davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29
1.-The Universities Are Full to Over
flowing, but Only Poverty Con-
fronts Professional Men

and the Catholics 1865, with a re-
duction of 392.
Statistics showing how women are
pressing into the various profess
s;ons are especially striking. Not
less than 2,192 of them are. study
ing medicine, against only 944 five
years ago; 1900 are taking mathe-
matics and the natural sciences,
against 691; 1,150 law and political
science, against 1855; 1872 dentistry.
against 65; 130 pharmacy, against
16. 1t is noteworthy fact that
women are already turning away
from the profession of teaching, evi-
IDENTIFY aware of the overcrowding in
that profession. During the ten
years ended with 1918 their number
ran up from 600 to about 1000, but
during the past two years there has
been no further increase.
The large gain in the number of
students at the technical colleges
has already been mentioned, but the
figures quoted do lot give an ade-
qua4e idea of the situation. Besides
the technical Institutes of high rank,
which ere state institutions, there
are many private schools that under.
take to prepare young men for spe-
cial technical work. They take
every applicant and are crowded to
capacity. Not a few efficient arti-
sans save up their pennies to pay
for courses in these schools, unde-
TERED by the fact that skilled work
men are usually better paid than
medium grade technical officials. Ii
appears evident, therefore, espe-
cially IN view Of the uncertain out
look for economic Germany, that the
manufacturing companies OF the
country will within a few years be
flooded with applications for en-
ployment from young men far be-
yond their requirements, and many
of them will have to look for posi-
tions abroad.
Increase of Physicians
Medicine and law will apparently
be the chief battle ground of Ger
many's intellectual proletariat-
medicine in particular. A leading
medical weekly recently said that the
number of physicians in Germany at
the last enumeration was 31,6O2:
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29

lication Of his Doctors dissertation.
This has become far too expensive a
pleasure, and the Minister Of Edu-
cation has recently issued decree
relieving the young doctors of that
expense. ut would now cost a small
fortune" writes a professor, "to get
a dissertation printed; and thus the
doctors degree would become more
and more the privilege of the rich"
Henceforth the young doctors are
only to have several typewriter
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29
copies of their dissertations made for
the university library.
9HeOWtQ 1}a2S4.

copies of their dissertations made for
the university library.
German students are striving to
carry forward the tradition of schol-
arship under these hard conditions.
And what is to be their material re-
ward? AS matters are now going
they are to enter upon hopeless COM
petition with porters and scrubbing
women. At Berlin there is an insti-
tuition for scientific research whose
fame has gone even into foreign
countries. It's annual budget con-
tains these two entries:
Director, Professor X, salary,
5000 marks
Scrubbing woman, Anna Y, salary,
1900 marks.
Teachers Underpaid
The case is typical of conditions
throughout the learned professions
of Germany, especially where men
draw salaries from the government.
The pay of governmen. employees
had become so notoriously made
quate that a general advance was
provided for by law recently
passed; but even this law left fully
half of the clerks and most of
the school in classes be-
low "scrubbing woman, Anna Y"
Some remarkable statistics have
recently been published, showing the
economic plight of the P'iuat-DoSen-
ten at the universities. These men
are the private lecturers, from whose
ranks the future professors are
selected. While they are on the
waiting lists they are without salary
and live-or starve-on the fees paid
by their hearers. The statistics in
question, gathered at twelve univer-
sites, show that half of these lee
turers gather less than 500 marks a
year from their fees, and 40 per cent
of them have less than 5000 marks
private income, before paying taxes.
Yet tfree-fourths of them are mar
ried and about forty-one years old.
They have spent more than score
of their years in preparing for an
appointment which the majority of
them will never receive at all; and
their only reward will be the salts
faction that comes from devotion to
scholarly pursuits.
But even a pfofessorship is no
Golconda. The ordinary" professors
l. L a L
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29
Increase of Physicians

