THE MEETINGOER

The Harvard Co-operative Society, a local merchandising and valeteria outfit, held what amounted to a meeting Wednesday afternoon. Thirty leisured students attended the affair, although the Board of Directors had previously extended a blanket invitation to anyone with a Coop card. As each member entered the Harvard Hall gathering-room, he was presented with a red treasurer's report, a white monograph on the Society's history, and a blue manual of by-laws, a color scheme cleverly designed to prepare the audience for the patriotic fervor to follow.

The meeting was apologetically called to order at 5:02 by Mr. Cole, who seems to be the ranking officer in the Coop hierarchy. Mr. Cole is a white-haired man whose kindly face was carefully mounted on a tab collar; throughout the convention he sat midway between two life-size marble statues, one of a Greek athlete and the other of a Greek solon, presumably representing the two sides to the Coop's retailing activities. His first official act was to call upon Mr. Humphreys for a rendition of the previous year's minutes.

Mr. Humphreys obliged in a monotone, following which one of five oldish directors in the front row moved that the minutes be accepted as read. The measure was unanimously approved. This marked the only time during the afternoon that the 30 students exercised their rights of suffrage, but it had the effect of infusing them, at an early stage, with a "sense of belonging." Next on the program was Mr. Ford in an enthusiastic but factual soliloquy entitled "The Treasurer's Report." Mr. Ford prefaced his remarks with a comment that Mr. Cole has never yet missed an annual meeting, which was the cause of some laughter among the five oldish directors.

Never lifting his eyes from his report, Mr. Ford asked the assemblage to turn to page five for what he confidently referred to as "some interesting facts." These included a Net Rental Income of $10,511.79, Internal Interest Charges to Merchandising Departments of $17,561,00, and something called a Demolition Expense, $37,765.95. It all added up to the fact that the Coop lost over $25,000 last year, which seemed to disturb neither Mr. Ford nor the 30 participating members.

The meeting was then opened to questions from the floor. The first query was, what percentage of Coop purchases are made by members? "Seventy-two to seventy-eight percent," answered Mr. Cole, and then, as an obiter dictum, divulged what he called "the Great Mystery of the Harvard Cooperative Society:" why some people pay a dollar to join and then buy only five cents of goods.

Someone asked whether the Coop would rather hire college men. "Yes," said Mr. Cole, "a man going to Harvard or Radcliffe is as good as and probably better than the run-of-the-streets."

The high point of the afternoon came when one student demanded to know whether the Coop hired negroes. Mr. Cole became strong-voiced and frenzied. "There is no discrimination in the Harvard Cooperative Society." he proclaimed dramatically. "There won't be any! We've had negroes, we've had Chinese, we've had Indians, we've had Japs, but"--as an afterthought--"we still haven't had Malays." The student was satisfied by the answer, and the rest of the meeting came as an anti-climax.

Q. Will Corcoran's cut into your business?

A. Only in the bedspread, curtains, and women's hosiery line.

Q. Has the devaluation of the pound affected you?

A. Somewhat.

Q. Don't you show a loss in your refrigerator department?

A. We sold three ice boxes in the Yard last year.

By the end of the meeting Mr. Cole sounded like Dunninger solving the love life of the man in the third row. The conclave ended on a friendly note as the tired chairman invited the students to come to his office and hear some "funny stories about comparative prices."