For the first time in three years a normal summer vacation is at hand, and many undergraduates have already made plans to spend it in a way which seems a decidedly wise one, namely, as manual workers in factories, yards, and mines of the nation, where the great forces that govern industry may be seen in actual play.

This type of summer work has been dictated for the most part by the impulse to see and feel the great facts of life in their largest, roughest, and most elemental form, and to broaden in view-point accordingly, which was aroused but not satisfied for them in time of war. The jobs they have selected are those which involve heavy manual work, among men who work honestly from day to day with their hands, and see things from the laboring man's point of view.

Without doubt the college man who has chosen as his summer occupation to enter the ranks of those who earn their living by muscular effort, and thereby learn at first hand the fundamental problems which face the industrial world in this era of transition and unrest, has made a the thorough, wise and farsighted choice. Theirs will be an invaluable opportunity to experience for a study their ideas of social reform, and ultimately to aid intelligently in the present world-wide search for a more satisfactory combination of the conditions which govern the life of the worker, and a more stable and balanced tendency in the development of the social order. When the summer is over, they will have learned something in the coal mines, factories, mills, stock-yards, or packing-houses, which will enable them to do their full share toward the ultimate removal of the causes of the widespread unrest among the laboring classes which threatens the peace of the world today. Certainly it is beyond controversy that the men who have signed up for these jobs have chosen a most profitable field for the exercise of their energies during the summer months.