fc oL v^ b c 
 
 
 UNIVERSHY OF ILLINOIS BULLEIIN 
 
 
 Issrr.i) Wekki.y 
 
 
 Vol. XXVII February 11, 1930 No. 24 
 
 
 [Kntereti as secoiul-class inattor Dcci-mbtr 11, 1912, at the post office at Urbana, IllinoiH, 
 under the Act of August 24, 1912. Accej>tance for mailinK at the special rate of post- 
 age provided for in section 1103, Act ot October 3, 1917, authorized July 31, 1918.) 
 
 
 ^r a 
 
 Whole WorUh 
 
 
 ^able 
 fctage. 
 # long 
 
 yiiy. 
 
 Eyes Services 
 
 aun!^ 
 pictuj 
 rathC 
 
 
 ^r The 
 ^Dither. 
 ^^ an- 
 
 of Illinois U. 
 
 with\ 
 glamoj 
 and tf 
 
 
 / Or 
 ^ farce 
 it the 
 
 
 curt^ 
 
 
 
 
 mQS 
 
 Bennett Finds University 
 
 an^ 
 
 
 
 Citizenship "Lab." 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 of p^ 
 
 
 /the 
 
 By James 0*Donnell Bennett, 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 r 11 HE University of Illinois is a 
 1 vast laboratory' of science and 
 1 citizenship built by and for the,, 
 ^ people of Illinois, f^W^ 
 It is primarily that, ancLlasa 
 ^s^^^aM^ more thari|^Vea^O»<^^ 
 #ons of d'i^^ ^^ 
 
 
 
 Reprinted from the Chicago Sunday Tribune 
 of June 2, 1929 
 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 
 URBANA 
 
DAVID KINLEY 
 PRESIDENT 
 
IHI'^ Lnivt'isitN ot' Illinois is a vast laboratory of 
 science and citizcnshij) built by and for tlu* |)C'()j>k* 
 of Illinois. 
 
 It is i)riniarily that, and last year it s|)cnt more 
 than seven and a (luarter millions of dollars on 
 the children of the people of Illinois. 
 
 r.ul its discoveries are always at the world's 
 service and the whole world seeks its service. 
 
 Within the memory of graduates still active enough to toddle 
 onto the campus and sedately whoop it up on commencement day 
 it was a provincial industrial school on a bit of prairie. That was 
 61 years ago. The school was then called the Illinois Industrial 
 university. It opened with an enrollment of 50 students. There 
 were three teachers. They taught algebra, geometry, physics, his- 
 tory, rhetoric, and Latin. 
 
 Today the University of Illinois has 14,000 students, nearly 
 1,200 teachers, a thousand clerks, stenographers, and laborers, 
 and more world contacts growing out of solution of practical 
 problems of existence than any other school in this country. 
 
 It is known throughout the world for discoveries that have 
 made buildings safer to live in, trains safer to ride in and tracks 
 safer to ride on. 
 
 Service That Overleaps Frontiers 
 
 Tonight in faraway Japan people are sleeping better in their 
 beds because of Prof. Arthur Talbot's discoveries at the Univer- 
 sity of Illinois in the adaptation of building materials to the shock 
 and strain of earthquakes. 
 
 In leper colonies of the Far East many of the world's three 
 million lepers who thought they were doomed to the most dread- 
 ful of deaths are being restored to hope and health because Prof. 
 Roger Adams developed at the University of Illinois synthetic 
 chaulmoogric. Natural chaulmoogric oil was effective in the 
 treatment of leprosy. Unhappily, it could not be given in suffi- 
 cient quantities without causing violent sufifering and sometimes 
 death. In the laboratories of the University of Illinois it was, 
 so to speak, tamed. 
 
 Glance up at the smoke begrimed wall of a remote Texas 
 roundhouse and you will see a lithograph showing a cross section 
 of a locomotive and bearing this notice: "The following facts 
 relative to the economical use and firing of a locomotive have 
 been determined by the Engineering Experiment Station at the 
 
 {3 
 
University of Illinois." Then follow instructions which are simply 
 worded but which represent years of tests and retests at the Uni- 
 versity of Illinois. 
 
