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 those hours which would otherwise be spent in idleness. A good job keeps a man from acquiring bad habits and inspires in him respect for democracy.

Those who took the opposite view alleged that col—lege is no place for earning a living. There is no time for the broader things of education if a man must earn his way, whether wholly or in part. The opinion of many of these fellows who have earned their living and who do not look with favor upon the practice, is that outside work deprives the student of the opportunity to engage in athletics, social and other college activities, and so keeps him from one of the most valuable experiences in college life. It often makes him conceited, over self-reliant and too much in love with his own accomplishments. He is likely to undervalue real culture because he has had no time to give either to understanding what it means or to acquiring it. The fact that students work outside results very often in the college graduate's being a craftsman rather than a broadly educated man. Most of the work done by students in college in their attempts to earn their living is not helpful to them later in the professions which they fill. It is injurious to their life work and detracts from their efficiency. The good which a man may normally expect to get out of four years of college is thus very much lessened. As one man says: "A fellow who has earned his living has most of the joy and all of the culture taken out of his college life."

My own observation of the men who work their way through college is that too many who are unqualified attempt the task. Many a boy pays too high a price for the education he receives. Men do not


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 always realize what they are missing or how much their studies are suffering from their outside work. As I see it through the experience of thirty years of pretty active contact with the man who works his way, the fellow who can get an education in no other way should accept the situation bravely and not whine; he should neither be proud of it nor ashamed of it. The fellow who works his way when he need not do so or who simply wishes to show his independence, is foolish and not using his time to the best advantage; and the father who forces his son to earn his way when he could just as well furnish him the money, himself needs educating.

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not been long in college before I learned that political parties and political organizations, and politicians are quite as evident among college undergraduates, and are considered quite as necessary as they are among the voters of a commonwealth. There were few students in attendance when I entered college, but it took me only a few weeks to see that political lines were as closely drawn in that little community as in state or national affairs, and that if I desired political, and to some extent social, advancement I must ally myself with one side or the other. The literary societies were the dominant political parties at this time, and the one that I joined was in control of the political power of the institution. I should not have admitted the fact at that time, but in all probability its political prestige was one of the deciding factors in determining my choice, for I had myself more than a passing interest in politics. My political future was therefore assured. No one got a place on the college newspaper or the class annual or on class committees unless he had a stand-in with the political party, alias the literary society that was in power. It was scarcely ever a case of fitness for the office, although within limits fitness may have been considered—it was rather a case of who your friends were and how well they were organized. Charlie Gibson was no doubt very much better fitted to he editor of the college paper, than


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 was Lin Wilbur, but Charlie had few supporters and fewer admirers of his talents, and he belonged to the wrong political party, so that settled his case. I remember that Lin told me with some chagrin that when he was approached by his friends who asked him to become a candidate, the spokesman of the party said, "It isn't because you are the best man, Lin, that we are asking you to run, but because you can be elected." The organization was simple, but it was effective; we were able to predict two or three years ahead who would hold the important offices, and we scarcely ever missed it, nor do the politicians of to-day.

I was talking not long ago with one of the old timers who was deploring the fact that things have changed so completely since he was in college, and, from his point of view, changed for the worse. The fraternities, he said, had come in and had undermined the influence and work of the literary societies which, he averred, had done so much to train men to think and to speak effectively. I pointed out to him that the former supposed province of the literary societies had been usurped by the English department and that in reality the literary societies in his time and in mine were the most carefully organized political machines extant; that they would have made a present-day democratic central committee ashamed of its crude work, and further that the fraternities were simply playing in an amateurish and weak way the political game that the literary societies had taught them. I cited a few things to him that had occurred while he was in college, and after he had thought these over a short time, he decided that per-


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 haps things were not so bad now as he had supposed, and that the political game is as old as time. It was worked as skillfully when Jacob organized the home forces and "rimmed" Esau out of his birthright as it is to-day.

Politics in college are not run very differently from city politics, or state politics. As the college increases in size the organization must become more complex, the difficulties of control grow greater, and more genius in leadership is required. A friend of mine who, during his senior year, had been elected to the position of president of the athletic association of one of the large Middle West state universities said to me that the planning and organization of his campaign for this office required more thought and work than was later necessary to get him elected to the state legislature from his home district, on the Republican ticket, in a Democratic community.

If one desires to be elected to any general office in a large university he must make his plans early. I am more and more astonished when I am brought to appreciate how early they must be made. I have no doubt, for instance, that at this moment the political forces in the sophomore class of the University of Illinois are fully organized, and that the plans are all made, the candidates all chosen, and many of the appointments to committees decided upon for the management of the class when they shall have reached senior standing. The unexpected events which always occur even in the best of family and political organizations will necessitate numerous changes in these plans, no doubt, but I am quite sure that such plans are already formed.


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 So far as my information and experience goes, every institution, large or small, has its politicians who control, in a more or less complete way, undergraduate affairs and undergraduate offices. Sometimes they do it well; sometimes very much to the contrary. If the authorities of any college think this is not true in the institution with which they are connected, I am convinced that they have not probed under the surface of undergraduate activities. To hold the strings that may be pulled, to shuffle the cards in order that one may get a good hand, to try to get into a position of control or of preferment is as natural and as human in college, and out for some people, as to look out for three meals a day.

In college, as out of it, the successful politician is always a part of a well-knit organization. This organization may be an open and a recognized one acting under a given name and with college authority, or it may be an unauthorized and informal one, unknown to the general community. It may be the literary societies, it may be the fraternities, or it may be some democratic organization whose ostensible purpose is to oppose organizations in general, but no man ever got very far politically or in a business way without building up around him some sort of machine. The secret organizations about most colleges whose membership is discreetly kept under the rose, are for the most part political, though their adherents claim strenuously that politics never enter into their deliberations. One of the most carefully organized political machines in the institution of which I am a member has regularly held that political machinations are unknown within its member-


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 ship, yet it manages every year to name most of the successful candidates for office and to control most of the undergraduate affairs which have connected with them either profit or honor. The only explanation of why members of Greek letter fraternities, in most of the colleges in which they exist, hold much more than their proportionate share of class offices and political jobs in general is because these men are organized, and so have little trouble in getting their men by. The man in an organization comes to expect appointment or election merely because he belongs to an organization, and the public very often comes, also, to expect the same thing.

I have not thought it necessary to explain, excepting by implication, what I mean by politician and politics. What I do mean by politician as related to college is the man who through diplomacy and finesse and conscious planning and organization gets control of undergraduate affairs, decides who shall run for class president, who shall be editor of the college daily, who shall be chairman of the Junior Prom committee, and who shall run whatever in student affairs needs running—in short the man who in the college community is the power behind the throne. The mayor of a city is not necessarily the most influential man in the conduct of municipal affairs; in many cases he is merely a figurehead who was chosen by the real politicians of the community to be a foil for their schemes and plans. So, too, in college. The recent president of one of our sophomore classes was in no sense prominent or influential. He was picked for the place by the real leaders who got him elected and who told him what to do,


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 and who selected his committees for him and planned the class functions without reference to his views or his comfort or pleasure. It would not be unlikely that they even told him what young woman he was to take to the Cotillion. He was in no sense a politician; he was simply a tool who was managed by politicians, who are the real bosses of every community.

The politician in college is a man upon whom there are many responsibilities if he will assume them. He is restricted, it is true, in his movements and in his opportunities for exploitation, by conventions, by college traditions, and by precedent, but even these if he is bold and aggressive he may often over-ride. Through long years of practice there have come to be somewhat rigidly established in every college, even though there are no fixed rules in print, customs, and expense rates, and recognized methods of procedure which one finds it difficult to deviate from. But even circumscribed by these the man in general control of undergraduate affairs has things pretty much his own way in the direction and management of the social life of the college, the general activities of classes, the policies and control of publications, dramatics, and all the other activities with which students are concerned. Sometimes he keeps his hands out of athletics, but the illustration is not far to seek where even in the determination of athletic affairs the politician has not been averse to determining what should be done, and who should be selected to do it. The larger the institution the more likely he is to attempt universal control of affairs.


