Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 2, Number 24, DeMotte, Jasper County, 5 January 1933 — JOBLESS PROFESSORS TO INSTRUCT NEEDY [ARTICLE]

JOBLESS PROFESSORS TO INSTRUCT NEEDY

Offer College Course to the Youths Out of Work. Port Royal, Va. —Twenty-five students and six professors gathered In a high-ceiled room under the slated sloping roof of an old building here have brought into existence Dr. A. C. Hill’s depression days college for financially harassed young men. The purpose of Port Royal college, Doctor—Hill explained, is to bring together college teachers who are.without appointments because of tqe depression and students who, owing to financial stringency, are unable to continue in existing institutions. Instruction will be available in the classics, modern languages, English literature, art, philosophy, history, government, economics and sociology. No degrees will be given, but Doctor Hill believes that' when the personnel of his faculty becomes known and the methods of the college explained, other institutions will accept its credits. He plans to have one full-time professor to every six students. No time will be devoted to athletics and no money spent in this direction. There will, in fact, be no athletics other than such as the students improvise for themselves. Cost About $250 a Year. The total cost to each student .will tie $250 annually, which will cover tuition, board, lodging and laundry. Students will not he permitted to work for wages when not engaged in classroom or study, which appears to be an unnecessary rule, if the appearance of Port Royal is any indication of the opportunity to work,, but they must care for their own rooms and take turns in waiting on tables and washing dishes. Professors in the college. Doctor Hill went on to explain, will get nothing in return for their services except their board, which the $250 paid by each student will care for. Class* rooms and dormitories will be in old houses and halls in Port Royal, lofig out of use, which have been .'eased by

their owners at fees that are said to be below the deadline of moderation. Just how Doctor Hill was led to select Port Royal has not been revealed, but “the eternal fitness of things’’ may have been a factor. The depression hit the town long before the depression college was thought of. Z’ Once Important Port. Nestling close to the turbid waters of the Rappahannock in a setting of ancient, spreading trees. Port Royal still retains something of the grace and elegance, and all of the leisurely atmosphere of early Colonial days, when it was a place of importance and a busy port. JUst across the Rappahannock and within sight is a crumbling pile, overgrown with rambling vines, all that is left of the house in which President James Monroe was born, and hut a little way farther Is the site of Washington’s birthplace. According to tradition. Port Royal was once thought of as the permanent site of the capital of the United States and came within two votes of being selected. But as the years went by things happened to Port Royal. Railroads took away its. river trade and. presently a modern highway, cut through a mile to the west, left it in virtual isolation. The president of the new institution (Doctor Hill calls it Port Royal college, but the natives speak of it as Depression or Hard Times college) Is a graduate of Dartmouth and formerly was instructor of economics at Springfield college. He is a staff member of the Brookings Institute.