 Heard Hopkins "As If a God" 
 
 In Greece, nearly eleven years after the war, farmers and 
 economists still treasure the memory and profit by the instruction 
 of Prof. Cyril Hopkins. He went among them in wartime to 
 
 show them how the dis- 
 coveries which he and 
 his colleagues had made 
 during twenty-five years 
 on the testing fields of 
 the University of Illinois 
 could be applied to their 
 own land. 'They listened 
 to him," said one fa- 
 miliar with the success 
 of that mission, ''as if he 
 were a god." The great 
 man died in 1919 at Gi- 
 braltar while on the 
 journey home after the 
 completion of his work. 
 But his work goes on. 
 The next generation of 
 Greeks will have forgot- 
 ten his name but they 
 will be doing what he 
 told their fathers to do. 
 Daily thousands of 
 people riding through 
 the Holland tunnel con- 
 necting New York and New Jersey are safe from the peril of 
 noxious gases because Prof. A. C. Willard built on the campus 
 of the University of Illinois concrete tubes which were one- 
 fourth the capacity of the ventilation ducts of the Holland 
 project and there definitely proved that systems which he and 
 other engineers had devised were efficient and would carry off 
 monoxide gas. 
 
 Facts That Earn Millions 
 
 The University of Illinois is bold in propaganda when once 
 it knows. It may — and it has — taken ten, twenty, thirty, and even 
 
 THE LAW BUILDING 
 
 [41 
 
NEW AGRICULTURE BUILDING 
 
 fifty years to make up its mind about the validity of a proposition 
 on which it is working but when it has the data all in hand and 
 the results before its eyes, then it goes aggressively forth to make 
 new scientific and industrial history. 
 
 In 1904 the first carload of agricultural limestone was applied 
 to Illinois land, and that land was one of the experiment station 
 fields of the University of Illinois. The university awaited re- 
 sults. Having obtained them it demanded that farmers take heed 
 of them. The farmers did take heed. In less than 20 years 
 500,000 tons of agricultural limestone were being applied annu- 
 ally to Illinois land, and that was one-fifth of all the agricultural 
 limestone used in the United States. 
 
 Deep cultivation of corn was once universal. The mind of 
 man ran not back to the time when, if ever, it had not been the 
 rule. The University of Illinois has changed all that. More than 
 40 years ago it began to doubt the ancient tradition. Doubt begat 
 experimentation. Experimentation begat revolution. Revolution 
 begat huge profits. For the University of Illinois has proved to 
 farmers in every part of the globe capable of growing corn that 
 an average of nearly five bushels more corn per acre can be pro- 
 duced by shallow cultivation than by deep cultivation. That solid 
 fact has grown millions upon millions of mrney for corn growers 
 everywhere, but it was given them as freely as heaven gives them 
 the sunshine which warms their fields. That fact and scores more 
 like it were in the mind of the agricultural publicist, F. J. Keil- 
 holz, when he said: 
 
 " Enough wealth has been realized by the state of Illinois 
 alone from the results and teachings of the university's agricul- 
 
 151 
 
tural investigations to cover, many times over, the cost of the 
 
 entire university." 
 
 The University of IlHnois is alv^ays doing something that 
 
 compels the wide world to take notice. Having done that, the 
 
 university imparts the fact with a laconic touch which in an age 
 
 of clamorous exploita- 
 tion is like the touch of 
 a cool, steady hand. 
 
 Illinium and Illinois 
 
 A standard book of 
 academic record is 
 "American Universities 
 and Colleges," edited by 
 David Allen Robertson, 
 and published by the 
 American Council of 
 Education. The head of 
 each institution admitted 
 to the book is permitted 
 to make his own record 
 of what he considers the 
 institution's outstanding 
 achievements for a given 
 year. If you glance at 
 page 696 of the volume, 
 which reached publica- 
 tion in 1928, you will 
 find this paragraph, 
 written by David Kinley, 
 
 president of the University of Illinois, on what the university 
 
 did to make history in 1925-26. 
 
