Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/41

 of our loan funds. His monthly check had not come, he had an engagement out of town, he needed thirty dollars immediately, and he wanted to catch the afternoon train. When I explained to him that our loan funds were not primarily to relieve such cases of distress as he presented, but even if we should be willing to make a loan to him it would take at least two weeks and possibly a month to get it approved, he was quite disgusted, and went out of my office muttering anathemas against the system.

The undergraduate who borrows money is usually inexperienced in financial matters. He has established nothing that resembles credit, he is ignorant of all such things as interest: and security and discount except as he may have come into contact with the terms while pursuing the study of arithmetic in the grades. He has seldom signed a promissory note before, and he usually signs this first one, unless some one insists otherwise, without reading it. He is told, perhaps, that the note bears five per cent. interest from date and that it will fall due in two years and eight months. This fact, however, is not likely to make any serious impression upon his mind excepting that it seems a sufficiently safe distance in the future to cause him no immediate uneasiness or worry. I have never known more than a half dozen student borrowers who got the date of the maturity of their note so definitely in mind as to be sure of it without a notification from the bursar. It is true that all of our regulations and requirements are down in black and white and are given to every student to be read when he applies for a loan, and though he affirms when he makes application for his loan that