PAINT FOR JOHN HARVARD

In the battle now raging between the Cambridge School Teachers, and (as far as we can make out) everybody also in Cambridge, including the Mayer, City Council, people, parents and pupils, the real spearhead of the teachers' battalion is an organization quaintly described is an organization quaintly described as the "C.T.B.E.S.R." Even in an age of abbreviations this easily establishes a record. Translated, it means "The Cambridge Teachers Bureau of Educational and Statistical Research."

Daily, this alphabetical society has been seeking to confound its enemies with some new morsel of statistics and research. Most of them pass over out poor undergraduate domes. But the latest and most interesting item deserves immediate pursuit by every expert in research, and all the statistics which Harvard University can muster to its defence.

Blaming Harvard for most of its woes, the C.T.B.E.S.R. then proceeds to deposit what is left of them in the laps of the few surviving Harvard professors who live in Cambridge and pay taxes there. (There are only 130 of them, the teachers say.)

Here is what they say: "They (the professors) pay a combined total tax of $81,212,74, which is one percent of the total amount needed to run the city for a year, and the seven members of the "extravagant" school committee together pay a larger total tax than does the entire Harvard teaching staff."

Here is a chance to do some real research and statistics. Get out your pencils, men. If the seven members of the school committee pay more than $81,212.74 in taxes on real estate, and if the tax rate in $33.70 per thousand, then according to our way of figuring it, the total real estate property of the seven school committee members amounts to exactly $2,409,873.59--not to mention intangible property probably amounting to a great deal more, too.

That being the case, it seems to us that, Cambridge's "Millionaire School Committee" might give Harvard University a lift in a few deserving spots. For example, they might give Harvard a donation to help finish the fence along, Quincy Street or to keep some of its libraries open. As a matter of fact, the statue of John Harvard could do with little polishing or a cost of paint. We couldn't come out flatly and ask the Cambridge school Committee members with real estate valued at $2.409,873.59 to give Harvard a donation. But a word to the wise is sufficient.