We had a requisition the other day for a barrel of soap and a gross of safety razor blades. It seemed out of proportion, but "ours not to reason why."
Today we want a mile of wire fencing eight feet high, 40 vacuum cleaners, and window curtains for 145 windows, all different. Yesterday there were 2,500 mosquito screens for the Business School; 12,000 napkins for the dining halls; a high-vacuum pump and an electro-dyalizer for the Medical School; a pair of andirons and a clock at McKinlock Hall; miles of conduit and electric wires; a variety saw for the carpenter shop; plumbing supplies; lumber; ushers badges for Commencement; paint; mimeograph machines; typewriters; and every day and always, chemicals with impossible names which must be spelled right and be right.
More Miscellany
Other items include 100 packages of diaper cloth; electric lamps; 200 specially-designed book-ends to keep the books on the Library shelves from slumping; rubber-wheeled trucks to go between the Library stacks and to make no noise while they are going; a cabinet designed to hold and index 20,000 lantern slides; a museum case which must be moth-proof and worm-proof; tents for a camp; lenses from Germany for a powerful telescope; a carefully-planned outfit for a South African expedition; a cushion for an instructor's office chair; fresh bottled-water for a thirsty professor; red and yellow chalk for the blackboards so plain that the students at the back of the room can see it; steel furniture for an anti-toxin laboratory; beakers, flasks, and evaporating dishes; 25 cases of books for the Sanskrit Department, printed in London and to be passed through the Custom House as nearly free of duty as possible. Are there blue books enough for the final examinations? Is there anything in that last glue we brought which will injure valuable prints that are to be mounted with it? "The last mimeograph paper dries fast enough, but we can't write on it." How can we buy paper that will absorb ink quickly and yet will not absorb it?
"The cabbage and carrots for our animals have been frozen and are not good enough. We want the best and uniform, so that our experiments will have good comparative results. Fix it up for us."
"Can you come over and price everything in our building. We have to take an inventory."
We have an extra desk. Can you sell it for us?"
We select rugs over the telephone to match a wall paper we have not seen. We place a contract for 10,000 tons of coal in the morning, and spend an hour over a pound of tacks to match a sample in the afternoon.
Perhaps one of the most pleasing aspects of this work is the relations formed with Harvard graduates. We want information, prices, forecasts. Is coal going up or down? How about oil? Where can we buy this or that? Where are the trade customs and agreements? We must have advice on legal or other points. We have only to ask a graduate, tell him that the information is for Harvard, and every door is opened for us, every book is at our disposal, and even the busiest official seems glad to interrupt his work and give us all the time we ask