from the porter to the policeman
and the educatedl man or woman in
the street, seemed to have been
waiting all Of their lives just for
this opportunity of doing me a
service and giving all their aid. If
inquire the way every one within
hearing stops dead still to tell me,
just as all the traffic in Fifth Avenue
stops as though frozen when the red
light and then the green appear
on the new signal boxes in the mid
die of the street.
Anything TO Please
Men and women 60 far out of
their way to show me the shortest
route. (They call it ''rout," but what
does that matter? So do our soldiers.
If l do not understand some custom
they sit down on bench and ex-
plain until the meanest understand
ing can be in no doubt. When a
total stranger like myself is intro
duced, men and women come for
ward with such smile and such a
cry of every pleased indeed to meet
you" that it is almost impossible
to realize they would say the same
to your bitterest enemy. Insincere?
Not in the least. 1t is but politeness
and the solicitude to please. How
charming, after the English and
Scottish manner of greeting every
stranger as an enemy or a bore!
How this widespread politeness
has grown up and been diffused I
cannot say. 1t is the more remark
able because the children are so COM
monty what is called >ill-bred. They
persist and interrupt and whine.
They whine like sick kittens. They
seem never to have "Hush!' or
DON'T" said to them, and never to
be told that "little people are meant
to be seen and not heard" I sup
pose there is not on earth more
irritating human being than the
ordinary whining American child be-
tween five and ten.
"If only had the wringing Of
your neck!" the unaccustomed Eng
lishman is inclined to remark.
And yet, out of these uncomfortable
little terrors grow the sweetest-tem-
pered and most courteous men and
women / have known. Is there, then,
something wrong in the British
training? Must we abandon "Hush!"
and "Don't"? Must we cease to
speak roughly to the little child and
beat him when he whines? God for
bidl There must be other causes for
the charm Of American manners.
Possibly the Schools
Puritanism as a religion is dead,
but perhaps there fingers still ira
dition of the Puritan sweetness of
manner and quiet grace in behavior
such sweetness and quietude as
grave Quakers use. Generation
after generation of old Americans
~
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29
earning Is at Low Ebb in Democratic Germany

that 1t is now about 10000 and will
very soon be $4,000. Before the
war, adds this paper, there was one
physician to 1000 population; now
one to about 1900; and the time will
soon come when there will be one
for every 1000; and then people
will begin to ask what can we do to
help the physicians?"
Conditions are developing along
precisely similar lines in law. The
ranks of the law students have been
swollen to ominous proportions
through the practical dissolution of
the army, which closed the military
career to the sons of the nobility.
These and many others are pressing
for admission into the law.
All this rush of hopeful young
spirits into intellectual callings at a
moment when Germany is sinking
deeper and deeper into poverty is a
thing that threatens tragical results.
Most of these students are strug-
Cling through poverty into what
threatens to become still sharper
poverty. In recent interview
high official of the Prussian Min
istry of Education said that only 30
per cent of the students have more
than 800 marks a month for their
support, and 6 per cent of them have
less than 100 marks. They are COM
PEELED to work to carry themselves
through the universities. Many of
them tutor schoolboys at to 3
marks an hour, and malnutrition has
reached frightful stage among the
students. One writer says that over
5000 of the Berlin students are able
to afford warm dinner only once
week. The English Quakers re-
Gently opened an eating house for
them and give a warm dinner to
about 1000 at nominal price.
Many students are working in their
spare hours to earn money. Some
are lamplighters, some work nights
at repairing streetcar tracks, some
are firemen, some are walters in
hotels and restaurants and some
drive automobiles.
A Constant Struggle
1t is under such conditions that
the future generation of German
scholars is being trained. 1t is a
daily ordeal of grinding poverty-a
struggle with hunger and cold.
When the student finishes his studies
and is finally rewarded with the
doctors degree the hard times de-
prive him of one of the chief glories
that the German student has ever
looked forward to as symbolizing his
laurel crown of success-the pub
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29

