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spring morning not long ago when I came to my office to begin the work of the day I found, as it is quite common to do, a young man waiting to see me. He was flushed and embarrassed as he entered my private office, and he asked me if I would consider what he should tell me in the interview which was to follow as entirely confidential. He begged that whatever facts and names he might divulge to me should be held strictly between ourselves. I gave him my assurance, and he continued with his story. He was the manager of an important undergraduate enterprise which necessitated his handling during the year some thousands of dollars. One of his duties at the outset had been to make a contract for supplies for the year. A friend of his, an upper classman, had come to him in the fall and had presented a proposition by which each was to receive a bonus of one hundred dollars in cash, if the contract should go to a definite local firm. He weakly and thoughtlessly yielded, hoping to get out of it or in some way to justify his action to himself, and now the contract had been fulfilled, and his friend was urging him to collect and divide the bonus.

"I have never consciously done a dishonest thing in my life," he said to me, "and I some way can not bring myself now to profit in this irregular way. If I take the money, I shall feel myself a crook all my


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 life; if I tell my friend that I have changed my mind and do not think it right that we should take this money, he will be sure that I am not playing the game fairly with him, that I am joking, and am intending to collect the money and use it all for my own benefit."

I suggested to him a way out of the difficulty which was quite satisfactory, and he went off relieved and resolved for the future to keep in the straight path of honesty. His is only one of the many instances, which come to my attention almost daily in a large educational institution, of the business temptations which beset students, and of the close relationships between the undergraduate and graft.

The unsophisticated is likely to think of the college life as a protected, shielded life, a life which one spends in the study of books and of nature, afar off from the transactions and the temptations of the sordid business world. This may be true under certain conditions and in certain institutions, but not in the large universities of the Middle West.

In the simple life of the small college there is little opportunity, in the undergraduate activities as they are carried on, for profit or for dishonesty. No large amounts of money change hands, and the students who have charge of undergraduate affairs do not often have their characters put to the test of honesty. "In my own undergraduate days there were fewer than four hundred students in the institution in which I was doing my work. There was little money coming in from athletics, there was a deficit in our class annual, and no one was paid for working on the college paper, for the very good reason that it

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 required labor and finesse for the business manager to meet the bills for its publication, let alone to pay any one for working upon it. We were satisfied to gain experience, though if there had been any loose money we should no doubt have shared it eagerly. Class functions and class invitations and student operas and plays and publications were either not a part of our undergraduate life or else their conduct entailed such a minor expenditure of money and was so simple in its nature that there was no thought or possibility of graft.

In an institution of eight or ten thousand students the case is very different. The student publications alone of the University of Illinois last year involved the letting of contracts and the expenditure of money to the extent of ninety thousand dollars, and practically all of this money was handled by students, and much of the profit divided among them. The expenditure of the senior class for their invitations, and ball, and breakfast, and class hats, and commencement caps and gowns would even at the most conservative estimate reach ten thousand dollars, and the contracts for all of these things were made by students, and the bills paid by students. The amounts may seem large, but when it is remembered that the number receiving degrees exceeded one thousand, the expenditure is very moderate. If one should go into it thoughtfully, he would be quite astonished to realize the thousand and one undergraduate interests which require the making of contracts, the collection of considerable sums of money often running into thousands of dollars, and the payment of bills by inexperienced careless undergraduates upon whom there


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 is little effective check, and who themselves are unlikely if allowed to go undirected or unsupervised to keep any intelligent or intelligible account of their receipts or their expenditures. In any of the Middle West state universities the sums of money handled by students in the conduct of undergraduate affairs will run annually into tens of thousands of dollars.

The young men who make up the student body of any of our Middle West universities when they enter college are, many of them, not unfamiliar with the ways of the world. They know what it means to get or to hold a job through the influence of friends; they may not call it "pull," but it is the same thing under another name. They are not inclined to work "for their health," and if they do a piece of work, even if it be only having their names on a hat committee, they can not always see why they should not profit by it in some material way. They are strongly imbued with the commercial spirit. Much of the foolish talk which they have heard about college has been mixed with stories of graft in undergraduate affairs, and many fellows come to college with the idea that if you are anything of a wise guy you can pick up money almost anywhere about a college campus.

The editor of the summer edition of our college daily was complaining to me not long ago that he was having to do most of the work on the paper himself this summer, and that it was really more than he was able to accomplish.

"Haven't you a staff?" I inquired, with the memory of a long published list of names of editors in my mind.


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 "Why, yes," was his reply, "but you see they don't get anything out of it, and you can't expect a fellow to work for nothing these days." It is a significant fact that if you ask a young fellow in college now to perform any sort of service, the first question he is likely to ask is, "What's there in it?" It is the slogan of our times which our young men have learned at home from the conduct of politics and the conduct of business. We are supposed to preach higher ideals in college, but it is hard to supplant a doctrine of selfish personal interest and profit with one of altruism.

The fact that it is becoming more and more popular to go to college and that every year, with us at least, there is an increasingly larger number of undergraduates who must earn their living, has its influence, I have no doubt, upon this desire for graft. I do not mean to indicate that it is the men who have the greatest need for money to meet the daily demands for food and lodging who are most concerned in the illegitimate ways of obtaining money, and to whom these temptations come more strongly. Quite the contrary in fact; but when one-third of the men in college, as is the case with us, are concerned in some way in earning the whole or a part of their living there is bound to be a good deal of talk current relative to these matters, and when one is daily rubbing up against men who are bringing in a few dollars, it is not strange that one should look about him, even though not pressed by want or dire need, in an attempt to discover if there is not some easy money in reach which he may pick up. If no one were earning money, perhaps no one else would want to do so,


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 but the sight or the rumor of other fellows adding to their incomes by steady work or clever financiering stimulates cupidity, just as when I go by an ice cream tefectory and see a few friends sitting in the window refreshing themselves with lemon stirs and bostons, my thirst rises.

When McIntyre came to me this spring and wanted me to help him collect a bill of fifty dollars from the freshman class for doing work which his office required him to do free of charge, I refused. "Why do you want this?" I asked, knowing that Mac got a generous check from home every month, "you have plenty of money"; not that that fact would have made any difference if he had been entitled to the money, but just to see what his reaction would be.

"Every one else in the house is making something," he explained, "and this seemed my chance. I can't see why I shouldn't make a little on the side even if I do get all I need from home." They were all in the game, and Mac didn't want to be on the side lines.

Another thing which, in a state university at least, helps to confirm students in their unwillingness to do anything unless they are paid for it, is the fact, I believe, that the fees which students pay at such an institution are so trifling as to be almost negligible. They pay little or nothing for instruction; many of their social affairs are in University buildings, their athletic sports and games are furnished at the lowest possible rate, the University offers them all sorts of entertainments free of charge, and pays a man to get the indigent a job. Since they get almost everything practically free, it is only a short step to the attitude


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 of mind that if one does any general college service, or belongs to anything, or is a member of any committee there ought to be a generous rake-off.

With this training and tendency of students which I have discussed, with so many student enterprises so organized that they bring in relatively large sums of money, some part of which may legitimately be divided among undergraduates, it is not easy to draw the line at the point where honest remuneration ends and graft begins. An athlete may not take money for his services; if he does he becomes a professional and, if his act is discovered, he is barred from the team. General college sentiment would not now approve an athlete's being paid even indirectly for his services. It would seem out of place for a member of the glee club to be paid for singing at the regular concerts, though he may be a member of a paid choir at the same time that he belongs to the club and be subject to no comment if the manager presents each member of the club from the profits of the concert a sweater bearing an embroidered monogram, though it would stir up criticism and scandal if they received ten dollar gold pieces. The members of a committee appointed to choose a class emblem or a class hat could not receive salaries for having their names on the committee, but they feel entirely virtuous and above reproach if they accept a hat or two or a watch fob for their work; in fact they would be likely to suffer a real irritation if they did not receive such gratuities. The members of a dance committee get free admission to the dance and charge up as legitimate expenses all their regular personal expenditures


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 for cabs and candy incident to the party, and these things are seldom looked upon as graft.

In some lines of student endeavor the undergraduate who manages the business is paid a stipulated sum or gets a definitely agreed upon percentage of the profits for his work and thought. The managers of the glee club and the student opera, and the lecture course, accept a bonus and little is thought of it; the managers and editors of all our student publications receive definite salaries and a share in the extra profits of these different publications which is often considerable, and they accept this as a right.

