The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-28
OWEN JOHNSON, WHO WARS AGAINST AMERICAN
 COLLEGE SNOROCRACV

Owen Johnson, whose stories of Stover' and "The Eternal Boy have
 made him an international figure in literature, is himself little older than the characters of whom he writes. He
 is still near enough to the boy to un derstand him, for he will celebrate his tWenty-fourth birthday tomorrow. Mill lions Of readers will join in the wish
 that his heart may remain always
 young, for the selfish reason that we
 may enjoy other tales that enable us
 to enter intimately into the hearts and
 lives of those most interesting animals, boys. It is not too much to predict
 that Dink Stover will live as long as
 Tom Brown, and Tom is immortal.
 Owen McMahon Johnson was born
 in New York on August 27, 1878, and comes of a distinguished literary fam ily His father, Robert Underwood
 Johnson, for nearly forty years on the staff of the Century Magazine, became
 the editor of that publication upon the
 death of Richard Watson Glider in 1909, and his literary attainments won
 for him the decorations of the Cheva- Her of the Legion of Honor of France and Cavaliere of the Crown of Italy. The creator of Dink Stover was edu- l'cated at Lawrenceville, N. J., and at
 Yale and his educational experiences
 gave him much material for the tales that were to bring him fame.
 MT. Johnson is very ,mush concerned
 over the future of Americas institu- tions of higher learning, and views
 with alarm the tendency toward trans 1 forming the colleges and universities into snobocracies, where the posses sion of money and social standing
 makes for leadership In other words,
 MT. Johnson points out, American boys were sent to college for the purpose of acquiring an education. Today they
 are ashamed of being students. and the young men who actually studies and works is sneered at as a grind
 or a dig The professional rah-rah boy, we are given to understand, looks
 upon a "dig" much as union laborer does a ''scab.' The rich mans son considers it quite ungentlemanly, don't
 you know, to grind" and it is the
 rich mans son who now sets the pace
 in American colleges, according to MT. Johnson.
 There was a time when the thinkers, the scholars, were the college leaders. At a later period those gifted with great physical prowesS became the he roes of the campus But whether It was the intellectual or the athlete who was honored, the question of cash and social position did not arise. As MT.
 Johnson sees it. this spirit of democ-
 racy is gradually being overwhelmed 1 by that snobocracy. The fraternities, clubs and; societies are held largely re- sponsible for this change by the au- thor of "Stover at Yale" He points out that in Europe the students are the radicals and the revolutionaries, who, with the occasionally wise but most often foolish enthusiasm of youth would overturn the present founda-
 tions of society and create on the ruins new heaven and a new earth. This enthusiasm for progress, immensely valuable for the conversation of dem
 ocracy, and perfectly harmless, is care fully repressed in most big American colleges. The student becomes club man, a man of the world, blase and
 suave, and a snob who sneers at the poor digs and at all who do not be- l long to his own most exclusive set. Such man may become mildly enthu- siastic, and exceedingly drunk, over a football success, but as for saving the country''-what is the country to him? 1 MT. Johnson is not hopeless as to | the future. He does not consider the transformation of the colleges into so- cial clubs as a thing definitely accom- | plished, but rather as a tendency that | has had a tremendous growth in the | last few. years, and that needs to be stopped, and stopped quick. "Stover at Yale'' was written for the purpose of showing this tendency and of arous- | ing public opinion against it.