DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT THE MACMILLAN COMPANY MBW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THZ MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTDL TORONTO DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT Being a series of essays on some of those who tread the green carpet BY THOMAS ARKLE LARK Dean of Men, University of Illinois gotk THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 AU right* reserved COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY St up and electrotyped. Published March, 1921. Ub , ' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN SANTA BARBARA PREFACE HUMAN nature is strangely similar wherever we find it. The college undergraduate does not differ widely in characteristics whether we meet him in Cal- ifornia or Massachusetts; in Michigan or Mississippi. The deductions which are contained in these essays are drawn from an intimate and an extended asso- ciation with undergraduate students at the University of Illinois ; they might, however, have been written at any other institution where similarly close relation- ships were possible. THOMAS ARKLE CLARK. Urbana, Illinois. CONTENTS PAGE DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT i THE BORROWER 27 THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 48 YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 67 " AND SOME MUST WORK " 89 THE POLITICIAN 109 THE CRIBBER 129 THE ATHLETE 155 THE LOAFER 174 THE FUSSER . . 189 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT As long as we deal with youth we shall have pretty regular violation of rule in college. " How long are we to have student outbreaks, and student irregu- larities ? " our president asked me not long ago. " Can't you ever get the boys educated so that we shall not be longer troubled with these things ? " "I could, I think," was my reply, " if I were allowed to work with them long enough. But when they are educated they leave us. A big new crowd of young ones is introduced every year, and the process of edu- cation must be begun again." I remember being asked at one time, with reference to an action taken by the executive body of the Uni- versity, what caused the members to vote as they did ? When I put the question to one of the officers con- cerned, his reply was that it was a question which no one could intelligently answer. Xo two men, he said, have in mind the same reason or purpose in coming to any conclusion. I vote for an issue for one reason, my neighbor for another. It is all a matter of per- sonal judgment. The same thing is true, I have no doubt, with reference to the college derelict. The purposes in the mind of half a dozen different indi- viduals who vote to impose a penalty upon an under- graduate who has been guilty of a violation of college rules are probably in no two cases alike. In the main, I take it, however, there is little if any thought 1 2 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT in the mind of most men that such discipline is to punish the offender as the state for instance might punish crime. The purpose I have kept before me in whatever I have recommended is, first of all, to correct the offender, to turn him in the right direction, to make it less likely that he will of- fend in this regard again. The main function of ed- ucation as I see it is to make good citizens. There is a further one, of course, which discipline subserves, and that is a deterrent one. Offenders are disci- plined because it is hoped by that method to call the attention of others to the fact that certain things are objectionable or wrong, and so to reduce the tendency to such irregularities. There are those whose ideas of right and wrong are so rigid, whose feelings are so strong, that they in- sist that every one who does wrong should submit to a definite punishment which will inflict upon him a certain amount of pain and disgrace. Xot long ago I received a letter from one of our former students, saying that when lie transferred his credits from a neighboring institution to the University of Illinois he had changed two of the grades, and so had received credit for five hours of work to which he was not en- titled. He asked to have this error corrected, and said that when he returned next year to finish his college work he wished to register for the five hours stolen and earn his credit honestly. There was a wide range of opinion among our officials as to what action should be taken in his case. The error was one which by no possibility would have been detected had he not admitted it, and it was an error which af- fected no one but himself, since no one else knew of DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 3 it. One university officer felt strongly that notwith- standing the fact that the man had confessed and ex- pressed a desire to make good the false credits, here was a case which demanded punishment, a more com- plete expiation, and he thought that the student should be expelled. I felt very differently. It seemed to me that a young fellow who had the cour- age to confess a dereliction of this sort and to offer to make such restitution as was possible was well on the way to good citizenship, and should be met half way. In his case the purpose of discipline had been accomplished. Each institution employs its own methods in the handling of disciplinary matters. If the college is small, the president often is the autocrat who decides the fate of the untoward. Sometimes it is the faculty as a whole which deliberates long and seriously over the cases of delinquents. In my own undergraduate days when a young fellow had been drunk, had danced in a college building, had carried away the campus fence to add fuel to the bonfire in celebra- tion of Hallowe'en, or had backed the cannon into the sluggish campus creek in order to show his dis- approval of military drill when he had done any of these things and was caught, he was brought before the entire faculty, assembled in serious session, and here he was tried. It was a harrowing experience, and not one always likely to bring justice. When an entire faculty deliberates on disciplinary matters, there is likely to be much talking, some wrangling, and uncertain conclusions. The responsibility is too widely scattered, and the student and good order are likely to suffer. 4 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT In many institutions these matters are left en- tirely in the hands of the students who through one sort of organization or another sit upon the cases of offenders against good order and college regulations and pass judgment upon them. At other places such matters are handled by a small commit- tee of the faculty, or there may he a combination of these various methods in operation in the same insti- tution. Since I have been a college officer I have had more or less experience with all of these methods. When I was in college I have no recollection that discipline was often enforced. The institution, just previous to my entrance, had recovered from a rather serious attack of student government in its worst form, and disciplinary affairs were running along pretty much by themselves. There was cribbing, but no one seemed to pay much attention to it. I have no remembrance that any one was ever called to account for dishonesty or in any way punished for it during my whole college course. There were student outbreaks, but if anything was ever done to the individuals concerned, they petitioned the faculty, peace was restored, and the offenders were immediately reinstated in their former positions. Xothing short of a riot ever aroused any comment on the part of the faculty, for with us at that time, as 1 have said, it was the faculty before whom the culprit appeared, who heard the evidence, and who after much talk and discussion, pronounced the verdict. For myself, I believe that college discipline may best be administered through a small group or com- mittee of the faculty. The entire faculty of any DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 5 college is too large for such a purpose, and is too conglomerate and bizarre. A man or a woman may be a very good teacher without having any of the judicial qualities which are required in passing upon cases of discipline. Every extreme of attitude to- ward the violations of college regulations will be found in any faculty, from the man who would con- done any overt act to the one who would guillotine or burn at the stake the perpetrator of the most trifling prank. The time necessary to be consumed by a college faculty in this sort of work, if it is taken at all seriously, is beyond all reason, and in the end offers little likelihood of justice to the student. It has never seemed to me good policy that the president of an institution should have entire charge of disciplinary matters, not only because the time of the president of any institution is ordinarily taken up with other matters of equal importance, but also because I do not think such matters should ever be wholly in the hands of one man. The cases are frequently so puzzling and so complicated and so hard to unravel that several heads are better than one. In cases where the evidence is not overwhelm- ingly convincing it is a comfort to feel that one has other men upon whose judgment one can rely and upon whom one can fall back in case of difficulty. Every college president who does not think himself omniscient will feel the same way. Many institutions throw the burden of deciding all disciplinary cases, such as those concerned with cribbing, and stealing, and drinking, upon a commit- tee of students or a student council. I have talked with a number of college officials the disciplinary 6 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT affairs of whose institutions are so managed, and they all expressed themselves as well satisfied with the result. One officer who was in general charge of undergraduate affairs in the institution to which he belonged said, in speaking to me, that he should not himself want to assume the responsibility of deciding the complicated matters which arise in connection with student discipline; they seemed to him too diffi- cult to solve, but he was very well satisfied to leave such things with the students who were doing it seriously and satisfactorily. His viewpoint seems to me very much as if a banker might say that his financial affairs were so complicated and tangled and so difficult of intelligent solution that lie was more contented to turn them over to his children to be dealt with than to settle them himself. I have always had an abiding faith in students, and I am quite sure that when they set themselves seriously to the accomplishment of even a difficult task it is likely to be done well; but I have had ex- perience in disciplinary matters and know something of other executive problems which may come before a college officer. There is nothing with which I have had to do officially that requires such careful judg- ment as disciplinary matters such diplomacy, such sympathy, such firmness, such freedom from preju- dice and bias, such skill in handling all who are con- cerned with the affair. Tf the lines between good and evil, between truth and falsity, could always be clearly drawn, if motives and the influences which surround the erring student did not have to be con- sidered, if, in short, wo were not dealing with the most subtle and intangible things when we are trvinjr DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 7 to mete out justice in discipline, I should be willing perhaps to trust these matters to the experience of students. But I know how hard these matters are to decide with fairness, how easy it is to make an error, how difficult, if not impossible, to correct one after it is made, and how much is at stake for the undergraduate concerned. The greatest handicap in my experience to success- ful college discipline is the number of rules laid down by the college authorities for the conduct of students. Many college officers feel that when an evil exists or an erroneous custom prevails the only thing necessary is to pass a regulation against the evil or the custom, and the matter is settled. I have found that I can in the long run do far more by suggestion and persuasion than by rule, and do it much more to the satisfaction of the students con- cerned, for often it is possible to have them feel that they have done it themselves. Generally the more rules an institution has, the more difficulty officers find in maintaining good order, and in keeping the young people within bounds. It is safe to take for granted that young people of college age know in the main what is right and what is reasonable as to conduct, so that it is not necessary that every sin in the decalogue or that every viola- tion of law under the statute should be named in the college catalog and the penalty for its violation at- tached. Rules often prevent individual action in specific cases. Every violation of good order should be taken up, looked into, and judged as if it were the only one of its sort. Rules often hamper such judgment. Only a short time ago the members of 8 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT our own disciplinary committee were discussing the penalty which was about to be recommended for a student who had been somewhat irregular in conduct. "I should be glad to vote for this penalty," one of the members said, " if it did not seem to me incon- sistent with what we have previously done in similar cases. The last man we had before us who had been guilty of a similar irregularity received a much more severe penalty." " Any one who has been on this committee long," a second member answered, " must realize that its chief virtue is that it never pretends to be con- sistent. It treats men as individuals, and we have never met two individuals alike." Many college rules are virtually a dead letter because they are difficult or impossible of enforce- ment, and the existence of such regulations can do nothing less than bring the whole system of college statutes into ridicule and disrepute. If a rule is made, some effort should be made to enforce it; though many people think that laws in themselves carry weight, even if allowed to go unexecuted. More than this, the very existence of regulations will frequently incite students to insubordination that would not otherwise have been thought of. " I've just discovered," one freshman said to another, " that it's against the rule to smoke in the quad- rangle. Xow I suppose it will make me sick, but I couldn't let a thing like that go by without having a try at it." I am not arguing against regulations per se ; some, of course, are necessary for the proper conduct of any business or institution, but the fewer DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 9 the better, and then only those which are absolutely necessary. The best way to manage the student guilty of I misconduct is to look after him so personally and so carefully that he may be brought to account just before he has been guilty of the act which would sub- ject him to discipline. The most skilful disciplinary work which I have ever done has been connected with the things that never happened, because they were .^ not allowed to do so. Granted that the college has made few rules, and that there is some one who keeps himself thoroughly conversant with what is going on, there will still be misconduct, and necessity on the part of college officers to exercise authority. Youth is still young and curious and irresponsible, and is quite as likely to be guided by impulse as by judgment. As I have said, I believe that disciplinary matters in college will be more satisfactorily handled to all concerned if put in charge of a small committee of the faculty composed of from three to five persons chosen be- cause of their knowledge of student life and condi- tions, and because of their special fitness to form reasonable and sympathetic judgments on the cases that come before them. The members of such a committee should be young or should have once been young with the memory of that time in mind, and their appointment should so far as possible be a permanent one. They should be broad-minded, and above petty prejudices; they should still be interested in the things outside of books that interest normal healthy young people, such as athletic sports and 10 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT social pleasures; they should have high, moral and scholastic ideals. They should have backbone enough when an unpleasant thing has to be done, and ought to be done, to do it even though it hurts some students and some fathers and mothers. Ordinarily I should not consider it a calamity if neither women nor law- yers were on such a committee. Women are more often than men influenced by their prejudices or their emotions, and lawyers are likely to insist upon a " legal " conviction. Conditions are such that a man should often be allowed to go free who has violated a college regulation, while another man who may not be proved guilty of any actual dereliction may yet clearly be a detriment to the community, and should be sent away. During the years in which, as chairman of our com- mittee on discipline for men, 1 have had to do with discipline at the University of Illinois 1 have had a good many interesting experiences, and have drawn from these experiences some pretty definite conclu- sions. I have come to realize that a disciplinary officer to be successful must have certain personal traits of character. He must first of all have the confidence of both students and faculty. The faculty must feel that matters given into his hands will be dealt with squarely and without delay. Xo college instructor wishes to bo humiliated by having matters of discipline which he reports either ignored or treated lightly. Neither should lie feel that he is compromised, if not every student whom he reports for discipline is found guilty. Some instructors whom 1 have known are as sensitive upon this topic as aeolian harps. I know more than one who re- DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 11 fuses to report cases of alleged cribbing, because of the fact that a student previously reported was not proved guilty by the disciplinary committee. It was not justice they desired but conviction. No disciplinary officer will get on well unless he has a reputation for playing fair. If the college officer is willing to give the square deal, he will have gone a long way toward solving his official difficulties. Pie will sometimes have to listen to some long stories, he will have to bury his prejudices against races and individuals, he will, perhaps, often have to go a long way and suffer some inconveniences to discover necessary facts, but, when the college officer was able to show them that he desired to do the fair thing, the college students I have known have for the most part been square, and have been willing to take with- out complaint or whimpering what was legitimately coming to them for their misdeeds. The college students I have known will use all sorts of subterfuge to shield a fellow student, but they will usually tell the truth about themselves. There are always two sides to a story, and it is never wise to reach a conclusion until both of these have been heard. Xo matter how damaging or convincing the evidence may be with regard to any question under dispute, it is best to hold one's judgment in abeyance until the accused party has been heard and given a. chance to defend himself. Only a few days ago a woman called me on the telephone to settle a dispute with reference to an alleged agreement which she had had with a student. '' Should not a student who has rented a room for a semester, and who leaves before the end of his contract, pay for the whole 12 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT semester?" she asked. "Ordinarily, yes," I replied, " but I should like to talk to the student before an- swering." When I did so, I found that in reality the woman had violated her contract, but wanted still to hold the student to his. One of the things that has impressed me most in the pretty wide experience which I have- had with college discipline is that no two cases are alike, be- cause no two men are alike. There is always some- thing new coming up new character, a new view- point, new conditions, a new view of temptation and weakness. The work can never become mechanical because of its infinite variety. One might think, if he did not know, that, having seen fifty men during a year on fifty different sorts of wrongdoing, there would bo nothing now, and that the next years would be a repetition of the old stories, but it is not tnie. Every case of discipline which I have had to do with was a special case. I have found, too, that women up for discipline are not at all like men. I have not for years had any direct connection with the discipline of women, that work being done by a committee of women, as I think it best perhaps that it should be. The experience which T did have, however, led me to the conclusion that they aro less frank than men, less likely to tell the truth if they have done wrong than men are, because they are more nervous, more temperamental, and have more to lose, as society is now constituted, than men have, if they should be detected in wrongdoing. I have come to look upon the work of discipline in a somewhat different light than T did during the first few years I had to do with it. At first it took DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 13 all the courage and force of will that I could summon to recommend discipline of any sort, and especially the dismissal of a student from college. It is no small matter to send a young fellow from college in disgrace. As time has gone on I have realized more clearly the effect of discipline upon the indivdual, and I have seen, too, that the parent quite as often as the child is at fault, and needs the shock which discipline brings. When one sees the fathers he often feels like being more lenient with the sons. A young fellow who has been detected in a violation of college regulations, whether it be a case of cribbing, or gambling, or stealing, or whatever it may be, almost invariably thinks first of his parents, usually of his mother. I have remarked often, not as a jest, but as a matter of fact, that one parent at least, and often both, of most of the students with whose dis- cipline I have been connected for a good many years has been in the most critical physical, mental, or financial condition, a condition which the boy thinks will end in a complete breakdown if the par- ents hear of the son's disgrace. I have often won- dered why such critical situations do not more often keep sons within the narrow path. " It will break my mother's heart," I am told over and over again by boys who think they are utter- ing the truth, and though this fact is no logical argu- ment if the punishment is deserved, and the good of the University community is to be furthered, I have come to know that it is not true. " If I am sent home," boys say to me, " it will mean that my educa- tion is at an end, and that my father will have noth- ing to do with me further." 1 have had fathers and 14 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT mothers tell me that if their son were dismissed, they would disown him, and though this may sometimes happen, I have never yet known a parent who, when the actual crisis arrived, did not come to the support of his- child. A short time ago I thought I had found an exception, hut the later details proved that I was mistaken. A father and mother sat in my office and talked to an only son who was about to be dismissed for irregularity of conduct. Both said to him firmly that if- he were sent home, he need never appeal to them for help or support; they were through with him for all time. He was finally dis- missed, but I was interested to learn very shortly that he was sent to a neighboring state university, and that he was receiving generous monthly allow- ances from home. I recall another student dismissed for hazing. His case appealed to me at the time because of the peculiar circumstances at home. His parents were both dead, and an older brother with whom, he had many difficulties, was his guardian. This added trouble the boy thought would estrange them com- pletely. T shall not soon forget his downcast an.d. hopeless face when he came to say good-by to me. A year later lie told me that his dismissal from college was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It awakened him to seriousness of life; and more strangely than that it awakened the sympathy of his brother and brought them more closely together than they had ever before been. He came back to the Uni- versity at the end of his period of suspension, a happy boy and a serious student, and as 1 am writing these paragraphs, a letter comes to me from him written DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 15 from a western city where he is now a successful busi- ness man, stronger, perhaps, from the experiences through which he has gone. Another instance is characteristic. When a boy is disciplined, his father is, of course, written. A young fellow this year disciplined, but not dismissed, for some minor divergence from the straight path, showed me a letter which he had just received from his father relative to the notice which the latter had received from me. It was an angry, cruel note, written on the impulse when the chagrined and dis- appointed parent was smarting under the sting of his son's disgrace. In it he said that he was through with the boy, who if he wanted any further educa- tion must himself earn it. He need not come home, he need not ask further for money. The boy was stirred and determined to stay in college; I offered to help him, to lend him money until he could get work, and suggested that I write his father. It was only a few days after I had written until the father came to see me. He was ashamed of his letter, but too proud to take back his statements at once, but before he left me he gave me a sum of money adequate to meet his son's expenses until the close of the year, which I was to lend to him with the statement that it came from a friend who was interested in his welfare, and who wanted to help him out. A little later the two were reconciled, and the story ended happily. My first conclusion, therefore, is that what- ever happens to a boy, the folks at home can be counted on to stand by him. My experience has also led me to the conclusion that the fellow who violates a college regulation or a 16 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT moral principle and who is not detected in it, or who, though detected, is allowed to go without pen- alty, is usually weakened in character by the experi- ence, or confirmed in his bad habits. I stumbled upon the fact one day, early in my experience as a dis- ciplinary officer, that a young fellow just entering his junior year was dissipating his energies and squandering his time and money by gambling. When I called him to the office he was very much agitated and begged for " one more chance." It was the old story of his " first offense." There was the sick mother at home believing in her only son, there was the probable ruin of his college career, there were all the stage effects which I have since come to recognize, and there was the strong assurance that he had learned his lesson, and would give up the habit. Since no other students were concerned, I accepted his word, and dropped the matter. I have since learned that he kept up the practice at irregular in- tervals through his college course, safe in the feeling that if he were caught again he could work upon my fcflings to let him go unpunished. Another case is that of a young man caught in the act of cribbing in an examination. He seemed very penitent, the offense was committed in an environment which made the temptation strong, and he gave his word of honor that such an offense would not be committed by him again. It was not a month before he was again detected, and his only excuse was that since his error had before been condoned, he thought it would be again. The man who escapes punishment, who gets away, does not have his tendencies to error inhibited. There is for him no deterrent. DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 17 Men ultimately see this fact and admit it. " The best thing you ever did for me," one pf our graduates said to me not long ago, " was to send me away from college a year. I thought at the time that it was severe, that it would ruin my chances of finishing my course, that it would break off all friendly rela- tions between myself and my parents, but it braced me up; it gave me the determination to make good; it made a man of me." I remember one Christmas morning, years ago, when a young freshman and his broken, tearful mother sat at my fireside trying to gather up the fragments of what seemed to them a ruined life and trying to gain courage to face the world. The boy had had very meager resources; he had been hard pressed not only for the comfortable, pleasure-giving things which most boys have, but often even for the necessities of life. Opportunity presented itself, and lie had yielded to the temptation to steal from the gymnasium lockers of other students. He had been detected, arrested, lodged in jail, and fined. Now lie was out of college and was going home. It was a sad hour we spent together trying to look facts in the face and to plan a sane future, and it seemed, some- how, a pretty hopeless hour. I urged him to go somewhere else and start again, and he promised to try. A few years later I received an invitation to the Commencement exercises of a reputable western college, and within it a card bearing his name. Two years ago he came to see me at home-coming time. He had done well in college, he was married, and he was doing what he could to make the world wiser and better as principal of a reputable high school. 