The Nieman Fellows Report: An Account of an Educational Experiment in Its Tenth Year [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674366756

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THE NIEMAN FELLOWS REPORT

LONDON

: GEOFFREY

CUMBERLEGE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

THE NIEMAN FELLOWS REPORT An Account Of An Educational Experiment In Its Tenth Year EDITED BY

LOUIS M. LYONS

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts 1948

COPYRIGHT, 1 9 4 8 , BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

PRINTED BY THE CRIMSON PRINTING CO., CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U . S. A. BOUND BY THE STANHOPE BINDERY INC., BOSTON, MASS., U . S. A.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION THE NIEMAN FELLOWS

3

THE PURPOSES OF NIEMAN FELLOWS

7

NIEMAN DINNERS

23

NIEMAN SEMINARS

33

THE NIEMAN STUDY PROJECTS AMERICAN HISTORY

39

RACE RELATIONS

59

LABOR

63

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

67

SCIENCE

70

SOCIAL RELATIONS

77

ECONOMICS

86

SPECIAL PROJECTS

96

CONCLUSION HOW HAVE THEY STUCK TO THEIR LAST?

115

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

120

BOOKS, AWARDS, ARTICLES

127

TERMS OF A NIEMAN FELLOWSHIP

133

INTRODUCTION

THE NIEMAN FELLOWS

EACH autumn since 1938 the stream of students flowing into Cambridge has included about a dozen newspapermen, who have come on Nieman Fellowships for a year's work at Harvard. They have taken advice where they found it and set about obtaining answers to the questions which brought them to the University. They have outlined their general plans in advance and had them accepted. But the year's work is of their own shaping. Each develops his individual program. Some come with gaps to fill in previous education, others to catch up with the changing world of their times, in science, in economics, in world relations. Some want to study the special problems of their regions, some to prepare for assignments in the foreign field or in Washington, others to concentrate in areas where modern journalism requires specialization, in labor economics, agriculture, city planning, housing, science. At an average age of thirty-three after a dozen or so years of the pressure of the daily news, they enter upon a year of freedom to take what they can from a university whose doors are open to them in every department. They enter these doors at different levels of preparation, at various stages in their profession, and with widely differing desires. But all come seeking the knowledge they expect the University to supply. Some are writers, some editors, a few publish their own small papers. Some come from the highly organized metro-

4

The Nieman Fellows

Report

politan dailies, some from country weeklies. They are reporters and correspondents, news editors and the technicians of the copy desk. The one thing they have in common is that they are qualified newspapermen who seek to reinforce their background for dealing with the complex pattern of events which makes the news. They owe the chance of a year of work in a university to the widow of a newspaper publisher. The Lucius W. Nieman Fellowships were established at Harvard in 1937 by a bequest of Agnes Wahl Nieman in memory of her husband, founder of the Milwaukee Journal. Her purpose as she defined it was "to promote and elevate standards of journalism in the United States and educate persons deemed especially qualified for journalism." Harvard chose to carry out the purpose by opening the University each year to a selected group of working newspapermen of at least three years' journalistic experience. They come on leaves of absence from their papers, and their stipends from the Foundation approximate the salaries they relinquish during their residence in Cambridge. Applicants numbering ten to twenty times as many as the Fellowships available each year insure opportunity for annual selection of a representative group of competent newspapermen. Just about half the Nieman Fellows of the first ten years— 59 of 122—have been general staff reporters. Sixteen more have been specialized reporters, six in labor, five in politics, five in science. Twenty-four have been editors, ranging from city editors and Sunday editors of large papers to editorpublishers of small papers. Seven have been editorial writers, six copy desk members, and nine foreign correspondents, of whom all but two have come since the war. Previous education is no factor in the Nieman selection.

The Nieman Fellows

5

It is based on the promise which their past performance has shown for future usefulness in journaUsm. Of the 122 who came up to the Fall of 1947, two-thirds (81) were already college graduates and eight of them had also master's degrees. Twenty-four had started college but never finished. Seventeen had never been to college. So their demands upon a university are various. Equally so are their problems of devising ways and means to make the most of their year. No requirements are laid upon them for class attendance or examinations, nor are any degrees or course credit conferred. They may divide their time as they choose between lecture and library, conference and laboratory discussion and cogitation. The individual ways they have organized their Nieman year are described in this book in their own words, taken from their term reports to the Curator of the Nieman Fellowships. The 20 work reports shown here were selected as representative of the activities and processes of Nieman Fellows at Harvard. They tell a number of things besides the distribution of studies. Incidentally, the distribution of the whole 122 shows the largest number (30) have centered their work in American history. The next largest number (21) have concentrated in international affairs. Economics has claimed the principal attention of 19, including eight whose concern was chiefly with labor. Regional studies have occupied 13, most of them Southerners seeking answers to the particular social and economic problems of the South. Government, national to municipal, has proved the chief interest of ten, city planning of five. Six science writers have explored the various science departments. Two Fellows have found their interest in sociology, two in agriculture, one in housing. The'other dozen defy classification. Some, as their reports

6

The Nieman Fellows

Report

show, have ranged pretty well through the college catalogue. But with minor excursions into literature, philosophy, psychology and the arts, most, as would be expected from their necessary concern with public affairs, have centered their work in history, government and economics. The reports tell their own story of problems of adjustment to the changed pace and environment from news room to college. The fresh eye these men bring to college study, the sense of adventure, the zest for exploration, the voracity with which some have consumed the offerings of classroom and library, and the satisfaction shown over unanticipated byproducts of leisurely study and intellectual -stimulus gleam through many of the reports. The occasional references to the informal group program of Nieman dinners with visiting journalists and seminars with professors, to the social and intellectual value of association with the Harvard "Houses," to conferences and conversation and informal relationships with the faculty, sufficiently suggest the atmosphere in which the year is spent. The Nieman Fellows as a group each year develop a close fellowship. T w o groups have joined in producing books on journalism as a by-product of their Nieman year. But within the group each carries out a highly individual program. In total these make a great variety of intellectual experience. The principal purpose of this book is to describe a representative variety of the individual Nieman projects at Harvard. Louis M.

LYONS

Curator of Nieman April 1, 1948

Fellowships

THE PURPOSES OF NIEMAN FELLOWS

WHY DO newspapermen seek Nieman Fellowships? Before the Fellowships were established the prevailing opinion in journalism was that they would not do so. When President James B. Conant explored the prospects for the Fellowship plan, he was told by many editors and publishers that newspapering was so competitive and fast-moving that men in it would hesitate to step out of their jobs for a year. This view was disproved the first year when 309 newspapermen applied for the nine Fellowships awarded. Every year has seen a large number of applications and the number has not been much reduced in years when the briefest announcement was made and obscurely published if published at all. In every year many more applications have come from qualified journalists before any announcement was made than could be met by the very limited number of Fellowships. Every year the problem has been one of selection from a list that could have filled very acceptably several times as many Fellowships. Fellowships are awarded only on application, and, with only very recent and very minor exceptions, applications are limited to those who can present letters granting leaves of absence from their papers. An application includes a statement of the candidate's journalistic experience and one of his proposal for study at Harvard. The purposes disclosed in the many hundreds of applications over these ten years reveal a very prevalent feeling among conscientious journalists of a need for intellectual reinforce-

8

The Ήteman Fellows^ Report

ment and refreshment on their jobs.

T h e relation of their

felt needs to a university's offerings is in happy coincidence. T h e dimensions of journalism are such that nearly all knowledge is grist to the newspaper mill.

So it is not necessary to

set up courses especially for journalists or to limit the fields open to them. Most applications suggest the unique pressure of

the

newspaper job which gives no time for preparation to meet the demands of the daily assignment and little if any chance for background reading between assignments.

News is by

nature so unpredictable that an exceptional versatility is required of the general assignments reporter, and the interests of the editorial writer must range over the news.

Only in

certain special departments and chiefly on the large newspapers, may a writer concentrate within a

field.

Selections

for such specialization are often made for other reasons than the writer's background in that

field.

A

newspaperman

whose interests during his school or college years had led him to concentrate on literature or history finds himself becoming a special writer in such a field as labor or science.

Or a

seasoned reporter has ambitions to cover politics or become a foreign correspondent and is aware that he lacks background for such an assignment. A selection of a few statements from successful applications sufficiently describes the purposes of the newspapermen who have come to Harvard on Nieman Fellowships. William B. Dickinson, Jr., Minneapolis bureau manager for the United Press in 1939, said: " I want to undertake a course of study to give me the fullest possible background in economics.

I should hope to return to newspaper work

equipped to handle adequately almost any of the increasingly frequent

stories

having

an

economic

background."

He

The Purposes of Nieman Fellows

9

served the United Press as London and then Pacific war correspondent and returned to become manager of their New York bureau. Victor O. Jones, sports editor of the Boston Globe, applying in 1941, said: "I am trying to work my way out of the Sports Department into a broader field of journalism. I believe a year of study would provide the background and intellectual stimulus I need—particularly in American and Modern European History." He returned to his paper as night editor, served them as war correspondent, and in 1947 was night managing editor. John Day, applying from the Huntington, West Virginia, bureau of the Associated Press in 1942, said : "I want to study economics, political science, sociology and history for it is in those fields that as a newspaperman I feel esf)ecially the need of greater knowledge. Without thorough background in these and related subjects a man can be at best no more than a reporter of the superficial, a journalistic cub. The poorly informed newspaperman and the newspaper edited without due attention to underlying considerations of history and economics are feeble aids if not handicaps to democracy." After service as a reporter on the Cleveland Press, Mr. Day became managing editor of the Dayton Evening News in 1945. Harry Montgomery, applying from the cable desk of the Associated Press in New York, said: "I propose to use the academic year to fill as best I can the gaps I have discovered in my background in foreign news work. I want to prepare myself to do a better job by increasing my knowledge of economics and sociology. These are living, ever-changing subjects. The standard reference works are dated in treating them and I have seldom been able to dig up answers to my

10

The Nieman Fellows

Report

questions." He has since become the business editor of the Associated Press. Irving DiUiard, editorial writer on the St. Louis PostDispatch, applying in 1938, said: "My purpose is to increase my equipment in the social sciences in order more intelligently to interpret the editorial problems produced by the onrush of the news. I hope to work especially on constitutional law, administrative law and labor law. Each of these fields bears heavily on public affairs and so on the work of the editorial writer." The Nieman applications tell a good deal about newspapering and newspapermen. They are equally revealing of the pressures of the job and of the ideals of the more conscientious newspapermen to be effective in serving their communities through their newspapers. Gary Robertson, Sunday editor of the Louisville CourierJournal, applying in 1945, said: "My work is largely concerned with what we should offer our readers. We have frequent discussions here about ' what newspapers can offer in postwar years when magazines, radio, television and facsimile broadcasting increase their competition. . . The study of outside factors that build up newspapers or kill them would mean taking courses in history, sociology, economics and government." Francis P. Locke, editor of the editorial page of the Miami News when he applied in 1946, said: "I desire a Nieman Fellowship because I am desperately anxious to replenish my intellectual capital. On the editorial page which I have conducted for ten years I had no assistance until a year ago and today have only one helper. Necessarily the accent has been on output. I have reached a point where the insufficiency of intake has set up an intense craving for time

The Purposes

of Nteman Fellows

11

and resources for study. This I regard as not only a personal need but a professional necessity." Frank K. Kelly, of the Associated Press in New York, applying in 1942, said: "I have been conscious many times that I could have written better stories if I had more knowledge of the social storms that were battering the people I tried to picture. The journalism of my generation has moved rapidly into interpretation rather than a simple exposition of the news. I need to know more about politics in its world scope and more about psychology in its social aspects." Kenneth Stewart, applying in 1942 as national affairs editor of PM, said: "There are wide gaps in my education that handicap me, especially in American history. So at Harvard I would like to start from scratch with the basic courses in the growth of the American nation." Mary Ellen Leary, State House reporter for the San Francisco News, applying in 1945, said: "As a political writer covering the State government the principal thing I would seek from a year of study would be broadened grasp of political problems." Robert J. Manning, applying in 1945 from the Washington staff of the United Press, said: "After eight varied years of reporting, my assignment now is concerned primarily with international politics. . . What I need is a period of solid study, unhampered by the heavy demands of a full-time correspondent's duties, to specialize in international politics and economics." On his return, he was assigned to cover the United Nations. Don Burke of Lije Magazine, applying in 1941, said: "Much of my work has been sports reporting. I am at the point where I feel the need of expanding my background for a larger field. So I should like to take temporary leave of the journalistic scene for study and research in political,

12

The Nieman Fellows

Report

economic and social subjects." He has since edited Life's international edition, covered a 40,000 mile assignment in Africa, and worked in the Middle East. Kenneth McCormick, applying as a reporter on the Detroit Free Press in 1942, said: "During 12 years on this paper I have covered every type of story. I would like to become a member of the Washington bureau. Without background of political economy and history, Washington coverage becomes routine and for the reader well-nigh useless. I was unable to go to college and in newspaper work it is hard to find opportunity for study." Returning to his paper he won it a Pulitzer Prize in 1945. The fact that Harvard offers exceptional opportunities for studies in labor economics has undoubtedly attracted some of the applications from reporters who cover labor news. Labor is a new field for most of the relatively few papers that make it a special assignment and most of the men in it have come to it without other preparation than comes to them on their news runs. Boyd Simmons, reporter on the Detroit News, applying in 1940, said: "After covering labor for three years, I want to study labor problems and labor history. I want to study the economic status of the South for the competition of its low wages has repercussions in Detroit. I want to study the racial problem for that also is a serious problem in Detroit, and I want to study economics." Edward Allen, reporter on the Boston Herald, applying in 1939, said: "I am determined to excel in the reporting of labor and social problems. . . I would like for one year to be free enough from the pressure of newspaper deadlines to delve into the history and psychology of mass movements and especially of the trade union movement." After war

The Purposes of N teman Fellows

13

service he joined the staff of the International News Service in New York. Science reporting is another field that is new in the small number of newspapers attempting it, and it is one of the most formidable branches of reporting, both from its technical nature and from its rapid and significant development. Frank Carey, applying from the Associated Press in 1946, said: "After experience on general assignments and rewrite, my bureau chief asked me one day to try my hand at an assignment that called for digging up stories that might not otherwise come to the office's attention, particularly in the field of science and medicine. . . There are many gaps that I'd like to fill in, particularly in astronomy, geology, meteorology, anthropology and applied electronics in which I have had no formal courses of study. Switching from one branch of science to another as the news dictates, I'm frequently faced with situations where I feel the need of fundamental knowledge." Steven M. Spencer, applying as science reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1939, said : "As a science writer I wish to broaden and deepen my general science background. I want to become particularly well informed in those sections of science which are likely to provide the most significant contributions in the future—the focal points or spearheads in science's advancing front." He later became an associate editor of the Saturday Evening Post responsible for the field of science. Harry M. Davis, applying in 1940 from the staff of the Sunday Times where he was doing some work in science, said: "When I think of the possibilities of a year at Harvard, I feel most strongly attracted by the laboratories. First I would welcome the opportunity to get my hands once again on test tube and microscope. Second I would like very much

14

The Nieman Fellows

Report

to visit the laboratories and observatories where researches are going on and to talk, free from the pressure of a news story, with scientists who are doing important work." He had his year in the laboratories and after war service became science editor of Newsweek^. Leon Svirsky, applying in 1945 as science editor of Time, Inc., said: "I need some fundamental work in science. My college work at Yale was principally in Uterature and history. . . I think a manageable program would be to spend as much time as I could in laboratories and with a few scientists to get a picture of some of the frontiers of science, to learn something of the scientist's language, to do some reading in fields that I have become especially interested in, and to brush up on elements of those sciences in which I feel especially ignorant." Men who have gone abroad originally as war correspondents have felt a need for special preparation to continue in foreign service. This was true even before America's entry into the war precipitated many reporters into overseas news jobs. After the war a considerable number of Nieman applications came from war correspondents seeking conversion to permanent foreign service assignments. Weldon James, correspondent for the United Press in Spain and China before his application in 1939, said: "I hope to secure at Harvard a broader background and intensive study of value either in interpreting foreign news or as a foreign correspondent. I believe one of the best ways to 'elevate' journalism is to provide more advanced educational opportunities for persons engaged as I have been in the coverage or interpretation of foreign affairs." After war service he became Far Eastern correspondent for Collier's. Robert C. Miller, a war correspondent for the United

The Purposes

of Nieman Fellows

15

Press in 1945, said: "It is my ambition to become a good foreign reporter, working preferably in central Europe. My three years in Europe and the Pacific as a war correspondent showed me I was poorly equipped. I was without many of the tools needed by a good foreign correspondent, including the languages and background of knowledge of the countries I was covering." His first assignment after his Fellowship took him to Greece, Palestine and India. John Terry, applying in 1943 from the Honolulu StarBulletin, said: "I plan to concentrate on studies on the Pacific Basin and the Far East, a field in which I wish to specialize as a newspaperman. I was born in the Orient and hope to return there as a correspondent." He did, as Far Eastern correspondent of the Chicago Daily News. He was killed at the Leyte Gulf landings. Leigh White, a correspondent for CBS when he applied in 1943, said: "As an outgrowth of my experience in the Balkans I have become extremely interested in the political, economic, geographical and cultural problems that threaten to obstruct a lasting peace in Europe. I would like to do a year of research at Harvard on the problems of the forthcoming peace." Since his Fellowship he has been a foreign correspondent of the Chicago Daily News. Ernest M. Hill, Jr., applying in 1942 from the United Press in Oklahoma City, said: "My goal is definite. I have some assurance that I could move to assignments in Mexico and South America with preparation in these fields. I should like to do a year's work in Latin American affairs." He did, and was for several years a correspondent in South America for the Miami Herald, later for the Chicago Daily News. Sanford L. Cooper, applying in 1941 from the news desk of the Pittsburgh Press, said: "My work consists in handling foreign news. It is work I like and wish to con-

