MISCELLANY OF ITEMS PASS THROUGH PURCHASING AGENTS OF UNIVERSITY

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.

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