COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY

It is probable that in these days of frenzied buying and selling, when every student is desirous of getting rid of his non-essentials at the highest possible price, the only persons who come out on the best side of the bargin are the asture book buyers. No Nero judging slaves ever assumed a more majestic and disdainful attitude than the average second-hand bookstore proprietor. With a regal gesture he dismisses book after book, apparently ignorant of the fact that in his window is emblazoned the legend--"All Your books bought here". Grudgingly, almost in a philanthopic manner, he will offer six pence for a volume which will appear bravely on his stalls next fall marked one dollar--reduced from three. And the slaughter of the innocents continues.

There ought to be not a law but a society for the protection of those who are anxious to dispose of their books at prices at least not rediculous. As it is the bookstore manager is the king in the springtime, however obliging he may be at the beginning of the next term. No union of determined undergraduates have formed in opposition to his tyranny and therefore he rules supreme. Decidedly a profiteer, he makes his hay while the sun shines, realizing that the antum months are sufficiently distant to make the rebellious ones forget their wounds.

To bequeath books for a mere pittance on the regal powers that be is such a dismal proceeding that it saps the strength of even those exuberant ones who have just emerged from the course in which texts were used. But they emerge to find a cold and heartless world, one dominated by Simon Legrees. Better, far better to assume the charitable and munificent pose and to give the books to the Phillipse Brooks House Library. There they will be appreciated, and the quality of gratitude will remain an unstrained.