18 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT The discipline of which I had unhappily at the time been the main cause, he came to thank me for. It had been, he said, the turning point in his life; it had stimulated his will and his ambition to overcome obstacles. He shook hands with me as we parted with tears in his eyes. Another case is similar. Various articles had been disappearing from the coat rooms at the University and from lodging houses about the campus, and I began to suspect a young sophomore. He fell into a trap that was set for him, admitted his guilt when the evidence was presented to him, and was dismissed from college. He was a fellow of some prominence, and all sorts of efforts were made by his friends to have him reinstated. Public officials, relatives, edu- cators, and religious workers all did what they could to have the penalty set aside, not because the man was not guilty, but because of their personal interest in him; but it did not seem best that this should be done. 1 lost track of him for a while, and then one day he dropped into my office to tell me that the discipline which had seemed so cruel to him at the time had proved his greatest blessing. It had aroused him to an appreciation of his own moral danger; it had caused him to think as he had never done before, and it had made him determine' to get a college education. He had entered another college, had graduated, and is now a successful professional man in a growing city in Illinois. One can not have to do with discipline long with- out coming to realize to what lengths the friends of students will go to influence college authorities to set aside penalties which have been imposed. It is not DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 19 that these friends think the student innocent of the charge against him, it is not that they feel that the penalty imposed is in general too severe ; they simply ask for special privilege and special leniency in the cases of their friends. They have worked for the in- stitution ; it owes them something for this effort, and they wish the debt paid through the granting of special moral or intellectual indulgences to their friends. Public officials of all sorts, business men, teachers, and even ministers have written me and called upon me to ask for clemency for their friends and sometimes almost to demand it as a right. For \ the reason that almost every penalty that is imposed will be challenged I have learned that it is wisest in imposing a penalty to make it a conservative one one mild enough reasonably to be defended and justified, and then to adhere to the conclusion reached. It invariably weakens the authority and the confi- dence in the judgment of college officials when dis- S ciplinary penalties are frequently being set aside. As a rule the man himself who is disciplined takes his punishment without whining; he accepts a just penalty, admits his error, and generally comes in to say good-by to me and to ask me to write a some- what detailed explanatory letter to his mother, to give her all the facts and to show her that he is not wholly bad. But parents seldom accept the punish- ment of their children as just. They have the general attitude of a father who talked to me a year or two ago concerning an attack by students upon one of our local theaters. " When I read the account in one of our local papers of the dreadful things those students did," he said, " I spoke right out. If I had 20 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT to deal with those students, I should expel every one of them, hut when later I saw that my son had been caught, I said, ' Why, poor Victor, he is a good boy. They surely will not punish Victor.' " He brought every sort of influence to bear upon us, and even tried to persuade his son to falsify as to the facts; but Victor was guilty, and had to go. The disciplining of the parents and friends of students is a far more difficult and trying task than meting out justice to undergraduates, but it conies in as a part of the day's work. It has never seemed wise to me to convict a student of dishonesty or of any other misdemeanor wholly upon circumstantial evidence, no matter how complete or convincing the evidence may have been. If it has been done we have usually lived to regret it. I should rather let a guilty man go than to convict an innocent .. one. Not long ago we had reported from one of the courses in civil engineering a case of alleged cribbing. The young fellow accused denied all guilt and did so in such a straightforward way that I was convinced he was telling the truth. lie had used in one of his answers, and had used it incorrectly, a table so long and so complicated that it seemed quite impossible that he could have obtained it anywhere excepting by consulting a book. The instructor in the course felt that it was inconceivable that a man before going to a quiz could commit to memory such a long list of figures. There were six columns, twelve items in a column, and seven figures in each item a total of five hundred and four digits to be remembered in order. We deliberated a long time; the student's previous record had not been good, and DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 21 it looked as if he had to be guilty. He protested strongly that he had written the table from memory. Finally one member of the committee turned to the boy. " You say you committed this to memory in the belief that you might get it in the examination ? " " Yes," he replied, " I can commit almost anything at sight." " Do you think you could repeat the table now ? " "I believe so," he said hesitatingly. It was three weeks since he had had the test, but he dropped liis head for a moment and then began. " I'll read the figures across," and he did so haltingly but surely, and in the five hundred and four digits he made an error in but two. I think I shall never vote to con- vict any one on circumstantial evidence again. I have had so many varying experiences with under- graduates and their escapades and irregularities that I have come often to have a sort of intuition as to what has happened as soon as I talk to the student. Two instances of this will suffice to illustrate my point. In one of the large laboratories in chemistry an instructor became suspicious that certain students were collaborating in their experiments, and were not performing all of them. It was thought that each man was doing a part of them, and that the others were working them up from his data, changing the data very slightly to avoid suspicion. [ called the men and talked to each of them alone, as is my custom, before bringing them to the committee. When the committee saw them their explanations were '-o clear and direct as to when and how they had done their experiments that the unanimous recommenda- tion was that the case against them be dismissed. A night intervened before I could take the recommend a- 22 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT tion to our Council for confirmation, as is required by our rules, and during this time I had recurring to me constantly the feeling that one of the men at least was guilty. I held up the recommendation long enough to have another interview with him. At this interview I said to him that though the members of our committee had believed his story and thought him innocent, as I had thought over his manner of giving his evidence I was convinced that he was guilty, that without the other man's knowledge, he had had access to his data and had copied his ex- periment. My frankness seemed to make an appeal to him, and he confessed that my surmises were cor- rect. One of the merchants near the campus not long ago had a number of checks presented to him which turned out to bo forgeries. Tbe custom of taking any one's check is so common with our local mer- chants that it is usually impossible to remember who passed such checks when finally they are detected. As usual he brought these checks three of them to me, to see what 1 could make of them. They all bore the name oi' a well known student, but when I compared his writing with that of the signature on the checks, though there was a similarity, there was no doubt that the signatures were forged. It was evident to me, however, that the man who had com- mitted the forgery had been familiar with the student whose signature he had forged, that he knew his sig- nature, the name of his bank, and something of the amount of money he was accustomed to keep on deposit. " Who is your room-mate now? " I asked the man whose bank account had been threatened, " and DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 23 who was your room-mate last year ? " As soon as he had named his room-mate of the previous year, I was completely convinced that I had found the guilty man. I had in fact had an interview with him that very morning, and I knew something of the financial difficulties he had been in, and I felt strongly the weakness and shiftiness of his character. Before calling him I got from his English teacher his last theme, and I looked up his study list which bore his penmanship and his signature. When I com- pared these papers with the forged signature I found two or three things which interested me. The color of the ink was identical in all cases, the form of sev- eral letters was the same, and the general slant of the letters was similar. After I had gone over these things in my own mind I called the suspected student and told him the whole story. I presented him with the evidence which I had, laid the forged signatures and the samples of his own writing before him, and said to him quite frankly that I thought he had written the forged checks. He turned quite white as I was talking; when I had finished he dropped his head upon the desk for a moment and then looking me in the eye he said, " 1 did do it." I presume that in reality I had little or no convincing evidence against him. Tt was purely a matter of knowing the man and feeling that he was the guilty one. It is a sort of feeling which it would be dangerous to rely upon, and yet it has got me out of a corner many and many a time. There is much in the experience of a college officer as closely connected with discipline as I am to make one cvnical and to cause him to lose faith in human 24 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT nature; all that is low and unclean and dishonest in students I am daily coming in contact with. Yet I am constantly having experiences that show me that men are still honest and conscientious and manly. One busy day a few years ago I received an urgent letter from one of our graduates who had been out only a few months asking me to name a time when I could see him on an important and private matter. The case was urgent, he assured me, and the inter- view meant much to him. He came in a day or two and told me his story. When entering the University he had transferred from another college. By some curious error the registrar of the college from which he had transferred had entered upon his record credit for a subject which he had never taken. He had let the error go without mentioning it, the subject had been transferred to his University credits, and he had used it toward graduation. The whole mistake had arisen through no direct act of his own, and he had weakly let it go. The deceit had weighed constantly upon his conscience until he could bear it no longer. He was quite willing to relinquish his diploma or to reenter the University and make up the amount which had been falsely credited to him. I thought that perhaps there might be some other solution of the matter and went over his college credits with that hope in mind. I found to my satisfaction that by a slight readjustment of his work the surplus credits could be discarded, and that lie still had credits enough honestly earned to meet the requirement for graduation. I sent him home happy, and so far as 1 know, he and I are the only ones who know all the details of the story. DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 25 Two years ago I had another experience with a young fellow caught in a really serious college esca- pade, which strengthened materially my faith in human nature. It was a situation in which the boy knew that if he told the truth he would be per- manently dismissed from college. I knew all the details of the case, but this fact he was not aware of. In spite of the penalty which he knew would be inflicted, and ignorant of what I already knew he told our committee as frank and straightforward a story as I have ever heard, and though his father is a man of wide influence in the community in which he lives, the boy accepted his punishment in a thor- oughly manly fashion and left me with the most friendly feeling. It gave me the greatest satisfaction a few months ago to be able to write him that because of his truthfulness and because of the manly way in which he had received his punishment, our Council had reconsidered its action in the case and would allow him to return to the University next fall an action which had been taken in reference to no other similar offender in ten years. I was walking across the campus one bright spring morning not many years ago when I came upon a young sophomore sitting on the senior bench. " I thought you'd be along soon," he said, " and so I was waiting for you." " What can I do for you, Ralph ? " I asked. " Well," he answered, " I was drunk last night, and I had to tell some one; so I thought I'd It'll you." The sequel doesn't matter so much, I sup- pose. I am glad to be convinced daily that there are .-till honest men in college men who have courage to tell the truth even when the tmth brings public 26 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT disgrace to them, men who are willing to confess their faults even when such confession means dismissal. I seldom lose track of the fellows who for one reason or another have been disciplined by the Uni- versity. Even if their dismissal is a permanent one they write to me, or send me messages, or drift at in- tervals in a friendly way across my path. I count them among my closest and warmest friends. Only this afternoon one of them called me up to ask a few words of advice and to make a kindly inquiry about my health. There is lying in my basket of un- answered correspondence one of the kindest letters I ever received from a boy whom I was instrumental in sending away from the University. There is never a Christmas that I do not hear from some of the once derelicts who send me good wishes or the baby's picture. It gives me the greatest pleasure to know that these men are almost without exception doing a man's work in a manly way, and that out of their discipline has come for them a real strength of character. THE BORROWER WHEN I used to lie awake at night and try to devise means of disposing of the money which I should make by writing a book or through my investments in oil stock, one of the philanthropic plans which sug- gested itself to me most frequently of getting rid of my spoils, was to found a loan fund for needy students by which boys with ambition and no finan- cial backing should be able to borrow money easily to complete a college education. I had been desper- ately hard up myself as an undergraduate, and I had a more than ordinarily sympathetic feeling for others in the same situation and a desire to mitigate their pain. I know a good deal more about the college borrower, however, than 1 did twenty years ago, and though I still believe in college loan funds, I am not so sure as T once was that money or an education too easily obtained is always highly valued. T have found that not all of the young fellows in college who are willing to borrow money deserve to be helped, and that many who most deserve help are unwilling to borrow. 1 have seen the college borrower in a new light. It so happens that my official position has given me an unusual opportunity to observe two classes of men in college who want to be helped out of financial holes: those who have come to me for personal and immediate help because I seem good- natured and easy, and those who come to me as an 27 28 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT official of the University, who for some years has had general charge of the University loan funds. I have gained the confidence, also, of not a few soft-hearted friends who have at one time or another yielded to the touch of the indigent undergraduate, and who have told me whether they have lived to regret their momentary and monetary weakness or to rejoice that the chance had been given them to help a needy and a worthy youth. From these two experiences I have accumulated a considerable body of experience and have formulated generalizations. Our loan funds at the University of Illinois are safeguarded by numerous regulations and restric- tions so that it is not possible for an undergraduate who finds himself out of funds in the morning to negotiate a loan from his alma mater before evening. The prospective borrower must fill out an application blank, he must give references, he must, in most cases, offer security and must submit the names of at least two persons who know him and who are acquainted with the individual whose name he offers as security for the repayment of his loan. All this takes time sometimes it requires a month for all the preliminaries to be gone through, for few people answer letters promptly, and some otherwise good citizens never answer them at all, and so possibly save themselves considerable bother, as do those worthy though unprogressive individuals who refuse to in- stall a telephone. The borrower who lias not made his plans sufficiently far ahead of time is sometimes annoyed by what he considers unnecessary red tape and inexcusable delay. A young fellow called on me only a few weeks ago wishing to get help from one THE BORROWER 29 of our loan funds. His monthly check* had not come, he had an engagement out of town, he needed thirty dollars immediately, and he wanted to catch the after- noon train. When I explained to him that our loan funds were not primarily to relieve such cases of distress as he presented, but even if we should be willing to make a loan to him it would take at least two weeks and possibly a month to get it approved, he was quite disgusted, and went out of my office muttering anathemas against the system. The undergraduate who borrows money is usually inexperienced in financial matters. He has estab- lished nothing that resembles credit, he is ignorant of all such things as interest and security and dis- count except as he may have come into contact with the terms while pursuing the study of arithmetic in the grades. He has seldom signed a promissory note before, and he usually signs this first one, unless some one insists otherwise, without reading it. He is told, perhaps, that the note bears five per cent, interest from date and that it will fall due in two years and eight months. This fact, however, is not likely to make any serious impression upon his mind excepting that it seems a sufficiently safe distance in the future to cause him no immediate uneasiness or worry. I have never known more than a half dozen student borrowers who got the date of the maturity of their note so definitely in mind as to be sure of it without a notification from the bursar. It is true that all of our regulations and requirements are down in black and white and are given to every student to be read when he applies for a loan, and though he affirms when he makes application for his loan that 30 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT he has read these regulations, and though I have no doubt he goes over them, they seldom make any last- ing impression upon him. Most students have the feeling that it should be easier in a college town to borrow money not only from the college itself, but from private individuals, than in any other community. The contrary of this is in fact true, for men with money who live in a college town have had more experiences in lending it and more opportunities to lend it to undergraduates than have other people and have learned something from that experience. Every week almost through- out the college year some student, down in his finan- cial luck, often a man whom T have never seen before on his first registration day, comes cheerfully and con- fidently into my office and asks, " Could you tell the name of some one in town who would lend me some money ? " "Can you give security?" T inquire. He sel- dom knows what T mean by the term, but when I explain T find almost invariably that he can not, so that the banks are out of the question. I generally explain to such a man that the place for him to get money is at home where he has friends, where people know him, and where, if he has lived a steady, depend- able life, there are no doubt those who would be willing to trust him; but he generally leaves me dis- contented and disappointed. T am surprised often, too, at the optimism of many of those who wish to borrow. Fellows who have not been able to save anything in the past are eager to tax the future, confidently expecting that what has proved impossible this year will offer no difficulties THE BORROWER 31 next. A man came into my office last fall and said that he would like very much to en tor college. He, however, had no money and his entrance was de- pendent entirely upon his ability to borrow a sum sufficient to carry him through the year. He was not young was in fact, I discovered by inquiry, twenty-eight years of age. He had been out of high school eight years, had had a fair position during all that time, was without responsibilities excepting to take care of himself, but he had not saved a cent; he did not have enough money to pay our matricu- lation and incidental fees, which are in reality trifling. I told him that it would be impossible for the Uni- versity to lend him money, because it now has a regulation that no loans are available to students until they have been in residence for at least one year, but I went further to show him that if he had only himself to support, and had held a good position for so many years without saving a little money at least, so far as any loan was concerned he was what I should call a pretty poor bet. Any individual or institution would be doing a foolish thing if it lent him money with the idea that it would within any reasonable time be paid back. The man who does not look ahead before he enters upon any enterprise to determine how he is going to complete what lie has undertaken, as well as the undergraduate who enters upon the work of a year in college without having determined upon some way in which he may be able to meet his expenses, is ordinarily a poor risk. If he borrows money he will be (juite as unlikely to make definite plans to pay it back and will come up to the time of the maturity of 32 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT his note with hardly more than enough money to pay the interest. It is the fellow who applies early for his loan, who makes his plans a reasonable time ahead, who usually proves to be the best risk. A man who goes into debt should have in mind at least two reasonable ways for meeting his obligation, so that if one failed the other might prove dependable, just as a boy pursued by an angry bull in a pasture should be able to figure, as he flees to safety, that if he is unable to climb over the fence he may dodge under. He should take into consideration, also, the fact that it is the unexpected usually that happens. The fel- low who never had an accident in his life, and who, therefore, considers it unnecessary to carry accident insurance is often the first to slip on the stairway and break a couple of ribs. The man who borrows should take into account the ordinary accidents and unex- pected exigencies of life, but it is rarely that he does do so. The granting of loans from the funds which 1 have to do with is usually restricted to students of good or excellent scholarship. In presenting to the University the money for establishing one of our funds, the donor said specifically : " I do not wish loans to be granted from this fund to students simply because they are ambitious and needy. I feel that a groat University should give special aid only to those men and women who show distinct promise of intellectual power and success." It is true, however, that many an undergraduate while having to work for his living in college seems intellectually commonplace, but it' through a loan he is permitted to give all of his time to his work, THE BORROWER 33 he shows at once a marked increase in intellectual power. I have not, however, found that the scholas- tic standing of a student is in any dependable way an index of whether or not he will show promptness in the repayment of a loan. As often as not the dullard is as conscientious in meeting his financial obligations as is the high brow. One significant fact has shown itself in the col- k-cting of loans due the University. We have three principal loan funds. From one of these the loan is made to the individual student upon his own personal note without endorsement by a second person. Xotes drawn upon each of the other two funds require se- curity. Xo insistence has been made that these last notes be bankable, but only that a second person who has been recommended as honest and reliable sign them. Even when these notes are not paid when due there is seldom an attempt made to collect from the security. In but one instance, so far as I now re- member, during the twenty years that the funds have been available has an endorser of a note been required to pay. