CASE HISTORIES 

 ABRAMS 



History: He was a Jew thirty-four years old. His father 

 was a carpenter and the family lived in a village of southern 

 Russia. The boy attended the local school until his father died 

 and his mother remarried. He then went to a school in the city 

 of Pinsk, where he associated with boys who cared little for their 

 studies and spent their time in each other's rooms, discussing 

 politics and the condition of the peasants, and dreamed of strikes, 

 boycotts and revolution. The Japanese war broke out, and the 

 boys became pacifists hostile to the government. He philoso- 

 phized and dreamed of the future but neglected school work. 

 His only sports were swimming and skating. He did not dare 

 try the examinations for a high diploma but obtained a diploma 

 for work equivalent to that of an American grammar school. 



By teaching during his eighteenth year he earned enough 

 money to emigrate to the United States, and came to the home of 

 an uncle. The first year he worked ten hours a day in a chair 

 factory. During the next four years he attended high school 

 mornings, worked in the factory afternoons, and taught English 

 to a class of foreigners in the evenings. "I was just learning 

 English myself, I had no time to dream. I had physical work 

 in the factory which I had to do, and that was a stimulus. I felt 

 self-supporting. I was earning my own way. I was like a 

 soldier fighting." He was twenty-four years old when he grad- 

 uated from high school. 



In the autumn he entered a college that offered a three-year 

 course leading to the degree of A.B. He managed to live the 

 first year on two hundred dollars he had saved. During the 

 summer vacation he earned a hundred dollars peddling aluminum 

 kitchen ware from door to door. By December his funds were 

 gone. The college loaned him money without interest to com- 