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 All this is not so simple nor so innocent as it might at first seem. In an institution that numbers its students by the thousands any man in prominence in undergraduate activities is responsible directly or indirectly for the expenditure of considerable sums of money. In any one of a score of our prominent institutions, for instance, the chairman of the committee in charge of any large dance, conservatively speaking, has control of the expenditure of at least a thousand dollars. The chairman of the senior invitation committee last year at the University of Illinois expended two or three thousand dollars. The manager of a modern college daily may easily have pass through his hands during one year eight or ten thousand dollars, and in most cases these officers are appointed by the class president or elected by undergraduate vote. Often, then, appointments come purely as rewards for political loyalty, for standing by the candidate for office. More often than otherwise such positions are plums thrown down to the friends below who have given the aspirant for office a leg up the political tree. The amount of money which in these days is directly under the control of the college politician is rather startling when we come to sum up the total. Its control, it is true, is not infrequently reasonably well by college rules and college supervision, but even the most careful supervision has its loopholes which the shrewd undergraduate is not slow to discover, and not always averse to slipping through.

It is the man in control of undergraduate affairs, too, who ultimately makes customs, who establishes traditions, who determines ideals, good or bad, for


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 those with whom he works, or for those who come after him. I had a talk only a few weeks ago with the chairman of one of our underclass committees. The committee, which was a pretty large one with duties which were quite trifling (to select caps for the sophomore class), had been appointed in the early spring. Because of unusual conditions, it had not had a meeting, had done no business, and was not likely to do any. The topic of discussion between us was a rather extravagant bill for stationery for the use of this committee. The argument of the committee chairman in brief was that though no business had been transacted and though none would be transacted by the committee, the members were entitled to such trifling spoils as stationery, because by merely representing the class in an official way they had earned something, and because stationery had from time immemorial been a perquisite of class committees. He was not concerned with the fact that some one would have to pay for it or that his committee had rendered no real service. It had rendered a worthy service, he held, by allowing itself to be appointed. I do not know whether or not he was a member of that distinguished political party which was first responsible for the doctrine, but he was quite convinced of the justice embodied in the statement "To the victors belong the spoils."

In any community, civil or collegiate, there are not many politicians. Most people are indifferent to these things,—they are not interested in them. I am surprised and annoyed over and over again to find how indifferent they are. Ninety per cent. of the college community are indifferent as to who


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 has charge of undergraduate affairs One candidate, to most men, looks as good as another. It takes the thunders and the eruptions of a political campaign to stir up the layman, and often even these have little effect on him. "I don't care who is elected, just so they let me alone," is the common cry in college and out of it. Most people are glad to have the other fellow run things, provided they are themselves not disturbed or called upon to help in the running—otherwise the politician would have a more difficult time than he now does. Few, also, are willing to give the time that it takes to be a successful politician, for the majority of undergraduate students are conscientious and give their main time and thought to their studies, the general opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. There is no doubt but that it takes an unconscionable amount of time to manage political matters. Those who go into our national political life usually find that they have no time left for any other business, and so the college man finds—if he is a successful politician—and his term grades usually suffer. His scholastic salvation is found only in the fact that few undergraduates begin their political career until after they have learned how to manage their studies, so that after they go in for politics they carry their work on their former reputation. In these matters, again, the college politician differs little from his more experienced brother out in the world.

Speaking of the time it requires for a man with political aspirations to accomplish his purposes, brings to my mind the case of a student who at the beginning of his junior year conceived the idea of


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 securing the position of editor of the college daily in his senior year. The office was a profitable and a prominent one; it carried with it a remuneration sufficient adequately to meet all his expenses during his last year in college, and it made him almost certain of election to the senior society—an honor which most college students rate very highly. The office at that time was obtained through a general vote of the student body, and the election came late in May. From the opening of college in the fall this ambitious politician pursued his strenuous political campaign. Every day of the week excepting Sunday—he devoted several hours to making acquaintances, and building his political fences. He visited students' rooms, he met students on the street, he buttonholed them on the campus. Before the end of spring he had built a political fortress that was impregnable, and he had personally seen in his own interests every one of the thousands of voters on the campus. Then when the election was on and he was just about ready to begin to pass out the party rewards, he found that his studies were in such condition that he was not eligible for election. He had, however, accumulated a considerable amount of experience, political and otherwise, and I have no doubt could hardly consider the time wholly wasted, even if he did lose the election; but few students would be willing to give so much time or could afford to give it, for the sake of winning any college office, and no college office with which I am familiar is worth the sacrifice of time which he made.

One of the regrettable things about college politics is that real merit so often counts for little. Fitness


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 for the office is too often little considered if considered at all. Popularity, prominence, availability, and, more than all of these, frequently, manageability are the qualities which bring a man success in the political game in college. The most popular man in college is the successful athlete. Youth, both feminine and masculine, will continue to admire physical beauty and physical accomplishments no matter how vigorously we who are older and more experienced may eulogize intellectual power. The military conflict through which we have passed will not tend to dim the glory of the hero in physical combat, and will intensify this sort of hero worship in the minds of college youths generally.

Though the athlete in college, if he does not neglect his athletic business, is the worst possible candidate for official position or political activity because, on account of the exactions of his sport, he has no time to give to such things, yet, since he is so constantly and so favorably in the public eye, he can with less personal effort be elected to office, and so is frequently tempted through ambition and vanity to make the race. It is a safe conclusion, however, that the athlete in office, whether the position be chairman of the hat committee or president of the Young Men's Christian Association, is there primarily for advertising purposes, and will do little work and do the office little credit. The fact that he is entitled to it, as he so frequently claims, seldom gives him the feeling that he is also under the most serious obligations to fulfill the duties of the office which he has assumed.

Prominence of any sort is almost equally sure to help a man in college toward political success. If


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 an undergraduate has attained success in any line of endeavor, excepting in intellectual lines which nowhere, in the world, so far as I know, gives a man any political prestige, he is at once thought of as fit to be at the head of one undergraduate activity or another. The debater in some localities has vogue, the society man can not be wholly overlooked, and the "good fellow," whatever that may mean, is almost next in prominence to the athlete.

The man who can play both ends against the middle is a likely candidate. If one is popular with his own party and does not arouse antagonism in the other, he is often thought the most available candidate because he is most likely of election without a hard fight, and no politician likes a hard fight if victory may be gained easily. The ease with which a man may be managed is often an important factor in his selection as a candidate for office.

Very often an innocent, pliable, harmless person is selected because nothing particular can be said against him, and he has so little independence that when he is inducted into office the real politicians will have no difficulty in inducing him to back their schemes. There is in reality, it may be said, a considerable political advantage in this sort of candidate at times, for he has attracted so little attention from the authorities beforehand that through his instrumentality many things can be done quietly which would be suspected and detected in a better known and a more independent man. The worst political gang I ever knew in college always were able to point with virtuous pride to their candidates in whose personal record it was seldom possible to find a flaw. It


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232 not possibly have returned. But though I delivered them to my mistress, she has not answered them, and though of course she will do so if you insist upon it….’ ‘Perhaps you can tell me,’ broke in Genji, ‘who sent this curious note. Despite its minute size there seems to be a great deal of writing in it.’ ‘Ah, that one…’ said Ukon, ‘if I returned it once I returned it a hundred times! But there was no getting rid of the messenger. It comes from Captain Kashiwagi, His Excellency Tō no Chūjō’s eldest son. This gentleman knows little Miruko, my lady’s chambermaid, and it was through her that the messenger was first admitted. I assure you no one else but this child Miruko knows anything about the matter at all….’ ‘But how delightful!’ said Genji, much relieved. ‘Kashiwagi of course holds a rather low rank, and that is a disadvantage. But no child of such a man as Tō no Chūjō is to be scorned; and there are, in point of fact a great many important officials who in public esteem occupy a far lower place than these young men. Moreover, Kashiwagi is generally considered to be the most serious and competent of the brothers. To receive compliments from such a man is very gratifying, and though he must of course sooner or later learn of his close relationship to you, for the present I see no need to enlighten him.’ And still examining the letter, he added ‘There are touches in his handwriting, too, which are by no means to be despised.’ ‘You agree with everything I say,’ he continued: ‘but I feel that inwardly you are raising objections all the while. I am very sorry not to please you; but if you are thinking that I ought to hand you over to your father without more ado, I simply do not agree with you. You are very young and inexperienced. If you were suddenly to find yourself in the midst of brothers and sisters whom you have never known, I am certain you would be miserable. Whereas if you will

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 is not enough to know who is running for office or who is holding office, but rather who is behind him, who is managing him, if one expects to control the situation.

