Pauperism in the German Universities.

A recent article in one of the leading weeklies throws light on a side of German student-life, which is not often touched upon in the frequent accounts of the manners and customs of our Teutonic fellow-laborers in the large universities. Reference is made to the great prevalence of poverty among the students, and the increase of pauperism under the fostering care of immense charitable organizations.

The position that the Germans take is a peculiar one, namely, that a man should have a living at least while pursuing any branch of learning, even though the benefits of the education are entirely selfish ones. It is their way of "elevating the masses," and a futile and often disastrous way it is, too. There are earnest attempts among many of the students to support themselves honestly while studying, some even in Vienna, working as night street-sweepers. Nothing derogatory can be said of this class, for there is only a matter of choice between street-sweeping and waiting on hotel tables. Still, on the other hand there is a great swarm of men imbued with false ideas of their own powers, driven on by vanity, and often by parental pride, who come to the universities expecting an easy living and final renown in some one of the professions.

Here they find pecuniary aid in numberless "bursaries" and private benevolent institutions, while their inner man is kept in proper trim by distributions each year, by societies of thousands of meal checks. One of these latter organizations in Vienna, the "Committee for Student's Refectories," distributes annually 10,000 such checks.

Many of these aspirants for learning and free-lunch have honest ideas of what work is, and so, by ruining their health in study, give occasion for the German equivalent of a "fresh-air" charity. This we find under the name of "Sick Student's Relief Association." which sends large numbers of men to the health resorts and other recruiting places.

There has been of late a feeling among the university professors that the best interests of the leading professions cannot be advanced by men who are obliged to devote part of their time to "match peddling," and to such occupations as telegraph messengers, "itinerant musicians," etc. They can really accomplish very little, and their beggary brings into disrepute the professions they are studying. This state of things on its sober side is indeed a pitiable one. Thousands of almost absolute paupers, men of the most ordinary attainments and without a suitable early education at home, come up every year from the provinces to Berlin and Vienna.

In these great universities they struggle for a while in the attempt to cultivate what they have not until finally they are swallowed up by the flood of time, all of their youthful energy expended in a vain contest with hunger, cold and deepest ignominy, all of their ambitions consigned, with themselves, to oblivion.