Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/431

SOME IMPORTANT DEPARTMENTS 377 and territory in the country, the aggregate of salaries received by these appointees exceeding six hundred thousand dollars. Akin to the work of the Board of Recommendations was the student service in which scores of students were given employ- ment of various sorts in the University by which they paid their tuition fees in whole or in part. Of a similar nature was the Employment Bureau by which work was found for students outside the University. Employment of many sorts was found by this Bureau enabling hundreds of students every year to earn a part and in many cases the whole of the expenses of the years they spent in the University. Thus the institution actively interested itself in its students' welfare from the day they entered throughout their college, graduate, and professional courses and after they had left the quadrangles during their earlier struggles to establish themselves in teaching, preaching, or business. It was amply repaid by having a loyal body of alumni, who, at the end of the first quarter-century, were already found in every state and terri- tory of the Union and in many foreign lands. Of course there were other thousands of alumni who never needed the special sort of assistance here spoken of, who were equally loyal to their Alma Mater. This history has already made some mention of Athletics in following the events of the first year. The Department of Physical Culture and Athletics was regarded as important enough to demand a Director, as though it were one of the great Divisions of the University. It was not, but it was something more than a typical department of instruction. Physical Culture was such a depart- ment. It does not call for special attention any more than other departments. All the departments, indeed, had interesting his- tories, but it is not the purpose of this work to go into them. But any history of the University would be quite incomplete which did not give some account of Athletics. It was in every way fortunate that athletic sports had warm and wise friends in both President Harper and President Judson. In his Spring Convocation state- ment in 1896 President Harper said: The athletic work of the students is a vital part of the student life. Under the proper restrictions it is a real and essential part of the college education. The athletic field like the gymnasium is one of the University's laboratories,