Tribulations and Rewards of a Class Agent

IF any there be who are delinquent on Alumni Fund matters, let them quickly turn the page or else prepare for troubled consciences. Anyhow if this article passes the censorship of the editors and appears in the dignified ALUMNI MAGAZINE, perhaps it will stir up some of the lethargic classmates or fatten up their checks. It might even stir up some of the grads in other classes. Allons!

How does one start about his duties as class agent ? To begin with, he goes to his nearest class agents' meeting in either Boston, New York, or Chicago during the winter. He pays his own carfare but receives in return a dinner—a "regular feed." After all have eaten more than is necessary to sustain life, the chairman of the Alumni Fund committee lays out the general plans, there is an informal discussion and finally the President of the College speaks for a full hour. This class agent has never listened to Hoppy's concluding words without feeling that he has been paid in advance, and well paid, for all the work which is to come. He senses the absolute need of the College for this money that will be contributed by the alumni and he feels that it will be spent carefully and productively. He recalls the late George F. Baker's remark after viewing the library he had given the College, "you can get more for a million dollars in Hanover than in any place I ever saw." So Hoppy's informal talk makes a great big Reward No. 1.

Now our young hero applies himself diligently to the task of getting everything ready for the opening shot. He spends his evenings poring over his records and his predecessor's records, and does much thinking and figuring. He drafts and redrafts his first letter to the class, trying to get a punch into it but carefully avoiding any high pressure stuff. The next day he stops in to see the best secretary a class ever had and tremblingly lays the letter before him. The secretary reads it over attentively, probably making mental notes of the inferiority of the average brain-capacity of class agents as compared with secretaries, mildly suggests a minor change, and hands it back. The class agent either agrees to the change, or hints that the secretary ought to go jump in the near-by harbor, receives a retort of like nature and betakes himself to the multigrapher where he orders beaucoup copies for toute de suite delivery.

Now the class agent gets out his cards and starts his work in earnest. A always wants to contribute exactly the average which will make the quota if every man contributes. No more, no less. So the class agent rubberstamps A's letter "Average of the class $ " filling in the exact figure. B always wants to know how much he contributed last year. So B's letter is rubber-stamped "Last year $ ." And here is C who has increased his contribution annually for the last ten years. So C's letter is stamped "Last year $ " as a guide for him, while the class agent says to himself "Good old C, he is as solid as Gibraltar. We are as sure of that $3 increase this year and next year as anything can be." D's card next. The class agent always feels guilty when he asks D for a contribution. D is a minister in a country town. He and his wife came to the tenth reunion on their honeymoon and say, was she a peach! They have a flock of kids now. He always sends in a dollar. Last year he was so hard up that he wrote that he couldn't send it for another month and a half but that we could surely count on it. That dollar represents more to him than a hundred dollars to many of the boys. And he would resent it if he were not asked to contribute.

E next. Oh, oh! He spends a five dollar bill for gin every football game, dance, and Sunday morning golf, but thinks the Alumni Fund is something for all the boys but E. He is not at all Alumni-Fund-conscious. He just doesn't get it. What to do? Keep after him and at the last minute, perhaps, he will send in five bucks.

F next. His check will come back by return mail and it will be a good one. F never writes a letter. He has never been back to Hanover. Wish he would write us a letter.

G next. He won't answer a letter. He has never contributed. Somebody has said he is doing as well as the average in business. So the class agents writes on the letter "G, you are the toughest bird in the class to get an answer out of. I dare you to write and tell me to go to the hot place where you and I will probably meet eventually." But the class agent knows G won't answer it.

H next. Why do these names have to come up? Three years ago, H sent a check for $5O in the final Alumni Fund mail and wrote "You can count on me for at least $5O every year." What a kick the class agent had gotten out of that. Now he would always figure that $5O in his early estimate. Good old H! So the class agent carefully wrote that guarantee on the back of H's card and remained blissfully trusting for a full year when he awoke one fine morning to the fact that H had not contributed a red cent. The final curtain had been rung down, the orchestra had packed up and gone home but the class agent was still staring open:mouthed at the stage expecting H to appear with a $5O bill labelled Hanover, New Hampshire, as its destination. The class agent, still unbelieving, put on his hat and coat and hied himself homeward, firmly resolved never again to count his chickens until they were safely in the stew-pot in Hanover. H has never made another contribution to the Fund, although still rated a man of ample means.

