The Crimson Enters the 30s and the Depressions

Chapter VI

As far as I'm concerned, putting over The Crimson (In face of any competition which may arise) means more to me than staying in college. I shall guarantee to spend ten hours a day working on The Crimson during the next two weeks.

We've all (editors and future editors) got to show originality, ingenuity, imagination, and indefatigable energy.

Candidates and editors have got to get good men out for the next competition.

Let's make them the best competition in the history of The Crimson. It is during the first two or three weeks of a rival paper that we (by our own papers), can make or break that paper.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at its flood, leads on to fortune:

Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat:

And we must take the current when it serves.

Or lose our venture. --W.S. (S for Shaksper)

THE note was a bit fulsome: later, the author admitted that he had been drunk when he wrote it. But it marked a turning point in the affairs of The Crimson, the end of a period in which money and morale vied with each other in a race to hit bottom. This note appeared in a comment book in the Spring of 1934, the day before. The Crimson's first serious competition in decades was to hit the stands--a newspaper founded and staffed by ex-Crimson editors. This civil war followed a period in which the Depression wiped out The Crimson's business board, and came at a time when no two editors seemed to be on speaking terms with each other. To the outsider, forty years away, it is a mild surprise that the paper got through the Thirties.

The Thirties, of course, were a bad decade for the world; for The Crimson the Thirties brought disasters trooping along one after the other. But, whereas for the rest of the world the Thirties began in October of 1929 on the day the Market crashed, a reader of Cambridge's Breakfast Table Daily would have learned little about the state of Wall Street from his newspaper. The Crimson of the period saved most of its strength for the ongoing fight against the House Plan, a fight which spilled over from the Twenties into the Thirties, diminished from a frontal assault to a guerrilla action. By 1929, the Houses were starting to rise, and it was obvious that the battle was at an end. The Crimson published a series of conciliatory, articles, including an interview with the first two House Masters. Julian Coolidge of Lowell and Chester Greenough of Dunster, in which the new administrators assured undergraduates that students and tutors would be served the same food "by the same waitresses," and that formal attire would not be required at dinner. Nonetheless, when opportunity presented itself, the temptation to snipe, was irresistible. In January, 1930, the front page displayed an interview with Professor R.E. Rogers '09, who declared "It is my belief that the Harvard House Plan is the result of the despairing conviction that the college is disintegrating." Mr. Rogers, The Crimson explained, believed that fraternities were the answer to the college's social problems.

One of the last and most effective jibes at Mr. Lowell's pet plan was the editorial "Putting on English" which took Lowell and Coolidge to task for their Anglophilia. After the first High Table at Lowell House, at which tutors in evening dress looked down over a Dining Hall filled with students, the lights failed several times and the undergraduates were served three quarters of an hour late, the news writer and the editorialist went to town. But the paper also editorially lauded the choice of house staffs, and reached an accord with the Administration on the House Plan. When the list of the first students admitted to Lowell and Dunster was published, the names of several Crimson editors were conspicuously present.

1929-1930 saw The Crimson covering the arrest of a group of Harvard students after a riot on a subway car bringing them back from a Boston hockey game, and the arrest of a Harvard student for passing out socialist literature in Harvard Square. The latter, the paper noted, stood trial in Cambridge Court after "One Irishman, one Italian, and one hybrid" had been convicted of drunkenness. Later in the year, a headline told Harvard: "Director of Fogg Art Museum Receives Threatening Letters Denouncing Late Purchase of Paintings--Suspect Black Hand."