16

The Nieman Fellows Report

tinue. I would like to concentrate on a year's study of foreign affairs as background for my job." Since his Fellowship he has been for some years Time, Inc. editor for Canada. The development of regional studies on China and Russia at Harvard after the war appealed especially to foreign correspondents who had been assigned to those countries, but also to other newspapermen concerned with the handling of foreign news from these areas of increased strategic importance. Richard E. Lauterbach, applying as a war correspondent of Life Magazine in 1946, said: "I believe it would be extremely valuable to me as a journalist to study the history of Sino-Soviet relations and to a lesser extent American-Soviet and American-Chinese relations. I should like also to continue my study of Russian and to lay a foundation for selfstudy of the Chinese language. My experience in the Orient has made me realize that most American correspondents in foreign countries, including myself, are sadly lacking in preparation for their assignments." A by-product of his year in the China regional program was his book. Danger from the East, published by Harper's, 1947. Jay Odell, a veteran, applying from the copy desk of the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1946, said : "I wondered in long periods of front line combat if some untraceable failures of mine had not helped, though minutely, to accelerate the plunge into war—an unrecognized story which might have clarified and cooled, the creation or abetting of a defensible but misleading headline, the unthinking display of a greedy crackpot's ranting, only because he was a well-known figure offering a provocative phrase. There were such failures, honest as far as they went. Most of the editors who made them were guilty more of unlettered snap judgment than anything

The Purposes of Nieman Fellows

17

else. So I want to know more of international relations. I propose to concentrate on the hottest points of friction: Russia and the Far East." The study of regional problems within this country has from the start been the purpose of some Nieman Fellows in each year, particularly of a notable group of Southern journalists and of a number of able editors of smaller papers in the West. Henry Hornsby, applying from the Lexington Leader in 1946, said: "I would make my chief study the social and economic problems of the rural South, particularly of the Appalachian regions. I was born in the hill country of Kentucky, a poor, backward region. Thirty years have passed, yet conditions have changed very little in my mountain community or in the others along the Appalachian hillsides. Here is where my help is needed. Here is where my interests are. I like these mountain people. I was one of them. I know their immediate problems, but I don't know the answers. So I want to equip myself for more influential and helpful work as a Southern newspaperman." Returning to his paper, he is completing a novel on the hill country of his own people. David Botter, reporter on the Dallas News, applying in 1944, said: "The Dallas Morning News, as the only statewide newspaper in Texas, will need to be acquainted with the many-sided economy which is to present itself in the post-war period. My purpose would be to improve my understanding of industrial relations, labor, population trends and related subjects." Two years later he became Washington correspondent of the Dallas News. George Chaplin, applying as city editor of the Greenville (S.C.) Piedmont, in 1940, said: "No greater challenge faces journalism than the paradoxical land of репигу and plenty

18

The Nieman Fellows Report

that is the South. It is with an earnest desire to aid in dispelling the darkness over the South that I apply for a Nieman Fellowship and the much needed knowledge and clarification of perspective I know it will afford. Specifically I want to study race relations, government and labor problems." Harry S. Ashmore, a reporter on the Greenville (S.C.) News, applying in 1941, said: "There is a new movement stirring in the South, a movement of young men just beginning to realize that the traditions they were taught to respect have also become the chains that anchor their homeland while the rest of the world moves ahead. I have become a part of that movement and I'd like to take a year off and then go back into the fight—for that is what it is all the way—armed with the background and prestige a Nieman Fellowship would give me." His Fellowship was shortened by the war. After it he became associate editor of the Charlotte (N.C.) News, and in 1947 was appointed editor of the Arkansas Gazette. Thomas Sancton, applying in 1941 from the Associated Press in New York, said: "As a child in New Orleans and Mississippi I was given a romantic but inaccurate picture of American history. I have come to believe that one great need of the South is an understanding of its own history, its mistakes and lost opportunities. I very much want to return to the South and become an articulate journalist in an area I know and am part of. A Fellowship will give me the equipment to do the things I want to do when I get there." After two years as managing editor of the New Republic he returned to Pascagoula, Mississippi, to write the editorials for the weekly paper and continue his studies and writing on the race problem. H e edited the special Segregation issue of the Survey Graphic, January 1947.

The Purposes

of Nieman Fellows

19

The Nieman Committee has always sought to include some representation of the smaller newspapers, including weeklies. The best of the applicants from the smaller papers have described the purposes and needs of people editing such papers in terms of the interests and needs of their communities. Paul L. Evans, editor of the Mitchell (S.D.) Republic, applying in 1946, said : "As managing editor of a daily in what is predominantly an agricultural area, I have a natural interest in agriculture. But my interest goes deeper than that. I believe there is a direct relation between the stability of agriculture and world affairs. It is only necessary to realize that the only times in the past thirty years when American farmers as a whole received a fair return for their produce were when the market was stimulated by war conditions to recognize the importance of this problem. It is my desire to equip myself better to interpret international affairs so as to contribute to public support of adequate organization for peace; and secondarily to study agricultural economies." Ernest H. Linford, editor of the Laramie Republican Boomerang, applying in 1946, said: "As a country editor in Wyoming I feel an urgent need for becoming better informed. In this confused complex postwar period, I have a feeling of inadequacy when I sit down to write an editorial on the current national or international situation. I also feel an acute need for more knowledge of economics. Wyoming is made up of rugged individuals, livestock men, railroad men and miners. One of my cherished aims is to convince them that the world is moving rapidly and that isolationism of the past can destroy them with the rest of the globe. I believe a year at Harvard would give me the needed tools to do the job."

20

The Nieman

Fellows

Report

Before A . J. Liebling dedicated his book, The Pressman,

Wayward

to " a school for publishers," a number of publishers

of their own smaller papers had secured N i e m a n Fellowships to reinforce their understanding of public affairs and of the problems of their own regions. H o d d i n g Carter, publisher of the Delta Democrat,

Green-

ville, Mississippi, applying in 1939, said: " I want a N i e m a n Fellowship so that by study, principally of economics and sociology, I can better interpret for my fellow citizens the meaning of the things that are happening about us in the Mississippi Delta and the South.

T h e Delta, where I edit a

small city daily, is the laboratory for testing any suggested solutions of the nation's most difficult agricultural and sociological problems.

These problems and conditions must

be presented to an increasingly literate people through their sectional newspapers."

T h e first of his books on the prob-

lems of his area was begun on a N i e m a n Fellowship.

Re-

turning, he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1946 for his editorials on race relations in his region. Neil O . Davis, editor of the Lee County Bulletin,

Auburn,

A l a b a m a , applying in 1941, said: " I want to equip myself to do a better job in my community through my newspaper. A course of study to help m e contribute something to the improvement of rural life includes economics, sociology and history." Robert Lasseter, editor of the Rutherford

Courier,

Mur-

phreesboro, Tennessee, applying in 1943, said: " I a m a smalltown newspaperman by choice.

I want to study the social

and economic problems of a Southern agricultural community such as mine to help me in advancing the editorial p r o g r a m I a m now pursing. I should like to m a k e race relations my major study, to try to shape a plan I could put into effect in the Courier

to help the N e g r o .

I want to get a better under-

The Purposes of Nieman Fellows

21

standing of the problems resulting from the industrial development already started in my agricultural community, and to study in the field of government to help me in my efforts to modernize the outmoded government system of my own county." Some of the older Fellows have applied frankly for a sabbatical year to get away from the job long enough to see the woods instead of the trees. Arthur D. Eggleston, writing a labor column on the San Francisco Chronicle in 1940, said: "One of my main desires is to be turned loose in a library without the necessity of keeping one eye on the clock. Since 1937 I have been learning about the labor movement and its relation to society under pressure on a day to day basis and under the compulsion of a deadline." Continuing his wartime service into occupation, he was civilian consultant to the military government on German newspapers through 1947. Louis M. Lyons, reporter on the Boston Globe, applying in 1938, said: "What I am after at Harvard is a sabbatical year for professional improvement. I have been through the newspaper mill. In eighteen years of it I have worked all around the shop. . . What I can contribute from now on depends on what I can bring to the job. It is a primary limitation of the newspaper job that it affords no time for connected reading and reflection. It abounds in practical education and required reading. But this stays close to the surface. The immediate demands of the job are so great that there is little chance to get in deeper. I want to get a little away from the job and read all around some fields of history and philosophy and to reflect on a larger pattern than the daily hopper of the news." Volta Torrey, veteran of the Associated Press, applying

22

The Nieman Fellows Report

in 1939, said: "I would like to study economics and history. As editor of a news review page published by nearly one hundred Associated Press newspapers, I have to choose, condense and clarify each week's most significant and interesting news. Experience has shown me the difficulties. Much of the criticism of the press today arises, I believe, from the inability of newspaper writers to grasp the complexity of public problems. I want to do all I can to get a firmer hold on them." He later became managing editor of Popular Science Monthly.

NIEMAN DINNERS

N I E M A N FELLOWS

are selected as qualified journalists.

Their

college year is spent adding to their background for journalism.

They may study at Harvard anything but journalism.

T h e University has no school, department, or courses in journahsm. From the start of the Fellowships, discussions in journalism have been held each year in a series of dinners, usually twice a month on Thursday evenings.

T h e discussion

at

each Nieman dinner is led by a guest of distinction in journalism or in some field of public affairs of concern to journalists.

Several members of the Harvard faculties are

always invited to join the Fellows in these long informal evenings of discussion. Some of America's leading journalists have come year after year for a session with the Nieman Fellows.

Walter

Lippmann and Archibald MacLeish have hardly missed a year; Mark Ethridge, Erwin

Canham, Hanson

Baldwin,

Bruce Bliven, Dorothy Thompson, Thomas Stokes, Bernard D e Voto, Gerald Johnson, and Marquis Childs have come repeatedly.

Raymond Clapper came annually for several

years before his death.

Among publishers, Joseph Pulitzer,

Philip Graham, Barry Bingham, and Henry Luce came in two years.

Arthur Sulzberger, Mrs. Helen Reid, Marshall

Field, Silliman Evans, Richard J. Finnegan, Palmer Hoyt, Roy Larsen, Gardner Cowles, John Cowles, Marvin Creager, Harry Grant, Nelson Poynter, Eugene L . Meyer, have all been dinner guests at least once. 23

24

The Nieman Fellows Report

Such editors as Virginius Dabney, Ralph McGill, Louis Seltzer, George Fort Milton, Carroll Binder, Basil Walters, Ralph Coghlan, Herbert Agar, W. W. Waymack, Charles Merz, Joseph Barnes, James Morgan, and Jonathan Daniels have led Nieman discussions. In the magazine field Bruce Bliven, Edward Weeks, Frederick Lewis Allen, John Hersey, Freda Kirchwey, and Eric Hodgins have come, some of them annually. Such foreign correspondents as John Gunther, Vincent Sheean, William Stoneman, William Shirer, Theodore White, George Weiler, Raymond Danieli, Clark Lee, Joseph Harsch, and Saville Davis have reported on world events; and such Washington correspondents as Arthur Krock, James B. Reston, Lowell Mellett, and James Weschler have described the national political scene. Cartoonists Daniel R. Fitzpatrick and Gluyas Williams; poets Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg; such scientists as Malinowski, Shapley, Hooton, Hastings, and Rabi; labor leaders like Robert Watt; authors like Lewis Mumford, John Dos Passos, and Henry Pringle; such critics as Brooks Atkinson, John Chamberlain, Morris Ernst, George Seldes, Robert Cantwell, and Louis Kronenberger; columnists ranging from Pegler to Grafton; book publishers like Alfred Knopf, radio voices Raymond Swing and Edward Murrow; such businessmen as Beardsley Rumi, Henry Dennison, and Robert Amory have added to the variety and the dimensions of the Nieman programs. To scores of such figures in journalism and public affairs successive groups of Nieman Fellows are indebted for provocative ideas and good talk starting at dinner and lasting often till midnight. A list of the guest speakers at Nieman dinners in each season follows:

Nieman

Dinners

25

1938-39 John Gunther, author, Inside Europe Ralph Ingersoll, on the prospectus for PM Eric Hodgins, publisher of Fortune Walter Millis, editorial writer. New Yor\ Herald Tribune Paul Y. Anderson, Washington correspondent, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Alexander Woollcott, editor and critic Walter Lippmann, Washington columnist George B. Parker, chief editorial writer, Scripps-Howard papers James Morgan, chief editorial writer, Boston Globe Earnest A. Hooton, Professor of Anthropology, Harvard Henry R. Luce, publisher of Life Raymond Gram Swing, radio commentator Louis Stark, labor editor. New Yorl(^ Times William Allen White, editor, Emporia Gazette Jonathan Daniels, editor, Raleigh Observer Heywood Broun, columnist W . W . Waymack, editor, Des Moines Register-Tribune Robert E. Cantwell, book editor. Time, Inc. Louis Kronenberger, theater editor, Time, Inc. David Dietz, science editor, Scripps-Howard papers Harold Laski, British publicist 1939-40 Ralph Ingersoll, publisher, PM Felix Frankfurter, U. S. Supreme Court Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress Arthur Krock, Washington correspondent. New Times

Yor\

26

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Bronislaw Malinowski, anthropologist at Yale William L. Lawrence, science reporter, New Yor\ Times Mark Ethridge, editor, Louisville Courier-Journal Dr. Channing Frothingham, President, American Medical Society Henry Dennison, Framingham manufacturer Robert Amory, New England textile manufacturer Edward A. Weeks, editor, Atlantic Monthly Frederick L. Allen, editor. Harper's Magazine Vincent Sheean, Collier's foreign correspondent Roy E. Larsen, publisher. Time Ralph Coghlan, editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Waldemar В. Kaempfïert, science editor. New Yor1{^ Times Herbert Agar, columnist Harry Frantz, cable editor, UP Lewis Mumford, author. Culture of Cities Henry L. Mencken, editor, Baltimore Evening Sun Lucien Price, editorial writer, Boston Globe Freda Kirchwey, editor, Nation Walter Lippmann, columnist 1940-41 Arthur H. Sulzberger, publisher, New Yorl{ Times Joseph Pulitzer, publisher, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Walter Lippmann, Washington columnist Raymond Clapper, Washington columnist Ben Robertson, PM war correspondent Dorothy Thompson, columnist Westbrook Pegler, columnist Silliman Evans, publisher, Nashville Tennessean George Seldes, publisher. In Fact Walter Harrison, managing editor. Daily 0\lahoman Robert Frost

Nieman Dinners

27

Harry Grant, publisher, Milwaukee Journal Dr. Allan M. Butler, Harvard Medical School Palmer Hoyt, publisher, Portland Oregonian Adolf A. Berle, Assistant Secretary of State Hanson Baldwin, military editor. New Yorl^ Times Granville Hicks, critic Dr. A. Baird Hastings, Harvard Medical School Lewis Mumford, author and critic 1941-42 Walter Lippmann Archibald MacLeish Robert Frost Edward T . Leech, editor, Pittsburgh Press Dr. George Gallup of the Gallup Poll Dorothy Thompson Raymond Clapper John Chamberlain, Life William Henry Chamberlain, Moscow correspondent, Christian Science Monitor Joseph Harsch, Berlin correspondent. Christian Science Monitor Saville Davis, Rome correspondent. Christian Science Monitor Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, columnist James Morgan, chief editorial writer, Boston Globe Gerald Johnson, editorial writer, Baltimore Sun Bernard De Voto, author Joseph Sharkey, foreign correspondent, AP Marshall Field, publisher, Chicago Sun Carl Sandburg, author Bruce Bliven, editor, New Republic Ralph Ingersoll, editor, PM

28

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Richard J. Finnegan, managing editor, Chicago Times Robert Watt, American Federation of Labor Dr. A. Baird Hastings, Harvard Medical School William Shirer, author of Berlin Diary 1942-43

Rockwell Kent, artist Walter Lippmann Archibald MacLeish Ralph McGill, editor, Atlanta Constitution Basil L. Walters, editor, Minneapolis Star-Journal Louis Lochner, Berlin correspondent, AP Professor Thomas Reed Powell, Harvard Law School Louis B. Seltzer, editor, Cleveland Press Bernard De Voto, author and editor Clark Lee, AP war correspondent in the Pacific Gluyas Williams, cartoonist Maurice Hindus, New Yor1{ Herald Tribune correspondent Ira Lewis, editor, Pittsburgh Defender Henry Cassidy, AP correspondent in Moscow Erwin Canham, editor, Christian Science Monitor Carlyle Holt, Boston Globe war correspondent Charles Ferguson, associate editor. Reader's Digest Gardner Cowles, publisher, Des Moines Register George Weiler, war correspondent, Chicago Daily News Alfred Knopf, book publisher Gardner Jackson, U. S. Department of Agriculture Samuel Grafton, columnist. New Yor\ Post Allistair Cooke, British correspondent 1943-44

