Students' Expenses.

Mr. Frank Bolles has just issued a little pamphlet on "Student's Expenses" at Harvard, giving a great deal of valuable information to all connected or desiring to be connected with the University. Professor George H. Palmer on Commencement Day of 1887, gave in his address the results of the first systematic investigation of the subject. He showed plainly from the figures he had secured from the students themselves, that the individual expenditure of a quarter of the class of 1987 had been less than $650 a year; and that among these a number had been able to keep their expenses below $450. This address and many extracts from the students' letters upon which Professor Palmer's remarks had been based, were published by some interested graduates.

Since then much attention has been paid the matter, until now Mr. Bolles has gotten together the statistics of a portion of the class of 91, which is of great interest by comparison with the previous work. Although many of the conditions existing in 1887, are still the same, there are now many modifying influences which materially alter the yearly expenditures of students. Then there was no Foxcroft Club, no "Twenty-One Club," no Loan-Furniture Association, nor were there over six hundred boarders at Memorial Hall. Now these newly formed clubs and associations and the reduction in the weekly board at Memorial, are very active forces in reducing the average of student expenses. The Committee on the Reception of Students has published at the beginning of each year since 1890 a list of rooms to be let in private houses in Cambridge and vicinity, thus facilitating the letting and hiring of the rooms, as well as, more or less incidentally, securing a greater uniformity of rates, which is another factor in lowering expenses.

The college also gives much more help to the students now than when Professor Palmer gave his address. The aid fund now yields for yearly distribution $89, 000, against $50,000 in 1887. Systematic help is now given to student desiring vacations, and some few are assisted by the Dean in securing private pupils.

A short summary of the expenses of the members of the class of 1891, as. collected by its secretary is given; and at the close of the pamphlet are published the letters of some forty very poor, earnest, scholarly students of '92, giving an account of their expenses at Harvard, at the special request Mr. Bolles.