Congressman Jenkins on the line.(on the right)( William L. Jenkins)

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 1

'AND one day," Grandma said, "when the phone rings, it will be for you."

Grandma was not talking about the telephone as an expediter of teen romance. She had herself just now put down the telephone, opened the drawer, pulled out her checkbook, and, after a discreet sigh, diminished her bank account. Many candidates have expressed their mortification at having to call constituents personally, asking for money. They do this so often that it becomes easy to suppose they are inured to the exercise, suffering no more than the diabetic after the 1,000th daily shot of insulin.

That may be so, but what about Grandma? And the foredoomed grandson?

The great community of Americans who find themselves called to the telephone, where they will be solicited for cash contributions, fully understand that they (we) are submitting to institutional arrangements that have evolved from a conflict between social imperatives: 1) There are activities in the country which deserve support, and which 2) we wish to see succeed in their struggles to survive, but which 3) we don't want to turn over to government to subsidize.

The temptation to lean on government is persistent, and almost every year the private sector yields a little. Sixty years ago, when it was first suggested that the federal government might contribute to alleviating the financial problems of major private universities, the prospective beneficiaries held up their hands in shock and dismay at the mere proposal. They knew that financial benefits lead inevitably to political subjugation, although they could not have foreseen how far this would go ("How many albinos do you have in your freshman class?"). We learned from that brief period of defiance (1949-59) that it was indeed inevitable that the feds would make demands on colleges they patronized, but that it was not inevitable that college trustees would continue to reject federal money.

But the point here stressed ...