 "Achievement of the year ending June 30, 1926: Discovery 
 
 of chemical element No. 61 (since named Illinium) by Prof. B. 
 
 Smith Hopkins of the department of chemistry." 
 
 The entry was intensely characteristic of David Kinley — no 
 
 flamboyance, no record of matters which, although they may have 
 
 been momentous campus history, were not world history. 
 
 Kinley's Proud Brevity 
 
 "Yes," said the laconic David Kinley, "that was all we put in 
 — but we built as many buildings as the other fellow. Building 
 buildings is not necessarily achievement. Contributions to knowl- 
 edge are." 
 
 {6} 
 
 THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING 
 
Tiof. Hopkins' discovery of iluMiiical tk'nit'iil No. (A was 
 flaslicd to tlie world by cable. It is ibc only chemical element 
 ever discovered in the western liemisi)here. To the end of re- 
 corded time mankind will have to take account of it. 
 
 Knowing that, President Kinley also knew he could afford 
 to be brief. 
 
 The namini,' of the discovery was as characteristic of Smith 
 Hopkins as the manner of recording it was characteristic of Dr. 
 Kinley. The discoverer did not tag chemical element No. 61 with 
 the label hopkinsite. He named it illinium in honor of the Uni- 
 versity which for sixteen years has honored him with its confi- 
 dence, and in making for the current "Who's Who" a record of 
 his career, he wrote these words: 
 
 " With colleagues discovered the new element illinium." 
 
 The words "with col- 
 leagues" validate the per- 
 haps obsolete but still il- 
 lustrative comparison 
 which I heard applied to 
 Smith Hopkins on the 
 campus. That comparison 
 was "And yet he remains 
 as modest as a girl." 
 
 One third of this 
 school's money goes into 
 research and approxi- 
 mately the same amount of 
 the faculty's energy. That 
 is what makes it a univer- 
 sity of world rank instead 
 of a kind of collegiate de- 
 partment store. In twenty- 
 four words President Kin- 
 ley defined the difiference 
 between a college and a 
 university. "A college," 
 said he, "is only or princi- 
 pally a purveyor of knowl- 
 edge. A university is the purveyor of higher knowledge and also 
 the producer of knowledge." 
 
 Research the Vitalizer 
 
 Therefore, one of the fundamentals of the university's policy 
 is, in the w^ords of its president, "Every department, if it is to 
 
 THE CHEMISTRY BUILDING 
 
 in 
 
be alive, must conduct research." Its four major tasks are, in the 
 order of their urgency, teaching, research, dissemination of the 
 results of research, and developing teachers and. researchers. 
 
 The intense energy given to the investigation of the problems 
 of life as it has to be lived has brought upon the University of 
 
 Illinois the criticism that 
 it is too much concerned 
 w^ith bread and butter 
 courses and that its vast 
 curricula of highly spe- 
 cialized and technical 
 subjects diminish the 
 young student's zest in 
 and respect for the 
 purely cultural subjects 
 — the humanities, as the 
 Renaissance called them. 
 But it is the univer- 
 sity's conviction that dis- 
 coveries which lower the 
 cost of and simplify liv- 
 ing enrich life; that dis- 
 coveries which correct 
 material waste make in 
 time distinct contribu- 
 tions to the leisure and 
 the funds which permit 
 greater and ever greater 
 development of man- 
 kind's cultural and spir- 
 itual life. 
 Hence the emphasis on and the multitude of technical sub- 
 jects at Illinois. Its Engineering Experiment Station has 82 
 major research projects in hand and they concern the problems 
 of more than twenty industries. Its College of Agriculture is 
 working on 350 major and minor problems and experiments. 
 That college has nearly completed the most exacting and ex- 
 tensive soil test ever undertaken by man. It has put agricultural 
 Illinois through the laboratory. 
 
