i graduated from high school in 1907 with less than $5 left from my previous summer’s earnings. although, when younger, school attendance had been distasteful to me, i was now fully determined to get a college education, and that without asking financial aid from my parents. i had been reared on a farm and was used to hard work; but i felt that my education should now count for something, and that i should be able to get something better than manual labor. i made a complete canvass of the town and obtained offers of two very lucrative positions. the first on a local paper (i had already made some progress in learning the printer’s trade) at the enormous salary of $2.50 per week, and the other as assistant bill clerk in a wholesale house at $3 per week. i decided to accept the latter, as it offered the better chance of a quick rise, but the offer was rescinded before i could accept it. i then returned to the paper, but found that they no longer needed a “devil.” i saw then that it was the overalls for me.
my first position was in a lumber camp in the smoky mountains at $1.40 per day of eleven hours. next i took work with a gang engaged in grading 139 at $1.25 per day. it was in july and slightly “warm around the edges,” but i was getting along fairly well when i was offered the position of “devil” on the other local paper at $4 per week. i accepted.
i worked for this paper for over two years and my wages were steadily raised. our week consisted of fifty-four hours, but i frequently worked from ten to twenty hours a week overtime, in addition to walking back and forth from my country home and doing the chores night and morning. i frequently spent only my pay for overtime, and deposited all of my regular salary in the bank.
i well remember the fall of 1908, when, in a big rush the other two printers got on a big drunk and quit, thus leaving the whole burden on me. the strain was heavy, but i stood it and as a result got the foreman’s place long before i had served a four years’ apprenticeship. by the summer of 1909 i had saved $575. i had never commanded a large salary, as i quit just when i was becoming efficient enough to hold down a position in a bigger office. i was offered a chance to learn the linotype, but refused and entered college in september.
i did no outside work until the following spring when i started to working in a local printing office at odd times. i picked up $25 in this way. during my sophomore year i made $50, and started with the same work in my junior year, but was offered work correcting english papers and made $60 140 in this way during the year. the first summer out of college i worked at my trade and saved about $100. the next summer i took an agency with the aluminum cooking utensil co., which has, i suppose, helped more boys through college than any other one company. i was absolutely inexperienced as a salesman, but worked hard and cleared $200. the next summer i took the same work, but as i had secured an instructorship which would pay the expenses of my senior year, i “loafed on the job” and saved only $75. i have since sincerely regretted this wasted summer.
by these financial means, without any assistance whatsoever, i completed my college course, and on the day of graduation i could have paid all of my debts and railway fare home, and still have had $25 to my credit, or $20 more than i had when i finished high school.
when i landed in my college town i knew absolutely no one and, although i had very little money to spend and the college has the reputation of being somewhat aristocratic, i haven’t made such a bad record. in my freshman year i won the english scholarship; in my sophomore year the history scholarship; and in my junior year the endowed scholarship, under which i took the instructorship. i have served as president of the literary society and have twice represented it on public celebrations. i have been on the intercollegiate debate, and was elected to the position of valedictorian by the senior class. 141 i was also elected to membership in phi beta kappa and delta sigma rho (both honorary). i mention these facts merely to show that a fellow without money need not be denied an active part in college life and activities.
in looking back over the past six years i attribute my ability to do what i have done to perseverance and good health. too much emphasis cannot be laid upon the latter. any young american with determination, good health and reasonably good sense, who has no one else dependent upon him, can get a college education to-day.—“zank rein.”
lexington, va.
