The following extracts are taken from an article which appears in the current Alumni Bulletin dealing with the purchasing of supplies for the University. The article was written by W. G. Morse '99, purchasing agent for the University.

Centralized purchasing for industrial organizations has long since passed the experimental stage and become an accepted and necessary part of every large business corporation, but it is only within a few years that the need of it has been felt by the educational institutions.

The reasons why these institutions, Harvard especially should be the last to take up this question are plain. Colleges do not purchase large quantities of raw material and their finished product is supposed to be mental and spiritual rather than material.

Shopping List Miscellaneous

Colleges purchase small quantities of almost every known article. Harvard's list runs alphabetically from animals, alive and dead including cats, dogs, mice, rats, snakes, frogs, rabbits, guinea-pigs and monkeys--down through zincotype machines. It is not so easy here to show a saving through a purchasing department.

The Purchasing Department at Harvard is a voluntary service offered to the departments of the University, and not a compulsory one. It is here for use, if it is found useful. It will buy a broom or a chemical, or a thousand brooms, but only when it is asked to do so. It will supply information, if asked, as to the best broom, or the cheapest broom, or the broom that is the best value for the money. Or it will buy a particular, specified broom it will buy a specified broom from a specified firm. If not otherwise instructed, it will use its best judgment in buying brooms. It will arrange to have salesmen call on the department with sample brooms for selection. It will have brooms sent on trial. It will advise department heads and secretaries where they themselves can go and select their broom, and will make arrangements so that they can get the broom at the best possible price. It will advise one department as to what broom has proved useful elsewhere. In fact, is is here first for service, economies are a secondary consideration. It plans to accomplish both of these purposes with as little red tape and friction as possible.

How far has it succeeded in accomplishing these purposes? Starting on January 1, 1924, during the first five months it did a business amounting to $21,000. During the next 12 months, it did $375,000. The following year the volume was $505,000, and for the year ending July 1, 1927, it will reach $800,000.

Dead Rodents Spurned

At one time, when we were much occupied in getting rid of the rats in some of the Yard dormitories, we received a telephone call from the Department of Preventive Medicine. In the course of the conversation, without expecting to be taken seriously, we asked the doctor if he could use any dead rats. To our surprise he gave the matter serious thought and finally announced, "No! We use the fleas only and the fleas leave when the body gets cold."

Another doctor sent us a sample of a small, sharp-pointed staple which we tried for several days to duplicate, only to find that it was no longer on the market. Finally we called him up to ask what it was used for, so that we could perhaps provide a substitute. "I want to pin a tag on a cat's ear" was the answer. Whereupon we bought him a ten-cent box of clothes-pricing tags which proved satisfactory.

There is a saving in money many times more than the expense of this department, which expense, by the way, is not charged to the departments which use the service, the service being "free" in every respect.

This second-hand furniture business has now almost entirely disappeared because the university has adopted the policy of furnishing all the college rooms. The college has decided to furnish all of the college dormitories and will have nearly all of them equipped by next fall. This policy has brought about the expenditure of nearly $200,000, for chairs, tables, beds, desks, chiffoniers, bookcases, etc.,--the largest single furniture order, we believe, ever placed in New England.

Figures Show Work

During the past year we have bought about 8,000 chairs, 2000 beds and mattresses, 2500 desks, 2000 chiffoniers, $18,000 worth of crockery for the dining halls, $12000 worth of silverware, $30000 worth of coal, $120,000 worth of fuel oil, besides chemicals, scientific apparatus, hospital supplies, microscopes, stereopticans and moving-picture machines, and violet ray lamps and apparatus.

In addition we have bought about 60 tons of paper, of all sizes and shapes and kinds, Whatman's filter papers, seismograph paper, writing paper, toilet paper, napkins, towels, wrapping paper, photograph paper, blotting paper, building paper, paper boxes, paper confetti, paper for books and printing, card-board, press board, Japanese lanterns, etc.