descendants love to call them now
once lived as in Gods sight-lived
each day as it were their last, or at
least professed to live in that solemn
manner.
Perhaps fellow feeling of equal
ity in the presence of Eternal Truth
has passed into the very blood of
the race. Or if that explanation
seems too far-sought, there are the
public schools to teach equality. For
the public school in America is not
the richly endowed private school
for the children of the plutocracy as
in England, but is really a public
school open to every class. to every
degree of wealth or poverty.
| am told the standard Of educa-
ton is not SO high as in our so-called
public schools. AS far as the teach
ing of knowledge goes, do not un-
derstand how it could be lower, but
granting that knowledge is but a
very small part of education, still
one may say that the American pub
lie schools beat ours easily in the
diffusion of manners.
Who can overestimate the advan-
tage of country where all the young
stand on footing Of equality and
where opportunity for knowledge
and common education is open to
all, irrespective of the parents
wealth? Here one says "Sir" to
every one or no one. On the trains
there is only one class, and the work
man is as comfortable as the capt.
tallst (the great expresses take Pull
man cars and sleeping cars, it is
true, but there are no first, second
and third class compartment) sup
pose equality and the freedom from
fear of riches or station are the very
foundations of good manners. For
man conscious of social inferiority
will be either servile or rude.
Work and No Worry
Work is here conducted with
deal of unnecessary noise and an
assumption of hustle" but the in
ner spirit of it is easy going and
leisurely, as BELTS the heat of sum-
mer and the heated rooms of win
ter. People elbow in" at the Offices
about 8 or $50. They blow out to
lunch for an hour or so at IL, and
Broadway downtown" or Fifth
Avenue at Twenty-third Street be-
comes moving swarm of youths
and maidens, beaming, we'll dressed,
we'll fed, much at their ease. About
5 they all blow away to their homes
by bus, trolley, subway or elevated
rail. No doubt a lot of work gets
done, but it is absurd to think
OF Americans as sunk to the chin
in business. A cheerful spirit of
leisure prevails. Outside Russia /
have never seen people so unpunc-
tual. so Indifferent to time. Time
to them is entirely, and wisely, a
matter of "relativity," and so is
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29

Public Law died at the age of forty
two.
At the end Of June the Society
of German Publishers issued it's an
nual report, in which it pronounced
the last year "the hlackest and most
dismal in it's history" After re-
ferring to the vast increase of ex-
penses in the publishing business,
the report says that it is precisely
the most valuable books, from the
cultural standpoint, that are most
seriously threatened, since they ap-
peal to only small public and can
be brought out only in limited edi-
tions. Such books, it says, have
either ceased to be published, or can
be brought out only at heavy loss.
The report further says that after
Germany's frontiers were opened
last year there was an enormous
rush of foreign buyers Of German
books, taking advantage of the de-
probation of the mark to get them
at very low prices. Owing to the
same cause vast quantities of Ger
man timber and wood pulp were sent
abroad; and this is partly why most
German paper mills are idle.
This report says that printers
wages have risen 700 per cent and
binding $50 per cent, with additional
charges for certain materials.
Through these causes, including the
high price of paper and the impossi-
bility Of obtaining it at all, the
great publishing firms, says the re-
port, were forced to restrict their
activity more and more. The Ma
tional Printing Office at Berlin
raised it's prices $50 per cent last
year, and more recently the advance
has been carried to ITO per cent
over peace prices.
Libraries Cooperate
The high cost of foreign periodi-
Gals at the existing rates of ex-
change is another serious blow for
Germany's scholarship. The cost of
such publications ranges from twen-
ty to thirty fold the pre-war prices.
The Prussian State Library, as the
old Royal Library is now called, took
5000 foreign periodicals for its
reading room before the war; but it
has been compelled to cut down its
list to 25O. Owing to this situation
the German libraries have organized
sort of cooperative society for
subscribing for foreign periodicals.
The plan is to adopt a list of the
most important of such publications
and assign a part of it to each
library, thus insuring that every
good foreign periodical shall be
taken by at least one library. Then
the magazines will be sent around to
the other libraries as called for, in
exchange for similar courtesy.
The various German aca denies of
science, universities, technis col
leges and research institutes have
also recently organized the So
called Notgemeinschaft Emergency
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29