The question as to what constitutes graft and what constitutes legitimate payment for real services rendered, as I said at the outset, is not easy to settle. The manager of the glee club has no little responsibility. He organizes the club, he plans the trips and makes all arrangements for the entertainment of the members when they are out of town; he looks after the contracts for engagements, pays the bills, and puts in a tremendous amount of time in getting things in order and in keeping them so. If he should be paid fifty or one hundred dollars, should this be called graft? Again, the undergraduate who has charge of the commencement invitations does not always have an easy job. He is beset by solicitors, he must try to please as many members of the class as possible, he has a considerable amount of detail to look after, must read some pretty difficult proof (and usually does it badly) and be sure that the name of every member of the class is on the list. The invitations must be delivered on time and in exactly the


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 numbers ordered by each individual. Should he get a rake-off?

Only a few years ago when the representative of a well known engraving company in the East was soliciting an order from the chairman of the senior invitations committee he presented two propositions. The invitations—five thousand of them or more—would be laid down at the college book store for thirty cents each. If a certain paper stock was accepted he would pay to the chairman of the committee for his trouble one hundred and fifty dollars in cash when the order was delivered, or if the chairman did not see his way clear to accept this offer—some chairmen do not—he would furnish a slightly superior quality of paper for the same price. There would be nothing on record or public about this transfer of the cash,—he would be handed the bonus in cash which was simply to show in a delicate way the appreciation of the company for this item of business. Was this a legitimate payment for services rendered which the young fellow was at liberty to accept without criticism, or not?

Our college daily, managed by students, does a yearly business of twenty or thirty thousands of dollars. The annual contract for the printing of this paper is let by a board of trustees composed of four students and three members of the faculty. A few years ago one of the students concerned was approached by a representative of one of the firms bidding for the contract with this proposition. His firm would agree to print the paper for a sum as low as the lowest bidder who should make application for the job; they would also make in every other detail


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 a contract as favorable to the interests of the paper as any other contract offered. If the student concerned would use his influence and by his so doing they should secure the contract, they would hand him one hundred dollars in currency. The boy was a hard working fellow who was forced to support himself, the firm making him the offer was well qualified to carry out such a contract, and there was every probability that he could swing the business in their direction. So far as he could see he would not damage the paper nor cause any person inconvenience or loss if he should accept the proposition, and the money he was to receive would carry him easily through one of the hardest financial difficulties he had encountered during his undergraduate course. If he had taken the money, would he have been guilty of dishonesty and graft?

A former manager of one of our publications was approached by a representative of the firm that had done work on the publication when the manager referred to was in charge. "If you will help us to get this next contract," he said, "we shall be glad to pay you handsomely as a purely business proposition." The work which the firm had done had been second class, as the former manager well knew, but he volunteered to take the new manager through the work rooms of the interested firm, showed up their good points, evaded the weak ones, urged the claims of the firm to the new man's consideration and persuaded him to give them his contract. For all this he had his expenses paid and received in cash an amount of money far in excess of what he could have legitimately earned in four times the time consumed in his


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 endeavor. Was he dishonest, and was the money which he accepted graft?

In giving these illustrations I have advisedly indicated that in each case the remuneration which these fellows accepted or that which was offered them was always cash, never a check or a draft, for when bills change hands, unless they are marked, there is no tangible record and no way for an outsider to run the matter down and get hold of it. Each one of these firms may say, as in fact most of them have said, that there was no such transaction authorized by them and nothing of this sort so far as they are aware ever occurred. The student, also, if he is uncertain as to the integrity of his conduct has no embarrassing legal witness to rise up to trouble him. If he is asked about the affair he may have forgotten, or he may evade the question entirely.

For my own part, I am convinced that we should be living under a healthier business and social régime in college if we could go back to the time when students worked in undergraduate affairs because they valued the distinction and the honor of the positions which were attainable, and because they were willing through such means to gain acquaintanceship and experience. There was stronger loyalty then, there was a keener college spirit, there was greater development of character, there was better sportsmanship, for a fellow is a poor sportsman who can not see his way to doing something for the advantage of his college or his class or his organization without receiving payment for it whether such payment be in greenbacks or gold watch fobs, whether it comes to him through the operation of regular college rules, or by


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 irregular and hidden processes which he hesitates to discuss. We are, however, in most of our colleges at least, working under a different system, looking at the business of undergraduate affairs from a different viewpoint, and shall have to take things as I find them.

If I may answer my own question as to what really—constitutes graft in college I should say that it is receiving payment or profit without having the proper authority or sanction from those who actually pay the money or are responsible for its disposal; or without having rendered an equivalent service If the junior class votes to give fobs to the men who were in charge of the Prom, their acceptance of such a gift under this definition cannot be considered as graft because the class has a right to distribute its own money. If, however, the committee votes itself fobs without the approval or consent of the class, and buys them out of the proceeds of the dance, the case is different. The man who was in charge of the senior invitations, for example, if he should have accepted one hundred dollars might quite legitimately have been accused of graft, for no matter under what felicitous name the transfer of currency might have taken place, no one is foolish enough to think that any one was really paying this amount excepting those who are paying for the invitations and they are doing so without their knowledge or consent. The firm that offered such a bonus made itself safe by adding an equal or a larger amount to the regular selling price of the goods. The fellow who helped to land the contract with the firm that had previously done a second class business with him, in addition


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 to perpetrating an ordinary common act of dishonesty was also a grafter, for the service which he performed even if it had been otherwise square was far less in proportion than the remuneration he received.

We have a university regulation to the effect that no organization is permitted to hold an entertainment with a view to raising money to be divided among its members. When the members of our dancing clubs, therefore, turn their cash balance into their own individual pockets they are receiving profit contrary to authority and are guilty of graft. Sometimes, perhaps, a practice like this is established so gradually and goes on so long that it loses its original significance and seems to become a legitimate commercial enterprise.

There is another sort of graft which contemplates a special privilege or looks for favors through relationship or acquaintanceship where a man has given little or nothing for what he expects in return. A student is sometimes accused of "working a graft" when all that is meant is that because of his nearness to an individual or his connection with an office or an organization he may be receiving favors to which he might otherwise not be entitled. If Jones is chairman of the Prom Committee, then Brown who is his roommate, even though he has done no work to merit preferment, expects to fall heir to some sort of soft job where the payment will at least equal if it does not exceed the labor. Fraternity men in authority or with appointing power are not at all likely to forget the needy or the eager brother when their jobs are being partitioned out. If Tom Jones is managing the student opera it is to be expected that


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 a large percentage of the Zete's should be in the cast and in other places of emolument and honor; if Skinny Bill is in charge of the Mask and Bauble play then we are not surprised to find the whole Beta chapter taking tickets at the door. It is pretty hard when some member of the family is holding the bag for one not to try to get his fingers at least upon a few coins.

This form of graft does not always put the worst or the most incapable men into positions of trust; on the contrary the men selected frequently perform their tasks admirably, but it is simply another phase of the spoils system; it teaches a bad social principle, and is a form of graft detrimental to the best interests of the college. It is at best a weakener of the character of those who work it.

"I can not conceive," a senior recently said to me, "that any college man would ever fail to vote for a brother or for a friend if he were a candidate for office."

"Not even if there were a much better man running?" I asked.

"No fellow under those circumstances would be willing to admit that there are any better men," was his reply. But it is a rather vicious accompaniment of graft that makes it impossible for a man to recognize merit in any but his friends.

These things which I have been discussing are encouraged in college by two or three things. If we must speak the truth such practices are not at all uncommon in the business world, and students know it. The representative of one of the best known men's furnishing stores in Chicago not long ago ad-


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 you are lively stones in the building that is being fitly framed together; an holy temple in the Lord.

Brother, you are a son, and an heir to all the Pentecostal | blessings, gifts, and power. Press your claims at the Court of Heaven.

Seek the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and power. You can be a pillar in the temple of God, in, to go out no more. Be among the wise, that shall know of the Lord’s coming. Among the wise that shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.

Let all that read this sermon take warning. “He that knoweth My will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes.”

14

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 vertised his business and attempted to increase his trade by handing out half pint bottles of whiskey to all thirsty corners. We live in a dry time, so that although these little courtesies are not universally appealing they do in some satisfy a long felt want. I do not suppose the firm whose goods were thus being advertised knew the exact methods which were being employed by their solicitor, but he was known as one of the shrewdest and most successful salesmen on the road. A young landscape gardener who has been out of college for only a few years told me a short time ago that he seldom put in an order for shrubs to carry out the work of park planting in which he is now engaged without one or more salesmen offering to split profits with him to get his order. These dishonest ways of promoting trade are not unknown to many undergraduates, and though they are not universal they are far too common to make it easy to develop healthy business principles.

