Toothaker's Stable is the favorite Livery with the students. Hacks always in waiting
THE WEEKLY University Courier.
The largest College Journal circulation in the United States.
PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY MORNING
BY THE TUCE
COURIER COMPANY For Kansas University Students.
A. L. ADAMS,
President.
A. L. WILMOTH,
Sec'y.
EDITORIAL STAFF.
HARBY SMITH, Editor-in-Chief.
W. S. JENNES, '87,
LAURA LYONS, '88,
G. W. HARRINGTON, '87,
NANNIE ANDERSON, '88
B. P. BLAIR, '88,
LIZZIE FRETTE, '89,
LILLIE FREUMAN, '89
MARY SAINN, '87
BUSINESS MANAGERS.
BUSINESS MANAGER
DENTON DUNN ST. 87, E. G. BLAIR, 87,
503-629-1344
Entered at the Post Office at Lawrence, Kansas, as second class matte.
Cutler s Petroleum Engine Print.
We hope our foreign subscribers will overlook the fact that they did not receive their paper as early as usual last week. The papers were placed in the post-office at the usual time, but lay there three days before we were aware that they had not been sent out. The post-office men held them because our deposit had run out. We do not believe there is another office in the country that would be guilty of such a mean and contemptible trick. It is the custom of all offices to send out the papers or notify the business managers that their postage is due; but this office, managed by Bourbons who have about as much accommodation as a wood-chuck, did neither. We will do the best we can by our subscribers, but with' such a post-office, irregularities may be expected.
--amount of "eramming" at the end of the term, will be able to pass a better examination than one who, much better posted on all the essentials of a subject, has not made this special preparation for examination. Here we see possibilities for injustice, although the chances of error are lessened by counting term standing of equal value with examinations.
With the advent of warm weather, the student takes his equinoctial bath—a little early this year, on account of the precession of the equinoxes—and looks about him for other means of recuperating his health, enfeebled by somewhat extended hibernations. We wish to give some good advice, which we hope will be cheerfully received and diligently followed:
First, attend the meeting for the purpose of organizing a foot ball team.
Second, attend a similar meeting and assist in perfecting a base ball organization.
Third, attend all other meetings relating to athletic sports—these are the means of grace.
Fourth, if you are not chosen as one of the members of the first nine—and twenty chances to one you will not be chosen—postpone your exercise until the summer vacation. In the meantime the regular athletes will exercise by proxy for you.
Fifth, never appear on the campus unless in full dress. Do not think of engaging in any sports in which you are not an expert; you may show your awkwardness. Keep cool; wear your optical accessories, and rest assured that the athletic association will bring you through with sound health and strong muscles.
We are informed that recent movements have been made for the abolishment of the present marking system, and marking students as passed or not passed, as the case may be. This plan, although possessing some desirable features, should, nevertheless, be adopted only after the most careful consideration.
To be sure, the present system of grading is open to criticism. It is sometimes the case that one student having a very inferior knowledge of a subject in its entirety, by a small
Other objections of more or less weight may be brought against this system of marking. It is sometimes urged that such distinctions as grades in marking and grades in diplomas are unnecessary incentives in an educational institution of the standing of the University; that by offering these incentives, an improper motive for studying is suggested to the student.
In answer to the last objection, it may be said that the love of study and the desire for knowledge which every student has on entering the University, ought not to be diminished by the discovery that his work is attended by suitable honors. A good meal is not injured by a judicious amount of seasoning. Neither do we think that the incentives of honor are to be wholly overlooked in an institution of this character. It may be well enough in a University, but we must not forget that Kansas as yet has a University in name only. Her true University is still like faith—"The substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen." Nor can we hope by adopting the proposed plan to secure greater justice than is secured by the present system? The student who, by patient study and careful thought, is able to secure a grade of ninety-five per cent., is certainly worthy of more honor than the student who, clinging to the caudal extremity of the subject, is dragged through with a grade of seventy.
By the present system of marking —grading 1, 2 or 3, as the standing may be, between 100 and 90, 90 and 80 or 80 and 70—close and questionable distinctions are dispensed with. In grading on both examination and daily recitation, a check is placed on superficial "cramming," either for recitation or final examination. The few errors which may possibly occur will in all probability be overbalanced by the other forty or more examinations of the collegiate course, so that at the end of four years the average grade of each student will tell, with more truth than many are willing to admit, the relative character of his work in school.
