Royal Bartlett

Class of 1931

Royal Bartlett was born at the DuPage County (Illinois) "poor farm" where his father was superintendent and spent his adolescence near Wheaton and Elgin, Illinois.  In the fall of 1927, Royal entered the University of Illinois, in large part to fulfill a promise to a friend.  The two had agreed that they would enroll together, and although Royal's father had died and finances were tight, his mother insisted that he keep his promise.  "Except for that commitment that my mother said we made to him ... I probably wouldn't have gone to school at that time."   Ironically, the friend dropped out of college after his first year. 

 

Money was tight throughout his four years at Illinois.  Royal took out a loan from an Elgin bank to cover the tuition and room and board charges.  During the summer, he worked at boys camps for tuition money.   As he recalls, "we kind of lived hand-to-hand there for a while, I think I had plenty of company down there [at school] under the same circumstance." 

Registration was one of the first activities Royal remembers: 

"That was turmoil [laughter].  We had come out of a pretty good sized high school but I 'd never been exposed to a big group like that.  [One registered] not only for the classes you wanted, but the daily sequence of classes that would permit you to have some free time to work ... or where they were located because at the time you didn't have cars for students.  I still think back now ... how did we get from one building to another in the 10 minute break you had.  There was no transportation, we did it all by foot.  That's why when you laid out your classes you watched where they were located, going to be held, and how you could get back and forth.  There were a number of students who were transferring from small colleges... say two or three hundred students, and Illinois had at that time about 10,000.  They were lost." 

Housing: 

Royal lived in a private residence that rented rooms to students.  "They didn't have any meals where we stayed but there were boarding houses in the area that we could sign up for our meals.  And that's what I did.  There were four bedrooms upstairs so we had eight students. The rooms [downstairs] were where we conducted our studies, because the bedrooms were more or less a dormitory up in the attic, so there was no heat up there [laughter] ...  There was a good variety of people there.  Out of the eight students you had seniors and a couple of freshmen, a mixture.  

Social Activities: 

"The social activity was down at the old YMCA on Wright Street, which it shared with the Illinois Union.  But that was really, just a cramped up little place.  They really didn't offer much in the way of social activities as they do today."  Royal was active in Y activities until studies began to take more of his time.  Among other projects, Y members volunteered to do work with children in the public school system in town. 

Other student activities included dances and parties.  "They always had seven or eight dances a year.  They'd have a Military Ball, and of course, a Senior Ball and a Junior Ball.  One of the big things at those dances was the Grand March.  You'd come down one aisle, and [your date would] go around the outside, and ... you'd finally wind up with the whole ball room shoulder to shoulder." 

"Basketball was a big thing at the University.  They had good basketball teams at that time.  You've heard of Chief Illiniwek.  I backed him up, the first one they had [Lester Leutwiler].  When he wasn't able to show up for games and so, then I would act for him.  I had been active in the Boy Scouts all through my younger life and had taken an interest in Indian lore.  I had my own costume and so did he.  It was right after he left that one of the Champaign retailers, Joseph Kuhn, financed the purchase of a costume for the Chief.  But the first ones, we had our own from our own collections." 

Rules for Students: 

Smoking: 

"Off campus you could smoke, but you couldn't smoke on campus.  So you'd come to this spot and that would be the end of it.  If you were able to take a 10 minute break and were within classroom proximity, they'd all rush to the curb, you know.  Then one of the big cigarette companies ... it was Old Gold, sent out to all the students ... a nice tin box [of cigarettes], about 100 in there, in U. of I. colors.  All the mothers that were down there got up in arms for the tobacco industry for sending these cigarette gifts to all the students.  So there was a feeling even back then about smoking." 

Dean of Men Thomas Arkle Clark:

Thomas Arkle Clark "was well liked.  He had a mustache, he was kind of short, gray haired ...  he was well accepted."  Royal explains that students accepted the Dean's regulations because they were taught to obey authority at home:  "Coming from our homes, we were pretty used to it.  If you got in trouble, why [Dean Clark] disciplined you, that was fair.  And of course he had student assistants who would investigate some of the charges going on, so he had a pretty good rapport with the students." 

Dean Clark also assisted students with their problems: 

"When we sent out our dry cleaning, delivery constituted bringing it to the entry of your building.  They lost a suit on me.  Now there were two houses that were just about alike with a little alley driveway between them.  And so they said, 'maybe we put it in the wrong house.'  So they went over there and they couldn't find it.  A suit of clothes at that time was probably $20 and that was a lot of money to have in it, so I went to see Thomas Arkle Clark to see what the University would do with this dry cleaner.  And so he made a phone call or two and the next thing you knew I had $25 to buy a new suit [laughter]." 

Race Relations and Politics on Campus 

The student body was predominantly caucasian.  "African Americans were probably second.  They lived to the north of the campus.  We [Royal and his room mates] were at Sixth and Stoughton, they had to be further north another half mile, more of less.  Just pushed up, there would be a dividing line between Champaign and Urbana, there would be a few [African Americans] in both [towns], but they were not too close geographically to the University...  I would imagine [their location] was because private housing probably didn't accept them.  African Americans kept to themselves."  Jewish students "pretty well mingled with the fraternity group.  They had two or three houses of their own.  The ones that were independent ... they were in the minority.  I think it was probably after World War II, that you got to see more ... working together." 

Students who were involved in politics were "primarily the independents [those not involved in the Greek system], usually from the Chicago area.  They had kind of a passive approach too because they were in the minority.  I think [the political tone] on campus was predominantly Republican.  I don' t think anyone ever polled them.  But there was enough diversity with the various schools, you had agriculture, and business, and law, and what not, so you had a pretty representative picture of who all people throughout the state were." 

"Nationally, the biggest thing was Al Smith running for president, he was the first Catholic to run for the presidency.  That made quite an issue among the people at the time ... and the Depression, but the Depression didn't seem to be as close to us on a daily basis, [although] we were aware of family members who had suffered and lost their jobs." 

The Depression 

Upon graduation in 1931, Royal and his class mates had difficulty finding finance/commerce positions: 

"I guess I always had an interest in math in high school and keeping records.  Illinois had a good reputation... when I was in school you didn't have recruiting, when you graduated you were on your own.  I remember there were about 60 of us that graduated in accounting and each of us was given three accounting firms.  They were the ones that we were to concentrate on... to try to get employment.  You didn't move over and take this fellow's ones.  [Businesses] were not represented at the campus at all in recruiting like they do now.  None of the banks or industry ... they had all the help they needed.  So when I graduated, I went two years before I got a job in accounting.  In fact, I peddled hand bills from door-to-door for a good part of that time in the suburbs around Elgin.  You were lucky if you walked away at graduation with a job." 

After University of Illinois:

Royal Bartlett graduated from the University of Illinois in 1931.  In 1934, he married Avis Julien, a young woman from Champaign-Urbana whom he had met while he was a student.  His professional career has included business positions with Sinclair Oil (1933-42) in Chicago, Illinois and United Airlines (1942-74) in Chicago and in Colorado.  He retired in 1974. 

The tapes and complete transcript of this interview, conducted on November 7, 2000,   are available for research use in the Student Life and Culture Archives.

 

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