The interlocking regents were called in, and also the board of visitors, and there was great excitement. One of the students reminded President Van Hise that the Milwaukee Trades and Labor Assembly controlled a hundred and fifty thousand votes; which apparently produced the effect intended, for the business manager of the university retired. The interlocking trustees showed their appreciation of his fidelity to the principles of exploitation by immediately calling him to become president of Tufts College! Tufts gave him an honorary degree, and Brown and Clark followed suit, and now he is chairman of the Massachusetts Security League!

CHAPTER XCII
THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH

I have ventured to suggest student representation on boards controlling our colleges; and perhaps you thought I was showing too much confidence in student wisdom. Fortunately I can show you a few places where students are beginning to take up the problems of their own educating, and to find fault with the courses served out to them by the interlocking directorate. For example, Mt. Holyoke, a woman’s college with a thousand students, located at South Hadley, Massachusetts; they have organized the “Mt. Holyoke College Community,” governed entirely by committees of students and faculty. I note that they are fully aware of the various functions of government, and how to make a democracy work. They have arranged “an executive body consisting of the acting President of the College Community (a student) and the presidents of various student and faculty organizations; a legislative body consisting of one member for every fifteen students and one for every five members of the faculty; and a judicial body consisting of five students and two members of the faculty.” Also these students have organized a committee on the curriculum, and three hundred and forty of them have reported “a strong demand for the elimination of required Latin and mathematics, and for the requirement of physiology and economics; also for modern government and hygiene.”

More significant yet, the students of Barnard have got busy, right under the nose of Nicholas Miraculous! They organized a committee on their own initiative, and have constructed an “ideal” curriculum. Listen to what these progressive young ladies purpose requiring of freshmen: a course on the history of mankind, counting ten points, “a synthetic survey course designed to bring out the chief aspects of man’s relation to his environment by tracing present conditions and tendencies to historic processes; the physical nature of the universe ... man as a product of evolution ... the early history of man ... the concept of culture ... the historical processes leading to present cultural conditions ... modern problems, political, economic and social.” Next they want a course, counting six points, in human biology and psychology, “giving an outline of human development and distribution on earth, man in relation to his nearest kin, a survey of human powers and functions, an introduction to general biology, the structure of the human body, outlines of embryology, functions of the body and their inter-relationships”—and laboratory work on all these problems. Also—imagine young ladies actually putting such things on paper!—they ask for:

“Specific human development of the sex-reproductive-child bearing function.

Also they want a course in “general mathematical analysis,” counting six points; “the technique of expression,” counting two points; and “Engliliterature,” counting six points, with the aim “to present literature as an aspect of life; the emphasis throughout is therefore on subject matter rather than on technical or historical problems.”

Yes; and also these young ladies of Barnard have taken up the problem of having Nicholas Miraculous tell them whom they may listen to. It was declared to them that the good repute of the college must be preserved, and after an argument they submitted to that imposition; but one thing they laid down very emphatically—they want the college authorities to give up the idea of protecting their tender young minds! As they put it:

“Resolved, that it is the feeling of the Student Council:

“That there is nothing gained in shielding students during four years from problems and ideas they must face during the rest of their life, and