Much more could be said on this subject from either standpoint, but we incline to the opinion that the final verdict would be in favor of our present system. It presents no false ideal. Industry has its reward in every place; it offers a worthy incentive to intellectual activity, placing merit second only to moral sublimity. We have a good thing. Let us keep it.
The question of labor and capital, despite the great amount of discussion on that subject, seems no nearer solution than it did two years ago. However, there is a growing conviction among the more thoughtful of the people, that it can never be solved by force, and if solved at all it must be along the line of a restored harmony and confidence between the two contending factions. But how shall it be restored? This is a question which, as we have been informed time and time again, is of great importance and great complexities.
This great complexity, it seems to us, is caused by attempting to find some universal remedy; by assuming the very false hypothesis that the relation between labor and capital is the same in all places. No greater error could be made than this. The relation between the employer and the employee in the eastern manu-
factories is as far removed from the relation between similar parties in the west as night is from day. And no greater injustice can be done the western laborer than to class him in the same rank with the suffering laborer of the east. It does not take much to make a man believe he is miserable, and it takes less to make the man who has involved himself in unnecessary debt believe that some one else and not himself is responsible for it. But this has been the tendency in the discussion of this question in the west. Shiftlessness and prodigality are too often extenuated, and lack of success is attributed to oppression. And just so long as western laborers are encouraged in this belief; just so long as they are incited to "strikes," "boycotting" and riot, they will be oppressed, not so much by capitalists, as by their own misguided efforts.
The observations of the writer of this article—who is neither ashamed to confess nor proud to profess that he has been until recently a member of the working class—have led to the conclusions that the cry made by labor against capital in the west is wholly uncalled for. There are few places in the west in which the industrious laborer can not earn a comfortable living.
The attention of the students of the University has been called in a somewhat public manner to the condition of the suffering employees in the manufactories of Kansas City and adjoining towns. It has been our fortune to know that the condition of the laborers of Kansas City is not so deplorable as one might infer from the prominence given this subject in an article contributed to the COURIER within the recent past. If the class in economics, after visiting the shops, as has been suggested, will then compare the amounts of a given number of employees at the grocery with the accounts of the same employees at the saloon and the billiard hall, they will gain some information which will throw much light on this question. If they will investigate further they will find that in nearly every instance where the laborer is industrious and economical, that he is living in comparative comfort. We are personally acquainted with laborers who are living as comfortably and who are saving as much money as graduates from this University who hold positions of honor and trust in this city. Our attention has been called again to theamentable condition of the miners in this state. The labor statistics seem to show a state of affairs sad enough but miners themselves have informed as that they know of no better winter employment in this state. It is true that many miners work only two or three days in the week and loaf about the bar room the rest of the time Their condition and that of their families is wretched enough, but the honest, industrious laborer earning from $1.25 to $2.50 per day, has little o which he can complain.
There is no reason why the relation between labor and capital in the west should not be healthful and harmonious. The condition of the laborer here is better than it has ever been in any age or in any country. It is time for theorists and demagogues to teach better things. Teach the laborer how to work, not how to keep other men from working; teach him the extent of the possibilities, the opportunities that lie open before him—he will find out enough of his miseries without teaching; teach him the doctrines of the scriptures. If man can not live on bread alone, much less can he live on "strikes" and "boycotting" and politics alone. The opportunities for the laborer in the west are many. Success is offered to him as free as grace, yet like grace,
it can be acquired only through faith and work. He needs to have faith in himself and faith in his employer; he needs to work, and that right honestly. The first will give him a contentment fully warranted by his condition; the second will give him such conditions as to more fully warrant his contentment.
SAINTS AND SINNERS.
I confess my enthusiasm over the high school bill, which was to provide so many hoppers for the University mill stone, has about all flown with the reading of the bill. The bill does not, as I had inferred from talks with the Chancellor and others, provide a high school for every county. The gist of the matter is that any county having over a certain population, may, if it so elects, establish one high school; providing always that a lot of red-tape has been gone over. Now I'll wager something pretty that there will not be over two or three counties in the state that will adopt the high school. The average Kansan is at present too intent on voting R. R. bonds and increasing the value of his real estate, to pay out a few cents extra for the better education of his sons and daughters.
