Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/130

 Boys are chosen usually for membership not so much because of similarity of tastes and similarity of character as from similarity of their fathers' income and social or business position. Even in the country town in which I live, I could without much chance of error pick out the boys' who, when they leave the graded schools, will be asked to join one or another of the high school fraternities existing in the local high school, and I could do it without knowing the boys personally at all, but simply from my—knowledge of their parents and from my acquaintance with their financial rating. A boy in moderate or meager circumstances very seldom gets into such an organization, unless perchance he be an athlete, who is likely to be taken because he is a hero. The poor boy can not afford to belong; the boy without social prestige would queer the others.

The high school fraternity, excepting in private academies and boarding schools, exists not so much to bring boys together and to strengthen the friendly relations existing between them as to develop a rather excessive social life in which girls are also to a large degree involved. In a private or boarding school the conditions of living are different and the necessity for banding together more justifiable. Such boys are away from home, and they miss their customary social life, and whatever helps to make for them some of the associations and comforts of home is good. A boys' fraternity in a private academy, is, in a large degree, like a college fraternity and usu-