THE STAFF

Myrtle Barley

John Bower Orpha Burn Frances Campbell Rosalie Fields

Social Errors Committed!

There have been and are social errors frequently committed by both fellows and girls. A couple of observers finally have got up enough nerve to make them public.

Is your date a mutual compliment?

You girls that gripe continually about not getting dates, do you make yourselves accessible?

We grant that it might be well for some fellows to learn how to get onto the hang of how to easily place themselves on the outside of the walk but do you girls make it easy for him to do it easily?

When you girls are on double dates do you carry on private conversations exclusive of the fellows?

Do you ladies act awkward or look bewildered, as if to ask "What's the big idea, " when the gentleman changes from one side to the other in order to stay on the outside when turning a corner or something of that sort?

Girls, do you fail to take the initiative in speaking to a gentleman on the street? On the campus this custom is largely disregarded but on on the street, particularly on Main street in the presence of other people, a fellow has a right to feel that girl is "snooty" if she passes him without speaking: it is proper for her to speak first.

Are you indifferent in replying to a request for a date, for one's company, or for your cooperation in

some social or recreational activity? I prefer a flat refusal, even a wo-man's "No, " to the detestable, abominable, execrable reply of "I don't know, " or "I don’t care, ” or "It doesn't make any difference to me. " If it actually makes no difference to you, say "No, ” and be done with

Another January first has come around and with it the talk of resolutions. By the time this editorial appears in print most of our New Year's resolutions will probably have been broken. Be that as it may, however, this is a good time to take stock of ourselves for despite all the breaking of resolutions the future is a clean sheet upon which we may write whatever we will. Our penman-ship of the past will to a very large extent determine what we write into our lives during the next year. There are, therefore, certain personal qualities which one must take cognizance of if he wants to write nobly and bravely in the future.

One of the finest characteristics anyone can develop is loyalty, commonplace, yet beautiful loyalty is that which we show to our friends. College is, after all, a fine place to develop a fine circle of friends, but in order to do so you must not judge them by some misstep but by their average day and day conduct. If you want to cultivate friendships. you must be a true friend yourself,

avoid petty gossip, be honorable and straightforward in your dealings; in short, you must be loyal to your friends.

If, as Dr. Bright says, the best is yet to come we must strive for  it. If we ever hope to reach this goal we must be loyal to the boat. In a day when international complications follow each other in quick succession, when it seems that all

Are They Effective?

Resolved—

Undoubtedly, many of you as well as a great number of other people wrote this word around the time of Jan. 1, and followed it with a long list of resolutions of things you wished to do or not to do during this new year.

Perhaps a better way than making New Year's resolutions might be found to enrich our lives. Why not try taking stock of what we have and deciding what we shall keep?

None of us knows what the year ahead may bring, but we do know that, somehow, out of it will come elements of progress. It will bring its problems. Its losses and sorrows, its demands for patience and endurance. Some of its paths will run pleasantly; others will be rough and very difficult. For these there is comfort in words written long ago. "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass: and as thy days, so shall thy strength be. ” But a goodly part of that strength must be in what we have kept to take us from the past, across the present, and into the future.

To take stock at New Year's to sort out and label all the things that are worth keeping and resolve that will hold fast to these—can the mere making of lists of rules and regulations, to be forgotten usually before a month is gone, be worth as much as this? Certainly there is a great deal that clutters our lives without which we can travel better, but there is also much that we must not lose or throw away or fall rightly to value.

What may be most important to one of us may not mean so much to another. This is compatible with individual experience and personality. And yet, in the eternal needs and truths of mankind there must always be a peculiar similarity. In the essay, "Self-Reliance, " Emerson wrote:

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men

that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the uni-versal sense! for always the inmost in due time becomes the outmost— and our first-thought is rendered hack to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment "

If I could have just one New Year’s wish, it would be that we could have the courage to make our own choices, to hold fast the things that we know in our hearts are safe and right, so that we might carry across the threshold of 1937, the riches of Faith, Love and Life. For out of what we are come our choices, and these hold our hope for the future.