There is a growing feeling among college politicians, I am sorry to say, that whatever activity an undergraduate engages in he is entitled to some tangible return. In my own undergraduate days election to office or appointment to membership on a committee was in itself considered an honor and a distinction which more than compensated for the work or effort necessary in the performance of the duty assigned. Now everything is different. The candidate's first question is, "What is there in it?" Now the man who considers whether or not he will become a candidate for office or accept a position on a committee is quite likely to view the whole proceeding from the standpoint of personal profit. Sometimes this profit is expected to be in hard cash; at other times it takes the form of passes, of tickets to entertainments, of free stationery, or free cabs, or free stamps. Many office-holders do not get their fingers far into the bag, but they are not satisfied to play the political game and hold office for the mere sport of playing; there must be a small stake at least. Even the man who helps a fellow student to election by voting for him expects something. Last year I was speaking to one of our class presidents who ran unopposed for the office. It seemed to me that he was making his class committees (all of whom would receive some gratuities for their services or supposed services) too large for any reason.

"Why do you do it?" I asked.


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 "They all helped me pretty faithfully in my election campaign," he replied.

"You didn't need help," I protested; "you would have been elected no matter if they had not worked, for there was no rival candidate."

"But there would have been," he said, flushing, "if I had not given them to understand that, if elected, I would take care of them satisfactorily."

It is quite safe to say that the college politician would seldom be moved in his selection of a cabinet of helpers and advisers by any appeal as to their fitness and experience. He does not pay much attention to his rivals, no matter what their claims to merit may be, when it comes to the partitioning out of offices or committee jobs. Any one who is familiar with the political complexion of a college community could pick ninety per cent. of the appointees to office if he were told who the appointing officer is.

"I want to appoint the best man in college to be chairman of the invitation committee," an upper class president said to me not long ago.

"The most reliable man you could choose is Briggs, whom you defeated in the election," I suggested.

"What would my friends think of me if I appointed him?" he asked.

"They'd think you had independence and nerve, and you ought to be able to stand that," I replied. But he had neither.

The most comforting part of all my years of experience and acquaintance with college politicians is the fact that every year I find the man who has inde-


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 pendence, who is not willing to be managed, who does not approve of political chicanery, and who disappoints and surprises the friend who expected to profit from his election.

Not long ago a young junior came to me to get my opinion as to his fitness for the position of president of one of our important student organizations.

"You'd be a poor man for the place," I said to him frankly. "You are not aggressive, you are not independent, and the men behind you are lacking in the right political principles."

"I think I'll surprise you," he said, and he did. He succeeded in the election, and before he graduated I wrote him that I considered him the best officer his organization had ever had. He was punctilious in the performance of the duties of his office, and these were not few. He would not be managed, he would not tolerate irregularity or dishonesty, and when his friends shirked the obligations of the positions to which he had appointed them, they were supplanted by other men who were willing to do the work well. He was quiet, apparently unaggressive, but firm, shrewd, and honest. I never knew whether or not my adverse criticism stimulated him to do his best, but I do know that I wish every college had more undergraduate officials like him.

Another similar illustration occurs to me. The man in question was chosen to run for president of the senior class because it was taken for granted that he would handle affairs to the financial advantage of his friends. He allowed himself to be supported in his political campaign by the most untrustworthy politicians on the campus. After his election he


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 called his appointees together and very frankly told them that he recognized the fact that he had been elected because a number of people who had supported him expected to profit by his supposed crookedness. He was sorry so completely to disappoint his friends who had trusted him, he said, but he had determined when selected to run for office to stand for no graft and no dishonesty. He would expose any one whom he caught engaged in any shady action. If he had appointed any one who did not care to work under these circumstances that person might resign. There were no resignations, and there was an absolutely clean administration. The chairman of the invitation committee told me afterward that a representative of an eastern engraving company offered him one hundred and fifty dollars in cash if the chairman would place the order for the invitation with his company. "I knew that the president would not stand for it," he said, "even if I had been willing to do so, and I turned him down and placed the order with another company."

The party fealty of specific organizations about a campus is usually unbelievably strong. For twenty years or more the same organizations with us have been ranged against each other on every political issue that has come up. We have always been morally certain that if the Phi Delts voted for a candidate the Phi Gams would be to a man against him. Organization members have seldom voted as individuals; they have voted as the organization determined, and the organization usually determined to stand with the party whose cause they had regularly espoused. The chief argument that I have ever heard


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 for the establishment and continuance of inter-fraternity organizations is that such affiliations bring men of various fraternities together, that they widen acquaintanceships, undermine prejudices, and break down party lines. I think it does widen a man's acquaintances for him to belong to such an organization or organizations, but as for affecting his prejudices or in any way influencing his party affiliations, I think the inter-fraternity organization with us has not had the slightest influence. No matter how many friends a man may have made through these outside relationships, when it comes to voting he stays with his old party. I have known one or two men who refused to vote for a fraternity or party brother who was running for office, but such instances are so rare as to make the individual guilty of such independent thinking seem almost freakish.

The great body of undergraduates and the vast majority of the faculty have given little thought to the power and influence of the political leader in college even if they have gone so far as to recognize his existence. He, far more than the teacher of ethics, is responsible for the moral and intellectual ideals of undergraduates. He has an immeasurable influence over the undergraduate attitude toward graft, toward integrity in business, toward virtue and cleanness of life, and he is on a level with his student companion and talks to him directly and in a language which he can understand. I have seen the spirit of the whole undergraduate body disturbed and changed through the influence of one man; I have seen vicious undergraduate customs set aside and almost completely wiped out in the same way.


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 A few years ago the University was torn from one end to the other by the practice of hazing. Nothing else did the institution so much damage, for it angered the supporters of the institution and bade fair to undermine and divert their interest. The legislature was not willing to give its support to an institution in which such a practice prevailed. The chief stimulus to hazing was the posting by members of the sophomore class, followed by a similar action by members of the freshman class, of certain inflammatory proclamations which stirred the members of the two under classes and brought them into personal contact with each other. This distributing of the proclamations was done very quickly and very secretly at night, without announcement, so that it proved extremely difficult to catch the perpetrators. I used always to have a sort of premonition as to when the fray would begin, but there was nothing certain.

It occurred to me one fall that I would get at the leaders. The president of the sophomore class was a shrewd fellow not likely himself to get into trouble and quite sure to direct his forces in any combat from a safe vantage ground. I called him in and explained to him the whole situation, and the effect which hazing was having upon the growth and progress of the University.

"I haven't done any hazing, and I will give you my word that I will not personally put out any proclamations," he said quietly.

"I believe you," I answered, "but you know very fully who has done the hazing, and you know equally well when and by whom the proclamations are to be


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 posted. You can control both; you are the recognized leader of the sophomore class. You must exercise your control. If the proclamations go up this year, and if the hazing continues I'll hold you responsible." He said nothing more, nor did I. The proclamations were not posted, and the hazing ceased, and in fact it was scarcely ever revived again. The politician killed it. I could multiply illustrations indefinitely to show how the recognized leaders in college, or those real leaders who are quite as frequently unrecognized, have changed customs, have controlled difficult situations, have promulgated the loosest or the most rigid principles.

The opportunity of the college politician for good or for evil is almost unlimited. He is a far more vital force in the college community, because, he is so often an unseen or an unrecognized force in determining the morals and the ideals of the student body, than is the Young Men's Christian Association, or the whole body of student pastors, strong and helpful as the influences of these instrumentalities are.

The college official who is held responsible for discipline or for the control of student activities and who does not keep in the closest touch with college politicians, who does not make friends with them and try to understand their machinations will be likely to get on badly. When trouble is brewing he will have no premonitions; when it comes he will be likely to be in ignorance of its source. So long as he can lay a restraining, or a directing hand upon the college politician he has solved the most of his problems of discipline and of student control. If trouble


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 impends, he will know where to look for it; if it fails he knows who is responsible and who can correct it, for the college politician dominates student sentiments and student activities.


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as well frankly confess at the outset of this paper that I have seen a good deal of cribbing from the time I entered college to the present day, and I have been told of a great deal more than I have seen. As an undergraduate I knew men who never pretended to get through an examination without relying upon some subterfuge or trick or dishonest aid, and who would put more time twice over upon the devising of a cunning complicated crib, than it would have taken to learn by heart the whole text upon which they were preparing to be examined. I have known other men, keen-brained and studious, who could have written with high credit any reasonable examination which the instructor might have set, and yet who regularly and foolishly carried a crib to the examination and used it.

I remember asking a young sophomore once who had been caught in the act of using a crib in a final examination, and who was dismissed from college for his dishonesty, why he had done so. He was an intelligent fellow, and was easily in the highest ten per cent. of his class.

"It was a case of making ninety per cent. without the crib or ninety-five per cent. with it," he said, "and I was anxious to win preliminary honors."

