Chaucer and Shakespeare, had inherited the professorship in English literature previously held by Francis James Child, whose courses he continued to teach and whose great, unfinished eight-volume edition of the Popular Ballads of England and Scotland he brought to completion. It was Kittredge who pioneered modern methods of ballad study, and who encouraged collectors to get out of their armchairs and library halls and to get out into the countryside to collect ballads first hand. When he met John Lomax in 1907, this was what he encouraged him to do; the cowboy songs Lomax had been writing down were glimpses into a whole new world, and Lomax should follow up on his work. "Go and get this material while it can be found," he told the young Texan. "Preserve the words and music. That's your job." Wendell and Kittredge continued to play an important advisory role in Lomax's career after he returned to Texas in June 1907 to resume his teaching position at A&M after completing his Master of Arts degree. This included a visit by the two professors to Texas during which Lomax took them to a Sunday service in an African-American church. Soon after his return to Austin, John Lomax's son, John Jr., was born, on June 14, 1907. Galvanized by Kittredge's advice and support, Lomax had begun collecting cowboy songs and ballads, but his work was interrupted on February 7, 1908, when "The Great A&M Strike" broke out. The strike, caused by student dissatisfaction with the administration, continued even after February 14, 1908, when the University, in a conciliatory gesture, fired some of its administrators. Unable to teach because of the strike, Lomax decided to see about resuming his collecting of cowboy ballads with a view to publishing them in a book. Encouraged by Wendell, he applied for and was awarded a Sheldon Fellowship grant. In June 1908, Lomax became a full professor at A&M. That August the strike ended when the President of the University resigned. In June 1910, Lomax accepted an administrative job at the University of Texas as "Secretary of the University Faculties and Assistant Director of the Department of Extension." In November 1910 the anthology, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, was published by Sturgis and Walton, with an introduction by former president Theodore Roosevelt. Among the songs included were "Jesse James", "The Old Chisholm Trail", "Sweet Betsy From Pike", and "The Buffalo