Roy D. Chapin: The Man Behind the Hudson Motor Car Company

III. University Days

CHAPTER III UNIVERSITY DAYS ROY entered the University of Michigan in the winter of» 1899 with considerably more seriousness of purpose than the usual college student. Though he liked people, and settled naturally into the social pleasures of college life, he was restive. Many of his high school classmates were already out in the world, getting a start in business, and Roy did not wish to fall to the rear of the procession. He had in mind that George Field at any time might find a job for him in New York, and he was not at all sure that the university training would compensate for losing time from the business career which he intended to follow. He had entered the Literary Department of the university, as the liberal arts course was then designated; but its curriculum did not satisfy him. He wished to know more about how the wheels turned in commerce and finance. Accordingly, he voluntarily attended the lectures of the freshman law class. It was an almost unheard-of proceeding for a freshman to choose to take on extra classroom work, but for Roy it was characteristic. On the campus, he was less active than in high school, for several reasons. Having entered in the middle of the year, he was less in the swing of the social life of the university than the boys who had arrived earlier. The various campus competitions were already under way. Again, his letters home appeared to indicate the attitude of a young man in transit, who was interested in the scene about him but not necessarily committed to it. There was no indication of his planning what he would be like as a senior, or of taking any special interest in being a factor in university life. 19 2O ROY D. CHAPIN Roy's instinct for business, his flair for making money, already evident in school days, was continuing to grow. This unusual financial faculty was of a special sort, the ability to see a profit, to turn a penny, and to do it all in his stride. He had little of the accountant or banking temperament in his nature, and nothing of pomposity. Life was a gay enterprise, and business was his favorite game. This effervescent nature redeemed him in the eyes of his fellows, as his reputation had been imperiled by the odd practice of taking an extra college course. He was, in fact, chosen to speak for his freshman delegation at the initiation banquet of his fraternity. Of this, he wrote to his father, "The fraternity has its annual banquet on the 17th and I have been asked to represent the Freshman class and respond to the toast, 'The Freshman, or what struck me.' I will probably know a lot more about 'what struck me' after initiation." The fraternity was Phi Delta Theta. His older brother Neil was a member here and also his friend Walter Foster. Roy became an enlivener of banquets, liking to stick pins in the usual stuffiness of such affairs. A few years after this particular dinner , he attended an alumni banquet, and by a preconceived plan with several others he arose after the first toast, complained bitterly of the lack of qualifications of the toastmaster, moved that another be installed, and declared the motion carried. After each toast, the procedure was repeated. Much later in life, at a dinner of national importance, he kicked a long-winded Cabinet member in the shins, under the table, as a hint to stop talking, but this comes later in the story. He lost no opportunity to keep in touch with the outside world. Judge Grant of Lansing came down to Ann Arbor to preside over a debate between Michigan and Pennsylvania. The young freshman attended and went up to the chairman afterwards . "He gave me the glad hand," Roy wrote to his father, "and I congratulated him on his renomination." UNIVERSITY DAYS 21 The freshman year passed uneventfully with the customary round of parties and the usual undergraduate shortages of funds. "If you will send me about $50/' he wrote to his father in April, 1899, "I w ^ square everything up till the first of June and I also want to buy that jersey and the house party will cost a little something. There wont be any wasted. I was only paid up to vacation anyway. "I enclose you receipts for money paid...