Bull Market to Help Harvard Fund Drive

A rising stock market has sparked a prediction from the directors of Harvard's $82.5 million fund drive that the drive's total will read $54 million by the end of the year. At that time, the major part of the national alumni solicitation should have been completed, with its goal of $12 million almost attained.

The drive, named A Program for Harvard College at its inception two years ago, is to be completed by June 11, 1959--Harvard's 308th Commencement.

The largest gift to the Program, announced last week, was an anonymous donation of $2 million, given during November. Second largest gift was $1.5 million; third largest a gift of $1 million from John L. Loeb, New York investment broker, earmarked for a new theatre.

These gifts do not approach the dimensions of the Mellon Foundation's $15 million gift to Yale University last spring, but Harvard's President Nathan M. Pusey and new Program chairman H. Irving Pratt of New York are now pushing for the large gifts, hoping that the end of the recession will spur these on.

The improvement in the stock market has already brought a $25,000 gift for a common room in the proposed modern addition to Leverett House, one of the seven large residential units for upper-classmen.

Gifts of this moderate size have helped give Harvard a record for the largest number of contributions to date of any drive so far conducted. While eight leading colleges have received a total of 62 gifts of $100,000 or more, amounting to $19 million, the Harvard Program has received 85 gifts of this magnitude.