Unmentionable Counts

Dear to the heart of Publisher William Randolph Hearst is the notion that he can thwart and confound his enemies by the simple process of keeping their names out of his 33 newspapers. Two months ago Publisher Hearst added to his editors' list of unmentionables the name of Stanford University. Since Stanford is a prime athletic newsmaker, Hearstlings struggled over their sports pages, concocted such lame evasions as ''the Indians," "men from the Farm," ''the University at Palo Alto.'" What purpose his ban served only Publisher Hearst knew. What prompted it, however, in the opinion of most observers, was that Stanford had invited to California, right under Mr. Hearst's disapproving nose, the man who for many a year has represented and championed everything Mr. Hearst likes least about U. S. education.

That man is George Sylvester Counts. Last week the slight, peppery Professor of Education in Columbia University's crack Teachers' College turned up in Palo Alto, at Stanford's expense, to address 1,800 educators assembled for the University's annual Conference on Curriculum & Guidance. Well aware that his reputation as an eminent radical educator had preceded him to Hearstland, he began his address thus: "It's becoming almost respectable to be called a Red. Let anyone step out in defense of popular right, and he will be labeled a Communist."

What followed was a Counts pronouncement of the kind which makes Mr. Hearst and his fellows see Red. Broad in idea, general in language, its theme was "economic democracy." which Professor Counts has so far failed to reduce to concrete proposals. Excerpts:

"The fundamental liberties of the American people . . . are in greater danger today than at any time since the end of the 18th Century, except during wars.

''The situation today is very similar to the time of the rise of Jeffersonian democracy. The conservatives of those days feared the people. The people were on the march, demanding political rights. Today the people are on the march, demanding economic liberties.

"If the American democracy is to be preserved, the American people must know what is involved in democracy. They are too much inclined to identify democracy with political institutions. Historically this interpretation is inaccurate. The American people in the days of the frontier and simple agrarian life achieved a rough economic democracy long before they achieved political democracy.

''Today economic democracy is practically gone. Democracy in social relationships seems to be going. Only political democracy remains. The presentation and development of American democracy requires the reconstruction of its economic foundation. Is it possible for political democracy to achieve this and thus reverse the achievement of a century and a half ago when an economic democracy achieved political democracy?

"Public education is involved inevitably in the contemporary struggle for democracy. The public school should remain loyal to the great ethical conception of human equality. It should acquaint the rising generation with the full meaning of democracy in American history; explore and examine fearlessly all proposals for the reconstruction of our life and institutions."

Born 46 years ago on a Kansas farm, George Sylvester Counts calls himself a "collectivist," supports Franklin Delano Roosevelt politically, believes the President is "the only man sensitive to the great changes now in progress." His two trips to Russia and his onslaughts against the American Legion, the Hearst papers, the Teachers' Oath and the Liberty League have really done more to build up his reputation for radicalism than have his New Dealish effusions on "economic democracy." In an old Ford he traveled 6,000 miles across Russia, looked at its educational system, found it good. When he returned to the U. S. he was photographed in a scraggly, dark beard which led Hearst editors to deduce that he had become an out-&-out Communist. Even with the beard off, his bristly, dark-brown pompadour, reddish mustache, sharp features give him a faint resemblance to Leon Trotsky.

At the start of Mr. Hearst's academic Red hunt two years ago, Educator Counts's suspicions were aroused when two ingenuous young men presented themselves at his office, asked to be advised about the ruddiest courses available at Columbia. Sternly he faced them down, got them to admit that they were Hearstlings. Thereupon, amid a glare of publicity from the liberal weeklies, Dr. Counts persuaded the pair to tell all before a stenographer, reveal that the scheme was Publisher Hearst's own. Promptly the Hearst press labeled Educator Counts ''Red Russia's Apostle," flayed him roundly, finally put him in a class with other Hearst unmentionables.

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