John Hersey, magazine writer Marvin H. Creager, managing editor, Milwau\ee

Journal

Nieman Dinners

29

Virginias Dabney, editor, Richmond Times-Dispatch Thomas Eliot, Massachusetts Congressman Henry Luce, pubHsher, Time, Life, Fortune Eugene Meyer, publisher, Washington Post Carroll Binder, foreign editor, Chicago Daily News Clifford Durr, F.C.C. Commissioner Peter H. Odegard, Assistant Secretary of Treasury Hans Kohn, Professor of History, Smith College Emile H. Gauvreau, author. My Last Million Readers Daniel R. Fitzpatrick, cartoonist, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Agnes Smedley, foreign correspondent in China Raymond Gram Swing, radio commentator James Weschler, Washington correspondent, PM Professor Alfred North Whitehead Hodding Carter, publisher, Cairo edition of Ύαη\, Stars and Stripes Edwin A. Lahey, Washington correspondent, Chicago Daily News Rene MacColl, British Information Service Jack Lait, editor. New Yor^ Mirror Hanson Baldwin Bruce Bliven Raymond Danieli, London corresfюndent, New Yor\ Times 1944-45 John Cowles, publisher, Minneapolis Star-]ournal Nelson P. Poynter, publisher, St. Petersburg Times Dorothy Thompson Walter Lippmann Archibald MacLeish James B. Reston, New Yor\ Times Hanson Baldwin, New Yor\ Times

30

The Nieman Fellows

Report

John P. Lewis, managing editorj PM George Fort Milton, Knoxville journalist Commander Samuel E. Morison, historian U. S. Navy Donald Ogden Stewart, motion picture writer Llewellyn White, OWI radio director Henry Pringle, biographer Morris Ernst, civil liberties attorney Carroll Binder, editor, Minneapolis Star-Journal Alexander Kendrick, Moscow correspondent, Philadelphia Inquirer Commander Barry Bingham, U. S. Navy public relations for "Overlord" Lowell Mellett, Washington Star James M. Landis, director. Civilian Defense John Roy Carlson, author. Under Cover 1945-46 Edward A. Weeks, editor, Atlantic Monthly Gerald Johnson, biographer of Adolph Ochs Archibald MacLeish Walter Lippmann Thomas L. Stokes, Washington columnist Theodore White, China correspondent, Time L L Rabi, atomic scientist Erwin D. Canham Joseph Pulitzer, publisher, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Helen Reid, publisher, New Yor\ Herald Tribune Ralph Ingersoll Mark Ethridge Barry Bingham, editor, Louisville Courier-Journal Alfred Cohn, author, Minerva's Progress Charles W. Morton, associate editor, Atlantic Monthly Lieutenant Fred W. Neal, U. S. Navy

Nieman

Dinners

31

Fred W. Stein, editor, Binghamton Press Weldon James, OWI in Japan James P. Warburg, author and editor. Unwritten Treaty Charles Bolte, American Veterans Committee Donald Ogden Stewart, motion picture writer William Schlamm, Life Beardsley Rumi, president, Federal Reserve Bank of New York John Tunis, sports author Paul Duncan, War Labor Board James W. Riddleberger, Central European desk. State Department 1946-47 Edward A. Weeks, editor, Atlantic Monthly Brooks Atkinson, New Yor}{ Times Bernard McGuaid, Blair Clark, Ralph Bragdon, editors of New Hampshire Sunday News Mrs. Eugene Meyer, the Washington Post James M. Landis, chairman of the National Aeronautics Board Jerome Ellison, editor '47 Thomas Sancton, editor, Ira Reid, sociologist, on race relations Leo Huberman, labor editor Marquis Childs, Washington columnist Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post Harold Laski, British Labor Party Walter Lippmann, Washington columnist Freda Kirchwey, editor. The Nation Harrison Salisbury, foreign editor, Newsweek Gerald Johnson Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., author and publicist

32

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Edward R. Murrow, vice-president of C.B.S. Edwin A. Lahey, Washington correspondent, Chicago Daily News Dr. Julius Schreiber, director of National Institute of Social Relations William Stoneman, assistant to director general, United Nations Thomas L. Stokes, Washington columnist John Dos Passos, author Joseph Herzberg, city editor, and Joseph Barnes, foreign editor. New Yor\ Herald Tribune Prof. Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Prof. William E. Hocking, and Judge Charles E. Wyzanski. A forum with the Nieman Council on the Free Press Report. Lord Inverchapel, British Ambassador

NIEMAN SEMINARS

STARTING

with the second year a Nieman "seminar" has been

held weekly on Tuesday afternoon from 4 to 6 P.M.

Each

week some member of the Harvard faculty is invited to present a paper or lead a discussion in his field. Numerous complex subjects have been explored and illuminated over beer and cheese at the Faculty Club. Scientist and economist have proved both patient and practical in presenting material unfamiliar to many of the Fellows, with the result that often dinner hours were delayed while a fascinated group of newspapermen held the guest in discussion that ranged far over his field—often over the universe.

Responding to the

receptiveness of his questioners, many a noted scholar has yielded up the finest nuggets of his wisdom and speculation as the late afternoon session has lingered into evening with all reluctant to leave.

Many of these sessions have been

memorable to the Fellows; often they have awakened an interest that was to prove productive in reading and further study. T h e following Faculty members have conducted Nieman seminars, many of them in every year and most of them in more than one year. Each group of Fellows make their own discoveries of Harvard professors and decide whom to invite to one of these special sessions: President James B. Conant, Provost Paul H . Buck, University Professors I. A. Richards, and Werner W . Jaeger; Dean James M. Landis, Thomas Reed Powell, Manley Hudson, Sheldon

Glueck

and

Zechariah

Chafee, of the L a w School; Director Harlow Shapley and

33

34

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Bart J. Bok, of the Harvard College Observatory; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Samuel E. Morison, Sidney B. Fay, Gaetano Salvemini, Charles H. Taylor, Clarence H. Haring, Hans Kohn, Crane Brinton, Oscar Handlin, and John K. Fairbank, of the History Department; Charles H. Mcllwain, Merle Fainsod, Arthur N. Holcombe, William Y. Elliott, Carl J. Friedrich, Heinrich Bruening, Herman Finer, Pendleton Herring, Morris B. Lambie, Benjamin F. Wright, and Payson S. Wild, of the Government Department; Kenneth B. Murdock, Perry Miller, Howard M. Jones, F. O. Matthiessen, Theodore Morrison, and Theodore Spencer, of the English Department; Earnest A. Hooton, Carleton S. Coon, and Clyde K. M. Kluckhohn, of the Anthropology Department; Dean C. Sidney Burwell, Walter B. Cannon, Hans Zinsser, Allan M. Butler, Edwin J. Cohn, and A. Baird Hastings, of the Medical School; Dean Philip Drinker, Frederick J. Stare, and E. B. Wilson, of the School of Public Health; Dean John H. Williams, Sumner H. Slichter, John T. Dunlop, Alvin H. Hansen, Paul Sweezy, Seymour E. Harris, Edward S. Mason, John D. Black, and Joseph A. Schumpeter, of the Economics Department; Ralph Barton Perry and William E. Hocking, of the Philosophy Department; Derwent S. Whittlesey, Kirtley F. Mather, and L. D. Leet, of the Geology and Geography Department; Talcott Parsons, Pitirim Sorokin, and Carle C. Zimmerman, of the Sociology Department; Lawrence J. Henderson, G. Elton Mayo, J. Philip Wernetfe, and Neil H. Borden, of the Business School; Gordon W. Allport and Jerome S. Bruner, of the Psychology Department; Frederick L. Hisaw and Leigh Hoadley, of the Biology Department; Robert Ulich and O. H. Mowrer, of the School of Education; Edwin O. Reischauer, of the Department of Far Eastern Languages; Ar lie V. Bock, Director of Hygiene Department; Arthur D. Nock, of the Divinity School; John M. Gaus,

Nieman Seminars

35

Professor of Regional Planning; Samuel H. Cross, Professor of Slavic Languages; Walter Gropius, Professor of Architecture; André Morize, Professor of French Literature. Also, Bernard De Voto, author and critic; W. G. Constable, curator of paintings, Boston Art Museum; Lillian Hellman, playwright; Jim Bishop, literary agent; Leo Cherne, economist; Senator Glen H. Taylor, Idaho; Bartley Crum of Anglo-American Palestine Commission; Robert J. Watt, A. F. of L.; Frank S. Hopkins, State Department; Walter D. Edmonds, author; Charles F. Brooks, Director of Blue Hill Observatory.

T H E NIEMAN STUDY PROJECTS descriptions of the programs of work of some of the Nieman Fellows are taken from their own reports of their year in college, made to the Curator of the Fellowships. They are selected as representative of the variety of studies and plans of work followed by Nieman Fellows. THE

FOLLOWING

AMERICAN HISTORY

POPULISTS AND PROGRESSIVES "A

Central

Theme"

ROBERT LASCH*

I CAME with one major intention, to study American history. T h a t is mostly what I have done. I also had the notion that I wanted to get on a little higher level than undergraduate study. T h e result was long hours of reading in Widener, what a graduate student would call research. D u r i n g the first term this was organized around the theme of middle western political development and I embodied part of it in a paper I wrote for Professor Merk on political aspects of the Granger Movement 1871-1875. I had intended to carry this study on to the Greenbackers, Populists and Progressives and other heirs of the Grangers, but instead I became convinced that I didn't know enough about the antecedents of the Granger Movement. In the course of exploring them I was sidetracked on a fascinating historical puzzle: What were the pressures behind the opening of Kansas and Nebraska to settlement and the Kansas Nebraska A c t ? Apart from the question's regional interest 'Robert Lasch is a graduate of the University of Nebraska and a Rhodes Scholar. At the time he came to Harvard (1941-42) he was editorial writer on the Omaha World-Herald. He was thirty-four years of age. After spending his year with the Nieman group he became chief editorial writer on the Chicago Sun. He won the Atlantic Monthly contest for an essay on "Freedom of the Press" in 1944, and published a book, Breaking the Building Blockade (University of Chicago Press, 1946).

39

40

The Nieman Fellows Report

to me I found it interesting as a study in the origins of the Civil War. I have spent almost all of my time on it and have propounded my theories in a paper for Professor Merk running to about 7500 words. Don't get the idea that I have made a contribution to scholarship. Sometimes I doubted the value of confining myself to a narrow problem which might better be left to somebody looking for a Ph.D. I kept at it, actually, simply because I was entranced by the subject. Some of the best fun I had came from reading the Congressional Globe, newspapers of the period, and a vast assortment of material in pursuit of a hunch which after all was nothing very startling. At any rate, I did do a lot of reading about the fifties; learned, I think, a great deal about the forces behind the settlement of my part of the country, and got an insight into the origins of the Civil War. There is a certain value in organizing your reading around a central theme. I kept up with the general reading in Professor Merk's course, "The History of the Westward Movement," which had been the focal point of all my work anyway. Western history was my main interest. But, apart from that, Merk's course gave me a better feeling for the whole sweep of American history than anything else. For one thing it is economic history in the fullest sense. I sat in on most of the lectures in United States History— Professors Buck and Schlesinger—and found them a valuable means of knitting together a lot of things I knew only in a vague way. I went to Professor Mcllwain's new course on AngloAmerican Constitutional Development for about half the term until I got so jealous of my time that I cut down on as

American History

41

many lectures as possible. I attended Seymour Harris's lectures on the economics o£ the war pretty faithfully, but had no time for the reading. As the term went on I found myself shifting away from lectures to reading. Generally I spent every afternoon and a couple of hours every morning at Widener and supplemented this with evening reading at home. The extracurricular activities we took on after the war began were a pleasant relief. I worked regularly with David Owen's press committee of the Harvard Defense Group and ghost-wrote ten of the fourteen articles on aspects of the war that went to the Boston Traveler and thirty-five or so other papers. I took part in Arthur Schlesinger's W R U L broadcasting project, doing the broadcast on American opinion eight or ten times. As my Kansas-Nebraska study began to wind up at the end of the term, I found time, under the stimulus of our opinion survey for the Defense Group, to canvass the files of the Chicago Tribune and write an article on its war stand for the Atlantic Monthly. My last project was to study the details of the Lodge fight against the League and the extent of isolationism in our present Senate, which resulted in a magazine article. One of the most valuable things about the year has been the relations with the Nieman group, faculty people and those who came in for Nieman dinners and seminars. If I hadn't learned a thing I would count the year well spent in regaining for myself something I knew was slipping away— mental flexibility. The tremendous intellectual stimulation of a changed environment, and this environment particularly, saved me (permanently I hope) from a certain rigidity of ideas that I had felt setting in.

42

The Nieman Fellows

Report

CHEROKEES AND LOGIC An Individual

Plan

WILLIAM J . MILLER* COURSES I have attended regularly: first term—Merk's Westward Movement; Fay's History of Modern Germany; Robert Frost's English; second term—Merk's Westward Movement; Buck's History of the South; and Sweezy's Economics of Socialism. A.

B. Other courses followed in part: Allport's Psychology of Public Opinion; Wild's Plato; Leopold's American Diplomatic History; Jones's Victorian Literature; Matthiessen's Shakespeare; Dunlop's Economics A; Bertrand Russell's William James Lectures. C. Other activities: extensive research on the removal of the Cherokee Indians from the East 1836-1838; home study in mathematics, economics, and philosophy. Possibly I have tried to embrace more fields than are feasible for an effective grasp of any one. This skittering about undoubtedly sprang from a feeling that this was my one opportunity at college facilities, and a desire not to miss anything I should regret after the opportunity had passed. Undoubtedly the year would have been spent to better advantage had I applied myself intensely to two or three subjects. It is a mistake likely to be made, I suppose, by anyone without previous college training. The opportunity it gave me to sample a wider range, however, has at least prevenfed me from feeling that I missed something "better" in some other course, and has perhaps given me a truer picture •William J. Miller came to Harvard in 1940-41 from the Cleveland Press where he was a reporter. He was twenty-eight years of age at that time. No college. He returned to the Cleveland Press, which he served as war correspondent in Italy; later he joined the staff of Time magazine.

American History

43

o£ what the college affords than i£ I had confined myself to a specialized study. As a general rule I did not stay long with any course where I felt an equivalent could be obtained by reading. At the same time, in order to keep as free a hand as possible in my reading, I sought those courses where I thought the most could be obtained from lectures. I attended Professor Allport's lectures, and completed the first quarter reading (Doob's Propaganda, Lippmann's Stereotypes, Allport's Attitudes, three issues of Public Opinion Quarterly). Toward the end of the first quarter I dropped this course, not from any lack of interest, but from a greater interest in Professor Fay's course, which I had meanwhile sampled, believing it more valuable for my purposes and believing I had already obtained as much, from the former, as I should find immediately useful. I attended Economics A for a time until I became convinced that the slowness with which it necessarily moved, being a freshman class, might make it more profitable for me to spend the hour elsewhere. I confined myself thereafter to reading Garver & Hansen's Principles of Economics, which I acquired for the purpose, and applied this hour to J. D. Wild's course in Plato, which I attended for several weeks. Here again I eventually decided to turn to reading, since two of the three weekly classes were confined to lectures anyway. Having heard enough of the lectures to obtain what I considered to be the essence of the Platonic doctrine, and the spirit of Professor Wild's approach to it, I thereafter confined myself to reading the Loeb editions. From that time, I applied this hour to Dr. Leopold's lectures on American Diplomatic History. I found these interesting and valuable, and continued with them to the end of the term.

44

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Frequently I stayed over in Professor Merk's classroom to hear Howard Mumford Jones's lectures in the succeeding hour, and occasionally, if not too cramped from confining my long legs in a small seat for so protracted a period, also heard Professor Hopper's lecture in the hour succeeding that. I also attended one lecture by Professor Fainsod on Governmental Regulation of Industry, one by O. H. Taylor on Economic Theory, an evening seminar at Littauer on Canadian wartime finance, and two of Lord Russell's lectures. The last, I regret to say, were in too rarefied an element for my poor comprehension, and were undoubtedly intended only for those who have at least some grasp of mathematical logic. From first to last I attended faithfully both Merk's and Frost's courses. If I had attended nothing else I would count the year a success. Perhaps to the above might be added two courses I attempted to teach myself at home. In an endeavor to supply a long-felt lack in mathematics, I undertook a systematic and intensive study of Hogben's Mathematics for the Millions. Though it has not altered my early conviction that my talents do not lie in that direction, the time I have spent with pencil, compass, ruler, and protractor over Mr. Hogben's none (for all his title) too simple work, has at least been a useful discipline. I managed to get over the geometry and algebra parts fairly well, even to the extent of acquiring some inkling of the processes of astronomy and navigation. I came at last to grief on the shoals of series and spherical triangles. However, I intend to have another try. The other endeavor was in the field of logic. I wanted to take a course in this but none was offered for the first half. Therefore, after consulting Professor Williams, who was teaching a course in mathematical proofs, I acquired Eaton's

American General vacy of subject, ment I

History

45

Logic and attempted to grapple with it in the primy home. If it has not given me a mastery of the it has at least enabled me to shed some of the bafflealways previously felt in the presence of a syllogism.

