EDUCATION: North Dakota Harvest

One evening last fortnight Governor John Moses broadcast a desperate message to North Dakota’s citizens. For want of harvest hands, one of the lushest crops in the State’s history—millions of bushels of wheat and potatoes and tons of sugar beets—might rot in the fields.

Next day at the University of North Dakota, in Grand Forks, 1,000 men and coeds jammed into a mass meeting. Up jumped Dean William G. Bek and roared: “Field work is not beneath any of us, and any one of you who thinks so is a slacker in every sense of the word.” Then & there the college decided to shut down for two weeks and man the fields. So also did the North Dakota Agricultural College, the State teachers’ colleges.

At dawn next morning North Dakota’s collegians piled into farmers’ trucks. A facultywoman, a Ph.D., volunteered to drive one. Football squads turned out en masse. Canceled were football games and homecoming celebrations. In the fields, 4,000 of the State’s collegians were joined by thousands of high-school youngsters, to thresh wheat, pick potatoes, top beets, feed the student army in farm kitchens. Cried a teachers’ college president: “The finest community spirit I have ever seen displayed by any student body anywhere!”

This week North Dakota’s collegians went back to their classes. The crops were in.