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The weather opening up bright and warm, athletics will again come forward. There is just one way for our University to regain prestige in the sports, and that is by centralizing its work. Let us have one good ball club, one first-class foot ball team, and there stop. Pick out the best men in college and let practice be systematic. Above all, don't bore the merchants of Lawrence for any donations. Profit by the experience of three years ago, when a fine base ball ground was laid out on paper, a boat club for ladies, one for gentlemen, two foot ball teams and half a dozen base ball clubs were organized, while the only thing scored during the season was a heavy debt and a big scandal.
O yes! What has become of that society organized in Lawrence last fall for the suppression of wicked art, as chiefly represented by illustrations of opera burlesque? I supposed by this time that pictures of women in bare arms would not be tolerated, that the statuette of Power's Greek Slave in Field's store would have disappeared, and that the Adonises, the Mercuries, the quoitthrowers and other nude models of the Latin and Greek rooms would all be clothed in cutty sarks. Somehow the super-morality crowd must have withdrawn from business quite early in the season.
I think Prof. Canfield can get more work out of a pupil than any three teachers in Kansas. In the first place, he never assigns any definite lesson. He expects a student to take the text book for a starting point, and then browse around over all the pasture he can find in the country. When recitation hour comes, every mother's son must be at his post prompt to the second. He must be all eyes and ears to what is said about the subject in hand. If a girl's switch parts from its shoe-string mooring, or a boy's pants get a divorce from his suspenders, the switch and pants must go, while the sufferers concentrate their attention on the professor's last joke. In truth, there isn't a class room in old Mother Oread's cabin where the pupils learn more, laugh more and snore less than in the room across from the library.
*
After many, many years of anxious trials and tribulations, the Emporia Normal has induced the legislature to give it the ten sections of salt lands. I don't know how much it takes to
preserve the venerable female ruins till they have completed their Normal course at Emporia, but I should think these six thousand four hundred acres of salt would almost do it.
The Maggie Mitchell entertainment drew exceedingly well from the University ranks, and proved the most popular attraction since Minnie Palmer dazzled us. As Maggie Mitchell's dress came no higher than her knees, I presume the Saints who attended the Devil's Auction, but went into hysterics at my mention of the play, will sit quiet while I speak of "Little Barefoot." Miss Mitchell has a queer voice, harsh at first, but bewitching as you get used to it. Her acting is superb. In form and feature she rivals the charms of the pampered beauties of the present generation; but for fear of alarming the sanctimonious harpies, I will say no more on this point. Her rendition was a little incongruous. As "Little Barefoot" she never so much as uncovered an ankle or great toe, while as a poor servant girl, she wore big solitaires on fingers and ears. Altogether, however, the performance was the best we have had for many a day, and reflects credit on the taste of the Saints and Sinners who attended it.
Being fortunately prevented by other duties from inhaling the Washington gas at the University last Monday, I refrain from individual comment. From what one and all tell me, the pieces perpetrated were appalling. One rendition alone was extra good, one was fair, the balance sulphurous. Indeed, some of our most patient students threaten to resign and leave the University if one of the speakers of this occasion is again inflicted on their hearing. It beats the world how the ghosts of the Revolutionary warriors could have remained quiet while such a bald, stupid, inane, ridiculous mass of words was delivered in a manner so utterly devoid of relevancy, passion, consistency or interest.
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I wonder where Jenks boards. Last fall he came here lean, lank and hungry looking. Now his face is round as a pumpkin, and his coat buttons can no longer keep their engagements with the holes.
The last concert of the musical department is so warmly lauded by those who heard it, that I am in hopes Prof. MacDonald may be induced to repeat it. The might it was given was so disagreeable that but comparatively few people climbed the hill. Too much credit cannot be given Profs. MacDonald and Aldrich for the thorough musical work they are doing this winter.
I know very little about the preparation of doughnuts, and would rather leave the manufacture of the soft and insipid stuff entirely to the Baldwin Bakery. Cautiously and low, however. I would whisper in President Sweet's ear that whiskey is by no means an agreeable ingredient, even when cloves are added as a subsequent spice. It would be well enough to let the experiment of using these flavors end with the specimens from the Bakery who hugged the lamp posts in Lawrence last Monday. Lest President Sweet may not catch the latent meaning of these lines, I will add that it don't look well for his students to get on a drunk when away from home. SMITH.
Abilene now has the foremost antiprobition editor in the state, G. C. Rohrer, who employs as editor-in-chief the foremost prohibitionist in the state, Rev. Philip Krohn. Nothing like variety.
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