 
 >4,^.%H--. -/'.'•■■ •" ^' ' 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY HALL 
 
 Test-Tubing a Commonwealth 
 
 That work began 27 years ago with a general survey which 
 covered the fourteen great soil areas of the state and which gave 
 
 [81 
 
an invoice of tlic stock ol tc 
 soil in lliosc fonitccn areas, 
 the aim was to discover, niaj), 
 of soil on each farm in each 
 five acre lots. The task has 1 
 has cost hundreds of thousan 
 The Illinois farmer now can 
 how to work with it ; how in 
 ailing. "Every farmer can," i 
 ardent dav-bv-dav chronicler 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 never been hauled up on an 
 true scientist he added, "The 
 eyes of eagles." 
 
 rtility in 25 of the main ty|)es of 
 In the detailed work that followed 
 an<l investigate each dilVerent kind 
 of our 102 counties, even down U) 
 )een completed in 101 counties. It 
 (Is of dollars. It is worth millions, 
 know what he has to work with ; 
 short, to cure his farm land if it is 
 n the words of Joseph Wright, the 
 of the university's achievements, 
 "now evaluate his own 
 farm." 
 
 The work of chart- 
 ing this tremendous 
 diagnosis is being done 
 with such scrupulous 
 care that the maps are 
 printed in underground 
 chambers of unvarying 
 temperature and unvary- 
 ing moisture in order to 
 prevent the stretching of 
 the paper. Thus, the 
 slightest distortion of 
 lines and shadings is 
 avoided. 
 
 Equal exactitude is 
 maintained in the uni- 
 versity's agricultural 
 publications. "In all the 
 thousands of pages re- 
 cording our experi- 
 ments," said Dean Mum- 
 ford of the college of 
 Agriculture, "we have 
 error." With the modesty of the 
 university's proofreaders have the 
 
 Drama for Expert and Layman 
 
 The dean believes that the imagination of the city man will 
 be stirred — as the imagination of the farmer certainly is — by 
 contemplation of the historic Morrow plots on the campus. They 
 
 [91 
 
lie convenient to the visitor's wanderings over the 400 acres of the 
 campus proper and the 1,200 acres of experiment farms into 
 which the campus blends. 
 
 Anybody can point you to the Morrow plots. 
 They are small but they are world famous. 
 
 Men who were 
 willing to wait half a 
 century for the final 
 proofs of the matters 
 they were studying laid 
 them out in 1875. 
 They now commemo- 
 rate George E. Morrow 
 who was professor of 
 agriculture at the Uni- 
 versity from 1876 to 
 1894. They are the 
 oldest soil experiment 
 plots in the western 
 world and they have 
 been called "a monu- 
 ment marking the 
 tragedy of soil exhaus- 
 tion in America." 
 
 The aim of experi- 
 mentation on the three 
 narrow parallel strips 
 was to compare the 
 effects of a single crop 
 system as against more 
 diversified systems of 
 farming. Even a lay- 
 man knows now that 
 crop rotation is essential to profitable farming, but in the untutored, 
 hit or miss period of American farming it was the Morrow plots 
 which finally bore it in on the farmer that crop rotation — even 
 without soil treatment — increased his financial returns at least 
 fifty per cent. 
 
 What the Morrow Plots Prove 
 
 During half a century this was proved over and over again, 
 and to the hilt, by the continuous planting of corn in strip No. 1, 
 by the planting of corn and oats in rotation in strip No. 2, and by 
 the planting of corn, oats and clover in rotation in strip No. 3. 
 
 THE WOMAN'S BUILDING 
 
 (10) 
 
During a 12 yt-ar jx-'iiod cndinj^ with tlu* Morrow |»lol crops 
 of 1027 more (.'laboratc t'xporiincnlation was carried on, with tliL* 
 result that tiicsc ^^oldcii lads wore iniparlcd to the world: 
 
 1. Crop rotation alone increased the yield of corn 88 \)tr cent. 
 
 2. Soil treatment alone - tliat is to say, treatment of the soil 
 with manure, limestone and phosphate — increased the yield of 
 corn 76 per cent. 
 
