The Crime---Action and Achievement

Along about 1939 or 1940 the Federal government became interested in the CRIMSON from the standpoint of corporation taxes. Courteous but curious Internal Revenue agents wrote to the paper's president and business manager, requesting them to outline its legal and executive structure so that the Bureau would know what taxes to impose and which people to see about them.

Forced to think about the paper's legal status and executive hierarchy for the first time, the president and business manager rushed about frantically trying to gather a coherent report on how the CRIMSON functioned. Finally someone suggested that the T-men be sent a copy of the paper's constitution and told to puzzle it out for themselves. This idea rode high until an editor remembered that there happened to be only a single copy of the constitution, and that that copy was pasted into an ancient scrapbook in which all editors since 1904, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and James B. Conant, have signed their names.

This difficulty was solved by having a team of editors make a duplicate copy of the constitution. Then the whole, hopelessly-complex mess, with its amended provisions about car-fare money for the hockey reporter and fines for negligence, was packed up with all other slightly pertinent CRIMSONIANA and sent off to Washington.

Nothing has been heard of the matter since.

The fact that the paper's editors were just as baffled by its set-up as the Bureau of Internal Revenue will come as no surprise to any past or present Crimed. As one editor put it, "The CRIMSON is an amazingly complex operation run in an amazingly hap-hazard way which results in an amazingly successful newspaper."

The whole nasty, hap-hazard business started on January 24, 1873, when a group of juniors produced the first issue of a semi-weekly journal called "The Magenta" (it became The CRIMSON two years later when the College's official color was changed). The tiny, 8 x 10 inch Magenta was primarily a literary magazine which relied heavily on the essay and ran about two poems per issue. It did print College news, however, and in 1878 added an athletic column and a "sporting editor."

The early CRIMSON had lots of competition; the Advocate, then a semi-weekly newsmagazine like the Crime, the daily "Harvard Echo," and the Daily Herald. In October 1883 the Crime and the Herald joined forces to emerge as the Herald-Crimson, then the Daily Crimson, and finally, in 1891, the plain-ole CRIMSON.

The publication resulting from the merger was slightly larger than the old CRIMSON and usually four pages. The left hand column of the front page was devoted to advertising. The rest of the front page was given over to regular news and sports items, all arranged under identical one-column headlines which read "Football Today at 3," "Results of Class Elections," and so forth.

Sports news played a very large part in the paper of the Gay '90's, Accounts of the daily football practice were invariably given the best spot in the paper, and slight jugglings in the jayvee crew boatings were big news. Early CRIMSON writers were much franker in their criticism of teams than today's timid journalists. Specific players were singled out for uncomplimentary comment: "Simmons will just have to try harder. . .Stokes still waits too long on the recovery. . .Charlton refuses to charge ground balls" are typical examples. There was a lot of talk about overemphasis of sports, but in 1893 the paper published a series giving a recapitulation of Harvard's encounter with Yale in every major sport for the past five years.

But all was not quite so rugged. The paper also printed a monthly supplement which eventually split off from the Crime and lived for a good number of years as the Harvard Monthly, a competitor of the Advocate.

A member of the '86 staff says that the paper of those days should be thought of rather as a social club than as a disciplined board. In the following year the joyous journalists wrote a CRIMSON song destined to last into the 20's. The chorus went:

This is the Daily Crimson

That now is at the head

Of all the College Publications

Because it's always re(a)d.

The paper's office moved around a good bit in those days (1304 Mass. Avenue in 1895, the Union basement in 1901, 14 Plympton St. in 1915), but wherever it went there was a Sanctum, a center of exuberance and conviviality. As FDR put it in his report for an early CRIMSON catalog, "There was much fear expressed that the new quarters (the Union) would take away the esprit de corps which had grown up in the old Sanctum, and also that no punch nights could be held in the Union. Both fears have proved to be groundless."

The paper's social aspect has always been so important that the early constitution set aside $100 for "a spring party" and up to $70 for the Sanctum punches. Though no longer provided for in the constitution, parties and dances still rock the building at 14 Plympton.

From the beginning the paper carried on a lively rivalry with the Lampoon which was solidified in the form of a baseball game at the turn of the century.

