Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/63

 is little effective check, and who themselves are unlikely if allowed to go undirected or unsupervised to keep any intelligent or intelligible account of their receipts or their expenditures. In any of the Middle West state universities the sums of money handled by students in the conduct of undergraduate affairs will run annually into tens of thousands of dollars.

The young men who make up the student body of any of our Middle West universities when they enter college are, many of them, not unfamiliar with the ways of the world. They know what it means to get or to hold a job through the influence of friends; they may not call it "pull," but it is the same thing under another name. They are not inclined to work "for their health," and if they do a piece of work, even if it be only having their names on a hat committee, they can not always see why they should not profit by it in some material way. They are strongly imbued with the commercial spirit. Much of the foolish talk which they have heard about college has been mixed with stories of graft in undergraduate affairs, and many fellows come to college with the idea that if you are anything of a wise guy you can pick up money almost anywhere about a college campus.

The editor of the summer edition of our college daily was complaining to me not long ago that he was having to do most of the work on the paper himself this summer, and that it was really more than he was able to accomplish.

"Haven't you a staff?" I inquired, with the memory of a long published list of names of editors in my mind.