Author Nearing Scott

e.[3] Nearing's upbringing was that of a young bourgeois, his mother employing a part-time tutor and two Polish servants to clean the gleaming white house atop a hill overlooking the town.[4] Scott's brother recalled that the citizens of Morris Run had treated the handsome and intelligent Scott "the way they would treat the heir to the nobleman.... They all treated him with awe."[4] Nearing's father was a small businessman and stockbroker, his mother a vigorous, energetic, and idealistic woman who Nearing later credited for providing an appreciation of the higher things in life — nature, books, and the arts.[5] Despite an upbringing in a life of privilege made possible at some level by the harsh anti-union politics of his patriarchal grandfather,[6] young Scott Nearing nevertheless developed a social conscience, which one of his biographers describes as "a burr under his skin that none of his relatives acquired and that no interpretation satisfactorily explains."[4] Scott Nearing's radical worldview would stay with him for the rest of his life. Nearing graduated from high school in 1901 and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania Law School, "where corporate bias so violated his idealism that after one year he quit."[7] Instead he studied oratory at Temple University in Philadelphia and enrolled in the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, where he immersed himself in the emerging science of economics. At the Wharton School, Nearing was deeply influenced by Simon Nelson Patten, an innovative and unconventional educator and founding father of the American Economic Association.[8] Nearing was molded as a "Wharton man" for the current progressive era, one of the proverbial "best and brightest" trained in practical economics to be readied for a place as a responsible leader of the community.[9] In the words of another of his students, Patten taught innovative thinking — "making use of creative intelligence to master new situations irrespective of received dogma."[10] Nearing seems to have found these new intellectual tools for potential social change to be exciting and liberating. He completed his undergraduate program in just three years, while simultaneously engaging in campus politics and competitive debate.[8] Nearing received his BS degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1905 and his PhD in Economics in 1909. From 1905 to 1907, he served as the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee, a volunteer society working to solve the child labor problem in the state.[11] From 1908 until 1915, Nearing himself taught economics and sociology at the Wharton School and Swarthmore College, authoring a stream of books on the economics and social problems.[12] Nearing was a staunch advocate of a "new economics" which insisted "that the economists part company with the ominous pictures of an overpopulated, starving world, prostrate before the throne of 'competition,' 'individual initiative,' 'private property,' or some other pseudo-god, and tell men in simple, straightforward language how they may combine, re-shape, or overcome the laws and utilize them as a blessing instead of enduring them as a burden and a curse."[13] Much as Karl Marx drew radical implications from the ideas of the conservative Hegel, Nearing took the economic logic of his department head, Simon Patten, and made radical inferences about wealth and the distribution of income that his mentor had himself hesitated to draw.[14] He believed that unfettered wealth stifled initiative and impeded economic advancement, and hoped that progressive thinkers among the ownership class itself would come to realize the negative impact of economic parasitism and accept their civic duty of enlightened leadership.[15] Nearing instead outlined an economic republicanism based upon "four basic democratic concepts — equality of opportunity, civic obligation, popular government, and human rights."[16] Nearing's aggressive social activism in the classroom and through the printed word brought him into conflict with his own employers at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, resulting in his dismissal and his emergence as a cause célèbre of the American radical movement for the next decade. On the morning of June 16, 1915, Nearing's secretary telephoned him to report that a letter from the Provost had arrived, which noted that "as the term of your appointment as assistant professor of economics for 1914-1915 is about to expire, I am directed by the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania to inform you that it will not be renewed."[17] The Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania was heavily stacked with bankers, corporation lawyers, financiers, and corporation executives, and Nearing's writing had not gone unnoticed.[18] Nearing's tenuous situation had been exacerbated by an open letter to The North American in which he challenged the right wing evangelist Billy Sunday to apply the Gospel to the conditions of industrial capitalism, including "the railroad interests... the traction company... the manufacturers... the vested interests."[19] Reaction to Nearing's dismissal from the academy was swift, with department head Patten and others issuing statements condemning the decision. Progressives in the Wharton School quickly compiled a summary of the facts of the case and sent it to 1500 newspapers, journals, and academics around the country.[20] Even conservatives in the faculty were deeply troubled since, as one Wharton professor observed, "the moment Nearing went, any conservative statement became but the spoken word of a 'kept' professor."[20] Conversely, some radicals were satisfied for being validated in their belief of the conservative nature of the American academy. Socialist writer Upton Sinclair told Nearing in no uncertain terms in an open letter that "You do not belong in a university. You belong with us Socialists and free lances.... Instead of addressing small numbers of college boys, you will be able to address large audiences of men."[21] Retrospectively called by one historian "the most famous breach of academic freedom" of the era,[22] the University of Pennsylvania's action had the effect of making Scott Nearing into a public figure and fueled a long-running discussion about the proper role and rights of the teacher. From the Fall of 1915, Scott Nearing was established as a radical "public man." He joined the American Union Against Militarism in 1916 and delivered a series of speeches condemning the "Preparedness" campaign then being promoted by Woodrow Wilson and the nation's political elite.[23] He also remained a university professor, teaching Social Science at city-owned Toledo University from 1915 through 1917. The intense nationalistic feeling that swept the country now that America was embroiled at last in the war in Europe spelled the end of Nearing's Toledo days, as he later recalled in his memoirs: Nearing packed up his things and moved to New York City, where he became a founding member of the broad anti-war organization the People's Council, the establishment of which took place at the so-called First American Conference for Peace and Democracy, held May 30-31, 1917. He assumed the chairmanship of that organization that fall.[25] On July 1, 1917, Nearing joined the Socialist Party and began a new job, working for the next six years as a lecturer in Economics and Sociology at the Socialist Party's Rand School of Social Science.[26] He was a prolific public speaker during this time, estimating that he had given approximately 200 speeches a year during the war years.[27] Nearing authored a series of pamphlets, published by the Rand School, one of which, The Great Madness: A Victory for the American Plutocracy, resulted in his indictment under the Espionage Act for alleged "obstruction to the recruiting and enlistment service of the United States."[28] This indictment came down in April 1918, but it was not until February 1919 — that is, several months after the war in Europe had actually ended — that the trial against Nearing and the Rand School actually commenced.[29] The prosecution attempted to show that Nearing, by writing against militarism, had illegally interfered with the ability of the United States government to recruit and conscript troops for its military activities in Europe. It spent its effort making Nearing admit that he had written and spoken against militarism and the war in Europe — which he was quite willing to do. But at the end of the trial, Nearing addressed the jury and made a key point: "The prosecution has not been able to show a single instance in which recruiting was obstructed. They have not been able to show a single instance in which insubordination, disloyalty, and refusal to duty was caused."[30] Nearing noted the evil implications of the government's attempt to illegalize written dissent: The judge in the case, Julius M. Mayer, dismissed the first two counts of the indictment, alleging conspiracy, without sending them to the jury. Following deliberation, the jury found Scott Nearing not guilty but the American Socialist Society guilty on the third and fourth counts of the indictment. On March 21, 1919, sentence was passed and the American Socialist Society was fined $3,000 (short of the maximum fine of $10,000),[32] a sum which was ultimately collected through small donations from Socialists, labor groups, and civil libertarians in New York City.