are cart, stone boat and truck, and do "the granite of New Hampshire In our muscles and our brains." Of recent years, however, Dartmouth has been pressed into the service of the entire nation; and the State College, born and nourished at Hanover under the wing of its older sister, is continuing the traditions that it learned there. Six hundred and thirty young men and women of the state, representing 145 New Hampshire towns, are now enrolled at Durham. They come from 80 of the 84 approved high schools of the state. More than this, they are from the rank and file of the people. Sixty per cent come from the families of farmers, tradesmen and laborers; twenty-five per cent from those of business and professional men. Only seven per cent of their fathers are college graduates, and only one per cent of their mothers. The great majority of these students help in some way to put themselves through college. Many of them work all of their spare time for board or room or both. Serving meals, washing dishes, helping with house-work, doing farm chores, these are popular tasks; and the doing of them wins respect from fellow students. The captain of last fall's football team and president of his class not only has worked his entire way through college, but won the prize for scholarship ranking among students who earn at least half of their expenses. The two oldest girls from a family of eight, whose father is dead and whose mother is struggling to get a living for her other children, told me recently that they earned their board and room and So the days passthe ordinary days and the extraordinary ones, each of them drip ping slowly but force- PART OF HIS FORESTRY COURSE fully like water forming a channel in the clay. What four years of this sort of life mean to a New Hampshire boy or girl may hardly be estimated; and what they mean to the state may not be guessed when it is considered that there are now 1055 students registered at the institution. So far, much of what has been said would apply to most of the other colleges in the East besides New Hampshire; but there are several respects in which this is peculiarly an institution of the state. In the first place, about 80 per cent of the student body are New Hampshire residents, and the great majority of these were actually born here. In the old days before it became a national institution, this was true of Dartmouth; and I think that every loyal citizen of the state cherishes as a New Hampshire product, the "College on the Hill," and is as proud of it as are its graduates who sing of practically all of their other expenses. "We want to earn more for our family," said one, "and we know we can do so better with the aid of a college education." "Running through the first five letters of the alphabet in the enrollment of boys," says the College Registrar, "one can pick out casually over 100 who earned more than half of their expenses and 43 per cent of these state that they have earned every penny they spent. Most of them are sons of farmers, small tradesmen, laborers, railroad men, bricklayers, salesmen-not the "privileged classes" but the hard-working people who are the foundation and support of the democracy. It is their sons who have given the State College the reputation for thorough democracy of spirit. Student after student, in stating on his admission registration blanks the the reason he chose New Hampshire as his college, has said: 'Democratic atmosphere,' 'Financial 'Financial reasons, and N. H. C.'s growing reputation'; 'Reasonable expenses and courses offered'; 'Reputation of the college, personal knowledge of it, and fact that it is my own state'; 'Nearness, small expense and growing reputation'; 'Good chances for help in a financial way, together with the fine courses offered', etc. "ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON THERE MAY BE A 'VARSITY GAME" "One of the young men who earned his entire expenses recently, except for his Grange scholarship, was the son of a cook in a timber town in the north of the state," continues the Registrar. "He did not allow the heavy burden of combined study and self-support either to deprive him of the advantages of association with other youths, of athletic sports or of special activity in the department of military training. He was a member of a fraternity, played on his class baseball team two years and in basketball also; won a sergeant's stripes in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps; and was an active member of the Economics Club which studies and discusses the political and social problems of the day. Add to this that he was on the honor roll for high standing in his studies and it is easy to see why the college is proud of its men. economics course at the college. She earned half her money herself, getting up at four o'clock to milk twenty cows, and on Saturdays added to this labor the distribution of the milk in the nearest city. "A returned soldier, sent to the college by the Federal Board, had a wife and little baby girl to care for. When he went into the army, his brave wife took charge of the garage which had been their support. His return with serious wounds brought him the opportunity for rehabilitation training at the college. They had been separated so long that his wife decided to sell their small business and take 'roomers' in order to be with him. He has done good work in the mechanical engineering department, and is a good influence among the less mature men he comes in contact with." The names of these and a multitude of other students who work hard for the education which they desire so earnestly are on file at the Registrar's office, and their records tell dramatically the price that hundreds of young men and women are willing to pay for the opportunities furnished by the state. For the convenience of students who may find it more economical to borrow a small amount of money rather than devote such a large part of their time to outside work, gifts from various sources have enabled the Student Loan Committee of the College to assist a large number in their Junior and Senior years. For the most part the loans are small, but they are usually necessary in order that studies may be kept up satisfactorily. They are made on strictly business principles, going on interest at the close of the course. The institution is a people's college in more than the sense that the sons and daughters of the rank and file. come to it for a higher education, however; for the college is now being carried to the homes of the people themselves outside its 'walls. No proper estimate of the service rendered by it can be made without considering most carefully the leadership in community development which has been taken by the Extension Service and the far-reaching investigations in the interests of better farm conditions made by the Agricultural Experiment Station. Founded in 1887 as a result of Federal legislation, the Experiment Station has gradually acquired facts in regard to the agricultural problems of the state