In the Spring, Rudy Vallee offered to "do for 'Fair Harvard' what he has done for the Maine 'Stein Song'," and Harvard officials politely declined. Guy Lombardo dedicated his network radio program to Harvard; The Crimson reviewed the new Advocate, and a headline proclaimed "Both of Agee's Contributions Draw High Praise," In October, 1930. The Crimson attacked Military Science courses, saying they had no place in a liberal curriculum, and they were intellectually shabby to boot. Carl Friedrich, then an assistants professor, assured Harvard that Fascism would never, take hold in Germany: "German Professor Certain that Article 48 will Prevent a German Mussolini." The Dean of Radcliffe refused to allow her students to take part in a Harvard production of Molnar's "Olympia", "the worst play she had ever read." An editorial criticizing the drunken carryings-on of the American Legion convention in Boston brought the wrath of a nation--and scattered applause--on the paper, And, the editors announced. "The Crimson is now prepared to offer a 16 hour film developing, printing, and enlarging service by trained men. Film left before 5 p.m. will be ready the next morning."

The first burning issue of the new decade at Harvard was what a Crimson editorial referred to as "The Scrubwoman Scandal." In an act of monumental callousness, the University laid off two groups of scrubwomen in Widener Library, the first on December 1, the second on Dec. 21, 1929. A month later, the incident came to light in the Boston papers. The firing of the women, as the initial effects of the stock market crash were beginning to be felt, and just days before Christmas at that, would have been fodder for the Boston papers. The fact that they were given honorable discharges shortly after the State Minimum Wage Board had ordered Harvard to raise their wages from 35 to 37 cents an hour was enough to set off a barrage of criticism in the press. The Crimson followed suit, angered by the firings and by the Administration's steadfast refusal to speak to reporters. (A year later, The Crimson would editorially express pleased surprise at the fact that Mr. Lowell had agreed to talk to reporters about his House Plan.) In fact, although The Crimson repeatedly expressed distress over the dismissals, it always managed to seem a bit more concerned over the University's image than the future of the women involved. In March, when ex-Crimson editor Corliss Lamont '24 announced the formation of an alumni committee to raise several thousand dollars worth of back wages owed to the scrubwomen by the University. The Crimson upbraided him for resurrecting what it saw as a dead issue. But the paper did continue a campaign to get Harvard to disclose its wage and personnel policies, and may have had an effect in bringing Harvard out of the Dark Ages in its treatment of employees.

AS IT headed into the Thirties. The Crimson seemed to be less and less a hard news paper. The (allegedly) weekly Bookshelf supplement added distinction to the tone of the paper, with articles by Lincoln Kirstein, Henry Murray, Theodore Spencer, and other noted figures in arts and letters. The pictorial supplement continued, as tame and proper as any Sunday rotogravure section, and photographs became a more important part of the paper itself. Football, in season and sometimes out, took up columns of front page space, and Hu Flung Huey, the Crimson's prognosticator, would monopolize Page One with his predictions for Saturday's games. Football extras rolled off the press with greater and greater frequency. Meanwhile, up front in the Business Office, things got worse and worse. 1930 gave way to 1931, and only some clever bookkeeping--the suspension of a debt owed one Crimson account by another--allowed the paper to show a profit. In 1932, not even that did the trick; the paper lost $500, even though it paid no editors' salaries.

Disaster was on the horizon, in more than one form. While the money had been evaporating, the news page had been deteriorating. The great campaign of 1931 had been waged against Memorial Church, a building whose bulk. The Crimson found aesthetically unappealing, and whose usefulness seemed abundantly unapparent. The anti-Memorial Church editorial was picked up by the Boston and New York papers, which seemed incensed that a college paper should oppose a war memorial, no matter how unfunctional or ugly. This was the last great campaign before the deluge, and The Crimson settled in for several of its worst years.

The first sign of the malaise appeared in the comment books, which often serve as early warning systems for coming catastrophes. Whereas the comments of the 20s had largely been restricted to the day's paper, and were usually impersonal and to the point, the editors of the 30s began to digress, commenting on each other's character defects, stories the paper had missed, the ineptness of the candidates, and, more and more frequently, the number of mistakes the paper had made. As the years passed, the level of rhetoric escalated, humor disappeared, and, an observer teeis, only some miracle prevented bloodshed at 14 Plympton Street.

