08
A more succinct statement of propaganda pur-
pose, in any foundation report, would be hard to find.
Mrs. Bethune is a member of the board of directors of the
American Council on Race Relations, an outright propaganda
organization bent on influencing legislation and swaying public
opinion, which is handsomely financed by the foundations, in-
cluding the Rosenwald Fund, which, according to public law
regulating eleemosynary funds held in trust, cannot engage in
propaganda or attempts to influence legislation without for-
feiting tax exemption.
The American Council on Race Relations brings the discus-
sion back to the "Commission on Freedom of the Press," for
Professor Redfield, one of its members, serves on the council
board with Bethune. So did Edwin R. Embree, late
president of the Rosenwald Fund and vice-president of the
Rockefeller Foundation, who, so the story goes, was chief emis-
sary of Julius Rosenwald when he was trustee of the Univer-
Sity of Chicago, and was one of the men most directly responsi-
ble for installing Mr. Hutchins as president and later chancellor
of that institution. Louis Adamic is another director of the
American Council on Race Relations. So is Charles Dollard,
the preSident of the Carnegie Corporation.
121
The Carnegie Corporation, which in its reports has said it
is "not free to undertake" propaganda, is one of the chief sup-
porters of Louis Adamic, who is the leading propagandist for
Tito Communism in the United States. Adamic, as has been
noted, is a director of the American Council on Race Relations.
Like Langston Hughes, Adamic has received grant after grant
from the big foundations, both personally and for projects in
which he is interested.
Like Langston Hughes, Adamic was given a Guggenheim
Foundation Fellowship, worth about $2,500. On this money,
he spent a year abroad, after which he wrote a book, The Na-
tive's Retum.122 Despite the fact that this book, written in
1932, was more than ten years outdated, the New Deal and
left-wing elements who obtained bullet-proof jobs in the in-
formation-education branches of the army picked it up and
purchased 50,000 copies of it for circulation to troops abroad.
3
0
9
Adamic got $500 additional royalties from the federal treasury
by this gesture. The book was denounced in Congress as
menacing to the morale of the fighting men.m
Adamic got money from at least two other big foundations
to pay his expenses while writing other such books. He was
awarded a "grant-in-aid" in 1937 by the Rockefeller Founda-
tion, which has said it does not give to "individuals." Outside
of his three-year tenure as a student in the Lyublyana gym-
nasium (a junior college) in Yugoslavia, Adamic has never had
any degree from an institution of higher leaming except for
an honorary degree he picked up in 1941 from Temple Uni-
versity.lU The Carnegie Corporation, which has admitted it
would be violation of income tax exemption if it should engage
in propaganda, paid for three more of Adamic's books.
In 1940, the Carnegie Corporation paid Adamic a "grant-in-
aid" out of its $96,176.43 fund for that purpose to write From
Many Lands. In 1942, it paid him two "grants-in-aid" to write
Two-Way Passage and What's Your Name?126 All of these
books were published commercially and Adamic benefited
from the royalties. He already was an established author, re-
ceiving royalties from bis earlier books. He was writing pop-
ular works, having nothing to do with scholarship. Why he
should have been Singled out for foundation grants and extra
largess is something ideology explains in much more precise
terms than do the words of the Carnegie Corporation, which
said:
"The recipients are, however, not always academic and some
of the most interesting results have been achieved in the case
of writers and others who have some important idea to develop,
but who cannot take the time to do so without a guarantee of
at least part of their normal earning capacity. Two of the year's
best books for the general public, Van Wyck Brooks' New Eng-
land: Indian Summer and Louis Adamic's From Many Lands,
were made possible through such grants."127
It may strike some people as odd that foundation grants had
to be given to two people who were hardly in need of gUaI'an-
tees of their "normal earning capacity," while writing books.
Adamic already was the author of a "best seller" and could
3
10
afford to spend his time freely in organizing and helping to
direct some of the Communist-front movements promoting the
cause of :Marshal Tito among Americans of Balkan descent
during this period. Van Wyck Brooks, three or four years be-
fore, had written the 'best seller," The Flowering of New Eng-
land, which earned him at least $60,000 in royalties.
It is also singular that the Carnegie Corporation singled out
two men of the same general ideological persuasion for this
largess. Louis Adamic, as has been noted, is closely identified
with Balkan Communism. Van \Vyck Brooks, while he is an
unchallenged literary craftsman, is an admitted Socialist who
had managed to affiliate himself with twenty-four Communist
fronts up to 1944, and many more since then. Among other
organizations on the roster of which his name is to be found are
the National Council of American Soviet Friendship, the Na-
tional Federation for Constitutional Liberties, and the League
of American Writers, all classified by fonner Attorney Gerieral
Clark as "Communist and subversive."
No one recognizes more clearly than the author that writers
must eat. The subsidizing of books, either privately, as through
an advance on royalties, or by foundations and eleemosynary
organizations, on the whole is a benefit to the society, and with-
out it fewer books would be written. The quarrel here is not
with the "system." It is with the particular foundations which
are financing the writing of pro-Communist propaganda with
money held in public trust for the people of the United States,
under circumstances which appear suspiciously close to a vio-
lation of their charters. Why should any of this public money
go to Communists or to pro-Communist political propaganda,
when the aim of the Communist movement, documented in-
disputably in its o\"n official statements, is the overthrow of the
United States government by force and violence? The guilty
foundations might plead a case, of a sort, if they could prove
they had produced an equal number of books, and given an
equal amount of money to produce conservative, pro-American,
"right-wing" propaganda. But such is not the case. What
writer who favored the late General Draja Mihailovich over
Marshall Tito was ever given a Carnegie grant to write a book
3
11
offsetting some of the poisonous pro-Soviet propaganda about
the Balkans Louis Adamic has written? Where in the social
science programs of the big foundations such as. Rockefeller,
Carnegie, and Rosenwald are the subsidized books giving a
brilliant defense of capitalism, private enterprise, American
nationalism, and the economic principles of the pre-Willkie
Republican party? Even if the foundations could produce thelu,
they would not be exculpated. The finanCing of propaganda
with money held in public trust is not lawful, whether it is
conservative or Communistic. Doubly damning to the admin-
istrators of these public funds is the fact that even so much as
a dollar of them has gone to the support of Communist propa-
ganda, which has as its ultimate aim nothing less than sedition
and treason, and is so defined in the laws of several states.
The Carnegie Corporation is not the only big foundation en-
gaged in financing such books and subsidizing such writers.
The :Rockefeller General Education Board, a separate $16,000,-
000 foundation, regularly contributes to the same general cause,
although it modestly avers "the Board does not entertain re-
quests ... to support propaganda."128
In the same year the Carnegie Corporation gave grants-in-aid
to finance two of Adamic's books, it gave a similar grant to Leo
C. Rosten to write a book called I-Iollywood.
129
Rosten is an-
other whose material needs and cares have been considerably
lightened by the big foundations. He got a previous grant
from the Social Science Research Council, joint spending
agency for Rockefeller and Carnegie money, to spend sixteen
months in Washington, writing a book called The Washington
Correspondents.
130
The preface of this work says:
"It gives me genuine pleasure to acknowledge the encourage-
ment and guidance of Professor Charles E. Meniam, chailman
of the department of political science at the University of Chi-
cago. Many discussions with and suggestions from Professor
Harold D. Lasswell of the same institution can be acknowledged
only in these inadequate words."131
Professors Merriam and Lasswell, of course, are members of
the "Commission on Freedom of the Press." Rosten claimed
that his book was not "a polemical tract" but "an analysis-the
3
12
result of sixteen months of investigation in Washington, under a
fellowship from the Social Science Research Council of New
York."132 Under this claim, it is hardly fair for him to remark,
as he did, that he found "the most an-ant nonsense" in the edi-
torial columns of the Hearst newspapers.
133
Such a statement,
unaccompanied by any attempt to analyze the kind of "non-
sense" which might have been found in the editorial columns
of newspapers having different political views is a confession
that bias motivated this work, not factual, scientific analysis.
The kind of "analysiS" Rosten did under this grant of public
money, with the "guidance" and "suggestions" of two members
of the "Commission on Freedom of the Press," is of more than
passing interest because it illustrates the story of prejudice and
incompetence that is masquerading as scholarship in America,
financed by the foundation millions. The Washington Corre-
spondents was published in 1937, ten years before the "Com-
mission 011 Freedom of the Press" brought out its reports, also
paid for by other people's money.
Rosten, although he spent sixteen months in Washington,
used the mails to conduct a modified sort of Gallup poll of the
newspaper men working there, entitling it "the attitudes and
preferences of 107 'Washington correspondents." Why the job
could not have been done for a few dollars from Chicago, New
York, or wherever Rosten lived, without the window dressing
of "social science" and a fellowship, is not explained. He sent
the correspondents statements such as "I believe that 'rugged
individualism' is the best economic philosophy today," to which
a majority answered "No"; and some "form of government reg-
ulation over big business has become imperative," to which a
majority answered ''Yes.''
Just what this proves, unless it is that a majority of the Wash-
ington newspaper men Rosten "analyzed" were left-Wingers
rather than conservatives is not clear. He mailed questionnaires
to 127 of them and got back 107 replies.
134
His methods weren't
very democratic, for there were 509 regularly accredited Wash-
ington con-espondents on the roster of the congressional press
gallery, to say nothing of the radio commentators and reporters.
Rosten went on to report that a majority of his minority thought
3
1
3
"the press devotes too much space to trivialities; scandals, sensa-
tions, divorces, etc.," and that a lesser number of the minority
-not quite fifty per cent-thought the news columns were less
fair to labor than to "big business."m It may very well be that
many other Americans agree with one or more of the con-
clusions Rosten has tabulated. They may think that newspapers
devote too much space to crime and scandal, and they may dis-
agree with the editorial policy of certain newspapers. But, un-
doubtedly, there are just as many thinking Americans who be-
lieve the opposite, who feel along with Joseph Pulitzer that the
exposure of crime and scandal by newspapers is a social service
that helps to exterminate . those evils and put the culprits in
great fear, and who enjoy the editorial policy of the particular
newspapers in question.
