College Men Without Money

by Carl Brown Riddle

The last two years saw me on another charge, paying much more money, but a much more difficult field, mentally. I was able to graduate, free from debt, though I had seldom been so during the whole five years. I feel as though I have a right to say that I did not slight my work, for I was graduated “Magna cum Laude” and took a few other honors besides.

Taken collectively, the grind of lessons, the worries of a circuit together with shortage of money are not always conducive to optimism, but I felt like I had to get through. The same zest I had then for learning is still with me. I may say that I have no more money than I had when in college, but as much ambition.

Madison, N. J.

TASK WORTH WHILE
THOMAS ARKLE CLARK, B.L., DEAN OF MEN, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

I worked my way through college from necessity—I had to do so, or to give up the idea of having a college education at all. I had no ideas then concerning the great advantages of such a course.

When I was a little boy my father had formed the plan of sending me to college when I should have reached the proper age, but he died when I was scarcely fifteen years old, and my hope of ever securing a college education vanished. Seven years later, when I was twenty-two, a chance experience renewed within me the desire to go to college, and I laid my plans accordingly.

I had little money, though I had been teaching school two years and had also been farming for myself. It seemed to me then, and I feel it much more strongly now that I have had an experience with hundreds of other students in a similar situation, that it would be better to delay beginning my college course until I had saved enough money to give me a good start. This I did, farming another year and spending an additional winter in teaching a country school. When I was ready to enter college I had money, which I had myself earned, more than sufficient to pay all of my college expenses for two years.

I had not been in college long before I saw that the fellow with no special talent or training is very much handicapped in earning his living. Such a man must take what work he can get, and must usually work at a minimum wage. Often, too, the only work which he can get is mere drudgery. The man who can sing or can play a musical instrument well, the man with a trade, or a particular fitness for any special sort of work, can earn his living more quickly and more pleasantly than can the man who must confine himself to unskilled labor.

Soon after I entered college a chance came to me to become an apprentice in the office of the college paper and to learn to be a printer. I did not need to earn money during my first year, so I entered the printing office, and gave myself to learning to set type.

I worked at the trade industriously during my leisure moments, the fellows in the office were quite willing to instruct me, and at the end of a year I had become so proficient that I was employed as a regular type-setter. In this way I earned satisfactory wages during the rest of my college course.