1897

These are stirring times. Ask any mother who has a boy 18 to 25. Ask any father who has a boy in college. Ask any granddaughter of men our age and the answer truly given is that the world is out of joint.

Look at a piece of meat that can be bought for a dollar and I feel sure that most of our classmates will wince a little. Get a bill for a room at a hotel in Miami near the dog race track, the swankiest in the south, financed by the R.F.G., only $30 a night for a room.

Look at the long history of a college with its early start in severity and simplicity, its early students brought up in a world of daring and religious faith. Then look at the mirror of today and see the picture of us, we, ourselves, just as we are; students in college, vigorous graduates in the prime of life, and also us, old guys, looking backward from a western sunset of life. We all are changed. We all are off balance in our minds, in our actions, and probably our ledgers. So what! The College loses 25 to 50% of its students to shoot its strong backlog full of holes. What does the College do in this kind of a fix? Who or what is the College? Is it a library? Or bricks and buildings, or some profs that have read a lot and think deeply and talk over our heads sometimes? Is it a beautiful town with elm trees casting their shadows afar? Is it a group of boys in interesting costumes of the day? Is it a basketball team for sale? Or a college yell on the campus? Who or what is Dartmouth College? The answer is that it is us, we ourselves from the youngest freshman to the oldest graduate, and it is We, us and company—who are having a little difficulty in the balance sheet.

Here's my suggestion. Last year X shoved up the College gift 50%. This year I am going on up to a point higher and give double of what I have in many years, and go without some of the unnecessary extravagances to balance my personal ledger. This is my thought and I want to put it in words of simple structure. If you, we and company, who are the College, come up to about double what we paid five years ago it will help keep the wolf from the door.

I have one further thought. John Henderson of my class lived on a diet of hasty pudding and heated himself with a two-burner oil stove in 1893, saving every cent he could till he got a job working about ten hours a day. That was pretty severe but he had the guts to fight for an education. He didn't have the "gimmies. " A number of others in our class also worked while they were in college. Among them were: "Hiram" Tuttle, who was later a trustee of the college, and now president of his own business; Morris Lull, who was for a long time executive vice-president of a big railroad, and "Simp" Smith, who was an important executive in a big publishing company. Didn't hurt them—any of them—to work.

This is the thought for the day—"lf the student lived a little less extravagantly, the need for scholarship would be less, and if the student worked, he could help the College get by this bad spot."

I would hate to see Hanover become a sweat shop town, but I would not fear to expand the Workshop, as has been done at Berea College. I think the crafts are an open door to substantial earnings while a student is in college, and that is why I loaned the college my best loom for making homespun cloth, and also other equipment with which to earn money at odd times. In just the same way I taught people to earn money during the great depression of 1932-36. I would go so far as to put a loom in every fraternity house and other tools as well and try to teach the boys to make something for profit and let him learn the joy of creative work while he is in college.

Secretary and Treasurer 886 Main St., Bridgeport 3, Conn.

Class Agent. 862 Park Square Bldg., Boston 16, Mass.