Since it didn't snow over vacation, I took rides on our new 1937 bob sled down in the basement, and imagined myself skimming over the stairway and the washing machines at sixty per.

Post-vacation conclusions: Eldora will find that having only two men on the line will prove decidedly uninteresting: that this new fad of having a fiancee, is being substantially pursued; that both Ellen and Amos must have settled old scores at home in order to start a new one this year; that the half hour from 9: 30 to 10: 00 is still asking us what we are going to do about it.

It was because of a certain careful carelessness that Willis had his cleaning done Monday night when Dr. Schwalm peeked around the door and said "Surprise. ”

Harold Mohler Talks on

Recreational Games in W. S.

Harold Mohler gave a talk concerning the planning of socials and recreational games in the regular weekly meeting of the World Service group Wednesday night at 6: 45. Following his talk, the members discussed problems pertaining to these activities.

Kansas Rated Low In Owner Farms

Brethren Leader Blames Mortgage Indebtedness For Poor Standing

Only eight states ranked below Kansas in the share of farm land and buildings owned by the farmers who operated them in 1930, tables made public recently by the U. S. Bureau of Agricultural Economics revealed.

These tables show that farm operators in Kansas owned but 34. 6 per cent of the value of the farms they were operating in 1930. Maine farmers, at the other extreme, owned 77. 7 per cent equity in the farms they operated.

Those figures were arrived at by counting out all farm tennants, who  naturally do not own any share of the farms they operate, and by counting out the mortgage indebtedness on land and buildings—since that share really belongs to the mortgage holder.

Cal A. Ward, regional director of the Resettlement Administration and leader in the Church of the Brethren, blames high farm mortgage indebtedness and the excessive number of farm bankruptcies in the plains states since the war for a large part of the rapid growth in farm tenancy.

Farm tennants in Kansas have increased from 16 per cent of all farmers in the state in 1880 to 44 per cent in 1935. Only the South has a larger per cent of tennant-operat-ed farms than the midwest Mr. Ward reports.     

"Most of the Resettlement Administration's programs are already helping to combat the growing farm tennacy evil by ailing farmers to hold onto land and buildings they now own, and helping tenants get in position to buy the lands they are leasing. " the regional director comments, "but we are confident the government can make much more tenancy in the next few years by rapid progress in checking farm giving this problem the special attention it deserves. ”

An Acrostic Answer to

John Bower

Thy published acrostic, I greatly admire.

Hopes of greeting new pilgrims you once more inspire.

An ambitious group ought surely to moot

Now and again, and in efforts compete;

Kind sir, will you name a time and a place

Your convenience and others, in its embrace.

On Parnassus heights, there is room to spare.

Up then, urge old Pegasus our work to compare.  S. M. Heckethorn.

Evelyn High and Galen Glessner left Christmas eve for Sheldon, Iowa to visit in the home of Galen. With them went Phyllis Powers, Homer and Esther Kimmel, who spent the vacation in the Kimmel home. They were snowbound and could not return until Tuesday.

Arthur Steinberg of the Philadelphia Institute for Medical Research has recently made known the amazing results of experiments covering growth and extract of the thymus gland.

The thymus gland is located near

the base of the heart between the two lungs. It has been known for some time to be necessary for the proper growth and development of the human body. Mr. Steinberg told his audience that the chemical glutalhione, which is responsible for growth, is fonnd in the secretion of the thymus gland. This chemical is also believed to be responsible for cancerous growth.

The extract used in the experiments was prepared by Dr. A. M. Hanson of Faribault, Minn. The part it plays in growth was demonstrated in the Philadelphia Institute for Medical Research under the direction of Dr. L. G. Rowntree. "Feeding this extract to white rats

"Not until the strike is settled, " was Herby's reply when asked when he would sail again. "The strike on the West Coast was declared on Oct. 29, and I don't know when it will be over. "

Herbert Michael, who is here visiting his brother Vernon, says that he will stay in Kansas until the seamen’s walkout is settled and he can "ship" again. Herbert shipped out from Seattle in December 1935, has made three voyages to the Orient, worked on a coastwise ship a while, and may one voyage, from Frisco through the Panama Canal to the Gulf, which landed him in New Orleans at the time of the strike. Several of Herbert's letters to his brother, which told of his travels, have appeared in previous issues of the The Spectator.

