In Spite of a Leery Faculty, The Crimson Begins

Chapter III

I WON'T PHILOSOPHIZE. I will be read." An unusual contention for a college newspaper of the period, but nonetheless, this was the motto of the earliest version of today's Crimson--The Magenta, first published on January 24, 1873. Five of the six undergraduate newspapers founded in the Nineteenth Century had already folded the last, the Advocate, held a position of seemingly unchallengeable strength in the Harvard community, Nonetheless, a handful of undergraduates were willing to make the attempt, once more, to give the University a newspaper.

The Magenta set its sights high; it would attempt fairness, accuracy, and encyclopedic coverage; it would avoid gossip, falsehood, and error: in short, it would try to please all of the people all of the time, or as the editors put it in their first editorial:

The book notices and exchanges will be with the design to place before our readers only what is likely to interest them. Generalities are seldom read, and therefore will be omitted in these parts of the paper, and in the column devoted to the theatre as well. From time to time we shall review in a more conspicuous place than usual books that treat of education, or otherwise bear a relation to college life.

There will be occasional criticisms upon the methods of instruction and government followed here. We may differ from those who teach us, but in every case we will be careful not to say anything unworthy of ourselves or them. Wild and general accusations, in which the plainest thing is the author's bitterness, do not get or deserve much attention. But to a carefully considered, temperate article nobody ought to object, for, though its ideas are unsound, they are less likely to be harmful if stated fully and clearly than if left to spread through the college in the disjointed form of conversation. The error will be detected sooner, and, as a rule, college men are too honorable to side with what they see to be unfair even if it chimes with their prejudices.

Concerning news it is hard to say enough and not too much. The rights of the gossip must be held sacred, and it is unnecessary to trespass upon the domain of the childish. There is still room, however, to tell many things that should secure us the patronage of students and graduates....

These were hardly the words of fighting journalists, but these were not the days of great journalism, either. The worst newspapers of the period were the great yellow rags, the best were so genteel as to be stultifying--The New York Times's masthead boasted "It Does Not Soil the Breakfast Cloth." The Faculty of the College had seen to it that several earlier newspapers went out of existence after they had dared to print critical articles, and even a paper co-founded by James Russell Lowell had died from lack of readers. The bravest of the College papers. The Collegian, had boasted on its masthead "Dulce est Periculum"--"Danger is Sweet"--and had run the risk of offending faulty sentiment. It too was closed down. The prospects of success for a new paper seemed bleak.

But The Magenta came into being at the dawn of Harvard's Golden Age, in the early years of Charles William Eliot, and no climate could have been better for fostering such an undertaking. John Finley has suggested that the rise of the Sophist came about because of the need of Athens for expositors of the new imperial civilization, and it is not by accident that Samuel Eliot Morison has referred to Charles William Eliot as "The enlarger of the empire." Eliot's new intellectual empire, as it brought together under the banner of "Veritas" the best and most progressive scholars, students and thinkers in the world, needed expositors, instruments to bring the gospel of the new education to the masses. Eliot found his preachers in strange places--he himself was one of the best--and nothing could express the challenge of the new Harvard better to the undergraduate body than a first rate newspaper.

The faculty which had discouraged and disbanded the earlier newspapers was the same which had issued edicts-against students "grouping in the Yard," and defended the rigid, inflexible undergraduate curriculum which Eliot's reforms would sweep away. They were losing control over Harvard, as the school changed from a parochial college to the first great American university. Only in the light of Eliot's innovations could a newspaper survive where once the forces of academic conservatism had ruled unchallenged.

Yet even Eliot's liberalism did not mean that the Magenta would have an easy go of it with the Administration. As Henry A. Clarke, The Magenta's first President and guiding spirit, later narrated the story in an earlier history of The Crimson. Dean Gurney called Clark to his office for an explanation of the new paper and then:

expressed strong disapproval. I asked him whether the carrying out of the plan was officially forbidden. He said no, but that he wished us to understand that he thought the project very ill-advised. I reported what had taken place to the promoters, who decided to go ahead notwithstanding the Dean's advice to the contrary.

The Faculty, which a decade before might have banned the new publication outright, now held itself to a mild expression of outrage. The Magenta, on its part, largely observed the proper amenities in editorials, although it stood firm to a policy of identifying every editorial as the opinion of all the editors, not just the author. This policy was particularly useful, the Fiftieth Anniversary Book relates, when the Faculty came round looking for the man who had referred to one of their number as "a little tin god on wheels."

The Magenta, (named after the College color, it underwent a change in nomenclature in December 1875, when the College went crimson) at first could not be recognized as what we would call a newspaper today. It appeared biweekly, a thin layer of editorial content surrounded by an even thinner wrapper of advertising. To many, it must have seemed superflous: The Advocate already fulfilled the College's need for reading matter. Why bring out yet another publication?