As soon as the undergraduate begins to do business in college he finds that competition among local merchants and other business men is keen and that a good percentage of them are out for the business and are willing to pay to get it. It is not so strange, then, that the young inexperienced student should fall a victim to the subtle arguments which over-enthusiastic solicitors and business men are willing to present in order to get their orders. "They practically all do it in one way or another," the representative of a big business house said to me not long ago, "and if one wants to do business, one has to come across. It isn't always money, of course, which we put up, but it is the equivalent of money."


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 I should not want to blame this practice entirely upon business houses or their representatives. Most students are of the opinion that graft is pretty general in undergraduate activities and many fellows go out for positions with the hope of finding or making opportunity for illegitimate profit. Some men, it is true, are surprised when they are offered money to let a contract; some even are incensed; but there are others who by subtle suggestion make it quite evident to business firms that they are willing to be bribed, and others even more boldly ask at the outset how much there will be in it for them personally. A local merchant told me recently that the class officer who was in charge of the business of letting the contract for a class hat or cap came to him to ask for a bid on the proposition. When the boy had received the merchant's bid he said, "You have offered to furnish these caps for one dollar and twenty cents each. I will give you the contract if you will make it one dollar and thirty cents and turn the ten cents extra over to me for my trouble."

"I shall be very glad to do that," was the merchant's reply, "if your class will so vote or if you will have announced to the class beforehand what is being done; but otherwise I cannot." The young fellow went away to consider the proposition, but he never returned, and another firm received the order.

These practices could be stopped if they could more easily be detected; but very few people take responsibility in the matter. The students who profit by such grafting seldom boast of it or make it a matter of talk; those who know of it but who take no active part shrug their shoulders and affirm that it is none


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 of their affairs; it may be wrong, but the responsibility is not upon them to stop it. Merchants or business firms who are implicated, most of them far away from the campus, of course have nothing to say on the subject, and those who are approached and who do not want to enter into such irregular negotiations, ordinarily content themselves with turning down the proposition and saying nothing. When there is a transfer of cash there is no record of it, no witnesses, no checks or drafts or papers of any kind to show that the undergraduate has profited. Bills are made out in regular order and checks covering the total amount of these bills are always forthcoming, so that on the surface the transaction seems entirely above board.

Notwithstanding these facts, however, I feel sure that careful supervision by the faculty of the business transactions of student activities would help materially to reduce if not in many cases to prevent undergraduate graft as it now exists. Much of the graft does not come from a definite transfer of cash from the representative of a business firm to an undergraduate manager, though there is considerable of this; it comes through thoughtlessness and carelessness on the part of the student. He collects money from various sources and gives no receipts; he pays bills and does not make a record of them; he does not keep separate the money which belongs to himself personally and that which belongs to the committee or the organization which he represents; he spends money as he is called on to do so, and by the end of a week or a month he has no remote idea how his accounts stand—how much money is his own and how


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 much is his organization's. This spring I called to my office a young senior who had handled the accounts of a prominent university organization to insist that he make a reckoning. He had kept no records; he had taken no receipts nor given any; he did not know whether he had collected fifty dollars or two hundred and fifty. He was sure that he had not handled much money, though what had come into his keeping he had put into his pocket without record and spent as his own. The only way in which he could in any sense atone for his carelessness, he said, was to meet the bills of the organization and if these were presented to him he would pay them. I am sure he will always feel that he got the worst of the bargain, though it is not at all certain that he did not collect considerably more than the bills amounted to. Such errors as this which I have just mentioned are all too common; the student falls into them thoughtlessly at first, and then finding his affairs in a hopeless muddle, trusts to providence to get him out.

Such difficulties could be avoided by requiring all undergraduates responsible for the collecting and the expending of money to give numbered receipts for all money collected and to pay all bills by check on this money after it has been deposited in the bank. Years ago I learned through dear experience not to mix any one else's money with my own. If I were a Sunday school treasurer I should carry in a bag to the bank on Monday morning the pennies and nickels I had collected on Sunday and never let them touch the unsanctified coins in my own pocket. When all students who handle money for undergraduate organizations are required to make a busi-


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 ness-like report of their receipts and expenditures, and have furnished them at a trifling cost the necessary books and paraphernalia to keep these accounts, the graft that arises through carelessness will be reduced to a minimum Knowing that he will be required to make a report the undergraduate will be on his guard. If undergraduate graft is to be eliminated or even become the unusual occurrence in college life, it will be through the development of public sentiment. We are all of us more than we think kept conventional and clean and honest through fear of what people will say; we might sometimes be tempted to swerve a little from the path of rectitude if it were not for the fact that we should be talked about or made unpopular or criticized or ostracized for our action. We all wish to be: approved and thought well of. When the undergraduate who works a graft is looked upon by his fellow students as is any other crook or dishonest man, when his lack of integrity instead of making him thought a hero or a clever fellow brings him disfavor and unpopularity, when the sentiment of the world at large and of the college world is against such dishonest dealings and all who work them whether they be undergraduates or business men, the undergraduate will in large part be separated from graft.


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title recalls Tom Crow vividly to my mind. I noticed him first shortly after the opening of college. He was always late to my lecture, coming in heated and perturbed, if he came at all, and stumbling awkwardly over the feet of those who had been prompt, as he scrambled into his seat in the middle of the class room. His hair was usually damp and uncombed and his clothing unkempt as if while in the swimming pool or on the tennis courts some one had suddenly reminded him of his neglected intellectual obligation and he had hastened to his task adjusting his clothing on the way. In point of fact, as I learned later on inquiry, this was actually what had happened, for, since Tom had never before done any thinking for himself, his roommate had been engaged to do it for him, and sometimes was tardy in his duty. Tom showed himself a poor student; he was a likeable loafer who meant to do his work, but who could never get at it. He was so poor a student that when his mother came to visit him after his pretty complete failure at the end of the first semester she called on me.

"Don't be too hard on Tommy," she said. "I've always looked after him at home, and this new life is pretty nearly too much for him. When he was in high school I always used to give him his toast and


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 coffee in bed, and while he was eating I got his bath ready and laid out his fresh clothes, and got his things in order for him to start to school. He'll learn in time if you are patient with him."

In addition to the fact that it was bad hygiene for Tommy to eat before he bathed, it was poor discipline which his mother subjected him to. He was an exaggerated type of the only son whose career in college was short because he had been coddled by a too loving and a too indulgent mother at home.

Let me explain at once that though I am not the only child, I am the youngest son, and so am writing without prejudice and not without experience. As a child I had more freedom and more privileges than any of my older brothers and sisters had been permitted to enjoy. I was the normal spoiled child, I think, petted by my older sisters and praised and coddled by father and mother. I went to school when I pleased, and worked when I wished to do so. When I was fifteen my father died.

It is a handicap, I am convinced, to be the only child or the youngest son or the son of but one parent. A beneficent creator when he wrote the directions for running the universe decreed that every normal child should have two parents, and I think that either a greater or a smaller number than this generally results in an ill effect upon the child; and he intended, also, until society made it unpopular, that there should be more than one child in every family, in order that one might help in the training and the education of the others. Sometimes a wise parent is able to overcome this handicap for his child; sometimes a clever independent child is able to manage


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 himself or his parent so skillfully as to offset the handicap; but these cases are rare.

At this point I hear the indignant protesting mother saying, "Well, I'm perfectly certain that I have not spoiled my boy," and she launches out into a detailed recital of all his virtues and accomplishments and of the rigidty of her personal régime. I have heard the story so often and so vividly presented that I could recite it from memory without prompting, and sometimes I have been glad to admit that it was true.

"What is the matter with Percy?" the mother of an only child said to me a few days ago. "He works hard, he loves his work, but he doesn't get on."

"He is a spoiled boy," was my reply, "who neither loves his work nor works hard. He is a bluffer who works upon your sympathies by a recital of his woes and endeavors, and the results bring him more money and more privileges." She was a loving, indulgent, anxious mother who believed everything that her boy told her as if it had been gospel, and made adequate explanation of every dereliction and irregularity of which he was guilty. Her boy had not escaped the handicap.

I was talking to the father of a freshman who had failed in his college course completely. The boy was intellectually bright, but he had not studied, he had not gone to class, and he had fallen into bad ways and wasted his time generally.

"What is the matter with the boy?" the father asked. "Why has he failed?"

I did not answer for a moment, and then I met his inquiry by asking a second question.


