Chapter XXXIX: The Mining Camp University

We continue our journey on the Union Pacific Railroad, and come to the metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, a city entirely surrounded by gold mines, silver mines, coal mines and copper mines, and entirely controlled by hard-fighting piratical gentlemen who have seized these hidden treasures. Denver is only a generation removed from the mining camp stage of civilization, and mining camp manners and morals still prevail in its financial, political and educational life. In other portions of the United States you find the great captains of industry hiring politicians to run the state and city governments for them; but in Colorado up to quite recently they did their own dirty work—you would find the grand dukes of the interlocking directorate, Evans of traction, Doherty of gas and electric, Field of telephones, Cheesman of water, Guggenheim of copper, themselves the political bosses, hiring their thugs and repeaters and ballot box stuffers, and paying their own cash to their newspaper editors, clergymen and college presidents. These mighty chieftains used to fall out and quarrel and turn their scandal-bureaus loose on one another, so it was always easy to learn the insides of Denver finance, politics and education.

The leading prejudice factory of the State of Colorado has been the University of Denver, founded by the father of William G. Evans, traction magnate and Republican boss. Mr. Evans made himself president of the board of trustees of the university, and selected to run the institution an extremely venomous and abusive Methodist clergyman by the name of Buchtel. In running the government of Denver, Mr. Evans worked in alliance with the gamblers and the keepers of brothels and wine-rooms for the seducing of young girls; the violations of law became so flagrant that the political gang operating under Evans found its power threatened, and cast about for some candidate for governor to take the curse off them, and selected the Reverend Henry Augustus Buchtel, D.D., LL.D., chancellor of their university. As the Denver “Post” delicately phrased it, “They reached up in the House of God and pulled down the poor old chancellor to cover up the rottenness of their machine.”

There was a meeting of the chancellor with Mr. Evans and his political henchmen. One of the purposes of his nomination was that his candidacy might aid Simon Guggenheim, head of the Smelter Trust, to buy his way into the United States Senate. The chancellor accepted the nomination, and invited all present to rise, join hands and sing: “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” You may find this anecdote in “The Beast,” by Ben B. Lindsey, Judge of the Children’s Court of Denver—that is, you may find it if you can find a copy of the book, which its publishers mysteriously ceased to push. Says Lindsey:

The tie that binds the Beast and the Church? Yes, and the Beast and
the College! During the Peabody campaign (according to the “Rocky
Mountain News”) a young student named Reed had been practically driven
from the Denver University because he criticized the corporation
Governor. Later a university professor was sent to Europe to gather
data which was used in the campaign against municipal ownership in
Denver; and the professor was “exposed but not forced into
retirement.” Later still, Buchtel reprimanded a student named Bell for
volunteering as a worker in one of our Juvenile Court campaigns. Mr.
Evans was president of the Board of Trustees of the University, and
the Reverend Henry Augustus Buchtel was his Chancellor.

The use of Buchtel in the campaign that followed was a huge success.
Everywhere people said to me: “Why, the Chancellor will never stand
for the sale of the senatorship to Guggenheim!” Or the “dear
chancellor” will never permit this or that undesirable thing in
politics. But Buchtel had already admitted to a ministerial friend
that he believed Guggenheim ought to be elected—though he said nothing
of it from the platform, you may be sure. After he was Governor, he
not only endorsed Guggenheim but vigorously defended the Legislature
for electing Guggenheim, honored Evans with a place on the
gubernatorial staff, and gave a public dinner to the corporation heads
who had most profited by the rule of the System in the state. They
reciprocated by sending the Denver University handsome donations;
Evans led with $10,000, and Guggenheim, Hughes and others followed
with fat checks.

The keeper of a gambling hell, whom I summoned to my court and forced
to make restitution to one of his victims, said to me: “I have some
respect for Mayor Speer. He tells these preachers that he believes in
our policy of open gambling. But I have nothing but contempt for that
old stiff up in the State House who talks about ‘the word of God,’ and
gets his nomination from a boss who protects _us_, and gets elected on
money that _we_ contributed to the organization!” It is one of the
saddest aspects of this use of the Church that The Beast gains
respectability thereby, and the Church contempt....

Buchtel was elected. His candidacy proved a successful disguise for
the Guggenheim “deal,” and the “church element” was used as well as
“the dive element.” A corporation legislature was put in power. It
only remained for the corporations to deliver the United States
senatorship to Guggenheim “for value received,” and to betray the
nation as they had betrayed the state.

Simon Guggenheim had no more claim to represent Colorado in the Senate
at Washington than John D. Rockefeller has—or Baron Rothschild. He was
the head of the Smelter Trust, and he had been financially interested,
of course, in the election of Peabody in 1904, and the defeat of the
eight-hour law and the suppression of the eight-hour strike. These
things entitled him to the gratitude of the corporations only. He was
unknown to the people of Colorado. He had never been heard of by them
except in a newspaper interview. He had not, as far as I know, ever
spoken or written a word publicly on politics. “I don’t know much
about the political game,” he told one of his campaign managers, “but
I have the money. I know _that_ game.” He does.

That was fifteen years ago, and they did their bribery in the old-style way. Guggenheim paid the campaign expenses of a majority of the Colorado legislators. At present the State of Colorado is run by Phipps, the steel king, and they do not have to buy the legislators, for it is the people who elect the United States senators, and they have bought up all the institutions upon which the people depend. They have bought the Y. M. C. A. and the churches by “donations,” and they have bought the universities in Colorado by giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. Because Lindsey exposed this new style of bribery, the Phipps machine ordered all of Lindsey’s child welfare bills killed by the state legislature.

And of course in their university they watch incessantly to make sure that no dangerous ideas reach the students. Last summer there was a meeting of all the clergymen of Denver on the campus of the university to listen to Dr. Harry Ward, general secretary of the Social Service Commission of the Federated Council Churches of America. The chancellor intervened at the last minute and forbade Ward to speak, denouncing him as “a menace to the present social order.” Instead, he got copies of a report on the steel strike, which Judge Gary had had prepared by one of his kept clergymen, as a reply to the attack by the Inter-Church World Movement. Every member of the graduating class of 1921 received a copy of this report, being solemnly called in to receive it personally from the hands of the chancellor. A professor at the university, who had been scheduled to speak at the church of a Socialist clergyman in Denver, was called up and warned that if he wished to have a career at the university he must avoid that kind of thing. Shortly after this a representative of the Rockefeller education fund was invited to luncheon at the university, and the chancellor made a public appeal to him for funds, on the ground of his services in barring Dr. Ward. This was a trifle too raw, and the chancellor did not get his money!

The old man has just been retired; but the same gang still rules the board of trustees, with Evans the infamous as grand duke. As assistant he has an attorney for the “Big Four” corporations which run the city of Denver, who spends his spare time leading crusades against the “reds”; also a prominent banker, a corporation lawyer, a real estate speculator, a capitalistic preacher, a corporation lawyer from Pueblo, a millionaire oil man and lawyer, a millionaire miner and banker—and finally, as Grand Duke junior, “Boss” Evans’ son, John.