 3. And when croj) rotation and soil treatment were combined, 
 the yield of corn was increased by 177 per cent. 
 
 These eloquent plots which reward the glance of the passerby 
 
 with momentous eco- 
 nomic history are so 
 adequately placarded 
 that the layman can 
 readily grasp their sig- 
 nificance. If he would 
 learn more of their 
 meaning he can obtain 
 leaflets and booklets 
 fj-ee of charge in the 
 nearby agricultural 
 building. 
 
 But an article which 
 made even the barest 
 record of all that the 
 University of Illinois, as 
 a laboratory of science, 
 has done for mankind 
 would run to dozens of 
 newspaper columns. 
 This article has merely 
 sketched the extent and 
 variety of that service. 
 What is it doing as 
 a laboratory of citizen- 
 ship? 
 
 The answer is found 
 
 in President Kinley's 
 
 reply when he was asked what he considered the most impressive 
 
 sight which the campus of the University of Illinois unfolds to 
 
 the citizen of Illinois. 
 
 SMITH MEMORIAL MUSIC HALL 
 
 {in 
 
THE "BROAD WALK" BETWEEN CLASSES 
 
 An Army 10,000 Strong 
 
 "There it is," said he, and nodded toward ''the Broad Walk." 
 An army of youth, 10,000 strong, was sweeping by him. 
 The time was the hourly 10 minute interval between classes. 
 The morning was bright, the air balmy. The new foliage of the 
 elms arching overhead dappled the Broad Walk with dancing 
 shadows. From lecture halls, classrooms, laboratories, museums 
 and from a library that houses nearly three-quarters of a million 
 volumes thousands of young men and women were hurrying and 
 into those structures other thousands were going. The long ave- 
 nue of elms hummed with their talk and sang with their laughter. 
 Excited birds caught up the conversation and the merriment and 
 carried both aloft in their own language. The scent of wide lawns 
 and of freshly tilled experiment fields beyond the law^ns 
 filled the air. Deeply carved over one of the stone portals of the 
 library into which part of the army was moving were these 
 words: 
 
 The Hope of Democracy Depends on the Diffusion 
 of Knowledge and Wisdom. 
 
 And over another portal these words: 
 
 The Whole World Here Unlocks the Experience of 
 the Past to the Builders of the Future. 
 
 The concrete Broad Walk is five city blocks in length and 
 sixteen feet wide. Stand at the south end of it, in front of the 
 
 12) 
 
new Commorcc Imildinj^, (lining llu- U-n minute iiilcrv.il Ixtueen 
 classes and you do indeed see not only the greatest si^lil which 
 this campus provides hut also one (jf the [greatest si^dits which 
 the empire of the Mississii)pi valley provides. 
 
 " There they j^o," mused David Kinley aji^ain, " all the hopes 
 and fears of the future marching by." 
 
 Illinois' Most Influential Man 
 
 If, as he spoke, there was elation in his tone there was solici- 
 tude in his eyes. lie is 67 years old. As an assistant professor 
 
 and professor of eco- 
 nomics, as dean of the 
 college of literature 
 and arts, as acting presi- 
 dent of the university 
 for a year, and president 
 for nine years he has 
 given 36 years of his life 
 to this school. His presi- 
 dency has marked the 
 period of its greatest 
 growth and its weightiest 
 problems. He compre- 
 hends its perils, its prob- 
 lems and its opportuni- 
 ties as no other man 
 does. Estimating him by 
 the effect which his 
 ideas and his policies 
 have had upon teachers 
 and students for 36 
 years he may reasonably 
 be acclaimed as the most 
 influential man in Illi- 
 nois and one of the 
 
 RESEARCH HOSPITAL* 
 
 greatest of living American administrators. 
 
 David Kinley's Problems 
 
 And he knows that, with a student body of more than 12,000 
 dwelling in the twin cities of Urbana and Champaign, the uni- 
 versity has — numerically and temperamentally — a handful to deal 
 
 *The College of Medicine, College of Dentistry, and School of Pharmacy, are 
 located in Chicago. 
 