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 "How many children have you?"

"He is our only child," was the reply, "and we have done everything for him."

"You have answered your own question," I said. "He's your only child, and you've done everything for him." There had been nothing the matter with the boy; it was with the father.

It is true, as I have said, however, that some children escape the handicap of being the youngest or the only child or the child of one parent, and for the sake of harmony at the outset, we will agree that yours is one of these, that he has-not been made conceited by praise nor made selfish by indulgence. It is of the others, you will understand, that I am writing.

A college officer who comes into personal contact with scores of undergraduate young men every day will, as the years go on, have many things suggested to him relative to their home and their home influences, to their parents and to their ideals. Behind these boys he will come to see weak, incapable parents or hard-working, struggling fathers, and thoughtful, wise mothers, and influences that are stronger than words. He will come in time unconsciously to group these boys according to the characteristics they show, to separate, for example, the country boy from the city boy, for even the crude city boy has a vulgar crudeness all his own that is easily distinguishable from the rustic crudeness of the young fellow from the country. He will recognize the boy who has done right and kept clean from principle, and he will pick out the fellow without personal principles who has


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 played the game safe with the home folks and kept out of trouble through policy.

The undergraduate who has had his secondary training in a military school reveals that fact almost invariably the moment he opens the door of a college office, by his standing at attention or by his persistent and recurring use of "Sir" when he speaks to a superior officer. If he did not reveal it at this point he would be almost sure to do so later by the reluctance and irregularity with which he attends his college exercises. The trouble with this sort of boy is that during his school life he was so completely occupied with routine that he had no time to himself and no opportunity to learn self-direction. When the day came that he should determine for himself how his time should be employed, he was helpless. The routine had been so rigid that he revolted in the opposite direction. Having always had his duty mapped out for him, he lacked the strength to do it for himself.

I have come to say that I can usually recognize, before he has been in college long, the youngest son or the only child, or the child of a single parent, or the child who is living at home. Children are injured by over-attention quite as much as by neglect; they may be too well brought up as well as too ill. If it is true that the watched pot never boils, it is equally true that the coddled child seldom develops self-reliance and independence. A good many years ago when I was a teacher in an academy a troubled mother came to me with her only son. She had worried over him, and worked with him, and directed


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 him, and thought and planned for him, and goaded him on to his lessons with little avail. He was eighteen years of age and was scarcely ready for high school. She told me all these distressing details with much feeling as he sat by stolidly listening. He seemed to me a bright enough boy who was not listening to the tale of his intellectual shortcomings for the first time.

"What's the matter with Bob?" she asked in real distress. "Why doesn't he do better?"

"Too much mother, I believe," I answered frankly. For the first time during the conversation Bob looked at me and smiled and winked a knowing eye.

"You have been working out his problems for him during all these years," I continued, "let him do it for himself, now. Leave him here, and don't see him for six months."

"I have never been away from him a week in his life," she said. "He doesn't know how to take care of his clothes, or to look after himself. It would kill me to stay away from him that long."

"It will ruin him if you don't," I said. She was after all wanting very much to do the best for her boy. She left him, hard as it was, and for the first time in his life Bob was thrown upon his own responsibility. I need not go into detail. He liked the new régime, he did his work, and had his first experience in passing his examinations on his own initiative.

The picture is, of course, not always so black a one. Three of the undergraduates of my acquaintance this year who made the most conspicuous success in college, both from the standpoint of the faculty


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 and of the student body, were either only sons or youngest sons. More than this they were living at home. They were, however, rather notable exceptions which tested the rule. They were strong enough to follow their own independent action, and their parents were wise enough not to ruin them by indulgence.

The fault of the type of young fellow of whom I have been speaking lies in his training. The youngest-son, in the ordinary Middle West families, at least, who send their sons to college, comes into manhood at a time in the family history usually, when affairs are more prosperous at home than they were when the older children were ready for college. The family has moved into a new house, mother has more leisure, and father has more money to spend. The oldest boy when he was in high school may have delivered papers, or mowed the lawn in summer and looked after the furnace in winter, but now that the family is in better circumstances, there is a man to take care of these matters and the youngest son has nothing to do but to keep up his school work and enjoy himself. He has a generous supply of spending money, he may even have a motor car of his own, and there is no reason why he should take thought of the morrow.

I was talking to two such boys only the other day—pleasant lovable fellows—who have as much spending money—as would have taken me through college. They ride around in a high-powered car, they squander money daily on the "movies" and in ice cream parlors, and neither one would think of mowing the grass on their front lawns if it were as


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 high as their necks. The father of neither one of them is rich, but they are developing habits of laziness and extravagance, are often unhappy or bored because they can find no new pleasure or excitement, and though they are bright and clever, they are totally lacking in independence and initiative. They are the true types of the middle class youngest son and they will not be in college long until they will reveal the fact by indifference and discontent and dissipation, possibly, and a shirking of unpleasant and difficult duties.

Such a child at home soon comes to know how much the family exchequer will stand and what privileges he can count upon, and a few years of indulgence will teach him to get all he can. I was talking to a father this spring. His only son, a freshman in college, had grown tired of his course; it necessitated work, and he did not enjoy work. To relieve himself of this hardship he had run away, but finding life as a nomad more difficult than he had supposed it would be he had telegraphed his mother for money and had come back for a time, but now he was leaving college. He was not getting what he wanted, he said. I was urging his father to make him stay and finish what he had begun; he needed the discipline, and if he left now it was unlikely that he would ever come back.

"Charles will come back to college, I am sure," the father said, "any boy who has as good a place waiting for him after he graduates as he has will not be so foolish as to waste his chances by not getting an education."

"Doesn't he know that you'll give him the money


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 and the place whether he gets an education or not?" I asked.

"Well, I suppose he does," the father admitted, and the father was correct. Charles has never done anything that he did not like to do, and he never will, and father will give the money just the same.

The mother left with a young boy to bring up is likely to take the obligation very seriously. She realizes at once what a loss it is to him to be without the counsel of his father, and she tries bravely to play the part of both father and mother. For fear that she will fail in this dual task, she scarcely lets him out of her mind or out of her sight night or day. The first error which she generally falls into is to make his life too easy. There is for him little or no sacrifice. If any one is to do without things she does it in order that he may have what he wants. He must do as the other boys do; he must be supplied with all the comforts that would have been his if his father had lived; she does not like to see him do difficult or disagreeable things, especially if she can do them herself or hire some one to do them. If he wants to take responsibility he is often not allowed to do so, until he soon comes to the point of not offering to take it. "I would rather make sacrifices myself," many a foolish mother says, "than to have my son deprived of the pleasures and opportunities to which he has a right." All this can not help but weaken the boy and make him selfish and thoughtless and extravagant. He comes to feel that he is entitled to a good time and that if he wants money it is up to his mother to get it for him in some way.


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 Last Commencement I met the widowed mother of one of the members of our graduating class. She was keenly interested in her son's progress, in his pleasures, in the fact that he should have gotten out of his undergraduate life all that was possible. She told me what a sacrifice it had meant to her to send him to college and with what self-denial it had been possible for her to raise the needed money. She commented upon the extra cost of this last year, but she did not regret one dollar that had made it possible for him to have what he wanted. It was easy to see from her faded, out-of-date clothes what some of her sacrifices had been that had enabled her to send him the necessary money. And yet about the campus her son had been looked upon as a young fellow of wealthy family. He had gone with the fellows who spent money freely, he had never stayed away from dinners or dances or house parties, because he could not afford to go. There had been no hesitating on his part when money was concerned. And all the time at home his mother was working and pinching—and denying herself in order that he might live in selfishness and luxury, and all the time by this sacrifice she was doing him an irreparable injury for which he and the woman he marries will in the future have to pay a heavy price.

In another way these mothers in an unselfish endeavor to do the best for their sons and to supply the place of the father that is gone, often do them harm, and that is by never allowing them to do their own thinking, to look out for themselves, to make mistakes and by making them to learn how these mistakes may be corrected. These eager mothers choose


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 their boy's clothes and companions, and courses of study. They map out his future and all but do his work for him. They think for him, and smooth out the way for him, and leave him no chance to develop self-direction or initiative. They get him up in the morning, and tell him when to go to bed at night. If he has a task to perform, they regularly set him to it; if he has duties and obligations he is reminded of them before he has an opportunity to rely upon his own memory or think out his own plan of procedure. He is never allowed to forget to be polite or prompt or thoughtful or regular when mother is by, and knowing that he will not be, he comes to depend upon the fact that if there is anything he ought to do mother will remind him of it or call his attention to it in plenty time even if it is nothing more than speaking to a caller or changing his underwear, and so he never learns to depend upon himself or to tax his memory with the slightest obligation either mental or moral. In her abnormal fear that he will omit some duty, the over-conscientious mother robs her son of the power, when he leaves her, of doing any duty.