It also may be true that in the realm of the so-called "social
sciences," the basing of conclusions on the opinion of one out
of five persons is considered to be a "fair sampling." The fallacy
here lies in the method itself. The conclusions Rosten reported
from this survey were dignified as "science," and therefore sup-
posed to have great weight. But, in truth, what does the opin-
ion of 107 Washington correspondents out of 509 amount to?
They are unidentified, personally, and certainly carry no more
authority on matters of economic theory and newspaper prac-
tice than a group of editorial workers in any other large city.
In addition, Rosten, through his selective technique, had the
opportunity to load his statistics in favor of his own economic
and political beliefs by picking opinions from people likely to
agree with him. No one who has made an objective study of
the methods of the "social sciences" will be naIve enough to
believe he did not do it. If Rosten had obtained 20 or 30 an-
swers from correspondents in the Hearst organization and In-
ternational News Service in Washington, he would not have
got a condemnation of Hearst editorial pages, or a majority of
his minority condemning "rugged individualism." This is not
to say that all Hearst editorial workers agree with the news-
paper's editorial policy; it only pOints up the danger to truth
from generalizing upon selected opinions, and demonstrates
how closely akin to phrenology, where bumps on the head are
314
measured instead of opinions, arc the measuring methods ot
the "social sciences." Nonetheless, "social scientists" such as
Professors Redfield, lvIerriam, and Lasswell of the "Commission
on Freedom of the Press," the latter two having helped Rosten,
are devoted apostles of the "measuring" cult which uses a two-
foot yardstick. The multi-million-dollar foundations pay big
money for this kind of thing, and one has only to examine the
foundation reports of grants and fellowships to see the same
old, familiar llames appearing over and over again-people
identified with economic and political conviction rather than
honest search for truth, whatever their academic standing.
vVhile there will be no attempt here to generalize, surely there
must be hundreds of university and college professors in Amer-
ica who do not have a pro-Communist, internationalist bias,
who do not revere the Roosevelt-New Deal domestic and for-
eign policy as tablets brought down from Mount Sinai, and
who need help in their research and writing. The V'.'Titer has
reviewed hundreds of foundation-financed tracts, pamphlets,
books, and theses, and except for medical research, disserta-
tions on Egyptology, Polynesian poetry, and the like, has yet
to find, in any politically influential work, the handiwork of
such an author.
Rosten got a Social Science Research Council Fellowship, and
so did John Victor i\Iurra, an instructor in anthropology at the
University of Chicago and student of Professor Redfield, of the
"Commission on Freedom of the Press." A year after Murra had
spent his $2,000 fellowship grant a United States District Court
judge refused his petition for AmeIican citizenship after intro-
duction of evidence from United States Almy intelligence,
backed up by records of his own activities on the university
campus and elswhere.
136
Murra was a native of Russia who had
fought in the Communist brigade in the Spanish revolution.
He d m i t t e ~ this, but denied he was a Communist. The
Social Scicnce Rcsearch Council is the agency of the big foun-
dations with which so many members of the "Commission on
Freedom of the Press" have been connected-Redfield, Mer-
riam, Dickinson, Schlesinger, Ruml, MacLeish, and Leigh.
Fellowships of the same sort are granted by the $20,000,000
3
1
5
GuggenheimFoundation,ofwhichLouisAdamicandLangston
Hughes were beneficiaries. Guggenheim has made some very
interestingpersonal grants.
OttoKlineberg, whogotCarnegiehelponbooks, was aGug-
genheim Fellow. So was Granville Hicks, ex-member of the
Communistparty.137 So was MauriceHindus,whois quotedas
anauthorityinDeanHewlettJohnson'sCommunistbook,Soviet
Power. ISS So was Richard Wright, said bya legislative investi-
gatingbodytobeaCommunistpartymember.139 So wereAlvin
E. Hansen, the New Deal economist; Mordecai Ezekiel, the
earlyNewDealassociateofHenryA. Wallace, andPaulDoug-
las, the '1iberal" professor at the University of Chicago, who
became a United States Senator. So was Carey McWilliams,
the California lawyer, whom legislative reports list as "a ham-
mer-and-sickle on ...anynewfront."14o So wasJack Conroy, a
teacherattheCommunistWorkersSchoolinChicago.
l4l
Thisis
notto say thatall Guggenheimfellows are Communists or fel-
lowtravelers,butthefrequencywithwhichleft-wingapplicants
have been able to gather in these fellowships in the last ten
to fifteen years transcends coincidence. Carey Mc"Villiams
writes pamphlets for the foundation-supported Institute of
Pacific Relations, of which Professor Hocking of the "Commis-
sion on Freedom of the Press" is a director. So does Maxwell
S. Stewart,one-timeeditorofthe Moscow Daily News, nowex-
tinct organ of the Kremlin.142 Both McWilliams and Stewart
write pamphlets for the Public Affairs Committee, Inc., of
which Stewart is the editor. This committee receives money
from three foundations.143
The Public Affairs pamphlets also have been devoted to
spreading the doctrines of Morris Ernst, Harold L. Ickes, and
the "Commission on Freedom of the Press." Robert E. Cush-
man, professor of government at Cornelluniversity, wrote one
called Keep Our Press F"eef, whichhas a capsule-sized digest
of left-wing doctrines, including the absolutely false statement
that in the United States "one company controls about 3,000
weeklies."144 Forfurther reading on the subject, the pamphlet
directsthoseinterestedtobooksbyErnst,Ickes, andthe"Com-
mission on Freedom of the Press."145 This same Cushman, ill
3
16
1947, was the beneficiarv of a $110,000 Rockefeller Foundation
,
grant for the "Studies of civil liberties, and the control of sub-
versive activities." This was a left-wing attempt to attack
"the work of the House Committee on Un-American Acti\ities."
One of Professor Cushman's principal assistants in this sup-
posedly unbiased inquiry is Professor Walter F. Cellhom, of
Columbia, who is a well-known enemy of the House Commit-
,
tee, was a member of several Communist fronts, and a man who
appeared as a defiant and unfriendly witness before the com-
mittee he is now supposed to evaluate with "scholarly" and
"scientific" objectivity.146
The "Commission on Freedom of the Press" demands that
private newspapers be "common carriers" of ideas and opinions,
yet these publications, financed by huge sums of tax-exempt
foundation money, do not present any "common carrier." The
ideas in them are predominantly left-wing, ranging from New
Deal to pro-Soviet, and very few with a capitalist, conserva-
tive, or pro-American viewpoint are given access to these pages
to challenge the facts or statements by the left wingers or to
present opinions. It should be remembered that the members
of the "Commission on Freedom of the Press" are closely iden-
tified with the spending of this foundation money, and with
the organizations which produce this kind of literature.
Three questions arise from this. First, why should the pro-
fessors and ex-professors who formed the "Commission on
Freedom of the Press" demand of others an impartiality which
they and the organizations with which they are identified re-
fuse to exercise? Second, why should tax-exempt funds, held in
public trust, be used to finance any propaganda work of a
political or economic nature, no matter what it is? Third, where
is the integrity of scholarship, the "search for truth," which
these professors and the big foundations both claim as their
justification for existence? Is a left-wing bias which refuses
to confront the facts any more desirable than a conservative
bias, which the "commission" falsely imputes to all American
newspapers? No reasonable person would object to foundation-
financed publications printing the arguments and appeals of
the Communists if an equal amount of pro-American fact and
3
1
7
opinion were included in the same issue or same series of issues.
Here is the place to tryout the "common carrier" idea, for the
money which pays for these publications is held in public trust
and certainly should not be the exclusive bankroll of a minority
of so-called intellectuals. This is money which ought to be
spent, if it is spent that way at all, on presenting the views of
all of the people-not just those professors who hold the purse
strings. If the professors want an exclusive editorial page for
their views, let them invest their own money, as newspaper
publishers do, instead of using funds bequeathed to the better-
ment of all citizens for the purpose.
Another propaganda organization heavily financed by the big
foundations is the Foreign Policy Association, which publishes
a series of booklets giving voice to the opinions of such con-
firmed left-Wingers as Max Lerner, the former editorial writer
for PM. The Rockefeller Foundation gave the Foreign Policy
Association $362,000 between 1941 and 1947,147 while the
Carnegie Corporation gave it $75,000 during the same
period.
148
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently
was headed by Alger Hiss, named in sworn testimony in a
federal court room as a dues-paying member of the Commu-
nist party and as a Communist spy who filched confidential
State Department papers for transmission to the Soviet. Hiss
denied this, but was convicted on two counts of perjury, one
based on his sworn denial to a grand jury on December 15,
1948, that either he or his wife abstracted the papers and gave
them to Whittaker Chambers, an admitted Soviet spy, and the
other based on his sworn denial that he or his wife ever saw
Chambers after January 1, 1937. To support his charge that
Hiss was his confederate in espionage, Chambers produced
stolen documents dated in January, February, and March, 1938.
This foundation has close connections with some of the organi-
zations just discussed. It distributes the booklets of the Foreign
Policy Association and the Institute of Pacific Relations.149 It
also distributed a book by the "Commission on Freedom of the
Press."150 This $11,000,000 public h'ust was in the propaganda
business long before Hiss took it over, although it is exempt
3
18
from federal taxes because, partly, it is supposed not to engage
in propaganda.