About the cause of the present strike he says:     

"The maritime unions of which there are seven covering all the main jobs on a ship, had contracts with the shipowners covering wages, hours, overtime pay, and method of hiring. These contracts between the unions and the shipowners ended Sept. 30. Officers of the unions made efforts to negotiate new agreements with the shipowners in accordance with the wishes of the membership of the unions. A truce was managed which kept the ships running until Oct. 29. But since no headway was being made in the negotiations a membership vote of the unions was taken which was in favor of striking.

"The steamship companies refused to continue the present method of hiring which is almost entirely through the unions. On the other hand, the unions refused even to consider agreements not including union control of the hiring halls. There were other differences of course, wages being next most important, but the question of control of hiring was the all-important cause of the walkout of the seamen on the West Coast.

"On the East Coast the situation is quite different. The East Coast unions, which are entirely separate from the West Coast, have not the solidarity of the West Coast unions. The majority of the membership have lost all confidence in their officers, believing them to be a bunch of grafters making an easy living off the unions. But for some reason they have been unable here-tofore to get these men out of office.

When the East Coast contracts expired last January the officers of the unions, signed new agreements with tho shipowners, it is alleged, against the majority vote of the membership. And now the membership is claiming that the contracts are not valid for that reason. A handful of members, on the East Coast decid-ed to strike 'in sympathy’ with the West Coast. More and more men joined this handful until the majority of the members on the East Coast were out on strike. But at no time did the officers give their approval and they are even doing their utmost to break the strike. It has become a fight of the members against the shipowners and their own officers.

"It is certainly regrettable that there is any need for a strike. But my sympathy is, in the main, with the unions. I cannot agree with the men who believe that by beating up 'scabs' they are helping their cause. Still, from my one and a half months experience with the strikers in New Orleans, I am firmly convinced that the seamen are guilty of no more unfair tactics than are the shipowners. In New Orleans, hundreds of seamen were arrested and many given jail sentences on charges of ’vagrancy’ or 'loitering' for the sole purpose, I believe, of breaking the strike. In one instance three delegates from New York making a tour of Atlantic and Gulf ports by automobile were on their way out of New Orleans when arrested on a ‘technical charge' as 'fugitives from Justice.' The police countered by a Writ of Habeas Corpus, changed the charge to 'vagrancy' and succeeded in evoking a thirty day jail sentence.

"There are many angles to sea life, unionism, the strike situation, and it seems like the more I learn the more there is to learn. There are things I don't like about being a sailor, but on the whole it is very interesting. My experiences so far have been worth a lot to me. "

Herby says that his job is "ordinary seaman. " His work includes scrubbing decks, painting, shining brass and various other odd jobs. The men in the deck department handle the lines which hold the ship to the dock whenever the ship enters or leaves port. The gear used in loading cargo they have to make fast for sea and batten down the hatches so seawater won't be washed into the holds during bad weather. He mentioned that at night at sea one man is stationed on the bow or the bridge to keep a lookout for shore lights and lights of other ships. When asked if it is necessary to have any prior experience in order to get a job on a ship. Herbert replied that it is not. He said that be-sides ordinary seamen there are two other jobs a beginner can take, that of mess boy, and that of "wiper" in the engine room. One must ship

through the union, though, except on oil tankers, it is very much harder to "break in" in the winter than in the summer for in the winter there is a scarcity of jobs but in the summer time when there are more ships running there is usually a surplus.     -

On mentioning the navy, Herby responded "The merchant marine (ships in commercial trade) have the navy all beat. If you join the navy yon can't quit when you want to as you can on a merchant ship, you get less pay to start with, and you have no choice in your destination. But in the merchant marine you can pick a ship for almost any country you wish to visit. "

"And if you ever go to sea," he says, "don’t think as I did that it will be child’s play to save your money. It's just as easy to spend your earnings going to sea as it is working ashore!”

