1905-06 Volume 30 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

THE SCROLL. 395This catalogue of B 6 II is issued in November, 1905. It contains therolls of the chapters down to and including all persons admitted to the fraternityduring the college year 1904-5. The chapter rolls are arranged in alphabeticalorder, according to the college name of each chapter, and withoutregard to its Greek name or the date of its establishment. The names arearranged, generally speaking, in the order of the admission of the membersto the chapters. In ordinary course the members of successive classes followeach other with regularity, but sometimes the admission of an upper classmanor professional student advances or retards the normal position of thename on the roll.Concerning each member an endeavor has been made to give his fullname, his class, his degrees earned, his present occupation and address, andwhatever other facts in his career seemed important enough to the fraternityto demand insertion. Degrees secured in course have been uniformlyomitted when known. Attendance at other non-professional institutions oflearning where no degree has been secured has been usually omitted. Servicein the Mexican war, the civil war and the Spanish war has been mentionedwith great brevity.The increasing size of the fraternity, and the expense attendant uponcompiling and publishing a catalog^ie of its members, has compelled aneconomy of space which is to be regretted, but which, nevertheless, had tobe secured if the cost of the publication should not become prohibitive. Theoriginal intention was to cut out even more detail than has been eliminated,but it was believed that the change from previous elaborate informationwould be too sudden, and an intermediate course was adopted. Future catalogueeditors will have to use the pruning knife more freely than we havedone.A certain and somewhat large percentage of inaccuracy is unavoidable inany college fraternity catalogue. If the chapter lists were all accuratewhen sent to the composing room they would be inaccurate, as to somenames, before they reached the bindery. The migratory character of ourpopulation is scarcely to be believed until it has been made a matter of personalobservation. The longerthe interval, therefore, between the time of gatheringthe information and the final issue of the book, the greater the degree ofinaccuracy due to this cause alone. It was determined, therefore, that aneffort would be made to do the work quickly. It was eight months betweenthe time when the first lists were tentatively compiled and the last finishedlist went to the composing room. When it is stated that prior catalogueeditors have had between these stepping stones of progress from two andone-half to eleven years, the magnitude of the work can be better appreciated.In compiling the lists all available public sources of information havebeen freely employed. City and state directories have been used, and classifiedlists of clergymen, lawyers and doctors, the alumni catalogues of colleges,compilations, such as encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries and"Who's Who," have been consulted. College and class secretaries havebeen applied to and the resulting corrected lists then submitted to interestedBetas, one or more from each chapter. After the information thus securedhad been compiled, a letter was sent to every living member asking tor verificationor correction of the information which we had secured concerninghim.Of course many men failed to respond. Many, of course, did respond,not only for themselves but for others. As a result of all this effort, we believethat the catalogue is more accurate than it would have been had a longertime been taken for its compilation. The errors in it are largely due to