This foundation, operating under slogans of "peace," which
brought it out openly in favor of United States entrance in
two \Vorld Wars, is the leader of what is sometimes called the
America-last movement in international politics. For thirty-
five years it has devoted its millions to building the kind of
internationalist opinion in the United States which coincides
with the foreign policy of Great Britain and France. The Car-
negie Endowment was one of the most powerful propaganda
organizations supporting the 3lf-billion-dollar British gift-loan
which preceded the Marshall plan, printing in its 1946 Year-
book a congratulatory letter from the state department for its
"public education" in behalf of that particular project.l;1l
Propaganda apparently becomes "public education" when
you agree with it. The same Yem'book reported that the Car-
negie Endowment had distributed to its "international mind al-
coves" and to "international relations clubs" in high schools and
universities copies of The People of the Soviet Union, by Corliss
Lamont. Lamont was a lecturer in the Jefferson School of Social
Science, tl1e Communist party school in New York City, and has
been affiliated with a host of Communist front organizations.
m
Among speakers the Carnegie Endowment has presented on its
radio programs is Archibald MacLeish, a member of the "Com-
mission on Freedom of the Press."1r;3 Another was Harlow Shap-
ley, the Harvard astronomer who headed the 1949 Communist
gathering of the National Conference of Arts, Sciences, and
Professions in New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and who
has been extremely active in Communist fronts.154 Still another
was Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, popularly known as the "col-
lectivist" Bishop of the Methodist Church, who has a record of
participation in Communits fronts in America unequaled by
any other Methodist parson, with the possible exception of Dr.
Harry F. \VardY" Beardsley Ruml, another member of the
"Commission on Freedom of the Press," took part in the endow-
ment-sponsored meeting of political scientists, the same Year-
book noted.
106
Alger Hiss was ushered into the preSidency of the Carnegie
3
1
9
Endowment with special flourishes which were not accorded to
his predecessor, Nicholas Murray Butler. All Dr. Butler got
out of it was a lavish expense account, which enabled him to
make regular pilgrimages to his beloved France and England
under the excuse of probing the sentiments of the "international
mind." But for Mr. Hiss, the Endowment created a special job
with a salary of $20,000 a year, plus the expense account. Hiss
withdrew from the endowment in 1949. At the same time Mr.
Hiss was elevated to this office-May 9, 1946----John Foster
Dulles, the internationalist lawyer and personal friend of Hiss,
was made chairman of the Endowment Board. The 1947 re-
port of the Endowment secretary said:
"The selection of Mr. Dulles as chairman of the board and of
Mr. Hiss as president of the Endowment serves to emphasize the
decision of the trustees to concentrate the Endowment's efforts
as much as possible upon the success of the United Nations as
the instrument best adapted at the present time to promote the
purposes for which the Endowment was founded."lG7
Along with propagandizing for the United Nations, the En-
dowment under Mr. Hiss was able to get in a few items favor-
able to the Soviet among the books it distl"ibuted, including the
Lamont book and The Soviet Union Today; An Outline Study,
put out by the American Russian Institute, which has been cited
as a Communist front by several legislative inquiriesP8
There is, of course, an enormous interlocking between the va-
rious pro-Communist activities carried on with the foundation
millions in the hands of the professors. One of the foundation-
financed Foreign Policy Association Headline Series pamphlets,
for instance, was written by Professor Philip E. Mosely, profes-
sor of international relations at Columbia University's Russian
Institute. In it, Professor Mosely said: "Over the long run, great
numbers of people will judge both the Soviet and American
Systems, not by how much individual freedom they preserve
but by how much they contribute, in freedom or without it, to
develop a better livelihood and a greater feeling of social ful-

This is the straight Communist party ideology-"what is free-
dom without bread?" Garet Garett, editor of American Affairs,
32
0
commented: "It means only that pure Communist ideology
may be thus imparted by Columbia University's Russian Insti-
tute through the Foreign Policy Association."lGO Not only is
the Foreign Policy Association foundation-supported, but the
Rockefeller Foundation is also responsible for the Russian Insti-
tute at Columbia, granting $250,000 in cash to establish it in
1945.
101
It has supported this "institute" handsomely since. It
also made a similar large grant to Cornell University to start
a Russian Institute there, "for a better understanding of the
Slavic world, particularly of the contemporary life of the Soviet
Union."162
The kind of "democracy" wealthy foundations pay money to
define is indicated in the title of a book, The Pattern of Soviet
Democracy, by C. F. Aleksandrov, a leading Communist "phi-
losopher," which the Rockefeller millions have helped to get
translated and circulated in this coul1b-y. In 1944, the Rocke-
feller Foundation gave the American Council of Learned So-
cieties $500,000 to translate some of the latest Soviet wdtings.
It issued its first volume, a treatise by a member of the Polit-
buro, N. A. Voznesensky, about four years later. This book
attacked the wartime accomplishments of the United States
and Britain. Other such books, including the Aleksandrov vol-
ume, are being issued with this money. Undoubtedly it is true
that the translation of Russian newspapers and magazines
through such a project could serve a useful purpose, telling
Americans what the Communists are writing and thinking
about us. The opportunities it offers, however, as an avenue
of propaganda in the hands of professors who are sympathetic
to Communism ought to be apparent-so much so, in this in-
stance, that Newsweek magazine reported the result has been
that the American Council of Learned Societies has been
swamped with requests, particularly from Communist party
members in the United States and American leftist leaders,
who are eager to fina out what the party line really is:
103
Another organization worthy of special attention was the
"Committee for the Marshall Plan," a propaganda group estab-
lished in New York City in February, 1948, to "sell" the idea
of the Marshall Plan and a twenty-bill ion-dollar donation of
32
1
the taxpayers' money for Europe to Congress and to the Ameri-
can people. Here, again, the question at issue is not whether
the Marshall Plan is good or bad. It is simply a question of
whether money held in public trust by the large foundations
ought to be used to propagandize for any partisan political
issue.
164
One of the most shocking stories is the manner in which the
professors, spending the millions of great foundations such as
the Rockefeller Foundation, the General (Rockefeller) Edu-
cation Board, the Carnegie Corporation, and others, are reach-
ing right down into the public schools, on elementary and
grade level, and using these millions in direct indoctrination
of the children with outright Communist propaganda. One
book for high school use, written by a Communist professor
and a left-Wing associate and published with foundation assist-
ance by the National Education Association, said:
"Freedom of the press, cinema, radio, and of publishing
has to be restored.... For instance, limitations might be im-
posed on the number of journals (or magazines) a single com-
pany is allowed to publish on press syndicates. A limitation of
investment by a single person or company in these fields may
also be useful. The purpose is to reestablish a deconcentrated
press, radio, motion picture industry, and publishing business
based on competitive private (or cooperative) ownership. . ..
Newspapers, radios, and similar industries should also be re-
quired to make public their sources of
The close identity of these last few recommendations, di-
rected toward newspapers, with the doctrines of the "Commis-
sion on Freedom of the Press" will be apparent to the reader.
166
It is, in fact, just one more item of proof of the common direc-
tion of thinking in those circles of the higher learning where
the members of the "Commission on Freedom of the Press" are
active apd important today.167
The people who direct this thinking and who influence the
spending of this public money, so much of which goes to
furthering the Communist, socialist, or 'liberal" cause in the
United States and elsewhere in the world, are a certain kind
of university professors, in the minority perhaps, as to numbers,
32
2
but in positions of great power. Let the reader look at the
names-Hutchins, Ruml, Merriam, Shuster, Lasswell, Mac-
Leish,Niebuhr-identifiedwiththefoundationsandtheirpoliti-
callydirectedspendingandlikewise members of the"Commis-
sion on Freedom of the Press." These are the men who cry
"bias"againstthefree anddiversified press ofAmerica, thelast
remaining stronghold of freedom against socialist encroach-
mentof biggovernment. Theseare themenwho have revived
the old socialist cry: "Shackle the press to make it free."
323
NOTES
NOTES FOR CHAPTER TEN
1. A Free and Responsible Press, op. cit., p. 17.
2. Ibid, p. 18.
3. 1bid, pp. 59, 60.
4. Appendix IX, op. cit., pp. 1514-1518.
5. Soviet Power, by Hewlett Johnson, International Publishers, New York,
1940, p. 308.
6. The American Press, address by William Allen White, Vital Speeches,
May 15, 1939, p. 455.
7. Ibid, p. 455.
8. Ibid, p. 455.
10. Moody's Manual of Investments, 1948, E. 1776.
11. Standard Corporation Records, Standard & Poor's Corp., New York,
Feb. 28, 1949, pp. 334, 335.
12. Moody's, op. cU., p. 710. (See also financial report in Appendix E.)
13. Ibid, p. 1657.
14. Cf. Newsweek, Aug. 1, 1949, p. 46.
15. Standard Corporation Records, op. cit., p. 1520. Moody's, op. cit., p. 2703.
16. Moody's, op. cit., p. 2216.
17. Ibid, p. 2882.
18. Ibid, p. 2197.
597
19. Ibid, p. 1667.
20. Standmd Corporation op. cit., p. 1520.
21. The Critique of Political Economy, by Karl Marx, London, 1859, Vol. I.
pp. iv, v.
22. American Universities and Colleges, 5th edn., edited by A. J. Brum-
baugh, American Council on Education, \Vashington, D. C., 1948. Financial
reports of each institution are listed alphabetically under the institution. Esti-
mates in the case of Harvard, Yale and Princeton property are the author's,
has eo on information from real estate autllOrities, educators, and others in
Boston, New York, vVashington, and Chicago.
23. Statistics of Higher Education, 1943-44, published by Federal Security
Agency, U. S. Office of Education, Washington, p. 35.
