Open Letter to:

Dr. Henry D. Chadwick

President

Cambridge Tuberculosis and Health Association

Enclosed you will find a contribution of one dollar to the Cambridge Tuberculosis and Health Association. I wish to state my sincere regret that it was not possible for this contribution to have been made through the Harvard Student Council's Service Fund.

A student finds himself in the difficult situation of making charitable contributions with money which he has not earned. If "give in proportion to income" were his rule, he would not give at all, and yet most student's feel that a donation of some sort, if only of token dimensions, should be made to the charities of the community in which their school is located.

But it should be made clear that students cannot be treated as the "fellow citizens of Cambridge" to which your appeal is addressed. Our anomalous position has led to the unification of our charitable contributions through the Service Fund, the distribution of which among charities is determined by student vote.

Perhaps any one charity which conducted a separate campaign among the students as you are doing would raise a larger sum of money than would be obtained through the Service Fund, yet this is true only because of the existence of the Fund. Harvard students with the above good reasons for giving a limited amount would not tolerate seven or eight solicitations each year, and the total Harvard contribution to Cambridge would be reduced.

That the Cambridge Tuberculosis and Health Association should feel it wine to operate in opposition to a wisely planned system of college charity contribution to a blot on the splendid record of a leading civic organization. Francis D. Fisher