A refined, educated mother sat in my office only a few weeks ago. Her only son had failed, and she wanted to know why. She had watched over him and directed him, and kept him immaculate physically; he had wanted nothing that he did not get. He had never made a sacrifice. She had petted him and loved him and scarcely ever let him get out of her sight. He was a good boy, she knew, she said, before he came to college. How had it all happened? But the facts were that he was not a good boy, and


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 never had been. He had no independence, no principles, no desire to do well. He had talked to me very frankly. He had had a few "sprees" while he was in high school. "It was pretty hard to get away with it," he said, "for she watched me pretty closely, and I did not want to hurt her." His theory was that anything is all right if you don't get caught. Since he had left home he had been drunk, he was in debt, he had contracted a wretched disease, but he had no compunctions and little power of resistance. He is one of a type of boys spoiled at home.

In contrast to the illustration just given is one of another whom I know. She is a widow and a woman of influence and wide acquaintance. This summer her only son wanted a position and asked her to go to some of her friends who were in business and try to get him in with them. She declined to do this and showed him that it would be very much more to his credit and advantage if he should himself apply to people whom neither of them knew and secure a place upon his own initiative. It required courage and backbone for him to do this, but he was a happier and a stronger boy when he came home one night with a good job which he had got through no one's efforts but his own.

There is another phase of this error on the part of parents, especially on the part of mothers, to teach their sons independence and self-reliance and a sense of responsibility which is seen in their tendency to come to college with their sons in order that they may look after the boys and give them their care and their supervision. When this action is taken for financial reasons, because the family exchequer is low


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 and a necessary saving of money can be effected by all living together I have nothing to say. I feel much as I do when a fellow tells me that he has to make his living while he is carrying his college work—it is a situation which has to be met and should be met without grumbling or complaint, but it is not one which is ordinarily best for the student. When parents come with their sons to college because they feel that by so doing the boys will be more healthy, more comfortable, or more moral, they are ordinarily making a mistake.

"I want my son at home with me as long as possible," a father remarked to me, "I do not like to think of his getting out from under his mother's influence." He did not realize that no boy who has been correctly brought up can get out from under the influence of his mother no matter how widely they may be separated in time or distance.

I have never known a young fellow who was restrained in college by having his mother or even by having both parents with him if he had any tendency to irregularities of character, more than he would have been had he been away from home. Subterfuge is so easy, explanations flock to his brain, and opportunities are infinite for evasion. There is always the "friend" to fall back upon who wants one to study with him or to work up a few experiments. The boys who live in town with their parents are the hardest sort to keep any kind of check on, and they seldom have the self-reliance that those boys have who are away from home and working out their own difficulties.

I appreciate the fact that it brings the keenest


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 pleasure to parents, especially to mothers, to make these sacrifices, to perform these services, to have their children with them and to give them their constant thought and attention. It requires a wise head and a strong will and often real mental suffering to keep the hands off. I remember the saying of a well-known physician that cuddling was good for a mother but harmful for her baby; so experience has taught me that this loving, anxious care for youngest sons and only children, this indulgence and sacrifice on the part of parents, this constant thought and planning for their present and for their future no doubt develops and strengthens the characters of the parents but it is seldom good for their sons.

"What fault do you find with my son?" a mother asked me a few days ago when we were talking on this subject. "Isn't he a credit to me; has he not succeeded? How have I spoiled him?"

I parried her question by saying that she was, perhaps, an illustration of the mother who has sensibly met all these conditions and who has not robbed her son of his independence by doing his thinking for him. I knew very well, however, that though he was a fellow of excellent intellect who had done his college work creditably, he had been over-fastidious and ladylike, disliking to soil his hands with hard work. He had been made selfish and self-centered. He had not succeeded at first; it was only after years of contact with shrewd men in a profession that tests men's characters for real worth, and which holds up snobbishness and superficiality to derision, it was only after he had married a sensible woman who knew how


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 to stimulate him to his best endeavor, that he showed that there was really good stuff in him.

Such boys as I have been discussing are not always failures in college; on the contrary they not infrequently get high grades and do the routine work of college excellently, but their training almost always shows in their characters. They are too often selfish and extravagant; they are on the look-out for concessions and special favors; they want a longer vacation than other students in order that they may satisfy special desires. They have been so used to special consideration all their lives that they are unable to understand why they can not receive it when they get to college.

"I ought not to spend so much money as I do," an undergraduate confessed to me recently, "mother can't afford it; she is making sacrifices for me constantly. She does her own work and takes care of the furnace, and gives up most of the pleasures she would enjoy, simply that I may have a generous allowance. She is always sending me boxes of things to eat, and entertaining my friends, and looking out for my comfort, and I selfishly let her do it." This selfishness of his showed in his relations with his friends of whom he had too few, it showed in his college work which was usually in a bad way, and it was a constant blot upon his character. He was exacting in his demands upon those with whom he associated; he borrowed notes and books which were never returned until they were sent for, he asked for help in his work whenever and wherever he could get it; he had never made sacrifices or depended upon him-


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 self at home and it was hard for him to begin at college.

Last Christmas I had a dozen letters from as many mothers whose only sons had not been home since the opening of college in September begging me, in violation of the college rules, to let them come home a few days early—they were homesick.

"Won't you please let my son come home four days early," one mother wrote, "I have not seen him for several weeks, and because he is our only child I know you will make this special concession in his case." When I answered that I regretted not to be able to grant her request the father wrote and persuaded a special friend of mine with whom he was acquainted to write also to plead for the special privilege.

Though it is true, as I have said, that some of these younger sons and only children succeed in carrying their college work satisfactorily, that they overcome their handicap, yet a very large percentage of them fail or do their work in a commonplace way. This is not strange, for they find it difficult on their own initiative to do anything regularly or thoroughly. There is no one to set them to their tasks, and they have seldom formed the habit of setting themselves to duty and its accomplishment. They have mostly been told what to do, and so now when there is no one to tell them to study, to get them up in the morning, and to get them off to their college classes, they are likely to find themselves in bed at ten o'clock in the morning when they should have been at chemistry at eight; they are pretty sure to put off their study until to-morrow when there is a vaudeville to which


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 they may go to-day. It is not difficult to see how they find their way to the Dean's office very early in their college course. They find the college life more strenuous than they had expected, and never before having done anything that was difficult or disagreeable, they do not see why they should do so now.

"Why did you not let me know that my son was not doing his work?" a mother wrote me not long ago, "and I should have come down and stayed with him until he got his work up. I have never let him get behind while he was in high school, and I can not understand why he is failing now." The trouble all lay in the fact that previously his mother had been his conscience; he had not learned self-direction in any sense; and having no director he loafed and slept late in the mornings.

It is the spoiled boy at home who in college develops into the loafer and the indifferent student. His parents often do not set for him especially high standards; they are pleased if he does not fail; they are satisfied to have him merely intellectually commonplace. And since they are contented, he has for himself no high intellectual ambitions; he prides himself that he is not a grind and pats himself metaphorically upon the back when he evades probation.

It is this same spoiled boy also who in college evades everything that is unpleasant or difficult. He is in few college activities because to get into activities requires initiative and sacrifice, and it demands usually more than ordinarily high scholarship. He has not learned to economize either his time or his money; he does not know how to make sacrifices, and he can not give up the petty gratification or pleasure


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 of the moment in order that he may later enjoy a greater and a more worthy pleasure.

I can understand the interest of parents in their children and their desire to save them from sacrifice and hardship and pain and struggle, but as they are shielded from the difficult they are often harmed; in trying to help them we often hinder. Protecting and coddling them unfits them for the hardships of life which they are as sure to meet as the sun is to rise.