24. Sec J3y-Laws of the Unicersity of Chicago, 1945. The articles of incor-
poration set forth in this document say specifically that the trustees of the uni-
versity shall be members of the corporation. There follows the statement that
the members of the corporation "shall have no vote of any nature." \Vhile the
matter has never been brought to legal issue, it seems apparent that the Chan-
cellor is the only person left with a vote.
25. American Universities and Colleges, op. cit., p. 416.
26. Ibid, p. 289.
27. Statistics of Higher Education, op. cit., p. 30.
28. Ibid, p. 3.
30. American Universities and Colleges, op. cit., p. 48. It is not true, how-
evcr, that the larger universities, as a general rule, make a profit from this bil-
lion and a half of government money spent on G. 1. education. Administrators
of one major middle wcstern university, for instance, told the author that the
university must put up $2 to $4 out of its own funds for every government
dollar spent there on veterans' education. In the smaller colleges, however,
where educational costs are lower, tl1is government money frequently has bccn
a windfall.
31. Estimates range from 505 foundations with capital assets of $1,817,-
817,299 as given in American Foundations for Social Welfare, by Shelby M.
Harrison and F. Emerson Andrews, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1946,
p. 58, to 700 foundations with capital assets of $4,000,000,000, as reported in
Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 10, 1940.
32. Ibid, espy. American Fottndations for Social Welfare, op. cit. p. 58.
33. American Foundations for Social Welfare, op. cit., p. 44.
34. Newsweek, Dec. 27, 1948, p. 68. Introducing a bill in Congress to halt
tax exemption to university commercial businesses, Rcp. Noah Mason (R., Ill.)
remarked that one university is in the race track busincss and otl1ers operate air-
ports and manufacture piston rings to dodge taxes . (Cf. Chicago Tribune,
June 22, 1949, p. 24.)
36. Ibid, p. 42.
37. Ibid, p. 43.
38. Rockefeller Foundation, Annual rep01t, 1946, p. 244.
39. Carnegie Corporation, Annual report, 1947, p. 3l.
40. Rosenwald Fund, Review of Two Decades, 1917-36, by Edwin R.
Embree, 1936, p. 2.
41. Carnegie Corporation, op. cit., 1942, p. 15.
42. Ibid, 1942, p. 99. See other annual reports, 1941-1947.
43. Ibid, 1946, p. 24.
44. Ibid, 1942, p. 24.
59
8
NOTES
4,5, Teacher in America, by Jacques Barzun, Little, Brown & Co., Boston,
1945, p. 288.
46. See annual reports of the foundations mentioned, also Who's Who.
1948-1949.
47. American Foundations and their F,jelds, 6th survey by Raymond Rich
& William Cherin Associates, New York, 1947, p. 15. Also Who's Who, 1948-
1949.
48. Ibid, p, 53.
49, See latest annual reports of these foundations. Also Who's Who, 194R-
1949.
50. Who's Who. Also publications of the Carnegie Endowment.
51. Who's Who. Also Rockefeller Foundation, Annual report, 1946-1947.
52. American Foundations and their Fi.elds, op. cit., p. 15.
53. Who's Who. Also Julius Rosenwald Fund, Report of the Fund, 1940-
42, p. 38.
54. Men Who Control our Universities, by Hubert Park Beck, King's Crown
Press, Morningside Heights, New York, 1947, p. 107.
55. Cf. Money to Burn, by Horace Coon, Longmans, Green and Co., New
York, 1938, pp, 275-298.
56. A sample of the indoctrination in communism contained in University
of Chicago social science courses is found in the Syllabus and Selected Read-
ings, Soc'ial Sciences 2, September, 1948, University of Chicago Press, Vol. I,
pp, 157, 158. The reader will find the full text of it in Appendix C.
57. "Hutchins of Chicago," by Milton Mayer, Harper's Magazine, March-
April 1939, p. 543.
58. University of Chicago Announcements, the College and the Divisions,
(catalogue), 1943, p. 2.
59. Chicago Tribune, Dec. 16, 1948, p. 1. -
60. Ibid, Nov. 14, 1948, p. 1.
61. Ibid, Oct. 19, 1948, p. 3.
62. Ibid, Oct. 18, 1948, p. 1.
63. RockefelIer Foundation, Annual Report, 1942, p. 36,
64. Ibid, p. 36.
65. Ibid, p. 39.
66. State Department telephone directory, Washington, 1945.
67. Washington Daily News, May 20, 1942, news story by Dan Kidney.
68. Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1943; Aug. 29, 1943.
69, Advertisement for Leigh's book Modern Rules of Parliamentary Pro-
cedure on back of d u ~ t ,jacket of the book, The Public and Its Problems, by
John Dewey, published by Gateway Books, 301 E. 18th St., Chicago.
70. Report of the Social Science Research C()uTlCil, 1946--47, p. 51; Ibid,
194,5-46, p. 52; Ibid, 1946--47, p. 52; Rockefeller Foundation, Annual report,
1945, p. 285.
71. Money to Bum, op. cit., p. 203.
72. Who's Who, 1948--49.
73. Ibid.
74. Money to Burn, op. cit., p. 287.
75. Ibid, p. 287.
76. UNESCO and the National Commission, Basic Documents, Depart-
ment of State, Publication 3082, March, 1948, p. 16,
77. American Foundations and their Fields, op. cit., p. 54: Chicago Trib-
tme, Dec. 22, 1948, p. 6.
78. American Foundations and their Fields, op. oit., p. 54.
79. Rockefeller Foundation, Annual report, 1943, p. 195.
80. Money to Bum, op. cit., p. 287; Who's Who.
599
81. Who's Who.
82. Congressional Record, 76th Congress, 3d session, Vol. 86, Part 1, pp.
419, 420. (Ct. Chapter Four.)
SS. Who's Who.
84. Who's Who . The fascist nature of NRA's economic system is demon-
strated in its structure-government regulation of business left in private hands.
Some of the original members of the Roosevelt "brain trust" during the plan-
ning days of NRA told quite frankly of thcir admiration for Mussolini's system
in Italy, many of the ideas of which were borrowed for this American experi-
ment.
85. Who's Who.
86. For Hocking, Ibid. For Luce and Wallace, Chicago Tribune, Oct. 10,
1947, p. 4. .
87. Carnegie Corporation, Annlllll report, 1947, p. 30; Rockefeller Founda-
tion, Annual reports, 1941 to 1947, inclusive.
88. Carnegie Corporation, Annual reports, 1941 to 1947, inclusive.
89. Fourth report, Un-American Activities in California, 1948, op. cit., pp.
40, 41.
90. Social Science Research Council, Report, 1946--47, p. 4.
91. Ibid, 1941-1945, pp. 5,40.
92. Ibid, 1941-42, p. 6.
93. Who's Who.
94. Hanns Eisler, who left the United States under a deportation agree-
mcnt, and his brother, Gerhardt, who fled, both are now teaching at
a German university in the Russian zone. Hanns was charged with perjury
growing out of testimony he gave before a congressional investigating com-
mittee. (Chicago Tribune, Feb. 7, 1948, p. 21.)
The Rockefeller Foundation, with which so many members of the "Com-
mission on Freedom of the Press" have intimate connections, has said that "the
Foundation does not make gifts or loans to individuals, or finance patents or
altruistic movements involving private profit, or contribute to the building or
maintenance of churches, hospitals, or other local organizations, or support
campaigns to influence public opinion on any social or political questions, no
matter how important or disinterested these questions may be." (Rockefeller
Foundation, Annual Report, 1941, p. 54.) However pious the denial, this is
what happened:
As far back as 1938, the visa division of the American State Department
reported that "the evidence establishes preponderantly that [Hanns] Eisler is
a Communist, although it does not show that he [presently] is an enrolled
member of the Communist party. His beliefs are anti-Nazi and pro-Com-
munist; he has given the Communists in the United States and other countries
aid, comfort, and active association in the promotion of their cause." (Hearings
Regarding Hanns Eisler, 80th Congress, 1st session, U. S. Government Printing
Office, Washington, 1947, p. 68.) Eisler had been in and out of the United
States on an Austrian passport for the previous three ye.ars, and was in New
York at the time, where he had been working as a "visiting lecturer" at the
New School for Social Research.
This institution, where Professor Lasswen and Archibald MacLeish of the
"Commission on Freedom of the Press" were frequcnt lecturers and which was
the home of Kurt Riezler, a foreign advisor, and Milton D. Stewart, a member
of the stalf of the "commission," was headed by Dr. Alvin S. Johnson, a former
University of Chicago professor who is connected with the Social Science
Research Council, the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and several other
ventures. (Who's Who in America, 1948-49.) On March 29, 1938, Dr.
600
NOTES
Johnson offered Eisler a position as professor of music at the New School for
Social Research, although Eisler had no academic or scholastic qualifications
or standing. Eisler was having trouble gctting his non-immigrant visitor's visa
renewed, and Dr. Johnson had been fronting for him with various govcrnment
officials. It was supposed that by changing Eisler's status from "visiting lec-
turer" to "professor" his chanccs for remaining permanently in the United
States would be improved.
"On June 20, 1938," S,liJ the official government proceedings in the matter,
"after Dr. Johnson had been in contact with various govcrnment officials, as
has becn brought out in this hearing, and had been adviscd that Eisler's visa
was being held up, he wrote Hanns Eisler. ... 'I understand that your visa
is being held up becnuse you have been boosted by the Daily Worker as a
"Comrade," that is, as a Communist. I pcrsonally have no prejudice <lgainst
Communists and can see no earthly reason why a good Communist should lIot
be a good musician.'" (Eisler Hearings, op. cit ., p. 81.)