Through the years the game has evolved into one of the most unusual contests in American sporting annals: one team, headed by its president, lines up in a row at home plate while the other publication, with its president in the pitcher's box, takes the field. The pitcher tosses an empty beer can to his rival executive who swats it with a hunk of wood. At this signal the team at bat races in a wild circuit of the base path while the members of the "fielding" team attempt to tackle and/or trip them. As soon as 23 men have crossed home plate the inning is over and the other publication is "at bat." After all this both squads retire to claim a 23 to 2 victory. In the last two years the 'Poon-Crime weekend has been solemnized by a legitimate crew-race, which the funnymen, using paid athletes, have won both times.

But even in the early days good times were secondary to a good paper. In the '90's appeared for the first time sports extras on the streets minutes after a game's finish and a house rule establishing a $2 fine for editors who failed on assignments.

Bitter Rivalry

Competition arose to test this sense of purpose; in 1984 the "Daily News" was founded. After a bitter rivalry the newcomer folded in 1895 and loyal Crimeds from miles around flocked to the Sanctum to celebrate under the hastily-constructed banner, "No News is Good News."

In 1901 the Lampoon took advantage of the CRIMSON's notoriously prosperous financial condition to issue the first local parody. Aided by a traitorous Crimed, the 'Poon put out a spurious issue announcing, among other things, that all subscribers could receive a $1 refund by calling at the paper's office. The stunt left a good deal of hardfeeling.

Another memorable year was 1907. After a long debate the paper decided not to incorporate; instead it instituted a three-man supervisory Graduate Committee, and it paid out a dividend before the staff left College in June--something it never did before or since.

In a reminiscent mood the 1909 president once wrote, "We certainly made no great attempts to please our readers. . .The paper was indispensable because of its notices, but I don't believe it was generally read, except by the editors. . . .But when the occasion demanded we turned out a really creditable sheet. . .Of course, there was more of the right sort of conviviality in those pre-Volstead days than there could be late."

He sounded a familiar note when he noted that "the candidates did most of the news-gathering, and their period of servitude was too long gruelling." The competitions are still tough, but now they are constitutionally limited to less than 10 weeks. But another hazard has been added, for since 1937 editors have been competing in the fall of their junior year for posts on the eight-man executive board. On today's paper, where the financial incentive has been eliminated, competitions make the wheels go round.

By 1911 the paper had shook itself somewhat out of the rut decried by the 1909 president. Action pictures replaced illustrations and the typographical format was livened up.

But if the editors were satisfied with their product, they were not happy about their environment; by 1914, there was more than a little agitation for a private CRIMSON building; Undergraduate interest and graduate financing combined on the project, and in 1915 the nomadic newsmen finally settled down at their 14 Plympton St. headquarters never to unsettle again.

New Home

On November 20, 1915, the first college paper to own its building published its first issue from the new home, a 44-page Yale edition and the first rotagravure section ever included in a university daily. The varsity contributed to the joyousness of the propitious day by walloping the Elis, 41 to 0, that afternoon; ironically enough, Harvard's 41 to point was scored by a regular member of the squad.

No doubt for a while, Crime staffers treated their spanking new building more kindly than they do now, and the paper certainly was kind to them in those first few successful years on Plympton. But it was too good to last and hardly expected to with a Democrat, and a Princeton man to boot, in the White House.

"WAR" said the three three-inch letters of the April 5, 1917 head-line, and the honeymoon was over. The publication struggled gamely on for the next 18 months--no one knows how--and then capitulated. Then the student body, much to everybody's surprise, began vigorously to clamor for what it had previously clamored so vehemently against, and the CRIMSON was resurrected as a weekly only 2o days after it had quit.

After Christmas vacation of 1918, the paper was once again on a daily schedule; although set back fast. In 1919 CRIMSON bought the 20-year old Harvard Illustrated Magazine, a pictorial journal, and thenceforth published a bi-weekly photographic supplement.

The following year, the progressive staff bought a new press and enlarged its beloved rag by the addition of a fifth column laterally and five inches vertically.

