SUPER-SOLICITUDE?

With the enormous jump that has taken place over the summer in the number of concern's catering to the student body in everything from laundry and pressing to firewood and furniture, and the consequent bitter and cutthroat competition, the fine line between the ethical and the unethical in soliciting, the line between the legal and the possible, has been almost completely obscured. And not because such a line has ceased to exist, but because it has been so frequently and persistently trampled upon and crossed that it is no longer easy to see, and indeed it may be at times more convenient not to see any too clearly.

And yet while the rule may seem insignificant, and its violation unimportant, yet when this violation becomes wholesale it of necessity leads to much injustice. Those concerns whose representatives solicit in the dormitories gain a great advantage over those more scrupulous who do not, and who lose a great part of that custom they might have obtained on merit, were all other considerations equal. Is it then right that they should be thus penalized for adhering to the letter of the law, while their less fastidious rivals reap their ill-gotten gains? Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are not speedily filled in Harvard Square.

The anti-soliciting regulation in the past has been but laxly enforced. Mr. Hanford's proclamation shows that the authorities are fully alive to the present situation, but the mills of the gods grind slowly. The effective method of enforcement is by the refusal of the students themselves to patronize those who illegally call at their rooms, and to cease the practice of signing merely to rid themselves of an unwelcome and over-persistent guest. In this manner, and with the help of the authorities the rules will be upheld, and the question of competition decided, as is only right, on merit alone.