Project Editor: Kimberly Kraska, UCARE, 2007

Project Editor: Kimberly Kraska, UCARE, 2007

——————————		——————————
	Page Image

THE STANDARD OF LIVING AMONG STUDENTS

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CAL., January 22, 1994 [sic].-Dear Mr. Editor: Your Request for a contribution to the anniversary number of THE HESPERIAN reminds me-the first request ever made of me for an article came from the editor of the same periodical, then THE HESPERIAN STUDENT, a thin octavo monthly making strenuous efforts to have "a literary flavor." Your present suggestion that I write on the early standard of living among the students, and especially among those who did their own cooking, brings back the early incident still more forcibly. The three hundred words which I handed to your predecessor fifteen years ago were under the title "Batching." Then, as now, I turned to the dictionary to see if the word was or was not spelled with a "t," and then, as now, I was disgusted with the dictionary for not telling me. Your conservation predecessor changed the title to "Self-Boarding," and rather than run the risk of a second editorial mutilation I palace at the top of these notes a title sufficiently proper and dull to pass muster with any editor.

The editor of THE HESPERIAN STUDENT of 1878 ought to have been able to edit an article on batching with discrimination, for he was living by the uncouth method indicated by the uncouth word. I remember that when I went to his room with the "copy" I was pleased to learn incidentally that the great man's method of cooking much did not differ greatly from my own, and that in the matter of cleaning the pot I was distinctly ahead of him.

The "Biz Man" of THE STUDENT roomed next to Mills and myself that term. We were in the second story of a ramshackle frame building on O street, since torn down. There were two other families on the same floor, besides the four students. Tenement house problems did not interest me as much then as they have since, or I might have collected some useful notes. Our one room was so small that the bed lounge on which we slept had to be folded up and the bedding piled on top of it every morning before we could sit down to breakfast. Our kitchen table was also our dining room table, and also our study table. This insured our washing the dishes promptly so as to get the table to put our books and papers on.

The other boys had a larger room than we, but then they were Juniors and we were only First Preps. They also were not afraid to pay five dollars per month while we only paid four. A door opened directly from one room into the other, and a joke which was considered good as long as it could be worked was to call to the man in the other room and when he opened the door throw at him a baked potato or other harmless missle [sic]. One day when the doys [sic] in the other room were "having a spread," of which Mills and I

——————————		——————————
	Page Image

Poor Adams! The next year, which was to have been his last before graduating, proved to be the last of his life. It seemed so manifest that stinted living and unstinted work had undermined his health that Chancellor Fairfield, the day after the funeral, felt it best to caution the students as a body against the mistake that he had made.

There used to be three large frame buildings, facing upon as many sides of the campus, which were inhabited by students who were boarding themselves. Rivalries in athletics or something else were frequently long continued between the inhabitants of these houses, and when the attempt was made to see which set of boys could perpetrate the most practical jokes on another set the practices came dangerously near to hazing.

Later self-boarding went out of fashion and boarding clubs were formed. I joined one or these because they promised to make me steward. Consequently I was the storm center when battle was joined on the issue of having or not having cod fish, or upon some equally burning question.

Not many children of wealthy parents went to the University of Nebraska in the early days, because those who could afford it, and there were not many such in the state, preferred to go East. The fashion of the day was therefore set by those to whom levish [sic] expenditure was out of the question. In my time one little knot of students was both fast and wealthy, and the impression made upon me by this fact was such that to this day I cannot help feeling that there is something disreputable about being rich. Intellectually I know that this is not the case, and that in some sort the hope of the country lies in those who are "rich but honest." In other colleges I have met those whose simplicity of life was in no wise destroyed by the fact that they had independent incomes, and whose money was used to broaden their education and to enlarge their sympathies and their usefulness in a way not possible for a student to spend a thousand dollars a year and still lead a life that is unostentatious and healthful. In college better than elsewhere men of this class may meet on terms of equality and friendship with those who have no money but what they earn. In college life the unpardonable sin in snobbery. The lines of social cleavage among students should not be those of property but rather those of capacities and tastes. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge were established originally for the education of small boys, but there have been times in the last hundred years when they seemed to serve only as the idling places for the sons of "gentlemen." We look with earnest confidence to the state universities of America to avoid such degeneration, to maintain a standard of living that is simple, elastic, and healthful, and to preserve for coming generations the benefits resulting from a democratic mingling of the capable youth of all classes.