Page 2 University Daily Kansan Thursday, March 24, 1955
Gold Rush Era Was Colorful, Exciting
St. Joe and Independence were trading posts. Oregon was a practically-foreign outpost. California was an untamed mass of mountains, streams, and Indians—but the news was out and no one cared about anything but when the first wagon train was heading west.
The tale had spread like a prairie fire. It had run up and down the coast like a tidal wave. It crossed the continent from west to east and then jumped the oceans. In a few months and with crude communications, it had reached every corner of the globe.
It routed men from their homes, farmers from their fields, clerks from their desks. The fever ran rampant; all routes west hastily were looked up—then promptly choked with bumping, careening prairie schooners.
For the news was out. The secret had proved too good. A teamster, sent to town to buy supplies, had stepped into a Mormon's saloon to get a drink. Whisky was scarce. The Mormon refused to let him have the drink unless he could pay. Pay he did—with pure gold dust.
The stuff had been discovered where he worked—at Sutter's For in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Freely imbibing the now anxiously-given drinks, the teamster lost restraint and told all about it.
Gen. John A. Sutter, wary of the "great carnival" and devastation which would come, had tried to keep the secret. Sutter's Fort was just getting a good start. Remote from civilization, Sutter with but 15 men to help him, had pitched his tent, mounted his guns, established sentinels, and laid the foundation of an empire. For the consequences it entailed, it was to be unmatched in the republic of colonies.
And the great carpival came—the wild, romantic, fascinating carnival. Forgotten were the habits, the customs, the comforts of a distant East. The immigrants grabbed up the crops which had been left to die, and regarded the opportunity of gold as divine interposition. Men went gold-crazy and all was confusion.
A building was set up for a mint in Oregon City. The bars of gold were stamped into $5 and $10 gold pieces. Outside the mint there was a man named Zack Fields who offered to bet a $5 coin that no one could raise his head from the ground by the ears. It looked easy, but when a man put up a gold piece. Zack greased his ears so the man's fingers would slip right off.
Pills were $30 a box or $1 apiece. A woman who could play a guitar or sing fairly well commanded a sum in gold just by stopping in at a saloon for an hour or so. Women were at a premium.
Wild adventurers swarmed into the state from every direction. Stabbings and shootings and lynchings were the custom. "Three-Fingered Jack", along with Joaquin Murietta were finally captured and killed. Their heads were pickled in alcohol for identification, then purchased at a sheriff's auction for $36. A merchant wanted them for decoration in his show window.
There were the unscrupulous legislators, landsharks, and gold-hungry squatters but there were also the mild. There were those who dreamed just as vividly but arrived on the heels of the looters. There were those who panned the wrong streams, lonesome and disheartened men who battled to forget the never-realized fortunes and dreamed of home, though there was no way back.
San Francisco was suddenly a city. By 1853, it had a dozen daily newspapers. They were crammed with the reports of a turbulent society. One which lived for gold and its pleasures. But the men of the West were strong and among them were builders.
—Irene Coonfer
The course, as its title implies, instructs one in the proper enunciation, voice pitch, and tone inflection necessary in carrying on a conversation over the telephone. Such tricky assignments as the proper way to use a telephone directory are included, and the students often make field trips to the local telephone exchange.
A great variety of courses are offered to the student each semester at the University—they range from social dancing to physics. The elective-seekers long have been advised to take Basket Weaving or Early Morning Bird Calls II, but always jokingly.
One Woman's Opinion
It was small wonder, then, that several students just laughed when they heard about the course which is offered at Fort Scott Junior college. "Telephone Techniques" is the course, and it is conducted twice a week for credit for graduation.
Listening to recorded telephone conversations is another class exercise, as well as viewing films on conversations between persons. Based on the assertion that "the world is peopled mostly with fumbling phoners," the course is designed to insure success and not failure in using the instrument.
The course probably is well-handled and beneficial, for it has been in operation for three years. Probably it is being too sophisticated to assume that most students know how to effectively operate a telephone by the time they reach college age. However, others can remember receiving such instructions during their girl and boy scouting days, if their home education had been lacking in that area.
The American educational system is criticized constantly by foreign students who were required to pass difficult eliminating examinations while at the elementary and secondary school levels. American students generally do not catch up with the foreign student's development until he has done college work.
Such courses, then, as "Telephone Techniques" seem considerably out of place when evaluating the knowledge which a student should acquire. History, political science, the physical sciences, and economies hold more importance in the advanced technological world today.
They seem much more relevant, indeed, than two of the instructor's cardinal rules: "Don't keep the other person waiting on the line," and "Always think out what is to be said. Have a memorandum pad with previously prepared questions." —Irene Conferer
When the world's largest passenger liner, the Queen Elizabeth, docks in New York harbor she lands as many as 2,000 travelers and their baggage, gets a stem-to-stern cleaning, loads enough food for 100,000 meals per round-trip voyage, and embarks another 2,000 passengers—all within a normal two-day turnaround.
