INCREASED EXPENSES.

In 1913-14 the disbursements of the H. A. A totalled $238,000, an increase of $30,000 over 1912-13. Football cost $20,000 in 1908, $31,000 in 1909 and 1910, $30,000 in 1912, $34,000 in 1913, and $36,000 in 1914. The steady increase in expenses has evidently been paralleled at Yale, and the end is not yet in sight. On account of this the Yale Committee has found it advisable to limit the expensive paraphernalia and high-priced coaching systems that have come to be regarded as necessary for athletic success.

At Harvard the increased cost has been due in a considerable measure to the large and constant growth of the number of men who participate in athletics. In 1914, 1,472 men were so engaged; in 1915 the number had grown to 1,847. Everyone who desires is now given an opportunity to work on a squad, even though he stands the smallest chance of ever making a University team. Valuable as this policy undoubtedly is, more athletes mean more athletic supplies, more coaches, and consequently larger expenses.

At the present time the finances of Harvard athletics are in a comfortably sound condition. Rising expenses have been more than matched by an increased income, and it has not been necessary to impose any burden on either graduates or undergraduates. In consequence, there is likely to be little enthusiasm in Cambridge for such a limitation of athletic armaments as the Yale Committee desires.

Economy can and ought to be practised, however, in connection with the extravagance that often attends such necessities as training tables and transportation of teams. Of this Dean Briggs observes in his 1911 report: "Taxicabs as the sole means of getting about, costly dinners with wines and cigars,--all to be paid for out of gate money,--these things belong to that theory of training which furnishes free automobile rides and theatre trips as a relief to the overtaxed nervous systems of the University squads."