The Goose-Step (book)
 First edition | |
| Author | Upton Sinclair |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Sociology |
| Publisher | Self (Pasadena, California) |
Publication date | 1923 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover first edition, softcover second edition) Reprinted 2004 by Kessinger Publishing in paperback |
| Preceded by | The Brass Check |
| Followed by | The Goslings |
The Goose-step: A Study of American Education is a book, published in 1923, by the American novelist and
The book is one of the “Dead Hand” series: six books Sinclair wrote on American institutions. The series also includes The Profits of Religion, The Brass Check (journalism), The Goslings (elementary and high school education), Mammonart (great literature, art and music) and Money Writes! (literature). Using "Dead Hand" as the title of the series, Sinclair tried to show the difference between the reality of a 'Dead Hand' of greed in human life and the ideal of Adam Smith’s "Invisible Hand" laissez-faire concept of guiding economics.[1]
Context
Published in 1923, The Goose-step was written during the post–
Critiques of higher education had recently appeared, such as Thorstein Veblen’s 1918 book The Higher Learning in America.
Sinclair spent a year traveling the country for the book and interviewed over a thousand persons. Sinclair also used primary sources like letters, and secondary sources like student newspapers.
Sinclair had studied at Columbia University in New York City, and the book’s longest section attacks Columbia and its president, Nicholas Murray Butler.
Sinclair originally intended to also critique elementary and high schools, but because of length he saved that material for another book, published in 1924 as The Goslings.
Title
Contemporary readers would have recognized the title, The
Organization
To explain how higher education is controlled by financial interests, Sinclair quotes from a report of the 1913 Pujo Committee of the United States House of Representatives.
- "credit, which is the life-blood of our business world." (p. 19)
The interlocking directorate was equally well represented on the
For each school (see below), Sinclair describes how the interlocking directorate exercises its influence on the school's Board of Trustees. Bankers and powerful local businessmen dominate the boards, ensuring that school policies support their class interest.
This occurs in various ways. The school president serves the board rather than the educational interest of the students. Unqualified but politically conservative men are hired as administrators or professors. University funds are invested at artificially low interest rates at favored banks. Schools purchase land from people in their administration. The administration represses radical students and prohibits speeches by Socialists like Sinclair. Students at state universities, which are funded by the public, are nevertheless taught to serve the interests of the rich.
A major theme is professors' inability to speak freely in or out of class without fearing for their jobs (academic freedom). Rather, the Board of Trustees, acting through the school's president, suppressed any criticism of the status quo. Many faculty members were dismissed, driven out or denied promotion because of their political activities or views. Sinclair says that academic freedom was suppressed at church-sponsored and tax-supported (state) schools, as well as at private ones. Only one or two faculty members allowed Sinclair to use their names.
- "I talked with another professor at Chicago, who does not want his name used. I asked him what he thought about the status of his profession, and he gave the best description of academic freedom in America that I have yet come upon. He said, 'We are good cows; we stand quietly in our stanchions, and give down our milk at regular hours. We are free, because we have no desire to do anything but what we are told we ought to do. And we die of premature senility.'" (p. 247)
Other chapters deal with the importance of keeping the support of wealthy and politically conservative alumni/donors, and the influence of plutocrat-founded policy organizations like
Among his prescriptions for change, Sinclair wanted more professors to unionize by joining the American Association of University Professors (only 2-3 per cent were unionized). He also wanted college students to experience real life: they should visit jails and work in factories, or alternatively have prisoners and labor leaders speak at their schools.
Critical reactions
Critics have usually praised The Goose-step for bringing an enormous mass of information together in an engaging and readable book. It is “muckraking at its best”,[2] an “honest effort to find out the truth”[3] and "indispensable to any student of present American life."[4] While they rarely if ever find errors of fact,[4] they criticize Sinclair's interpretation as oversimplified: plutocrats are not responsible for all the problems with higher education.
Regarding suppression of academic freedom, one critic argues that “many [cases], perhaps a majority, were the result of war hysteria and should not be regarded as typical.”[3]
Institutions mentioned
Sinclair's epithet for the school follows; it refers to the major source of plutocratic influence on the Board of Directors or school administration.
- Morgan
- Harvard University: The University of Lee-Higginson
- University of Pennsylvania: The University of U.G.I. (United Gas Improvement Company)
- Princeton University: The Tiger’s Lair
- Yale University: The Bull-Dog’s Den
- University of California (Berkeley): The University of the Black Hand[5]
- Stanford University
- Trust
- University of Washington (Seattle): The University of the Chimes
- Anaconda
- University of Idaho (Moscow)
- Latter Day Saints
- University of Denver: The Mining Camp University
- Trust
- North Dakota Agricultural College
- University of North Dakota-Grand Forks: The University of Wheat
- Trust
- University of Wisconsin–Madison
- University of Chicago: The University of Standard Oil
- Judge Gary
- University of Illinois (Urbana): The University of the Grand Duchess (Mary E. Busey, widow of Samuel Busey)
- University of Michigan (Detroit): The University of Automobiles
- Trust
- Syracuse University: The University of Heaven
- Clark University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Cornell University
- Brown University
- Wesleyan University
- New York University: The University of Jabbergrab[6]
- City Colleges of New York (College of the City of New York: men; Hunter College: women)
- University of Southern California
Briefer references to: MIT, Cincinnati, Washington University, Temple, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Ohio State, Beloit, Marietta College, Rockford College, Williams College, Delaware, Bryn Mawr. Religious colleges: Wooster, Muskingum, Allegheny, Washburn, American University, Trinity, Baylor, SMU, Bethany, Emory and Henry, and Drew Theological Seminary (later Drew University).
Institutions Sinclair praises:
All page numbers refer to the second edition (1923).
References
The cited references can be found through JSTOR, an online database of academic journals.
- ISBN 978-0805771978.
A critical and appreciative study of the controversial author examines his literary significance as well as his impact on American social history
- ^ Hicks, Granville, "The Survival of Upton Sinclair" College English 4 (4) (Jan., 1943), 213-20.
- ^ a b Alvord, Clarence W., The Goose-Step (Review), The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10 (3) (Dec., 1923), pp. 336-7.
- ^ a b Lovett, Robert Morss, "Upton Sinclair," The English Journal 17 (9) (Nov., 1928), 706-14.
- black hand society of the rich." The Commercial Federation had been founded by Harry Haldeman, a Los Angeles businessman (and grandfather of H. R. Haldeman). (p. 129)
- ^ "Jabbergrab: Heroes of Finance" is a publication Sinclair invented for a satirical short story titled "A Captain of Industry."
Also Eells, Walter Crosby, "Criticisms of Higher Education", The Journal of Higher Education, 5 (4) (Apr. 1934), pp. 187–9.
Further reading
- "Upton Sinclair’s criticism of higher education in America: A study of The Goose-step, its sources, critical history, and relationship to criticisms of higher education." A Ph.D. dissertation in the history of education by Abraham Blinderman at New York University (1963). Dissertation Abstracts International, 25, no. 04, (1963): 2334. Accession No: AAG6406547.
- A book review by Russell Jacoby in the Los Angeles Times on June 19, 2005 discusses the current commercialization of academia. Available through Proquest (subscription required).
- A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council for the Social Studies (64th, Washington, DC, November 15–19, 1984). "Upton Sinclair and the New Critics of Education" by Jack L Nelson. Abstract: Upton Sinclair's critique of education is examined, and what today's critics of education can learn from him is discussed. Available online through ERIC, Accession no. ED260954 (subscription required).
External links
- Full PDF copy of The Goose-Step (Free, from Archive.org)
- Sinclair’s papers for The Goose-step are at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.