His manner was as cold-blooded and matter of fact in the discussion of the situation as a careful house-


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 wife might assume in swatting a persistent fly. I had had no experience with cribbing until I came to college. If the seekers after knowledge in the little rural community in which I lived were addicted to trickery and mental larceny I was happily never aware of it. It was something of a shock to me and rather a doubtful compliment when in my first college examination the man sitting next to me asked me for the solution of the third problem. When I hesitated not quite understanding what he really meant, he turned disgustedly to his nearest neighbor and copied the problem verbatim. I do not know that our college is worse than others in this respect; I have talked to instructors from neighboring institutions who claim that there is no cribbing in their classes, and I have visited other colleges where such careful precautions are taken that cribbing is almost a physical impossibility, but in institutions in the Middle West organized as ours is, I am of the opinion that conditions do not materially differ.

The most surprising thing to me about the man who cribs is the attitude which his fellow students assume toward him. Those of his friends who acquire their college credits in a manner similar to his own look upon him with real admiration. If he is not detected in his dishonesty, and so does not come to grief, he is regarded as a good sport and a shrewd fellow. If he is caught in his irregularity, he is looked on in somewhat the light of a martyr, whom ill-deserved misfortune has overtaken. Even the honest man, who minds his own affairs, writes his own examinations, and keeps himself absolutely within the bounds of integrity, is seldom affected by


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Rh only wait till I have settled your future (in such a way as your father, upon whom there are so many claims, could not possibly manage), there will be time enough afterwards to disclose the story of your birth.’

Though he did not say in so many words that he would far rather have kept her for himself, he more than once came perilously near to hinting something of the kind. Such indiscretions she either misunderstood or ignored. This piqued him; but he enjoyed the visit and was quite unhappy when he discovered that it was high time for him to go back to his own quarters. Before he left she reminded him, in guarded language, of his promise to tell her real father what had become of her. He felt at this more conscience-stricken than he need have done. For in her heart of hearts Tamakatsura was by no means in a hurry to leave the New Palace. She would have been glad to have the inevitable introduction to her real parent safely behind her, chiefly because the prospect of it destroyed her peace of mind. However kind her father might be, it was impossible that he should take more trouble about her than Prince Genji was doing; indeed, Tō no Chūjō, not having once set eyes on her since she was a mere infant, might well have ceased to take any interest in her whatever. She had lately been reading a number of old romances and had come across many accounts of cases very similar to her own. She began to see that it was a delicate matter for a child to force itself upon the attention of a parent who had done his best to forget that it existed, and she abandoned all idea of taking the business into her own hands.

Genji arrived at Murasaki’s rooms full of enthusiasm for the lady whom he had just been visiting: ‘What a surprising and delightful creature this Tamakatsura is!’ he exclaimed. ‘Her mother, with whom I was so intimate years ago, had almost too grave and earnest a character.

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 the dishonesty around him. He thinks no less of the cribber; the dishonest man is in no sense a pariah in his eyes. It is not his funeral, he says. If the man wants to crib, that is his business. It is a personal right, like chewing tobacco, or eating frogs' legs which no one should interfere with. If the modern undergraduate should have propounded to him the question that Cain tried to dodge in the Garden, he would unquestionably refuse to accept any responsibility as to his brother's conduct; it is up to every man to look out for himself, he would maintain. Even with girls the case is not different. I have known the most popular and the most influential girls in college to crib their way through an examination without apparent shame, who seemed to lose by the act nothing of their influence or of their popularity. If cribbing is common one does not lose caste by being guilty of it.

I used to have the feeling that the man who cribbed in an examination did so because he felt that he had to do so—he was in a corner from which he could not extricate himself without resorting to some illegitimate means—I thought it was usually a matter of a sudden overwhelming temptation to which the man yielded because the pressure was more than he could resist. Quite the contrary is usually true—nine-tenths of the people whom I have known to crib did not need to do so at all so far as passing the course in question was concerned. They cribbed because they thought it was easier, because they did not like the instructor, because other people were doing it, because they thought the examination was unfair, because they were pressed for time, because they


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 thought they were being watched and they felt that it would be a good joke to outwit the proctor; and even when they were not caught, very few of them ever profited through a higher grade from the cribbing. Most men who are detected in the act of cribbing and who are facing discipline as a result aver that the time in question is the first time they have ever been guilty of the act. This may be from the fact that the man not caught the first time develops so much adroitness as never to be caught, or it may be that he has forgotten his past record.

A man when brought face to face with the facts will usually admit his guilt, especially if the facts are presented by a single individual. Most young women will at first plead innocence. The explanation lies probably in the fact that the man feels that he has less to lose by admitting guilt than does the woman, for, as things now are, a man's damaged reputation is far more easily repaired than is a woman's.

The cribber, unless he is detected, suffers very little remorse. I am familiar with the class of melodrama in fiction which pictures the young fellow guilty of crime or dishonesty racked and torn by the tortures of an accusing conscience; but in fact it is usually only when he is in doubt as to the success of his subterfuge, or when he knows that he has been detected and that public disgrace is staring him in the face, that he begins to think and to suffer, It is wrong only if you are caught, is his philosophy. He excuses himself largely on the ground that the examination is a game, like love and war, and that anything one does is fair and unobjectionable which circumvents the instructor. When you cheat an in-


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 structor, he argues, it is in the same class of virtue as beating a corporation or evading taxes, an overt act which any one admits is to be winked at.

By cribbing, the student argues, he is simply beating the college, which stands to him as a sort of unfeeling, overbearing despot like the railroad corporation to the traveler. If on the other hand a fellow student is involved the whole situation changes. The cribber will usually suffer indefinitely rather than have a pal come to grief through his error or his carelessness or crudeness of work. In such an instance he is usually quite willing to suffer anything in order that another undergraduate may get off.

Just a few weeks ago I had before me two sophomores who had been detected cribbing in a final examination. They were equally guilty, and in accordance with our regular custom where there are no extenuating circumstances, they were dismissed. The older of the two waited after our interview was over to say to me that he felt himself more to blame than his companion. He was older, he alleged; he should have set a better example. Besides the younger man, who was by the way in no sense a personal friend of his I knew, was a promising athlete. The college could not afford to lose him. He was anxious then, he said, to bear the whole punishment of the misdeed if by any arrangement the younger boy might go free. It was a generous offer which, perhaps, showed more truly the boy's real character than his error in conduct had done, but it was one which I did not feel at liberty to accept.

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 juniors had been suspected of dishonesty in an examination and had been reported to me. One was without prominence in student affairs, the other the captain of an athletic team counted upon to win. An examination of the evidence showed beyond doubt that one of the two men had copied from the other, though it was not clear which one. I discussed the situation with each separately, and with apparent frankness they told me the facts. The athlete was innocent, he said. The older man confessed that he had been the dishonest one, and was dismissed. Years afterward I learned that the men had talked the matter over before coming in to see me and had agreed to lie, the man of little prominence being the willing sacrifice in order that the craven coward athlete might be saved. It makes me angry still when I think of it, distorted sense of honor though it was.

A short time ago, in order that I might better understand the student viewpoint with respect to cribbing, I prepared and sent to a selected list of four hundred undergraduate men, a questionnaire. The queries were as follows:

1. What percentage of the members of your classes do you think sometimes crib?

2. Is this percentage larger in some kinds of courses than in others, as for instance, mathematics, rhetoric, chemistry, etc., and if so, in what kinds?

3. Under some kinds of instructors than under others, and if so, under what kinds?

4. What form of cribbing is most common?

5. What seems to be the most common reason or defense given?

6. If you have ever cribbed what was the situation?


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 7. If you were charged with cribbing by what kind of committee would you prefer to be heard,—a committee of older members of the faculty, a committee of younger members of the faculty chosen by the students, or a committee of students? Please state the reason of your answer.

8. Do you think it more objectionable to receive information than to give it?

9. Would you volunteer information to a committee of the faculty concerning a fellow student who to your knowledge had cribbed?

10. To a student committee?

11. Would you give information in either case if asked to do so?

12. What kind of punishment or procedure if any do you think is likely to be most effective in curbing the practice of cribbing?