In the late Twenties even into 1930--comments on the insufficiencies of The Crimson were couched in humor and good will; when one editor wished to point out an inaccuracy in another's story, he would do it more often with wit than with sareasm. Thus, one man wrote, in November, 1930:

Maxon Hammond wishes it to be said in the future that High Table guests are guests of Master Julian Coolidge '95 and not merely guests of Lowell House--The point seems to be that as C's guests there is an excuse for not introducing 'em to the entire unshaven rabble.

So would a minor mistake be corrected in 1930. But a few years later, the problems were no longer minor and the tone of the comment books was transposed into a major key. The man who explained the etiquette of High Table in 1930 might be surprised to find, two years later, this gentle message from November 1932.

Jesus H. Christ

This Is The Goddamnest Mess I

Ever Saw!! We Need Ads--

Where is the Needham Man?

Where is the Business Board?

There is No Sense In Taking On

Any Business Candidates

If They're Going to Follow the

Sterling Example of

The Present Board.

Why in Hell Doesn't The President of the Harvard

Crimson Do Something About it

Instead of Letting the

Sheet Sink Into A Financial Hole

Which The Hard Work

Of Future Boards Will Never get the

Paper Out Of.

I'm Disgusted.

The note, signed by its author, drew consenting signatures from half a dozen more editors. Underneath, in a more contained hand someone else had written..Why limit it to the financial hole? Isn't the rest of the paper worth saving?" These two expressions of discontent give a good indication of what was going on at The Crimson at the time. A short time before they appeared, a business manager had resigned in despair.

The financial situation did nothing to aid the morale of the paper. Even Art Hopkins, the long suffering linotypist, began to give up hope, as this encounter with an editor shows.

Art--There aren't many ads now but there'll be a lot by Easter!

Me--Is that a promise?

Art--P'raps, but I'm looking for another job.

Me--No foolin'

Art--Sure--talk about RATS leavin a sinkin' ship--when the damn thing's Julla water, even the MICF won't stick around!

Art's disgust with the state of things extends beyond the balance sheet. One night, in his quiet, humorous, dignified way, he walked in and left this note for the editors to think about?

Please dw knot esk the printers few coopureight bi comming inn early eny moare ez wi fine itt du, knot help thee Editur few gett outt eny erlier butt onli marks sed printters doughnate extry tyme fur witch thay receve absoleotly 0

As always, in his three and a hall decades at The Crimson, Art was right. All too right.

For a year or so, the comment book had been filled with symptoms of decline.

Art comes in daily at ":15, and some copy should be ready then. Candidates should try to do routines stories earlier in the afternoon whenever possible.

Art suggests possibility of a return to the practice of having two editors per paper, working concurrently.

It won't take many such things as take weatherlines, headlines, notices, etc., which have been appearing frequently to give the Crimson an unfortunate reputation. Gentlemen, we are a newspaper, not a Yale News....

CHRIST! How about some news! Just a little, tiny but, candidates, so that it won't be necessary to change the name of the paper to

The Review" or' ' Views of Reviews" God! I never saw a paper with less news.

Unfortunately, these comments accurately traced the pattern of the times. First the mechanics started to break down--the candidates unenthusiastic and dilatory, the editors slow and sloppy--and then the paper began to look less and less a newspaper, interviews, profiles, press handouts--anything but real news appeared on the front page, day after day. "For the University daily newspaper The Crimson is unchristly lousy," wrote one editor, and the sentiment was echoed by a growing minority of the news board. We have a very unenterprizing board of officers, damned shortsighted and not really interested in improving the paper..." said an editor, summing up their feelings. In all fairness, running The Crimson in those days was an almost impossible job. The executives who should have had their full time to devote to news were co-ordinating a drive to generate national-advertising; everyone who could was on the streets drumming up business. The editorial content of the paper deteriorated, and a growing group began to press for more national coverage, higher quality work from candidates, and an expansion of the size of the paper, which had shrunk to a norm of four pages as advertising dropped off. Some headway was made; David Lawrence was persuaded to donate his column free of charge, and it soon became a popular front page feature. Frozen out of the Associated Press by Robert Choate, publisher of the Boston Herald, the paper began taking U.P., and publishing a Column One of Salients in the Day's News" taken from the wire.