Dr. Johnsen then wrote to James L. FIoughteling, commissioner of tlle bu-
reau of immigration and naturalization and son-in-law of Frederick A. Delano,
uncle of the late President Roosevelt. Delano, incidentally, is a trustee of the
C;]rnegie Endowment for International Peace, headed by Alger lIbs, convicted
on two counts of perjury, and is also a trustee of the Busscll Sage Foundatiun
and tlle a r n e ~ i e Institute. Dr. Johnson told Houghtcling he intended to
employ Eislcr 'as a teacher, primarily of song composition." He said he
was aware that native American musicians werc having diHieulty getting
employment and that there was e\'ery reason for not employing an alien
where an American could be employed. But, he added, "the spccial fund out
of which we should pay his salary would not be available for an Amcrican
composer even if I knew one who could answer the same purpose." (Ibid,
p. 102.)
To this, the visa division of the State Department added the following com-
ment: "It would be interesting to know the source of the funds available to
Dr. Johnson, but which are not available for paying thc sala.ry of an American
composer. If the funds are to be made available only to pay the salary of an
alien, what kind of an institution is Dr. Johnson trying to opcrate in the United
States?" (Ibid, p. 102. )
Conunissioner Houghteling ruled that Eisler could stay in the United States
for the duration of his teachIng eng,lgement at the :\cw School for Social Re-
search. This was not at ail pleasing to Eisler. He wanted permanent residence
here. He and his wife applied for it through the United States consul at Ha-
vana, Cuba, and later through the consul in Mexico City. Here, J--\rs. Eleanor
Roosevelt, related to both Dli!lano and Houghteling, stepped into the picture.
She appealed to Sumner 'Welles, then Acting Secretary of State, writing: "Dear
Sumner: This Eisler case seems a hard nut to crack. 'What do you suggest?"
This was the second appeal in Eisler's behalf by Mrs. Rooscvelt, then First
Lady in the 'White House. A previous note to Wclles was dated January 11,
1939. (Ibid, p. 68.)
As soon as the First Lady started agitation, tlle State Department promptly
changed its mind about Eisler being an undesirable Communist. Thirteen days
after tlle "Dear Sumner" note, George S. Mcssersmith, Assistant Secretary of
State under Sumner 'Welles, told the Havana consul: "It would seem to me that
unless there is a definite and convincing proof that ).Ir. Eisler does hold opin-
ions which would exclude him his case CRn be favorably considered from that
point of view." (Ibid, pp. 113-114.) Communist or not, Eisler was to be let
in if he could give the right answers . He got back to the United States on a
temporary visa while strings were being pulled in his behalf in higher New
601
PREJUDICE A:ND THE PRESS
Deal echelons. Dr. Johnson, mpanwhile, got the Rockefeller Foundation
for him to make his stay more comfortable and profitable.
"The request for this grant was in the first instance presented orally to Mr.
John Ylarshall, assodate director of the humanities of the Foundation
by Dr. Alvin Johnson, director of the New School for Sodal Research," Ray-
mond n. Fosdick, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, wrote. "The Foun-
dation has long been acquainted with the work of the New School, and while
we ne\'er contributed to its general support, we have from time to time assisted
in the work of particular scholars thcre." (Ibid, pp. 8.5-86.)
This is the foundation which said it doesn't give money to indi\:iduals, and
refuses to contribute to local churches 01' hospitals. Tbe 1940 Annual Report
of the Rockefeller Foundation added this comment: "The Foundation made a
grantof $20,160 to the NewSchool for Sodal Research for experimental studie;;
of music in film production during tile two-year period beginning February 1,
1940. These studies are under the direction of Dr. Hanns Eisler, a membel
of the school's faculty and a well-known composer of lllusie for motion pic-
tures." (Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report, 1940, p. 316.)
Although the Labor Department and the Immigration Service repeatedly
attempted to deport Eisler durillg this period, even swearing out warrants for
him which were never served, the "professor" stayed on to spend all but
$185.25 of the Roekefelkr Foundation money. He even asked for a "supple-
mentary grant" of $4,900, but this, according to Mr. Fosdick, the Foundation
"declined." The largess of the foundation to the New School for Social Re-
search was 1I0t so small as Fosdick may llave implied in his statement.
The same foundation report which listed the Eisler grant also listed these ap-
propriations:
"New School .for Social Research:
"Study of social and economic controls in Germany and Russia and gen-
eral research assistance .."..___.. __... "... ".. _... " ............... _... "........... $53,000.
"Experilnental demonstrations of music in film production (partof Eisler's
$20,lGO grant) ..." .......................... _... _._.. ".... "_.... _.. ,, ................ $10,400.
"Study of totalitarian communication in wartime... _..". .................$15,960.
"Administration of grants to European refugee scholars................ $35,OOO.
"Grant in aid fund for refugee scholars....................... __ ... _..._._..._..... .. $2,500."
(Ibid, 1941, pp. 350, 356, 361.)
Further inspection of Rockefeller Foundation reports shows that the New
School got $62,5.3.5.42 for five projects in 1(.)42, $37,000 in 1943, and $14,000
in 1944. (Ibid, 1942, 1943, W44.) The "rdugl'e scholar" racket was a ruse
explOited fully by European Communists during the war years, and the Rocke-
feller Foundation financed it handsomely. As is shown by the Eisler case, tile
foundation was not at all particular about the people who got tltis mon.ey. If
Eisler was so competent as a composer of music for films, the reader may
wonder why Hollywood, which is not unfriendly Communists, did not hire
him. The answer is Simple and \'ery important. Eisler did work in Hollywood
for very short periods. On a visitor's visa, howe\'er, he could not take regular
employment. He would have been forced to get on ilie German or Austrian
quota list, which was filled. The quicke-;;t way to get into the United States
is to become a "scholar" or "professor," since immigration laws admit such
persons on a non-quota basis, expecting them to contribute to society.
95. Carnegie Corporation, Annual Report.
96. This was the first recommendation to "the press" in ilie "commission's"
report. Cf. A Free and Respo1lS1ble Press, op. cit., p. 92.
97. Plain Talk, January, 1949, p. 57. Dr. von Nlises said: "The El1C!/clo-
pedia of the Social Sciences may fairly be considered as representative of the
602
NOTES
doctrines taught at American nnel British universities and colleges. Its ninth
volume contains an article 'Laissez Faire' from tbe pen of the Oxford professor
and author of detective stories, G. D. H. Cole. In the 6ve and a quarter pages
of his contribution Professor Cole freely indulges in the use of deprecatory
epithets. The maxim 'cannot stand cxamination: it is only prevalent in 'popular
economics,' it is 'theoretically bankrupt,' an 'anachronism,' it sllfvives only as
a 'prejudice: but 'as a doctrine deserving of theoretical respect it is dead.'
Resort to these and many other similar opprobrious appellations fails to disguise
the fact that Professor Cole's arguments entirely miss the point. Professor Cole
is not qualified to deal with thc problems involved because he simply does not
know what the market economy is and how it works. The only correct affir-
mation of his article is the truism tJlat tJlOse rejecting laissez faire are
Socialists." Regarding Beer, A S[ln;ey of SOcialislIl, by F. J. C. Hearnshaw,
op. cit., p. 23l.
98. Plain Talk, op. cit., p. 61. In this same passage Dr. von Misos pointed
out that since Sombart declared the FuhTer "gets his orders directJy from God,
the Supreme FuhTeT of the Universe ... once you admit these premises you
can no longer raise any objections against planning and socialism."
99. Carnegie Corporation, Annual Report, 1941, pp. 23, 66.
100. Carnegie Corporation, Annual TepOrt, 1943, p. 23; see also reports for
other years, 1941 through 1947.
10l. 1948 California Joint Fact-Finding Committee report, op. cit., p. 390.
102. Who's Who.
103. Carnegie Corporation, Annual RepoTt, 1941, p. 66.
104. House of Representatives, Appendix IX, op. cit., p. 262. Cf also Re-
port On Civil Rights Congress as a Communist Front Organization, by the
House Committee on Un-American Activities, 80th Congress, 1st session, Sept.
2, 1947, to Nov. 17, 1947, USGPO, Washington, 1947, which says, p. 15:
"Langston Hughes, sponsor of Civil Rights Congress; member, Communist
Party, U.S.A.; signer of statement in behalf of Communists Georgc Dinlitrov,
'WilIiam Z. Foster, Don West, Benjamin J. Davis Jr.; contributor to the Com-
munist press."
105. 1947 California Joint Fact-Finding Committee report, op. cit., p....
106. Rosenwald Fund, Review fOT 1940-42, op. cit., p. 24; Ibid, 1944-46,
p. 21; Ibid, 1917-36, p. 35; Ibid, 1938-40, p. 21, 22.
107. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Report of the secre-
tary and treasurer, 1941-42, p. 2.
108. Chicago Tribune, Feb. 4, 1949, p. 3. Dr. Holley explained that the
"hate" campaign is being conducted through a tJlCme tJmt whites are taking
away the rights of Negroes. He protested "the rape of my race by the northern
press and other organizations," naming the Rosenwald Fund particularly.
109. Rosenwald Fund Review, 1942-1944, op. cit ., p. 36; 1947 California
report, op. cit., p. 34.
llO. Rosenwald Fund Rel)iew, 1942-1944, op. cit., p. 38; Chi,cago Triblme,
June 28, 1947; July 17, 1947; April 25, 1949.
111. Rosenwald Fund Remew, 1942-1944, op. cit., p. 39; Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 10, 1947, p. 4.
112. Rosenwald Fund Review, 1942-1944 op. cit., p. 40.
113. Ibid, 1944-1946, op. cit., p. 13.
114. New Leader, Nov. 27, 1948, p. 3.
115. Rosenwald Fund Review, 1944-1946, 0T)' cit., p. 15.
116. Citations by Official Government Agencies, op. cit., 1948, p. 90.
117. Rosenwald Fund Review, 1917-1936, op. cit., p. 28.
118. General Education Board, Annual Report, 1946, p. 43.
119. 1948 California report, op. cit., p. 390.
