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History - 1930's
(Summary/Commentary)

In this decade, the Association began providing much more formal reports and financial statements to its members.  Josephine Banks was employed as a full time professional secretary (no doubt working within the EBA office at N. Y. U.) and, in 1932, a dues increase for the 242 members was hotly debated.  The article of the Association’s constitution stating the name and defining the purpose of the association was amended.  EBA Executive Secretary Robert B. Jenkins’ report to the members at the 1939 Annual Meeting held at Duke University is an absolute classic.  In effect it was his valedictory address as he retired the next year. 

From the start, there was discussion concerning the appropriate geographic size of “sections” or “chapters’ or “regions” and that debate continues.  Initially the trend was toward smaller groups and some argued small groups would allow/encourage members to meet more frequently.  In fact, it was one such small group in central New York State that in effect tested the approach to cooperative purchasing proposed by George Frank that became the E&I Cooperative.  More recently, there have been mergers creating fewer larger groups.  The same issues that drove the debate sixty years ago are with us today. 

In 1934, the E&I Cooperative service was organized by a small group led by Cornell’s George Frank who was at the time an EBA past president and one of the most influential and able leaders within the Association.  The cooperative purchasing scheme proposed by Frank and others was tested within a small group of central New York EBA members including Cornell, Colgate and Syracuse universities in 1934 and then offered to all EBA members in 1935.  A close working relationship between the Association and the Co-op was established when the two organizations decided to share office space in 1937 and the recently hired Manager of E&I was named Assistant Secretary for the Association.  Although there had been some debate within the Association over the usefulness of EBA managed pool buying and some saw it as a distraction, they clearly embraced the benefits of cooperative purchasing when conducted by a separate but allied organization. 

The first record of a “Code of Ethics Advocated by The Educational Buyers Association” was found in a proposed document date stamped March 5, 1937.  The format and individual articles are remarkably similar to the current version despite many amendments over the years. 

Earlier correspondence disclosed a spirited debate over the propriety of sharing information related to price and conditions among purchasing officers.  Apparently this had been a hot button issue.  Some felt this was confidential information between buyer and seller.  Others pointed out that state law required them to disclose this information and some thought secrecy benefited only the seller.  In any case, there is no mention of this issue in the draft code of 1937 and the general support of cooperative buying suggests that the issue had been settled on the side of transparency and disclosure. 

Toward the end of the decade, retrenchment is the order of the day on campus as the effects of the 1929 stock market crash and worldwide depression takes hold.  However higher education seemed to have been somewhat insulated from the worst of the economic collapse, as there is little mention in the records available of the dire conditions that gripped much of the nation.