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the notes that bear an endorsement are met with much greater promptness and regularity than are the other notes. It is not an exaggeration, I believe, to say that the unendorsed notes run twice as long, before they are finally met, as do those which bear an endorsement. The man who gives only his personal note feels safer, knows usually that a collection could with difficulty be forced, and so feels justified in taking his time. A few years ago a wealthy friend of education offered to present to the University five-hundred dol- lars a year to be given to such needy students as the 34 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT University might designate and in such sums as might be determined. This was done for one year, but the effect upon the men themselves was to my mind not a good one; they were not stimulated by it, their self- respect and self-reliance were not strengthened. I therefore wrote the trustee of the fund suggesting that the amount which he should put at our disposal be lent to students, rather than given to them, at a low rate of interest for a reasonable period of time and upon its repayment that it be used to increase the fund available. This was done, and the effect in my opinion has been much more salutary. What we get for nothing we seldom value. The time set for the repayment of the loans, which I am discussing, is two years following the date of the borrower's regular or expected graduation. It has been interesting if disappointing to me to find that only a very small percentage of the loans are paid within that time ; if they were, the University would each year have at its disposal nearly twice as much money available for loans as it now has. The time the notes actually run, I have no doubt, if the matter were investigated, is fully twice as long as that agreed upon. Most of the loans are ultimately paid, for however careless he may be and however long he may delay the liquidation of his debt, the college borrower is innately honest and at least means well. There are exceptions to this last statement of course, one of which I recall. T met an old college acquaintance of mine a few months ago. Tie had been graduated twenty-five years or more, and though he had not made any marked success in his profes- sion, yet he was in comfortable circumstances and THE BORROWER 35 without a family depending upon him. He was re- calling old friends and old experiences. " You know the President lent me two hundred and fifty dollars in my junior year," he said. " I suppose the debt's outlawed long ago." " Haven't you paid it ? " I asked him in astonish- ment. " No," he replied quite nonchalantly. " He never pushed me, and so I just let it go. He's dead now, anyway." There was no suggestion in his tone of obligation or gratitude or shame for having treated a friend badly ; and the kindly old man who had done him the service had lived a life of sacrifice and died in comparative poverty, no one knowing how much of his savings had gone with the two hundred and fifty dollars which my college acquaintance referred to. The actual reasons why the college borrower does not pay are usually the reasons of youth, for youth is optimistic, the future always looks bright; to-morrow is to be a more successful day than to-day has been. There is no coefficient of error introduced into his calculations for the future, and lie seldom if ever prepares for the worst or for the unexpected. Some men are thoughtless, careless, and indiffer- ent. Having made an obligation, the fact passes out of their mind entirely until their attention is called to it. Under these circumstances they are quite unlikely to be in any position to meet the obliga- tion because they have not prepared to do so. Some, naturally, have ill-luck. Their wages when they get to work are lower than they anticipated; ill- ness overtakes them, ami a hospital bill, and a doctor's 36 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT bill have to be paid; unforeseen calamities arise in their immediate families, for which they were not prepared, and for which they were not responsible. All these things must be taken for granted, and expected, but they do not indicate the usual nor the normal condition of affairs. Other graduates fall into situations at once in which unusual opportunities for investment present themselves. They are thereupon loath to use their money for the payment of a debt which seems to many of them, now that the money has been spent, very much like putting their earnings into a dead horse. "I could have paid the loan a long time ago," one man frankly wrote me, " but I could get money no- where else at so low a rate of interest, and my invest- ments were bringing me so much more than this that T could hardly be expected to withdraw them just as I was getting a financial start to pay this debt. The University can afford to lose better than T can." A few men take advantage of any chance to evade payment. T am reminded of one of these whom I had personally helped. He was not eligible for one of our regular loans. He was down financially, had a chance to get a good job in a distant city, but had no money to pay his transportation. I came to the rescue and took his personal note for the thirty-live dollars required lo carry him to his destination. When I wrote him a year later suggesting payment of the sum borrowed, he replied that it was at that time inconvenient for him to pay; besides, lie added, the debt was uncollectible since he was not of legal age when he signed the note. He was, therefore, THE BORROWER 37 he alleged, at liberty to pay when and if he pleased. There are not many like him, thank heaven. It is a curious coincidence that of the eight men whose loans from one of our funds are longest over- due seven are lawyers. Perhaps their knowledge of the law has helped them in the evasion or the neglect of their obligations. Tt will at once be said by some one that the explanation of the phenomenon lies in the fact that lawyers are long in getting established, and that these men are not making enough money to meet their obligations, that they must spend what they make in order to keep up a respectable appear- ance. This is a good explanation, but in this case it is not the correct one. Of the ten lawyers whom I have repeatedly written concerning overdue accounts only one has replied; no one has paid, though all are quite able to pay. A great manv fail to meet their obligations on time because they plan to pay in one sum what they have borrowed. Almost every one who goes out from college could, from the very beginning spare five or ten or fifteen dollars a month from his salary and so gradually reduce hi? debt: but when it comes to hav- ing at hnnd two hundred or three hundred or five hundred dollars, the situation becomes more compli- cated if not impossible. There are too many tempta- tions surrounding the man just out of college tending to separate him from his money to make it likely that he will have available at one time the total sum of his indebtedness. Tf he bocrins by making monthly payments lie will lie surprised how quickly the debt will be cancelled without any apparent embarrassment to himself. 38 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT But the excuses already given explain only a small percentage of the cases where notes are not met at the time of maturity. Far and away the largest number of graduates who fail to meet their notes when they become due give matrimony as the only excuse. Whether the self-supporting student who must borrow while he is in college is after he gradu- ates less experienced in the affairs of the heart or more sentimental than the average, it is a fact that he is the first to gather his family gods under his own roof-tree, and, ignoring or forgetting his former obligations, to take to himself a wife. It has be- come quite a habit with me now, when a former student does not pay his loan when it becomes due, to suppose that he has married, or knowing that he has married and that his regular monthly pay- ments have ceased, to surmise that his family has increased in size, and my supposition is nearly always correct. A few years ago I found in the morning mail an appealing letter from a former undergraduate. He had been out of work for some time until all his funds had gone. Xow, however, he had found a good job. His only trouble was that he did not have at hand, nor could he get, sufficient money to meet the most simple living expenses until he should obtain his first month's pay. Would 1 not, remembering our former friendship, let him have twenty-five dollars until pay day, and thus virtually save his life? I sent him a check for the amount asked for, but did not hear from him for months. I wrote him two or three times, but even my letters brought me no re- spouse. Then one day when 1 was in the city I called THE BORROWER 39 him up on the telephone and inquired courteously why I had not heard from him. He seemed reluctant at first to give me any definite explanation, assured me that it had been his specific intention to write me that very day, and, finally, when pressed admitted that he married immediately following the receipt of my check and added that I, being married myself, could well understand that the necessity of buying furniture and establishing a home left him no sur- plus to meet obligations previously incurred. I un- derstood perfectly. Incidentally I have not yet re- ceived my money, though I have had a postal card picture of the new baby and a brief line from father indicating that he expected soon to send me a remit- tance. A few quotations from those who have assumed later matrimonial obligations will illustrate the ex- cuses I receive for delayed payments: "My wife's hospital bill has added an extra burden during the last year/' one man writes ; " I am to be married in December," says another, " and do not find myself financially where I expected." " In September after my graduation," moans a third, " I was married, and my salary was reduced to a living wage. I, therefore, find it impossible," etc. Here are a few more : " To be frank with you, I have had money enough to pay the loan at two dif- ferent times, but six months ago I took the best girl in the world in wedlock." " If you ever began life on a small salary, with some indebtedness, in a city where the cost of living is high, you would appreci- ate," etc. " My expenditures are those of a married man with one child." 40 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT Matrimony seems to be thought an adequate excuse for all sorts of financial delinquencies, since fully sev- enty-five per cent of those students who have availed themselves of the advantages of our loan funds in the past, find it the only excuse they have to offer for not meeting their obligations on time. So often is the excuse given that I have recently had inserted in the application blank which students fill out when asking for a loan, this question, " Do you contem- plate marrying soon?" In all this that I have re- lated something seems to me wrong. Is it our sys- tem, or our teaching, or is it that the student who makes the loan has an inadequate conception of his obligation, or does marriage like war constitute an adequate and legitimate excuse for a man's not meet- ing his financial obligations promptly? There is another class of borrower, however, in col- lege whom most undergraduates who have soft hearts and easy purse strings, and whom all college officials are acquainted with. These men are those who do not wish to take advantage of the more formal meth- ods of obtaining help through the regular loan funds established by the institution, but who are only tem- porarily insolvent and who are expecting checks on the next mail or legacies at the convening of the next term of court. I had a man ask me for a loan once who had an aged grandfather upon whose deatli he was expecting rather generous returns. I had the strength of character to refuse the request, and though that was years ago, at last reports grandfather was as hale and hearty as ever. These men seldom want a great deal, but they want it at once to meet the pressing obligation or to catch THE BORROWER 41 the waiting car. I think I have not, more than or- dinary men, found it difficult to resist their plausible arguments, but my experience with them has been varied and interesting. They are the harder to resist because their plea is so reasonable and their need so urgent. I have done business in one way or another with a good many of them within the last twenty years, and though the most of them have paid, so far as I now remember, only six have strictly kept their agreements. Until a week ago it was only five, but last week a man to whom I had lent thirty dollars, paid me three days before he had agreed to do so and surprised and almost shocked me by adding twenty-five cents for interest. " Do you know where La Rue is now and what he is doing ? " one of my faculty friends asked me the other day. " He's married and has a good job in Peoria," I replied." Why do you ask ? " " Well, he borrowed a hundred dollars from me just before he graduated with the understanding that it was to be paid within a few months, and I've not seen hide nor hair of him since. If he were hard up I did not want to press him, but if he is able to pay I thought I might as well have the money as he." Few weeks go by that I am not approached by stu- dents with the request that I endorse a note for them at the bank in order that they may make a short time loan. In my younger and less experienced days I used occasionally to do this when I thought I knew my man, but after I had paid a few of these notes at times which were often annoymgly inconvenient to me, I came to the conclusion that I should under no 42 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT circumstances endorse a note for a student or any one else for that matter. If I had the money and felt so inclined I might let him have it, and if I did do this it would be with no idea of being able to count on its return at the time he agreed to do it. If he did pay it when he agreed to, it was just like finding it ; if he did not I was not surprised. I felt always in such a case as Josh Billings in his beatitude " Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be dis- appointed ! " An experience of this sort was mine only a few months ago. A young fellow whom I knew very slightly presented himself at my desk with a promis- sory note in his hand for forty dollars all filled out and ready for my signature. " I can't do it, Mack," I said, " I'm sorry, but I've paid my share of that sort of note, and I've sworn off." " You wouldn't have to pay this one," he assured me. " That's what they all said," I continued, " and I have no doubt they honestly meant it." He seemed so disappointed and in so difficult a place that I was rather sorry for him. " If T should sign the note," I asked him, "how would you meet it? Where is the money corning from?" " I have a pretty generous allowance," he ex- plained, " and I am sure I could easily pay ten dol- lars a month out of it if I could get this money, and I surely do need it very seriously." I hesitated a moment and then said, " I'll lend you the money myself and take your note for six months. That ought to give you plenty of THE BORROWER 43 time." I gave him the money, took his note, ana ne left me. I did not see him again until after the end of the six months and then only because I sent for him. When he came at my call he paid a part of his indebtedness, made no explanation of his delay, prom- ised to pay the rest within a few days, and passed on. That is the last time I have seen him. Well, per- haps it all went in a good cause, for Mack joined the army and fought for his country. My experience with him, however, is typical and characteristic. Some one who reads this article may say that I am over-pessimistic, that my faith in the honesty and promptness of the undergraduate is weak, and that any inference drawn from the facts and incidents presented herein would tend to discourage any one who might have a tendency to help the needy under- graduate in college. I hope that this is not true. No one can surpass me in the confidence and faith 1 have in the college man. I think he will meet his obligations, but 1 think because of his youth and in- experience that he will seldom do so within the time that he first sets for himself ; and if he can not do so he will seldom make any explanation or offer any ex- cuse. He argues that if he can not pay, it does no good just to say so. I believe, on the whole, that those men who have given money to aid needy students more readily to finish their college course have done well better even sometimes than do those who endow libraries, or who erect fine buildings for educational purposes, be- cause those who aid the self-supporting student are equipping men more quickly, and directly for life. Those, too, who might otherwise be developed into 44 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT broad-minded, cultivated students, if they have to give all their time to earning a living, are' often kept narrow and inefficient by the hard, cruel grind. If I were to come to the aid of the borrower in college I should do so with my eyes open, I should face the actual facts which experience with these things had taught me, and I should surround the granting of these loans with such restrictions as would make them comparatively safe risks. Of course if the terms upon which loans are granted by the college are so rigid as to make it next to impossible for the needy undergraduate to meet them, the whole purpose of the loan is defeated. If the student must meet the conditions which a bank imposes then, barring the fact that the college loan is usually made at a somewhat lower rate of interest than one must pay at the bank, the borrower might quite as well patronize his local bank. I should not make such loans prohibitive, but I should grant them only after a careful investigation and study of the character and need of the prospective borrower; for after all the main safeguard in making such a loan is the personal character of the individual who is re- ceiving the loan. I should very seldom lend money to students under the junior year. If the under classman must begin to borrow he is likely so heavily to handicap himself with debt at the very beginning of his college course that be grows discouraged, gives up the task, and never graduates. Tie is too young usually to realize the meaning of debt. Since such a man seldom graduates, he, therefore, does not fit himself for rapid advancement in any line of work which he may take THE BORROWER 45 up, and he finds it difficult to save enough money be- yond his living expenses to meet any considerable debt. The man who does not begin to borrow before his junior or his senior year can usually see the end not far away, and he struggles on to the finish. If he does not immediately marry he stands a good chance of shortly paying up his obligation. I believe in a young man's marrying early, but or- dinarily I think he should not do so while he is in debt. It is not so cheap for two to live as one and never has been, and the young fellow who takes a wife faces the probability of doctor bills, of increasing family, and of irregular employment, and these con- ditions are not conducive to the payment of old debts. For this reason, just stated, I have usually hesitated to recommend a loan to any applicant when it seemed likely that he would marry before his debt was fully paid. The loan most easily obtained is usually the one least appreciated and least likely to be repaid. I be- lieve it is a good thing for the student who wishes to avail himself of the privileges of a college fund to be required to offer some security. Life insurance is a protection in case of the borrower's death, but any one who has lived twenty years or more should not find it impossible to secure an endorser of his note, a mem- ber of his family or a friend, who at least has the rep- utation for honesty even if he is not to any large ex- ten a property holder. The fact that two names are on a note shows that there is some one who is willing to vouch for the borrower's honesty. There is a cer- tain responsibility upon the student, also, to make good, to meet his obligation, and to justify himself 46 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT in the eyes of the man who trusted him sufficiently to put his name to a note. 1 used to feel otherwise, but an experience with hundreds of borrowers has changed my viewpoint entirely. A student should seldom borrow, during any year, more than half the amount necessary to meet his col- lege expenses. He should have saved something from his work during the summer vacation, and if he can get no help from home, he can always find leisure time which can be profitably utilized in adding to his income and the use of which for this purpose need not interfere either with his pleasure or his studies. A small debt is often an incentive to the man just out of college to work hard and save his money, but a heavy one is likely to take most of the joy out of life, and to discourage the debtor utterly. Whether loans should be made to students with high scholastic standing only, depends upon whether one is interested mainly in scholarship or in citizen- ship, and though I should think it unwise to put much money into the intellectual development of the dullard, T should never confine my beneficences to high-grade students only. The average man is for purposes of citizenship quite worth while, and quite worthy of any help which may be bestowed upon him. I should still like some day to found a loan fund for needy students, but I should not be willing to lend to every one who asks, or even to every one who is in real need. Sometimes the eager borrower is lazy ; he is not willing to work as he might to keep himself in funds. Sometimes he is inefficient and lacking in initiative, so that he has not been able to avail himself of opportunities for other sorts of help THE BORROWER 47 which were at hand. Sometimes he has not lived within his means and wishes to borrow only that he mav live more extravagantly than he should. I should not want to lend to any of these, nor should I make it too easy even for the best of fellows to get a loan. It is a good policy for the upperclassman who is hard up, if he has a definite purpose before him and an average mind and body, to borrow money to get him over the last hard pull of the senior year. I have always been sorry that I did not myself borrow more. Had I done so I could have accomplished more during my last year. But the man who bor- rows should really be a man who takes his obliga- tions seriously, who meets them promptly, who, when he gives his word, keeps it. THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT ONE spring morning not long ago when I came to my office to begin the work of the day I found, as it is quite common to do, a young man waiting to see me. lie was flushed and embarrassed as he entered my private office, and he asked me if I would consider what he should tell me in the interview which was to follow as entirely confidential. He begged that what- ever facts and names he might divulge to me should be held strictly between ourselves. I gave him my assurance, and he continued with his story. He was the manager of an important undergraduate enter- prise which necessitated his handling during the year some thousands of dollars. One of his duties at the outset had been to make a contract for supplies for the year. A friend of his, an upper classman, had come to him in the fall and had presented a proposi- tion by which each was to receive a bonus of one hun- dred dollars in cash, if the contract should go to a definite local firm, lie weakly and thoughtlessly yielded, hoping to get out of it or in some way to jus- tify his action to himself, and now the contract had been fulfilled, and his friend was urging him to col- lect and divide the bonus. " I have never consciously done a dishonest tiling in my life/' he said to me, " and I some way can not bring myself now to profit in this irregular way. If I take the money, 1 shall feel myself a crook all my 48 THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 49 life ; if I tell my friend that I have changed my mind and do not think it right that we should take this money, he will be sure that I am not playing the game fairly with him, that I am joking, and am in- tending to collect the money and use it all for my own benefit." I suggested to him a way out of the difficulty which was quite satisfactory, and he went off relieved and resolved for the future to keep in the straight path of honesty. His is only one of the many in- stances, which come to my attention almost daily in a large educational institution, of the business temp- tations which beset students, and of the close rela- tionships between the undergraduate and graft. The unsophisticated is likely to think of the college life as a