60
3
PREJUDICE AND TIlE PRESS
120. Rosenwald Fund Review, 1917-1936, op. cit., p. 29.
121. The president of the American Council on Race Relations is Louis
Wirth, a social science professor at the University of Chicago who has pro-
moted the Socialist cause on several university-sponsored radio programs. (Cf.
University of Chicago Round Table of tlte Air, No. 505, Nov. 23, 1947; No.
511, Jan. 4, 1948.) The executive director is A. A. Liveright, another Uni-
versity of Chicago professor who was a member of the Civil Rights Congress,
held by Attorney General Clark to be "subversive." (Report on Cicil Rights
Congress as a Communist Front Organization, by the House Committee on Un-
American activities, 80th Congress, 1st session, Sept. 2, 1947, U. S. Govern-
ment Printing Office, Washington, 1947, p. 23; Citations, op. cit ., p. 26.) The
director of community services is Robert C. Weaver, frequently mentioned in
government reports for affiliations with Communist fronts . (Appendix IX,
op. eft., pp. 263, 266, 1280, 1347, 1783, for example. ) The vice-pr('sident is
\ViII \V. Alexander, a former vice-president of the Rosenwald Fund. Alexander
was administrator of the Farm Security Administration in the early Roosevelt
New Deal and was named by Lauchlin Currie, executive assistant to the late
President, as one of the persons Currie saw on social occasions at the home of
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, accused in connection with Communist spy
ring activities. (Hearin gs Regarding Commtmist Espionage in tlte United
States Government, 80th Congress, 2nd session, U. S. Government Printing
Office, Washington, 1948, pp. 857, 870. ) One witness said Communists photo-
graphed secret government documents in the basement of Silvermaster's home,
although Silvermaster refused to answer the charges. (Ibid, p. 593. )
The American Council on Race Relations occupies former Rosenwald Fund
r,remises near the University of Chicago. It is a major clearing house for
'organizations concerned with minority group problems." (Official Pamphlet of
the American Council on Race Relations, undated. ) Two of the major activi-
ties of the American Council on Race Relations are listed in its literature as
follows:
"Legislation, Administration and Public Policy-continuation of coordinated
efforts to extend ci vil liberties and rights through improved legislation and
more effective administration and public interpretation.
"Public Opinion and Mass Communication-cooperation with and service to
the press, radio and other mass communication media to make available to the
public more adequate information concerning minorities and to develop a
climate of opinion more conducive to democratic solution of minority prob-
lems." (Ibid.)
These statements are an open admission that this foundation-financed
organization has as its major aims the influencing of legislation and the dis-
semination of propaganda-"to develop a climate of opinion." In view of
this, it is interesting to contemplate foundation statements such as the fol-
lowing:
"The officers of the Corporation find it necessary with increasing fre-
quency to inform proponents of various causes that the corporation, as a
matter of policy and because of its legal exemption from income tax as well ,
is not free to undertake support of enterprises carrying on propaganda or
otherwise attempting to influence legislation." (Carnegie Corporation, An-
nual Report, 1945, op. cit., p. 15.)
This came from the Carnegie Corporation, whose preSident is on the Amer-
ican Council on Race Relations board. From the Rockefeller Foundation,
which gave the council money: "The Foundation does not ... support cam-
paigns to influence public opinion on any social or political questions, no
matter how important or disinterested tJlese questions may be." (Rockefeller
60
4
NOTES
Foundatjon, Annual Report, 1941, op. cit., p. 54. ) And: "The Rockefeller
Foundation is not an advocate of any doctrine or theorv, whcther in medicine
or the social sciences. It has nothing to promote." (Ihid, 1943, p. 30.)
122. Chicago Tribune, Nov. 7, 1948, p. 1. This was a forthright propa-
ganda job For sovietizing the Balkans, containing statements such as this: "Now
r see why the Russian 'revolution was necessary, from the standpoint not only
of backward peasant Russia, bllt of the world at large. r see now that the
salvation of the Yugoslav people and other small hack""ard nations in that
part of the world lies clearly and inescapablv in the direction of Russia. They
will have to ... attach themselves to the U.S.S.R."
123. Ibid.
124. Who's Who.
125. Carnegie Corporation, Annual report, 1941, op. cit., p. 122.
126. Ibid, 1942, pp. 58, 59.
127. Ibid, 1941, p. 37.
128. General Education Board, Annual Report, 1940, p. 159. Undcr the
General Education Board list of publications resulting From "grants" are How
Fare American Youth? by Homer P. Rainey, published in 1937 by the Amer-
ican Youth Commission, and The Fami/lj Past and Present, by Bernhard J.
Stern, published in 1938 by the Progressive Education Association. Stern man-
aged to get himself cited thirty-five times in only one government publication
rcporting affiliations \"ith Communist fronts, and Rainey eight times. (Ibid,
pp. 71, 72; Appendix IX, op. cit. , for Stern, pp. 352, 3'54, 390, 40BF., 460, 589,
050. 657, 674, 707, 710, 801, 927, 931, 973f., 977, 1093, 1148, 1150, 1170,
1177, 1179,1237, 1256, 1335, 1338, 1379, 1384, 1456, 1555, 1557, 150.5, 1617,
1048, 1773; For Rainey, pp. 535, 537, 675, 1037, 1587, 1596, 1599, 1764.
The Carnegie Corporation, however, has remained one of the soFtest touches
for non-acadcmic writ ers with nothjng particularly to recommend them except
so-called '1iberal" ideology and perhaps a few powerful friends. Listed among
books in which "the Corporation has had a part" is one called Print, Radio,
and Film in a Democracy, eruted by Douglas Waples. (Carnegie Corporation,
Annual Report, 1942, p. 55. ) Waples was an associate of ProFessor Lasswell
of the "Commission on Frcedom of the Press" when Lasswell was on the
Library of Congress payroll doing "propaganda analysis" during the war, and
was a subject of discussion whcn Congress investigated that activity of the
FCC. (Investigation of the Federal Communications Commission, 78th Con-
gress, 2nd Session, H. R. 21, p. 3471.)
Still another Carnegie book, for which a "grant-in-aid" was given, was
Business as a System of Power, by Robert A. Brady. (Carnegie Corporation,
Annual Report, 1943, p. 54.) The title of this volume alone is enough to show
11 general port-side list although Mr. Brady gives further evidence of it by
thirteen citations in the same government directory. (Appendix IX, op.cit ., pp.
371, 386, 388, 404, 407, 587, 600, 663, 665, 785, 1115, 1383, 1446. ) Another
title is Workers' Education, a Wisconsin Experiment, by Ernest E . Schwarz-
trauber. (Carnegie Corporation, Annual Report, 1943, p. 54. ) The "Wis-
consin experiment" was a so-called "workers' school" on the University of \Vis-
consin campus which had Socialist inspiration. Still another is Characteristics
of the American Negro, edited by Otto Klineberg, another wartime Federal
Communications Commission employe, who has five citations. (Carnegie Cor-
poration, Annual Report, 1943, p. 54; Appendix IX, op. cit., pp. 334, 349,
353f., 648, 668.)
129. Carnegie Corporation, Annual report, 1942, pp. 58, 59.
130. TheWashington Correspondents, by Leo C. Rosten, Harcourt, Brace &
Company, New York, 1937, pp. x-xi.
60
5
131. Ibid, pp. ix-x.
132. Ibid, p. xi.
133. Ibid, p. 293.
134. Ibid, pp. 341-344.
135. Ibid, p. 34.3.
13G. Chicago Tribune, Jan. 1.8, 1947, p. 1.
137. 1948 CaliFornia Report , op. cit... p. 245.
138. SOlliel Power, by Hewlett Johnson, op. cit ., p. 207.
139. 1945California Report, op. cit., pp. 124, 12:5.
140. 1947 CaliFornia Report, op. cit., p. 34.
141. Ibid, op. cit., p. 9.5.
142. Carey !vlcWilliams, denied he was a Communist though he was identi-
fied as a party memher on two separate occasions by a go\'ernmentwitness who
herselfwas a former Communist (1945 California report ,op. cit., pp. 149, 156).
is another Favored object for thecharityof the big foundations. Hewas a writer
for a special number of SUl'cey Craphic magazineentitled Calling Ameri.ca, pub-
propagandize.or to "illuminate issues are Amer-
Icans, (Su.rvey Crap/lIc, Janllnr)" 1947) as the ISsue sal . ThIS publicatIOn was
financed by four important foundations, although it was put out by a private
New York group called Survey Associates, Inc.
"Backlog of the venturehas been a eOllsidtrablegrant from theJulius Rosen-
wald Fund, and generous contributions from the Carnegie Corporation, Lucius
N. LittauerFoundation,andthePhelps-Stokes Fund,"themagazinesaid. (Ibid. )
TheCarnegie Corporation give it $3,000. Another writer for this issue was Will
Alexander of the Anlerkan Council on Race Relations. (Ibid, p. 5.) Alexander
was associated with Alvin S. Johnson in the Sodal Science Research Council,
and Johnson was on the board of Survey Associates, Inc., publishers of the
magazine. (Ibid, p. 5.) Johnson is the man who got the $20,600 Rockefeller
Foundation grant for IIanns Eisler at the New School for Social Research.
