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The Crimson Starts Its Next 100 Years

TWO ASPECTS dominated The Crimson for the rest of the 19th century: athletics and the mechanics of the paper. The Crimson established its own crew team, and the results of the races appeared in the New York daily papers.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 rose to the presidency of The Crimson, he editorially attacked the undergraduate student body for its sagging athletic spirit. Students were urged to attend the football team's practice sessions and to support the squad on Saturday by going to the games.

And while football occupied its columns, finding a home occupied its editors. Originally the paper's offices were located in Stoughton 22 (someone reading this article will live there this fall), and that lasted until 1895 when 1304 Massachusetts Ave. became home for Crimson editors. After the cramped quarters in Stoughton, the three floors on Mass Ave. must have seemed like a palace, and it gave The Crimson a permanency somehow absent in the early days.

However, the transient paper was not to remain on Mass Ave. After a brief sojourn in the Harvard Union, improved finances enabled The Crimson to set aside funds for a new home on Plympton St. In November 1915, The Crimson moved into its current headquaters, becoming one of the first college newspapers to own its own building.

But the biggest change in the first two decades of the 20th century came in the columns of the newspaper. A larger staff and more adverting meant more eight-page papers, and the birth of the Editorial Board brought greater coverage of theater events and political issues.

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The Crimson was no longer run by a small staff, and the president and managing editor found themselves in control of a growing newspaper instead of a two-man operation.

During these years, the paper supported Hughes against Wilson and opposed intervention into World War I. When the war came, hundreds of Harvard undergraduates traipsed off to Europe to make the world safe for democracy, and many Crimson editors went along.

The War To End All Wars took the life of W.H. Meeker '17, Crimson president, one of 15 Crimson editors who died in the trenches of France.

After the war, Crimson editors drifted back to Cambridge, and the paper started to rebuild itself. One of its first moves was the purchase the Harvard Illustrated Magazine, a publication which had started in 1899. The Magazine's photo equipment came along with the magazine itself and the Photographic Board was born.

The Crimson of the 1920s was like The Crimson of today. The addition of the Photo Board increased the number of departments to four-editorial, news, and business are the others. If any of you want to join the ranks of Crimson editors this fall, you will try out for one of these four departments.

These tryouts are time-consuming and somewhat difficult. Candidates for the News Board must work two days per week for eight weeks; there are cuts after four weeks and eight weeks. Editorial candidates must write six articles; Ed Board cuts are very flexible, each candidate working individually with a tutor.

Candidates for the Photo Board must complete six assignments and prove competency in the darkroom. Business Board candidates must work in the office a few afternoons each week and sell between $700 and $800 in ads.

After the requirements have been met, the boards hold elections, which are pretty much rubber-stamp procedures. No one pretends that the tryouts are easy, but no one wants them to develop into cut-throat competition either. Candidates are not competing against each other; they are striving to improve their reporting and their writing. If you want to learn to write, take pictures, or sell ads, The Crimson will teach you.

LESSER AND GREATER men and women have attempted to become Crimson editors, and some famous people have failed. Walter Lippman '10, a patron saint of journalism, was cut four times. William Randolph Hearst '96, the Xanadu of newspaper owners, never bothered to try out. And neither seemed the worse off for it.

As Harvard and Radcliffe evolved toward their present relationship (and that is a whole different story), The Crimson evolved too. Women began to frequent the building after World War II, and the first women were elected in the late forties.

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