Ross Affair: Notebook containing D. S. Jordan's statement with exhibits and ptd. report of Committee of Economists

(Copy of draft of letter, written in October, 1896, on return from Bering Sea, and before ''Honest Dollars" was seen.)

Dear Dr. Ross:

I called on you a day ago but failed to find you at home. It seemed to me that I ought to say a frank word as to certain matters as seen from my point of view as the representative of the University as a whole, which stands pledged to non-partisanship in all matters over which men struggle in opposing bands. An institution moreover maintained by the most strenuous effort by a founder, who whatever her own views, will never interfere to impose them upon us.

No institution should claim the right to limit investigation or to check or belittle the expression of these conclusions. But an institution like ours has the right to expect its members not to compromise its dignity. As it cannot escape some degree of responsibility for the public acts of each of its members, it must expect its members to keep this fact in mind. Each society has in some degree a responsibility for the public acts of each one of those who compose it.

In courtesy, if for no other reason, a member of the University ought not to expose the institution to unwelcome surprises.

As a matter of fact in the present campaign, as a president of the University, I have met with a number of surprises and at least three of these have been distinctly humiliating.

It is perhaps not necessary to be more explicit, but O do not think that it would be right to let the matter pass without protest. If you do not see any ground for such action on my part then is my humiliation the greater. Very truly yours, David S. Jordan.

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Exhibit ''M''.

Report of Address of Dr. Ross at mass meeting in opposition to oriental immigration as reported in the San Francisco CALL of May 8, 1900:

"Professor E. A. Ross of Stanford University followed in a thoughtful and eloquent discussion of the economic phases of the problem. He declared that primarily the Chinese and Japanese are impossible among us because they cannot assimilate with us; they represent a different and an inferior civilization to our own and mean by their presence the degradation of American labor and American life. We demand a protection for the American workman as well as for American products, the speaker insisted. And should the worst come to the worst it would be better for us if we were to turn our guns on every vessel bringing Japanese to our shores rather than to permit them to land."

The headlines under which this report among those of other speakers at the meeting were as follows:

WARNING AGAINST COOLIE "NATIVE AND JAPANESE.

CITIZENS IN MASS MEETING ASK PROTECTION FROM THE INFLUX OF ASIATIC HORDES.

INVASION OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE DENOUNCED.

(Copy)

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Exhibit "N."

May 21, 1900.

Mrs. Stanford,

My dear Friend:

I must tell you frankly and fully my own impression of Dr. Ross. I am sure that if you knew him as I do, no outside criticism could shake your confidence in him.

Dr. Ross has faults, no doubt; but they are neither dangerous nor incurable. They are the faults of enthusiasm and conscientiousness. He is not a politician nor a fanatic: not an agitator nor a socialist; nor has he anything in common with these classes.

It is his business as a professor of Social Science to study movements and results of social changes, and to look at them from both sides. This brings him into public criticism more than if he worked in other fields, because these are all public matters. Every professor of social or political science has had the same experience in greater or less degree. If he be honest and strong, he will cross some one's opinions or prejudices or interests. Dr. Branner, for example, teaches Geology, which comes in no conflict with politicians; yet it is not many years ago that he was hanged and burned in effigy for telling the truth about a fraudulent mine called the ''lost Louisiana.''

The only ground for real criticism Dr. Ross has ever given was four years ago. As a "Sliver [sic Silver] Republican'', he was convinced what the evils of the gold standard -- evils which Mr. Stanford clearly recognized and tried to cure in another way -- could

best be done away with by the free coinage of silver. He did not endorse Bryan, except as a means to this end, namely, the doing away with the increasing price of gold. All that he said was true, so far as I know, but I and all his other colleagues believed that the crash which would follow a sudden change was more dangerous than the evil itself. What Dr. Ross did was actuated not by partisanship for he has never been a Democrat, but by a sense of duty. He ceased when he saw that the public could not separate him from the chair he held -- when he realized that his words compromised his colleagues and the University. Since that time he has not uttered a word in public that could be considered as partisan, and the silver question has been settled for a long time to come by the unexpected growth of gold mining.

But even in this matter he never stepped outside of the recognized rights of a professor. Many eastern professors spoke in that campaign on the side of gold. Some, President Seth Low, have been prominent as political leaders. President Wheeler, as professor at Cornell, was a member of the Democratic District Committee, without criticism, and he was afterwards one of the leaders in the Gold Democrat movement which elected President McKinley.

The real work of a professor is to be judged not by a few chance speeches but by the things on which he spends his time, by his class work and his publications. Dr. Ross is the author

3 of a large number of the socialist and least sensational papers lately published on social questions. his great work on ''Social Control", a study of the methods and forces by which society is held together will soon appear. It is one of the quietest and sanest works on Social Science, and it would make his reputation as a careful thinker and patient investigator, were that reputation not already established. Among scholars at large no worker in this field is more widely or more favorably known. A couple of boyish speeches in defense of silver as a political issue do not break this reputation. I have carefully looked into the two recent matters. The address at Oakland was on the subject of making cities healthful. There was only a passing reference to street cars and no criticism on their present management. In speaking of the future city he said that a period of municipal ownership of street cars was coming on, to be followed by a return to private ownership under government regulation. Every one recognizes that right or wrong the present drift is toward municipal ownership. Dr. Ross thinks it undesirable and that the final condition will be in private ownership under regulations, the condition that prevails in England. In the matter of Japanese immigration, he was invited, after I had declined, to give a ''scholar's view'' to a ''nonpartisan'' gathering. He did not know the [ma]n who i[n]vited him and was not pleased with them when he had seen them. He has