The National tribune., 1901-06-13
MAKING ENDS MEET AT COLLEGE.
How Young Men Manage to Work Their Way
Through the Universities Strange occupa-
tiols for Students.
dune Century.l

Anyone who visits q certain little meat
ship in a side street of Boston on Satur-
day night, when the rush of trade is
greatest, will find there an extra clerk,
distinguished from his fellOw-clerks only
by an unusually intelligent face. Like
them, he wears no coat, and he manages
his long white apron as easily as they.
His smile and quick repartee make him
popular with the waiting throng, and he
saws through the bone of pOrterhouSe
steak wraps up the meat, and hands 1t
to its owner as quickly and deity as a
professional. II the customer will 20 to
q dingy grOcery-store Il little farther down
the same street, he will find another man
backed up against a kerosene barrel, pa
tiently rehearsing the price of eggs, but
ter and soda to Il bulky matron of the
middle class, keeping his temper when she
informs him that all these commodities
are two cents cheaper at rival store, and
even smiling Il cheerful good-by when the
virago slips four cents worth of goldfish
into her basket as the result of 10 min
utes' haggling, and squeeZes through the
door.
If the same customer happens to be in
Harvard Square the following Monday, at
the end Of q collegiate hour, he will prob
ably feel like the victim of Il modern fairy
tale, when he recognizes in two students,
swinging across the yard with notebooks
in their hands, the butcher and the grocer
of Saturday night.
In the modern development of under
graduate self-support such metamOrphoses
from student to workman and back again
are so common that stranger within half
a days distance of any one of the we'll
known colleges for men is likely to meet
with a similar experience. The students
themselves take these transformations as
a matter of course, but the conventional
visitor in large college town may be
permitted a start of surprise when he
learns that the tactful person at an even
ing party, who looked after the comforts
of the guests effectively and unObtrusive-
w. and who set the social wheels in mo-
ton skillfully when they threatened to run
down, was in reality a student earning
dollar or more an evening for his sery-
ices. 1t is rather discOncerting, also, for
one with carefully regulated social ideas,
to discover in the class orator at COM
| mencement the night clerk of his hotel.
But Nation which allows one of its
SONS to work his way from canal-boy to
President could not, if it wished, escape
reflection of democratic ideals even in
its most aristocratic educational institu-
tions.
The opportunities for self-support vary
in the different colleges, according to their
size and location. Occupations practicable
for students in a small town are soon eX-
| hausted. For this reason the self-support-
ing student in Princeton, Williams, Dart
mouth, Amherst, Leland Stanford, jr
and some other colleges must make the
best commercial use possible of the col
lege public, and not rely too greatly on
the limited supply of outside work. But
the man earning his way at the Chicago
University, Columbia, Yale or Harvard
has n whole cityful of possibilities to
choose from, if the college body itself
proves unremunerativc. When the pros
| pective student of one of these universi-
| ties consuts the list of undergraduate in
| dustries from the safe vantage of his own
home, indeed, he feels as bewidered as
| n woman before samples of all the dress
goods in a store. His choice at first seems
unlimited. But only q few encounters
| living serve to reverse his ideas of his
own Importance, and to make him thank
full to do the first profitable thing his
hands find to do.
The freshman, particularly. discovers
before him very hard row to hoe. Lack
of capital, ignorance of the college Tnb-
| lie, its supplies, and its needs, a scarcity
of friends and acquaintances-all these
| things he must contend against. Upper
classmen may he chOosers, but freshmen,
| like beggars, must be content with what
they can get. They may be among
the fortunate ones whose high grades are
to be rewarded by scholarships later on,
But this vague possibility will not keep
the wolf from the freshman's doOr-mat in
the meantime, and he will have to bestir
himself or go hungry. Fear of hunger
| is a strong motive, and it drives hard
bargains with its victims; but an expe-
dent that would be a tragedy in the life
of an older intellectual man becomes a
pastime to the student who looks on it
as a temporary measure, and he shovels
off sidewalks blithely, and cleans furnaces
to a song.