THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

Comparable to F. D. R.'s "One Third of a Nation," hundreds of ill-housed graduate students are living out their Cambridge years in over-costly and inhospitable rooms. A few dozen of them have already taken refuge in the International House whose non-profit rates have packed the dollar with new buying power. Rooms that go for $5 or $6 a week on the usual Cambridge auction block have been reduced to $2.50. Meals are only $7. Almost like Good Housekeeping's "Dream House", the cooperative venture stands as a model that might well be imitated.

Surely among the streams of graduate students who come to Phillips Brooks House each fall for advice on boarding houses there must be a few enterprising souls ready to form the nucleus of other cooperatives. The trick is merely to eliminate the middleman. By renting a house for the whole year--and a lavish one goes for as low as $1,200 students can blow the usual landlord profits up the flue and cut their own costs by .50 per cent.

With boarding houses which lend themselves to the cooperative plan plentiful around Cambridge, Harvard should soon find itself the foster parent of a new movement. The International House has drawn the first outline: the details are ready to be filled in. Before next fall gets much closer, Phillips Brooks House would do well to encourage a few graduate students to ring door bells, inspect rooms, and compare prices. Before long "one third of an ill housed nation" can be shaved to a quarter.