Roosevelt's first position on the CRIMSON was secretary, a traditional sophomore post. In those days a comic poster was printed playing with the names of the newly elected officers. F.D.R.'s read: "For Secretary, Rosy Rosenfelt, The Lillie of the Valley."

"Rosy" advanced to higher executive position, and did a fairly conventional job in each. For the first semester of his junior year, he was one of the two assistant managing editors, in charge of the paper two nights a week. The papers of that period were dull and routine by todays standards--one historian has characterized them as "bulletin boards"--and F.D.R.'s appear no different from the rest.

In the second half of his junior year, Roosevelt won the managing editorship. Here again, he was competent, but not outstanding. Slightly better sports reporting was the only noticeable change under his leadership.

But he clearly demonstrated an ability to command the cheerful loyalty of those who worked for him. One of F.D.R.'s staff recalls that Ed and Mac, the CRIMSON printers, "habitually presented stern resistance to any departure from their routine." But, when Roosevelt asked it, they would "do anything with alacrity and complete approbation," even though it meant taking the forms off the press to make them over for some late news.

Other editors noted the same quality. "Before I graduated," Robert W. Ruhl '03 said, "I talked with the other editors who had executive positions and they said Franklin had a lot on the ball and the nerve of a brass baboon... The man could, if he wished, charm the birdies right out of the trees."

Although Roosevelt completed his college requirements in three years, he took graduate courses in the fall of 1903 so that he could stay on and head the paper as president, a position to which the m.e. automatically advanced. It was then the president's job to write all the editorials, and F.D.R.'s reputation as a crusading journalist stems chiefly from this aspect of his CRIMSON career.

Always an Issue

Roosevelt always had an issue to campaign for, and there is some evidence that he occasionally stirred up the student body. After a sarcastic editorial on the ineptness of the football team, he wrote home to his mother: "The row about Monday's editorial is subsiding--at least half the college think it was quite called for. Something of the kind was necessary but I shouldn't have made it quite so strong."

By today's standards, and perhaps by the standards of the time, however, Roosevelt's editorial range was conventional indeed. Freidel claims that his policies varied little from those of other alert college editors of his generation. He continually attacked both the football team and the student body for lack of spirit, he proposed a separate section in the stadium "where ladies may enter without fear of being asphyxiated" by tobacco smoke, he advocated boardwalks in the Yard during the wet winter months, and he successfully campaigned for better fire-fighting equipment in the Yard dormitories. His regime was evaluated by the Harvard Alumni Bulletin as "at least mildly distinguished for the animation of his many editorials, and for certain college reforms which he engineered."

Despite his numerous activities, F.D.R. found time to participate in athletics. He was not good enough to make the varsity teams, but he played freshman football and rowed on the freshman crew. All through his college career he was greatly interested in intramural sports, chiefly rowing. "We had the most exciting kind of race yesterday and won by four feet," he exclaimed in one letter home, and there are similar references throughout his correspondence.

Social Whirl

What time and energy he had left--and he possessed considerable of the latter--was chiefly spent on the Cambridge-Boston social whirl. Roosevelt has often been characterized as a democrat during his college days, but he was one only in a gentlemanly sense. When compared to his Groton friends, he had some radical notions, but when compared to the average student, he was definitely aristocratic.

Some idea of the extent of his social activity can be grasped from this excerpt from a letter home: "On Thursday I...went to lunch at the Sturgises', and to dine at the Lords'...on Saturday went to lunch with Mrs. Brown at the Touraine and went to the theatre in the evening. On Sunday (yesterday) I met Sidney Lord in Harvard Square at 9:30, & we went to Oakley and had a very good game of golf, & met various members of the family. I hustled back at 12:30 and went in to a stag lunch with Willy Burnham... After service I paid several calls, one to the Forbeses' but they were out. I hustled back here and in again to dinner at Gerry Chadwick's where I stayed all evening."

His living quarters on the Gold Coast also reflected his social background. Endicott Peabody, official preacher to the University, often decried the "gap between Mt. Auburn Street and the Yard," and it was just such expensive dorms as Westmorly Court, where F.D.R. lived, that Peabody disliked.

Roosevelt did not eat at the large common dining halls in college. For the freshman year, prep school graduates generally ate at their own special tables in Cambridge eating houses. "Our table, you will be glad to hear, began at lunch yesterday," he wrote to his mother, "and the crowd is a very nice one and next to the table of some of the other Grotonians.