Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/752

730 Before leaving this subject it is only fair to say that there is one form of extravagance of which the football association is not guilty. They do not spend more than their income. They live very far within it. Combining with the baseball association in paying into the Financial Union their earnings, the two organizations more than make up the deficiencies of the others. After paying all bills of all the organizations the Financial Union is able to give $4,000 to the field association, $1,000 to the gymnasium, and still has a reserve fund for future contingencies.

Evil No. 3: Brutality. This is the hardest charge to meet, because there is such a difference of opinion as to what constitutes brutality. In the eyes of timid people any collisions between young men in the most properly conducted game would seem brutal, though these same collisions would be tame fun to the average schoolboy. Personal encounters of some kind seem absolutely necessary to the education of young men, especially young men of the strongest characters. Such young men, judiciously trained, constitute the best citizens of a State. A State full of such citizens becomes thereby the safest to live in, for such men are its best defense. At the dinner given by Colonel Higginson to the teams of Yale and Harvard, it was remarked by Mr. Ropes, the historian, that those nations which practiced semi-military games like football were not only the strongest nations, but that they were the least likely to rush into war; whereas other nations seemed to carry a chip on their shoulders, ready to fight on the smallest provocation. Certainly those who have been intimately acquainted with students and student life for the past twenty-five years can bear testimony not only to the decreasing brutality of college customs, but also to the generally mild and gentlemanly characters of the football players. They, by their influence and example in the college, have largely contributed to this better state of college life.

If violent encounters on the football field do lead to the temptation of inflicting needless personal injuries on an opponent, they also give opportunities for resisting this temptation, and consequently for the development of the highest forms of courage and self-control. According to the observations of the writer, these opportunities are embraced by the majority of the players. Only the minority yield to the temptation, and few of that minority attain to prominent places on a team. If the contrary were the fact, football would long ago have vanished from the list of college sports.

With reference to the evils of public contests—gate money and strains and injuries—the writer sees no reason to change the views already expressed.

"If field athletics are to continue, the expense of them must be