H. E. JORGENSON

To-day if a young man or woman lacking financial means wishes to get an education, the question is not: Am I able to get it? It is: Am I willing to work for it? I have not completed my education, but I am working for it. With the hope that it may encourage someone who thinks working for an education is a colossal task, or that it may suggest a way, I shall tell how I have been working my way through college.

At fourteen I debated whether I should complete my high school course or not and ended with the belief that a commercial school would give me a more practical education than the high school and would put me on a salary basis when I was through. There were six of us children at home; as they would grow up the expense of keeping our family decently would soon exceed father’s income, for he was a wage earner. It would cost about $15.00 per month to go to the commercial school. This father could spare out of our month’s savings, but it would be a sacrifice; yet he was willing to do it. I decided to get a business education, but determined to pay the expenses myself. At Laurium, Mich., two miles 234 from my home, was the Laurium Commercial School. The day after my father and I had agreed upon the course I should follow, I went to Laurium and had a talk with the principal of the school. He needed a janitor and I offered to do the sweeping, dusting, window-washing, firing and all duties incident to a janitorship in return for all expenses. He hesitated, for I was young, and small for my age. Finally he agreed, and one day after the opening of the regular fall session I was at work on my Bookkeeping.

It was hard work, especially when winter came, when I had to trudge through the deep snow, and sometimes it was dangerous, when a northwestern blizzard would come sailing over us from Lake Superior. The stoves of the school had to be fed during the months between October and April. It was necessary to carry the fuel from the basement to the third floor at convenient times and to arrive early in the morning to enliven the fires. It was hard work on the muscles, but my heart was seldom heavy, for the students were considerate and kind and they made me feel inspired rather than humiliated; in fact, I was one of them. I succeeded in covering as much work as the average student and at an average standing, and in a year and a half I had completed the combined commercial course.

Just before leaving the commercial school, I made application for a position with a commission house in our city. They took me on trial and for awhile 235 it seemed as if they would not keep me. But I succeeded in sticking and by burning some midnight oil, and a lot of digging managed to fall in line with the work, and it was a task, for the accounting system used was a cost-finding system and made the work of the bookkeeper difficult and a matter of great responsibility. I remained in this position three years when I resigned to accept a position with a lumbering firm during one winter’s operations.

I had long come to learn that my education was inadequate and many times regretted that I left the high school. To make the best of it, I spent most of my evenings in the public library and in my room covering lost ground. As my ignorance made itself more and more manifest, I began to think out some plan by which I could get to college. The winter I worked with the lumbering firm, I was employed three evenings a week tutoring a class of men in a large co?perative department store, who wanted to make ready for promotions. This work brought me some money and experience. The money I had saved would not keep me more than a year in college, but I thought that with a little more preparation I could teach the commercial subjects in some college in retur............