and rise gradually to 6,6OO-with a
rent allowance Of 1000 to 1000
marks. The extraordinary" pro-
fessors start at $500 and rise to
4,SOO marks. Besides these sums
the professors get certain percent
age OF their lecture fees. Altogether
the sure income Of an ordinary pro-
fessor ranges between 6,7OO and
9,100 marks; that Of the extraordi-
nary from $500 to $500 marks.
Hence many of these learned men do
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29
Possibly the Schools

Puritanism as a religion is dead,
but perhaps there fingers still ira
dition of the Puritan sweetness of
manner and quiet grace in behavior
such sweetness ands quietude as
grave Quakers use. Generation
after generation of old Americans
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29

The suggestion has been seriously
put forth that writing machine corps
be organized among the students,
whose task should be to strike off
copies Of new unpublished books by
the professors for supplying the va
rious university libraries.
At meeting of the German Book
Publishers Association, held at
Leipsic May 2, the distress of the
book trade formed the burden Of dis
cusslon. The price Of paper, it was
said, had risen fifteen-fold and more
from 1914 to 1919. A pound of
paper containing no wood pulp cost
20 pfennigs before the war; it now
costs 9A marks. Setting and print
ing increased eightfold, illustrations
seven to ten fold. 1t was added that
prices were still soaring; and it was
almost impossible for a publisher to
determine what the retail price of a
book ought to be. 1t was further de-
clared that present costs Of printing
would in short time cause the sus-
pension Of all scientific publications,
because these can look for only small
sales that would not cover the costs
of manufacture.
''Kultur Catastrophe"
The book publishers then raised
the following poignant cry of dis
tress: at is therefore the duty of
every true German to draw public
attention to the fact that, with the
breakdown Of the German book
trade, we are hurrying toward the
kultur catastrophe of our people"
In line with this the Deutsche
Bucherei "a sort of national library
at Leipsic has recently reported that
no fewer than 140 periodicals have
suspended publication since the war
began, thirty-two Of them this year.
T. mentioned the suspension of the
Zeitschrift for Philosophy and
Philosophical Criticism, after hav-
ing reached its 165th volume; and
the Zeitschrift for Private and
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29
American Ways and Manners

@AN there be any more de-
lightful holiday than visit
~ ing a foreign land where
one understands the Ian
guage almost completely? asks H.
W.. Nevinson, writing in The Man
chester Guardian. An Englishman
IN the United States can enjoy that
strange pleasure to the full. For a
time few words may escape him.
For week or two he is almost
sure to get the accent wrong in such
words as ordinarily" or "necessari-
ly." He will get the pronunciation
wrong in tomato" and "vase" and
few other common words. He will
continue to say got" instead of
gotten" and he will spell "check"
as "cheque," or talk of engaging a
room instead of making a reserva-
ton, or ask for a season ticket in,
stead of committing.
But these little errors are soon
corrected, and even in his broken
American how much more easily the
Engllshman moves than in his brok-
en- English or German or Swahili!
How much more readily he sym-
pathlzes with peculiarities and char
acterlstics among the Americans
than among other foreigners, such
as the Chinese or Hindus! AS in
ireland, he is a foreigner, but he has
less difficulty of comprehension.
Had Expected Rudeness
from the very first the English
man is overwhelmed with surprise,
chiefly delightful. He had expected
10 be received with rudeness or at
the best with indifference. He had
supposed the American people as a
whoie to be rough and ill-mannered.
rerhaps their loud and high pitched
voices had given him the idea. But
'ne loud or high pitched voice is pro-
duceo, think, mainly by the noise
VI the cities, or by the isolation of
'ne houses in the suburbs and coun-
Try $50 that one has to shout to be
"sard from door to door,, or by the
haoit of talking all at one time. 80
mat only the loudest voice can as
sert itself.
IL has no connection whatever
WIN aggressiveness, impoliteness or
want OF consideration. Except per-
maps in India, l have never known
such consideration, such sensitive
ness to the feelings Of others, such
'ol'citude to please as in these
States.
An Englishman appears among
:, .he people as a stranger speaking
seir language with markedly for
s'sn accent. We know how "the
0eastly foreigner" is treated in our
: country. and /. expected even worse.
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29
Women Joining Ranks