protected, shielded life, a life which one spends in the study of books and of nature, afar off from the transactions and the temptations of the sor- did business world. This may be true under certain conditions and in certain institutions, but not in the large universities of the Middle West. In the simple life of the small college there is lit- tle opportunity, in the undergraduate activities as they are carried on, for profit or for dishonesty. No large amounts of money change hands, and the stu- dents who have charge of undergraduate affairs do not often have their characters put to the test of hon- esty. In my own undergraduate days there were fewer than four hundred students in the institution in which I was doing my work. There was little money coming in from athletics, there was a deficit in our class annual, and no one was paid for working on the college paper, for the very good reason that it 50 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT required labor and finesse for the business manager to meet the bills for its publication, let alone to pay any one for working upon it. We were satisfied to gain experience, though if there had been any loose money we should no doubt have shared it eagerly. Class functions and class invitations and student op- eras and plays and publications were either not a part of our undergraduate life or else their conduct en- tailed such a minor expenditure of money and was so simple in its nature that there was no thought or possibility of graft. In an institution of eight or ten thousand students the case is very different. The student publications alone of the University of Illinois last year involved the letting of contracts and the expenditure of money to the extent of ninety thousand dollars, and practi- cally all of this money was handled by students, and much of the profit divided among them. The expen- diture of the senior class for their invitations, and ball, and breakfast, and class hats, and commence- ment caps and gowns would even at the most conserv- ative estimate reach ten thousand dollars, and the contracts for all of these things were made by stu- dents, and the bills paid by students. The amounts may seem large, but when it is remembered that the number receiving degrees exceeded one thousand, the expenditure is very moderate. If one should go into it thoughtfully, he would be quite astonished to real- ize the thousand and one undergraduate interests which require the making of contracts, the collection of considerable sums of money often running into thousands of dollars, and the payment of bills by in- experienced careless undergraduates upon whom there THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 51 is little effective check, and who themselves are un- likely if allowed to go undirected or unsupervised to keep any intelligent or intelligible account of their receipts or their expenditures. In any of the Middle West state universities the sums of money handled by students in the conduct of undergraduate affairs will run annually into tens of thousands of dollars. The young men who make up the student body of any of our Middle West universities when they enter college are, many of them, not unfamiliar with the ways of the world. They know what it means to get or to hold a job through the influence of friends ; they may not call it " pull," but it is the same thing under another name. They are not inclined to work " for their health," and if they do a piece of work, even if it be only having their names on a hat com- mittee, they can not always see why they should not profit by it in some material way. They are strongly imbued with the commercial spirit. Much of the foolish talk which they have heard about college has been mixed with stories of graft in undergraduate affairs, and many fellows come to college with the idea that if you are anything of a wise guy you can pick up money almost anywhere about a college campus. The editor of the summer edition of our college daily was complaining to me not long ago that he was having to do most of the work on the paper himself this summer, and that it was really more than he was able to accomplish. " Haven't you a staff? " I inquired, with the mem- ory of a long published list of names of editors in my mind. 52 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT " Why, yes," was his reply, " but you see they don't get anything out of it, and you can't expect a fellow to work for nothing these days." It is a significant fact that if you ask a young fellow in college now to perform any sort of service, the first question he is likely to ask is, "What's there in it?" It is the slogan of our times whicli our young men have learned at home from the conduct of politics and the conduct of business. We are supposed to preach higher ideals in college, but it is hard to supplant a doctrine of selfish personal interest and profit with one of altruism. The fact that it is becoming more and more popu- lar to go to college and that every year, with us at least, there is an increasingly larger number of under- graduates who must earn their living, has its influ- ence, I have no doubt, upon this desire for graft. I do not mean to indicate that it is the men who have the greatest need for money to meet the daily de- mands for food and lodging who arc most concerned in the illegitimate ways of obtaining money, and to whom these temptations come more strongly. Quite the contrary in fact; but when one-third of the men in college, as is the case with us, are concerned in some way in earning the whole or a part of their living there is bound to be a good deal of talk cur- rent relative to these matters, and when one is daily rubbing up against men who are bringing in a few dollars, it is not strange that one should look about him, even though not pressed by want or dire need, in an attempt to discover if there is not some easy money in reach which he may pick up. If no one were earn- ing money, perhaps no one else would want to do so, THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 53 but the sight or the rumor of other fellows adding to their incomes by steady work or clever financiering stimulates cupidity, just as when I go by an ice cream refectory and see a few friends sitting in the window refreshing themselves with lemon stirs and bostons, my thirst rises. "When Mclntyre came to me this spring and wanted me to help him collect a bill of fifty dollars from the freshman class for doing work which hi* office re- quired him to do free of charge, I refused. " Why do you want this ? " I asked, knowing that Mac got a generous check from home every month, " you have plenty of money " ; not that that fact would have made any difference if he had been entitled to the money, but just to see what his reaction would be. " Every one else in the house is making some- thing," he explained, "and this seemed my chance. I can't see why I shouldn't make a little on the side even if I do get all I need from home." They were all in the game, and Mac didn't want to be on the side lines. Another thing which, in a state university at least, help? to confirm students in their unwillingness to do anything unless they are paid for it, is the fact, I be- lieve, that the fees which students pay at such an in- stitution are so trifling as to be almost negligible. They pay little or nothing for instruction ; many of their social affairs are in University buildings, their athletic sports and games arc furnished at the lowest possible rate, the University offers them all sorts of entertainments free of charge, and pays a man to get the indigent a job. Since they get almost everything practically free, it is only a short step to the attitude 54 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT of mind that if one does any general college service, or belongs to anything, or is a member of any com- mittee there ought to be a generous rake-off. With this training and tendency of students which I have discussed, with so many student enterprises so organized that they bring in relatively large sums of money, some part of which may legitimately be divided among undergraduates, it is not easy to draw the line at the point where honest remuneration ends and graft begins. An athlete may not take money for his services ; if he does he becomes a professional and, if his act is discovered, he is barred from the team. General college sentiment would not now ap- prove an athlete's being paid even indirectly for his services. It would seem out of place for a member of the glee club to be paid for singing at the regular concerts, though he may be a member of a paid choir at the same time that he belongs to the club and be subject to no comment if the manager presents each member of the club from the profits of the concert a sweater bearing an embroidered monogram, though it would stir up criticism and scandal if they received ten dollar gold pieces. The members of a committee appointed to choose a class emblem or a class hat could not receive salaries for having their names on the committee, but they feel entirely virtuous and above reproach if they accept a hat or two or a watch fob for their work; in fact they would be likely to suffer a real irritation if they did not receive such gratuities. The members of a dance committee get free admission to the dance and charge up as legiti- mate expenses all their regular personal expenditures THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 55 for cabs and candy incident to the party, and these things are seldom looked upon as graft. In some lines of student endeavor the undergradu- ate who manages the business is paid a stipulated sum or gets a definitely agreed upon percentage of the profits for his work and thought. The managers of the glee club and the student opera, and the lecture course, accept a bonus and little is thought of it; the managers and editors of all our student publica- tions receive definite salaries and a share in the extra profits of these different publication* which is often considerable, and they accept this as a right. The question as to what constitutes graft and what constitutes legitimate payment for real services ren- dered, as I said at the outset, is not easy to settle. The manager of the glee club has no little responsi- bility. He organizes the club, he plans the trips and makes all arrangements for the entertainment of the members when they are out of town; he looks after the contracts for engagements, pays the bills, and puts in a tremendous amount of time in getting things in order and in keeping them so. If he should be paid fifty or one hundred dollars, should this be called graft? Again, the undergraduate who has charge of the commencement invitations does not al- ways have an easy job. He is beset by solicitors, he must try to please as many members of the class as possible, he has a considerable amount of detail to look after, must read some pretty difficult proof (and usually does it badly) and be sure that the name of every member of the class is on the list. The invita- tions must be delivered on time and in exactly the 56 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT numbers ordered by each individual. Should he get a rake-off? Only a few years ago when the representative of a well known engraving company in the East was so- liciting an order from the chairman of the senior in- vitations committee he presented two propositions. The invitations five thousand of them or more would be laid down at the college book store for thirty cents each. If a certain paper stock was ac- cepted he would pay to the chairman of the commit- tee for his trouble one hundred and fifty dollars in cash when the order was delivered, or if the chairman did not see his way clear to accept this offer some chairmen do not he would furnish a slightly su- perior quality of paper for the same price. There would be nothing on record or public about this trans- fer of the cash, lie would be handed the bonus in cash which was simply to show in a delicate way the appreciation of the company for this item of business. Was this a legitimate payment for services rendered which the young fellow was at liberty to accept with- out criticism, or not ? Our college daily, managed by students, does a yearly business of twenty or thirty thousands of dol- lars. The annual contract for the printing of this paper is let by a board of trustees composed of four students and three members of the faculty. A few years ago one of the students concerned was ap- proached by a representative of one of the firms bid- ding for the contract with this proposition. His firm would agree to print the paper for a sum as low as the lowest bidder who should make application for the job ; they would also make in every other detail THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 57 a contract as favorable to the interests of the paper as any other contract offered. If the student con- cerned would use his influence and by his so doing they should secure the contract, they would hand him one hundred dollars in currency. The boy was a hard working fellow who was forced to support him- self,, the firm making him the offer was well qualified to carry out such a contract, and there was every probability that he could swing the business in their direction. So far as he could see he would not dam- age the paper nor cause any person inconvenience or loss if he should accept the proposition, and the money he was to receive would carry him easily through one of the hardest financial difficulties he had encountered during his undergraduate course. If he had taken the money, would he have been guilty of dishonesty and graft? A former manager of one of our publications was approached by a representative of the firm that had done work on the publication when the manager re- ferred to was in charge. " If you will help us to get this next contract," he said, " we shall be glad to pay you handsomely as a purely business proposition." The work which the firm had done had been second class, as the former manager well knew, but he volun- teered to take the new manager through the work rooms of the interested firm, showed up their good points, evaded the weak ones, urged the claims of the firm to the new man's consideration and persuaded him to give them his contract. For all this he had his expenses paid and received in cash an amount of money far in excess of what he could have legiti- matelv earned in four times the time consumed in his 58 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT endeavor. Was he dishonest, and was the money which he accepted graft ? In giving these illustrations I have advisedly in- dicated that in each case the remuneration which these fellows accepted or that which was offered them was always cash, never a check or a draft, for when bills change hands, unless they are marked, there is no tangible record and no way for an outsider to run the matter down and get hold of it. Each one of these firms may say, as in fact most of them have said, that there was no such transaction authorized by them and nothing of this sort so far as they are aware ever occurred. The student, also, if he is un- certain as to the integrity of his conduct has no em- barrassing legal witness to rise up to trouble him. If he is asked about the affair he may have forgotten, or he may evade the question entirely. For my own part, I am convinced that we should be living under a healthier business and social regime in college if we could go back to the time when stu- dents worked in undergraduate affairs because they valued the distinction and the honor of the positions which were attainable, and because they were willing through such means to gain acquaintanceship and experience. There was stronger loyalty then, there was a keener college spirit, there was greater develop- ment of character, there was better sportsmanship, for a fellow is a poor sportsman who can not see his way to doing something for the advantage of his col- lege or his class or his organization without receiving payment for it whether such payment be in green- backs or gold watch fobs, whether it comes to him through the operation of regular college rules, or by THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 59 irregular and hidden processes which he hesitates to discuss. We are, however, in most of our colleges at least, working under a different system, looking at the business of undergraduate affairs from a differ- ent viewpoint, and shall have to take things as I find them. If I may answer my own question as to what really constitutes graft in college I should say that it is re- ceiving payment or profit without having the proper authority or sanction from those who actually pay the money or are responsible for its disposal ; or with- out having rendered an equivalent service. If the junior class votes to give fobs to the men who were in charge of the Prom, their acceptance of such a gift under this definition cannot he considered as graft because the class has a right to distribute its own money. If, however, the committee votes itself fobs without the approval or consent of the class, and buys them out of the proceeds of the dance, the case is different. The man who was in charge of the senior invitations, for example, if he should have accepted one hundred dollars might quite legitimately have been accused of graft, for no matter under what felicitous name the transfer of currency might have taken place, no one is foolish enough to think that any one was really paying this amount excepting those who are paying for the invitations and they are doing so without their knowledge or consent. The firm that offered such a bonus made itself safe by adding an equal or a larger amount to the regular selling price of the goods. The fellow who helped to land the contract with the firm that had previously done a second class business with him, in addition 60 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT to perpetrating an ordinary common act of dishon- esty was also a grafter, for the service which he per- formed even if it had been otherwise square was far less in proportion than the remuneration he received. We have a university regulation to the effect that no organization is permitted to hold an entertainment with a view to raising money to be divided among its members. When the members of our dancing clubs, therefore, turn their cash balance into their own individual pockets they are receiving profit con- trary to authority and are guilty of graft. Some- times, perhaps, a practice like this is established so gradually and goes on so long that it loses its original significance and seems to become a legitimate com- mercial enterprise. There is another sort of graft which contemplates a special privilege or looks for favors through rela- tionship or acquaintanceship where a man has given little or nothing for what he expects in return. A student is sometimes accused of " working a graft " when all that is meant is that because of his nearness to an individual or his connection with an office or an organization he may be receiving favors to which he might otherwise not be entitled. If Jones is chairman of the Prom Committee, then Brown who is his roommate, even though he has done no work to merit preferment, expects to fall heir to some sort of soft job where the payment will at least equal if it does not exceed the labor. Fraternity men in au- thority or with appointing power are not at all likely to forget the needy or the eager brother when their jobs are being partitioned out. If Tom Jones is managing the student opera it is to be expected that THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 61 a large percentage of the Zete's should be in the cast and in other places of emolument and honor; if Skinny Bill is in charge of the Mask and Bauble play then we are not surprised to find the whole Beta chap- ter taking tickets at the door. It is pretty hard when some member of the family is holding the bag for one not to try to get his fingers at least upon a few coins. This form of graft does not always put the worst or the most incapable men into positions of trust; on the contrary the men selected frequently perform their tasks admirably, but it is simply another phase of the spoils system ; it teaches a bad social principle, and is a form of graft detrimental to the best inter- ests of the college. It is at best a weakener of the character of those who work it. " I can not conceive," a senior recently said to me, " that any college man would ever fail to vote for a brother or for a friend if he were a candidate for office." " Xot even if there were a much better man run- ning? " I asked. " Xo fellow under those circumstances would be willing to admit that there are any better men," was his reply. But it is a rather vicious accompaniment of graft that makes it impossible for a man to recog- nize merit in any but his friends. These things which 1 have been discussing are en- couraged in college by two or three things. If we must speak the truth such practices are not at all uncommon in the business world, and students know it. The representative of one of the best known men's furnishing stores in Chicago not long ago ad- 62 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT vertised his business and attempted to increase his trade by handing out half pint bottles of whiskey to all thirsty comers. We live in a dry time, so that although these little courtesies are not universally appealing they do in some satisfy a long felt want. I do not suppose the firm whose goods were thus being advertised knew the exact methods which were being employed by their solicitor, but he was known as one of the shrewdest and most successful salesmen on the road. A young landscape gardener who has been out of college for only a few years told me a short time ago that lie seldom put in an order for shrubs to carry out the work of park planting in which he is now engaged without one or more salesmen offer- ing to split profits with him to get his order. These dishonest ways of promoting trade are not unknown to many undergraduates, and though they are not universal they are far too common to make it easy to develop healthy business principles. As soon as the undergraduate begins to do business in college he finds that competition among local mer- chants and other business men is keen and that a good percentage of them are out for the business and are willing to pay to get it. It is not so strange, then, that the young inexperienced student should fall a victim to the subtle arguments which over-en- thusiastic solicitors and business men are willing to present in order to get their orders. " They prac- tically all do it in one way or another/' the repre- sentative of a big business house said to me not long ago, " and if one wants to do business, one has to come across. It isn't always money, of course, which we put up, but it is the equivalent of money." THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 63 I should not want to blame this practice entirely upon business houses or their representatives. Most students are of the opinion that graft is pretty general in undergraduate activities and many fellows go out for positions with the hope of finding or making op- portunity for illegitimate profit. Some men, it is true, are surprised when they are offered money to let a contract ; some even are incensed ; but there are others who by subtle suggestion make it quite evident to business firms that they are willing to be bribed, and others even more boldly ask at the outset how much there will be in it for them personally. A local merchant told me recently that the class officer who was in charge of the business of letting the con- tract for a class hat or cap came to him to ask for a bid on the proposition. When the boy had received the merchant's bid he said, " You have offered to furnish these caps for one dollar and twenty cents each. I will give you the contract if you will make it one dollar and thirty cents and turn the ten cents extra over to me for my trouble." " I shall be very glad to do that," was the mer- chant's reply, " if your class will so vote or if you will have announced to the class beforehand what is being done ; but otherwise I cannot." The young fellow went away to consider the proposition, but he never returned, and another firm received the order. These practices could be stopped if they could more easily be detected ; but very few people take responsi- bility in the matter. The students who profit by such grafting seldom boast of it or make it a matter of talk ; those who know of it but who take no active part shrug their shoulders and affirm that it is none 64 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT of their affairs; it may be wrong, but the responsi- bility is not upon them to stop it. Merchants or business firms who are implicated, most of them far away from the campus, of course have nothing to say on the subject, and those who are approached and who do not want to enter into such irregular nego- tiations, ordinarily content themselves with turning down the proposition and saying nothing. When there is a transfer of cash there is no record of it, no witnesses, no checks or drafts or papers of any kind to show that the undergraduate has profited. Bills are made out in regular order and checks covering the total amount of these bills are always forthcom- ing, so that on the surface the transaction seems en- tirely above board. Notwithstanding these facts, however, I feel sure that careful supervision by the faculty of the busi- ness transactions of student activities would help ma- terially to reduce if not in many cases to prevent undergraduate graft as it now exists. Much of the graft does not come from a definite transfer of cash from the representative of a business firm to an un- dergraduate manager, though there is considerable of this; it comes through thoughtlessness and careless- ness on the part of the student. He collects money from various sources and gives no receipts; he pays bills and dors not make a record of them ; he does not keep separate the money which belongs to himself personally and that which belongs to the committee or the organization which he represents; he spends money as he is called on to do so, and by the end of a week or a month he has no remote idea how his ac- counts stand how much monev is his own and how THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 65 much is his organization's. This spring I called to my office a young senior who had handled the accounts of a prominent university organization to insist that he make a reckoning. He had kept no records; he had taken no receipts nor given any; he did not know whether he had collected fifty dollars or two hundred and fifty. He was sure that he had not handled much money, though what had come into his keeping he had put into his