Perhaps particular mention should be made of my own special project, the Cherokees, since it has been responsible for my neglect of reading which I should have liked to do on other subjects. It may be that this topic will seem somewhat removed from the problems of today, but there was a time when it was an issue almost as momentous as slavery, and, in the allegiances and divisions it provoked, in more than one sense it was a precursor of the Civil War. In fact, I do not doubt that it will prove a complement and corollary to my studies in Professor Merk's course. Although I was forced to neglect his required reading, I find my bibliography in many cases dovetails, and where it does not, it certainly supplements. The reading I have completed (including copious notetaking) includes: Myths of the Cherokees, by James Mooney; Royce's Chero\ee Nation of Indians; Lanman's Letters from the Alleghenies; Hodgson's Letters from North America (2 volumes); Lumpkin's Removal of the Cherokees from Georgia (2 volumes); Autobiography of Winfield Scott, (2 volumes); History of Buncombe County (2 volumes); Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi, by Annie Heloise Abel; Andrew fackjon, by Marquis James; Cherokee Messenger, by Althea Bass; Grant Foreman's Indian Removal and Sequoyah; John Ross and the Chero\ees, a doctoral thesis; The Story of Georgia, by George Gilman Smith; The Cherokee Indians, by Thomas Valentine Parker; the American State Papers, military affairs; five volumes of Senate documents on Indian affairs, published in 1834; and the files of the National Intelligencer and Nile's Register for 1830-1838.

46

The Nieman Fellows

Report

My other reading, in addition to the "home courses" previously mentioned, has consisted of: first term—Benjamin Franklin, by Car] Van Doren; Van Wyck Brooks's The Flowering of New England; Jonathan Daniels' A Southerner Discovers New England; J. P. Marquand's The Late George Apley; and Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls; second term— Brinton's A Decade of Revolution; Bruun's Europe and the French Imperium; Max Werner's Battle for the World; General William S. Graves's America's Siberian Adventure; Thouless' Straight and Crooked Thin}{ing; Josephus Daniels' Editor in Politics; Buck's Road to Reunion; and chapters of Marx, Lenin, and Ricardo; Marquand's George Pulham, Esq.; and Robert Hillyer's book on the elements of poetry. Circumstances having dictated that I write this report some weeks and several hundred miles removed from Harvard, I am in a position to assess the year from a greater distance and perspective than if I had written it while there. It has already begun to take on a glow, a patina, like a fondly remembered dream. I know even now that I shall always cherish it as a golden year, a wander fahr. I know that I am certainly a great deal broader, both mentally and spiritually. Blind spots in my mind have contracted, tolerance and understanding have expanded. I am no longer as certain as I was about anything, other than my own ignorance. Most important of all, I have shed considerable of the inferiority complex endemic to the non-college man. For me, the year has been a priceless experience. If I were forced to enumerate any particular things I had learned, I might be unable to give a satisfactory answer. The gain is a difficult one to express, but nonetheless real. Chief of all I would count the opportunity it has given me to regard men and their affairs from a greater distance than a working

American History newspaperman obtains.

47

Gertrude Stein, in a rare burst of

lucidity, once told me: " A newspaperman is too immediate to be immediate."

I think I know precisely what she means.

W e are too involved in the deeds of the moment to appraise them validly. I suspect every newspaperman has, at one time or another, felt a desire to go off to Samoa and twiddle his toes in the sand while, like Miniver Cheevy, he "thought and thought and thought about it." chance to "think about it."

Well, here we have a

My thinking has produced no

conclusions, but it has enabled me, I believe, to reach a much broader perspective.

I always knew, intellectually, that is,

that nothing is ever black, or white, but gray; emotionally, however, I always judged them as one or the other. I believe I have at last achieved an open mind. OIL AND THE DUST BOWL

A Texan's Research Project VANCE JOHNSON* T H E SECOND

half year was of infinitely more value to me

than the first, largely because of a more definite plan of study. At the outset there was a strong temptation to sample everything, but being convinced that this was both impossible and impracticable, I settled down to a serious effort to channel my work along the lines proposed in my Nieman application. During the first half year I spent most of my time working in Widener on a special field of research into the oil industry, projected with the idea of perhaps writing a book, •Vance Johnson was managing editor of the Amarillo, Texas, Globe before he came to Harvard in 1940-41. At the time he was twenty-nine years of age. No college. After his year as a Nieman Fellow he served with the United States Marines. He then became Washington correspondent first for the Chicago Sun, later for the San Francisco Chronicle. His book on the Dust Bowl, Heaven's Tableland, was published by Farrar, Straus in 1947.

48

The Nieman Fellows Report

but equally as background in an industry important to my section of the country.

In seeking evidence of the impact

of oil on the everyday life of the common man in America, I found myself exploring many new fields of history and economics.

Particularly valuable to me was an investigation

into the growth of government regulation of business, and also the growth of American industries. After considerable experimentation during the first month, I settled on just three lecture courses for the first half: Government—American Constitutional Development

(Professor

W r i g h t ) ; Government Regulation (Professor Fainsod); and History—Westward Movement (Professor M e r k ) . I attended virtually every lecture but did a minimum of the required reading because of my own reading. T h e lectures were very valuable for the background I sought. At the outset I planned to attend at least three seminars weekly in the Littauer School of Public Administration, but, after attending for several weeks, I dropped two and attended the third only on days when some discussion of special interest to me was scheduled. My lecture schedule the second half consisted of: Government—rAmerican

Constitutional

Development

(Professor

W r i g h t ) ; American History—Growth of the Nation

(Pro-

fessor Schlesinger and others); History of the Westward Movement (Professor Merk) ; History of the South (Professor B u c k ) ; Political Parties (Professor Fainsod).

In addition

I attended early sessions of Littauer seminars in international relations by Professor Bruening and in agricultural economics by Professor Black. An interesting and profitable diversion during the second half year was a series of weekly conferences on composition with Mr. Wechsler of the English Department. sessions I wrote several papers.

For these

Mr. Wechsler provided the

American

History

49

kind of criticism I sought, gloves off and no holds barred. I abandoned my research into the petroleum industry with a view to a book on it when two new books on that subject appeared shortly after the first of the year. I then returned to a project on which I had spent spare time for several years —an economic history of the Dust Bowl Region of the Great Plains. In this work I was on solid ground. It was something in which I was extremely interested. It fitted more closely the lectures I was taking. This research involved reading more than twenty books, perhaps a hundred articles in periodicals, and several dozen government reports, as well as a study of the census from 1870 to 1910. Many times I have wondered whether my plan of work was the most desirable method of attaining my objectives. I doubt I shall ever convince myself that I took full advantage of the opportunity afforded by this year, yet I am sure the experience will be of lasting benefit. My principle objective in coming to Harvard was to equip myself for more adequate interpretation of the news. The Nieman program, particularly the seminars and dinners, is admirably suited for the attainment of such an objective. However, I greatly regret that my program did not afford time for excursions into courses in the English Department. In my association with Leverett House I became greatly interested in members of that Department. Discussions with them in the senior common room were invariably stimulating. Indeed, I believe the most valuable phase of my experience at Harvard has been the informal discussions with members of the faculty, both at seminars arranged for the Nieman Fellows and privately. Without exception I have found the members of the faculty eager to be of help. I am conscious of a widening horizon. I believe I am better able to read, to understand, and to analyze events than when I came.

50

The Nieman Fellows Report LABOR ECONOMICS

Reading and Settling

Down

ARTHUR EGGLESTON*

in popular movements, political and economic, led me to American history and particularly to the period during, preceding, and immediately after the Civil War. The core of study consisted in reading Sandburg's six volumes on the Hfe of Abraham Lincoln, together with most of the pamphlets and sermons on the John Brown episode, the two volumes of Wendell Phillips' collected speeches and addresses. Woodward's American History and special studies of Lincoln's life by Herndon, Raymond, Barton, and others. From these I have been led to Freeman's Robert E. Lee and Allen's Reconstruction, which presents the ultra-left view of reconstruction in the south. M Y INTEREST

Most of my time in the first half year was spent in reading, chiefly in the fields of labor economics and history, in Widener stacks and main reading room as well as at Littauer. It took me some time to shake off the feeling that I had to keep up to date on everything happening in the field of labor relations. In addition to this, which I now count an obstacle to full participation in the University activity to me, I would like to comment upon the award of half-year fellowships. The knowledge and feeling that I would be at Harvard for only half a school year made more difficult the breaking with the accustomed round of newspaper thought and activity. I therefore recommend against half*Before coming to Harvard in 1940-41, Arthur Eggleston, then fortyone, was a labor writer of wide, ranging experience and travel, from the San Francisco Chronicle. H e is a graduate of the University of California. After his Nieman year he was in OWI abroad during the war. H e became consultant on German newspapers in the military occupation.

American History

51

year fellowships. [Half-year fellowships were given up. Only three were ever given. Mr. Eggleston stayed through the year.] I took no courses in which reading requirements were met fully although I did some reading in Professor Merk's History of Westward Expansion and attended the course quite regularly. Other courses attended regularly were Professor Slichter's collective bargaining seminar and Professor Fainsod's course in government regulation of industry. Courses irregularly attended included Professor Allport's Pyschology of Public Opinion, Professor Wright's History of the American Constitution and Professor Slichter's labor relations lecture course. In addition I attended most of the Littauer seminars centering upon present activity in Washington having to do with preparation for national defense. I should like to thank the Nieman Foundation for permission to attend the CIO convention at Atlantic City during the week November 18 to 23. Upon my return I assisted John Dunlop and Russell Nixon of the Harvard Economics Department and Boyd Simmons, Nieman Fellow, in giving a seminar in Professor Slichter's Economics of Collective Bargaining and Public Price Fixing. I also spoke before a labor forum conducted at Adams House in October on "Harry Bridges and the West Coast Labor Movement" and to Mr. Bowron's freshman class in American civilization at Harvard Uuion on "Labor and Politics in 1940." Activity along the same line also included a round table discussion over Station WRUL wth Simmons and three government instructors and tutors on the subject, "Should strikes be banned in defense industries?" In commenting upon facilities available at Harvard, I should like to mention in particular the library arrangements

52

The Nieman Fellows Report

and privileges. Most valuable, I think, arc stack privileges and as one N i e m a n Fellow I am extremely grateful for their grant. What counsel I got was unobtrusive and "atmospheric." I did not seek direct counsel because I had fairly well in mind the subjects I wanted to read. I think my state of mind when I came to Harvard was primarily that of a m a n embarrassed with riches. I was tempted to do as the circus midget who married the circus fat lady—run 'round and 'round the Harvard Yard shouting, "Mine! All m i n e ! " There is a great temptation to shift from course to course, from book to book, and to end up with nervous prostration because you can't take in everything in the time allotted. There were a number of factors at work in my case and one, as I mentioned above, was the feeling that I would be here only for the half year, that I had to work fast and could only orient myself, perhaps, and store up lists of books and pursuits for some future time. T h e second half year should be doubly valuable, I feel in my case, because I am more settled in my mind as to what I want and how to g o about it. HARD-HEADED HISTORY

Four Regular Courses ALEXANDER KENDRICK* I AM SURPRISED to See how fairly consistently I have been able to follow the study and reading I laid out at the beginning. I have been attending all classes and doing all the reading »Alexander Kendrick was a feature writer on the Philadelphia Inquirer before he became a Nieman Fellow in 1940-41. At that time he was thirty years of age. No college. After his year at Harvard he returned to the Philadelphia Inquirer and became its Washington correspondent, then its Moscow correspondent. Later he became Moscow correspondent of the Chicago Sun.

53

American History

in four courses, all of them history, and have done a good deal of reading by myself. My four courses were: Modern European History, Professor Langer; Modern Germany, Professor Fay; T h e Westward Movement in America, Professor Merk; Diplomatic History, Doctor Leopold.

American

These four teachers

have made the year a delight and a privilege for me.

His-

tory, with the hard-headedness and realism in its teaching here, has been great stuff for me. In addition I have read especially into French and Russian history on my own. I think I could find my way through the history stacks in Widener in the dark. I audited three courses in the first term: Factors in International Relations, Professor History, Professor Usher; Jones.

Hopper;

Victorian

Modern

Economic

Literature,

Professor

Auditing in this case means taking lecture notes but

doing only cursory reading.

In Professor Jones's course I

had previously done most of the reading.

Put this one down

to sheer enjoyment. I added two half courses to my four main courses in the second term, and both were gems.

One was Philipp Frank's

course in the philosophy of physics.

This made lucid some

pretty basic things and so whetted my appetite that a lot of my semester's reading was in this field. T h e other course, given by four professors, was called "Literature and Democracy." T h e four professors were good, but the real excellence was in the students. T h e course was a paper-writing one for seniors concentrating in the field, and graduate students. I take off my hat to these boys.

They knew their stuff.

I wrote

three papers for this course, one on Walt Whitman, one on Veblen, and one on best sellers. I occasionally attended Usher's Economic History, Taylor's Intellectual Background of Economic Thought,

and

54

The Nieman Fellows Report

Sweezy's Economics of Socialism.

The

weekly

seminars

given by Paul Sweezy for the Nieman Fellows through both terms were a high spot of the year. I have a list of seventy or eighty first rank books, practically all on United States or European history I have read; and I have compiled a bibliography of more than one hundred which will keep me going for some time. T h e reading period so geared up my reading that I was almost sorry to go back to classes. I joined the Harvard Committee for Democratic Action at the beginning of the year and attended most of its meetings, read two papers myself, and became acquainted with some of the faculty members in a way I could not have done in classroom or library. TENNESSEE

HISTORY

A Biographical Study THOMAS H. GRIFFITH*

I SPENT the year gathering and writing a biography of John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, and only governor of the Lost State of Franklin.

Yet though it has led me to

spend most of my time in a Widener stall, and in the eightteenth century, I have not found it incompatible with a newsman's place in these times to have studied a segment of the American past.

I should add that Widener surprised

me with the completeness of its collection in the field of early Tennessee history.

When I visited Tennessee in mid-

year to examine the state archives, I found little that had •Thomas H. Griffith, a graduate of the University of Washington, was assistant city editor of the Seattle Times when he came to Harvard in 1942-43. At that time he was twenty-seven years of age. He is now a senior editor of Time magazine.

American History not already been available to me at Widener.

55 And it is a

tribute to the breadth and tolerance of the Nieman Committee that I was allowed to spend my year in this fashion. Only in the first half year did I attend classes.

I went to

Merk's westward expansion course, and found it

highly

suited to my own studies, for Professor Merk carries on the frontier discoveries of Frederick Jackson Turner.

Never have

I heard a lecturer who so ably combines intense personal integrity, interest in his subject, and the ability to transmit his interest.

T h e availability of Widener Library is reason

enough to continue Nieman Fellowships, but I agree with Irwin Edman that sometimes there are teachers "who, by their passion for ideas, their clarity about them, their love for the communication of them, their exemplification in their own being of intellectual discipline and candour, have given a meaning to facts that, even with leisure and libraries,

[a

student] would not have been as likely to find by himself." Such a teacher is Professor Merk. I went to Payson Wild, too, and found him able, lucid, and invigorating, with a forthright liberal point of view which I admired.

Of all discussions on postwar problems,

I think his were the best.

Professor Fay's first half year on

Nineteenth Century Europe was an amazingly fact-packed course. Also, whenever I could, I attended Hans Kohn (Modern European History), whom I think each Nieman Fellow regarded as his own discovery. My recollection of the several dozen afternoon and evening meetings is that the best of them were those in which I learned new things about new fields rather than those in which we re-argued the familiar.

I suppose, for instance,

that the evening we all talked about Sacco and Vanzetti would not be considered part of a postwar project, yet I measure it as one of the most exciting nights we had.

I en-

56

The Nieman

Fellows

Report

joyed factual reports from the globe trotters: Hindus, Cassidy, Lee, etc.; the report of the psychiatrist on war neuroses; the Kohns and Wilds who talked of the peace in terms of previous attempts at it. I'll remember with pleasure the evening we spent with President Conant. I came here with the prejudices of (1) a state university man; (2) a westerner; (3) a member of the lower middle class; and (4) a newspaperman. I must confess I was wrong in my preconceptions of Harvard; and the lack of much of the stuffed shirt atmosphere I anticipated can be traced to Mr. Conant, to the national scholarships, and to the extension of the house plan (which on the race issue at least is a thousand times more democratic than the fraternity system of my state university). HISTORY AS A BASE

By Trial and Error HARRY S. ASHMORE*

standing in the middle of a great university with full authority to do what I would with it, I was confused. I ignored the good advice that was thrust at me and went dashing off in all directions searching for courses that would fit into a preconceived educational scheme. During those early weeks I wasted a lot of valuable time, I suppose; certainly I started a number of courses which I never finished. What I wanted, or what I thought I wanted, was a schedule crammed with American history, government and economics. In the History Department I at once

I N THE BEGINNING,

*Harry S. Ashmore, a graduate of Clemson College, was reporter on the Greenville, South Carolina News before becoming a Nieman Fellow in 1941-42. At that time he was twenty-five. After military service he became associate editor of the Charlotte, North Carolina News. In 1947 he became editor of the Ar\ansas Gazette.