The list to whom the questionnaire was sent was a carefully selected one comprising members of all classes, representatives of all organizations, and men of all types and affiliations. I explained that by cribbing I meant to include the using of text books or other written helps, the receiving of help of any sort from other students, or the giving of help of any kind to such other students. Students were not asked to sign their names to the papers returned, and it was indicated that the information obtained would not be used in any way to the detriment of individual students. A large percentage of the papers were returned, and every one, so far as I remember, seemed to answer the questions seriously and frankly. The papers were "keyed" in such a way as to make it possible to tell which came from men living in fra-


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 ternity houses and which ones from men not so affiliated; other than this there was no mark upon the papers to identify the writers. In almost every case the fraternity man was more radical or more pessimistic than his independent college mate, a situation explainable, perhaps, from the fact that fraternity men, living in a somewhat more congested way than other men, are likely to have closer associations, to know more about what is actually going on among each other and, because of their close personal friendly relations, to be franker and more open in confessing their derelictions.

Naturally the replies to the questions varied widely in specific instances, but it was interesting to see how closely in the main the majority of the students agreed. Seventy per cent. of the men admitted that they had cribbed at one time or another, and fifteen per cent. of those who sent in replies ignored the question. Those who affirmed that they had never themselves cribbed were more optimistic with reference to the universality of the practice than were the others, though not more rigid in their suggestion as to discipline. One man said that in attempting to discover how widespread the practice of cribbing was he had made inquiry of twenty of his and friends, and that nineteen of the twenty admitted that at one time or another they had used some illegitimate method in an examination. Some of the men said they had never given the practice any consideration or attention, they had paid attention solely to their own business, had seen no one engaged in dishonest methods, and so had no opinion to offer. More than fifty per cent. of those answering, how-


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 ever, were of the opinion that the practice of cribbing is quite general.

The majority were agreed that in courses, examinations in which require the memorization of a considerable number of dates, or formulae, or isolated facts, cribbing is more prevalent than in courses which admit more readily of the discussion of general principles. In descriptive geometry, one man said, he thought everybody cribbed. History, mathematics, some courses in economics, and chemistry, it was said, are the courses in which most dishonesty is practiced because in examinations in these courses it is easier to prepare material that can be readily and advantageously used.

It was generally agreed, also, that certain types of instructors stimulate the students to crib more than do others. Very little cribbing is done under the instructor who treats his students fairly, who seems to look upon them as honest gentlemen, and who is interested in the success and progress of those he is teaching.

"The most cribbing is done," one student wrote, "under instructors who do not play the game fairly with the class, who would rather than not ask questions on an examination which they feel sure their students can not answer. There is more cheating under inexperienced instructors who are working for a higher degree, and who feel that they must fail a certain percentage of their students in order to give the impression that they are deep and efficient."

Another man said, "The instructor who places confidence in his students gains their respect, and as a rule they treat him squarely. Students are


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 proud of the fact that they have cribbed successfully under a man who is always watching for cribbers."

The following quotations, also, were interesting: "Cribbing will be carried on more under an instructor who does not get into personal touch with his students. The instructor who is human will have little trouble with cribbing." "I have heard it said that the sarcastic instructor who by his manner virtually says to his students, 'cheat if you dare, I bet I catch you,' is the one the student delights in beating at his own game." "Cribbing is most common under a very strict or a very lenient instructor." "Any instructor who is specially sarcastic or who does not deal with his students in an open and friendly way is sure to have those in his classes who will try to get through in any conceivable manner."

In reply to the question, as to the form of cribbing most common there was little agreement, the consulting of notes carried to class, looking on another student's paper, and verbal communication between students sitting crowded together being thought most common.

More than thirty per cent. of those who replied to the questionnaire held that the main excuse offered for cribbing lay in the fact that the specific examination in question was unfair and that examinations in general are in no sense an adequate test of a student's knowledge. If the instructor knows in the main what the individual student will be likely to know before he gives him the test, why, the student asks, should he give him the test at all; but in asking this question he fails to realize that unless the examination were given the student will not make the mental


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 effort to gather together the body of facts and information which the instructor knows he will possess if the examination is given. In addition to the allegation that unfair examinations induce cribbing, the justification of the practice, in order of frequency presented, are fear of failing the course, ignorance of the points in question, and the fact that other people do the same thing I once heard a man claim that the reason he had never honestly scheduled his property with the tax collector was because his neighbors never did. If he scheduled his property honestly, he claimed, when his neighbors withheld a large part of their possessions, he would pay more than his just share of taxes. The cribber argues similarly: he can not afford to be honest, for when his companion cheats the honest man suffers in comparison for his honesty, and that he is not willing to do. Besides evading the responsibility for personal integrity, he argues from a false premise in taking for granted that the man who cribs by so doing increases his scholastic average. I believe it could be proved, if it were possible to get at the real facts, that the cribber very seldom profits scholastically from his trickery. The excuses which the men offer for their delinquencies, were varied, but I think no one really tried to justify himself. The excuses were all simply subterfuges to ease their consciences and in no case deceived even the men who offered them.

With reference to the tribunal before which they were to be heard if charged with cribbing, by far the larger number were in favor of a committee com posed of older members of the faculty, the reasons given being that the judgment of such a committee


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 would be saner, the experience of the men broader, and that their decisions would be tempered with a finer quality of mercy. Those who preferred to be judged by the younger men were of the opinion that such men, whether students or members of the faculty, would be more lenient and, because they were still concerned with undergraduate problems or were so slightly removed from them, would understand and sympathize more fully with the student in trouble than would the older man. So far as actual justice was concerned they were nearly all convinced that the older men would the more completely attain this end in their decisions, but they thought the guilty would get off with a lighter penalty the younger the judges were. This last conclusion was the more interesting to me in view of the fact that through my personal associations with various men on disciplinary committees over a period of several years, I have found almost invariably that the undergraduate and the younger member of the faculty is likely to be harsher and more severe in his judgments of men found guilty of dishonesty when it is put'up to them to impose a penalty than is the older and more experienced man.

Seventy per cent. of those answering the questions thought it more objectionable to receive help than to give it, though the arguments advanced to justify this point of view were few and frail. Seven per cent. did not answer the question. One man asserted that it was impossible to refuse to give help when asked without being more of a martyr to honorable ideals than most college men are willing to be. "Under our present moral code," another man says, "a


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 man who is asked for aid has to run the risk of popular dislike if he refuses to give it. This a student does not feel like taking upon himself." On the other side a third student says, "There is no difference between receiving and giving aid. If I give opium to a dope fiend, I am no better than he; if I am a servant and give a burglar the key to my employer's house, I am no better than the burglar; if I supply a fellow student with information to copy, I am as bad as he is, because I help him to be dishonest."

There was little difference expressed by the men in their willingness to volunteer information with reference to cribbing, whether the committee in charge of discipline were composed of students or members of the faculty. In each case about eighty-five per cent. of the men said they would not volunteer information under any circumstances, three per cent. did not answer the question, and the remainder were willing to give information if the conditions under which it were given were made sufficiently innocuous. There was a pretty general lack of feeling of responsibility suggested by the replies The condition of affairs was possibly to be regretted, they admitted, but when at the end of the semester a student is pushed into a corner by a heartless instructor who endangers his intellectual life, what is to be done? It is hardly to be thought of that the suffering undergraduate should be still further set upon by his classmates in an attempt to beat the truth out of him, but rather, if opportunity is afforded, that they should run to his assistance. So strongly are some of the illogical arguments presented that one is al-


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234 This girl will, I can see, be more a “woman of the world”; but she is at the same time evidently very affectionate. I am sure she has a brilliant future before her….’ From his manner Murasaki instantly saw that his interest in Tamakatsura had assumed a new character. ‘I am very sorry for the girl,’ she said. ‘She evidently has complete confidence in you. But I happen to know what you mean by that phrase “a woman of the world,” and if I chose to do so, could tell the unfortunate creature what to expect….’ ‘But you surely cannot mean that I shall betray her confidence?’ asked Genji indignantly. ‘You forget,’ she replied, ‘that I was once in very much the same position myself. You had made up your mind to treat me as a daughter; but, unless I am much mistaken, there were times when you did not carry out this resolution very successfully….’ ‘How clever every one is!’ thought Genji, much put out at the facility with which his inmost thoughts were read. But he hastened to rejoin: ‘If I were in love with Tamakatsura, she would presumably become aware of the fact quite as quickly as you would.’ He was too much annoyed to continue the conversation; however, he admitted to himself in private that when people come to a conclusion of this kind, it is hardly ever far from the mark. But surely, after all, he could judge better than she? And Murasaki, he reflected, was not judging this case on its merits, but merely assuming, in the light of past experience, that events were about to take a certain course….

To convince himself that Murasaki had no ground for her suspicions he frequently went across to the Side Wing and spent some hours in Tamakatsura’s company.

