PICKLE AT PENN STATE

It was indeed a very different Frank Buchman who arrived back in America - altogether calmer and happier, thought his friend John Woodcock.1 He was, still, however, without a job and had very little idea what to do next. The Woodcocks knew that the post of YMCA Secretary at Pennsylvania State College was vacant, and Mrs Woodcock suggested he apply for it. Whether he did is not clear, but one way or another word got to John R. Mott's office at YMCA headquarters that Buchman might he available, and Mott's assistant, H. P. Anderson, wrote to the Chairman of the College 'Y' Committee, Professor J. M. Willard, recommending Buchman as a 'man of breadth and great personal attractiveness'.2 The Dulls' nephew, Vance McCormick, then Chairman of the State Democratic Committee, was a College trustee and may also have intervened. The faculty members who had interviewed Buchman were soon urging him to come. 'We accepted your terms with the hope and expectation of prompt acceptance,' wrote the Professor of Romance Languages, Irving L. Foster.3 But Buchman, now thirty, hesitated for over two months before accepting and, even then, only agreed to a six-month engagement, starting in January 1909, on a trial basis. The salary was $100 a month.

Buchman's hesitation was not altogether surprising. The YMCAs dominated the religious life of most American college campuses in the years before the 1914-18 war but, even so, 'Penn State' was scarcely an alluring prospect. Founded as an agricultural college where farmers' sons could acquire a liberal arts education as well as the rudiments of farming, Penn State had 1,400 students and was known neither for its intellectual excellence nor its sporting prowess. It was, moreover, remote and provincial, situated in the centre of the state, where a small town without social outlets, actually called State College, had grown up around it- 'out in the boondocks with a vengeance', as one local historian put it.4

In recent months, too, State College had earned itself an unenviable reputation. The YMCA Secretary would be in charge of the religious work in the college, and Mott had, according to Buchman, told him that he thought it 'the most godless university in the country'. Moreover, a student strike - a rare phenomenon in those days - had only just been settled. Class scraps often resulted in serious injuries, and one recent 'flag scrap' had lasted for ninety hours. 'Hazing' - the custom of subjecting new students to harassment - was often brutal, and, although saloons were forbidden by state law, the supply of alcohol on the campus was plentiful, much of it peddled by a local hostler and college janitor called Gilliland. On the night Buchman arrived, there were a score of liquor parties in progress. Gilliland did a particularly brisk trade before and after college football matches. 'There were times when we sent six hundred to a game, and they would all be drunk,' said Buchman of his first year. Few games were won. Buchman soon found that you did not have to be a student to get an unpleasant reception. He had not been in his room for two hours before two hefty young men arrived with the idea of roughing him up. Fortunately a friend had sent him a large box of chocolates, so he hastily suggested they continue their talk over these. That saved the day.