pocket without record and spent as his own. The only way in which he could in any sense atone for his carelessness, he said, was to meet the bills of the organization and if these were presented to him he would pay them. I am sure he will always feel that he got the worst of the bargain, though it is not at all certain that he did not collect consider- ably more than the bills amounted to. Such errors as this which I have just mentioned are all too com- mon; the student falls into them thoughtlessly at first, and then finding his affairs in a hopeless mud- dle, trusts to providence to get him out. Such difficulties could be avoided by requiring all undergraduates responsible for the collecting and the expending of money to give numbered receipts for all money collected and to pay all bills by check on this money after it has been deposited in the bank. Years ago I learned through dear experience not to mix any one else's money with my own. If I were a Sunday school treasurer I should carry in a bag to the bank on Monday morning the pennies and nickels I had collected on Sunday and never let them touch the unsanctified coins in my own pocket. When all students who handle money for under- graduate organizations are required to make a busi- 66 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT ness-like report of their receipts and expenditures, and have furnished them at a trifling cost the neces- sary books and paraphernalia to keep these accounts, the graft that arises through carelessness will be re- duced to a minimum. Knowing that he will be re- quired to make a report the undergraduate will be on his guard. If undergraduate graft is to be elim- inated or even become the unusual occurrence in col- lege life, it will be through the development of pub- lic sentiment. We are all of us more than we think kept conventional and clean and honest through fear of what people will say; we might sometimes be tempted to swerve a little from the path of rectitude if it were not for the fact that we should be talked about or made unpopular or criticized or ostracized for our action. We all wish to be approved and thought well of. When the undergraduate who works a graft is looked upon by his fellow students as is any other croo.k or dishonest man, when his lack of in- tegrity instead of making him thought a hero or a clever fellow brings him disfavor and unpopularity, when the sentiment of the world at large and of the college world is against such dishonest dealings and all who work them whether they be undergraduates or business men, the undergraduate will in large part be separated from graft. YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN MY title recalls Tom Crow vividly to my mind. I noticed him first shortly after the opening of col- lege. He was always late to my lecture, coming in heated and perturbed, if he came at all, and stumbling awkwardly over the feet of those who had been prompt, as he scrambled into his seat in the middle of the class room. His hair was usually damp and uncombed and his clothing unkempt as if while in the swimming pool or on the tennis courts some one had suddenly reminded him of his neglected intel- lectual obligation and he had hastened to his task adjusting his clothing on the way. In point of fact, as I learned later on inquiry, this was actually what had happened, for, since Tom had never before done any thinking for himself, his roommate had been en- gaged to do it for him, and sometimes was tardy in his duty. Tom showed himself a poor student; he was a likeable loafer who meant to do his work, but who could never get at it. He was so poor a student that when his mother came to visit him after his pretty complete failure at the end of the first semester she called on me. " Don't be too hard on Tommy," she said. " I've always looked after him at home, and this new life is pretty nearly too much for him. When he was in high school I always used to give him his toast and 67 68 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT coffee in bed, and while he was eating I got his bath ready and laid out his fresh clothes, and got his things in order for him to start to school. He'll learn in time if you are patient with him." In addition to the fact that it was bad hygiene for Tommy to eat before he bathed, it was poor disci- pline which his mother subjected him to. He was an exaggerated type of the only son whose career in college was short because he had been coddled by a too loving and a too indulgent mother at home. Let me explain at once that though I am not the only child, I am the youngest son, and so am writing without prejudice and not without experience. As a child I had more freedom and more privileges than any of my older brothers and sisters had been per- mitted to enjoy. I was the normal spoiled child, I think, petted by my older sisters and praised and coddled by father and mother. I went to school when I pleased, and worked when I wished to do so. When I was fifteen my father died. It is a handicap, I am convinced, to be the only child or the youngest son or the son of but one parent. A beneficent creator when he wrote the directions for running the universe decreed that every normal child should have two parents, and I think that either a greater or a smaller number than this generally re- sults in an ill effect upon the child; and he intended, also, until society made it unpopular, that there should be more than one child in every family, in order that one might help in the training and the education of the others. Sometimes 'a wise parent is able to overcome this handicap for his child ; some- times a clever independent child is able to manage YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 69 himself or his parent so skillfully as to offset the handicap; but these cases are rare. At this point I hear the indignant protesting mother saying, " Well, I'm perfectly certain that I have not spoiled my boy," and she launches out into a detailed recital of all his virtues and accomplish- ments and of the rigidty of her personal regime. I have heard the story so often and so vividly presented that I could recite it from memory without prompt- ing, and sometimes I have been glad to admit that it was true. " What is the matter with Percy? " the mother of an only child said to me a few days ago. " He works hard, he loves his work, but he doesn't get on." " He is a spoiled boy," was my reply, " who neither loves his work nor works hard. He is a bluffer who works upon your sympathies by a recital of his woes and endeavors, and the results bring him more money and more privileges." She was a loving, indulgent, anxious mother who believed everything that her boy told her as if it had been gospel, and made adequate explanation of every dereliction and irregularity of which he was guilty. Her boy had not escaped the handicap. I was talking to the father of a freshman who had failed in his college course completely. The boy was intellectually bright, but he had not studied, he had not gone to class, and he had fallen into bad ways and wasted his time generally. " What is the matter with the boy ? " the father asked. "Why has he failed?" I did not answer for a moment, and then I met his inquiry by asking a second question. 70 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT "How many children have you?" " He is our only child," was the reply, " and we have done everything for him." " You have answered your own question," I said. " He's your only child, and you've done everything for him." There had been nothing the matter with the boy ; it was with the father. It is true, as I have said, however, that some chil- dren escape the handicap of being the youngest or the only child or the child of one parent, and for the sake of harmony at the outset, we will agree that yours is one of these, that he has not been made con- ceited by praise nor made selfish by indulgence. It is of the others, you will understand, that I am writ- ing. A college officer who comes into personal contact with scores of undergraduate young men every day will, as the years go on, have many things suggested to him relative to their home and their home influ- ences, to their parents and to their ideals. Behind these boys he will come to see weak, incapable par- ents or hard-working, struggling fathers, and thought- ful, wise mothers, and influences that are stronger than words. He will come in time unconsciously to group these boys according to the characteristics they show, to separate, for example, the country boy from the city boy, for even the crude city boy has a vulgar crudeness all his own that is easily distinguishable from the rustic crudeness of the young fellow from the country. He will recognize the boy who has done right and kept clean from principle, and he will pick out the fellow without personal principles who has YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 71 played the game safe with the home folks and kept out of trouble through policy. The undergraduate who has had his secondary training in a military school reveals that fact almost invariably the moment he opens the door of a college office, by his standing at attention or by his per- sistent and recurring use of " Sir " when he speaks to a superior officer. If he did not reveal it at this point he would be almost sure to do so later by the reluctance and irregularity with which he attends his college exercises. The trouble with this sort of boy is that during his school life he was so completely oc- cupied with routine that he had no time to himself and no opportunity to learn self-direction. When the day came that he should determine for himself how his time should be employed, he was helpless. The routine had been so rigid that he revolted in the opposite direction. Having always had his duty mapped out for him, he lacked the strength to do it for himself. I have come to say that I can usually recognize, before he has been in college long, the youngest son or the only child, or the child of a single parent, or the child who is living at home. Children are in- jured by over-attention quite as much as by neglect; they may be too well brought up as well as too ill. If it is true that the watched pot never boils, it is equally true that the coddled child seldom develops self-reliance and independence. A good many years ago when I was a teacher in an academy a troubled mother came to me with her only son. She had wor- ried over him, and worked with him, and directed 72 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT him, and thought and planned for him, and goaded him on to his lessons with little avail. He was eighteen years of age and was scarcely ready for high school. She told me all these distressing details with much feeling as he sat by stolidly listening. He seemed to me a bright enough boy who was not listen- ing to the tale of his intellectual shortcomings for the first time. " What's the matter with Bob ? " she asked in real distress. " Why doesn't he do better ? " " Too much mother, I believe," I answered frankly. For the first time during the conversation Bob looked at me and smiled and winked a knowing eye. " You have been working out his problems for him during all these years," I continued, " let him do it for himself, now. Leave him here, and don't see him for six months." " I have never been away from him a week in his life," she said. " He doesn't know how to take care of his clothes, or to look after himself. It would kill me to stay away from him that long." " It will ruin him if you don't," I said. She was after all wanting very much to do the best for her boy. She left him, hard as it was, and for the first time in his life Bob was thrown upon his own re- sponsibility. I need not go into detail. He liked the new regime, he did his work, and had his first ex- perience in passing his examinations on his own ini- tiative. The picture is, of course, not always so black a one. Three of the undergraduates of my acquaint- ance this year who made the most conspicuous suc- cess in college, both from the standpoint of the faculty YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 73 and of the student body, were either only sons or youngest sons. More than this they were living at home. They were, however, rather notable exceptions which tested the rule. They were strong enough to follow their own independent action, and their par- ents were wise enough not to ruin them by indul- gence. The fault of the type of young fellow of whom I have been speaking lies in his training. The young- est son, in the ordinary Middle West families, at least, who send their sons to college, comes into manhood at a time in the family history usually, when affairs are more prosperous at home than they were when the older children were ready for college. The family has moved into a new house, mother has more leisure, and father has more money to spend. The oldest boy when he was in high school may have delivered papers, or mowed the lawn in summer and looked after the furnace in winter, but now that the family is in better circumstances, there is a man to take care of these matters and the youngest son has nothing to do but to keep up his school work and enjoy himself. He has a generous supply of spending money, he may even have a motor car of his own, and there is no reason why he should take thought of the morrow. I was talking to two such boys only the other day pleasant lovable fellows who have as much spending money as would have taken me through college. They ride around in a high-powered car, they squander money daily on the " movies " and in ice cream parlors, and neither one would think of mowing the grass on their front lawns if it were as 74 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT high as their necks. The father of neither one of them is rich, but they are developing habits of lazi- ness and extravagance, are often unhappy or bored because they can find no new pleasure or excitement, and though they are bright and clever, they are to- tally lacking in independence and initiative. They are the true types of the middle class youngest son and they will not be in college long until they will reveal the fact by indifference and discontent and dissipation, possibly, and a shirking of unpleasant and difficult duties. Such a child at home soon comes to know how much the family exchequer will stand and what priv- ileges he can count upon, and a few years of indulg- ence will teach him to get all he can. I was talking to a father this spring. His only son, a freshman in college, had grown tired of his course; it neces- sitated work, and he did not enjoy work. To relieve himself of this hardship he had run away, but finding life as a nomad more difficult than he had supposed it would be he had telegraphed his mother for money and had come back for a time, but now he was leaving college. He was not getting what he wanted, he said. I was urging his father to make him stay and finish what he had begun; he needed the discipline, and if he left now it was unlikely that he would ever come back. " Charles will come back to college, T am sure," the father said, " any boy who has as good a place waiting for him after he graduates as he has will not be so foolish as to waste hLs chances by not getting an education.'' " Doesn't, he know that you'll give him the money YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 75 and the place whether he gets an education or not? " I asked. " Well, I suppose he does," the father admitted, and the father was correct. Charles has never done anything that he did not like to do, and he never will, and father will give the money just the same. The mother left with a young boy to bring up is likely to take the obligation very seriously. She realizes at once what a loss it is to him to be without the counsel of his father, and she tries bravely to play the part of both father and mother. For fear that she will fail in this dual task, she scarcely lets him out of her mind or out of her sight night or day. The first error which she generally falls into is to make his life too easy. There is for him little or no sacrifice. If any one is to do without things she does it in order that he may have what he wants, lie must do as the other boys do; he must be sup- plied with all the comforts that would have been his if his father had lived; she does not like to see him do difficult or disagreeable things, especially if she can do them herself or hire some one to do them. If he wants to take responsibility he is often not al- lowed to do so, until he soon comes to the point of not offering to take it. " 1 would rather make sac- rifices myself," many a foolish mother says, " than to have my son deprived of the pleasures and oppor- tunities to which he has a right." All this can not help but weaken the boy and make him selfish and thoughtless and extravagant. He comes to feel that he is entitled to a good time and that if he wants money it is up to his mother to get it for him in some way. 76 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT Last Commencement I met the widowed mother of one of the members of our graduating class. She was keenly interested in her sou's progress, in his pleasures, in the fact that he should have gotten out of his undergraduate life all that was possible. She told me what a sacrifice it had meant to her to send him to college and with what self-denial it had been possible for her to raise the needed money. She com- mented upon the extra cost of this last year, but she did not regret one dollar that had made it possible for him to have what lie wanted. It was easy to see from her faded, out-of-date clothes what some of her sacrifices had been that had enabled her to send him the necessary money. And yet about the campus her son had been looked upon as a young fellow of wealthy family. He had gone with the fellows who spent money freely, he had never stayed away from dinners or dances or house parties, because he could not afford to go. There had been no hesitating on his part when money was concerned. And all the time at home his mother was working and pinching and denying herself in order that he might live in selfishness and luxury, and all the time by this sacri- fice she was doing him an irreparable injury for which he and the woman he marries will in the future have to pay a heavy price. In another way these mothers in an unselfish en- deavor to do the best for their sons and ,to supply the place of the father that is gone, often do them harm, and that is by never allowing them to do their own thinking, to look out for themselves, to make mis- takes and by making them to learn how these mis- takes may be corrected. These eager mothers choose YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 77 their boy's clothes and companions, and courses of study. They map out his future and all but do his work for him. They think for him, and smooth out the way for him, and leave him no chance to develop self-direction or initiative. They get him up in the morning, and tell him when to go to bed at night. If he has a task to perform, they regularly set him to it; if he has duties and obligations he is reminded of them before he has an opportunity to rely upon his own memory or think out his own plan of pro- cedure. He is never allowed to forget to be polite or prompt or thoughtful or regular when mother is by, and knowing that he will riot be, he comes to de- pend upon the fact that if there is anything he ought to do mother will remind him of it or call his atten- tion to it in plenty time even if it is nothing more than speaking to a caller or changing his underwear, and so he never learns to depend upon himself or to tax his memory with the slightest obligation either mental or moral. In her abnormal fear that he will omit some duty, the over-conscientious mother robs her son of the power, when he leaves her, of doing any duty. A refined, educated mother sat in my office only a few weeks ago. Her only son had failed, and she wanted to know why. She had watched over him and directed him, and kept him immaculate physically ; he had wanted nothing that he did not get. He had never made a sacrifice. She had petted him and loved him and scarcely ever let him get out of her sight. He was a good boy, she knew, she said, be- fore he came to college. How had it all happened ? But the facts were that he was not a good boy, and 78 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT never had been. He had no independence, no prin- ciples, no desire to do well. He had talked to me very frankly. He had had a few " sprees " while he was in high school. " It was pretty hard to get away with it," he said, " for she watched me pretty closely, and I did not want to hurt her." His theory was that anything is all right if you don't get caught. Since he had left home he had been drunk, he was in debt, he had contracted a wretched disease, but he had no compunctions and little power of resistance. He is one of a type of boys spoiled at home. In contrast to the illustration just given is one of another whom I know. She is a widow and a woman of influence and wide acquaintance. This summer her only son wanted a position and asked her to go to some of her friends who were in business and try to get him in with them. She declined to do this and showed him that it would be very much more to his credit and advantage if he should himself apply to people whom neither of them knew and secure a place upon his own initiative. It required courage and backbone for him to do this, but he was a happier and a stronger boy when he came home one night with a good job which he had got through no one's efforts but his own. There is another phase of this error on the part of parents, especially on the part of mothers, to teach their sons independence and self-reliance and a sense of responsibility which is seen in their tendency to come to college with their sons in order that they may look after the boys and give them their care and their supervision. When this action is taken for financial reasons, because the family exchequer is low YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 79 and a necessary saving of money can be effected by all living together I have nothing to say. I feel much as I do when a fellow tells me that he has to make his living while he is carrying his college work it is a situation which has to be met and should be met without grumbling or complaint, but it is not one which is ordinarily best for the student. When parents come with their sons to college because they feel that by so doing the boys will be more healthy, more comfortable, or more moral, they are ordinarily making a mistake. " I want my son at home with me as long as pos- sible," a father remarked to me, " I do not like to think of his getting out from under his mother's in- fluence." He did not realize that no boy who has been correctly brought up can get out from under the influence of his mother no matter how widely they may be separated in time or distance. 