Education: A Case of Crates

The Army had a million leftover textbooks, and many a schoolmaster was howling for books. It looked like a simple matter of supply and demand. Last week in Washington, D.C., 25 educational groups complained that it was a little too simple.

The trouble, said the educators, was that the War Assets Administration put all its books in standard size packing cases. If 335 copies of Shoop & Tuve's Mechanical Engineering Practice filled a crate, and a school wanted only 100 it had to take all 335 or none. Result: most schools were taking none.

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