During the fourth month the weather was rather depressing. But one evening, when it had been raining heavily all day, he looked out and saw to his relief that

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 most persuaded for the moment that not only is honesty not the best policy, but that in reality it is no policy at all.

The most frequently emphasized suggestion for improving conditions was to do away with final examinations entirely and depend upon weekly quizzes, or to make the questions asked so general as to render a crib useless or unnecessary. In making these suggestions the writers ignored the fact that there is quite as much cribbing done on daily work and weekly quizzes as there is on final examinations, and that by laying the emphasis upon these methods of testing a student's work they simply shift the danger point or get from the frying pan into the fire. The honor system, more careful proctoring, and the separation of students so widely at examination time that communication is practically impossible were also suggested as methods of cutting down cribbing, though the opinion was expressed by many that no method could be devised which would wholly banish the practice. Expulsion, suspension, failure of the course, public confession, and reprimand, loss of general college credit, and the giving of the widest publicity to the offense and the offender were among the remedies suggested for reducing the amount of cribbing. Perhaps one of the most sensible suggestions was that students known to be guilty of cribbing should be permanently barred from participation in college activities. From my experience with students and from my knowledge of the importance which they attribute to participation in college activities, I am sure that many a student would prefer to


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 be dismissed from college than to be prohibited for any length of time from participation in activities.

"Abolishing specific numerical grades," one man suggests, "would take away from many students a strong temptation to crib. Those who desire to excel are, under a system of numerical grades, often influenced to crib in order that they may take intellectual precedence of their classmates. If specific grades were done away with, this condition would not exist."

Another man writes, "I do not believe that a university is a place to begin the primary teaching of honesty. A man's habits and principles are formed when he comes to college. A young fellow should be educated in principles of honesty in the home and in the graded schools. If he has not learned these before he comes to college he is entitled to no leniency. No one should be given a degree from a university who has grossly cribbed."

The attitude toward the practice in most of the papers was one of indifference or of justification. Especially in discussing the subject of giving help to a classmate in trouble was the moral sense of the writers dull. Instead of looking upon such a practice as objectionable there was the almost universal tendency to condone it or even to recognize it is a virtue. The fellow who would not help a classmate in need of information in an examination when he was politely asked for it was without heart a great number felt, and lacking in the proper brotherly spirit.

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 much concern as the problem of cribbing and the cribber. I believe sincerely, as one young fellow said, that if the freshman entering college could come into an atmosphere where cribbing was not tolerated and where the man who was seen to crib or was known to crib lost caste and was looked upon with disfavor he would be given a respect for truth and honesty which would be of incalculable value to him throughout life. If a man could live for four years among students who looked down upon dishonesty—of every sort, the experience and the training would be of as great value to him as anything the college could teach him.

The man who cribs is lacking a true sense of honesty, and the companion who helps him is impelled by a false sense of honor. Leaving out of consideration the questions of the morality of the practice, which is perhaps the main question, but which unfortunately will be likely last to appeal to the undergraduate, the question of expediency comes in. By cribbing the student weakens himself, robs himself of training, lessens his self-reliance, and so reduces the probability of his success. The cribber comes in most cases not to depend upon his own strength and judgment. When he strikes a hard problem, when he gets into a corner, when he meets intellectual difficulty, his courage fails him, and he calls at once lustily for help. And it is the self-reliant man, who can marshall all his powers and be sure of them, not the man who is always looking for help, who is wanted in every business. If a student in mathematics allows some one to work his home problems for him and then cribs from his neighbor in the final examina-


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 tion, what does he expect to do after he leaves college when the questions which involve such mathematical computations are before him for solution? There very likely will be no one to work them out for him and no friendly neighbor engaged with the same difficulties from whom he may crib. He has followed a practice in college which has left him helpless after he is out.

A young chemist whom I once knew, whose college work required the analysis of a rather large number of unknowns, by chance happened upon the table of results which had been worked out by the instructor and by skillfully changing his own results slightly so that they might be within the percentage of variation and error allowed, was able to meet the requirements of the course without really going through any of the work. He was detected and dismissed, but even if he had been clever enough to carry out his intentions he would ultimately have been the loser, because he would have lacked the training and the experience to pursue the calling for which he was preparing. The cribber does not think of the future; he is concerned wholly with the present safety of his skin.

"But one has to get through some way," a cribber said to me by way of excuse for the dereliction in which he had been detected.

"How about the influence of this upon your general character?" I asked.

"You don't think that because I wasn't square on this measley little examination I would lie or steal or cheat my employer, do you?"

"Why, yes," I replied; "I think you are much


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 more likely to do so. If you are tricky and shifty and dishonest with one man, even if he happens to be only your instructor, the chances are that you will find it more difficult to be entirely above board with other men even though the relationship which you stand in to them is a different one."

The cribber is, then, not quite so safe a man to trust, his principles of integrity are not so solidly grounded, his standards of honesty are somewhat more flexible; he does not quite ring true. He would pick up a needed umbrella with fewer compunctions of conscience than others of his mates; he would repay a small loan with more reluctance; he would borrow your clothing, or your stationery, or your stamps with less elaborate ceremonies than the really honest man and would be among the last to return them. He has a treacherous memory with reference to other things than dates and formulae and details. The irregularity of which he is guilty is in many cases, I am quite willing to admit, a venial one, but it leaves his character a little soiled. The lowering influence, also, which such an act on the part of an upper-classman or of a leading man in college has upon a student just entering is incalculable.

"How can you expect us to be honest?" a freshman asked me last year. "It is true the upper-classmen in our house warn us constantly against cribbing, but it is not because they feel that it is wrong. They simply think that we are not yet wise and clever enough to get by with it; they are afraid we shall be caught and that they will be annoyed by the disgrace of the exposure. We know all the time that they crib


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 even while they are warning us against the dangers of it, and we are stimulated to try it ourselves, rather than restrained by their warnings."

The cribber, if he is successful, is likely to be a grafter. Having managed to get something for nothing, or to suppose that he has done so in his intellectual relationshpisrelationships [sic], he is not satisfied until he takes a hand in activities, and when he gets into activities he is not there for his health alone, nor for the public recognition, or honor which may accrue. He is out for the loot. It is easy for him to argue that since he is entitled to some compensation for the services, real or imagined, which he has performed, it is quite unobjectionable for him to pay himself, since the red tape to be unwound, if he should seek remuneration in the regular way, is often tiresomely complicated, and the possibility of his getting anything at all is distressingly remote. He is an advocate of efficiency and uses a short-cut method by appropriating what he considers himself entitled to and salves his conscience, if it gives any indication of activity, by saying that they all do it anyway, and if he doesn't take the money some one else will.

All this is a sad preparation for good citizenship. If a young man can be depended upon to do the honest thing only when it is easy, only when all other men are known to be honest, only when it is to his personal and financial advantage to be so, he is little fitted for responsibility and service, and yet such conditions are quite in accord with the doctrines of the man who cribs.

I was in conversation, not long ago, with a business man who held a position of the greatest promi-


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 nence and trust in one of the largest corporations of the Middle West. He confessed to me that he had had little education and training as a boy before he became a part of the business. What he knew he had acquired through practical experience, through hard knocks, through willingness to work, and what he had accomplished he had done without influence or pull.

"How does it come, then," I asked, "that you have been placed in so prominent a position at so early an age?" for he was still a comparatively young man.

"There is but one reason," he replied. "I have a single virtue. I proved myself to the company by many tests to be absolutely honest. It is that quality which gave me my position, and it is through that quality that I hold it." I told the story later to a cribber.

There is one solution, it seems to me, to the difficulty, one cure for the evil of cribbing,—the creation of a strong healthy student sentiment against it. Rigid discipline will help, but it will not wipe out the evil. Whatever discipline is enforced must appeal to the good judgment of the better class of students as just. Whenever in the minds of the body of undergraduates the character of the discipline enforced by the faculty seems cruel or over-severe, one of the main purposes of discipline, the deterring of misdeeds, is lost; for the student who is thought to have been disciplined too severely becomes at once, in the minds of his friends and companions, a martyr to be sympathized with and pitied and made a hero of. When such a condition arises the evil is rather likely to increase than to lessen.


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 The evil of cribbing would be far more easily controlled and the cribber more rapidly eliminated if the members of the faculty were as a whole alert and helpful. In fact many of them are indifferent, and many more are asleep. They are in most cases, I am sorry to say, as indifferent to the situation as is the undergraduate himself.