1 have never known a young fellow who was re- strained in college by having his mother or even by having both parents with him if he had any tendency to irregularities of character, more than he would have been had he been away from home. Subterfuge is so easy, explanations flock to his brain, and oppor- tunities are infinite for evasion. There is always the " friend " to fall back upon who wanis one to study with him or to work up a few experiments. The boys who live in town with their parents are the hard- est sort to keep any kind of check on, and they seldom have the self-reliance that those boys have who are away from home and working out their own difficul- ties. I appreciate the fact that it brings the keenest 80 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT pleasure to parents, especially to mothers, to make these sacrifices, to perform these services, to have their children with them and to give them their con- stant thought and attention. It requires a wise head and a strong will and often real mental suffering to keep the hands off. I remember the saying of a well- known physician that cuddling was good for a mother but harmful for her baby; so experience has taught me that this loving, anxious care for youngest sons and only children, this indulgence and sacrifice on the part of parents, this constant thought and plan- ning for their present and for their future no doubt develops and strengthens the characters of the par- ents but it is seldom good for their sons. " What fault do you find with my son ? " a mother asked me a few days ago when we were talking on this subject. " Isn't he a credit to me ; has he not succeeded ? How have I spoiled him ? " I parried her question by saying that she was, per- haps, an illustration of the mother who has sensibly met all these conditions and who has not robbed her son of his independence by doing his thinking for him. I knew very well, however, that though he was a fellow of excellent intellect who had done his col- lege work creditably, he had been over-fastidious and ladylike, disliking to soil his hands with hard work. He had been made selfish and self -centered. He had not succeeded at first ; it was only after years of con- tact with shrewd men in a profession that tests men's characters for real worth, and which holds up snob- bishness and superficiality to derision, it was only after he had married a sensible woman who knew how YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 81 to stimulate him to his best endeavor, that he showed that there was really good stuff in him. Such boys as I have been discussing are not always failures in college; on the contrary they not infre- quently get high grades and do the routine work of college excellently, but their training almost always shows in their characters. They are too often selfish and extravagant ; they are on the look-out for conces- sions and special favors ; they want a longer vacation than other students in order that they may satisfy special desires. They have been so used to special consideration all their lives that they are unable to understand why they can not receive it when they get to college. " I ought not to spend so much money as I do," an undergraduate confessed to me recently, " mother can't afford it; she is making sacrifices for me con- stantly. She does her own work and takes care of the furnace, and gives up most of the pleasures she would enjoy, simply that I may have a generous al- lowance. She is always sending me boxes of things to eat, and entertaining my friends, and looking out for my comfort, and I selfishly let her do it." This selfishness of his showed in his relations with his friends of whom he had too few, it showed in his col- lege work which was usually in a bad way, and it was a constant blot upon his character. He was exacting in his demands upon those with whom he associated; he borrowed notes and books which were never re- turned until they were sent for, he asked for help in his work whenever and wherever he could get it; he had never made sacrifices or depended upon him- 82 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT self at home and it was hard for him to begin at col- lege. Last Christmas I had a dozen letters from as many mothers whose only sons had not been home since the opening of college in September begging me, in violation of the college rules, to let them come home a few days early they were homesick. " Won't you please let my son come home four days early," one mother wrote, " I have not seen him for several weeks, and because he is our only child I know you will make this special concession in his case." When I answered that I regretted not to be able to grant her request the father wrote and per- suaded a special friend of mine with whom he was acquainted to write also to plead for the special priv- ilege. Though it is true, as I have said, that some of these younger sons and only children succeed in carrying their college work satisfactorily, that they overcome their handicap, yet a very large percentage of them fail or do their work in a commonplace way. This is not strange, for they find it difficult on their own initiative to do anything regularly or thoroughly. There is no one to set them to their tasks, and they have seldom formed the habit of setting themselves to duty and its accomplishment. They have mostly been told what to do, and so now when there is no one to tell them to study, to get them up in the morn- ing, and to get them off to their college classes, they are likely to find themselves in bed at ten o'clock in the morning when they should have been at chemistry at eight; they are pretty sure to put off their study until to-morrow when there is a vaudeville to which YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 83 they may go to-day. It is not difficult to see how they find their way to the Dean's office very early in their college course. They find the college life more strenuous than they had expected, and never before having done anything that was difficult or disagree- able, they do not see why they should do so now. " Why did you not let me know that my son was not doing his work ? " a mother wrote me not long ago, " and I should have come down and stayed with him until he got his work up. I have never let him get behind while he was in high school, and I can not understand why he is failing now." The trouble all lay in the fact that previously his mother had been his conscience; he had not learned self-direction in any sense ; and having no director he loafed and slept late in the mornings. It is the spoiled boy at home who in college de- velops into the loafer and the indifferent student. His parents often do not set for him especially high standards; they are pleased if he does not fail; they are satisfied to have him merely intellectually com- monplace. And since they are contented, he has for himself no high intellectual ambitions ; he prides him- self that he is not a grind and pats himself metaphor- ically upon the back when he evades probation. It is this same spoiled boy also who in college evades everything that is unpleasant or difficult. He is in few college activities because to get into activi- ties requires initiative and sacrifice, and it demands usually more than ordinarily high scholarship. He has not learned to economize either his time or his money ; he does not know how to make sacrifices, and he can not give up the petty gratification or pleasure 84 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT of the moment in order that he may later enjoy a greater and a more worthy pleasure. I can understand the interest of parents in their children and their desire to save them from sacrifice and hardship and pain and struggle, but as they are shielded from the difficult they are often harmed; in trying to help them we often hinder. Protecting and coddling them unfits them for the hardships of life which they are as sure to meet as the sun is to rise. I said at the outset that my father died when I was fifteen. Up to that time T had taken no re- sponsibility. I had had no tasks, no difficult prob- lems. I had made no sacrifices. I had lived a life of pleasure and irresponsibility. Circumstances in the family were such that at my father's death it was imperative that I should run the farm on which we were living. I must do a man's work. I must be up in the morning by four o'clock without being called, and out in the fields plowing and sowing and reaping and looking after all the varied interests which have to do with farm life. If my strength was slight I must work faster or longer in order to accomplish as much as the older and stronger work- men. I kept at it eight years and until 1 entered college. It seemed then a cruel hard life for an in- experienced child. Often when the load was heavy and the problems difficult to solve, in my heart I re- belled against my lot ; but I kept on, in spite of the rebellion, and finished my tasks. Mother encouraged me, but she could give little help, little direction, lit- tle suggestion. I must meet my own difficulties and solve them alone, as I have since learned every one must do ill life and in death. 1 look back now to this YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 85 experience as the best which could have come to me; it was my salvation. It gave me hard muscles and a strong body and a strong will; it showed me that one must have backbone and principles if he would win the respect of men ; it taught me courage and self- reliance and initiative ; through it I was able to find myself, and by it I was helped to overcome the handi- cap under which many another youngest son or only child is struggling. I was trying not long ago to help the father of an only son to solve his difficulties. The boy had been dismissed from college because he had failed through loafing and irregular habits. The father was a man of moderate means, but the boy had had every in- dulgence and no responsibility. " What shall I do with him ? " was his query. " Put him to work for a year," was my reply ; " give him something difficult to do, and let him see how hard it is to earn his living." " I have a farm," he went on, " I could put him out there ; but it would be a hard life. He would have no pleasure ; the surroundings would not be such as he has been used to, but I'll do it." "If you do," I warned him, " you will have a more severe struggle than the boy. After your disappoint- ment has grown a little less keen you will go out to the farm some day, and you will see the boy dirty and perspiring and tired and your heart will be touched ; you will say, ' Why should I torture him in this way,' and unless you are a strong man you'll bring him away with you." " I believe I shall," he said shamefacedly, " I be- lieve I haven't the courage to do otherwise." 86 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT " But you could make a man of him," I pleaded as he left me. A friend of mine, a wise woman with one son, had more courage. The boy, who was in the high school, got it into his head that he would like to earn a little money, and having a job offered him accepted it. This work necessitated his getting up at five in the morning and working until time to start to school. "It must be rather hard on you," a sympathetic neighbor said to his mother one day, " getting up so early in the morning to get William's breakfast and to get him off." " But I don't get up," was the mother's reply. "When William took the job I explained to him that he must manage himself: if he lost the place through failure to get there on time, it was his own fault. So he bought a ' Big Ben ' to awaken him at the proper time; he gets his own breakfast, and he has never been late one morning. It took a lot of cour- age and self-control for me to hear him coming down stairs before daylight these cold winter mornings and not to get up and help him off, but William's char- acter is worth more to me than my own selfish com- fort in looking after him." She has been a thousand times rewarded in the years that have followed in the strong, sturdy, self-reliant son to whom she now looks up. Her way is the only way I know to make men of character and self-reliance and independence. No one gains strength except through struggle ; self-reliance comes through meeting hardships. There is no strength of character without sacrifice, and as we make it easy for our children, as we save them from the hard, unpleasant tilings of life unduly YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 87 we do them damage. It is the boy who has learned to do a task that is given him whether he likes it or not, who can direct himself and look after himself, who does not shrink from difficult and unpleasant things, who does not hesitate at sacrifice or self-control, who has been taught to think of the comfort and pleasure of others as well as of his own it is this sort of boy who is going to get on in college and whose home training will show before he has been in the college community a week. Such boys are to a college officer like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The spoiled, humored boy who has been kept from hard- ships and sacrifice, no matter with what loving care, will hardly escape a weak youth and a selfish ineffec- tive manhood. A brown thrasher has a nest in our sweet honey- suckle, and for weeks we have been interested in watching her movements. Just now she is teaching her children to fly, and it seems to an onlooker no trifling task. I said " children," for though we have never so trespassed upon the privacy of our shy ten- ant as to look into her dwelling, I am sure from the way in which she has been conducting her child's education that there is more than one little thrasher in the nest. It was no only child who was being put through his exercises this morning. The first sound that caught my ear when I wak- ened was the voice of the mother, firm and insistent, directing and encouraging her child. When I went to the window I saw the prospective young aeronaut, tailless and nervous, perched on the telephone wire. He was very tottery and was whimpering audibly, but I could tell from the strong notes of his mother's 88 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT voice coming from the lilac bushes that she was not to be moved by his tears. He must take the initia- tive; he must make the leap. She kept after him vigorously flying toward him in a most threatening manner occasionally, until finally, screwing up his courage, he spread his little wings and landed safe in the honeysuckle. A moment later I saw the mother fly into the nest with a big juicy worm in her bill. It was bad pedagogy, but she had taught him self-reliance and self-direction. Later in the day he seemed to have developed a considerable initiative, and was helping his mother with the housework by bringing home a few choice worms for the younger children's supper. It is not easy to train either young birds or young people properly. The most of us who have been pushed out early and have had to rely upon our- selves hesitate to do the same thing for the young people whom we had under our direction. We would fain save them the danger and the pain. So many youngest sons and only children have been kept so completely from that which is unpleasant or difficult, they have lioon so coddled and pampered that they shrink hack when the test comes. They grow selfish and lack initiative and self-reliance. They do not like that which is difficult. They have whimpered, and mother has told them that they need not learn to fly. " AND SOME MUST WORK " THERE was a letter in my mail this morning from a young boy just out of high school. He was desir- ous of going to college, and like many another man with high ambition, he was without money. " Could you find for me," he asked, " some posi- tion which would not interfere with my studies, and which would bring me in an income of not less than fifteen dollars a week ? " I was forced to write him that I could not ; that al- most any job which he might obtain would interfere with his studies, and that if he were to earn fifteen dollars a week, unless he were possessed of some spe- cific trade or skill worth a high rate of remuneration, it would be only by working six hours a day or more, and such an amount of time given to outside labor would interfere very seriously with any one's studies. There are a great many people who labor under the mistaken notion that it actually is helpful to a college student's scholarship for him to work. I have known parents who were quite able to meet their son's col- lege expenses, but who refused to do so under the false impression that they were doing the boy a service by forcing him to earn his living. " It will make a man of him," they affirm. " It will teach him the value of a dollar." It may, but it will seldom if ever conduce to making him a good student, and that should be his object in going to college. 89 90 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT President Lincoln in a note to Mayor Ramsey once wrote : " The lady bearer of this note says she has two sons who want to work. Set them at it if pos- sible. Wanting work is so rare a want that it should be encouraged." A college officer in my position at the opening of the college year would not be inclined to agree with Mr. Lincoln, for half the correspond- ence which comes to my desk during the summer months has to do with men who either want to work, or who say they do, in order that they may defray their college expenses. There are so many of them that their correspondence becomes almost depress- ing at times, for I realize the disappointments and the difficulties which very many of these boys will encounter after they reach college, and their unfit- ness to do any definite work well. " I have been out of high school three years," one young fellow writes, " and have not been able to save any money. T want, however, very much to go to college. Can you secure a place for me to work where I can earn my board and room and such ex- tra money as I shall need for my other small ex- penses?" This man, who has given all his time to work for three years and who lias done nothing more than live, expects easily to carry a college course which in itself requires most of a man's time to do justice to, and at the same time to earn his living on the side. T get many such letters from those who feel that earning one's living and going to college are in no way incompatible. So much has been written about the fellows who have started to college without a cent and who have later been valedictorians of their classes and ultimately President of the " AND SOME MUST WORK " 91 United States, or at least a member of his cabinet, that the average high school boy has little concep- tion of what sacrifice and deprivation such a pro- cedure involves; if he did understand he would no.t so often undertake it, or he would do so after more careful deliberation. The man who works his way through college sel- dom does so because he enjoys working nor, except- ing in rare cases, because he has any interest in the particular line of work by which he earns his living. He works from necessity; his chief thought, com- monly, is not centered upon the efficiency of his serv- ice nor the value of his work to his employer, but upon the amount of cold cash it is going to net him. A'ery few boys who are working their way through college are interested in the work they are doing for its own sake or for the personal development there is in it for them ; they have little thought of perfect- ing their skill in such work ; they are looking for- ward eagerly to the time when they may leave it and take up something they really have interest in. They are for that reason in many cases indifferent, inefficient, and expensvie help, who lack the joy and incentive of interest in their work. During my own undergraduate days I earned my living as a compositor on the student paper. There was no enthusiasm in any of the " typos,'' as they were called, to perfect themselves in typesetting ex- cepting as such perfection would lead to immediate financial returns, and no idea of going permanently into the printing business; type-setting was for them simply a makeshift. They were interested chiefly in getting a long " string " and in picking off the 92 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT " fat " jobs from the hook. They were, of course, never annoyed if incidentally they helped in getting out a creditable paper, but that was merely a side issue; the main thing was the pay envelope. None of us would have given a moment to type-setting if a legacy had been left us, or if we could have ca- joled a rich uncle into sending us a satisfactory monthly allowance; we worked because it was neces- sary to eat and to pay our room rent. Too many people attempt to work their way through college. IVrany of our colleges to-day are overrun with students with no money, with only commonplace ability, and with little initiative and re- sourcefulness. It is only the exceptional man with- out money who should go to college. Many men say that they would not be able to save money if they went to work, but it is as easy to economize and to save money out of college as it is in, and the com- monplace student should either not go at all, or he should work and save money enough to allow him to devote the greater part of his time to his studies; otherwise he is likely to fail. The man who works his way too often makes a poor living, and gets little college credit; he might better stick to a good job and give up the thought of the higher education than half starve and finally flunk in college. The names of scores of boys occur to me as I write this sentence boys of only mediocre ability who tried the struggle and failed. In a democratic institution where a large per- centage of students work, the tendency is for even the man who is under no such necessity to try to add to his income. \Vhen a fellow's roommate is receiving " AND SOME MUST WORK " 93 a pay check every month, it seems to a good many men, even though they do not stand in need of the money, inexcusable not to do something. Some- times the man who needs the money least is most skillful and clever in earning it. I have in mind two young men who were adept at salesmanship but who were quite able to meet all their college expenses. They constantly endangered their college work through the unreasonable amount of time they put in in their business enterprises. Their father, who was a shrewd, close-fisted business man, was extremely proud of their earnings, never realizing that in spending so much of their time in making a few dol- lars they were detracting very materially from the efficiency of their education. Most of the things which have been written of boys without education, like Lincoln, who ultimately became President of the United States, or of fellows with only fifty cents in their pocket who got through college on their nerve and made Phi Beta Kappa, are romantic, but quite misleading. These things have been done (there are the immortal Garfield, and Daniel Webster, of course), and they are still being done by men of unusual mental and physical equip- ment, but they are not easy to do, and they are not always desirable to do. The men who accomplished these things did so in spite of their handicaps and not because of them. I have known many a man who paid in privation and sacrifice more than his college training was worth ; for he was so engrossed and his time so oc- cupied in the struggle for existence that he lost the greater part of what he should have obtained from 94 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT his college life and associations. The memory of Allan comes to me as I write. He was at best medi- ocre intellectually, and socially he was completely un- trained. It was his dogged stubborn persistence only that carried him through. He was like a bull dog which had taken hold and could not let go. He had little resourcefulness, little initiative, so that there was nothing open to him but the most menial physi- cal tasks. He had few friends and he was often without sufficient food. He slept in a stable during more than half his life in college and did the dirty scullery work at a cheap untidy down-town restaur- ant for his meals. He reeked constantly of stable odors and of the heavy smells of frying food. His wretched life told on him physically and mentally ; he grew hard, bitter, sullen. He felt, not wholly without reason, that every one was against him, that he was fighting alone and a losing fight. He got his degree, but he left college coarse, soured, repellant, ill-trained, without courage to fight longer and without hope for the future. He has not ac- complished as much since he received his college de- gree as he might reasonably have been expected to do without education. The boy who works his way through college, and by this I mean the student who gets no help from any other source excepting his own efforts, must first of all have concentration, for he will of necessity have less time to devote to his studies than have those fellows whose entire time is at their disposal. There is a pretty general idea that the man in college who does not earn a good part of his living is on the whole a loafer and a spendthrift, who has so many " AND SOME MUST WORK " 95 vacant hours at his disposal during the day that, un- less he gets into some sort of deviltry or extravagance, he is likely to grow horribly bored. Quite the con- trary is true; for the college course as now planned, if it is done well, will give any ordinary young fel- low . enough to occupy his time quite creditably. The man, then, who besides doing his college work has to earn his living, will need to give his whole time to it, should be able to accomplish more in the same length of time than the average fellow, and must be satisfied to have little leisure in which to read, or play, or develop social graces, or do as he likes. A young fellow strong and healthy looking dropped in to see me one day this week. He was ambitious but broke. If he came to college, he must make his way. He had on hand scarcely more than enough money to pay his initial tuition and get his books. We went over his plans together, and I thought that perhaps he might try it. " There is one thing I did not tell you," he said just as he was ready to leave, " I have always been interested in athletics, and if I come to college, 1 shall want to play football." 1 threw up my hands, for even playing football sometimes gives a man little enough time for his studies, but if a man plays football and earns his liv- ing, he has little time for sleep, and none for his studies. The athlete is lucky if he passes his courses with creditable grades; he can seldom give much thought or time to earning his living. The boy who must work should be mature and strong, and by that I mean usually nineteen or 96 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT twenty years of age. The burden is often too great for a young boy to assume, for such boys are often forced to live irregularly, and to keep irregular hours either to bring up their college work or to do their outside tasks. Not long ago a young fellow, still physically immature, called at my office to ask my advice. He had little energy, he said, and little interest in his work. He found it difficult, when he sat down to a task, to accomplish much. I discov- ered on inquiry that he was working for a physician. He was forced to sit up until midnight to do his col- lege tasks, and he had to get up at four or at latest at five o'clock in the morning to accomplish the things necessary to hold his job with the doctor. He was, therefore, getting never more than five hours of sleep a day, and yet could not understand why he was so lacking in energy and ambition. I have always felt that it was a wise and thoughtful phys- ician with whom he was living. This slender, grow- ing boy was attempting an impossible task, and in addition to failing in it for he did not carry his work he was in a fair way permanently to injure his health. The student worker should be resourceful and adaptable, able to fit in anywhere, and able to use his brain in his work. It is the man who first meets an unsolved condition or satisfies an unsatisfied want who makes good at earning a living. Last fall a young freshman came to my office to ask me if I had any knives or scissors lying about which needed sharpening. He carried with him in a neat leather case which resembled a Corona typewriter, with its traveling clothes on, a small emery wheel and some " AND SOME MUST WORK " 97 simple apparatus for repairing and sharpening tools. I had just been trying to hew a broken lead pencil into shape with an impossibly dull knife, so that his coming seemed like an angel's visit. I gathered up all the paraphernalia in the office which permitted of sharpening, and he went at it. They were in a few minutes in excellent condition, he collected a quar- ter, and I sent him over to my house to make the rest of my family happy. I kept my eye on him during the year, and was not surprised to find that he was making a good living during his leisure moments because he had had intelligence enough to meet an unsatisfied want. Several years ago, before the business of pressing men's clothes and keeping them in condition had been taken up generally, one of our freshmen rented a room, bought the necessary apparatus, and agreed for one dollar a month to press a suit of clothes each week, and to call for the clothes and deliver them. It was at that time an innovation, and even with one or two assistants, he soon had more business than he could take care of. He had a business head, he kept his agreements, he did his work well, and he was soon one of the financially independent who could oversee his business and let some one else do the manual labor. I always had the assurance that he would get on wherever lie went, and I have not been mistaken. He is successfully running a fruit farm down in Florida now, and last Christmas I had a pleasant note from him accompanied by a box of delicious grapefruit which caused my family to re- member him kindly for many a morning. The skilled laborer, the man who has a trade or a 98 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT talent will get on more easily than other men. Last year a young sophomore found himself without money and without a job. He saw an advertisement in the college paper for a cook in one of the short order restaurants near the campus. He had helped his mother cook at home, he had had a month's ex- perience cooking in a summer camp for boys; he had some nerve, so he applied for the place and got it. The best part of the story is that he gave satisfac- tion, earned his board, and made a respectable salary besides. The undergraduate who last year at the University of Illinois made the most money of any one who was trying to earn his living, did so by writing songs. His poetic efforts were in no sense remarkable ; in fact I am not sure but that the same thing might be said of most of those words and music which are ring- ing in our ears most often as we go down the street, but what this young fellow wrote seemed to catch the popular ear, and he reaped the reward of his ap- peal. He had a certain talent that was not great, perhaps, but it was not common. It is the man who lets his brains save his strength, who makes the most money. In fact it is most often the man who does not work at all physically but who uses his head to make his plans and who hires some less clever thinkers to take the hard knocks, it is this sort of fellow who really earns his way through college most successfully. A wide awake junior last year made arrangements with a city wholesale house to take orders for butter. Early in the fall he made a preliminary canvass of all the fraternitv houses and general student boarding clubs, " AND SOME MUST WORK " 99 and took their orders for the year. Each house is sent so many pounds a week directly from the city. There is no further ordering and no delivering by the student; all he has to do is to send out the monthly bills and make his collections. With little real work he has made considerably more than enough to pay his college expenses. When he gets through college he will have several hundred dollars to his credit in the bank with which to start business. " I could clear two thousand dollars a year at the work/' he admitted to me, " if I wanted to give the time to it, but I don't believe in making too much." T have said before that the man who must meet all of his expenses while doing his college work must be mature and physically strong. A young fellow past twenty-five, who graduated from one of our Middle West state universities last year illustrates my point. He had learned to operate a linotype machine and was beside this a physical giant. When he came to college he was put on a night shift in one of the local printing offices. He did his studying in the after- noon and in the evening; he did his full day's work in the printing office after seven o'clock in the even- ing, and he got on with from five to seven hours of sleep a day and incidentally earned eighty dollars a month throughout his college course. He had so much money in the bank when he finished that he was able to marry on the day of his graduation and set up housekeeping for himself. T should not. how- ever, advise m men of similar ability who have not had his training. 