I said at the outset that my father died when I was fifteen. Up to that time I had taken no responsibility. I had had no tasks, no difficult problems. I had made no sacrifices. I had lived a life of pleasure and irresponsibility. Circumstances in the family were such that at my father's death it was imperative that I should run the farm on which we were living. I must do a man's work. I must be up in the morning by four o'clock without being called, and out in the fields plowing and sowing and reaping and looking after all the varied interests which have to do with farm life. If my strength was slight I must work faster or longer in order to accomplish as much as the older and stronger workmen. I kept at it eight years and until I entered college. It seemed then a cruel hard life for an inexperienced child. Often when the load was heavy and the problems difficult to solve, in my heart I rebelled against my lot; but I kept on, in spite of the rebellion, and finished my tasks. Mother encouraged me, but she could give little help, little direction, little suggestion. I must meet my own difficulties and solve them alone, as I have since learned every one must do in life and in death. I look back now to this


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 experience as the best which could have come to me; it was my salvation. It gave me hard muscles and a strong body and a strong will; it showed me that one must have backbone and principles if he would win the respect of men; it taught me courage and self-reliance and initiative; through it I was able to find myself, and by it I was helped to overcome the handicap under which many another youngest son or only child is struggling.

I was trying not long ago to help the father of an only son to solve his difficulties. The boy had been dismissed from college because he had failed through loafing and irregular habits. The father was a man of moderate means, but the boy had had every indulgence and no responsibility.

"What shall I do with him?" was his query.

"Put him to work for a year," was my reply; "give him something difficult to do, and let him see how hard it is to earn his living."

"I have a farm," he went on, "I could put him out there; but it would be a hard life. He would have no pleasure; the surroundings would not be such as he has been used to, but I'll do it."

"If you do," I warned him, "you will have a more severe struggle than the boy. After your disappointment has grown a little less keen you will go out to the farm some day, and you will see the boy dirty and perspiring and tired and your heart will be touched; you will say, 'Why should I torture him in this way,' and unless you are a strong man you'll bring him away with you."

"I believe I shall," he said shamefacedly, "I believe I haven't the courage to do otherwise."


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 "But you could make a man of him," I pleaded as he left me.

A friend of mine, a wise woman with one son, had more courage. The boy, who was in the high school, got it into his head that he would like to earn a little money, and having a job offered him accepted it. This work necessitated his getting up at five in the morning and working until time to start to school.

"It must be rather hard on you," a sympathetic neighbor said to his mother one day, "getting up so early in the morning to get William's breakfast and to get him off."

"But I don't get up," was the mother's reply. "When William took the job I explained to him that he must manage himself; if he lost the place through failure to get there on time, it was his own fault. So he bought a 'Big Ben' to awaken him at the proper time; he gets his own breakfast, and he has never been late one morning. It took a lot of courage and self-control for me to hear him coming down stairs before daylight these cold winter mornings and not to get up and help him off, but William's character is worth more to me than my own selfish comfort in looking after him." She has been a thousand times rewarded in the years that have followed in the strong, sturdy, self-reliant son to whom she now looks up. Her way is the only way I know to make men of character and self-reliance and independence.

No one gains strength except through struggle; self-reliance comes through meeting hardships. There is no strength of character without sacrifice, and as we make it easy for our children, as we save them from the hard, unpleasant things of life unduly


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 we do them damage. It is the boy who has learned to do a task that is given him whether he likes it or not, who can direct himself and look after himself, who does not shrink from difficult and unpleasant things, who does not hesitate at sacrifice or self-control, who has been taught to think of the comfort and pleasure of others as well as of his own—it is this sort of boy who is going to get on in college and whose home training will show before he has been in the college community a week. Such boys are to a college officer like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The spoiled, humored boy who has been kept from hardships and sacrifice, no matter with what loving care, will hardly escape a weak youth and a selfish ineffective manhood.

A brown thrasher has a nest in our sweet honeysuckle, and for weeks we have been interested in watching her movements. Just now she is teaching her children to fly, and it seems to an onlooker no trifling task. I said "children," for though we have never so trespassed upon the privacy of our shy tenant as to look into her dwelling, I am sure from the way in which she has been conducting her child's education that there is more than one little thrasher in the nest. It was no only child who was being put through his exercises this morning.

The first sound that caught my ear when I wakened was the voice of the mother, firm and insistent, directing and encouraging her child. When I went to the window I saw the prospective young aeronaut, tailless and nervous, perched on the telephone wire. He was very tottery and was whimpering audibly, but I could tell from the strong notes of his mother's


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 voice coming from the lilac bushes that she was not to be moved by his tears. He must take the initiative; he must make the leap. She kept after him vigorously flying toward him in a most threatening manner occasionally, until finally, screwing up his courage, he spread his little wings and landed safe in the honeysuckle. A moment later I saw the mother fly into the nest with a big juicy worm in her bill. It was bad pedagogy, but she had taught him self-reliance and self-direction. Later in the day he seemed to have developed a considerable initiative, and was helping his mother with the housework by bringing home a few choice worms for the younger children's supper.

It is not easy to train either young birds or young people properly. The most of us who have been pushed out early and have had to rely upon ourselves hesitate to do the same thing for the young people whom we had under our direction. We would fain save them the danger and the pain. So many youngest sons and only children have been kept so completely from that which is unpleasant or difficult, they have been so coddled and pampered that they shrink back when the test comes. They grow selfish and lack initiative and self-reliance. They do not like that which is difficult. They have whimpered, and mother has told them that they need not learn to fly.


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was a letter in my mail this morning from a young boy just out of high school. He was desirous of going to college, and like many another man with high ambition, he was without money.

"Could you find for me?" he asked, "some position which would not interfere with my studies, and which would bring me in an income of not less than fifteen dollars a week?"

I was forced to write him that I could not; that almost any job which he might obtain would interfere with his studies, and that if he were to earn fifteen dollars a week, unless he were possessed of some specific trade or skill worth a high rate of remuneration, it would be only by working six hours a day or more, and such an amount of time given to outside labor would interfere very seriously with any one's studies.

There are a great many people who labor under the mistaken notion that it actually is helpful to a college student's scholarship for him to work. I have known parents who were quite able to meet their son's college expenses, but who refused to do so under the false impression that they were doing the boy a service by forcing him to earn his living. "It will make a man of him," they affirm. "It will teach him the value of a dollar." It may, but it will seldom if ever conduce to making him a good student, and that should be his object in going to college.


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 President Lincoln in a note to Mayor Ramsey once wrote: "The lady bearer of this note says she has two sons who want to work. Set them at it if possible. Wanting work is so rare a want that it should be encouraged." A college officer in my position at the opening of the college year would not be inclined to agree with Mr. Lincoln, for half the correspondence which comes to my desk during the summer months has to do with men who either want to work, or who say they do, in order that they may defray their college expenses. There are so many of them that their correspondence becomes almost depressing at times, for I realize the disappointments and the difficulties which very many of these boys will encounter after they reach college, and their unfitness to do any definite work well.

"I have been out of high school three years," one young fellow writes, "and have not been able to save any money. I want, however, very much to go to college. Can you secure a place for me to work where I can earn my board and room and such extra money as I shall need for my other small expenses?" This man, who has given all his time to work for three years and who has done nothing more than live, expects easily to carry a college course which in itself requires most of a man's time to do justice to, and at the same time to earn his living on the side. I get many such letters from those who feel that earning one's living and going to college are in no way incompatible. So much has been written about the fellows who have started to college without a cent and who have later been valedictorians of their classes and ultimately President of the


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 United States, or at least a member of his cabinet, that the average high school boy has little conception of what sacrifice and deprivation such a procedure involves; if he did understand he would nat so often undertake it, or he would do so after more careful deliberation.

The man who works his way through college seldom does so because he enjoys working nor, excepting in rare cases, because he has any interest in the particular line of work by which he earns his living. He works from necessity; his chief thought, commonly, is not centered upon the efficiency of his service nor the value of his work to his employer, but upon the amount of cold cash it is going to net him. Very few boys who are working their way through college are interested in the work they are doing for its own sake or for the personal development there is in it for them; they have little thought of perfecting their skill in such work; they are looking forward eagerly to the time when they may leave it and take up something they really have interest in. They are for that reason in many cases indifferent, inefficient, and expensvieexpensive [sic] help, who lack the joy and incentive of interest in their work.

During my own undergraduate days I earned my living as a compositor on the student paper. There was no enthusiasm in any of the "typos," as they were called, to perfect themselves in excepting as such perfection would lead to immediate financial returns, and no idea of going permanently into the printing business; type-setting was for them simply a makeshift. They were interested chiefly in getting a long "string" and in picking off the


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 "fat" jobs from the hook. They were, of course, never annoyed if incidentally they helped in getting out a creditable paper, but that was merely a side issue; the main thing was the pay envelope. None of us would have given a moment to type-setting if a legacy had been left us, or if we could have cajoled a rich uncle into sending us a satisfactory monthly allowance; we worked because it was necessary to eat and to pay our room rent.

