178 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



may be the gains that we have made otherwise, the obligation to avoid 

 cheating in the college examination room was certainly more insisted 

 upon by southern students prior to the civil war than it is to-day 

 in the country at large. Custom and tradition had established a 

 standard that every son of a gentleman felt it his privilege and duty 

 to maintain. To violate this unwritten law was perilous for the 

 young man whose home training had been defective. The temptation 

 to cheat might be strong, but to incur the contempt of his fellow 

 students was a risk that could not be lightly undertaken. 



The firm establishment of such a code of college honor at the 

 south was undoubtedly an outcome and manifestation of the extreme 

 conservatism characteristic of that section during the period when 

 communication with other parts of the Avorld was very limited. It 

 antedates the railroad and telegraph. Travel was restricted, and 

 local customs were correspondingly fixed. Similar restriction existed, 

 perhaps to a less extent, at the north; but at the south the institution 

 of slavery had established class distinctions in society which were more 

 sharply defined than was possible where the population was almost 

 confined to a single race. The southern college was completely domi- 

 nated by a single social class. The upheaval and confusion, the im- 

 poverishment and chaos due to political destruction and reconstruction, 

 were not sufficient to extinguish at once the college traditions estab- 

 lished by an aristocracy that retained its pride after its wealth had 

 been annihilated. The honor system was cherished as a heritage to 

 be proud of, one that was inseparably linked with the traditions of 

 the lost cause. 



Forty } r ears have not been enough to efface the influence of these 

 college traditions at the south. At the north they had never been 

 established. This statement does not imply that the ethical code 

 customarily in force among northern students was inferior to that at 

 the south. It means that certain actions were forbidden by student 

 opinion in the one section and deemed permissible by student opinion 

 in the other, such opinion being in each case determined chiefly by 

 local precedent. Political fealty and church affiliation are well known 

 to be determined more frequently by prescription rather than by argu- 

 ment. It would be remarkable if student opinion were more judicial. 

 The differences of opinion between a democrat by inheritance and a 

 republican by inheritance are certainly no greater than between south- 

 ern and northern students in their traditional views about the honor 

 system. Neither side has a monopoly of virtue. 



The present writer was reared amid influences where the honor 

 system was dominant, receiving his baccalaureate degree in South 

 Carolina. During college days on one occasion he took part in a mass 

 meeting of students held for the investigation of a supposed breach 

 of the honor system. The questions to be used in a written examina- 