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Daily Hansan
Editorial Editor          Gene Shank
Assistants: Elizabeth Wolgenuth, m
NEWS STAFF
EDITORIAL STAFF
Lemon
Man. Editors: Amy DyeYong, Jon
don. Karen HillerMack, Jack Lundberg
News Editor ... Nancy Neville
Asst. News Editor ... Lee Ann Urban
Staffer Hill ... Stacy Hill
Wire Editor ... Tom Lyons
Society Editor ... Mary Bess Stephens
Past Soc. Editor ... Irene Coonfer
Past Technology Editor ... Tayl
News Advisor ... C. M. Pickett
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Mgr. ___ Audrey Holmes
Advertising Mgr. ___ Martha Chambers
Nat. Adv. Mgr. ___ Leonard Juren
Clr. Mgr. ___ Georgia Wallace
Classified Mgr. ___ James Cazer
Business Adviser ___ Gene Bratton
Foreign Students Find Adjustment Difficult
During a conference on the International Educational exchange recently two panels discussed the academic and social adjustment of the foreign students at KU.
The results of the discussion and the reaction of the participating students showed that the social adjustment especially is still a problem for the responsible representatives of the University, but is also a problem which ought to be solved on a wider level, concerning faculty, fraternities, sororities, student organizations, as well as the individual students.
An admirable program of the University made it possible for the number of foreign students to be increased, and today 150 students from 53 countries are enrolled here.
Certainly each single student, who by means of a university or fraternity or sorority scholarship is able to spend one year in the United States and at KU will be grateful to his sponsors and he will accept facilities and try to fulfill all obligations. And from comments of foreign students it can be learned that their practical adjustment to the somewhat different way of life was successful.
But with the growing number the amount of work which had to be done to organize the program, to provide housing and living facilities, and academic and social aid, piled up.
At this point the problem for the foreign students arises. Everyone who has lived in a foreign country will know that one can get used to the new customs and circumstances fairly easy but may not feel comfortable even after the period of a year or longer.
Most of the foreign students who get scholarships to the United States are selected on the basis of nation wide competition over the period of one year and in many more aspects than their academic record. They have the wish and the ability to learn as much as possible, to discuss actual problems and to demonstrate their own ideas and experiences, and they are specially trained and prepared for a successful social adjustment.
When these 150 well-equipped foreign students arrive on the campus, they start eagerly and sensitively to dig and pull and turn over everything in the way—until they come to a barrier.
This is the point where the social adjustment easily fails. After becoming accommodated with the new circumstances the foreign students look for more. As they know the facts they search the background. They look for new people and new bases to accomplish their first impressions.
To make this second stage of adjustment successful, the foreign students need the careful help of understandable members of the university or the public life, who regard their needs and who are able to satisfy them.
And this is a wide open field at KU with many chances for the future. Other universities installed educational courses for faculty members, students and interested townspeople to prepare them in advance on how to deal with students of different nationalities, background and education. They selected outstanding and interested students out of organized houses, organizations, and classes to meet their guests on an equal level or to live with them in international horses
A solution of this problem is important because the foreign students who like the University and the campus want not only to feel comfortable among themselves but also within a group into which they may fit.
—Heiko Engelkes, Hamburg, Germany
Having emerged not too long ago from the rigors of a world war, we sometimes think that the 20th century state of mind is unique. That the problems we face today are problems which have never before been thrust upon the human race.
The period of the 1920s following World War I brought similar problems differing only in size and complexity.
Soon after the armistice in 1919, when the United States was changing again to the production of civilian goods, there came a rash of new inventions and technological advances. Science began to gain prestige which has never quite been lost.
The expansion of electric power in the late '20s is paralleled today by experiments conducted in atomic power for peace-time use.
Today's Problems Not New
The "Red scares" come to mind as one of the dominant features of public opinion shortly after the end of World War I. They differed from the "witch hunts" of today in that riots displaced investigations. They accomplished approximately the same end and achieved the same publicity and public distaste. The public of the '20s, like that of today, was jumpy and ready to condemn any cause on which the Communist, then called Bolshevik, could be pinned.
There were also the ever-present government scandals. There are few examples of corruption which equal the Teapot Dome incident of the '20s and the mink coat tinge of the late '40s
Fashions also raised eyebrows as women who were trying to break from the burdens which pre-war I customs placed them began to sport rakish hair styles and short skirts. Today, similar concern is directed toward the Dior "H look" and short hair styles.
Morals, it seems, are always under fire, especially after a world war. We can look to 1919 and see the similar movie censorships experiments in moral codes, and cries that our youth are becoming excessively wild that are found today.
The post-World War II era faced many complex problems and holds the same apprehensive outlook as experienced in the early 20s. Our problems are unique only in the far reaching consequences of our decisions. Gordon Hudelson