"If my students want to crib in my classes," I often hear an instructor say, "they may; it isn't up to me to act as a spy and a policeman over them. If they do crib, I should rather not see them, and even when I might be led to suspect that they were doing so, I prefer to think well of them, and to treat them as if they were gentlemen." And no one better than the student knows exactly how the individual instructor feels about these matters, and no one thing is more potent in helping to confirm him in the habit of cribbing than this same indifference on the part of his instructors.

"You can't tell me that 'Bobby' doesn't know about that cribbing that goes on in his class," a junior said. "He's too sly a dog not to get onto a practice that is as open as cribbing in his class. He doesn't want the trouble or the unpopularity that would result if he reported the men, and so he prefers not to see what is going on." But in refusing to see it he lost the respect even of those who were cribbing under him, and indirectly encouraged one of the most vicious practices in college. A good many members of the faculty feel that their honor has been compromised when they report a man suspected of cribbing and those in charge of disciplinary matters do not find him guilty.


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 "I shall never report a man again for dishonesty," an instructor old enough to have more sense, said to me not long ago.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I reported Hanley last year, and the committee let him go."

"But there was no convincing evidence that he had cribbed," I protested.

"Perhaps not," he admitted, "but the whole affair put me into a very embarrassing position, and such a position as I don't propose to get into again soon. If my men want to crib I'll flunk them or ignore the fact."

Another class of instructors refuses to take any responsibility for the cribber because they allege that when he is caught the penalty imposed is not to their liking. One man says that he will report no more men who are dishonest because the penalty of dismissal for half a year or longer, which we ordinarily impose upon men above the freshmen year, is too severe. He prefers, he says, to handle his own cases, which means that it pleases him best to pay no attention to them, or to delude himself into the belief that there are none. Another instructor refuses to take the subject of cribbing seriously because from his point of view the penalty imposed upon the guilty ones is a joke. He would expel or behead every man guilty of the slightest deviation from the path of integrity. Thus both the conservative and the radical indirectly helps to confirm the student in his habit of irregularity.

The type of instructor who by his manner virtually gives a challenge to his students to crib regu-


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 larly helps in the practice. When you tell a student that you are so clever that you will be quite willing to have him fool you if he can, you have given him a dare, and his brain at once begins to work in a determination to outwit you. The instructor in whose classes there are more cribbers than in any other I know is the one who alleges that he takes nobody's word, and who announces that if any undergraduate cribs in his class he will find it necessary to get up pretty early in the morning. If instructors would be less indifferent, if they would use more common sense, and if they would report for discipline all students who are detected cribbing, the number of cribbers would be materially lessened.

The cribber could be discouraged if more precautions were taken in the conduct of examinations. No one can deny that, when we take into consideration what hangs upon the result of the test, the temptation to dishonesty in final examinations is not small. No faculty, therefore, it seems to me, can possibly justify itself until it makes the conditions under which examinations are given as thoroughly as possible conducive to honesty. With a little care in any institution the student undergoing examination could be so situated that even if it were not impossible for him to cheat, it would at least be difficult. As it is now in many institutions, the undergraduates at examination time are so crowded together that it is almost impossible for them to be honest if they desire to be. Students using the same questions are sitting elbow to elbow. If they look around it is easy to see what the man on each side and in front of them is writing, and communication by word of mouth or by


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Rh Emperor gave to his code can only be understood to relate to constitutions since Constantine, and he must have relied on the Gregorian and Hermogenian Codes for earlier constitutions still in force, and on the text-books of the lawyers, approved by his constitution of 426, for supplying the requisite details of practical law.

The Code of Theodosius was divided into sixteen books, each book having a number of titles and each title usually containing a number of constitutions or fragments of such. The order of subjects is similar to that of Justinian's Code with some exceptions. Private law is treated in Books ii-v, military matters in vii, crime in ix, revenue law in x and xi, municipal law in xii, official duties in i, and xiii-xv, and ecclesiastical matters in xvi. The names of the Emperors at the time of enactment and the date and the place either of framing or of publication were given with each constitution though they are not wholly preserved. Compared with Justinian's Code it contains a much larger proportion of administrative law and a much smaller proportion of ordinary private law. The Code remained in force in the East and in Italy until Justinian superseded it, though the traces of its use are few. In the West, in Spain, France, and Lombard Italy, it remained in practical use for long, chiefly as part of the Code issued to the Visigoths by Alaric II in 506.

A number of constitutions issued by Theodosius and his successors after the Code and therefore called Novellae (i.e. leges), "new laws," have come down to us — 84 in number, the latest of which bearing the names of Leo and Anthemius was issued in 468. Of further legislation by Roman Emperors until Justinian we have only what he chose to retain in his Code.

After the Theodosian Code and before Justinian there were compiled and issued codes of laws for the Romans in Burgundy, for the Ostrogoth subjects in Italy, and for the Romans in the Visigothic kingdom in South France and in Spain; and we have evidence of other laws prevailing in the Eastern part of the Empire, before and after Justinian's time.

In Burgundy about the beginning of the sixth century King Gundobad issued a short code of laws for all his subjects whether Burgundian or Roman. A few subsequent constitutions by him or his successors have been appended to it. Somewhat later he issued a code for his Roman subjects, when suits lay between them only. This code is about half the length of the other but many of the headings of the chapters are the same. The matter is principally torts and crimes (e.g. cattle-lifting), runaway slaves, succession, gifts, marriage, guardianship, process, and some brief rules on other parts of the law. It appears to have been taken from the same sources as the Lex Visigothorum and the particular source is frequently named. But instead of simply repeating selected words of the source, it is rather an attempt at real codification. (The name Papianus often given to it arises probably from this Code


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Rh at last the sky was clearing. The young maples and oak trees in the garden blent their leafage in a marvellous curtain of green. Genji remembered the lines ‘In the fourth month the weather grew clearer and still…’ and thence his thoughts wandered to the girl in the Western Wing. He felt a sudden longing, on this early summer evening, for the sight of something fresh, something fragrant; and without a word to anyone he slipped away to her rooms. He found her practising at her desk in an easy attitude and attire. She was in no way prepared to receive such a visit, and upon his arrival rose to her feet with a blush. Caught thus unawares and informally dressed, she was more like her mother than he had ever seen her before, and he could not help exclaiming: ‘I could not have believed it possible! To-night you are simply Yūgao herself. Of course, I have always noticed the resemblance; but never before has it reached such a point as this. It so happens that Yūgiri is not at all like his mother, and consequently I am apt to forget how complete such resemblances can sometimes be.’

A sprig of orange-blossom was stuck among some fruit that was lying on a tray near by. ‘As the orange-blossom gives its scent unaltered to the sleeve that brushes it, so have you taken on your mother’s beauty, till you and she are one.’ So he recited, adding: ‘Nothing has ever consoled me for her loss, and indeed, though so many years have passed I shall die regretting her as bitterly as at the start. But to-night, when I first caught sight of you, it seemed to me for an instant that she had come back to me again—that the past was only a dream….Bear with me; you cannot conceive what happiness was brought

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 means of notes passed is as easy and free as talk at an afternoon tea. The instructor usually looks on indifferently, engaged in reading the newspaper or in the solution of some of his own intellectual or domestice difficulties, or he quite as likely strolls out of the room entirely to do an errand for his wife, or to get a breath of air for his health. There is no adequate supervision, no adequate proctoring. The students are not on their honor, and they know they are not, and even if the instructor announced that they were, they would seldom accept the announcement as authentic since it had been made without discussion with them and without their consent.

The honor system would help, but it would be worse than useless unless it were backed strongly by student sentiment. If three-fourths of the student body were of the opinion that the practice of cribbing is wronz, that it should go, and that they are not only willing not to crib themselves but that they will report every man who is known to crib, the practice would soon be upon its last legs. It is not so difficult to interest a considerable number of students to the extent that they will agree to honesty of procedure themselves, but it is altogether another matter when it comes to their assuming responsibility for the conduct of others. "I would myself agree not to crib," students say to me over and over again, "but I would not report a man whom I saw crib or even talk to him about the matter." But this, it seems to me, is the logical solution of the whole matter—student sentiment and student responsibility. So long as cribbing is an affair between faculty and students it may be ameliorated, but it will never be fully cured. It


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 is only when the student loses favor or standing or caste with his mates through dishonesty that he will take the matter of cribbing seriously. A student can stand anything else better than to be distrusted or disliked by his own undergraduate associates.