American

History

57

found what I was after in Merk's "Westward Movement" and Schlesinger's "Social and Intellectual History." In the other fields I didn't fare so well. By the time the semester reached the halfway mark I found myself working almost exclusively in the History Department. In addition to the courses offered by Professors Merk and Schlesinger, Professor Buck graciously made available to the four southern Nieman Fellows his course in southern history which normally would not have been offered during the first semester. Once a week, busy as he was with his duties in the dean's office, Paul Buck sacrificed an entire evening to meet with us at his house for a long, informal discussion that included not only the oudine of his history course, but an invaluable running commentary on southern problems, specific and general. I was, and am, mightily impressed by Merk, Schlesinger, and Buck and any regret I may have felt at seeing my carefully wrought and comprehensive plan of study dwindle has long since passed. Indeed, and I don't think this is rationalization, I decided that a concentration on American history would be the best possible preparation for any branching out I might do during the second semester. I had great plans for that second semester. I intended to keep on with the three history courses, cutting down on the reading if I had to, and to them I was going to add Professor Mcllwain's new course on the development of free institutions, Paul Sweezy's "Economics of Socialism," and, possibly. Professor Holcombe's government course, which had by now pushed its way through the detail that had bothered me and emerged as the sort of course I thought it was in the first place. The war knocked my plans all haywire. I have a reserve commission in the infantry and after Pearl Harbor I

58

The Nieman Fellows

Report

knew I could expect my orders to come through at once. I got them just at the beginning of the second semester, but I did have time to attend a few meetings of the new classes I had intended taking, enough to prove that the pretty titles in the catalogue hadn't fooled me this time. » Looking back on it, I wouldn't write off even those courses I started and dropped as wasted, for some of them, at least, started me off on reading trails in Widener. And reading, it seems to me, has been perhaps the most important part of my Nieman half-portion. I can't be sure that I have read wisely or well, but I've read a lot, ranging all the way from The Middle Class in American Politics to Reflections in a Golden Eye. Once or twice I set off on specific research projects, such enterprises as an effort to gather, for a magazine article, information on Henry Hotze, an obscure character who served the Confederacy as its London propagandist. I never got around to the magazine article, but I did learn a lot about Confederate diplomacy. If the Nieman Foundation had given me no more than access to Harvard's great library and long days in which to read I should consider my time well spent. I came seeking knowledge and tolerance and broader understanding, and, obviously, I'm in no position to judge how successful my effort has been. If instinct counts for anything, I can say that I feel that I have gained a great deal, that my thinking is clearer, that I am better able to see things whole.

RACE RELATIONS

THE SOUTH Race

Relations

GEORGE CHAPLIN*

As MY MAJOR activity of the year I count my reading in race relations. This pivoted about the Negro and was done under the guidance of Professor Buck of the History Department. I plan to continue my reading, particularly in Southern problems as they relate to the national picture, and am carrying home an extensive bibliography. Seven or eight of the Fellows, including myself, and a like number of Negro students held a series of night seminars embracing papers on the race problem and frank, informal discussions of the subject. Topics included the sociological and historical development of the caste system; the Negro in the army; the Negro in business; the Negro in agriculture; the Negro in education; and the Negro in politics. At the conclusion of the sessions, a story was given to the Crimson in an effort to arouse more general college interest and to emphasize the need for a yearly course here in race and nationality relations. During April I wrote a thirty-page paper developing the thesis that a largely invalid dream of the past is still be*George Chaplin, a graduate of Clemson College, was city editor of the Greenville, South Carolina Piedmont before he came to Harvard in 1940-41. At that time he was twenty-six. After war service that included editorship of the Mid-Pactfican, he became managing editor of the Camden Post and Courier, Camden, New Jersey. In 1948 he became managing editor of the San Diego Journal.

59

60

The Nieman Fellows Report

clouding the South's grasp of current realities and until psychoanalysis is effected the region will never deal intelligently with its fundamental problem of race relations. I also stressed the nation's stake in the South and the need for more federal aid. The paper was done principally to find out how I felt after some exploration of the field. The courses I most regularly attended in the first term were: History—Growth of the American Nation, Professor Merk; Economics—Labor Problems, Dr. Dunlop and Mr. Nixon; Economics seminar—^Labor Problems and Labor Movements, Professor Slichter. Courses which I followed in varying degrees as I had time or as they covered material pertinent to my general plan of study were: Principles of Economics—Dr. Dunlop; Rural Sociology—Professor Zimmerman; Government—American Constitutional Development—Professor Wright. I entered the second half year, after a first semester of some sifting and shifting, knowing pretty definitely how I wanted to spend my time. I attended the following courses: Economic Aspects of War—Professor Harris, et al.; American Constitutional d e velopment—Professor Wright; History of the South—Professor Buck; Growth of the American Nation from 1852— Professor Schlesinger et al.; Party Government—Professor Fainsod. The reading on my project in the first term included: Dus\ of Dawn, DuBois; The Souls of Blacky Fo/^, DuBois; portions of Dar\water, Dubois; Up from Slavery, Washington; History of the Negro, volume I, Washington; "The Negro Problem," Harris and Spero, in the Encyclopedia of Social Science; The Negro Family in Chicago, Frazier; Negro Question in the U. S., Allen; Mulatto in the U. S., Reuter; Race, Class and Party, Lewison; Negro Americans, What

Race Relations

61

Now?, Johnson; The Blac\ Worker, Harris and Spero; The Tragedy of Lynching, Raper; Shadow of the Plantation, Johnson; What the Negro Things, Moton; Road to Reunion, Buck. For the second term my reading on the race project covered this hst: Race Relations and the Race Problem, Thompson, et al; Races and Ethnic Groups in American Life, Woo£ter; Christians Only, Broun and Britt; The Chicago Race Riots, Sandburg; Alien Americans, Schrieke; American Race Problem, Reuter; These Foreigners, Seabrook; The Negro a Beast, Carroll; Development of Attitude Toward the Negro, Horowitz; Race Attitudes in Children, Lasker; American Minority Peoples, Young; Children of Bondage, Dollard and Davis; The Negro: the Southerner's Problem, Page; "Race," Boaz, in the Encyclopedia of Social Science; "Race Conflict," Kohn, the Encyclopedia of Social Science; "Education and Racial Adjustment," the Report of the Second Peabody Conference, July 1932. Activities undertaken independently have consisted largely of attending Ford Hall and University lectures (Professor Merriam, Bertrand Russell, Norman Thomas, Dr. Rosenblueth at the Medical School, for example), and of doing general reading, including: Ideas Are Weapons, Lerner; Bottlenecks of Business, Arnold; The American Stakes, Chamberlain; Shall Not Perish from the Earth, Perry; portions of Law and Politics, Frankfurter; 90 Degrees in the Shade, Cason; County Government in South Carolina, Andrews; State Administration in South Carolina, Coleman; Tillman Movement in South Carolina, Simkins; The Operation of the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina, Webster; Southern Industry and Regional Development, Herring; Statesmen of the Lost Cause, Hendrick; A Southern Discovers the South, Daniels; The Prostrate State, Pike; The Southern Poor White,

62

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Mcllwain; Statesmen of the Old South, Dodd; Sharecroppers All, Raper and Reid; The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, Johnson, et al; Edwin A. Alderman, Malone; It is Later Than You Thin\, Lerner; / Ы\е America, Hicks; Five Cities, Leighton; Big Business, Efficiency and Fascism, Simpson; The City of Man, Salvemini, et al; I Saw England, Robertson; An Economic Program for American Democracy, Sweezy, et al; The News and How to Understand It, Howe; parts of the following: Culture in the South, Couch, et al; Human Geography of the South, Vance; Capital, Marx; Abraham Lincoln, Cham wood; Main Currents in American Thought, Parrington; and Government and the American Economy, Fainsod and Gordon. An adventure of this sort—and for me it has been an adventure—defies precise measurement which I shall not essay other than to note that it has given me time to read, to listen, to weigh, and, after a fashion, to plan. Whether, in return, it will help "elevate the standards of journalism" is a question which only the future can answer.

LABOR

HISTORY AND ECONOMICS

Adventure and Exploration EDWIN A. LAHEY*

contact with the faculty was through an invitation to lunch with Felix Frankfurter. In our first five minutes together he told me (1) to study all the American history I could, (2) to disabuse myself of the awed feeling that I was about to associate with great men, and (3) not to dissipate what we laughingly call my intellectual energy by trying to take all the courses in the catalogue.

M Y FIRST

I enrolled in his seminar in administrative law, and this activity, plus extracurricular contact that I had with F. F., was the most satisfying and stimulating of my experiences in Harvard. Concepts that were at best hazy came, under his influence, to be clear, vital, and I believe permanendy fruitful. I cite specifically concepts of law, which are clear to me now as they never were before I got from Frankfurter the description of "peaceful accommodations, expressive of the dominant ideals of western democratic civilization, for the clash of interests and feelings in a dynamic society." Taking Frankfurter's advice about American history seriously, I went looking for Granville Hicks, counselor in American history at Adams House. He kindly offered to *Edwin A. Lahey was labor reporter on the Chicago Daily News before he came to Harvard in 1938-39. At that time he was thirty-six. N o college. After his Nieman year he returned to his paper and became one of its Washington correspondents.

63

64

The Nieman Fellows

Report

get together with me one afternoon a week for discussion and reading, and thus started an association that was second in importance only to that with Frankfurter. Ed Paxton joined us immediately, then Louis Lyons, and later John Clark and Irving Dilliard. Our Wednesday afternoon sessions became for us about the best thing in the University. We read the Beards' Rise of American Civilization; Turner's Frontier in American History, and most important of all, Parrington's three-volume Main Currents in American Thought. Granville's tremendous background in American life, in the intimate atmosphere of a study, did things for us in the way of interpretation and understanding that no amount of private reading could have accomplished. No officially planned program could have been as felicitous as these meetings. Economics 21a: an introduction to statistics. I worked hard at this half course during the first semester, and believe I profited in a measurable way. In lecture and laboratory I learned the mechanics of assembling and presenting graphically the everyday data of the financial page, correcting the data for secular trend, seasonal variations, etc. The class also studied defective data, and all in all I believe I developed a critique of statistics that must make me a better reporter. Here is an example: I frequently have to do with data that look scientific, but which may be loaded with propaganda. The monthly bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Institute is a good instance. Economics 21a and the excellent instruction of Associate Professor Frickey have given me the tools to handle this, if I will but keep an edge on the tools. Although Mr. Frickey warned I might find the course juvenile, I followed Economics 21a with his course in ac-

Labor

65

counting. Much of it was obvious, but I did get a rationale of accounting and a familiarity with corporation accounts that will be of everyday assistance to me as a reporter. (A year or more ago I conducted a fight against the Yellow Cab Company and some interlocking corporations, and I had to have a trained financial writer at hand every time I looked into corporate records, to keep me from sticking my neck out. I would feel much more at home on the same assignment today.) I enrolled also in Economics 62a and 62b under Professor Mason, which courses are a general study of monopolies and monopoly control. I dropped out of the first half after about three weeks, because it seemed like pretty simple stuff—the structure of corporations, etc. I picked it up again in February and attended the lectures irregularly but covered completely and with interest and advantage the full reading assignments, on the decline of competition, the development of monopolies, and the history of government regulation. Through this reading I have been led afield into an interesting study of how the courts have directed the antitrust laws against labor groups, despite specific protection for labor in the Clayton act, etc. I rank as my most valuable and enlightening course the economics of socialism give in the second half by Ed Mason and Paul Sweezy. I've worked and studied hard in this course, and while I can't pretend to more than a superficial knowledge of the subject right now, I know the way to learn more about a system of thought that grows more important every year in the affairs of the world. And during recent weeks I have had valued contact with Paul Sweezy over coffee and cakes between classes. I enjoyed and profited from Professor Langer's course in the history of Europe between 1815 and 1914, although I at-

66

The Nieman Fellows

Report

tended the lectures only during the first half of the year.

I

read considerably in this course, not only the general history of the period but a special history of Italy from 1815 to its unification in 1870. In the second half year I switched my history interest into Charles Taylor's course on the medieval mind, and while I did not do all the reading assignments in this, I attended the lectures pretty regularly and got some ideas on the merger of faith and rationalism in the Middle Ages that I didn't enjoy before.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

PROBLEMS OF PEACE

125 Boo{s MILLARD C. BROWNE*

I CAME here to concentrate in international relations, with the intention of getting all the background possible in problems of the peace settlement and foreign affairs generally. As it has turned out, the fact that I had such a project was the only thing that saved me from branching out in any number of aimless directions. T h e peace theme, I discovered, provided enough of a central thread to keep nearly all of my course work and reading within a sort of pattern, although it went fairly far afield at times.

T h e temptation

throughout has been to spread out too broadly, at the cost of not digging deeply enough in any one place.

T o the

extent that I've yielded to that temptation, I can only rationalize it on the ground that a small-city editorial writer cannot afford to specialize too narrowly. Courses I've followed during the year have been: Payson Wild's International L a w and American Foreign

Policy;

Hans Kohn's Nationalism and International Relations; Fay's History (Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe) ; Michael Karpovich's History of Russia and Eastern Europe; David •Millard C. Browne, A.M., a graduate of Stanford University, was editorial writer on the Sacramento Union before coming to Harvard in 1942-43. He was twenty-seven. He is now an editorial writer on the Buffalo livening Newt.

67

68

The Νteman Fellows

Report

Owen's History o£ the British Empire; Philosophy E—Fundamental Issues of the War; Economics. The only course I followed systematically was Hansen's Money and Banking, during the fall term, which filled in a serious gap in my economic education. Otherwise, I prowled a:round considerably, looking for explanations of some of the more intricate problems in the international trade and monetary field. I think I finally got what I wanted here— out of assorted Littauer seminars, plus a half dozen books on the subject. I took in quite a number of fiscal policy seminars (Hansen and Williams) and international trade and foreign exchange lectures and seminars (Haberler and Leontief). Smatterings: I attended the freshman survey courses in American and European history quite frequently but not at all regularly, and found them excellent, also Ben Wright's American Political Thought, Whittlesey's Geopolitics, Haberler's Economics of War, Friedrich's Comparative Government, and Merk's Western Movement. My reading was rather intensive in the field of peace problems, that is, that covering the Versailles period, international relations since then, and plans for the coming peace. I suppose two-thirds of the 125-odd books I read during the year touched on this one way or another (including, of course, a liberal sprinkling of recent volumes by war correspondents) . Otherwise, I concentrated on European history and international economics. I found H. A. L. Fisher's threevolume History of Europe especially helpful as a survey of that field, with Pirenne's History of the Middle Ages thrown in for good measure, and a dozen others on various periods and personalities in European history. In economics, I struggled with Haberler's International

International

Affairs

69

Trade, read Hansen's Business Cycles and Fiscal Policy, and a half dozen other treatises on the mysteries o£ international economic relations. My main extracurricular activity during the year was work with a postwar subcommittee of Harvard Defense, headed by Professor Wild. I found its discussions helpful in crystallizing my ideas on postwar issues.

SCIENCE of six years one of the Nieman Fellows has been a science writer. His program has been even more individual than those of the other Fellows. In each case he has divided his time between the Medical School and science departments of the college. In each

ATOMS

AND

MEDICINE

For Fundamentals of Science FRANK E . CAREY PRINCIPAL objective in seeking a Nieman Fellowship was to get fundamental training in branches of science—such as nuclear physics, astronomy, and geology—in which I had no formal instruction. My secondary objective was to strengthen myself in certain fields—such as bacteriology and physiology —for which I had preliminary training in a premedicai course in college. My third objective was to make an intensive review of general physics—a subject in which a science reporter must have as much grounding as possible if he is going to attempt to write clearly and simply about such things as radar, television, X-ray, acoustics, optics, etc. My

I found what I wanted in the following courses at Harvard in the first term: Geology la (Introductory Physical Geology, given by Professor Kirtley Mather). Professor Mather is a lively lecturer, *Frank E . Carey, reporter before coming time. After his year porting assignment in

graduate of Holy Cross, was an Associated Press to Harvard in 1946-47. He was thirty-seven at that as a Nieman Fellow, he resumed his science reWashington.

