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