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THE STUDENTS JOURNAL.
speak and by speaking himself. Besides the vast amount of benefit coming to the individual through attendance upon and participation in the exercises, the University is completely dependent upon the various societies for the men who are to sustain its honor against the forensic attacks of Nebraska's representatives. Hence the duty of every student who has the welfare of this University at heart is to encourage the debating societies, and especially the University Debating Club because it seems to be most in need of encouragement.
At the next meeting of the Nebraska legislature there will be presented a bill, originated by the Prison Reform Association providing for the creation of a State Board of Charities and Correction for Investigation and Counsel. The members of this board will, according to the bill, consist of the Governor of the state, the President of the Regents of the University, and four commissioners. All appointments to positions in the state institutions will be made by the Governor, with the concurrence of this Board. In this point alone, the proposed Board will be very valuable, but the bill will further provide for its utilization by making its general secretary an instructor in a new department of the State University, the Department of Sociology. A year's course, consisting of active practical work in studying social questions, will be arranged under this instructor.
We sincerely hope that the proposed bill may become a law and wish that some similar bill may be presented in Kansas. It would be a great help in encouraging thorough, fruitful work along lines now impossible to follow because of insufficient opportunity for observation. We already have here two courses, Sociology and Unsettled Problems, which are dependent for complete success upon just such practical work as will be offered at our sister and rival University if the proposed bill becomes a law. Wlll Kansas be backward in providing for the best welfare of her students? Even if it should be thought, for some reason, unadvisable to venture upon the matter in the way proposed in Nebraska, very material aid could be given by appropriating a sum for use by our Department of History and Sociology, in sending well qualified students to various places where important sociological
phenomena may be observed and their causes investigated. The sum required for such an arrangement would be small--very small in proportion to the benefit to be reaped.
AGAIN our foot-ball team has been defeated, but this time it is a defeat that is generally recognized as a victory for our boys. The odds were so clearly against our eleven, that, it is reported, bets of five to one were offered that our team would be shut out; and yet the score was twelve to twenty-two. And this, notwithstanding the fact that three of our best men were not in a condition to play, and that our "patched up team" had opposed to them what is, perhaps the heaviest team in the United States—a team that averaged eleven pounds more than ours, whose line averaged fifteen pounds more than ours. The Capital voices the sentiment of all who saw the game: "But, to make a long story short, the playing of the patched up team was magnificent."
The game to be played on McCook Field to-morrow with Nebraska will be a very interesting one, and all the students should attend the game for the purpose of seeing what "Unele Jimmy Canfield's boys" can do at playing foot-ball.
Our connections with Nebraska University are constantly growing more intimate, not only in athletics but in other ways as well Let us endeavor, by the most kindly and hospitable treatment, to make our rival our staunch friend as well.
No team from Lincoln has been here since the acquisition of McCook Field. The last one here was their excellent base-ball nine, which gave our boys such a tussle in '92, but. which was beaten, with a score of five to four.
The mutilation of the reading-room copy of Harper's Weekly, reported in our local columns, shows that the University is not yet rid of persons who are dead to all feelings of gratitude for the advantages given here, of pride in our excellent reading-room, and of appreciation of the rights of others. This vandalism can never be overcome by the librarian and her assistants alone, however watchful they may be. Hence it is the duty of every honest and patriotic student to lay aside all of that false sense of honor, which makes him unwilling to publish the