172 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT The struggles and sacrifices which he made in his undergraduate years are more than compensated for by the returns which come to him in later life. I have read the most that has been published in re- cent years concerning the evils of inter-collegiate athletics the extravagantly large amount of money necessary to support such a system, the confining of athletic training to a very limited number of stu- dents, the gambling, drinking, and other moral dissi- pations incident to big games, but though I have known personally as many undergraduate students, athletes and otherwise, as any college officer in Amer- ica, I am convinced that these evils have been very- much exaggerated. I cannot deny that intercol- legiate athletics is expensive, and it would be foolish to maintain for a moment that it is not accompanied by abuses and evils I can think of no other activ- ity, not even religious activities, that is free from them but in my experience as a director and super- visor of undergraduate activities it has seemed to me that nothing else has done so much as athletics to develop real college loyalty, to unify a heterogeneous undergraduate body, and by giving an outlet for youthful enthusiasm and youthful spirits, to aid in the maintenance of healthy college discipline. It is true that athletic contents have at times been the op- portunity for undergraduate outbreaks and disturb- ances, but these occasions have on the whole been rare and not infrequently a case of " great cry and little wool," of wide newspaper publicity and relatively little foundation for the facts alleged. I am sure that if it were not for the athletic contests and the THE ATHLETE 173 athlete I should as a disciplinary officer have a much harder time than I now have. There is the argument that the athlete supports a sort of physical aristocracy which maintains a monop- oly over athletics and physical exercise and makes it possible for the physically elect only to obtain the exercise that all need. We should develop a system, the promulgators of this argument say, which would force every one into athletic sports and secure regular and pleasant exercise daily for every one in college from the freshman to the President. Such a physical millennium sounds alluring, and the theory is beau- tiful, but the result is about as likely of attainment as those implied in the theories of our socialist friends; they sound attractive on paper, but they are impossible of realization. In every college with which I am familiar there is a predominating per- centage of students arid faculty who, unless a chain were put. about their necks and they were dragged to the fray would take no part in athletic sports at all. There are even more than we might suppose who take no pleasure in exercise themselves and who find no relaxation in watching other people engaged in sports. Whatever can be done to interest students and faculty in sports generally, I believe is a desir- able thing, but such interest is not decreased by the development of athletic teams. As I have seen the athlete his training is worth all that it costs to him, to the college authorities, and to the undergrad- uate body as a whole, in the development of character, in discipline, in college loyalty, and in the binding together of the students as a whole. THE LOAFER I CAUGHT sight of Jack and Eddie and Mac sitting in the Arcade as I passed this niorning on my way down town. They had evidently got up too late for breakfast and were " hitting a coke " before they subjected themselves to the strain of a ten o'clock. The last bell had rung, but they were taking their time and giving Eddie opportunity to finish the risque tale of his last conquest. Mac had already been out of classes this semester for five weeks because of a slight illness, but that seemed to him an asset rather than a liability, for the instructor knowing he had been ill, could not reasonably expect him to get into the work vigorously all at once or to come to classes regularly or on time. Jack had been out to a dance the night before, and not being prepared had cut his nine o'clock, and Eddie was taking the cuts which as a senior he thought himself entitled to. They were good illustrations, these three happy-go- lucky souls, of the college loafer irregular, irre- sponsible, unambitious the type of men who are the real menace to-day of undergraduate life in col- lege. It takes a man of some energy to be a real devil, so that the loafer at first seldom gets into anything that is difficult, or dangerous, or not nice ; he doesn't initiate tilings; some one else makes the plan, though he may trail along behind in an escapade and seem to be a real part of the procession. He is a passive, 174 THE LOAFER 175 talkative being; he loves ease, leisure, sleep, coca cola, cigarettes, chocolate bostons, and girls. He is a stroller, a hanger on. If, as I am writing these para- graphs, I should look out of my window upon the broad green expanse of our back campus, I should catch sight of him walking lazily under the shade of the tall elm trees of Burrill Avenue, or sprawled upon the grass, a girl by his side, a smile on his face, his books and his intellectual obligations forgotten. He knows the last dance step, the latest gossip, and he has seen the last bills at the Orpheum. He would be entirely innocuous if he were not allowed to run at large. The trouble is he infects the crowd. It is not difficult to understand the environment which conduces to the development of this type of student. At home he has neither been given nor has he assumed any responsibility. He has had no duties, no regular set tasks ; he has done no work ; often he has been mother's darling. It has usually, at home, been a problem as to what should be done with him in the summer vacation when there was no school, so he loafed around lazy and discontented. He has seldom done well in his preparatory school or high school ; he has passed, but neither he nor his parents have had any ambitions for him to be a grind or the valedictorian of his class. If his mother were asked she would probably say, " We are very well satisfied with what Clarence has done in high school; he is not a natural student, and has never been very strong, so that we have never pushed him nor wanted him to over-study." And Clarence has done as his parents desired and has never overstudied. He comes naturally to speak of himself as " no 176 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT student " and to take a certain pride in the fact that this characteristic in some way differentiates him from the common herd of undergraduates who do their work because they like it, or who go at things with energy because it is their duty. He takes his commonplace work as a matter of course, just as many people assume without trying that they can not learn to spell. " You had a shamefully low average last semester," I remarked to Brinkerhoff the other day, " for a man of your training and ability." " Well, I'm no student," was his self-satisfied reply, which was only another way of saying, " I'm a hope- less loafer, and you ought to be satisfied that I got through as well as I did." There was no shame on his part, no resolve to do better, simply a resignation to the inevitable. The loafer in college is not always a boy who has been brought up in luxury ; he not infrequently comes from very humble surroundings; but wherever he has been brought up he has never developed any love for work. When he enters college it is without ambition, without any definite purpose or object; he has little idea of what he wants to do, no love of books, no interest in study, no vision of the future. He does not know whether he wants to go north or south, whether he would like to study art or ceramic engi- neering, whether he would prefer to spend his life as a missionary or as a vaudeville star. Some of the other fellows were coming to college, so he threw a few changes of clothing into a suitcase and came along, just as he might have joined a camping party or taken a hike into the country. Some of the most THE LOAFER 177 confirmed loafers I have known have been men who had to work for a part of their living. Loafing in college is not, as many people think, a matter of money, but of temperament. Yesterday a father came into my office to discuss with me the possibility of his son's entering college. "What course does he want to take?" I asked in order more intelligently to answer his question. " I don't know," was the reply. " We have not thought much about that. I don't believe George has decided on anything yet." " What is he interested in ? What sort of work or study does he like best ? " I continued, trying to get myself square with the intellectual compass. " He has never shown any special interest in any- thing yet. We hoped that after he got to college he would develop interest in some line of work." "Is he in love?" I ventured, determined to get somewhere if possible. " Well, he certainly does like the girls." It is this sort, interested in nothing but his senses and his emotions, that develops into the loafer. A boy will seldom show more ambition in college than he has shown at home; if he has had no vision or pur- pose there, he will be unlikely to find one in college. We do not change our characters by changing our lodging house, and if we have disliked work in Chi- cago we shall hardly take to it in Champaign. " You haven't done much for Babb in college," a fellow townsman of his said to me when I was on a visit to the country town from which the freshman referred to came. " He's as lazy and worthless as ever." 178 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT "If you have had him here for nineteen years and have done nothing for him, how can you expect us to reorganize him in six months ? " I inquired. " I thought you were able to do everything in col- lege," he replied. But we are not. I have found the greatest interest as an executive officer in college in getting the peculiar viewpoint of the loafer. When I call him for irregularity, and if I am shrewd enough to prove to him that these ex- cuses which he has offered were not thought sufficient on his part to keep him from certain social pleasures in which I have seen him indulging, he leans upon the prop of all loafers and asserts that the rules of the college permit a. certain number of cuts to all stu- dents, and he has not yet exceeded his limit. " Any- way," he goes on, " a fellow can't go to class all the time." One of the most common excuses of the loafer for not attending class is that of not being wakened in time by the proper person. I have a let- ter now on my desk from a young fellow dropped from college for poor work who says : " A good deal of my trouble was due to the ineffective waking sys- tem in our house," meaning that the freshman whose duty it was to come around and wake him up, some- times went to sleep at the switch. The next most popular excuse for absence is that he was busy study- ing for another course than the one he cut. It never seems to occur to him that there are regular hours of study far more than adequate for the purposes of even the good student, and that it is seldom if ever necessary to cut class in order to study. Cutting class with him is a habit as regular and as persistent as smoking, for every loafer smokes. THE LOAFER 179 He either smokes because he puts in so much time loafing that he needs some recreation to keep him from getting lonesome, or he loafs because he has smoked so much that it has robbed him of the energy sufficient to do anything else. The odor of the Fatimas which he has burned up floats across the desk to me as he comes in to ask me for an excuse because of illness; before he steps off the campus he has lighted another to stimulate his waning interest in life, and wherever you meet him, between dances, at his room, on the street, he is drawing strength and comfort from a pipe or a cigarette. It is the badge of his fraternity. " Why do you smoke so much ? " I asked Kheims, whose restless manner and putty colored complexion and yellow finger nails told the story of his devotion to Xicotine. " You know it hurts you." " Yes, I suppose it does ; but why do you want to rob a man of all pleasure ? " That was too much for me. It is hard for the loafer to study : there are so many easier, subtler, cleverer ways to get by. He means to do it to-morrow, Sunday, next week, before the end of the semester, but he is such an awfully pop- ular fellow, he has so many friends to entertain, so many dates to keep, so many extra-curriculum duties to perform, that he has little or no time to give to study. He borrows your notes which he has been too laxy or too busy to take himself, and never returns them until you go to his room and hunt him up; lie questions you about your outside reading and tries to got the gist of its content PO that lie may be spared the labor of doing it for himself, he sits by you dur- 180 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT ing the quiz hours and stealthily cribs your ideas which he rephrases so that they seem his own. More's the pity, sometimes he does it so well that he gets a better grade than you do who have gone through the assigned reading with puritanic con- scientiousness. The loafer is usually a very charming fellow; he is selfish, but diplomatic and well-mannered. " How does it happen," I asked one of the clan not long ago, " that you do so little work about the fraternity house while Moore is always at it? " " Moore has no diplomacy," was the reply. " I saw at the start that if I didn't talk back and was always polite and courteous to the fellows, they sel- dom ' fagged ' me ; Moore is impudent, and he has to do all the work while the fellows sit around and are amused at my line of talk." He loves to talk, and he generally talks well and knows it. He is usually popular in any crowd, for he has never brought on brain fag through overwork or overstudy. He can be found at every fraternity house sitting before the grate fire spinning his yams to any hour of the night. He dislikes going to bed even more than he dislikes getting up in the morning, and will never think of going so long as he can get some one to keep him company. Not infrequently he has in him some touch of the genius. He has talent without motive power. As I write this sentence my mind drifts back to Jim Watson. " Why don't you stir up Jim? " I asked the president of his fraternity one day, " he might amount to something if he would work." THE LOAFER 181 " Oh, Jim," was his reply, " Jim's an awfully good fellow; he's charming; no one could say anything cross to Jim. He's an artist; he's a poet; he's a dreamer; he could do anything if he would." He was correct in his diagnosis; I simply phrased it a little differently ; Jim was the most delightfully artistic loafer in college. He was the sort of fellow of whom people were always saying that he would be a great man if he ever got down to work; but he never did, and he's the most commonplace citizen to-day of the country town in which he lives. Some people argue that college is a good place for the loafer even if he will not do his college work with credit. He learns to know people, he picks up a smattering of useful information through his daily rubbing up against those who do study, and whether he puts forth much effort of his own or not he comes constantly into contact with people of culture and ex- perience and refinement. He is of no great harm to the college, they say, and the college may be of untold benefit to him. Perhaps so. I remember a number of years ago we had in the University I had him in fact in some of my own classes a big lazy loafer who so far as any of his instructors could discover never " cracked " a book. He had one virtue; he never cut a recitation even though he never recited, and he was also an impen- etrable wall in football. One day the president of the institution, who at that time had general charge of all delinquents whether in scholarship or in other things, was looking over Mr. Hicks' scholastic record, which was no credit to any one. 182 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT " We can never keep this man," lie said to the ath- letic director, "even though he can play football. I shall have to send him home." " Perhaps you are right," said the director, " but if you do you will shut him off from any further chance of intellectual improvement. He's an exemplary loafer who for the first time in his life is associating with people of cultivation and of ideals. The Uni- versity is doing him more good than he is doing it harm, it is helping to make him a man, and so far as I can see he ought to be allowed to stay a little longer." Whether the argument was a specious one or not, the president consented, and the man stayed on and played on. He is a respected successful city banker to-day, he had money so that perhaps in this case at least the athletic director was right. I have myself often been the victim of the charms of these fascinating loafers. In their own houses, and in mine, I have been forced often to yield to the magic of their personality. They are good fellows, many of them; they have within them infinite pos- sibilities, unlimited power, if they would only work. A good deal has been said and written about the dissipations and immoralities of college life, and much that has been written is false. I have been as- sociated with college students more than half of my life, and I have known thousands of them personally. The undergraduate is not free from the temptations and the evils which other men yield to. There are men in college who drink, there are men who gamble, and there are men whose lives are not clean, as there are in every community, but the sum total of these THE LOAFER 183 and the evil which they perpetrate is far outweighed by the loafer in college and the vicious influences of which he is the source. It is almost without excep- tion the man who has nothing to do or who having something which he ought to do yet does not do it, who is responsible for the sins and dissipations of col- lege life. It is loafing and lack of a really worthy ambition to give a man balance that leads students into all the other sins and indiscretions of undergrad- uate life. There is no other evil in college to com- pare with it, and none so difficult of remedy or of cor- rection. " I am coming back to college/' one of them wrote me this week, " and I know you will be surprised to hear that I do not expect to give you any more trouble." " If you are intending to go to class regularly, to study faithfully, and to do your work like a man/' was my reply, " I shall welcome you with open arms ; if you are going to loaf as you have done in the past, I wish to the Lord you would stay where you are." It is hard for the loafer to reform. Sometimes he can do it in a new environment and under generally new conditions, but the man who has wasted his time in college and who stays out a semester or a year with the hope that he will gain ambition and self-control is often disappointed or disappoints his friends who may have placed faith in him. As soon as he strikes the old crowd and the old campus the spell is on him again ; he is like the reformed toper who catches the odor of the highball. Last spring a young fellow who had been out of college a year returned to try 184 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT to finish his work. He had previously been a con- firmed loafer who had by strategy and luck barely escaped dismissal. " I'm sorry you have come back, Baker," I said to him. " I've expended about as much physical and mental energy on you as I think you are entitled to. I should not care to give you a permit to reenter un- less I can have some assurance that you are coming back with a definite purpose to do your work faith- fully and well." He gave me the assurance, but there was no real enthusiasm in what he did. He cut class and fooled away his time trying, of course, to keep safely within the limit that would bring him passing grades, but he was the same old loafer as before. " I am hurting no one but myself," is the favorite excuse of every young fellow who by irregular habits is injuring his mind or his body, but the loafer can truthfully make no such assertion. Xo young fellow loafs long alone ; he -spends little of his time reading even trashy or vicious books ; lie is not given to soli- tude or meditation. He must gather friends about him and they go out together. There never was a loafer in college who did not ruin some one else in order that he might have a pal to accompany him on his daily orgies of pool and billiards and poker, and soft drinks and fussing and vaudeville and the movies and local gossip, or whatever it is with which he whiles away his hours. " You don't need to be afraid of my leading any one astray," a young fellow not in college said to me when asking my permission to live in one of the fra- ternity houses. THE LOAFER 185 " Have you a regular job ? " I asked. " Yes, in the daytime," said he. " What do you do at night ? " I went on. " Nothing/' he confessed. " Then you are a bad man to live in a house where students are supposed to study at night, for nobody does nothing alone." I said at the outset that the loafer very seldom initiates things, and this is true, but he falls easily into disreputable habits. The student who does not spend his time in study, is not at all likely to be spending it in making his own character or that of the world better. Most of the men who have failed or gone to the bad in college have done so because they had learned to loaf. There are few things so good for the developing and strengthening of charac- ter as work. If one has duties to occupy the major part of his waking hours, he is pretty safe. The loafer is a far greater foe to scholarship than is the man of what we ordinarily speak of as dis- tinctly bad habits. Even if he does his work, and very frequently he is lucky or clever enough to pass, he has no desire to do well. " A pass is as good as one hundred to me," I hear him say repeatedly, and he preaches the foolish doc- trine so assiduously that many innocent and inexperi- enced freshmen believe him. I said foolish doctrine, for not many practices have succeeded in getting more men out of college than this one of calculating how near one can come to failing and yet pass. " I don't think I should have been dropped/' a loafer pleaded with me. " I meant to pass ; though I did not care to get a high grade; in point of fact the 186 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT way I had it figured out I did pass, but the instructor evidently did not figure as I did." " Evidently not ; they don't always," was all I could say. The loafer is a hindrance to all kinds of progress. If he gets elected to office it is for the honor and not with the idea of doing any work, and the interests in his keeping go to the bow-wows ; if he is on a com- mittee he is late when it meets or he never comes at all ; if he is a member of an organization, he lies down sluggishly and retards all advancement. I was at a loss to know last fall why an organiza- tion in which I was interested was getting on so badly. " Who is your president? " I asked one of the mem- bers. " Baird," was the reply, " and he's too lazy to do anything himself and too conceited and self-satisfied, to let any of us do what ought to be done." Most loafers in office play the part of the dog in the manger admirably. The loafer has done more to undermine the faith of sensible, practical people in the value of a college training than any other class of student. Men can pass over without comment a dozen first rate fellows whose lives have been broadened and whose ideals have been strengthened and whose use- fulness to the community has been increased by their college training, but the loafer never gets by them. He is an argument hard to meet. I was trying to persuade Old Man Elliott who runs the hardware store in the country' town where I spent my childhood that he ought to send his son to col- lege. The boy had done well in high school ; he was THE LOAFER 187 ambitious-, and the old man could well afford the money. I was getting