McWilliams also writes pamphlets for the Institute of Pacific Relations, pre-
viously identified as a Communist front (Citations, op. cit., p. 9), heavily sub-
sidized by the Rockefcllcr Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, and of
this Professor Hocking of the "Commission all Freedom of the Press" is a
director. So does S. Stewart, who edited a group of IPR pamphlets
on China, India and the Far East. Stewart and his wife, Marguerite Ann
Stewart, were teachers in the }'losC'Ow Institute, and Stewart was an associate
editor of the Moscow NetGs, published for "English speaking people in the
Soviet Union and throughout the world," and recently discontinued by the
Kremlin. (Masthead, the Moscow News, Oct. 3, HHO.) Mrs. Stewart was sec-
retary of the Institute of Pacific Relations, and thousands of the pamphlets she
and her husband wrote have been used in American publicschool social scicnce
courses. Some schools have burned them after the pro-Communist bias of
them was demonstrated. (e.g. Delavan, \-Vis., high school, Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 10, 1947, p. 4.) The Institute of Pacific Relations also managed to dis-
tribute more than three-quarters of a million copies of these pamphlets to
American troops in Asia and the Pacific during the war. (Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 10, 1947, p. 4; 1947 California Heport, op. cit., pp. 313, 314.)
143. This committee receives money from the Carnegie Corporation, the
Rosenwald Fund, and the Sloan Foundation. (American Foundations for Social
Welfare, op. cit., p. 172.) Carnegie paid it $5,000 for support of the Stewart-
edited pamphlets in 1946-1947. (Carnegie Corporation, Annual Repon, 1947,
p. 46.) Oneof these pamphlets,The Races of Mankind, contained suchobvious
pro-Russian propaganda that it was even banned by the army and the usa,
although the Rosenwald Fund, which helped to finance and distribute it, eriti-
606
NOTES
cized this action as "suppression and distortion," defending its right to issue
propaganda with public, tax-exempt money. (Rosenwald, 1942-1944, op. cit.,
p. 6.) It described this pamphlet, which lauds the "Russian program" under
Communism (The Races of jl,Jankind, by Buth Benedict and Gene Weltfish,
Public Affairs Pamphl et No. 85, Copyright 1946, Pnblic Affairs Committee,
Inc., p. 26), as "an authentic, scientific statcmcnt." (Rosenwald Fund Review,
1942-1944, op. cit., p. 6.) The names of McV,rilliams and Stewart appeared
on the same Public Affairs pamphlct on one occasion. ('1V/wt About Gur
Japanese-Americans? by Carcy McWilliams, Copyright, 1944, Public Affairs
Committee, Inc. This pamphlet has the name "Amcrican Council, Institute of
Pacific Relations" on the front cover. Maxwell S. Stcwart is listed as "editor
of the pamphlet series, Public Affairs Committee, Inc.," p. 32.)
144. I<.eep om Press Freel by Robert E. Cushman, Public Affairs Pamphlet
No. 1;3, C?pyright, 1946, Public Affairs Committee, Inc., p. 27.
14;). Ibid, p. 32.
146. Rockdeller Foundation, Annual report, 1947, p. 190. Ib'id, 1948, p.
224. Appendix IX, op. cit. , pp. 471, 477,795,801, 809, 811., 949, 964, 1093,
1206, 1210, 1277, 1337, 1375.
147. Ibid, 1941 through 1947.
148. The Rockefeller Foundation describes its grants to the association, in
one of its annual reports, as follows:
"In addition to a one-year grant of $2,5,000 for its Department of Popular
Education, the Foreign Policy Association was given $110,000 over a two-year
period ending December 31, 1943, toward its general budget. The former
project is concerned primarily with the organizations of educational work in
relation to world problems, collaboration with colleges, schools, forums,
women's clubs, youth groups, labor programs, agricultural clubs, etc." (Rocke-
feller Foundation, Annual Report, 1941, p. 231.)
In one of its Headlme Series booklets, the Foreign Policy Association used
part of this money to publish the following statement by Max Lerner:
"If democracy is to survive, it too must move toward socialism-a socialism
guarded by the political controls of a state that maintains the tradition of intel-
lectual consent and the freedom of political opposition. And the imperatives
of survival are stronger than the winds of capitalist doctrine." (Headline Series,
No. 61, Jan. 20, 1947, published by the Foreign Policy Association, Inc., New
York, p. 65.)
In another booklet, distributed to American troops abroad during the war,
prepared by tIle Foreign Policy Association under the title OUT Russian Ally,
appears the statement:
"Today, in Russia, birtIl is no barrier to advancement for men and women
of ability. If he has the right qualification$, the son of a peasant may become
an engineer, an industrial manager, or a general. This is one of tIle principal
advantages of tIle Soviet system from tIle point of view of the masses.
"This freedom of opportunity is a rec.:ent de\'elopment. For many yeru's
after the Bolshevik R(;!volution, the Soviet g()vernment, fearing counter-revolu-
tion, discriminated against the c.:hildren of priests (who in tIle OrtIlodox church
are allowed to marry), of czarist officials, of industrialists, and latcr of Trotzky-
ists. These discrinlinations, however, have been gradually abandoned.
"Today the younger generation is relatively free of tIle hatreds and preju-
dices accumulated during centuries of one form of absolutism or anotI1er. Every
young man and woman feels that, if he or she is bright and hard working,
undreamed-of opportunities for achievementlieahead. Thisfeelingofconfidence
has done much to create enthusia,<;m on the part of the younger generation.
The Soviet government has been active in promoting young people, many of
60
7
whom under 30 hold important posts. They can accomplish imaginative and
creative work, free of some of-if not all-the fears, reservations, and suspicions
that cast such a dark shadow on tl leir elders during the early years of the Soviet
regime." (Our Russian Ally, EM 46 GI Round-table, published by Historical
Service Board, United States Armed Forces, in cooperation with the Foreign
Policy Association, p. 42.)
149. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yearbook, 1947, p. 48;
Citations, op. cit. , p. 17.
150. Carnegie Endowment, Yearbook. 1947, op. cit ., p. 48.
151. Horace Coon, writing back in 193R, before World War II, said:
"The Endowment tclls Americans about international problems and urges
us to do something about them. It appeals to the idealism and high-minded-
ness of youth and advocates a foreign policy which would mean that the
Ameri can navy would be used as an international police force. It encourages
British and French propaganda. The Carnegie Endowment might be con-
sidered an expensive luxury which we, as a rich nation, can afford, since it sup-
ports a number of people doing work of possible academic value, but it becomes
a menace to our peace, to the peace of the world, when it agitates for interna-
tional agreements demanding that we go to war for the sake of the peace of the
world. If the nations of Europe should start a holy war against fascism or
communism it is easy to imagine the Carnegie Endowment crying for another
crusade to make the world safe for democracy. Just as the Endowment helped
in building sentiment favorable to France and England from 1914 to 1917, so
it is building up the same sentiment today. Of course the Endowment believes
that international questions should be solved by judicial discussion. But if a
nation refuses that means, then, according to Dr. [Nicholas Murray] Butler
[then president of the Endowment], we are immoral if we remain neutral."
(Money to Burn, op. cit., p. 126. )
A more accurate prediction of the course of human conduct has seldom been
written, for less than two years after it appeared, just as Mr. Coon said, Dr.
Nicholas Murray Butler, head of an endowment supp'osedly dedicated to peace,
was ranting up and down Ameri ca declaring that 'isolationism" was a "sin,"
and that the United States ought to get into England's and France's "holy war
against fascism" with both feet. Furthermore, the Carnegie Endowment is not
supposed, for tax reasons, to attempt to influence legislation, but it does. It
w a ~ one of the chief organizers of the propaganda campaign to put over the
3 ~ ~ billion dollar gift-loan to England. The 1946 Yearbook said:
"Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler wrote the foreword to the resulting brochure,
Fifteen Facts on the Proposed British Loan, which was edited by Robert L.
Gulick, Jr. There was a first edition of 200,000 copies, and a second of 100,000
is now being printed. Hon. W. L. Clayton, Assistant Secretary of State, has
this to say about the Fifteen Facts: 'Pernlit me to congratulate you on the ex-
cellent job which I am sure will be most helpful in placing the loan before the
public in the proper perspective: The board of directors agreed, without dis-
sent, to sponsor a campaign of public education relating to the agreement."
(Carnegie Endowment, Yearbook, 1946, op. cit., p. Ill.)
152. E. G., House of Representatives, Appendix IX., op. cit., pp. 357,362 f.,
346-368, 370, 380 f., 382 f., 409, 417, 467, 469, 589, 591, 649, 758, 930, 968,
971, 974, llOI, 1163, 1170, 1187, 1190, 1192, 1194, 1201 ff., 1250, 1300, 1313,
1351, 1355 f., 1378, 1379, 1384, 1446, 1454, 1456 ff., 1471 f., 1603 f., 1617,
1620, 1649, 1651, 1677, 1772 f. Other official reports have still other listings.
153. Carnegie Endowment, Yearbook, op. cit.
154. Shapley was the head of the 1949 "peace" meeting described, which
the state department referred to as an outlet for Communist propaganda. For
608
NOTES
his other activities d.House uf Representati\'es, Appendix IX, op. cit., pp. 330,
a35, 336, 620f., TiS, 981, 1107, 1210, 13a8, 1357, 1651.
155. For a partial \i,tillg uf Bishop Oxnam's activities see House of Repre-
sentatives, Appendix LX, op. cit., pp. 481, 1137, 1202, 1253, 1302, 1455, 1520,
1523, 1611, 1772. For a partial listing of The Rev. Mr. Ward's activities, see
ibid, pp. 349, 354, 383f. , 391, 397, 401, 404ft., 409, 411, 416-419, 422ft, 442,
458, 473, 540, 620, 640, 643, 650, 655, 669, 746, 758, 764, 769, 793, 937, 970,
974, 1052, 1083, 1090f., 1095, 1110, 1119, 1150, lW4, 1205, 1207, 1209, 1212,
1235, 1238, 1258, 1286, 12\)7, 1300, 1305, 1307, 1335, 1338, 1351, 1385, 1464,
1468ff., 1474, 1514, 1.517, 1562, 1603, 1648, 1678, 1703.
