There was a young social worker, Nell Vincent by name, who was called to act as secretary to the charity organization society of the town. Some common laborers, working on the college buildings, went on strike and began picketing. It was a spontaneous strike, by Italians and other foreigners, and Miss Vincent, who knew their wives and children, tried to organize them, and spoke to them at a meeting, urging them to refrain from violence and abide by the law. The news of this came to the charity organization trustees, and there was a terrible fuss; some of the prominent members of the faculty summoned Miss Vincent to appear before the board, and challenged her for stirring up trouble in the town. One charge they brought against her was that she had never been to church; another was that while living on a “good” street, she had invited the poor to visit her, and the wives and families of Italian laborers trailing up to her door had “lowered the social tone of the street.” She had brought into Princeton a critical sentiment, which was most distressing to the authorities of a fashionable university. One professor’s wife reported that the attitude of the Italians had entirely changed; she no longer had any pleasure in distributing charity to them, they did not love her any more. President Hibben finally succeeded in patching up the trouble; but he told Miss Vincent, referring to some of the university trustees who are members of the charity board, “You have no idea how I had to argue with them!” In a letter to me Miss Vincent uses the phrase, “the exquisite lie that is Princeton.” In connection with this strike Evans Clark tells an anecdote which throws a bright light on Princeton education. He was invited by a student to lunch on Prospect avenue, where all the rich clubs are. The strikers had quit work on a club building, and were picketing this building, riding up and down on bicycles. “What are those men doing?” asked the student, and Clark explained—they were pickets. “What are pickets?” was the next question. They went inside, continuing their conversation at the club dining-table; here were a score of college men, and all asked questions, and hardly one knew what the word “picket” means, and hardly one knew there was a strike of the laborers working on Princeton’s exclusive new club! ----- Footnote H: “Some Unsolved Social Problems of a University Town,” by Arthur Evans Wood, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan; a thesis of the University of Pennsylvania, published by C. W. Graham, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1920. This document gives a detailed study of Princeton slums. On page 32 it appears that the infant mortality rate of Princeton in 1916 was 150 per thousand, as against 96 per thousand in New York City. -----