THE FIRST EDITORIAL mapped out an independent course for the paper, and attempted to differentiate it from The Advocate:

.... We do not attempt to rival it in jeux d'esprit, or in cunningness of speculation, or otherwise poach upon its preserves. We shall be content with the humbler task of satisfying the curiosity of our readers about what is going on in Cambridge, and at other colleges, and of giving them an opportunity to express their ideas upon practical questions....

The period of testing which The Magenta went through in the 1870s did not go easily. Even though the editors of The Advocate extended their editorial goodwill to the new paper, the community at large seemed unenthusiastic. The first issue promised a home delivery system for subscribers; the second retracted the offer because of lack of interest. The wrapper of advertising stayed at four pages until the Fall of 1875--two years without an increase. Also in 1875, in concert with The Advocate, The Magenta cancelled its policy of credit to subscribers. "We have been in existence now for three and a half years, and during that time we have lost something like two hundred dollars on subscribers' bills..." the business manager announced.

The great editorial causes of the early years have a ludicrous ring to them today. The paper fought for plankwalks in the Yard, turning off of the Yard gas lights at a later hour, more spirit at the athletic contests, a student union. The columnists wrote on everything and nothing, from life in foreign universities to athletics and the arts; and every issue of the paper could be expected to contain a selection of poetry and fiction, usually followed by the initials of the editor-author. Drama and book reviews appeared now and again, although these were far from the high point of the paper. One famous reading by Oscar Wilde, damned in the pages of the Boston papers for its lack of style and content, drew high praise from The Crimson's enthusiastic, although apparently unsophisticated, reviewer.

If the weighty issues in the paper's editorial' pages somehow lacked a sense of urgency, it is well to remember that this was a far simpler age. The change of the College color from magenta to crimson, which occurred in 1875, is a case in point. Rather than make any rash decision. Mr. Eliot researched the history of the color, studied the precedents, and began a long series of consultations with alumni and faculty, which all culminated in a mass meeting in Holden Chapel in May. After lengthy argument and debate, a motion to change the color was made. It passed, The Magenta tells us, "by a large majority," although not unanimously, it seems. On May 21, The Crimson made its first appearance.

The formal systems of election and job classification which now esixt at The Crimson seem not to have come into being in the 1870s. One became an editor simply by writing for the paper, or, presumably, by trying to sell advertising. Two editors were put in charge of each issue, and given the responsibility for writing the editorials, soliciting copy from other sources, and seeing the paper through the press. (Printing was done alternately at the Riverside Press and John Wilson & Sons, in Cambridge.) Periodically, meetings of the staff were called by the President, who would hang The Crimson shingle from an iron bar on the side of University Hall to summon editors to his room that evening.

Among The Crimson and Magenta men of the first ten years were such easily recognizable names as Owen Wister '83 the novelist, Josiah Quincy '80, the future Mayor of Boston, Barrett Wendell '77, the legendary Harvard professor, and Frederic Jessup Stimson '76, Wilson's Ambassador to Argentina, who is most remembered today as the author of the early Harvard novel Rollos's Journey to Cambridge.

Around 1876-77, just as advertising was getting up to eight pages an issue, the roof caved in on the already anemic finances of the paper. Editors were forced to pay the printer's bills out of their own pocket for a time, as the delayed results of the Panic of 1873 hit Cambridge. "Our subscription list was very small, as the students could not easily afford to subscribe," wrote a business editor of the period: "The advertisers knew The Crimson was in trouble, and consequently were unwilling to throw away their money, fearing the paper would fail."

BUT THE FLEDGLING entrepreneurs who solicited advertising hit on a plan: "We canvassed our friends, and ascertained what necessities they expected to purchase, and then solicited an advertisement, agreeing to take the article they wanted at a small discount from the regular price, in lieu of cash. This scheme worked famously, and when our board retired, we left our successors a sheet absolutely free from debt, and at least $200, either in cash or in easily collected bills."

The budget surplus was not to be long-lived, but it tended to demonstrate that The Crimson was a viable enterprise, not likely to fold up under an economic gale. As the paper rounded the corner into the 1880s, it seemed fairly sure of its place at Harvard.

Its place at Harvard, though, was to be sharply redefined as it entered its second decade. The editors of the paper, larger in number and more ambitious in outlook than their predecessors, were eager to do something which more resembled the kind of journalism that big city newspapers were engaging in during that heyday I the American press. The first attempt at a revision in format was made in 1882, when, in the words of The Advocate's 1890 catalogue:

Some of The Advocate editors dissatisfied with the condition of journalism at Harvard, evolved a project for uniting The Advocate with The Crimson ...A formal offer of consolidation was made by The Crimson, the terms proposed being, that the publication of The Crimson should be stopped, that its editors should be elevated to The Advocate board, and that The Crimson's debt, amounting to several hundred dollars, should be assumed by The Advocate.

An ambitious plan, and one which would have changed the face of writing at Harvard over the past century. However, The Advocate board found itself sorely split over the proposal, and finally rejected it by one vote. The alumni of The Advocate were said to have been extremely active in opposing the merger proposal.