Play and movie reviews have had a long and stormy history on the CRIMSON, Producers are as often as not sorry when they send complimentary ducats to the Crime, and the day may come when they will play the caustic Cantabrigians a fee not to darken their door or their theater. Although theater advertisements mean money, the courageous critics let fire any time they find the playwrights worshipping Theapis too little or the CRIMSON business editors worshipping Mammon too much.

From the Schuberts (who shut off the Crime's free tickets after its critics had roasted several pre-war turkeys) to the Hasty Pudding show (which ran an ad pointedly referring to the good things "professional" critics had said about the show), theatre groups have protested the Crime's high-minded approach. But the Harvard audience remains as discriminating and hard to please as any anywhere, and it requires like-minded critics.

But if the paper couldn't excell in quality, it could always turn to quantity, as it usually did on Yale game Saturdays. In 1921, the prolific Plympton men spewed forth a 16-page morning edition, a 40-page pictorial supplement, a 4-page post-game extra, and 45,000 song programs, which is a world's record for something or other.

The 1923 staff woke up one morning--if it had gone to bed the night before--to find that the paper was 50 years old. It was a hard-earned maturity, and the Crimeds looked back with pride, as various and sundry thousands climbed on the bandwagon of congratulation.

An article in the New York Evening Post among other things said, "The Harvard CRIMSON--a very fine and high-grade expression of the best student sentiment--has great influence and deserves to have it."

Mother Advocate pondered the past, thinking back to the days when the Crime was an upstart literary magazine rival, and stated, "If the child is father to the man, the two are often strangely dissimilar."

Cordial Relations

Faculty members made frequent contributions to the staid Crime of the 20's; by 1925, the paper-prof relations had finally become unbearably cordial, and The Confidential Guide to Courses was born. In the beginning, the Confy Guide was a part of the regular issue; it was a separate booklet first in 1936, also the year of the first CRIMSON Telephone Directory.

1925 also saw the first Student Vagabond column. Starting originally as merely a guide to local lectures. Vag later switched to a stream of consciousness style, making the feature a sort of "A Portrait of the Crimed as a Young Man."

Linotying was under the capable mishandling of the erratic and esthetic Dick Dyer in the twenties, and credit goes to him for about the worst "pruf hak (proof reading error)" in the paper's 80 years. A solemn theological article appeared one morning bearing the head-line, "Christianity: A Positive Farce."

If anything were a farce to Crimeds, it was President Lowell's House Pian of 1928. For some reason or other, after a previous board had sponsored the plan, the wrong, and they called the $3,000,000 bolt from the Blue alumnus a "misdirection of wealth."

Houses Decried

Even after the Houses were built, the Crime still bore malice to the system. The CRIMSON castigated both the sublimity of Lowell high tables, which it labelled "aristocratic tendencies" and the ridiculousness of the rabbit coat-of-arms used on the wrong side of the Plympton tracks.

A CRIMSON crusade in 1931 was largely responsible for the resumption of athletic competition against Princeton after a five-year cooling-off period. Those were the days before Princeton's Tigers became adversity's virgins, and the University was thankful for the Crime campaign then if it isn't now.

Although the Crimeds were irresponsible, they were also depressible, and the depression did just that to them in 1932. The paper couldn't meet its normal $3,000 in annual salaries. Papers were small and advertisement few and far between, although deadliness were met somehow or other.

Secession seemed inevitable, and in the spring of '34, eleven men who had been the nucleus of the Crime resigned to form the Journal; the battle between the two was on.

What was left of the CRIMSON board rallied around to wage a torrid scoop- skirmish with the rebel sensationalists. The "100 Days War" finally came to an end by June when the Journal-ists had had it financially and academically; the victorious Crime emerged a far more modern and readable paper than it had been before the schism.

While its semi-official status and inertia helped in the triumph, the real here for the CRIMSON in the Journal battle was Arthur Hopkins. From 1929 right up to the present, linotyper Art has been the her of the nightly "Battle of the Bilge." It was he who took over when the green undergraduates left off in 1934 and he who saved the day for the Crime again during World War II. Few remember that his name was put at the top of the masthead as President one issue in 1935, but no Crimed will ever forget Art. If it's anyone's paper, it's his.

