Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/77

 much is his organization's. This spring I called to my office a young senior who had handled the accounts of a prominent university organization to insist that he make a reckoning. He had kept no records; he had taken no receipts nor given any; he did not know whether he had collected fifty dollars or two hundred and fifty. He was sure that he had not handled much money, though what had come into his keeping he had put into his pocket without record and spent as his own. The only way in which he could in any sense atone for his carelessness, he said, was to meet the bills of the organization and if these were presented to him he would pay them. I am sure he will always feel that he got the worst of the bargain, though it is not at all certain that he did not collect considerably more than the bills amounted to. Such errors as this which I have just mentioned are all too common; the student falls into them thoughtlessly at first, and then finding his affairs in a hopeless muddle, trusts to providence to get him out.

Such difficulties could be avoided by requiring all undergraduates responsible for the collecting and the expending of money to give numbered receipts for all money collected and to pay all bills by check on this money after it has been deposited in the bank. Years ago I learned through dear experience not to mix any one else's money with my own. If I were a Sunday school treasurer I should carry in a bag to the bank on Monday morning the pennies and nickels I had collected on Sunday and never let them touch the unsanctified coins in my own pocket. When all students who handle money for undergraduate organizations are required to make a busi-