The Survey, Volume 30, Number 3, Apr 19, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 3, Apr 19, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
Recently at the University of Michigan the movement was presented to
1,200 students in two days, to employers of the city at a luncheon, to
labor leaders at a dinner in the city Y. M. C. A., and to a special
meeting of engineering professors. At Cornell University over 1,600
students were addressed, and 525 signed up as interested and willing to
promote the ideas and ideals of the movement. One hundred and thirty men
volunteered for definite service, and many are already teaching in the
homes of foreigners, leading boys’ clubs, and doing other similar work.
Others will teach this summer where they live and work. The movement was
presented also at meetings of engineering professors and at a gathering
of the Business Men’s Association. The city and student branches of the
Y. M. C. A. are financing the scheme, and a strong student committee is
heading the work in the university.
In practically every college the faculty heartily supports the scheme,
and the sentiment of many professors was expressed when one said, “I
hope every one of my students will make a place in his program for some
volunteer altruistic service. They will have opportunity to do a great
deal of good, but will gain far more than they can give.” Recently at
the University of Iowa the movement was presented to a faculty meeting
which had not been addressed by any outsider for nineteen years. A
number of college faculties have met to discuss the movement, and to
consider the re-adaptation of engineering courses to give more attention
to the “human side of the engineering profession.” Already many
engineering schools have courses in “management,” but professors feel
increasingly that even these courses have too much of the “material” and
not enough of the “human” element. Such instruction supplemented by
personal friendly contact in service for industrial workers will do much
to remove prejudices and promote mutual understanding between college
men and workingmen.
_Appreciation of the Work_
Some quotations from letters written by working men show better than any
other testimony how they feel about this work:
“I have not found words to thank the best friend I ever had on earth
for all he has done for me. I am a better man.”
“I have learn some English, got better job, will be good American
citizen. I am grateful forever.”
A foreign convict writes: “Now I got good chance to learn English to
read and write because I got long time to do in this prison, and if I
learn, that will help me when I get out from here. I no like to work
all my life with pick and shovel.”
In the West a lumber company has provided a room where its foreign
employes can learn English under student leadership. A newspaper
clipping tells the story in these headlines: “Slavonians eager to
acquire knowledge of English after back-breaking work in mill.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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