Collegiate World

Books and the moods they create are divorcing Jack C. von Bloeker, University of California student, from his wife. Alleging that her husband spent all his time studying, Mrs. von Bloeker has filed suit for divorce in the Alameda County Superior court.

She charged cruelty. The complaint asserted that since their marriage in 1934, von Bloeker has seldom removed his eyes from his texts and has developed an irritable temper.

Each male student of Pennsylvania State College who expects his picture to appear in La Vie, the student annual, will have to erase his smile before posing for the photograph.

This is not a move to create general campus gloom. The editors have issued the order because they want all pictures to be in keeping with the tenor of the subject matter.

"Broad smiles on faces of the men will be omitted that the general tone of the senior section will conform to the formal clothes worn, " the announcement read.

Bulldogs To Face Coyotes Tomorrow

McPherson To Open Conference Season Against Strong Kansas Wesleyan Team.

Tomorrow night the McPherson College Bulldogs open the Kansas Conference season with a basketball game against the Kansas Wesleyan Coyotes. The Coyotes always have strong basketball teams and never fail to make a determined bid for the conference championship.

The Bulldogs are determined to put up a good fight against Wesleyan Friday night. It will mean a lot to get off to a good start in the championship race. The Canines should have more to fight for, too, because the Coyotes have repeatedly defeated McPherson at crucial times in all sports. For the past three years Wesleyan basketball teams have defeated McPherson by one point margins in late-season games. In each case this defeat dropped the Bulldogs out of a championship possibility.

The squad has resumed practices again after a short rest during the holidays. The team showed up well at Hays during the vacation, and after the game with Bethel last night, should be in shape to beat the Coyotes tomorrow.

Coach "Bud” Selves has been shifting the lineups in practice in an effort to find a combination that will work smoothly together. The lineup tomorrow night will probably be C. Johnston and Haun, forwards, Barngrover at center and H. Johnston and McGill at the guard posts.

Volley Ball Bows to Basketball

Say, did you see the W. A. A. volley ball tournament Tuesday night? Well if you didn’t you certainly missed four fast and exciting games. Those girls showed plenty skill in stopping the ball on swift serves, picking them out of the net, and working set-ups. Both sides showed real team-work.

“Come on gang, let’s go!” were the words of encouragement as first one side was ahead and then the other. "Hit that ball” was the command to all.

Each game became more exciting and the scores were close. There were eleven players on each team and each one did her part in "playing the game." But as usual there wore some outstanding players. The players in the forward lines really worked the hardest, and really had to be on their toes and ready for action at all times. Wine and Flory, center forwards on one side, and

Hubbard and Shirk on the other were skillful rivals. Marion Wash-ler was outstanding in her swift returns, and Becky for her mean serves. Taylor did her part by ef-fcient passing to the forward line for set-ups, Lucille Cole knocked the ball, spinning across the net, and High did her part as defense player in the back line. Of course there was Jessie who was razzed from all sides because she couldn’t serve the ball over the net. The official score keep-er and umpire was Gordon Yoder.

Through all four games the ball was kept in the air, back and forth across the net. About the third game hands began to get red, arms became tired, and some of the girls began to get weak. Some wore them-selves out by continually jumping up and down and yelling. However, they all kept fighting until the end.

Marjory Flory and her team won three out of the four games played and the other team was sadly disappointed.

They were interesting! They were exciting! They were close games! So ends the volley ball season for another year, and already they be-gin, to talk about basketball which will start soon. And certainly the basketball games will be just as ex-citing, if not more so, than volley ball.

Lowell Brubaker spent part of last week of the vacation in St. Louis, Mo.

Toshiro Tsubakawa spent holidays in Chicago and Iowa.