 {13 1 
 
with. (The hourly march-past of 10,000 at class interval does 
 not, you see, include the whole university student body living in 
 Urbana- Champaign nor any of the 1,400 students enrolled in the 
 university's colleges of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy in Chi- 
 cago.) He knows — none better — all the inspiring and all the 
 wearing phases of the task of drilling common sense into poten- 
 tial geniuses, the task of giving the right direction to talent, the 
 task of making something of mediocrity, the task of controlling 
 the lawless and the impetuous without putting them in jail or on 
 bread and water, the task of inspiriting the timid ; the many sided 
 task, in short, of running a vast machine that must run with 
 the precision of a delicately attuned machine and still shall not 
 be a machine, but shall stand in loco parentis to 12,000 children 
 away from home — fresh, gabby, o'er confident children, to say 
 nothing of a faculty of nearly 1,200 adults among whom is the 
 inevitable proportion of the pompous, the fantastic, and the half 
 baked. 
 
 Control Without Tyranny 
 
 The glory of the Kinley decade at Urbana- Champaign is that 
 the University of Illinois has been fatherly without being grossly 
 paternalistic. It has exercised a firm and searching supervision 
 without indecent espionage. It has put the student body through 
 the laboratory with the same particularity that it has put the 
 agricultural soil of Illinois through the laboratory. It knows its 
 children down to the decimals. It knows that one of its problems 
 is the overcrowding of students in private lodgings and that 
 such crowding hurts scholarships. It did not, in that matter, 
 accept an impression as a fact. It made tests and discovered that 
 in a selected group of students the average of scholarship of 
 those living two in a room was 3.22, of those living three in a 
 room was 3.08, while the average of those living four in a room — 
 which from the hygienic point of view alone is scandalous — 
 is 3.04. 
 
 Where Wilful Children Win 
 
 Before some indecorums — such as miss in her 'teens smoking 
 at restaurant tables or in the booths of soft drink parlors over- 
 looking the campus — the university has lain down. It has lain 
 down because it knew that it could not correct the indecorum 
 without an amount of clamor and intrusion and hectoring out of 
 all proportion to mischief involved. 
 
 But before the student owned and student driven automo- 
 bile the university has not lain down. There the mischief 
 amounted to moral peril and justified emphatic measures. 
 
 (14) 
 
A scliool with more than S, ()()() im'tlU'Sonu' hoys and nearly 
 4.000 pcrsonahlo and nndiTclad j^irls on its canii)us has to look 
 facts in the face. 
 
 Decatur is 50 miles away; Danville oi]ly 32 miles. Bootleg 
 liquor is to be obtained in both places. Se(iuestere(l nooks and 
 roadhouses are along the way. Via the hard roads and, running 
 his own car, a student could have his frolicsome i)arty far from 
 university jurisdiction in twenty minutes. Yes, it was better to 
 look facts in the face. Two years ago the ban was placed on 
 student operation of automobiles except under special and tem- 
 porary permission. The university was a pioneer in this measure. 
 Other institutions have followed its lead, notably the University 
 of Michigan, which has bettered the instruction and made the 
 control stricter. Hundreds of parents have written the authori- 
 ties of our school, thanking them for placing the ban. But here 
 is a curious point: most of the protests against it and the pleas 
 for special exemption came from mothers. It is, I was told, 
 almost always so when the faculty appeals to parents for their 
 support in enforcing discipline. 
 
 World's Greatest Time- Waster 
 
 President Kinley did not emphasize the moral safeguards 
 which the ban aims to provide, merely remarking in his compact 
 Scotch way, "Thus we have eliminated one of the most success- 
 ful time wasters which modern science has invented." 
 
