Oberlin College - Hi-O-Hi Yearbook (Oberlin, OH)

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In 1836, when the college was feeling the pinch of hard times, some visionary persuaded Mr. Shipherd that the manufacture of silk would solve all their financial problems and, at the same time, provide enough manual labor for all the students applying. Recitations were suspended for a week while 60,000 mulberry trees were set out. Unfortunately, a dry summer, combined with Ohio clay soil, spelled disaster for the enterprise. So, with Alsace-Lorraine as a focal point, the inspiration stemming from john Frederic Oberlin had world-wide and sometimes unexpected repercussions. The most characteristic struggle in the community that bore his name was the fight for the abolition of slavery. Originally adopted as a means of secur- ing badly-needed funds, the philosophy of abolition fitted neatly into the Oberlin conception of Christianity. The exhortations of prayer and pamphlet accompanied the more adventurous past-time of maintaining an Underground Railway Station for runaway slaves. In one year alone over three hundred and fifty slaves were cared for in Oberlin and shipped forward in safety to Canada. It was boasted further that no black man fleeing to Oberlin for safety was ever returned to bondage. Post-Civil War mechanization 'brought its inevitable changes. The next twenty-five years saw a steady expansion of the school and a steady modern- ization of the community as Oberlin acquired, one by one, a modern water plant, a sewage system, improved streets and sidewalks, and free mail delivery. The opening guns were fired in the temperance war as the town which had bragged in the 1870's that it had no grog shops met in a mass meeting in 1881 at which five hundred men signed the pledge.

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rm' HUF' 5 W 'mm' AW-tial, ,lg I Z .eryfq - . 41,5 - . 3 O 2,2 ,- 1', iff' zu, . L ., .fi 'efff' f kk 'L N -, ' .. V. .f.'..1 ,.v - -- ' - Q Today students come to Oberlin from every state in the Union and from twenty-seven foreign countries. White, yellow, and black alike rub elbows in Oberlin lecture halls, pound on pianos in Warner practice rooms and discuss world peace earn- estly. In freshman dining halls Southern drawls and Western twangs soften and blur until everyone speaks a more or less nondescript Americana, individualized by colloquialisms which somehow hang on. Even the eccentric dancers present at freshman mixers smooth out or subside, although here and there an exaggerated dip or local jeep pops up. In the tradi- tion of Learning and Labor, Oberlin wends its collective way to chapel, to rec hall, to the libe, and to the Vars, while Oberlin leaders look ahead to a new world in which the ideals of its founders will live on.