Next is J. Only in college a year, when his parents had wanted him nearer home. Reluctantly he had transferred to H-Y-P. But at heart he is a good Dartmouth man and always will be. Put K's card away. He is out of a job and having hard sledding to get by. He must not be asked to contribute.

Meanwhile friend wife has addressed envelopes till she is dizzy. Eventually all are in the mail and then the FiJN(d) begins. By return mail L sends check for an increased amount. His salai-y has been cut, but he knows "the going will be hard" and he "doesn't intend to quit in a tight place." M writes that he will surely contribute the last thing and to forward all letters, since he does not wish to miss any. N writes similar intentions but adds that it will not be necessary to send more letters. The C.A. knows that N would consider a second letter as a dun. O sends a fat check with a letter chock full of news. All about his business and his 15year old boy who is a natural baseballer and who will be a pea-green frosh in 1935. Here is real meat. The C.A. and secretary read this letter hungrily several times. Would that all the boys would write such letters. They constitute one of the major rewards for the class agent. So it goes right up to the finish line with one day bringing checks, money-orders, express orders and currency and the next day showing a total loss, alternately raising the C.A. to the heights of Everest and plunging him to the nadir of despair.

What then, are the hardest trials and greatest tribulations besetting a class agent? He has tried to rank them according to intensity but has surrendered hopelessly. Each is the prize goat-getter at times.

First, there is the man who says he will contribute and then fails to do so. That hurts. Second, the man who absolutely refuses to answer any and all letters. This group and the E group mentioned above who think the Fund is a wonderful institution for everybody but E, are closely allied. No wonder a class agent goes berserk at times. Third, the man who can well afford to contribute $5O and who sends but $5. Fourth, the man who eagerly accepted scholarship aid in order to pull through college and who, if this aid had been offered on the condition that he do his best to repay it when he would be out in the world, would have been only too glad to assent, and who now declines to recognize any obligation to the College whatever. This group is very small. Fifth, to be compelled to return a contribution because it is two days past the deadline.

Now, what are the rewards which lift the agent out of the slough of despond? First, the man who sends in his check before the opening date. It costs not a bit of time, effort or expense to collect it. Second, the man who receives the first notice and sends check by return mail. Third, the man who contributes more than he has been asked for. Fourth, the man who writes a letter with much news. Fifth, the man who sends check and a note "Let me know how you are getting along near the end of the campaign." He is really telling the class agent "If you have to have some more help, let me know and I'll send it." Sixth, Hoppy's informal talk at the class agents' meeting. Seventh, the final showing of the class when it is well above the contemporary classes. What exquisite pleasure to hear a classmate soberly asking a man of the next class if everybody in the latter class is a Scotchman!

This class agent believes that about 85% of the class really want to contribute to the Alumni Fund. What proportion of the balance of the class are restrained by inertia, procrastination, indifference, and the thought that their contributions would be so small as to be undesirable, deponent knoweth not, as Bill Cunningham would say. But deponent doth know that, outside of seven or eight men, everybody in the class can contribute at least a dollar bill. He still lives in hope that millenium will some day arrive.

Who knows the ways of the Class Agent?Who is familiar with all the deviousness of his machinations, the vast arduousness of his tasks, and the variousness andcomplexities of the situations which he meetswith understanding and tact? The answeris, No alumnus who has never been a ClassAgent! At this time, when alumni interestis focussed on the Alumni Fund and theClass Agents are in correspondence withtheir classmates looking toward the Fundgoal of $135,000 by June 30, there is highappropriateness in an article which provides understanding of the work of the ClassAgent and sympathy with his efforts. Atthe request of the editors, Charles H.Linscott '13, a Class Agent who knows all ofthe tricks of the trade and whose recordshows the effectiveness with which heemploys them, to write the accompanyingarticle on the trials, tribulations, devices,animosities, and rewards of a Class Agent.