THE BUSINESS END

The colorful Cornell Sun has succeeded in ignoring the main point of the Corporation's mysterious endowment plan, but the by-product of individual professionalism is nearly as interesting as the topic of large-scale commercialization. The development of a plan of abolishing gate receipts would naturally be paralleled by a furthering of intramural athletics, and an ultimate goal of the least possible intercollegiate sport. If this were carried through to perfection, the problem of individual professionalism would be settled finally; for the spirit that moves anxious alumni to subscribe to funds that will aid so-and-so to stay in college a while longer and insure the Big Rival's defeat next fall, would hardly stir in an appeal for financial aid to help the Freshmen beat the Sophomores.

But the time when there will be no intercollegiate athletics is not yet, and the concern of the present is the present system. The ramifications of the various Amateur Athletic Unions have after all accomplished something. The tramp athlete is a character of history; there has been much codification and standardization of rules. This is almost a period of laissez faire, so far as any general clean-up-athletics move goes. In its place exist the intricate individual agreements that hold only within small groups of colleges; this is in line with the increasing apartness of institutions, now in the phase of leagues, and perhaps eventually to be narrowed down everywhere to the meeting of only two or three rival colleges a year. Under such conditions the administration of amateur rules is simplified for those to whom their enforcement makes any difference: the limited number in a league makes possible the application of its rules to its members. But in leagues of unwieldy size this salutary effect hardly exists and in this financial consideration, of the number of paying contests each year, is the connection of professionalism and gate-receipts.