Not long ago we had in control of our student paper one who could find little to approve of in our university organization and control. Everything was wrong: the system of teaching, the development of research, the construction of buildings, the supervision of student activities, the general attitude and composition of the faculty, were all hopelessly and irrevocably wrong. He stirred a good deal of feeling among the authorities, he irritated and offended scores of our faculty, but the more opposition he aroused the better he liked it, for it gave him the feeling of a reformer. He had a considerable following of undergraduate sympathizers, he won the approval of a certain number of instructors who were glad to have him voice the sentiments that they might have been afraid themselves to utter, and he did not care a picayune what the administration thought of him. But one day he entered upon another field. Delighted with his success as a stirrer up of trouble among the faculty, he began a heavy onslaught upon a disreputable student practice. He was somewhat surprised on the day following the appearance of his editorial to find that his old friends were not so cordial; his former acquaintances looked at him coldly as they passed him or crossed to the other side of the street to avoid meeting him; the cold shoulder was given him wherever he went. It was all right to criticize the faculty; the criticism of their own personal


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 derelictions and evasions of duty did not take so kindly with his undergraduate friends. He never wrote another editorial on the tabooed subject, for he could not stand the unpopularity which such writing brought him; he did not have the courage to go against public sentiment as expressed by his associates.

So cribbing and the cribber will go when the cribber losing social standing, is not looked upon with favor, is not regarded as a gentleman. So long as undergraduate sentiment toward this sort of dishonesty is indifferent or tends to condone it, the practice will continue. General student sentiment against the man who practices dishonesty in his college work would cause him to disappear over night.


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many a generation past the athlete has been the undergraduate idol, the big man in college, the god whom the incoming freshman worshiped and to whose attributes and accomplishments he hoped through physical tribulations to attain. There may have been a time, when our great grandfathers were in college, that the orator or the scholar was most envied and emulated by the ambitious undergraduate, but, if so, that time is long past. The student crowd will go wild over a successful athlete, shouting themselves hoarse in proclaiming his excellencies, and fighting like demons to get a chance to carry him off the field. No one molests the orator or the scholar or follows him down the street with an ovation. They have an unobstructed path from the scene of their accomplishments to their lodging houses.

Don't misunderstand me: I am in no sense advocating or defending this condition of affairs; I am simply making a conservative statement of facts. Scholarship may be and should be the goal toward which the ambitious undergraduate in general is struggling, but physical strength and physical accomplishment is in reality what youth most admires. We might as well recognize and acknowledge the fact, change it if we can, and become resigned to it if we must.


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 We had for many years at the University of Illinois, permitted—I scarcely dare to say approved—by the faculty, an underclass contest or "scrap" which took place early in the fall and which furnished an outlet for the class feeling and class rivalry which has been extant in colleges between freshman and sophomore classes from time immemorial. The contest took on various forms during the twenty-five years or more of its continuance. It was always a test of physical strength, directed at rare intervals by some little brains; it was rough, not without danger, and occasionally to the onlooker it presented strong symptoms of brutality, though I believe, through the providence which is said to watch carefully over fools and children, no contestant was ever seriously hurt. Ultimately through the influence of certain members of our faculty, nervous or soft-hearted, the contest was barred. The main arguments against it were the danger involved, the fact that such a contest was undignified and out of keeping with the character of college gentlemen, and most strongly urged, perhaps, was the argument that our college man of to-day is more refined, more intellectual, and less given to rough boisterous sport than was true a generation or two ago. I may be pardoned, I hope, if I decline to believe this statement. The young college man of to-day is in many respects as barbaric as he was a hundred years ago, he is just as fond of a fight, just as much an admirer of physical strength and physical contests as he ever was, and that is why the athlete is going to continue to be for the growing youth a hero, and in college the person to be most admired and emulated.


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 The athlete in college was not always so worthy of emulation as he is at present. I do not have to go back farther than my own college days nor even s0 far as that to recall instances of men who found their way into colleges for the sole purpose of developing or exhibiting their physical powers, of making an athletic team, and without any intention of adding to their intellectual strength. Mr. George Ade's crude young Hercules in the "College Widow" whose ostensible purpose in entering college was the study of art but whose real object was to help make a winning football team, might find a counterpart in many another college. I myself can recall a big hulk of human bull who had been employed about town in driving an ice wagon and who was drafted by a few local enthusiasts to enter college in order that he might play center on the football team. He was a crudely impossible yokel, and unfortunately of little use, for he had no brains to manage his brawn, and proved more of a hindrance than a help. Such proceedings as his are happily at an end in self-respecting colleges, and the athlete of to-day is a very different character morally and scholastically than he once was. For membership on one of the Middle-West conference teams, at least, a man must be a bona-fide student, must be in good standing, and must have carried a full year's college work in the institution which he wishes to represent. Our own athletes for years have maintained a scholastic standing considerably above that of the average man in college and in many cases, in fact proportionately in quite as many cases as the men not in athletics, have attained a standing which has entitled them to elec-


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 tion to such honorary organizations as Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Tau Beta Pi. In conference colleges the athlete as a class is not a flunker, for when he becomes a flunker he can no longer represent his college as an athlete. No more is he satisfied merely to pass, for he has been taught that intellectually, at least, a miss is not nearly so good as a mile, and that his physical safety lies in making his intellectual calling absolutely sure.

The athlete is the best known man in college. The man who made high scholastic average for the year is occasionally pointed out; the editor of the college daily, or the student colonel of the cadet regiment may swagger a little as he walks across the campus; the fellow who took the rôle of leading lady at the spring performance of the Union opera may cause a few admirers to crane their necks as he passes, but every one knows the athlete. When "Shorty" Righter made three home runs in the last baseball game with Chicago and settled the conference championship for that year, he was a bigger man in the eyes of the undergraduates than if he had been president of the steel trust or Ambassador to the court of St. James. There wasn't any one in the country, they were quite convinced, who had anything on "Shorty."

The athlete sometimes excuses his too vigorous participation in physical affairs to the consequent detriment of his studies on the ground that it is for the good of the college—it is all for the love of Alma Mater. There is very little to such talk. The real athlete is such from pure love of it. He longs for a fight; he enjoys being in a contest; he is overflowing


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 with strength and animal spirits; it gives him pleasure to win, and if through his winning Alma Mater gets an incidental mention he is not annoyed. Few athletes consider the time they put in in practice or the punishment they receive in a game as a sacrifice; the joy of contest and of victory more than outweighs all the sacrifice and pain endured. If there is doubt of this in any one's mind let him watch the successful athlete as he looks over the sporting sheet of the Sunday paper following a successful game or meet and reads his own eulogy and sees his own photograph; there is very little thought of Alma Mater in his mind at such a time.

Because he is so well known, there is no one else in college whose daily life is so much under observation, whose habits and ideals and accomplishments are so much discussed and whose dicta count so much in setting the standards for the college community What the athlete thinks and does determines what is right; what he says settles a matter for all time. He can quell a riot or stop an objectionable undergraduate practice with a word, if he will. He is often so harassed by the severe exactions of his athletic training and by the necessity, under this training, of keeping up his college work, that he has little time for leadership in any active way, and though he stands out in a notable manner as an example which the students in general are likely and willing to follow, he usually makes a poor chairman of a committee, an indifferent president of an organization, and a not very active member of anything that requires aggressive leadership. He takes the popularity, and the prominence, and the adulation, but he side-steps the


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 responsibility which this prominence brings him. I have known a number of athletes who were elected president of the Young Men's Christian Association, but I do not now recall one who was any good in the office; as class officers and as presidents of student organizations they have pretty generally been figureheads, put into office for advertising purposes only, as prominent men in real life sometimes lend their names to the furtherance of some enterprise or to the advertising of some nostrum in which they have little real interest.

There are exceptions, of course, many of them, and one I recall which is a joy to remember. He was a big husky guard on the football team who made Tau Beta Pi and who was elected president of his fraternity and who really was president after he was elected. He counseled the freshmen like a father, and they adored him. He was a veritable D'Artagnan in leadership; he set all the fellows an example in conduct and morality and scholarship that they never forgot.

On account of his popularity, also, there is no man who can so easily be elected to office as the athlete. His prestige carries him through; what he has done to win athletic prominence for the college, his followers argue, entitles him to the reward of the office he seeks, and forgetting that his other duties are already a tax upon his time and his strength, he yields to his ambition and to the insistence of his friends. I have wished over and over again that he might have had the strength to decline when he was urged, for he seldom assumes seriously the responsibilities of his office. It would be better usually for all concerned if