But Crimson stall members did little about covering national news themselves, and the coverage of College news continued to slip. One day, the paper received this letter from a College official:

I am wondering if The Crimson is very proud of its handling of the epidemic story this morning. The headlines states that there was

No Official Word

About Epidemic In

Freshman Class

Actually, there were about 180 official words, and I gave them to you myself........

The academic year 1932-1933 ended on this note, but September brought a new dedication to accuracy, and to excellence. J.J. Thorndike, John U. Munro, Osborne Ingram, and others, led a movement to restore The Crimson's credibility, a movement which seemed at first to be succeeding. But by winter, the paper was slipping back. We are in grave danger of losing all the ground we have gained". Thorndike warned the staff. JESUS H. CHRIST IN THE FOOTHILLS was Ingram's comment on one particularly outrageous error. The enthusiastic newshounds insisted that the paper be expanded: six pages, they said, was the minimum necessary to do justice to College and national news. The Business Board, barely rehabilitated, smelled disaster and giant losses in an enlarged paper, and rounded up enough votes in the Winter executive elections to elect their candidates.

War was declared.

Some of, the Crimson's best talent walked out of the Sanctum after the election never to return. Tempers had run high, and the election had swung on a few key votes. Some of the business board's electors had not been seen on Plympton Street for months. After the decision, eleven editors departed to found their own paper.

The Harvard Journal gave The Crimson the only tough fight in its history. One Journalist threw down the gauntlet in a defiant note to Crimson President J.H. Morison:

I will make a proposition to you. I'll be Crimson newsboy, if you'll be Journal newsboy--of course, you must realize you'll have much longer routes to cover.

Initially, even The Crimson thought he was right. Public opinion is a bit over-favorable to the ournal," an editor warned. We have got to handle ourselves better, to make it more interesting, if we're to keep our subscriptions and hence our ads."

The shock of secession galvanized The Crimson into action. Suddenly, all the things everyone insisted couldn't be done--the scoops, the big stories, even the six page papers--became everyday happenings. Osborne Ingram, the inveterate invoker of the Deity, became Managing Editor, and made a journalistic silk purse out of the sow's car of a green and inexperienced young staff. Meanwhile, in the Advocate building behind Claverly, the Journal people were turning out a lively, inventive, readable paper. Congratulations to the Journalists," wrote one of Ingram's untrained minions one day.

Whatta Col. 5 scoop they got, oh boy oh boy." The Journal contracted for printing with a Cambridge paper, and came out regularly, six days a week, plus extras.

The Journal had the staff. The Crimson had the facilities, the business contacts, and the tradition. Since it did not begin publication until after the Easter vacation, the Journal was in a weak position to attract subscribers. In balance, The Crimson had the edge.

The battle was neck and neck for a few weeks. The Journal's layout was original and intriguing, with plenty of five column headlines and pictures. Eight Journal pages every day gave readers Harvard, national and international news, and even Radcliffe news--something always scandalously neglected in the old Crimson. The Journal's Sunday edition--it omitted Mondays--scooped The Crimson often on weekend news. Through it all the College maintained neutrality. Although Dean Hanford had tried to stop the split before it became public, he treated both papers impartially, giving official notices and news to both. The 1948 history relates that the Journal scooped The Crimson with an extra on the death of Dean Briggs, and again with coverage of a student demonstration against a German cruiser at the Navy Yard. The Journal was trapped into a defense of the status quo in the face of a Crimson expose of the Engineering School; The Crimson in turn, lost popularity with its defense of the right of F.E.S. (Putzi) Hanfstaengl, '09. Hitler's piano player, to return for his 25th reunion. On the whole, the Journal was more a crusading paper. The Crimson more moderate, during the battle.