Having had its proposal spurned by The Advocate, The Crimson was left to take independent action. The editors announced their next step in an editorial on June 28, 1882:

For nearly ten years The Crimson has been regularly issued as a fortnightly, and has none but the most grateful comment to make on the support which it has received from the College. It now seems to the editors that the interests of the College will be best served if the paper shall hereafter appear as a weekly, since the establishment of two successful dailies, it has become evident that fortnightlies must no longer assume to be newspapers, but rather take up the role of magazines. It has seemed to us evident that the interest which the college has taken in this form of literary publication would not warrant the continued existence of two such papers of the same character and aims. The proposal that The Advocate and Crimson be consolidated was deemed inadvisable by our contemporary. In consideration, then, of the facts above stated, and of the fact that The Advocate is the older paper, and has, therefore, certain pre-emptive rights in the premises, we have decided to publish The Crimson as a weekly and to leave to The Advocate a field which it is so well able to fill. By this action we feel that we shall not be abandoning the traditional policy of The Crimson, but shall rather be extending it and carrying it on as it stands epitomized in our motto, 'I won't philosophize and will be read'.....

Certainly, deference to The Advocate was one reason for the decision to become a weekly, but an eagerness to get into the middle of the journalistic fray, join in the press war which was developing at Harvard, must have helped prompt the decision. The editors of The Crimson had stood by for three years while not one but two dailies had been founded. The Harvard Echo in December of 1879 and The Harvard Daily Herald in January of 1892. While the adventurous and talented Herald moved in for the kill on the more stolid and less interesting Echo, The Crimson's editors were consigned to a back seat, serving as observers to a battle they wanted to join. The Crimson's writers had to be content to deliver their opinion of the situation in their editorials. Thus, The Echo was told: "It is, we think, the general opinion that The Echo has never been all that a Harvard daily should be, nor yet all it at one time gave promise of becoming."

If that was not enough, The Crimson felt obliged also to give The Echo's staff a lesson in good Calvinist theology as well: "No college paper can achieve success without hard work on the part of all connected with it. To drop a miscellaneous assortment of items into a hopper can hardly be called editing a paper."

The Herald, on the other hand, could do no wrong in the eyes of The Crimson, which was "glad to see demonstrated that an energetic and correctly printed daily is not an impossibility at Harvard. We have the best of good wishes for our new contemporary, and congratulate it on its successful debut.... we should be sorry to say farewell to The Echo, but we are willing to accept the principle of the survival of the fittest. It is too early to predict which this will prove to be in the present instance....."

It proved to be The Herald, for, after competing one term, The Echo quietly folded its tent and sneaked away to the land where newspapers whose time is past all go. The Herald had covered the field better than The Echo ever could; it was reporting Harvard news thoroughly, and exchanging news with The Yale News to keep the Cambridge readership aware of New Haven events. In its first year, it issued three eight-page extras after athletic events, most of them out within minutes after game's end. The Herald served the College's need for news, and the College read The Herald.

Nonetheless, starting a newspaper was expensive, then as now, and The Herald found itself facing a mounting deficit. At the end of the first full year, in June of 1883, the paper was running a $700 deficit. In this situation, and aware that the editors of the more established Crimson were eager to get into daily journalism. The Herald began to think of merger. On October 1, 1883, the board of The Herald met to discuss joining The Crimson. In the words of one editor: "After a thorough discussion of the project, a unanimous vote was passed to make arrangements for their union, if suitable terms could be arranged." The Crimson was eager, incredibly so, to make a union. The constitution of The Herald-Crimson was adopted on October 5, 1883, only four days after The Herald had gone for merger, and the daily Herald Crimson, hit the stands on October 8. An editorial explained the merger to the readers:

Although both papers had made for themselves a place in the College world, and although it might have been quite possible to carry them both on successfully, it was deemed best by the boards of both papers to effect a consolidation, and by uniting their interests form a new paper, which, while naturally partaking of much of the character of the--former publications, would yet be free from many of the disadvantages under which they labored, and would possess a much wider range of possibilities than was open to either The Herald or The Crimson... That there is room for literary merit in the columns of a college dally is our firm conviction, and we shall...endeavor to combine prose, poetry, and news in such proportion as will be acceptable to our readers for their daily edification and enjoyment.

Under the terms of the merger, the President of The Crimson was named President of The Herald-Crimson; the Managing Editor of The Herald became Managing Editor of the new paper. It was also agreed, that, after one year, the name of the paper would be changed to The Crimson...

So The Crimson finally took the form which it would continue to have for the next 90 years. As we shall see, the dedication to poetry and literature in the pages of the paper would soon go by the boards, and The Crimson would gradually lose any connection except in name to the biweekly magazine which was its ancestor. But the hopes 'and ambitions, the dedication to journalism and hard work, which had characterized the first ten editors in 1873 would survive in their successors even to the present