s
body, though it has only met semi-occasionally, has initiated several
movements which have had a real influence on the relations between the
University and the graduates. This has been particularly true in matters
relating to alumni support for the Union, and the problems arising in
connection with its administration.

In its earlier years the Alumni Association also undertook to keep up
the alumni catalogue and maintained for some time a card index of the
alumni. This task, however, eventually outgrew the resources of the
Association, and in 1910 the alumni catalogue was transferred to
addressograph plates by a special appropriation, and its maintenance was
made a part of the regular administrative work of the University, with a
separate officer, closely associated with the Alumni Association,
appointed to maintain the lists and edit the catalogues. The labor
involved in keeping this list of over 40,000 names even approximately up
to date may be judged from the fact that the catalogue office now
includes four assistants as well as the Director, Mr. H.L. Sensemann,
'11, of the Department of Rhetoric.

For some years the practice was continued of including in the annual
calendar an "Alumnorum catalogus," which began in 1848 with the names of
the fifty-six graduates of the first four classes. The list eventually
became too long, however, and in 1864 the first General Catalogue was
issued as a forty-page pamphlet which included 999 names. Four
subsequent editions have appeared, in 1871, 1891, 1901 and 1911, in
addition to a privately published volume issued in 1880. The slender
pamphlet of 1864 became, in 1911, a volume of 1,096 pages which recorded
43,666 names, while the catalogue of 1921 will be even more impressive.

Though the interest and enthusiasm of the graduates is expressed in many
less spectacular ways, the amount of alumni gifts is the most available
standard by which the effectiveness of this support can be shown. Judged
by this rough and ready approximation for a force which is in reality
intangible and based on something finer and more spiritual than material
gifts, particularly since it represents obviously only the sentiment of
the few rather than that of the thousands who would do likewise if they
were able, it shows nevertheless how responsively the University's
alumni regard her call for their support. They have given their alma
mater funds and property whose estimated value may be conservatively