that he had received pledges of membership from a sufficient number of men now in college to justify him in proceeding with the arrangement for establishing the commons next year." The next academic year, still in 1899, sixteen non-fraternity men, led by Frederick Clark, Thomas Travis, and Herbert Ward, formally established the Wesleyan Commons Club. The University also organized the Commons Club as a boarding club, beginning with thirty-eight members, setting the price of board at $2.25 a week. The next fall, the membership increased to seventy and the college enlarged the building in which they were dining to provide meeting rooms for the group. Because of the financial aid provided, the University felt free to make a condition that all undergraduate members of the college, not belonging to fraternities, should be offered an election to the group regardless of race, color or creed. National Federation of Commons Clubs The success of the Wesleyan Commons Club inspired the founding of similar organizations at Dartmouth College, Middlebury College, and Norwich University. These four formed the National Federation of Commons Clubs in 1906, which would add thirteen additional members by 1918 as well as numerous non-aligned Commons Clubs on campuses throughout the United States and Canada. Along with the increase in chapter memberships, went a great many improvements, following the easiest course in imitation of the older Greek-letter societies which were close at hand in every college, rather than in sticking to original principles or in making novel but difficult improvements. The Commons Clubs adopted, one after the other, most of the characteristics of the Greek-letter fraternities, not, however, without a fight at every adoption by the sterner, more democratic element in every chapter. The innovations consisted of yearly conventions, an annual magazine, initiation and installation rituals, robes, secret hand grips, badges, pennants, private fraternity houses, alumni organizations, and the like. Because membership was open, a Commons Club could grow to a size unwieldy to govern, inadequate for forming close friendships, and unsuited to the effective advancement of their stated ideals. Factions and in some cases whole clubs split away and sought petitions from national fraternities or declared themselves a local fraternity. In 1905, ten members of the Middlebury Commons Club, including President George E. Kimball, left to form a new organization which later became the Kappa Delta Rho national fraternity. The weak organization of the Federation itself left it vulnerable to