Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/239

 visitation and supervision of chapters, was a thing unheard of or thought of until long after I became a member of a fraternity. It was impossible, in fact, for the fraternity did not have money enough to finance such a project. While the number of chapters in each fraternity was kept small there was little or nothing to hold them together. There was no supervision and no unity. Fraternity organization was of the loosest kind. The effort to build up individual chapters and the binding together of each fraternity into a unified whole has come much faster than has expansion, and our newest chapters are the most influenced by it. It is very difficult to get the oldest chapters in any fraternity to realize that their organization is a national one and that they must conform to national regulations, that they must submit reports, that they must yield to control and obey regulations; it has not been the tradition for them to do so. Newly organized chapters do not feel so. It cannot, therefore, be shown that increase in numbers has weakened organization or is likely to weaken it. Quite the opposite effect has resulted. If the fraternity roll has increased in numbers, fraternities generally have developed closer supervision, better organization and control, and a closer unification.

The statement is made that our newest chapters