Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/165

Rh As such, it was finally arranged that they receive a special allowance from the estate. This allowance as household servants paid their salaries, and a registration tax of twenty dollars per year on each student had to cover all other expenses. But these two sources of income did not come at once, and the great farms run as experiment stations were centers of loss and not of income.

A single incident will make this condition vivid.

At one time in August, 1893, Mrs. Stanford received from Judge Coffey's court the sum of $500 to be paid to her household servants. It was paid in a bag of twenty-five twenty dollar gold pieces. Mrs. Stanford called me in and said her household servants could wait; there might be some professors in need, and I might divide the money among them. I put the money under my pillow, and did not sleep that night. Money was no common thing with us then. Next morning, on Sunday, I set out to give ten professors fifty dollars apiece. I found not one who could give change for a twenty dollar gold piece, and so I made it forty dollars and sixty dollars.

The same afternoon after I had gone the rounds $13,000 was brought down from the city for us other household servants. This sum was distributed, and then Mrs. Stanford sent word that as we had some money now perhaps we could spare her the $500. I drew a check for the sum against a long-vanished bank account, and covered the amount in the morning with the aid of some of my associates.

This incident again will explain why for six years the professors were paid by personal checks of the president, and why these were not always issued regularly, nor for the full amounts. We were all struggling together to be able to issue them at all. There was no certainty ahead of us. Most of the property was of such a character that it could not be divided, but must go in blocks of millions, if it went at all, and no one with millions at his disposal seemed inclined to invest it anywhere. The estate held a one fourth interest in the Southern Pacific System, and of all its many ramifications. Kept together, it could maintain itself, but if any division were made the smaller part might be subject to the process known as "freezing out."

I pass by many minor incidents of struggle and economy. The farms had to be abruptly closed, and then to be made to yield an income. This required wise management and rigid economy at the same time, but for all this Mrs. Stanford proved adequate. She learned her lessons as she went along, and came to take a wholesome pleasure in the Spartan simplicity of her life. If all else failed, there were the jewels to fall back upon; and she steadily refused to consider the advice (almost unanimous) of her counsel to close the university or most of its departments until some more favorable time. In 1895 she invited the pioneer class, then graduating, to a reception in her city home, one reason being that it was the last class that could ever