70

Science

71

and a first-rate future contact for a science reporter studying at Harvard. In his course he hits hard on phases of geology which a science writer may be called upon to discuss, periodically, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, soil erosion; and, at the outset of his course, he gives a swell discussion on uranium and nuclear fission, which provides a good background for a reporter who intends to go into those subjects more thoroughly during his stay at Harvard. The University's course in the fundamentals of atomic physics, which includes study of the atomic nucleus, was not given until the spring term, so Professor Mather's discussion provided a good framework for informal, private study during the first term. My principal reading in this course included the text we used in class (Longwell, Knopf and Flint's Textbook^ of Physical Geology), and Dr. George Gamow's Biography of the Earth. I also went on one field trip to the North Shore to study coastwise geological formations. Astronomy la (Astronomy of the Solar System—Dr. Fred Whipple). I believe this is a must course for any science Nieman, if he hasn't already studied astronomy. It goes without saying that now that radar signals have been bounced off the moon, and man-made rockets have reached great heights, the science reporter's beat extends increasingly beyond the limits of our planet. Dr. Whipple has been prominent in experiments utilizing V-2 rockets to investigate the upper atmosphere, and he's interested in a study designed to expel man-made meteors from rockets so as to give scientists new knowledge of the natural meteors which invade the earth's atmosphere from outer space. His astronomy course is further enlivened with similar subjects. Whipple understands the problems of a science reporter, and wants to help in every way possible. One of my most valuable contacts at Harvard this year

72

The Nieman Fellows Report

was another astronomer, Dr. Bart J. Bok, assistant director of the Harvard Observatory. Dr. Bok and I had periodic luncheon sessions during which we talked over possible news stories in the astronomical field and also discussed the increasingly important role that science is playing in national and international life. H e has a wide contact among scientists in various parts of the world and has a good nose for news. Any science Nieman should cultivate him. My reading in astronomy included the textbook we used in class, Astronomy, by Baker; Dr. Fred Whipple's Earth, Moon and Planets, Dr. George Gamow's Birth and Death of the Sun, as well as numerous reports prepared by the staff of the Harvard Observatory and other astronomers on current research. I also attended various astronomical meetings at the Observatory in Cambridge, did some of the laboratory work in the course, and visited the Oak Ridge Observatory at Harvard, Massachusetts, for a study of the telescopic and photographic equipment there. Natural Sciences 2a (Dr. Le Corbeiller and Mr. B. J. Cohen) . This is one of the courses in the new general education plan. I didn't start attending it regularly until midway in the fall term, because I was taking (and still continued) a course in general physics, and I wanted to avoid repetition if possible. But once I started attending the natural sciences course regularly, I regretted that I had missed a single lecture. The course is designed to give students who are not planning to specialize in science a good general picture of physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and it is presented in much the same language that a science reporter would use in presenting phases of those subjects to a lay audience of newspaper readers. Most of the course is devoted to physics. I particularly liked the spring term of this course, when

Science

73

the subjects of electricity and light were detailed, and when we had a series of lectures on contemporary physics (nuclear energy, etc.) by Professor Oldenberg. The course includes, in addition to straight lectures, many excellent demonstrations of physical principles—amplified by good explanations, and aided by good equipment. In addition to the textbook we used. The Study of the Physical World, by Cheronis et al., my reading for the course included A Primer of Electronics, by Caverly (a swell readyreference book for a newsman). Science for the Citizen by Hogben, and Electrons in Action by James Stokley of the General Electric Research Corporation. Physics Ba (Mechanics, Heat and Sound—Dr. George Clark). This is a straight, sqlid course in elementary physics —well suited to a newsman who wants to get a good review of the subject in an orderly fashion. To supplement my study of physics, I attended colloquia conducted on Monday afternoons by the Physics Department. These colloquia—on subjects of contemporary interest in physics—were preceded by get-togethers of members of the department. And these preliminary meetings provided a good opportunity to meet and talk with various physicists. On Wednesday afternoons I attended symposia in applied science arranged by Professor Chaffee, Harvard electronics expert. At each meeting, discussion was held on some phase of electronics research now under way at Harvard. Some of these talks—both at the physical colloquia and at the applied science symposia—were pretty technical, but they gave a science reporter a good idea of what was currently going on in the field. Bacteriology. I took this course at the Medical School in Boston, under Dr. John H. Mueller, and various assisting lecturers. Such a course, I believe, is basic for anyone who

74

The Nieman Fellows

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intends to write on medical subjects. One gets a good roundup of each of the important bacterial and virus diseases that beset man; and the subject matter is presented in a way that is understandable to anyone with a fairly good background in chemistry and biology. Dr. Mueller and his aides were very cooperative, arranging visits for me to various laboratories where research projects are under way. Coincident with the bacteriology course, I attended some lectures in preventive medicine, given by Dr. Aycock. These one-day-a-week lectures conflicted with my bacteriology lectures on one day, but I tried to pick subjects between the two which would give me the most benefit. General work: In addition to my regular courses in the fall term I attended some lectures in economic botany, given by Dr. Mangelsdorf, and some lectures in the biological sciences phase of the general education course, given by Professor Castle. I also attended sessions on the control of atomic energy, given at Harvard and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and I attended discussions of the medical aspects of atomic energy given at the Medical School by Dr. Arthur Solomon. In the spring term I took up Physics 1 (Introduction to Atomic Physics—Dr. R. B. Holt). This is an excellent course for a science writer who wants to get the fundamentals of the story of atomic energy. The course does not start immediately with the subject of nuclear fission, which made the atomic bomb possible. It starts with a review of the origin of the atomic theory of matter. Then, the course deals successively with the atomic structure of electricity, the atomic structure of light, and, finally, with the structure of individual atoms, which includes discussion of nuclear fission and its implications. Several weeks in the latter part

Science

75

of the course are devoted entirely to the study of the atomic nucleus, natural and artificial radioactivity, isotopes, etc. For reading in this course, I received much help from Dr. Arthur Solomon's Why Smash Atoms?; Dr. George Harrison's Atoms in Action; an excellent booklet entitled Our Atomic World, published by the Los Alamos Scientists; and the Smyth report on military aspects of atomic energy. I also made arrangments with the National Committee on Atomic Information at Washington to receive the same literature I woud receive from them if I were at my AP work; and I procured each month the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by the Atomic Scientists of Chicago, which provides good up-to-date articles on atomic energy. Astronomy lb (Stellar Astronomy—Dr. Donald Menzel). All of this course, which includes the study of the sun and the other stars, was valuable, but I particularly liked the clear explanation of the principles of spectroscopy. The course ties in nicely with the atomics physics course, too, because Dr. Menzel and his assistants discuss the tremendous nuclear reactions involved in stellar energy production. Dr. Menzel is one of the world's outstanding authorities on the subject of the sun, and he augments his lectures on that subject with dramatic motion pictures of the solar phenomena. Natural Sciences 2b (Le Corbeiller and Cohen). This was a continuation of the general education course in the natural sciences. One of the highlights of the spring term was a demonstration of spectroscopy, and various types of electron tubes. Another, as noted above, was a series of lectures on nuclear physics by Dr. Oldenberg. Thus, these three courses—atomic physics, astronomy, and natural sciences—helped keep the subject of atomic energy accented throughout the spring term. There was necessarily

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The Nieman Fellows

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some repetition, but I'm thankful that things worked out that way. It was good to get the subject from various angles. Physiology. I took this course at the Medical School. Dr. Eugene M. Landis, Higginson Professor of Physiology, and other doctors at the Medical School, were the lecturers. In addition to attending lectures, I observed some of the laboratory exercises of the medical students, and visited the various research laboratories where a number of problems in physiology are under investigation. I did selected reading in various physiology textbooks, and got a lot of help from a very readable volume entitled, The Human Body and Its Functions, written by Drs. C. H. Best and N. B. Taylor. This volume is somewhat old (1932) but it is a volume designed for public health nurses, hospital instructors, etc., rather than for more advanced medical students, and its presentation of the subject is a good model for a science reporter to follow.

SOCIAL RELATIONS

HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY

Adjustment

and

Evaluation

EDWARD M . MILLER*

application for a Nieman Fellowship I expressed the wish to seek answers to the broad question: How can newspapermen recognize and interpret new ideas that are destined to affect the world we live in?

I N MAKING

Where to find study leads into the broad question was a matter of considerable concern. By the time of my arrival in Cambridge I had concluded that American history would afford a profitable field of investigation and was pleased to find, during our first discussion, that the Curator concurred in that opinion. Therefore I selected, as two must courses, Merk's History of the Westward Movement, and Schlesinger's Social and Intellectual History of the United States. The two courses complement one another admirably. Because here in America we have been affected so greatly in thinking and in action by European influences, I sought a study lead in that direction. The courses chosen were History of Continental Europe in the Nineteenth Century during the first half of the year and History of Modern Germany during the second half. Both courses were given by Professor Sidney B. Fay. I had been particularly anticipating Modern •Edward M. Miller, graduate of the University of Oregon, was thirtyeight when he came to Harvard in 1941-42. He was Sunday editor of the Portland Oregonian. He returned to the Oregonian as assistant managing editor.

77

78

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Germany; and when, because of war conditions, it became necessary for me to return to the Oregonian two weeks after the opening of the second term, I felt, with deep regret, that I was leaving behind the answers to the German riddle. At the start of the year, in casting about for a course that would tie in directly with the major study project, I was referred to Professor L. J. Henderson and his course on Concrete Sociology: A Study of Cases. In this course, which sought to provide a conceptual scheme for the appraisal and the influencing of individual and group reactions, I found my greatest Harvard classroom adventures. Attendance at all the courses was regular, my notes are impressive in quantity and I can only hope that that which is on paper is also in my head. In Schlesinger's course the outside reading was confined to following lectures in a supplementary text; in Merk's course I read occasionally from his listings. In Fay's European History I followed the lectures in a text and read several volumes tying in with the period. Most extensive outside readings were done in connection with Henderson's sociology, particularly in the field of employer-employee relationships where, to date, are found the most practical and most significant applications of Henderson's classroom theories. I did relatively little miscellaneous reading. The most enjoyable side excursion was Space, Time and Architecture which explained to me for the first time the meaning of modern architecture. During the first two months I was not entirely satisfied with the results of the Nieman experiment as it applied to me. It was proving exceedingly enjoyable, but nothing seemed to jell. I am sure, now, that the adjustment from fifteen years of routine work was proving more difficult than had been anticipated. The world of realities I had known was slow in receding into the background.

Social Relations

79

A welcome change came rather suddenly, shortly before the Christmas holidays.

Quite abruptly I became aware that

the routine chores of yesterday had been filed away for future reference and ideas and abstractions had become the reality. I suppose the process is nothing more than getting out of the rut. T h e pattern was taking shape from the various classroom sessions, from the dinners, the seminars, bull sessions, sundry lectures, from associations with the faculty in connection with war work.

But, above all, I should like to

mention the stimulation gained from Professor Henderson. His class was proving the core of my work. Attending the class (Concrete Sociology) were not more than a dozen men, so there was ample opportunity for questions, answers, and arguments before, during, and after the class hour.

T h e nature of the work was completely foreign

to anything I had studied previously.

In about a month

the purpose of the course revealed itself to this lagging mind and thereafter I found myself fascinated by a study that will, I am sure, always affect my thinking processes and my work. T h e study interruption prompted the speeding and telescoping of a bibliography compilation for later reading. From Walter Gropius of the Department of Architecture came a list on

modern

architecture

and

city

planning;

from

Evan

Collins, Assistant Dean of the School of Education, a list on developments in secondary education.

Arthur N . Holcombe,

Professor of Government, provided

titles on

geopolitics;

Dumas Malone, Director of the Harvard University Press, indicated recent Harvard publications which, in his opinion, are outstanding. D r . Bruening, Professor of Government, suggested books on Germany; John H . Williams, Dean of the School of Public Administration, gave me a list of books and articles on the

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The Nieman Fellows

Report

pro and the con of New Deal (Hansen) economics; and George Elton Mayo, Professor of Industrial Research at the Business School, listed the titles available on the theory of executive leadership and employer-employee relationships.

I

have also Professor Fay's reading list on Modern Germany, as well as lists in some other courses.

T h e foregoing, with

a good many miscellaneous titles, will guide my reading for many a month. By way of extracurricular activities I joined with the other Nieman men, after Pearl Harbor, in lending a hand with the war work of American Defense-Harvard group, took some camera excursions for a record of early New England homes, and during the holidays went to southern Florida to see, at first hand and for the first time, the multitudinous problems of the deep south. Looking now at the Harvard months in retrospect, I wish first to take strong exception to a point of view which holds that the Nieman year should be spent in studying the sins and virtues of present-day newspapers.

This belief was ex-

pressed by Ralph Ingersoll during his talk this year to the Nieman group. H e discounted the value of the individualized study now permitted. May I suggest that Mr. Ingersoll, most amiable of persons, has permitted himself to err in his estimate of the value of the Nieman year. After all, the technique of newspapering is merely the frame of the picture.

Assuming integrity of purpose, our

job is to keep alive to the picture within the frame—the substance—that must be painted with refreshing accuracy each day.

And this requires the questing point of view, the

fundamental approach that is so admirably quickened by the Nieman program as it now stands. All Nieman activities are useful in contributing to the desired end.

T h e core of the impetus is provided by the

Social Relations

81

business of tracking down a vital study project, plus the inviting side leads that appear so unexpectedly.

T h e splen-

did faculty seminars persistently open up new vistas; the dinners are valuable in keeping touch with our work; and the House functions gradually loom increasingly pleasant and provocative.

All this, with the guidance of the Curator

and the participation in University functions, such as war work, contrive pleasantly but firmly to impel the subject toward horizons completely new to his experience and to reactivate his interest in matters half forgotten during the press of deadline years. In taking stock of my own Nieman experience, I feel it is divided into three phases. First, the fumbling out of accustomed work habits into the freer reflective activities.

For

me this was a slow and sometimes discouraging process. There is no note of regret intended here.

For a person long en-

gaged in routine, I believe it is tremendously useful to go through the business of getting the brains aired and reconditioned, and in this phase of the program I wish to report success to the extent of the equipment at hand. T h e second phase consists of consolidation of the information gained in and out of the classroom.

Here I can report

only partial success. T h e loose ends are conspicuous by -their quantity, particularly in the side leads.

During the second

part of the year, had the opportunity been available, I am confident that the process of accumulation and consolidation of information would have accelerated rapidly.

As for

the major project. Professor Henderson's course has given me a pattern from which to continue studies, a pattern that is considerably more precise and explicit than I had hoped to find at the first of the year. This suggests the third phase, the running start; the momentum that will, or not, persist after leaving Harvard.

This

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The Nietnan Fellows Report

affords the final examination for the Nieman year—if the individual slows down to a walk, he has failed. I can only guess, but I'm guessing that the momentum will continue. PATTERNS OF SOCIETY

Sociology and Psychology WILLIAM M . PINKERTON* T H E DIRECTION of my work was set by the work of such social anthropologists as Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Bronislaw Malinowski. It seemed to me that the methods they had used to gain insights into the patterns of primitive societies were at least suggestive for the attempt at better understanding modern American civilization.

Although no first semester course was offered in Social Anthropology, Professor Kluckhohn consented to advise me on reading in the field. In this, Kluckhohn was particularly helpful, because the reading which he suggested was as much in works on aspects of American society as it was in the studies of primitive cultures. Because of this, the work which I did under Kluckhohn dovetailed neatly with Talcott Parsons' course in Economics and the Social Structure. In fact, their reading suggestions overlapped. I found Professor Parsons' course very useful. I have done all the reading in Parsons' course, plus some further reading in the same field of books that caught my interest. I was interested in doing a paper under Parsons and ' W i l l i a m M. Pinkerton was Washington reporter for the Associated Press when he came to Harvard in 1940-41, at the age of thirty-three. H e is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin. After finishing his Nieman year he continued serving the Associated Press in Washington until he was commissioned in the Navy. After the war he joined the staff of the United States News, and in 1947 he was appointed Director of the Harvard News Office.

83

Social Relations

I decided that the most useful thing would be to try to organize my newspaper experience in terms of Parsons' "schema." I have written five chapters of a paper called " T h e Newspaperman," and hope to finish the thing off while I am still around here and can discuss it with Parsons. T h e only other first-term course I attended regularly and did the reading in was " T h e Psychology of Public Opinion," given by Professors Allport, Child and McGranahan. For sheer enjoyment, I got more out of Robert Frost's Tuesday night monologues than from anything else I attended during the semester. When the first semester opened, I started attending some of the Littauer seminars, especially Katz and Mason on Defense.

I soon decided, however, that I would have to choose

reading or the hazards of the seminar-chase.

I chose the

sedentary life. In the second semester of work, I followed with great enjoyment Merk's fact-packed and intensely interesting lectures on the Westward Movement, Robert Hillyer's understanding analyses of his fellow-poets and his fine reading of their verse, and Kluckhohn's stimulating survey of recent scientific theory in his graduate course in Social Anthropology. I think Kluckhohn's course did for me the same thing that Frank's Philosophy of Physics did for some of the other Fellows. Despite my lack of background in economic history, I found Usher's analyses, especially those dealing with industrial development, gave me new insights into the nature of economic growth in America.

I am sorry I was not able to

follow Usher and Merk through the whole year (in both cases I caught up with the courses at midyear). Courses attended in which I did the reading were: Parsons—Economics and the Social Structure; Allport, Child, McGranahan—Psychology of Public Opinion; Kluckhohn—

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The Nieman Fellows

Report

Contemporary Anthropological Theories; Matthiessen, Miller, Spencer, Levin—Literature and Democracy; (Part-time attendance) Hillyer—Modern English and American Poets; (Part-time attendance) Henderson—Concrete Sociology. Courses in which I attended the lectures but did not do the reading: Merk—Westward Movement; Usher—Economic History; Frost—Poetry. Papers and reports: Sociology (Parsons)—A paper on The Newspaperman; English (Literature and Democracy)—Reports on Tolstoy's What Is Art?, the Lynds' Middletown, and L A. Richards' Science and Poetry. Outside appearances: WRUL—Roundtable discussion o£ "Literature and Democracy"; WRUL—One fifteen-minute broadcast of a digest of American Editorial Opinion. Reading done outside of course work: Under Kluckhohn— reading in anthropology, and in American social structure. I also did considerable reading of English and American poetry. The extracurricular teaching by the faculty and students of Adams House has been important. I have developed a great deal of the "old school tie" feeling about Adams House during these six months. While the physical facilities—library, common rooms, squash courts, and swimming pool—are excellent, the personal relationships of the place, guided by David Litde's genial hospitality, have been invaluable. From eating day after day with faculty and undergraduates, I have formed a new opinion of college professors (they don't scare me half as much as they once did, for one thing) and have gained new insights into "the undergraduate mind." I have found my Adams House colleagues—especially Dr. O. H. Taylor and Dan Vandermeullen, both of the Economics Department— equally willing to devote a few hours to my redemption from economic illiteracy or to share a rare social evening. Bill Mc-

Social Relations

85

Cauley of the Government Department has been particularly helpful and friendly.

