What Price Comfort?

The discerning young Harvard man discovers, soon after moving into his college dwellings, that the angular, unpadded objects grandiosely labeled "room furnishings" offer excellent facilities for clothes-hanging and third degrees, but have few other practical uses. In order to secure a modicum of comfort he must supplement the University supplied furniture by making purchases in Cambridge or Boston. Unfortunately, furniture suitable to college rooms is not easily found and even when available can be acquired only by parting with a painfully large amount of money.

The situation is doubly damnable because there is at term's end enough furniture owned by men leaving college to satisfy most of the needs of the next term's arrivals. There is, however, no way by which the potential buyer is brought in contact with the seller. In the Spring everyone is trying to get rid of furniture, and in the Fall everyone is trying to acquire it.

The solution to this unhappy dilemma is the formation of an undergraduate operated furniture exchange to buy furniture at a fair price from men leaving college and to sell it to new men as cheaply as possible. The exchange, though college wide, might be operated in each House by an agent of the House Committee. Its semi-official character would enable it to negotiate with House janitors for storage space over periods when the stock of furniture exceeds the demand.

The business affairs of the exchange would be administered by students receiving pay for their work. They would be responsible for coordinating the activities of the various House organizations on a college wide basis, and could use the exchange's slight profits to buy new furnishing in wholesale quantities and to repair worn pieces of furniture. This exchange would prevent the men who sell their furniture at term's end from taking an unnecessary loss, and assure an ample supply of decently priced furniture for the beginning of the next school year.