156. Carnegie Endowment, Yearbook, 1947, op. cit.
157. Ibid, 1947, p.33.
158. Citations, op. cit., p. 17; Appendix lX, op. cit., pp. 466-470.
159. Plain Talk, op. cit., p. 54.
160. Ibid, p. 54.
161. Rockefeller Foundation, Annual report, 1945, p. 14.
162. Ibid, 1943, pp. 208-209.
163. Cf. Newsweek, Oct. 25, 1948, p. 96.
164. i 'he Calculated Risk, by Hamilton Fi;h Armstrong, Macmillan Com-
pany, New York, 1947. Armstrong is editor of Fureign Affairs, a quarterly
published by the Council 011 Foreign Hclatiolls, Inc:. The Council on Foreign
Helations, Inc., received $60,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and $50,000
from the Carnegie Corporation in 1947 (Carnegie Corporation ,\nnrwl Report,
1947, p. 30; Rockefeller Fouudation, .4.llllual Report, 1946, p. 33) . The edi-
torial advisory board of Foreign Li/Jairs includes Isaiah Bowman, George H.
Blakeslee, John W. Dads, Stephen Duggan, Allen W. Dulles, Charles 11. Mc-
Ilwain, Charles Seymour, Henry L. Stimson, and Henry M. \-Vriston. Stimson
was national chai.rman of the "Committee for the Marshall Plan." Dulles was
a member of the committee's "executive committee." Bowman, Davis, and Sey-
mour were membcrs of its "national council" (Letterhead of the Committeefor
the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovcry, 5:37 Fifth Ave., New York, 17,
N. Y., dated Feb. . 5, 1948, soli citing funds and signatme of a pctition to Con-
gress. On the reverse side of this was the list of the "national council").
Stephen Duggan was the founder of the Institute of International Edllcation,
president of which was his son, Lawrence Duggan, who plunged to a mysteri-
ous death during the Communistspy ring investigation, and chairman of which
was George N. Shuster of the "Commission on Freedom of the Press." Win-
throp W. Aldricll, a trustee of the Rockefcllcr Foundation, \\'as a member of
tlle executive committee of the "Committcefor the J\'Iarshall Plan." Thefollow-
n ~ trustees of the Rockefcllcr Foundation were members of the "national coun-
cil' of the "Committee for the lIIarshall Plan": Karl T. Compton, John S.
Dickey, Robert G. Sproul, Arthur II. Sulzberger. Former Secretary of State
Marshall was the originator of the Marshall Plan. He is a trustee of the Car-
negie Corporation. Other members of the "national council" of the "Committee
for the Marshall Plan" includcd Professor Shuster and Professor Niebuhr of
the "Commission on Frcedom of the Press."
165, Two of the organizations most directly responsible for the book in
question were the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the
National Council for thc Social Studies, both divisions of the National Educa-
tion Association, which clailTls to rcprescnt 800,000 American public school
teachers. Both the NationalEducationAssociationand theProgressive Education
Association, a radical group which claims a membership of some 8,000 public
school teachers receive largefunds from thefoundations. In one year alone, the
Rockefeller General Education Board granted $2.50,000 to a single commission
of the National Education Association and $456,100 to the association itself
60
9
(G. E. B. Annual Rc:port, 1940, pp. 36, 55). In the same year, it gave $1,635.
941 to the Progressive Educatiou Association (Ibid, p. 55). Tiois report 01 tile
General Education Board said:
"The one lIew undertaking in the area of instructional materials and l11ethous
for which funds were made available in 1940 was a prOject sponsorcd jointly
by the National Association of Secondary School PrinCipals aud tloe l\ational
Council for the Social Studies [of the National Education AssociationJ for the
preparation ot a series' of 'resource units' in the social studies. In most sec-
ondary schools an important phase of civic edueation is the social studies pro-
gral1l . In this area many teachers suffer from a lack of auvanceu preparation
in the sodal sciences and from unfamiliarity with instruetional materials. The
most rapidly growing eourse in the secondary school eurriculwll is the course
called Contemporary Social Problems, or Problems of Democracy, given in the
eleventh or twelfth grades. Textbooks for this cow'sc have not proven very
satisfactory and there is a real need for cooperation between social scientists
and secondary school teachers in developing better instructional materials.
"Recognizing this need, the National Association of Secondary School Prin-
cipals undertook an e.xploration of the problem with a group of social scientists
at the University of Chicago ill the swnmer of 1940. Out of the exploration
grew a plan for the development of twelve or more units whieh would serve
teachers as resource material (but not as textbooks for students) in helping
pupils gain a clearer understanding of problems invoked in sueh fields as plan-
ning and public finanee, public education, population, unemployment, health,
personal socllrity and self-development, dcmocracy and dictatorship, free enter-
prise and collectivism, American defense.... A grant of $17,500 from the
General Education 130ard will care for the expense involvcd in the preparation
of the materials." (Ibid., pp. 48, 49.)
In aduition to this $17,.500 grant, the National Associatiou of Scconuary
School Princ.:ipals of the National Education Association rceciveu a $105,100
grant from the Gcneral Education Board in the same year. Let us scc what
the public school teachers in eleventh and tv".elfth graue got out of this big sum
of money to corrcct their "lack of advanced preparation," rcslll,ting frOlll an
"exploration" at the University of Chicago, headed by Chancellor Hutchins 01
the "Colllmission on Freedom of the Press," directeu toward "helping pupils
gain a elearer undcrstanditl g of problems" in a "democracy." The two ucparl-
ments of the N'ational Education Association put out a whole series ot booklets
on "Problems in American Life."
One of them was entitled The American Way of Business, designcd from
its titl e to instruct public school teachers and thei.r eleventh and twelfth graue
pupils in how American business enterpriSes are run. One would expect sueh
a pamphlet to bc writtcn by leaders in American business, or at least by edu-
cators who were familiar with American business. Instead these two divisions
of the National Euucation Association pkked a pair of alien-born professors,
both of tbem with pro-Soviet backgrounds. One of them was Oscar Lange,
economics professor at the University of Chicago, who eame frOIll Poland and
was naturalized as a United States citizen in 1937 In 1945, a vcar after the
American \-Vay of Business was published, Lange renounced 'his American
citizenship and became a citizen of and offiCial of Soviet Poland. He now
represents the Stalin puppet dictatorship of that c{)unh-y in the Unitcd Nations.
The other author was Abba Lerner, a Bessarabian refugee who was trained at
the London School of EconomiCS, the institution of Harold J. Laski, late British
socialist. Lerner currently tead,es at Roosc\'e!t College, a left-wing institution
in the Chicago Loop which was supported by the Julius Rosenwalu Fund.
(Rosenwald Report 1944-46, op. cit., p. 4.) Both Lange and Lerner, previous
610
NOTES
to the writing of this booklet, were personal bencficiaries of Rockefeller
Foundation grants.
Here are sume of the points that Lange and Lerner drilled into the minds
of American teachers anc.J their pupils under the guise of an "Americau Way
of Business": That..the idea of aboJlshing private enterprisecamehom socialist
thinkers who believed that this change would actually turther the uevelopment
and treedom of the indiviuual." That American business men "cannot at the
same time claim credit for producing the things that are beneficial to society
...their aim, whcn they gu intu business, is to make money and the good or
the harm done to society is a secondary matter, even though there IIIay be a
temptation to claim credit when it does good and to evade responsibility when
it does harm."
That "the concepts of accowlting and sound business that are proper for
private enterprise ...haveno necessary relevance for publicenterprise." That
"public enterprise must become a major constituent of our economy, if we are
really going to have economic prusperity." That "it is necessary to have public
ownerShip of banking and credit (investment banks and insurance companies).
. . . A publicly owned banking and credit system alone is compatible with the
Hexibility of capital value necessary to maintain competitive standards in pro-
duction and trade." That "it is necessary to ha"e publiC ownership of monopo-
listic key industries....Thelegal basis for public ownershipofsuch industries
should betrovided by an amendment to the anti-trust laws, providing that
in cases 0 proved repetition of monopolistic practices and impossibility of
correcting the situation on the basis of privatc cnterprise, the companies in
questiun should be transferred into pUblic owncrship and operatcd on the
'principle of public service.'"
That "it is necessary to have public ownership of basic natural resources
(mines, oil fields, timber, coal, etc.)." That "in order to insure that the public
corporations act in accordance with the competitive 'rulcs of the game: special
economic courts (enjoying the same indcpendence as the cOllrts of justice)
might be establishcd ...and that the cconomic courts be givcn the power to
repeal any rules of Congress, of legislaturcs, or of the mnnicipal councils...."
(American Way of Business, by Oscar Lange and Abba Lerner, Published by
the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the National
Council for the Social Studies divisions of the National Education Association,
1201 16th St. N.W., Washington, D. c., 1944.)
166. Ibid. Other titles in tilis same series of National Education Asso-
ciation pamphlets includcd Economic Pro/JIems of the Post-War World, by
Alvin H. Hansen, the NewDcaleconomist and apostle of "compensatoryspend-
ing"; and International Organization After the 'Var, by Max Lcrner, the former
associate editor of PM, identified elsewhere in these pages.
167. Edwin R. Embree, thelatevice presidentoftheRockefeller Foundation
andpresidentoftheRosenwaldFund,who was an importantfigurein thefound-
ation picture, wroterecently (Harper's magazine, March, 1949, pp. 31-32) thnt
there is little evidence the "conservative trustees" of foundntions use foundation
power to bolster the status quo, and "still less" evidence to support disclosures
that foundations are aiding communism and communists. On the latter point,
however, Mr. Embree did not present any evidence that foundations are nol
aiding the communists, and he ignored completely the evidence presented in
newspaper articles and before congressional committees that they are.
6II

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