However, I have found all the staff

of A d a m s House tolerant, interested, and helpful. Aside from casual contacts with such disparate fields as philosophy, chemistry, architecture, economic and social history, and mathematics, the lunch-time conversation at the tutors' table has offered a good substitute for coffee or cocktail sessions with the gang from the A P office back in Washington.

T h e A d a m s House

g a n g demonstrate a lively and informed interest in current events abroad and at home. I think the N i e m a n seminars did much to enrich my appreciation of what Harvard is, as an institution, because they offered an opportunity to taste the fare of a wide variety of activities of which (I am sure) the average graduate student is not aware.

ECONOMICS

ORGY OF EXAMINATIONS

Trade Research and Russian FRED W. NEAL*

MY MAIN accomplishments during the year were two research projects and the study of the Russian language.

O n e research

project I had started in part in Washington, D . C .

It dealt

with revenue and national income, and involved an attempt to show the effect of high tax rates on upper bracket incomes on national income and thus trace a possible tax structure for the future.

It was academic and not of great importance to

me, but interesting and educational.

T h e other project dealt

with commodity agreements as a postwar trade policy, with emphasis on their price effects and monopolistic characteristics. T h e tax project was in connection with the Fiscal Policy seminar but was never presented to the seminar.

T h e other

was as a part of the International Trade seminar and was presented on the last meeting of that seminar. T h e first semester I attended: Fiscal Policy Seminar, Professor Hansen; International Trade Seminar, Professor Haberler; Money and Banking Problems, Professor Williams; Advanced Economic Theory, Professor Chamberlin;

Agricul-

tural Economics, Professor Black; Graduate Public Finance, *Fred W. Neal, graduate of the University of Michigan, came to Harvard in 1942-43 when he was twenty-seven. He was Washington cor-, respondent of the Wall Street Journal. Upon finishing his Nieman year he did special service in Russia for the Navy, after which he joined the State Department as a specialist on Russian and economics.

86

Economics

87

Professor Burbank. The first two were excellent, chiefly in refreshing me on current economic literature, which I had largely missed since 1938, that is, the periodicals. The second semester was devoted to the two seminars and projects, one under Professor Hansen and the other under Professor Haberler. In addition, I attended Professor Cross's super-intensive course in Russian language. Professor Cross sold me a bill of goods on this one. It took far more time than he said it would, but I think it was worth while. Much of the benefit of the year to me came from having time to read, and discovering some new books. Chief of these was Professor Haberler's Prosperity and Depression, which is a regular "What to Do" of economics. Of course, just arguing and discussing points with these men, Hansen and Haberler, as well as my other teachers, and economists like Schumpeter —excellent for discussion—Sweezy—also excellent—and Leontief, was an education in itself. From time to time I had an opportunity to teach an economics course here and there, out of which, as with most teaching, I got as much if not more than the students. Among such classes were elementary economics courses of a number of junior instructors, and classes in corporations, public finance, economic theory, and money and banking. While all of my formal work was in economics, I managed to explore other fields a bit by talking with people in them. A favorite of such people was Dr. Bruening, from whom I learned some fascinating tales of his last days in Germany. After the first term, I had an orgy of examination-taking. I took exams in all my courses and in several I had not taken, such as constitutional law, government regulation of business, and American history. I passed them all except economic theory, in which course I was always afraid to ask and was never told.

88

The Nieman Fellows

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I regretted my inability to take any courses in Oriental history.

I also regretted that I spent a good part of the time

loafing or reading inconsequential matter, but perhaps the enjoyment of that is half of the benefit from the Nieman Fellowship. ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

Quest for Philosophy

of

Government

JOHN H. CRIDER* WITH

THE

EXCEPTION

of

Friday

attendance

at

Professor

Sprague's three-times-a-week course in Monetary Policies and Problems at the School of Business Administration (on this day D r . Sprague answers questions instead of lecturing), all of my work has been in the Littauer School of Public Administration.

T h e r e I audited four seminars, any two of which

if taken for credit with all required reading performed would approximate a full-time job.

These seminars were: Fiscal

Policy, Professors Williams and Hansen; Government Regulation of Industry, Professors Bruening and Elliott;

Interna-

tional Economic Relations, Professors Haberler and Harris; Price Policies, Professors Mason and K a t z . One of the requirements for credit in the Littauer seminars is to prepare and read a paper on some subject related to the general field of inquiry.

Because I had long wanted to study

the history of securities regulation in Great Britain as background for understanding problems of the Securities and E x change Commission, I volunteered to prepare a paper in the *John H. Crider, graduate of Columbia University, was with the Washington Bureau of the New Yor/( Times when he came to Harvard in 1940-41 at the age of thirty-four. At the end of his Nieman year he returned to the Washington staff of the New Yori[ Times and in 1946 became editor of the Boston Herald.

Economics

89

Bruening-Elliott seminar which I completed and read late in November. Running upwards of 20,000 words, the paper traced the development of relations between London's City and the British government in the light of our own American regulatory problem. I had the benefit of a series of conferences with Dr. Bruening, and one interview with Dr. Sprague. The research took me through a dozen or more volumes, some only in part, and through scores of issues of the Economist of London. In addition, Dr. Bruening loaned me a collection of his clippings from various British journals dealing with the origin and history of the so-called Share-Pushing Bill. A copy of this paper was requested by and sent to officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Early in the year I had a conference with Dr. Paul Sweezy in which he gave me a suggested reading list of economic classics, only a few of which I have thus far read. Towards the end of the first half year I determined that I could make better use of my time by plotting myself a definite research and writing project, to which I would adhere throughout the second half year. After thirteen years of reporting I found that my bent was toward doing work in terms of a preconceived research project, which is, after all, what reporting consists of, on a somewhat smaller scale. I also discovered during the first half year that there were no definite answers to some of the economic questions to which I addressed myself in my original Nieman application, and consciously drifted away from economics into broader fields. In fact, I am quite proud of myself for finally being able, after four months away from the job, to become interested in abstractions as distinguished from concrete problems of the here and now. In all of this mental gymnastics I was led to rediscover that what I was really concerned about was the American

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The Nieman Fellows Report

drift towards collectivism. I recalled that almost two years ago I had written in Washington for possible magazine sale a lengthy treatise on "The Trend Towards Collectivism." Then last fall I ran into an article in Harper's which several times used the phrase "democratic collectivism" without any definition whatsoever. The author assumed, and evidently the editors also assumed, that there could be such a thing as "democratic collectivism." The more I thought about it the more I was convinced that, using an encyclopedia definition of each of the two words, it could be shown pretty conclusively that such a thing was highly unlikely—certainly Utopian. With the exception of several weeks' attendance at Paul Sweezy's Economics of Socialism, the entire second half year was spent in research and writing on my book. During March and April I spent practically all day every day in my stall at Widener. After my family left, May 1,1 took bachelor's quarters in Hamilton Hall where I carried on my work until this morning, when I completed the last chapter (excepting a concluding summary of the book). The original idea of the book was to start out with a consideration of the evolvement, or emergence, of man to show early indications of coöperational or competitive tendencies; then to consider man in his primitive state for evidences of collectivism; and, finally, to review all of the important examples of collectivist societies in history, treating them chronologically. For three months' reading, even reading night and day, this was too much. The original idea was followed in a general way, but no pretense was made to cover all collectivist societies. The book was premised upon the current world and domestic situation, in those respects which indicate that collectivism is closing in upon the United States. The purpose of the book was (1) to show how easily we drift towards collectivism, and (2) to show that collectivism (de-

Economics

91

fined as state ownership or control of the means and materials of production) is not compatible with democracy (defined with primary reference to civil liberties). My original plan was to obtain bibliography in a series of formal conferences with members of the faculty, but I found after several of these that I was able to get what I wanted in less time and just as effectively by bringing up my subject in conversation in the University dining rooms. Suggestions came readily. I am particularly indebted to Clyde Kluckhohn for very concise and valuable references, as well as for kindly reading two of my chapters. These were my worst chapters and hardest to write because they went into fields like physical and social anthropology, biology, social psychology, etc., with which I was totally unacquainted. Talcott Parsons of the Sociology Department, George Wald of Biology, and Henry J. Cadbury, Librarian of the Divinity School, were especially helpful. O. H. Mowrer of the Psychology Department, was recommended to me by Dr. Kluckhohn in connection with cooperation. I am under the impression that this was the beginning of a chain of circumstances which led the Fellows collectively to have a seminar with Professor Mowrer and later, at his suggestion, to vi^it the Yale Institute of Human Relations, with which he was formerly connected. I estimate that I have written between 70,000 and 80,000 words. The manuscript is now in the hands of my agent in New York and, despite earlier assurances, it may never see print.* But whether or not it does, the work was fully worth while, and I only wish that I had had the foresight last September to use my whole year as I employed the last three months. For me, it is the most productive way to work. •Some of it became part of his book, The Bureaucrat, by Lippincott.

published in 1944

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The Nieman Fellows

Report

RUSSIAN AND ECONOMICS

Depeloping

a "First

ROBERT J .

Exposure"

MANNING*

I'VE DECIDED that the two principal factors which enhanced the value of the Fellowship for me were (1) my alleged youth, 25, and (2) my previous lack of any protracted exposure to higher learning. I started on the year's program with the feeling that here was a chance to compress into eight months a sizable portion of the studying and cogitating which I had missed by not attending college. How much I absorbed remains to be seen, but I believe it was considerable. I may have been a bit greedy in my attempt to take on as many courses as could be stuffed into a week's schedule, but I found it difficult to overdo and, by deciding early in the year which courses to audit and which to develop more extensively, I managed, I believe, to make the most of everything.

The major project in the first semester was Russian. This is an intensive, or, more exactly, semi-intensive, course which provides in two regular semesters two years' instruction in the Russian language. The first semester is more important and covers almost entirely the grammar and phonetics of the language. The second semester, which I did not attend regularly, follows through with extensive training in reading and speaking, with the accent on speaking. The class meets eight hours each week and overnight work, I found, requires at least a couple of hours. I discovered early that I could not profit greatly by merely auditing the course with my limited experience in linguistics. Professor Cross was very helpful in •Robert

J.

Manning

was

Washington

when he came to Harvard in 1 9 4 5 - 4 6 .

reporter

for

the

H e was twenty-six.

United No

Press college.

After finishing his Nieman year he returned to the United Press and was put in charge of their reporting from the United Nations.

93

Economics

getting me under way and my professor, Dr. L . I. Strakhovsky, devoted much attention to me, treating me in class as a regular student.

I recommend that Nieman Fellows who

study the language plan on taking the regular hour examinations and the final examination.

I found that this dis-

cipline was perhaps the greatest single reason for my acquisition of a firm foundation in Russian in one college semester. Most of my remaining time in the first semester went to economics. I had a problem at the outset, for my acquaintance with economics when I arrived was decidedly cursory.

I

checked the courses in elementary economics and they appeared to be just too elementary, so I gambled on a series of graduate courses, pointing more at attaining a working vocabulary in economics than any expert knowledge, and I think I won the gamble. I sat with Hansen and Williams regularly, taking Hansen's "Economic Analysis and Public Policy," and the Hansen-Williams seminar in Fiscal Policy.

I also took

Leontief's "Structure of the U . S. Economy" and sat in occasionally on Harris and Haberler's seminar in International Trade.

By learning as rapidly as possible the language used

by Hansen, Williams, and Leontief, I found these professors easy to understand and I received much profit from them. T h e International Trade seminar started at such a high level that I found myself bogged at the outset, but I should imagine that anyone with even an elementary knowledge of economics (which I lacked) would have little trouble with it. I feel that I learned from these courses the language of economists and, more importantly, how to look for the answers to economic questions which I encounter in my work. I also took Professor Schlesinger's "Social and Intellectual History of the United States" in the first semester and sacrificed it in the second semester only because I required those three hours per week for meetings with my Russian professor

94

The Nieman Fellows

Report

for the purposes of polishing the Russian I had studied in the first semester. Periodic attendance at Professor Fainsod's "Dictatorship and Bureaucracy"

and

several of

the Littauer

seminars

rounded out my first semester schedule. In the second half year I switched into several courses which had been unavailable in the first semester, chiefly T e d Spencer's courses on Shakespearean tragedies and modern British and American poetry.

Both courses were beautifully or-

ganized and excitingly presented by Spencer.

I also added

Perry Miller's survey course in American literature,

finding

Miller perhaps the most stimulating lecturer I have encountered at Harvard.

Closely dovetailed with Miller's course is

Henry Smith's seminar, "Sources of American Thought." My introduction to anthropology and to Carl Coon was shared by more Nieman Fellows than attended any other course during the year.

I found it extremely instructive and

followed Professor Coon through the whole year. As far as reading and homework were concerned, I did all of the work required in Russian (including the examinations), much of the reading required in the economics and anthropology courses, all of the reading in the literature courses.

Perhaps it will not sound quite so ambitious if I

point out that in most cases, I read chiefly what appealed to me.

In economics I passed over an appreciable part of the

reading lists. I think I have failed to mention five or six courses which I audited rather haphazardly, dropping in for occasional lectures. Otherwise I have tried to give a picture of my curricular program.

I think I found the extracurricular profit al-

most as great as the classroom profit.

Beyond the excellent

Nieman get-togethers and the other meetings which were

Economics

95

primarily Nieman occasions, Margaret and I spent countless fine evenings with faculty members. I must confess that I allowed my program during the year to slip away a bit from the original objective, that of concentration almost solely on diplomatic history and international economics. Almost all the economics I learned applies of course internationally as well as nationally. One reason for the trend away from the original prospectus was the amount of work I found necessary to keep up with the Russian. The second was my surrender to an intense and long-standing desire to absorb knowledge which I have always regretted missing—Shakespeare, poetry, and American literature in general. How much I enjoyed those courses! And how pleased I am that I spent my valuable Nieman time in pursuing them!

SPECIAL PROJECTS

FOR DEALING WITH BOSS CRUMP

Local Government in Tennessee NATHAN G. CALDWELL* EARLY

in the year at the suggestion o£ Professor Lambie I

began a study o£ local government in my own state of Tennessee.

Later on, this field was narrowed down, because of

a lack of time and lack of information available, to a study of the governments of about forty Tennessee municipalities.

At

the beginning it was my intention to prepare a series of profile studies of these Tennessee cities.

These were to be prepared

along the same general outline as those prepared by Professor Lambie and his associates for Massachusetts cities and towns. I sent letters seeking information to about eighty Tennessee city governments, but the replies were so sketchy and so completely lacking in a uniformity of questions answered that I abandoned this angle of approach to the problem.

It would

have been impossible to prepare any general set of profile studies from them. I decided on the advice of Professor Lambie to carry on this work from sets of statistical information collected by the Tennessee

Taxpayers

Association,

the

Tennessee

Authority, and the University of Tennessee.

Valley

Such additional

•Nathan G. Caldwell was a reporter on the Nashville Tennessean when he came to Harvard in 1940-41. He was twenty-eight and had had one' year at Southwestern University. At the end of his Nieman year he returned to the Tennessean and, after taking up their State political campaign, continued as political writer.

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97

information as was useful was to be culled from the individual reports of the Tennessee cities. I have continued along these lines, and spent most of my Christmas holidays collecting further material from the offices of the Taxpayers Association at Nashville and the T V A at Knoxville. I discovered that there was no responsible state agency in Tennessee making any effort to collect and study fiscal and administrative information from cities or counties of the state. T h u s there could be no informed general direction given by the state, if it had chosen to do so, for the conduct of local government. Such general legislation as there was appeared to be of the hit or miss variety, and usually had resulted in no measurable good. For this reason I decided to spend a considerable portion of my time remaining here in the collecting and arranging of the information available on Tennessee cities and towns. T h e purpose and use of this material, when I return to Tennessee, will be in the preparation of a series of articles and perhaps some pamphlets on local government in Tennessee. These would point out the evils or inefficiencies and be accompanied by other articles suggesting general improvements and state-wide legislation to provide these improvements. For that purpose and under the direction of Professor Lambie and his associate, Mr. Barber, I have made a sketchy study of the Massachusetts plan for state supervision of local government activities. I have persuaded my newspaper, the Tennessean, to undertake upon my return a campaign for local government reform and revision in Tennessee. The research department of T V A is making a rather complete study of the needs for reform in county government, and I am going to try on a smaller scale to get a picture of the needs for reform in city government. During the second half of the year I was forced to abandon

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The Nieman Fellows Report

temporarily my research project in Tennessee municipal government.

I used all of the financial statistics available from

the Tennessee Taxpayers Association, and when I exhausted these was unable to get any more reliable information.

How-

ever, I have the consent of my editor to spend a portion of my time for the next year studying firsthand local governments of about fifty Tennessee towns and cities. I expect to combine the results of my year's study in local government at Harvard, and the further research I will make in Tennessee, into a series of pamphlets.

These probably will be published under the

auspices of the Taxpayers Association or some other group. Professor Lambie's advice, suggestions, and direction have been of a most constructive and helpful nature throughout my work in the municipal government field. I found him to be thoroughly grounded in a practical knowledge of the field of local government.

Professor Lambie has stimulated in me

a desire to continue my study of municipal and county governments in my home state, after I leave Harvard. I have already charted out a plan of study that will consume a considerable portion of my spare time for two or three years. My other major effort during the first half of the year was a study of the regulatory and community improvement values of the T V A

program.

