OPPORTUNITY

Students going through college at the present time are enjoying, or -- if one chooses to consider it so -- suffering a rare experience -- an experience which, fortunately, compels them to think to an extent that was not required in the prosperous twenties. The economic crisis has led them to think about how the world is run and how it might be made better. Today students, at the dawn of what appears to be a new period in the world's history, have the freedom to consider calmly what the future shall be and how they may adjust themselves to it.

Great changes must be made; no thoughtful person can desire the permanent existence of the status quo. Things that served their purpose well a few years ago are not necessarily best fitted to meet the needs of the future. Some things must be scrapped. The common man must be given an opportunity to lead a happier life. Everyone who desires a job and is competent, must, from sheer justice, be given an opportunity to hold one; the country is duty bound to accomplish this even at the expense of forcing the permanent discontinuation of the huge bonuses paid to industrialists. Any man who can take a million-dollar bonus while others are crying for jobs and for bread must be forced into decent generosity if his conscience does not prick him into it.

But students, while remembering the injustices committed under a laissez-faire capitalism, must remember that this country was built up through the efforts of ruggedly individualistic capitalists; these men did great things and are so deserving of thanks. But conditions have changed; the frontier is gone and great industrial organizations have developed. The tine has come for social responsibility; but it is not now, and there never will be, a time for a complete leveling of wealth. Nor is the present a time to listen to destructive agitators like the Communist leaders of the New York taxicab strike, who, with absolutely no desire to ameliorate the lot of the drivers, sought only to make trouble for the cab operating companies. Now is the time to he as careful to preserve the things that are good -- the family, religions, the economic inequality, individual liberty and individual initiation -- as well as the time to be just enough to destroy what to bad -- speculation, excessive and unjust, economic inequality, oppression, dishonesty, selfishness, unemployment, and profiteering. Without being influenced by destructive and either insincere or misled agitators, students today have a breathing space in which to meditate on their future action.