which have already in important instances shaped a better farming policy. For detailed information as to what this work has meant the reader may be referred to recent bulletin, published by the Station, entitled "Digging Up Facts for New Hampshire Farms." This bulletin shows graphically how the ed such fundamental questions as: research investigations have answer"Can we afford to buy fertilizer?" "How can we cut our grain bill?" "How can we grow better crops?" "How can we raise livestock more profitably?" and "How can duce the taxes paid to pests and disease?" we re The fund of information acquired by the Experiment Station has constantly been spread, through bulletins, through lectures, through correspondence, and through press articles, among the people of the state. During the past decade, however, both the investigations and the teachings of the college in agriculture and home economics have been through the medium of a the medium of a new agency written with amazing rapidity into farm. politics. This agency is the Extension Service. Built up from the beginning under the direction of the head of the Experiment Station, Director J. C. Kendall, the extension work is combined with the research investigations and more comprehensively than in most other states of the union. It has now reached a point, to quote a recent report, "where over 8000 of the more active farmers of the state have solidly aligned themselves behind it; where over 1000 persons are serving on committees to promote definite extension projects; where nearly half of the funds in support of the work is raised in the counties themselves; and where it is clear that the farm and home practices of the state are being momentously affected." It is worth while considering that the welfare of the state is bound up inevitably with the problem of rehabilitating its agriculture. Unless farming can be made more profitable, the drift away from the country, which was clearly shown by the 1920 census, will continue; and unless more of New Hampshire's food can be raised economically within her Own borders, her manufacturing concerns will find themselves more and more unable to hold their own with the competition of the South and Middle West. To produce more at less cost per unit, to market more efficiently, to improve farm home conditions, these are the slogans to which the Extension Service has rallied the bulk of the farming popula tion. Among the far-sighted plans of President Hetzel none has been developed with greater determination than to make the institution a great educational forum, at which all interested state organizations and individuals might confer on methods of state progress. Boiled down to its essence, it is only good "factory management;" the state's educational plant should be kept busy in its offseasons. Hence various civic, social, religious, official, agricultural and home organizations are welcomed to the campus during the vacation perids. The buildings are thrown wide open; and the people who attend are treated not so much as visitors as the rightful heirs of a public institution. For four summers practically all of the state-wide agricultural and home organizations have united in the Farmers' and Home-Makers' Conferences. The streets of Durham are lined on both sides with parked automobiles; the lecturerooms are filled with intensely interested men and women; and from five to six thousand people in one week have enjoyed the facilities of the college. Last summer for the first time a summer school was also started, with a view to giving six weeks' instruction to teachers, students needing extra credits, graduate scholars, and others. Still another service to the state has been rendered through the SmithHughes teacher-training work. Sixteen high schools where agriculture is taught now receive the benefit of supervision from the college, while students at the college are trained in all of the divisions along pedagogical lines, and students in the home economics courses are assisted for eight weeks in the year in actually giving instruction in this subject in various centers of the state. more Perhaps nothing has been. phenomenal in regard to New Hampshire College than its rapid growth during the last decade. Legislators have been alarmed by it. Alumni have viewed it with swelling pride. Faculty members have scratched their heads to find ways to accommodate it. Executives have even raised tuition and fees to check it. Yet the enrollment and demands upon the institution have kept mounting. Something in the state has reached out to Durham as a plant gropes instinctively towards the light; and this desire, in the breasts of multitudes of people, for a higher education is one of the most hopeful and significant signs of the times. course. Ten years ago the complete regis- Yet during the past five years, in stration at the college amounted to spite of the fact that the institution only 336; to-day it is 1055. This has more than doubled in size, the tells the story of the series of crises state has not been asked to provide which in the past few years have had more buildings! This fact, amazto be faced by these who have had ing on the face of it, can only be accharge of steering the institution's counted for in three ways: (1) the generosity of a true friend of the college, Mrs. Alice Hamilton Smith, in providing a girls' dormitory caring for more than 100 young women; (2) the foresightedness of the college executives in making a permanent use of the buildings, labor and funds provided by the Federal government during the emergency period; and (3) a most careful expenditure of all moneys. A great part of the increase in enrollment has been due to the growing demand on the part of young women for an education on a par with that given by the state to young men; and the gift of Mrs. Smith was an inestimable aid in making it possible to fill this need. No less valuable was the construction work done during the war when the college was a military training camp. In a great many institutions the buildings erected at that time have been considered only of temporary value and have been scrapped. Not so at New More students have meant more teachers. The faculty to-day numbers nearly one hundred, and, together with the members of the extension and research staff, is now as large as the entire student body was at the beginning of the century. Class rooms, laboratories, dormitories, auditorium, faculty offices, library, heating plant, all of the resources of the institution have been strained to the utmost to respond to this urge on the part of the people of the state for greater knowledge and better training. "We have been in the position of a growing family," says President Hetzel. "There have been each year more mouths to feed, new calls for room and accommodations. The need for economy has been constant --we have had to measure carefully each expenditure, and yet the necessity for expenditure has been more and more urgent." |
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