Twenty Years Ago! Brooks Hays Can't Believe He Has Been Out of School That Long - Page 3

Abstract

Open letter written to the editor of the Arkansas Alumnus ; a profound influence into the lives of two million people. Each college will have a part to play. For Business Administration graduates it means ability to appraise and direct the forces that make for a more democratic and cooperative type of business enterprise. For the Agris it means aid in lifting farm living standards by creating new forms of wealth. Agricultural leadership now implies something more than knowing when to plant corn or the answers in legislation to collective ills. An understanding of human factors and an ability to promote cooperative endeavor are also highly essential. We lawyers, too, must understand how economic change is affecting professional requirements. Henry Maine said, "Social opinion should always be in advance of law and the greater or less happiness of a people depends upon the narrowness of the gulf between them." Hence, law must not lag too far behind social opinion. The new order has a place for the lawyer who is sensitive to wrongs that cannot be redressed except for progressive and socially minded lawyers who know how to frame the desires and social planning of the people in legal procedures. There is also the traditional demand of a liberal education that it add to our appreciation of life wherever it is lived but life could not be more exciting in the world than in Arkansas during the last twenty years and if my predictions hold good it will be more exciting in the next twenty. Let's all stay in Arkansas. I have in tender memory the faculty members of 1915-19 and it is gratifying to know that so many of them are still well and active. God bless them every one. And for my class mates, greetings. It was a great class, not large but an exceptional one and I am very happy in the recollection of those associations. I have gotten more serious than you intended, perhaps, when you asked for this letter. It is a failing of mine that even the Sophomores of '15-'16 could not quite eliminate though they made me capable of smiling at myself when I get too solemn. I can feel a smile coming on right now and so I close this letter. Thanks for reminding me of the twentieth anniversary. Sincerely, Brooks Hays Little Rock, Ark.