GAMES THIS WEEK

Sport Skits

The Conference season opens tomorrow night with two league performances on the hill. The Bulldogs play the Coyotes and Bethany meets the C. of E. Presbies. Ottawa also will see action in a non-conference game with Bethel.

McPherson Defeated By Hays Quintet

Selves Men Outscore Tigers Last Period—C. Johnston High Scorer With 18 Points.

Although they outscored their opponents seven points the last half, the McPherson College Bulldogs lost a fast and interesting exhibition basketball game to Fort Hays State college 23 to 28. The game was played Wednesday, December 23, at Hays. The Tigers led at the half and although the Bulldogs came back to outscore them in the final period McPherson couldn’t cage enough goals to overcome Hays’ wide halftime margin.

Hays scored mostly on long shots. In the first half, McPherson worked the ball in close for setups, but when Hays put up a tight defense in the last half, the Bulldogs started dropping long shots from the corners and out beyond the free throw line. The Tigers were unable to stop this Bulldog offense, and as a result, McPherson scored consistently.

Coach “Bud" Selves’ Bulldogs clicked better in this game than they have any other time this season. Their fast style of play in the last half soon had the Tigers “on the run."

Chet and Harold Johnston were the two McPherson stars in this game. Chet was high scorer with 13 points, and Harold garnered seven points. Barngrover was the only other Canine to score, unaccountiug for three points.

Staab, Hays’ elongated center, was second high scorer with 12 points. This tall fellow caused the Bulldogs a great deal of trouble the first half but was less effective in his scoring in the final period.

Hays took an early lead and led 19 to 7 at the end of the first half. Early in the second half the Bulldogs started cutting down the margin and outscored the Tigers 16 points to 9.

The box score:

The McPherson college Bulldogs last night trounced the Bethel Gray Maroons 47 to 20. The Canines demonstrated a good brand of basketball

to win their first game of the sea-son. McPherson acquired the lead early in the contest and was never

headed. The halftime score was 22 to 5.

H. Johnston, "Bulldog guard, was the leading scorer of the game, getting 14 points. C. Johnston and Haun each made eight points. Buller, tricky forward, was best for Bethel with six points. Barngrover and McGill added six points each for the Bulldogs and Wiegand made five.

The McPherson second team lost 19 to 12 to the Bethel seconds.

Girls!

Watch That Temper!

When the girls go over to the gymnasium to play volley ball, it is really a sight for sore eyes to watch them play. The one who watches them feels as if he has had a day’s work, so what must it be like to the girls? The onlooker just laughs and laughs, ‘cause—.

Well, they start playing, going through the craziest antics just to get the little ball over the net. The time comes for a certain little lassies to serve and she swears (the others do that, too (that she just can’t serve. Then they all tell her she can, so she does her best, which is not so good,

Later several players on the losing team begins to get “mad" at others on the team. This always helps in any sport and it helps especially where girls are concerned. Such a state of emotion improves their ability and they succeed in losing the rest of the babies.

All in all, though the girls seem to have a good time, and since pleasure is the purpose of their games, who are we to criticize their technique—however bad?

Winter A Blessing

Disturbing articles, so they say, should be removed from our station of work whether it be on a college campus or elsewhere. But are these corrections being made on our campus? Hot water pipes are heated in order to combat the chilly rooms on these January days. And what a blessing to a class room. The snapping and hammering of the expanding pipes causes too much disturbance for a lecture—so a few minutes pause will help. It helps!—Just as the lecturer makes another attempt to speak, the pipes commence again to expand.

Another disturbing factor to any one is continuous coughing. Another blessing to the class room? Well, I should say so (especially when the instructor has to dismiss class minutes early because that exasperating cough that cannot be stopped.)

It’s just these few exciting moments that give students something to discuss, and add spice to life.

Patronize Spectator Advertisers
Mr. and Mrs. Alvin C. Voran visited with Mr. and Mrs. Voran during Christmas vacation. Mr. Voran (more familiarly known as "Cheesy”) was music director here last year.

Kenneth Weaver visited in the Home of Modena Kauffman at Topeka, Kansas, during Christmas va-cation.