on pretty well when Bill Haws in golf togs ambled down the street leisurely, a cigarette in his mouth and a vicious looking bull dog tugging at the chain which he was holding. Bill had registered at Michigan once and had been fired be- cause he wouldn't work. The old man looked at him a moment and shook his head. " Do you think I want my boy to look like that ? " he asked. And yet Bill Haws had not been injured by college. He had been a loafer always ; it had been bred in him by his indulgent father and by his foolish mother, but the college got the credit for his unambitious lethargic life, as in such cases it always will. When President Lincoln was being beset and re- viled for retaining General Grant, whom many con- sidered incompetent, at the head of the Northern Army, he replied, " I can not spare this man ; he fights." It is this sort that the college needs men who have a purpose and determination to carry it through if it takes the skin off, men who will fight the hardest intellectual battles stubbornly and per- sistently. There is no success, there is no ultimate salvation for any excepting through hard, persistent regular work; and for that reason, it seems to me there is no place in college for the loafer. Especially do I feel that this is true in a state university. The young fellow who goes to such an institution pays in tuition scarcely a tenth of what his education is cost- ing the state. Every wash woman and laborer and artisan, every farmer and clerk and merchant in the state is paying a part of the cost of this young man's education, and is doing thi< with the thought, if he 188 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT has thought of it at all, that the student should be- come a better citizen. Such an institution is no place for loafers ; it is a place for men with ambitions, with a purpose, with willingness to work and a desire to make the most of themselves and to do what they can for the upbuilding and the betterment of the com- munities into which they go. The quicker a college gets rid of its loafers the better it will be for the loafers and for the college. THE FUSSER THE two sorts of activities in college life which invariably make the front page are the activities of athletics and the activities of social life. Athletics, of course, occupies the center of the stage, but the " f usser " is a close second to the athlete when those engaged in college activities are bidding for first mention in the newspapers. In the case of these two activities, as in many another, prominence brings a flood of adverse criticism, and the two things in the life of the undergraduate student of to-day in the big universities which are most severely railed at and criticized by the newspapers and by the public in gen- eral are inter-collegiate athletics and the students' social life. Everybody, including those who live in college towns and those who are in the state at large, seem to agree that the social life of the undergraduate in college is excessive, that he goes too much ; in fact it is quite generally believed by a great many that his life consists of very little else than social pleasure, and that he spends his time not in study, as he should do, but in running from one social orgie to another. The young women, especially at a co- educational institution where there are usually sev- eral times as many men as women, are thought to be intemperate in social matters to the extent of break- ing down the health of a large percentage of them 189 190 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT and of permanently acquiring a sort of social de- lirium tremens. Local women, at mothers' meetings and at afternoon sewing circles or bridge whist par- ties, look very serious and shake their heads know- ingly when they talk of the awful social goings on over at the college. " Believe me," some maiden of uncertain years affirms, " I wouldn't let a daughter of mine do as those girls do. It's scandalous, and would ruin any constitution." Now the real fact is that the average young woman whom I know in college, and my acquaintance is not limited, has very little social life, and the average man, and I know thousands of them, has still less. Rather than there being too much social life, as many allege, I am convinced that there is too little. The trouble lies in the fact that what there is, is too restricted in character and is entered into by too few people. A study of the dances given at the institu- tion with which I am connected will show two things : granted that the number given is large yet it is true that never more than ten per cent, of the whole stu- dent body is dancing at any week-end and often not one half this number, and it is true also that twenty- five per cent, of the student body does at least ninety per cent, of the dancing. The social work is un- evenly distributed. I have spoken of dancing as if it were the main social activity in which college students indulge. In an inland college town in the Middle West this is not far from the fact, though there are athletic games which bind more strongly than any other activity the undergraduate body into a more unified group; THE FUSSER 191 there are the church sociables which reach a consider- able number of students, and there are also vaudeville and moving picture shows which at one time or an- other lure most of the students within their doors. Where the college is not situated upon a river or a lake there can be no skating, no tobogganing, no boating, and no bathing, excepting of a strictly do- mestic character. The undergraduate, who at the week-end, when his college work is done, is looking for somewhere to go with a young woman for pleasure or relaxation is practically always limited to dancing or to the local moving picture or vaudeville shows, and of these two opportunities the former presents the more refinement and the less evil and is most frequently taken advantage of. Both of these forms of social pleasure seem to the unthoughtful onlooker indulged in to excess by the undergraduate body in general because he does not analyze the constituents of the crowd that make up the patrons of these social activities. He hears the rag-time music pounded out as he passes a dance-hall in the evening, he sees the crowds pouring out of a vaudeville play-house, and he concludes that students in general put in most of their time either at a vaude- ville show or at a dance. He does not stop to calcu- late that perhaps not five per cent, of the student body is dancing and not ten per cent, at the theater, nor does he conclude, as he should, as he walks through the student district and sees the student lodging houses lighted from cellar to garret that on almost any Frida)' or Saturday evening of the week at least seventy-five per cent, of the undergraduates are in their rooms after eight o'clock not engaged in 192 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT any active social life at all excepting such as one may enjoy through associations with the fellows in his own lodging house. If the observer who believes that the social life at any college or university is excessive would study for a time the composition of the crowd that frequents the vaudeville theaters and moving picture shows, if he would for a time regularly attend the college dances, as I have done for the past twenty years, he would see that it is largely the same people who sup- port the shows and who are familiar with the regular change of bill from week to week and from day to day. I have talked often with the men who furnish the music for these shows, and they all admit that there is a deadly similarity in the crowds that come daily to these shows. The undergraduate gets the show habit as he may acquire the habit of smoking or drinking, and one habit is as dominating as the others. I imagine that very few college officers have attended more student dances during the last twenty years than I have, and the thing that constantly sur- prises me when I do attend is the limited number of students which frequents these parties. It is possible before I go to a dance to guess correctly the names of ninety per cent, of the fellows who will be there. Of course, if it is a fraternity dance the problem is easy, for the attendants at such a party will be the active members of the organization, but even when I am in- vited to the Junior Prom or the Sophomore Cotillion or the Military Ball or a Union Dance I have come to know the dancing crowd, and I can safely predict who will be in the grand march before I get into the reception line. THE FUSSER 193 Only a few weeks ago I was discussing this same situation with one of our college officers who was de- ploring the fact that our girls were going out to parties to an extent that was proving ruinous to the health of many of them, and she thought the Univer- sity should pass some pretty rigid regulations to con- trol this situation. " How many of our girls," I asked, " do you think make up the list of these social debauchees? How many ought to be locked up or sent home or put into a sanitarium?" She thought for a moment and then replied, " Forty, perhaps," and then thinking again, " twenty would very likely include all of them." And this is less than two per cent, of our girls. I am of the opinion that not more than that propor- tionate number of our young men are excessively given to dancing and similar forms of social activity. I am sure that seventy-five per cent, of the under- graduates whom I have known have too little social life ; instead of the social activities of our college being intemperate, the fact is that they are controlled by a monopoly of a very limited number of people. Five per cent, of our students, to state the case gen- erously, have too much social life, twenty per cent, have about what normal young people require, and the remainder of the undergraduate body have too little, and so get out of college crude and inadequately trained in social matters. This condition of ill-training is intensified consid- erably in an institution like the state university, be- cause of the large number of technical students in attendance, many of whom are more interested in acquiring information than in getting a real educa- 194 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT tion, and who look upon time as wasted unless it is put in in the acquiring of cold facts which may later be put to use in the earning of money. Graduates of city technical high schools and junior colleges who continue their technical training in college too often know and care very little about anything which does not seem to them practical, and social finesse they think is for girls and liberal arts students. They fail to see that as much money even, if that is all they want, is earned through finesse and courtesy and an ingratiating approach as through a knowledge of facts, or if that is putting it a little strongly, at least it may be said that no matter how thoroughly one may be trained in information or facts these are seldom of much use to a man in any business unless he can get the ear of some one and hold it without physical force or intimidation. I believe that colleges in general give too little at- tention to the social training of their students. The authorities have the feeling usually that there is too much social life, that young men and women will look after these things themselves, and that the best thing the college authorities can do is to sit on the lid and discourage excess as much as possible. The authorities, also, are not unlikely to feel that study and social pleasures are antagonistic, forgetting the adage that all work and no play makes for intellectual slowness, and that every normal human being needs some social exercise. The feeling that every student will see to it himself that he gets all he needs might be correct if social opportunities were open in college to all students alike, and if all students had equal THE FUSSER 195 interest in these things and equal cleverness in adapt- ing themselves to new social conditions. It is the regular fusser, however, well dressed and " high man " with the ladies, who in e.very college community with which T am familiar, gives more time to society than to his studies, and monopolizes, to the exclusion of his sturdier companions, the social life of the college. Every organization has one or two such men, and they are so adroit in getting rap- idly from one place to another that they seem much more numerous than they really are. Sometimes they devote themselves to one young woman exclu- sively, though this concentrated devotion is seldom for long, and almost never results in anything serious or remotely related to matrimony ; sometimes like the busy bee they flit from flower to flower never stopping long enough in any one parlor to form more than a speaking acquaintance with the inmates. Some fussers try hard to get their names into every social pot that is boiling. I have a young freshman in mind Harold I think his fond mother named him. He goes tearing down the street while I am at breakfast to meet Ethel and to carry her books to an eight o'clock, at eleven I see him riding with Grace in her dual power car, and at three, as I look out of my window upon the back campus, I catch a glimpse of him strolling languorously with Blanche. I have no doubt that before dinner he has paid court to other susceptible hearts and that by bed-time he has sat in the easy chair at one sorority house at least. He is a hard worker, this callow young freshman, but it is not at 196 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT his books, and unless he takes the Dean's warning he is not long for this intellectual world. The fusser who devotes himself to one girl is quite interesting. I do not mean here to include the young man who is mature enough to know his own mind, who is far enough along in college to think seriously of the future, and whose prospects are sufficiently definite to make it possible for him intelligently to contemplate marriage. This class of men is not a very large one but, however many or few there are, I leave them out of the question. The man I have in mind is the one who is playing with emotion, who thinks or imagines that he is in love, and who grows as restless if he must be separated from the object of his melodramatic adoration for a few hours as does an inveterate smoker deprived for a half day of his cigarettes. Such a man can never be a student. If he gets out his books for an hour in a half-hearted effort to absorb a little information he is likely to accomplish nothing. His mind wanders to the last walk he took with her or to the next engagement he has made, and his eyes are fixed dreamily upon her framed picture on his desk. He may stick to the books for a few minutes, but it is not long until he remembers, perhaps, that she is leaving Lincoln Hall at this hour, and he rushes out to meet her and to walk home with her. Such a man while in this state of mind has an even chance of flunking, and no chance at all of do- ing respectable work. He would be more useful run- ning a soda fountain than in college and very little use anywhere. I have occasionally tried to reason with him, but I can recall very few cases where i THE FUSSER 197 accomplished much worth while. The social enthu- siast who thinks he is in love is not amenable to rea- son ; such a disease as his must usually run its course, must wear itself out; there is very little that either medicine or advice can accomplish, and yet if any- thing could be done for him it would be by a physi- cian or by a psychologist. The game in which the fusser is sitting is not a cheap one; if a fellow is to stay with it long he will need to have a good income. There are parties and cabs and flowers to be considered; there are auto- mobile rides and all sorts of excitements to be paid for, and refections and confections innumerable to be provided. He must constantly be on the alert for fear some other more adroit or more generous suitor should get ahead of him. It will not seem surpris- ing, then, that the fusser is an easy borrower, con- stantly behind in his bills, and regularly overhead in debt. Not even poker played by a man of bad judg- ment, inept at the game, is more disastrous to an undergraduate's monthly allowance than is the game which the fusser is trying to play. I was talking not long ago to a father who has two sons in college to each of whom he gives the same monthly allowance, and this allowance is not an ungenerous one. His elder son was always in debt, always complaining of the stringency of the money market; the younger boy was satisfied, solvent, and could always show a respectable balance in the bank. The father was dis- turbed and unable to explain the trouble. I as- sured him that the explanation was a very simple one; his elder sou was playing the social game; he had joined the sentimental army of fussers. When 198 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT the father showed an inclination to doubt the ac- curacy of my diagnosis of his son's case I drew out a good sized florist's bill against the boy, long overdue, which had come to me in the morning mail from a local establishment with the polite annotation that any effort which I should be willing to make in bringing about a speedy settlement of the claim would be gratefully received. The father was con- vinced. It is the fusser who monopolizes the organized social life of every college. He is seen at every party, glued to a single partner throughout the evening. He may come late, but he never wants to go early, ten o'clock may find him yawning, but mid- night sees him freshening up remarkably, and if the party is a formal one and is allowed to run until one or two o'clock, he is just getting his second wind at these hours and is eager to continue his toddling until sun-up. It is he who opposes any attempts to regulate the hour of bringing parties to an end on the ground that such regulations interfere with the personal rights of individuals. The longer the party runs, he thinks, the more fun it is, for he never allows his real college work to interfere with his studies. He would drop dead from fright if he con- templated continuous study for six hours, but eight or nine hours of continuous dancing gives him great exhilaration. The fusser in college reminds me most vividly of the country greenhorns in pioneer days who felt that it was a waste of time to call on a young woman on Sunday evening unless they could sit around yawning until three o'clock in the morning. It is he, too, who frequently breaks into the man- THE FUSSER 199 agement of social functions, since by being on the managing committee of a party he thereby secures free admission and so cuts down his expenses. If this graft includes free cabs and free candy for the girl, so much the better; he is just that much ahead. The fusser, stretching his legs before the grate fire in his lodging house, lying in the barber's chair get- ting a face massage, or sitting on the front porch watching the crowd go by, has but one topic of con- versation. He is not interested in the supremacy of a democratic government in Russia, or in athletics, or in food conservation; he is not interested in labor agitations, or in his studies; or in anything that makes for the betterment of the community or the state; his only topic of thought and conversation is girls, singly and in groups, individually and collec- tively. What he doesn't know about girls has not been written or thought of or talked about. He knows them all absolutely, and he has them all tab- ulated and cataloged and properly estimated. He usually does not agree with you at all in your own personal estimate of any individual young woman in question and is sure that if you had had his experi- ence you would know a deal sight more than you do. He knows a lemon from a peach in any garden of girls in which he may be wandering, and he is eag- erly willing to give you the benefit of his skilled judg- ment. You may be bored by his talk after you have listened to him for a half hour, but you could not in reason doubt his taste or his conclusions. I have seen a healthy, enthusiastic freshman come home from a pleasant happy evening with a sensible normal girl have all the joy and enthusiasm taken 200 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT out of him by the knowing fusser to whom he con- fided the details of his call. The poor freshman is pitied, laughed at for his taste, and told that he has been wasting his time upon a " dead one." It is the fusser who sets the styles in girls as well as in dancing and in social forms and conventions. The fusser is a social aristocrat. It annoys him to meet at any social function one whom he does not know or who is not in his own particular social set. If he is a fraternity man, and he very frequently is, it galls him to have to associate with " barbs " ; if he is a liberal arts student he feels annoyed at having to come in contact with the cruder " ags." If he goes to a dance, he clings to his partner throughout the evening; he avoids bourgeoisie crowds of com- mon undergraduates, he considers any general col- lege function cheap and vulgar; he likes best to get into a small exclusive organization for social activi- ties where one does not meet so many uninteresting people whom one does not know or care for. Any- thing that makes for social democracy he discour- ages or frowns upon, and if by mistake he stumbles into a democratic social gathering, he is unspeak- ably bored or gets a lot of sport out of the experience by taking his place at a distance, not entering with any heartiness into the pleasures under way, and by making fun of whatever is done or of whoever comes along. He looks upon the whole performance as a crude, vulgar jam which affects him only to give him ennui or pain. I was talking to the president of one of the most prominent of our undergraduate organizations at a Union dance last spring about these very matters. THE FUSSER 201 He had spoken to no one apparently during the whole evening excepting the young woman over whom he had been hovering until he condescended to give me a word and a hand-shake. " These parties are a horrible bore," he ventured, " one never meets any one whom he cares to know or to associate with," and the young woman with him simperingly assented to the doctrine. His object in speaking to me, I found, was to ask my advice and to obtain my con- sent to his organization of a little group of men, a kind of a social monopoly, which would make it un- necessary for him to come into contact with any ex- cepting the most select he to make the selection. I tried to show him the advantage of a wide ac- quaintance, the opportunities for training and im- provement in the democratic associations which were open to him in just such social functions as lie was then a part of ; but he could not see it ; it did not appeal to him ; he was altogether selfish and narrow in his social activities ; he hated the crowd. He was a good illustration of the typical fusser, who de- sires to restrict and dominate the social life of col- lege for his own advantage and his own narrow, petty, selfish pleasures. There are a great many young women in our co- educational institutions who encourage this type of man. He keeps the furniture in sorority houses dusted and polished through his various calls ; he con- tributes chocolate bon lx>ns to satisfy the feminine craving for saccharine; he has a fluent flattering tongue, and he is ready to play the gallant at a mo- ment's notice. He so well satisfies the social needs of the moment that it seems useless to many so- 202 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT dally nervous girls to encourage the friendship of a solider and a less showy man, for fear they will have less social excitement and fewer opportunities to make social engagements. The popular girl and the fusser in college are both of a piece and together do much to spread a false idea of what the actual social life is of the average young person in college; both should be eliminated wherever it is possible. The fusser in college is a social menace. His pur- pose in enrolling as an undergraduate is not to ac- complish really good honest college work ; the college is for him simply the theater in which he is to have a chance to stage a little social drama in which he will be the star actor. He wants to professionalize and commercialize the social life of college. All he sees in it is an opportunity to make money or to have a regular and continuous good time. " I don't expect my son to do much work in col- lege." a foolish father said to me a few years ago. '' I want him to have a little social life, to enjoy him- self, to acquire polish. He'll get plenty of chance to work after he leaves college." " Arid he'll probably leave college very quickly," I added, for the man whose object in being in college is to get into society, very soon lags behind intellec- tually and either withdraws of his own volition, or is sent away. The man who gets no social training in college is missing one of the most important by- products of college life, but the man who gets little or nothing else has wasted his undergraduate years. The college that does not concern itself with the social life of its students, that does not in some way control or direct that life so that no one will be shut THE FUSSER 203 out from opportunities for social training and social pleasures is making a grave mistake. The college that without making an effort to change matters allows its social life to be restricted and controlled by a small group of social butterflies is committing a crime. I am sure that in the large institutions of which we regularly read in the newspapers, the al- leged social dissipations, accounts of which are con- stantly making the front page, are indulged in by a very small per cent, of the whole body of under- graduates. It is the social aristocrat of whom, thank heaven, there are not many, who dominates and controls the social life of every college with which I am familiar, to the exclusion of the great body of students who most need the training which comes from such an experience. There are in every college scores or hundreds of young men and women who are too shy and too inexperienced to form a so- cial world of their own, whose social instincts are be- ing repressed, who are being shut out from the life which should be freely open to them, and who are starving for a normal social life. College authori- ties should be wide enough awake to see the situation and to meet it, the social autocracies in college should be overthrown, and every undergraduate should be offered a fair chance for social training and social education. cA- THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. AVAILABLE CIRCULATION AFTER DISPLAY PERIOD 196T 20m-8,'61 (02084.84)476 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 001 371 106 4