The end of the fight was predictable; when the year ended, so did the Journal. Its editors lost money, sleep, and study time in their struggle to set up and run a new paper. Commencement brought capitulation, and The Crimson once more had the field to itself. But The Crimson of June, 1934, was inestimably better than its namesake of a few months before. Ingram's miracle had made it the kind of paper the Journal people had wanted in the first place, and the 1948 History tells us that the two groups buried the hatchet, and:

The defeat of the Journal itself hardly characterized the fate of the ideas upon which it had been founded. As the years went by almost all of them became incorporated into The Crimson's own outlook. United, then Associated Press news entered; pictures multiplied far beyond the Journal's dreams; the editorial page lost much of its verbosity and dryness and brought in more and more features and critical elements to make its material increasingly readable; frequent attempts were made to capture graduate school and Radcliffe readership; and makeup worked up to and beyond the Journal's standards of splashiness.......

WITH THE THREAT beaten back, The Crimson could turn back to the business of covering the University's news. The major news event of the post "war" era involved one of The Crimson's own former Managing Editors. Alan R. Sweezy '29, who had been a part of the late 20s revival of the paper, had gone on to become a popular instructor in the Economics Department. Throughout the early 30s, Sweezy's familiar "ARS" appears at the end of notes in the comment book. As an instructor, Sweezy and a colleague, J. Raymond Walsh, became active in the Cambridge Union of Teachers which faculty members had recently established. In 1937, Harvard announced that both men were being given terminal contracts. In 'explaining the dismissals of the two men, the University said that they:

...have been offered two-year concluding appointments as instructors in Economics at Harvard. Their cases present no unusual features; decisions in regard to these men by the Department of Economics and the Administration have been made solely on the grounds of teaching capacity and scholarly ability. There has been no departure in this case from the principles laid down in a recent report of an Overseers Committee on the Department of Economics.

President Conant recalled, decades later, that his wording of the statement had been unfortunate.

To large numbers of the Harvard community and almost all of the general public, the entire press announcement was taken to mean that the two gentlemen in question were being dropped because of their inadequacies as teachers and scholars. The protests were soon heard loud and clear.

And the soonest, loudest, and clearest of all was The Crimson's. An editorial the day after the appearance of the College's statement pointed out that overcrowding in the Economics Department seemed to be a more important factor in the Walsh-Sweezy dismissal than their competence. In days to come, the paper would point out that both men, and especially Sweezy, were highly regarded teachers. The Crimson pointed out that the College's statement could jeopardize both instructors' chances of getting other jobs. The whole matter took almost a year to die out, until both men found positions outside of Harvard, and a committee appointed by the President standardized promotion and tenure procedures.

We have seen that "Putzi" Hanfstaengl brought The Crimson face to face with the specter of Nazism. In 1936, the paper opposed participation in the Munich Games, and continued on an anti-Nazi track from then on.

The Tercentenary of Harvard College was marked with a series of thick, lavishly illustrated papers detailing the pyrotechnics of the celebration. Crimson reporters must have been run ragged keeping track of the speeches, learned papers, and not so learned bashes which went on during the celebration, but the Business Board managed to sell space by the yard to hotels, shopkeepers, merchants, tailors, theatres, and a score of other enterprises eager to congratulate Harvard on its longevity. On the whole, The Crimson's job on the Tercentenary could stand up to any other coverage--including the Boston Transcript's, even though that paper threw a huge staff and multi-sectioned papers into soup-to-nuts coverage of the Tercentenary.

The waning of the thirties brought the last major structural change in the running of The Crimson. Under the old system, editors would climb a ladder of advancement, from Assistant Managing Editor to Managing Editor to President, stepping in the first rung in their junior year and advancing one grade every semester. Under this plan, the first choice for President in every class was forced out of office after only a few months. In the thirties, with an expanded paper, a brace of supplements, and a Confidential Guide now issued as a separate magazine, the President had little time to do anything but learn the technicalities of his office before moving on. Thus, in 1937, the Constitution was overhauled, specifying that officers would be elected in the fall of their Junior year, take office in February, and leave office in January of their Senior year. The first President elected under this system was Cleveland Amory '39.19As The Crimson struggled through the Depression, its former President. FDR [shown here third from left, top row, while still on the paper] ran the country.