This article is mainly based on material found in the Harvard archives, in the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, and in letters from the surviving editors who served with FDR on the CRIMSON. Very little has previously been written on this part of Roosevelt's early life.

Fifty years ago this fall Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 entered Harvard College. While an undergraduate, FDR spent more time on the CRIMSON than in any other activity. Few persons would think of Roosevelt as a journalist; yet he worked on the CRIME for three and one-half years, becoming its managing editor and president. After he had become President of the United States he said, "It was on the CRIMSON that I received my first and last newspaper training. And I must say frankly that I remember my own adventures as an editor rather more clearly than I do my routine work as a student."

Colored by years and events, the editors who worked with him today remember FDR variously as "a cocky, conceited chap with a great name but nothing much else," the best "mixer of claret punch for the semi-annual initiations of new editors," an "energetic, resourceful, and independent" person, and a man with "remarkable capacity for dealing genially with people."

Certainly none of his fellow editors ever imagined that Roosevelt would come close to the Presidency of the United States, but his record on the paper was a good one, and his associates did name him head of the CRIMSON, the first position of authority FDR ever held. While merely a CRIME candidate, Roosevelt dared to ask President Eliot how he would vote in the 1900 election. Later as president, FDR wrote the CRIMSON editorials, including one blasting the spiritless football team, another describing the Yard dorms as firetraps, and a third suggesting that the new Stadium be turned into a toboggan slide.

Roosevelt's CRIMSON career began on October 15, 1900, when he and about 45 of his classmates answered a call for candidates. FDR's first important story--eight lines long--came a few days later from Eliot. A Democratic magazine at the University had reprinted sections of an article by Eliot in which the president criticized both parties but did not say whom he supported. The Democratic publication made much of the criticism of the G.O.P. and omitted the unfavorable remarks about its own party.

Roosevelt approached Eliot to ask him how he expected to vote, not knowing the rule against candidates talking to the president. Nevertheless, FDR was able to get the story and the CRIMSON of October 29 reported that Eliot would vote for McKinley and the rest of the Republican ticket.

In February, 1901, the first group of freshmen was elected to the paper's staff, but FDR was not among them. He continued as a candidate since year candidacies were not unusual in those days. At the end of April he got the story which insured his election.

He saw in the Boston papers that his cousin, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt '80, was in town and called to ask him when he could see him. TR said right after the guest lecture he was going to give in Government 1 the next morning in Sanders. FDR got an announcement of the lecture into the CRIMSON, and the hall was so crowded that Professor Lowell, the head of the course and the future president of the University, called the CRIMSON to ask how the paper got its unauthorized information.

In June, Roosevelt was elected to the paper along with two classmates. He made the first step up the paper's hierarchy the next winter, when he was elected secretary--a traditional sophomore post.

It was then that Nazi propaganda lies about Roosevelt's racial background could have begun. For each time a new set of officers was elected in those days a comic poster was printed playing on the names of the new men. In FDR's case it read: "For Secretary, Rosy Rosenfelt, The Lillie of the Valley."

In FDR's sophomore year there was some controversy over the moving of the CRIMSON offices from rooms on Massachusetts Avenue to the basement of the Union. As Roosevelt wrote later, "There was much fear expressed that the new quarters 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 more than groundless!"

Supervised Two Papers a Week

At the start of his junior year, FDR was elected one of the two assistant managing editors and given charge of the paper two nights a week. The papers of that period were dull and routine by the standards of today, and the papers which Roosevelt supervised appeared no different from the rest.

But, in spite of this and his late election to the paper, Roosevelt beat out all his classmates for the managing editorship in January of 1903. After a term as m.e., FDR's promotion to the presidency was virtually automatic.

Roosevelt completed the requirements for his College degree in three years, but took graduate courses at Harvard in the fall of 1903, so that he could stay in Cambridge and head the paper for a semester.