100 years ago: More than half of KU students pay their own way

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 10, 1913:

  • “More young men and women are working their way through the University of Kansas than through any similar institution in the country. Figures compiled by Registrar George O. Foster today show that out of every hundred K.U. students, fifty-six pay all or nearly all their expenses without aid from home. In the fields through the long summer, behind a desk, in a store, ploughing or peddling, do some 1400 of these young Kansans labor to obtain those funds necessary to obtain the higher education that the state provides…. ‘This is a record of which all Kansans should be proud,’ declared Registrar Foster. ‘It speaks well for the character of the state when its younger generation is so earnest about education.'”
  • “The newly enfranchised citizens of Lawrence gathered in the F.A.A. Hall yesterday afternoon for the first time since the privileges and duties of the ballot were conferred upon them by the men voters of the state and immediately began to struggle with the big problems of the day. The women of Lawrence are taking the ballot seriously and intend to be a factor of power in all problems that come upon the municipality and the state and later in the nation. It was the first meeting of the City Federation of Women’s Clubs since the November election and at this meeting the women took their first steps into the realms of politics.”
  • “Every third load of produce bought or sold in Kansas passes over inaccurate scales and resulting losses to the farmer mount up into the million dollar column annually. This is the substance of a report to the legislature completed today by Edwin I. Stimpson, assistant professor of physics at the University of Kansas, and Deputy Sealer of Weights and Measures for the State. ‘Of the one hundred wagon scales inspected by me personally this year, thirty-three were inaccurate,’ declares Professor Stimpson…. ‘One Kansas city was found to be purchasing coal for its schools and municipal buildings over a city scale that recorded 2,091 pounds to the ton. And it had been doing this for five years until we discovered the error last month. Coal dealers and merchants of the city who were using these “official” scales were losing five per cent of their product. That was but a single case, but when these losses are added to those in every section of Kansas, millions of dollars in losses is the total. Of course, these scales are not kept wrong intentionally. Often the discrepancy is not suspected, and even if the owner does believe it is off, he usually thinks he is getting the best of the deal. As a matter of fact, in about seventy per cent of the cases of inaccuracy, the error is in favor of the man using them.”