Cut Bank pioneer press. [volume] (Cut Bank, Mont.) 1909-current, 1917-01-05

boys at that 1nStl uJlOn aspire 10 DC
hoboes, and the nearer hat ideal he
can attain, the prouder is the stu
dent.
Not a complimentary statement
concerning the highest institution OF
learning in the proudest state in the
union, is it? But it will bear up
under an explanation.
Montana college men are hard
headed fellows. Before the govern
ors'' were getting $40 for each and
every bushel of wheat, or 80 cents
for a wisp of wool, the boys at Mis-
soula we're poor. A canvass by the
faculty showed that 80 per cent OF
them were forced to earn most of
their expenses.
Gloried in their Poverty.
But the students gloried in their
poverty and in surmounting the OBJ
stacles it brought. If money were
not to be had to open the doors to de-
sirable things, there were other ways,
the boys figured.
So, when the football team planned
its schedule three years ago, with
trips to Spokane; Pullman, Wash;
Bozeman and Butte, a group of stu
dents, somewhat ahead of their gen.
GRAFTON, determined to go, too. And
they did.
Among the dozen who gathered at
the darkened end of the N. P. sta
ton at Missoula some 40 hours be-
fore the referees whistle was to
blow at Pullman, 800 miles away, a
anvas showed total possessions of
$7.65. This, it was certain, must
take the dozen 900 miles. And it did.
Fast foot work at the terminals
and judicious tips to inquiring brake
men between stations, took the gang
to Pullman and back to Missoula.
Meanwhile, two others had done
yer better, riding IN the coach with
the football team, huddled between
two seats, back to back, with yer
coats flung over the opening.
Only the Tried Admitted.
On their return to Missoula, the
Hobo club was formally organized.
Since then its membership has grown
until a third of h men students
have attained the honor. To join, a
student must bum his way to a col
lege football game without paying a
CEN for railroad fare.
A few days ago, the Hobo club was
accorded recognition by being listed
with other university mems organiza-
tons in the scholarship rolls. The
tramps showed as we'll as any other
group of men on the campus.
Next autumn the hoboes will be
confronted with new distances to cov-
or. Montana was admitted recently
to the Northwest Conference of Col
leges, which embraces the UNIVERSE
ties of Washington and Oregon and
four other schools between Missoula
and the coast. To bum it over these
distances, will earn the Hoboes hon
ors of national scope, and they de-
clare they will do it.
A Side Door Pullman.
They even are planning to beat 1t
back to Minneapolis when Montana
meets Minnesota, next October, in one
of the greatest intersectional grid
iron battles in the history of the
sport. Unless the a shortage per-
sists, the boys will make it all right.
Their favored means of travelling is
an empty box car, IN which one can
sleep, after a sleepless night or two,
play penny ante and walk enough for
exercise.
The second year of its organization
the Hobo club, on the occasion of a
game with the state agricultural col
lege in Bohemian, organized a chapter
at that school. The Aggie boes won
instant fame. When the blue and
gold team went to Missoula, IS stu
dent farmers boarded the North Coast
limited, heralded through a nation as
n of the fastest and most exclusive
trains on the globe. The naughty
limited flies past a station and will
not stop unless scheduled to do so,
for a millionaire.
But the North Coast stopped at
Bozeman for water. When she heeled
away westward, one and one-half
dozen exceedingly amateurish hoboes
were disposed about her two blind
baggages and the real of the tender.
They were there, too, when the limit
ed, with a high strung snort and
streams of sparks from her brake
shoes, stopped impatiently at Nilsson
la, a scheduled stop.
Cheering themselves, the aggies
piled off and into the clutches of the
yard policeman, reinforced by depu-
ty sheriffs enough to land the gang
in Jail. In the morning they still
were there when Mayor Andy Get.
chell heard of their Imprisonment.
Before assuming the office of chief
executive for Missoula, Andy Getchell
was a Northern Pacific passenger en-
gineer. He was an old and trusted
man and his regular chore was tc
wheel ten express and Pullman cars
from Missoula to almost the top OF
the continent at Butte and bring them
back through the tortuous twists OF
He'll Gate. Mayor Getchell knew thai
riding the blind on the North Coast
was a job for a real man.
did those boys actually hold down
the North Coast from Bozeman al
night?" he asked in amazement wher
told of the escapade.
"They did, your honor"
"Well, believe me-" concluded the
mayor with finality, "any boys thai
think enough of cheering for theil
football team to ride that goin' son.