 This campus is one of the most highly fraternalized in the 
 United States. About three thousand boys live in eighty-seven 
 fraternity houses and eleven hundred girls in thirty- four sorority 
 houses. The total fraternity-sorority holdings represent a 
 property value of $7,260,000. The average value of each house 
 is $60,000 but the most expensive fraternity house cost $125,000 
 and the most expensive sorority house $100,000. The average 
 sized fraternity house lodges thirty-five boys at a cost for room 
 and board not greatly exceeding the cost of living in a private 
 house. Board in a private house will run about $30 a month and 
 a room from $12.50 to $15 a month. Board, room rent, and house 
 dues in a fraternity house will come to about $55 a month. 
 
 The university authorities direct the boys to build on the 
 Champaign side of the campus and the girls on the Urbana side. 
 This segregation was diplomatically inaugurated many years ago. 
 
 Fraternities No Unmixed Blessing 
 
 The authorities are far from considering fraternities and 
 sororities as an unmixed blessing. In the first place they are time 
 
 {15 1 
 
devouring gab centers, and in the second they provinciaUze their 
 members and sometimes make arrant snobs out of small minded 
 boys and girls. But, for a wholly practical reason, the deans of 
 discipline and their aids work in friendly cooperation with the 
 fraternities and sororities. Control and guidance of obstreperous 
 and reckless students are more easily exercised when the univer- 
 sity authorities can work with a strong, self respecting fraternity 
 in helping its weaker brethren back into the path of sense and 
 decorum. The fraternity, for its own honor, will aid the univer- 
 sity in this task, and it thoroughly understands that, if it employs 
 concealment and subterfuge to protect a culprit, its whole organi- 
 zation will pay the penalty of deprivation of privileges. 
 
 Didoes and Drink 
 
 The system works well. In 1927-28 there were no cases of 
 discipline resulting from misbehavior at dances in fraternity 
 houses. In 1926-27 there were four cases. Mr. Turner, the cele- 
 brated Dean Clark's first aid in the dean of men's department, 
 told me that one of those four offenses was ''boorish conduct" ; 
 the second and third were "unconventional arrangements, such 
 as not enough lights in some of the rooms," and the fourth was 
 "drinking." In three of the cases the penalty was "no social 
 functions in those houses for the rest of the year." 
 
 The university is combating cruelty and roughness at fra- 
 ternity initiations in rather an adroit way. It has somehow got 
 the fact to yeasting in the student mind that such hoodlumism is 
 "common," that "it isn't done" in schools of learning which have 
 come out of the juvenile squawk stage. The result is that more 
 and more the decent boys are saying to the gangster-wits, "O, 
 let's not be 'college' ! Let's be human beings !" 
 
 To fraternity gangsters who continue recalcitrant the authori- 
 ties merely say, "Keep on with your antics and we'll have your 
 charter taken away." 
 
 The development of , a rational ideal of campus conduct at 
 Urbana-Champaign has, as such developments move, been so 
 rapid and so heartening that the faculty believes that fraternity 
 hoodlumism will finally go the way of hazing, which used to be 
 flagrant at Illinois, but is now considered "just common." 
 
 A Churchly Student Body 
 
 If the statistics mean as much as they seem to, which statistics 
 seldom do, the student body at Illinois is emphatically a churchly 
 body. Seventy-five per cent of the boys and 85 per cent of the 
 
 {16) 
 
girls arc citluT nuMiilx-MS ot" or t-xprcss a |)rt'l"{r(n( c for some 
 church. Anollicr lahiilatioii made last year showed lliat "out of 
 these 12,150 students, <),()()4 declared they were alliliated with 
 some religious organization." They represented ahout 40 denomi- 
 nations. The Methodist h^piscopal church led with 2,458 stu- 
 dents; the Presbyterian church was second with 1.393, and the 
 Roman Catholic church third with 1,129. 
 
 The churches have leai)ed to the opportunity which those 
 figures epitomize. 
 
 Seven thoroughly organized religious foundations sentinel the 
 campus. The Catholics and the Methodists center their service 
 to the students in stately structures which are thoroughly aca- 
 demic in architecture and richly equipped with facilities that 
 make for ennobling social and cultural life. The Episcopalians, 
 Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists, the Disciples of 
 Christ and the Jew^s have as yet no such structural equipment 
 as the Newman foundation (Roman Catholic) and the Wesley 
 foundation (Methodist Episcopal), but their work is well or- 
 ganized. 
 