Too many people attempt to work their way through college. Many of our colleges to-day are overrun with students with no money, with only commonplace ability, and with little initiative and resourcefulness. It is only the exceptional man without money who should go to college. Many men say that they would not be able to save money if they went to work, but it is as easy to economize and to save money out of college as it is in, and) the commonplace student should either not go at all, or he should work and save money enough to allow him to devote the greater part of his time to his studies; otherwise he is likely to fail. The man who works his way too often makes a poor living, and gets little college credit; he might better stick to a good job and give up the thought of the higher education than half starve and finally flunk in college. The names of scores of boys occur to me as I write this sentence—boys of only mediocre ability—who tried the struggle and failed.

In a democratic institution where a large percentage of students work, the tendency is for even the man who is under no such necessity to try to add to his income. When a fellow's roommate is receiving


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 a pay check every month, it seems to a good many men, even though they do not stand in need of the money, inexcusable not to do something. Sometimes the man who needs the money least is most skillful and clever in earning it. I have in mind two young men who were adept at salesmanship but who were quite able to meet all their college expenses. They constantly endangered their college work through the unreasonable amount of time they put in in their business enterprises. Their father, who was a shrewd, close-fisted business man, was extremely proud of their earnings, never realizing that in spending so much of their time in making a few dollars they were detracting very materially from the efficiency of their education.

Most of the things which have been written of boys without education, like Lincoln, who ultimately became President of the United States, or of fellows with only fifty cents in their pocket who got through college on their nerve and made Phi Beta Kappa, are romantic, but quite misleading. These things have been done (there are the immortal Garfield, and Daniel Webster, of course), and they are still being done by men of unusual mental and physical equipment, but they are not easy to do, and they are not always desirable to do. The men who accomplished these things did so in spite of their handicaps and not because of them.

I have known many a man who paid in privation and sacrifice more than his college training was worth; for he was so engrossed and his time so occupied in the struggle for existence that he lost the greater part of what he should have obtained from


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 his college life and associations The memory of Allan comes to me as I write. He was at best mediocre intellectually, and socially he was completely untrained. It was his dogged stubborn persistence only that carried him through. He was like a bull dog which had taken hold and could not let go. He had little resourcefulness, little initiative, so that there was nothing open to him but the most menial physical tasks. He had few friends and he was often without sufficient food. He slept in a stable during more than half his life in college and did the dirty scullery work at a cheap untidy down-town restaurant for his meals. He reeked constantly of stable odors and of the heavy smells of frying food. His wretched life told on him physically and mentally; he grew hard, bitter, sullen. He felt, not wholly without reason, that every one was against him, that he was fighting alone and a losing fight. He got his degree, but he left college coarse, soured, repellant, ill-trained, without courage to fight longer and without hope for the future. He has not accomplished as much since he received his college degree as he might reasonably have been expected to do without education.

The boy who works his way through college, and by this I mean the student who gets no help from any other source excepting his own efforts, must first of all have concentration, for he will of necessity have less time to devote to his studies than have those fellows whose entire time is at their disposal. There is a pretty general idea that the man in college who does not earn a good part of his living is on the whole a loafer and a spendthrift, who has so many


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 vacant hours at his disposal during the day that, unless he gets into some sort of deviltry or extravagance, he is likely to grow horribly bored. Quite the contrary is true; for the college course as now planned, if it is done well, will give any ordinary young fellow enough to occupy his time quite creditably. The man, then, who besides doing his college work has to earn his living, will need to give his whole time to it, should be able to accomplish more in the same length of time than the average fellow, and must be satisfied to have little leisure in which to read, or play, or develop social graces, or do as he likes.

A young fellow—strong and healthy looking—dropped in to see me one day this week. He was ambitious but broke. If he came to college, he must make his way. He had on hand scarcely more than enough money to pay his initial tuition and get his books. We went over his plans together, and I thought that perhaps he might try it. "There is one thing I did not tell you," he said just as he was ready to leave, "I have always been interested in athletics, and if I come to college, I shall want to play football."

I threw up my hands, for even playing football sometimes gives a man little enough time for his studies, but if a man plays football and earns his living, he has little time for sleep, and none for his studies. The athlete is lucky if he passes his courses with creditable grades; he can seldom give much thought or time to earning his living.

The boy who must work should be mature and strong, and by that I mean usually nineteen or


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 twenty years of age. The burden is often too great for a young boy to assume, for such boys are often forced to live irregularly, and to keep irregular hours either to bring up their college work or to do their outside tasks. Not long ago a young fellow, still physically immature, called at my office to ask my advice. He had little energy, he said, and little interest in his work. He found it difficult, when he sat down to a task, to accomplish much. I discovered on inquiry that he was working for a physician. He was forced to sit up until midnight to do his college tasks, and he had to get up at four or at latest at five o'clock in the morning to accomplish the things necessary to hold his job with the doctor. He was, therefore, getting never more than five hours of sleep a day, and yet could not understand why he was so lacking in energy and ambition. I have always felt that it was a wise and thoughtful physician with whom he was living. This slender, growing boy was attempting an impossible task, and in addition to failing in it—for he did not carry his work—he was in a fair way permanently to injure his health.

The student worker should be resourceful and adaptable, able to fit in anywhere, and able to use his brain in his work. It is the man who first meets an unsolved condition or satisfies an unsatisfied want who makes good at earning a living. Last fall a young freshman came to my office to ask me if I had any knives or scissors lying about which needed sharpening. He carried with him in a neat leather case which resembled a Corona typewriter, with its traveling clothes on, a small emery wheel and some


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 simple apparatus for repairing and sharpening tools. I had just been trying to hew a broken lead pencil into shape with an impossibly dull knife, so that his coming seemed like an angel's visit. I gathered up all the paraphernalia in the office which permitted of sharpening, and he went at it. They were in a few minutes in excellent condition, he collected a quarter, and I sent him over to my house to make the rest of my family happy. I kept my eye on him during the year, and was not surprised to find that he was making a good living during his leisure moments because he had had intelligence enough to meet an unsatisfied want.

Several years ago, before the business of pressing men's clothes and keeping them in condition had been taken up generally, one of our freshmen rented a room, bought the necessary apparatus, and agreed for one dollar a month to press a suit of clothes each week, and to call for the clothes and deliver them. It was at that time an innovation, and even with one or two assistants, he soon had more business than he could take care of. He had a business head, he kept his agreements, he did his work well, and he was soon one of the financially independent who could oversee his business and let some one else do the manual labor. I always had the assurance that he would get on wherever he went, and I have not been mistaken. He is successfully running a fruit farm down in Florida now, and last Christmas I had a pleasant note from him accompanied by a box of delicious grapefruit which caused my family to remember him kindly for many a morning.

The skilled laborer, the man who has a trade or a


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 talent will get on more easily than other men. Last year a young sophomore found himself without money and without a job. He saw an advertisement in the college paper for a cook in one of the short order restaurants near the campus. He had helped his mother cook at home, he had had a month's experience cooking in a summer camp for boys; he had some nerve, so he applied for the place and got it. The best part of the story is that he gave satisfaction, earned his board, and made a respectable salary besides.

The undergraduate who last year at the University of Illinois made the most money of any one who was trying to earn his living, did so by writing songs. His poetic efforts were in no sense remarkable; in fact I am not sure but that the same thing might be said of most of those words and music which are ritiging in our ears most often as we go down the street, but what this young fellow wrote seemed to catch the popular ear, and he reaped the reward of his appeal. He had a certain talent that was not great, perhaps, but it was not common.

It is the man who lets his brains save his strength, who makes the most money. In fact it is most often the man who does not work at all physically but who uses his head to make his plans and who hires some less clever thinkers to take the hard knocks,—it is this sort of fellow who really earns his way through college most successfully. A wide awake junior last year made arrangements with a city wholesale house to take orders for butter. Early in the fall he made a preliminary canvass of all the fraternity houses and general student boarding clubs,


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 and took their orders for the year. Each house is sent so many pounds a week directly from the city. There is no further ordering and no delivering by the student; all he has to do is to send out the monthly bills and make his collections. With little real work he has made considerably more than enough to pay his college expenses. When he gets through college he will have several hundred dollars to his credit in the bank with which to start business. "I could clear two thousand dollars a year at the work," he admitted to me, "if I wanted to give the time to it, but I don't believe in making too much."

