A PERNICIOUS MISSTATEMENT ABOUT THE H. D. A.

An editorial on Memorial Hall, appearing in the current number of the Illustrated Magazine, is too likely to create a serious misapprehension among those who may read it without sufficient knowledge of the facts, to be allowed to pass unchallenged. It deliberately charges the Corporation of the University with "fleecing the student body of almost 50 cents a week" because it "exacts interest on gifts to itself," and it closes with an appeal to the members of the Association to "take the remedy of a strike."

The pernicious effects of the editorial are likely to arise from a misunderstanding of the nature of the Harvard Dining Association. This, as its name implies, is not a corporation doing business as a cafe, but an association of students for the purpose of deriving the advantages of cooperation in obtaining board. It is not capitalized and does not own property. On the contrary, it is obliged to borrow money at interest to pay for its plant and the regular bills incurred. This money, instead of being borrowed from banks, is obtained from the Corporation of the University as a regular investment. The fallacy of the Illustrated Magazine's position appears when it calls the plant, bought with the borrowed money, a gift to the Corporation. Legally it is the property of the University, but only for the reason that the Dining Association is not empowered to hold property in its own name. What is in reality an act of courtesy on the part of the Corporation is misconstrued by the Illustrated Magazine as "fleecing and extortion." As a matter of fact the full use of the plant is enjoyed by the Dining Association precisely as if it were its own property.

But the most deplorable part of the editorial is its proposed remedy for an imagined injustice. The idea of members of a voluntary co-operative association striking" against themselves would appear ludicrous to us, if we did not fear that it might breed among the misinformed results utterly ruinous to the purposes of the Association. What is needed is not the threat of repudiation of a bona fide debt by withdrawal, but rather an earnest attempt to insure a larger membership in order that the obligations of the Association may be more widely apportioned and the price of board for each individual be reduced to a more normal level than at present obtains.