Art's present-day night-shift helper is Lewis Erlanson. A jack-of-all-trades, the popular Louie works for the Crime from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and also is a part-time florist and Stadium program vendor.

We cite these members of the bureaucracy, because their roles are significant on an organization where officers come and go like French cabinets. Two others deserving mention are Mrs. Anna S. Hoke, who did about everything that could be done on the paper as secretary from 1938 to 1946, and Miss Marie Beaupre, Radcliffe '46, the CRIMSON bookkeeper for the past six years.

After the defeat of the Journal in the thirties, the CRIMSON'S next major opponent was the commercial tutoring schools. When in 1939 its conscience was hurt more from complacency than its budget would be hurt by courage, the paper rejected advertising from what it called "intellectual brothels" and began a crusade that saw their abolition in a year.

The paper emerged from battle flushed with victory and financially very, very able. Red ink was a thing of the past.

Equally colorful was the CRIMSON'S 70th birthday in 1943, and the President of the United States took time out to write, "As an old CRIMSON man I am sure that. . .I voice the sentiments of all that company of happy men when I say that none of them would exchange his CRIMSON training for any other experience or association in his college days."

There was little for "that company of happy men" to be happy about, however, as the undermanned staff found publication a terrific struggle during the early years of thewar. The demise of the paper on May 27, 1943, had appeared inevitable for quite a while.

But before it quit, the CRIMSON set up a Graduate Board to keep a watchful eye on its temporary successor, the Harvard Service News. The substitute was a four-column, semi-weekly, semi-literate sheet that was not allowed to express editorial opinion. Although it was circulated free to military personal, civilians free on the campus wouldn't take the Service News on a bet.

Nevertheless, the militarized sheet did improve, and as a connecting link between the '43 and the post-war Crime, it was well worth the $1,000 it lost in three years of publication.

Gradually, more and more Crimeds returned to the College ready to resurrect their beloved ag. And finally on April 9, 1946, the old-timers and hold-overs heartily thanked Art Hopkins and Mrs. Hoke for their yeoman service to the Service News and then threw the CRIMSON back into the lineup. A black flag hung from the bronze ibis atop 44 Bow St. that day to make things official.

The revitalization was swift and sweeping. The Crime's editorial pen was mightier than the Service News's sheathed sword, and other departments of the paper sprung into action under the guidance of the vigorous veterans.

Once again the paper contained five columns and Bodoni head-line type. These changes coupled with more progressive make-up and traditional eye-appealing, candidate-killing parallelogram head-lines restored the CRIMSON to its intermediate position between the Gutenberg Bible and the Yalie Daily in printing pulchritude.

Among the many accomplishments of the post-war board was the $16,000 Building Fund Drive of 1946-47 that provided much-needed repairs for the Plympton plaza. They spent $2,000 more in 1947-48 for the latest in office and photographic equipment, and the new Permanent Improvement Fund provision in the constitution assures the paper that trends and deterioration will be met when they arise.

1948 marked the diamond anniversary of publication that was no longer a diamond in the rough. Said President Conant, "As a former editor of the paper, I send you hearty greetings on this memorable milestone. All who have had the opportunity of seeing the University through the CRIMSON'S eyes have been especially privileged. . ."

The last five years were an era of parody rivalries, full-page features, and lightning extras. The fall of '51 saw a helicopter-delivered Dartmouth extra that arrived at the stadium just after the final gun. With the presses rolling two minutes before the game completion, Crimed's hearts were going this-way, that-way as wildly as the varsity's brilliant sophomore tailback. It was easy to see whether one was loyal to the CRIMSON or the Crimson.

Last fall, it was The Dartmouth's turn to parody the Crime, which the Hanover staff in 1951 had called "the newspaperman's newspaper and the best undergraduate paper in the country." Whether it deserves this appelation or not, it eighty years the CRIMSON has developed from a tiny literary sheet to a gigantic purveyor of news read by some 15,000 people daily. An on-going dynamism has characterized the first eighty years of Crime history, and there's little reason to suspect the trend will disappear.Yale alumnus, cartoonist Charles Osborne thinks the CRIMSON editorial writer likes to wallow in his own blood.