I have said before that the man who must meet all of his expenses while doing his college work must be mature and physically strong. A young fellow past twenty-five, who graduated from one of our Middle West state universities last year illustrates my point. He had learned to operate a linotype machine and was beside this a physical giant. When he came to college he was put on a night shift in one of the local printing offices. He did his studying in the afternoon and in the evening; he did his full day's work in the printing office after seven o'clock in the evening, and he got on with from five to seven hours of sleep a day and incidentally earned eighty dollars a month throughout his college course. He had so much money in the bank when he finished that he was able to marry on the day of his graduation and set up housekeeping for himself. I should not, however, advise many people to try to duplicate his task, for very few undergraduates would have either the skill or the physical endurance to do the work that he did. With all his strength, too, he knew his limi-


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 tations. His work, his studies, and sleep took up all his time. He had no recreation, no social pleasures, no real fun.

Fifty years ago when the farmer's son with an empty pocketbook and a desire for learning set out for college, he carried with him a bag of potatoes or a sack of corn meal upon which to subsist frugally while he toiled at his books. It is done differently to-day. A few years ago the sons of the families of two farmers with whom I am acquainted solved their financial difficulties and met their college expenses in an entirely individual manner. They borrowed a few of the family cows, drove them across the country, found a lodging place for themselves and their charges near the campus, and lived comfortably and independently during their college course by selling and delivering milk to boarding clubs mornings and evenings. When they left college they still had their original capital intact, and took it back home with them in as good condition, barring the wear and tear of four years of service, as when they came.

Barbers seem always in demand about a college community, though I have known but one to finish his course. Musicians usually find employment, especially if the college is situated in a country place, as ours is, where most of the recreation and amusement of the students they must themselves furnish. There is always a good deal of dancing—too much in fact many people say—connected with a large co-educational institution, and where there is dancing there must be music— or otherwise. At the University of Illinois most of the local orchestras are composed largely of students, and


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 many of them are controlled or managed by student leaders. These men all belong to the musicians' union and receive the regular scale of wages, which is a pretty generous one, set by the union. Since most of the engagements of these orchestras come at the end of the week, the members often have a chance to play two evenings and one afternoon a week, and though the physical strain is a hard one, they find it possible to sleep up on Sunday and so be in fair shape for the regular scholastic work of the week. I have known a large number of fellows who in this way met all of their necessary expenses and a few who were able to make more than they really needed while carrying their college courses, but the number of these last is small.

The skillful salesman with a line of goods which the public wants or which it can with a minimum expenditure of energy be made to want, can get on well in college. Just the other day, as I was walking down the street, I encountered an energetic junior who seemed to be bent on some business enterprise.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm making a house to house canvass for the sale of neckties," was his reply.

"Making any money?"

"As much as I need."

But unfortunately there are not many natural or skillful salesmen, and when one has no natural talent in this direction, he had better wait for his season of practice until he is not in actual need of money. The experience gained in learning to sell things is valuable, but it sometimes costs more than it is worth if the embryo salesman is trying to earn


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 his college expenses. The last thing I should advise the indigent undergraduate to do either during the college year or during the summer vacation is to take up salesmanship and especially to take up the selling of books, for unless he has peculiar talent in such work, he is likely to fail, the optimistic literature sent out by the publishers of subscription books to the contrary notwithstanding. Every spring there come to our institution, as I suppose to all other similar ones in the Middle West, representatives of the houses publishing subscription books who give their effort in securing the services of undergraduates to go out over the country during the summer to sell these wares. Some of the men who take up the work must succeed or the publishing houses would go out of business, but it is also a fact that many of those who take up the business do badly and give their time and energy very largely for experience.

The great majority of young fellows who are without money and who wish a college education are equally without talent or special skill. It is, however, very often the tales of what men with special talents have done that goad on the commonplace man and deceive him into the belief that he can do as well in earning a living as his better qualified classmate. When he finds that all that is open to him, all, indeed, that he is fitted for, is waiting table or washing dishes or taking care of furnaces at so much an hour, perhaps, the glamour of earning his way through college and graduating with money in the bank fades quickly. Money earned in this way, and this in actual fact is the common way, counts up's lowly and is a heavy drain upon the worker's time.


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 The first thing a man should ask himself who is contemplating self-support in college is what special thing he can do that will help him to earn money readily.

I have always advised the ordinary man without Money and just out of high school to wait a while before entering college. Two or three years of work will give him more maturity and so fit him better to withstand the heavy strain of doing two difficult things at once, as he will have to do when he carries his college course and earns his living at the same time, and if he is any way nearly as economical before he enters college as he will need to be afterward, he will be able to save a considerable sum of money to tide him over the first few months in college when he is getting his bearings and finding out what he can best do. No man should enter college who has not money enough to take him through the first half year without his working, and it would be better if he had made arrangements for an entire year. I say this in spite of the fact that a good many fellows struggle through the year successfully without taking these precautions, and in spite of the fact that many people urge the high school graduate to go immediately to college whether he has money or not. It is be cause of the great number of men who fail utterly or who have so little time for their studies that they accomplish practically nothing, that I feel as I do.

The man who has to work his way through college should be as well dressed as possible. He ought not wherever he goes to advertise the fact that he is in financial straits. He will not need better clothes than other fellows, but he will have to give them more


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 careful and constant attention, because he will often have to do work that is dirty and because he will have more temptations to carelessness in dress than many other men. Too many college men who are self-supporting divulge the fact to every one they meet by their generally woe-begone and run-down appearance. The four years which a man spends in college give him pretty confirmed habits of life, and these include certain habits of dress. If in college he wears sloppy untidy clothes, goes with his shoes unbrushed and his trousers covered with grease spots and bagging at the knees, it will be hard for him to develop habits of neatness and care in dress after he leaves college. He should have substantial, neat, well-made clothes that do not invite attention because they are of the latest extreme cut or because they are completely out of style, and he should give them regular care. He must do this because a working man subjects his clothes to harder service than do other men, and at the same time he must wear them longer and still have them look well.

A good deal has been said in one place or another of the social ostracism of those who are forced to be self-supporting in college. In so democratic an environment as a state university we are not likely to see much of that. I have not found in my own ex perience that it made any difference to a man's social standing whether he worked or not. There is not a social fraternity at the University of Illinois which does not have among its members men who must earn their living. Such men are not thought of less or more, nor should they be.

The man who is working his way is entitled to as


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 much respect and consideration as other men; I have seldom been able to see that he is entitled to more than are other men who are doing their college duties well. Self-support in college is not a matter either for self-congratulation or self-humiliation. The man who has to work is not the subject for special sympathy or special favors. He ought not to ask or expect to be exempted from the duties which fall to all students; he should not be annoyed if his omissions and his irregularities are looked upon in the same light as are those of other students. The young fellow who expects the college authorities to grant him special privileges, who thinks himself entitled to a larger number of cuts, or to longer vacations than those normally granted by the college simply because he works, is lacking a little. It is the man who meets the conditions of life into which he goes without complaint and without asking for favor that has the right stuff in him.

There is a quite general feeling among those who have never given the subject any serious thought or study that the man who works his way through college is more likely than other men to succeed in later life. I do not believe this, and I should be very glad to believe it if the facts warranted it. Men go to college for the training of the mind. The very fact that the self-supporting undergraduate must spend hours each day in earning a living, keeps him from the very thing for which he is making his chief sacrifice, and takes away from the very preparation which is fitting him for success in after life. The man in college who meets the necessity for self-support cleverly and skillfully, who uses his brains to


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 help feed him and clothe him, is no doubt permanently helped by this effort, but the number of self-supporting students who really do exhibit skill and finesse in their own support is very small. On the whole I believe that the future of students is injured rather than helped by their undergraduate labors for a living, and I should not find it hard to furnish many examples from real life to substantiate this statement. There are, of course, examples to the contrary, but these simply serve to prove the rule.

Two years ago, I sent out to all of our undergraduates, one-third of whom, perhaps, do something toward self-support, a letter of inquiry. I wished to get the opinion of the men who were working as to whether such work was helpful or otherwise to their studies. It is true that the perspective of the man himself is perhaps a little too close for him adequately to judge, but at least the answers were interesting.

To the question: "Do you think your studies suffered because of outside work?" thirty-nine per cent. of the students replied in the affirmative, and sixty-one per cent. replied in the negative. Fifty per cent. thought that every student should do at least a small amount of work. The reason given in nearly every case by the working students was the conventional assertion that the holding of a job teaches a man the value of a dollar. Other arguments in favor of working were that outside work compels concentration and study, teaches economy, regularity, self-control, self-reliance, and conservation of time. They said that the worker gains an acquaintance with the ways of man and the ways of the world. He avoids loafing and uses to advantage