Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/64

 "Why, yes," was his reply, "but you see they don't get anything out of it, and you can't expect a fellow to work for nothing these days." It is a significant fact that if you ask a young fellow in college now to perform any sort of service, the first question he is likely to ask is, "What's there in it?" It is the slogan of our times which our young men have learned at home from the conduct of politics and the conduct of business. We are supposed to preach higher ideals in college, but it is hard to supplant a doctrine of selfish personal interest and profit with one of altruism.

The fact that it is becoming more and more popular to go to college and that every year, with us at least, there is an increasingly larger number of undergraduates who must earn their living, has its influence, I have no doubt, upon this desire for graft. I do not mean to indicate that it is the men who have the greatest need for money to meet the daily demands for food and lodging who are most concerned in the illegitimate ways of obtaining money, and to whom these temptations come more strongly. Quite the contrary in fact; but when one-third of the men in college, as is the case with us, are concerned in some way in earning the whole or a part of their living there is bound to be a good deal of talk current relative to these matters, and when one is daily rubbing up against men who are bringing in a few dollars, it is not strange that one should look about him, even though not pressed by want or dire need, in an attempt to discover if there is not some easy money in reach which he may pick up. If no one were earning money, perhaps no one else would want to do so,