 A Welcome to the World 
 
 The spirit of that work, whether it be directed from the 
 Wesley foundation, which cost half a million, or from the New- 
 man foundation, which, with its lovely chapel, cost a million, is 
 perfectly conveyed by words which I copied from a bronze tablet 
 on an interior wall of the Newman foundation. Thus they read: 
 
 This group of buildings comprising the Newman 
 foundation has been erected to offer to the students at the 
 Uniz'ersity of Illinois, who come from all parts of our 
 nation and from foreign lands as strangers in our midst, 
 the comfort of home, the warmth of the fireside, and the 
 touch of the family life. 
 
 To students sprung from every race and from every 
 political and religious creed it offers a common home for 
 the fostering of friendship and democracy, a sanctuary 
 for the perpetuation of the finest traditions of Illinois, 
 and a shrine for the development of the noblest ideals of 
 American life and manhood. 
 
 To every last syllable the Newman foundation fulfills the 
 promise and meets the obligation of those words, for in its dor- 
 mitories dwell in amity Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and those 
 of no affiliation. In amity, I said, and on the whole, that is true, 
 although one of the twinkling chaplains of the foundation told 
 me that there was an occasional moan from the Irish boys that 
 the Jewish boys were ''somewhat aggressive." 
 
 f 17] 
 
"And that," added the wise cleric, "would seem to indicate 
 that we have before us the interesting phenomenon of an irresist- 
 ible force meeting an immovable object. That, I'm thinking, will 
 be good for both of them." 
 
 School and Church Working Together 
 
 These religious foundations are not a part of the university, 
 but they are at one with the university, and the university with 
 them. They are supported by their denominations and share in 
 no state funds. But the university allows credits up to eight 
 hours for study in the history of religion, which its students 
 pursue under the theologians of the foundations, and in the matter 
 of giving a civilizing spiritual direction to the life of the students 
 it takes counsel with the foundations as the foundations do with 
 it. It knows that you can pour all the world's culture into men 
 and still breed only a race of pitiless materalists. It knows 
 that what Cardinal Newman said on that subject is as true and 
 as final as it is brief. The words shine in bronze on another tablet 
 adorning the foundation which bears his name. They read: 
 
 Quarry the granite rock with razors or moor the 
 vessel with a thread of silk; then you may hope, with 
 such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge 
 and human reason, to contend against those giants, the 
 passion and pride of men. 
 
 And so the university welcomes the religious foundations and 
 these foundations work without clashing. During the days I 
 recently spent in Urbana the Wesley foundation was boldly and 
 alluringly announcing on the big bulletin board on its lawn an 
 impending discourse to students by the Roman Catholic bishop 
 of Oklahoma. 
 
 Thus the spirit of this great school is as broad and humane 
 toward mankind in the mass as its attitude toward the individual 
 student and his problems is tender and solicitous. 
 
 A Great Man*s Wisdom and Patience 
 
 That spirit and that attitude are beautifully conveyed in two 
 utterances by the calm, wise, searching David Kinley. They were 
 the best treasures I brought home from the campus. 
 Of the true significance of a state university he said: 
 "A state university is one of the finest illustrations of self- 
 denial that democracy affords. For here the aim of the people 
 is freedom of opinion and of teaching for the sake of social 
 progress." 
 
 [18) 
 
Alul ol tlic yoiiiii; ptMijili- to wlioin Ik- lias ;;i\cii the i^icat 
 irs of his life hv said: 
 
 "It is not for us older people to cheek youth's dreams, t(j lell 
 ■111 that tlieir gold is hut tinsel, or turn the glow of their spring 
 )rniiig to the gray of autumn skies. Those skies w ill turn gray 
 )!! enough, h'ortunately they do not helieve us when w i- try to 
 
 this. Otherwise progress would cease." 
 
 {19 
 
m