Economy at Harvard.

The following clippings from the letter of Mr. Wendell P. Garrison must have much interest for Harvard men as coming from the pen of one of Harvard's most prominent living graduates and as treating a subject which now is deeply absorbing the attention of her alumni:

"The remarks of Mr. Leverett Salton-stall at the last Harvard commencement on the growing extravagance of living at the college left a deep impression on those who listened to him. It would be a pity if nothing more should come of them than a general confession of their justness, and a vague appeal to wealthy parents to cut down their sons' allowances. If we depend much or mainly on an example of simple living on the part of those who have been bred in luxury, we shall be disappointed. Our practical efforts will lie in the direction of making economy respectable and of reducing the temptation to spend, by which the ordinary student's expenses are needlessly aggravated.

Such temptations are unquestionably to be found in the secret societies whose end is secrecy and exclusiveness. They are to my mind the greatest (and a most insidious) evil in the present constitution of the college, and are the nurseries both of extravagance and of vicious habits. Their debasing effect on those who aspire to them as a mark of distinction is, I apprehend, not realized by the faculty, though Yale offers such a warning example of the same corruption. How far it is well or possible for the authorities to interdict such associations and how far to check them by sumptuary regulations I cannot say. Every parent, however, can forbid his son to join them, and may be sure that he will save not only the fees but contingent expenses to an indefinite amount.

In the official estimate of cost of living (p. 138 of the last catalogue) the one item which does not figure in the lowest as well as the highest calculation is 'Societies and subscriptions to sports.' A student may join no society and contribute nothing to crews and teams. I have no means of judging how many are found in this category, but that most of them refrain reluctantly - as betraying either their poverty or want of sympathy with their fellows - I do not doubt. Upon those who do contribute to the sports, a variety of motives press with great force and unite with the often newly acquired liberty to spend to make their subscriptions disproportionate to their means. When so many claims in so many branches of athletics are presented at one time (as to the freshmen at the opening of the term) the aggregate becomes a sensible burden to parents who can barely afford the necessary cost of a college education. This, of course, could be met by fixing an absolute limit for such contributions, but on this point the fathers are likely to be as much at sea as their sons.

By far the larger part of the athletic levy is made for the maintenance and travelling expenses of crews and teams which engage in intercollegiate contests. But the amounts affixed to subscription papers represent only a portion of the expenses imposed upon the undergraduates. Any one who reads the college papers must be struck with the perennial exhortation not only to give, give, when the subscriptions are backward, but to journey in this, that or the other direction - 150 miles it may be - in order to "support" the home team on a distant field. In the case of the boat races, exhortation is necessary, but the result is the same. A greater or less number of students abandon their proper pursuits in search of excitement which is unwholesome per se, and add to their car fares and hotel bills the price of amusement, licit or illicit, during the nights they spend in a strange city away from their usual resources and their usual restraints. That in many cases the "visiting student's" purse is further depleted by wagers lost on the game in question must be believed.

There is, to my mind, not one good reason for tolerating these contests away from the college; and if there were, it would be far outweighed by the pecuniary consideration just advanced, the distraction from the main end of college life, the encouragement given to the gambling spirit so strong in the American breast, and the hostile feelings engendered and perpetuated between colleges whose only rivalry should be in the domain of the intellect. I am firmly persuaded that the intercollegiate sports are as much chargeable with the survival of the traditional animosity between Yale and Harvard, for example, as our primary text books of history are with the anti-British sentiment of all children of tender years.

My suggestion is, that the faculty forbid intercollegiate contests on the part of Harvard students; and (pending this action) that parents forbid their sons to subscribe to the particular organizations by which such contests are now kept up."