There are now 20,636 students in
the Berlin University, the Technical
Hochschule and other higher insti-
tutions here, comparing with only
1851 in 1911-'12. The increase Of
students studying for the various
professions is interesting. At all the
universities the medical students are
1854, against 16,O46 in 1914; in
philosophy, philology and history
there are 1883, against 14,436; in
political science and agriculture, H.
0S5; in law, 15,525, against 9,842.
Dentistry shows unique Increase
from 976 to 1887. Only theology is
failing to hold its own, inasmuch as
the clerical calling presents fewer at
fractions than ever. The total
Of Protestant students of theology
was 3,436, or 93S less than an 1914,
New-York tribune., 1920-08-29
By William c. Dreher

From The Triouaes European Bureau
BERLIN, August IS
"HE future of Germany as an
intellectual force in the
world is now endangered to
a degree that few persons
outside of Germany realize. In Ger
many itself that danger is appreci-
sted indeed, and the newspapers are
printing columns of alarm matter
on the subject, but even in Germany
only small part of the people ap-
rear to understand the situation.
Young men and women crowd the
universities and technical institu-
tons as never before, pressing
forward to intellectual callings at a
time when the entire economic basis
for such careers is visibly giving
way.
Yet the students come in hordes.
Last winter there were $4,000 at all
the German universities, including
about 5000 women. At the technical
institutions there are about 10000,
and in other institutions of univer-
sty rank about 10000. There is
thus an army of about 10000 stu
deats. The number of women stu
dents has more than doubled in five
years and almost quadrupled in ten.
In 1910 women accounted for 4 per
cent Of the student body; now they
are almost II per cent.
South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1920-07-30
DICTATES WILL TO
TALKING MACHINE

DIES MONIES, Ia, July 29.-What
he says he believed TO be a fraud
proof will has been made and hled
I'm the office OF the clerk of Polk
county. Iowa, 10y Theodore Mentz, a
Des Moines lawyer. Mr.. Mentz die
tated the will into a talking machine
and had II recorded in wax.
At the end OF the dictation. c. II.
Miller. a lawyer. and n. w. Brandt.
court reporter. testified into the
machine they were witnesses TO the
making" of the will, and spelled
their names out In full as the wit
nesses. The record then was put on
"a machine and reproduced the voic-
as. Being pronounced correct by
Mr.. Mdntz. he took Il TO the clerks
office, had the box containing il
sealed in wax and filed.
Mr. Mantz has instructed Mrs.
Mantz 10 take the case to the high
est court of the country If the valid
fly OF the viii should be questioned.
The Will on a record is believed
10y its maker TO be the first os its
kind in the country Lawyers say a
possible objection 10 Wills ON talking
machine records is an Iowa statute
which says conveyances of property
worth more than $500 must be in
writing. Mantz says he Will go be
fore the next session OF the legisla-
ture and endeavOr 20 get a bill
through which viii legalize spoken
wills when recorded as his is.
Mantz says he believes the future
viii see greater uses Of talking ma
chimes and records. and i'm his opin-
ION II would be far more dicult TO
'tamper with" a spoken viii than a
written one.