This was undertaken under the

direction of Professor Fainsod in connection with my reading in Government Regulation of Industry. During the first half year I attended the classes regularly and met the reading requirements in these two courses: Municipal Administration, Professor Lambie; Government Regulation of Industry, Professors Elliott and Fainsod. I also attended Professor Slichter's "Labor Problems and Labor Movements," with some regularity, and did about onehalf the reading required, and attended a number of sessions of Professor Slichter's seminar, "Economics of Collective Bar-

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gaining and Public Price Fixing," and Professor Lambie's "Administrative Process." I attended a few sessions of the following : Professor Wright's American Constitutional Development, International Economic Relations, Professors Haberler and Harris. T h e second semester I attended the following courses: History of the South, Professor Buck; Political Parties, Professor Fainsod.

I attended occasionally Professor Lambie's

seminar on " T h e Administrative Process," and Merriam's planning seminar.

Professor

I also visited two or three

times during the last half of the year most of the other Littauer seminars.

I also took advantage of the "History

of the South" course to begin some intensive reading in modern southern history.

This will naturally be of great use to

me, when I return to my newspaper, as much of my work will be devoted to writing of the Tennessee Valley Authority and other developments, which in themselves represent definite new trends in southern history. My reading in connection with the "Political Parties" course was directed toward a study of the functioning of the Democratic parties in the southeastern states.

I also made a

special study of the poll tax and its effects on the politics and the economy of the south. At the present, repeal of the poll tax in Tennessee and the south is the principal editorial objective of my newspaper. My work at Harvard should have prepared me for my job, which will consist partially of writing all the news stories connected with the paper's "anti-poll tax crusade." At the request of the southern Nieman Fellows and with the cooperation of another Nieman Fellow, George Chaplin, I organized a race relations conference with a group of Negro graduate students at Harvard.

We

met

every ten days during the second semester.

regularly

once

I acted as chair-

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The Nieman Fellows

Report

man of the group, which discussed possible steps that might be taken toward partial solutions of the race problem.

At

each meeting a Negro and a white member of the group prepared brief papers on the various phases of the race problem.

These were read and general discussions followed.

I delivered a lecture in the "History of the South" course on the Tennessee Valley Authority and the implications of its program for the new south.

This address was delivered

at the Dunster House staff dinner in May.

It consisted of a

comparison of the effects of a political dictatorship such as that of E d Crump in Tennessee and the effects of a program such as T V A ' s on the people of an area. During the second semester I also arranged for two forums on the Defense program at the request of the Men's Brotherhoods of the six Baptist churches in Worcester.

These were

round-table discussions in which I participated with four of the instructors in the Harvard government department. These forums were very successful, and we had several requests from church groups in surrounding New England towns to repeat them.

Unfortunately none of us had the time.

I also gave two lectures concerning public relations for public welfare agencies during the year at the New York School of Social Work, which is a department of Columbia University.

I made a talk on T V A to the Freshman Ameri-

can Civilization Council. I would like to say that, all in all, the personal conversations with the professors were by far more valuable to me than the attendance at scheduled lectures. My year generally was one of the most successful I've ever spent. I think that I have acquired an invaluable background for study and writing on southern problems, which was my primary objection in seeking a Nieman Fellowship.

101

special Projects A WRITING COURSE

A Historical Novel as a By-Product A. B. GUTHRIE, J R . *

IT HAS BEEN my good fortune to find at Harvard

three

complementary courses that constitute a highly illuminating approach to the problem of world peace, which is my special field of study.

T h e three are: International Organizations,

Herman Finer, International Law, Payson Wild, and International Economics, Philip D . Bradley. H a d I been authorized personally to formulate courses directed particularly to my own sphere of interest I could not have conceived a more satisfactory trio. Out of a secondary interest I have audited

Professor

Frederick Merk's Westward Movement in American History and have found it to be an unusual source of information on our national development. In addition to these classes I often have attended Professor Charles H . Mcllwain's History of Political Theory and the Hansen-Williams seminar. Fiscal Policy.

I should have

continued with both had time permitted, though the latter was sometimes difficult for me because of deficiencies

in

background studies. A t the outset of the term the committee approved a suggestion that I work on a western historical novel, counting it an unofficial but nonetheless actual course.

I have written

•A. B. Guthrie, Jr., graduate of the University of Montana, was city editor of the Lexington Leader when he came to Harvard in 1944-45 at the age of forty-three. After finishing his year as a Nieman Fellow he returned to his paper. He completed his novel. The Big which was published by William Sloane Associates in March 1947. He then left newspaper work to continue work as an author.

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The Nieman Fellows Report

about 60,000 words of it, and have gone over these opening chapters with Theodore Morrison, who had agreed to help me with criticism and suggestion. He has the happy faculty of being able both to criticize and encourage. I am pleased to have his assistance and reasonably well satisfied with my progress. In connection with my studies I have read Hayek's Road to Serfdom; Meyers' Elements of Economics; Brierly's Law of Nations; Briggs' Law of Nations; Welles' The Time for Decision; Sharp and Kirk's Contemporary International Politics, and selected chapters in numerous textbooks and references. Work on the novel has necessitated considerable research. Except for Chittenden's History of Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River and one volume of the Maximilian travels, however, I have read no books completely. If I have a suggestion about the Nieman program, it is only the expression of the possibility that most schedules are one-sided. Much time is devoted to reading, little to writing. I am not sure that this neglect of the tool of the craft is wise. Out of that doubt, a number of us, with the approval of the Curator, promoted the second-term English seminar that Theodore Morrison conducted. Eight of us enrolled in it; all of us got something out of it; some of us feel that we got a great deal. In addition, during the second term I attended and did part of the reading in two courses, Murdock's "American Literature from Emerson to the Present," and Wild's "American Foreign Policy since 1935," both of which I liked very much and recommend to future Nieman Fellows. Outside the curriculum I tried to go on with the study of economics that I undertook during the first term. I estimate that two-fifths of my historical novel is written

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103

and that the greater part of the research has been done. I hope to have the manuscript ready for the pubHshers by next June. In my files are nearly three thousand notes, taken from sixteen source books that I read in full, from other volumes dealing in part with my subject, and from old newspaper files at the headquarters of the Antiquarian Society at Worcester.

GENERAL

Browsing through the Catalogue CARY ROBERTSON* T H E COURSES I carried all year, or all term, included Coon's Anthropology 1, Allport's Social Psychology, Schlesinger's Social and Intellectual History of the United States, Leontief's Economic Theory, Mcllwain's Governmental Theory, Richards' Sources of Western Thought, Merk's History of the Westward Movement, Lewis' Ethics of the Social Order, Pound's Introduction to the History and System of AngloAmerican Law, Lindemann and Hincks' Psychiatric Problems of Children and Adults, White's Abnormal Psychology, and Wild's American Foreign Policy since 1935.

Some of these I entered after they had already started, some I interrupted at Christmas. I managed to hear from one to a dozen lectures by Sarton in History of Science; Fay and Salvemini in History; Bruening, Fainsod, Elliott, Holcombe, and Friedrich in Government; Williams, Hansen, •Gary Robertson was Sunday editor on the Louisville Courier-Journal when he became a Nieman Fellow in 1945-46. He was forty-three and had had three years at the University of Virginia. After completing his Nieman year he returned to the Sunday editorship of the Louisville CourierJournal.

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The Nieman Fellows

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Schumpeter, and Black in Economics; Hooton in Anthropology; Bruner and Mowrer in Psychology; Cobb and Bigelow in Psychiatry; Landis in Physiology; Jones in English; Whatmough in Comparative Philology; Williams in Philosophy; Zipf in his Psychology of Language Study; Opdycke in Fine Arts; Sorokin in Sociology; Davison, Merritt, Piston, Ballantine, and Woodworth in Music; and Frank in his course on the Philosophy of Physics.

I went to practically

all of the Harvard Conference on Public Issues luncheons and thought them one of the best courses in the University, even if they weren't considered one. T h e Nieman year offers so many opportunities in free access to Harvard courses, close association with the faculty, and dinners and seminars with distinguished outsiders that these things alone would be enough to make it the best year in one's life. Merely living in Cambridge means a lot to one from a smaller city than Boston—the museums, the concerts, the old houses, and the traditions and the inexhaustible number of people of an intellectual bent.

I was lucky enough to

find friends who took me around Beacon Hill on Christmas Eve and into a couple of houses there, and through a suddenly reawakened interest in chamber music I made more than fifty good friends, the greater part of whom turned out to be scientists and economists.

But more important was

the tried and true Nieman mechanism for getting on conversational terms with the faculty, both in and out of classrooms. I found the Faculty Club membership very agreeable and useful, and had lunch at the club most of the time, either taking a guest or making an acquaintance at one of the crowded tables. One of my musician friends ran the cyclotron at M I T and I visited M I T twice for classes and talks, but I felt sure I didn't do it justice.

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special Projects A PLANNED DIVERSITY

For Small Town

Editing

PAUL L. EVANS*

a good year—a year packed with exciting and

T H I S HAS BEEN

stimulating experiences.

I am sorry that it must end.

But

at the same time I am eager to get back to actual newspaper work again.

I fear that for me life at Harvard, with aca-

demic ease replacing the reality of deadlines, could become habit forming. In applying for a Nieman Fellowship I said I wanted the opportunity of a year at Harvard in order to become a better newspaperman.

Now, having enjoyed the privilege of

such a year, I hope and believe that objective has been realized.

However, the true test of the way I have spent the

year will come when I get back to work.

T h e real report on

my Nieman year will be written in my efforts as a newspaperman in the months and years ahead. T h i s report, therefore, may be a superficial accounting of what I have done, mixed with immediate, admittedly confused, and possibly unwarranted reactions to those activities. I am certain of only one thing: I am less certain of anything than I was a year ago.

Confusing and disturbing as

that sensation may be, I do not think it is bad.

In the

course of only a few years, an editorial writer unwittingly gets into certain ruts.

T h i s year has given me an oppor-

tunity to take a look at some of my pet ruts.

Perhaps I will

be less inclined to get back into them in the future. It seems to me that the benefits of a Nieman year can be •Paul L. Evans, graduate of Dakota Wesleyan University, was executive editor of the Mitchell (S.D.) Republic when he came to Harvard in 194647. He was thirty-two. After completing his Nieman year, he returned to the editorship of his South Dakota daily.

106

The Nieman Fellows

Report

divided, roughly, into three classifications—formal academic efforts, extracurricular activities, and personal

associations

and contacts—with so much overlapping that any sharp line of demarcation is almost impossible. Looking back now, it seems that my accomplishments in the academic field have been pitifully small. T h e only excuse I can offer is that there was so much to do, and so little time to do it. During the first term I attended three courses in which I did all, or most, of the required reading, as well as extra reading—Agricultural Economics, Nationalism in International Relations, and American Political Thought.

In addition

I attended two other classes regularly—International Politics, and the United States in World Politics, in which I did only part of the assigned reading. I found the graduate course in Agricultural Economics surprisingly elementary, and after completing the regular reading for the course went ahead on my own, with advice and suggestions from D r . John Black, doing reading on the postwar agricultural outlook and collecting data on the subject of agricultural income and industrial wage income. (Early in the year I thought I would be able to find a simple answer to the relationship between these two.

If there is such an

answer, however, it has eluded me.) Professor Wright's course in American Political Thought was one of the most stimulating, and it seems to me it may be the most valuable, of the courses I took. Nationalism in International Relations under Professor Emerson was a confusion-provoking course.

I did not know

at the time, and I am still uncertain, as to whether the subject was too complex or too simple for me to grasp.

How-

ever, it did introduce me to a phase of international relations

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107

of which I previously had been almost entirely ignorant. During the holidays I spent the better part of a week trying to set down some of my ideas on international affairs as a result of the course and other reading, but after finishmg a first draft of 10,000 words I put it away and went back to reading the "experts." I found Professor Poole's lectures on International Politics a valuable side light to the extra reading I was doing in international relations. Though I respect Professor Poole's background of experience and knowledge of the workings of world affairs, I must confess that I found myself constantly in direct conflict with his basic philosophy and concept of international relations. I believe attendance at his lectures was time well spent, largely, however, because it provided an insight into a viewpoint different from my own. Professor Wild's lectures on the United States in World Politics were an enjoyable breather. I found the course an interesting and well-presented review of a period which I lived through as a newspaperman, and which I followed closely and with interest at the time it was happening. When the second term opened I dropped the regular course in Agricultural Economics and instead attended the graduate seminar in that field. I found the seminar more interesting and informative than the class, particularly when Dr. Black spoke on current problems of agricultural policy, but was disappointed that so often the topics discussed dealt to such a great extent with the problems of New England agriculture. In the second term I also took another course under Professor Emerson—International Organization. This fitted in well with my interest in the subject and with previous reading, though because of previous work on the subject, part of

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The Nieman Fellows

Report

the course seemed very elemental. I do believe, however, that Professor Emerson did a very able job o£ teaching a course on a subject which is currently in such a state of flux. Because of an interest developed in Professor Poole as a typical old-line diplomat (or so he seemed to me) during his first term course, I started attending his second term lectures on the Conduct of Foreign Relations.

T o me, however,

the course was less interesting than his earlier lectures, and I attended the class irregularly. T h e toughest course, and the one on which Γ spent the most time during the spring term, was Economic Policy, under Professor Slichter.

Though, in my vague way, I am

more inclined to be a follower of the Hansen economic theory, as outlined in his writings, I found the course by Slichter interesting and thought-provoking.

I did not have ade-

quate academic background for the course, but by applying myself, digging into the readings, and doing some elemental review I managed to follow the lectures fairly well. As a mixture of history, economics, and a highly personalized philosophy I found Professor Usher's course in Economic History stimulating and informative. English F

under Professor Packard, a public-speaking

course, provided pleasant and I hope profitable relaxation during the spring term.

In addition to acquiring informa-

tion and experience in the organization and verbal presentation of material, I found the class an interesting laboratory of what I consider a cross section of Harvard undergraduate opinion.

I did not take the class with any idea of becoming

a polished public speaker, since I expect to continue using the written word as my major medium of expression.

I have,

however, long felt a need for improvement in my ability to express myself orally, and am satisfied I made some progress in that direction as a result of the course.

special Projects

109

Anyone looking over this lineup of courses might arrive at the conclusion that my selections were reached by stabbing blindly at the courses offered, since there was very little continuity or coherence in my course of study. If that is bad, however, I must admit that I planned it that way. Aside from a semi-concentration on international affairs, I jumped around like a flea sampling various portions of a dog. It would have been pleasant to take one specific field of study and concentrate my entire attention on it. I'm sure I would enjoy being an expert on some one subject, no matter how trivial it might be. However, I didn't feel I could afford to spend my Nieman year in such a way. I envy those Fellows who could afford to specialize because before coming to Harvard they had worked for a large enough organization or had a broad enough general background. As an editorial writer and editor of a small daily I could not afford the luxury of specializing. Perhaps a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But, if so, I am determined to be as dangerous in as many fields as possible. Both my courses and my reading were designed primarily to broaden my general background. Aside from the course reading I indulged in a hodgepodge variety of books during the year. Perhaps too planlessly I tried everything and anything which was recommended or seemed attractive, ranging from Charles H . Forte's Boo]{ of the Damned, to Scientists Against Time in the scientific field; from a rereading of The Federalist Papers to Arnall's The Shore Dimly Seen in politics; from the Yale Law Review's Symposium on International Organization to Culbertson's proposals on international affairs; from The Wayward Bus to Gentlemen's Agreement in the field of fiction, and so on into economics, philosophy, agricultural policy, etc.

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The Ήteman Fellows Report

It is a fact, for what it may be worth, books, and fewer newspapers, in the past year since I was graduated from college. read as many books in any one year as an

that I read more year than in any And I doubt if I undergraduate.

This diversity in courses and reading leads me directly into the second classification of the benefits of a Nieman year— extracurricular activities. Interesting and entertaining as they were, this does not refer to poker sessions. Rather I have in mind the Nieman seminars, dinners, the Harvard Conference, and other such informal sessions. These seminars, dinners, and conferences provided a constant source of new information for me. My evaluation of these meetings is indicated by the fact that I never permitted my academic schedule to interfere with my attendance at such affairs. There was always another class in economics, government, or agriculture, but when else could I hear Chester Bowles discuss price control, or join in probing the amazing mind of Harlow Shapley? Here again it may be that my reaction is conditioned by the geographic location of my newspaper activities. T o some of the Fellows from the metropolitan areas, the "big names" might be old stuff, but in the "sticks" the opportunity to hear nationally recognized authorities and to discuss current problems with them in person is sharply limited. A t this point both the academic courses and the extracurricular activities overlap with what I consider the third major benefit of a Nieman year—personal associations and contacts. Interesting and stimulating as the professors and VIP's were, however, I hasten to add that in no cases did the stimulation provided by those brief encounters compare with the long-range associations with the other Nieman Fellows. If I may exempt myself for a moment, I should like to say that I consider it amazing that the committee selected such a fine

111

special Projects group of Fellows.

I know if I had been given the opportu-

nity to select my own associates for a Nieman year I couldn't have done as well. I feel a debt of gratitude to all members of the Harvard faculty under whom I took courses, as well as to those who appeared at our seminars, or made time available for informal conferences.

It would be impossible to name them all, but

to me the friendly and generous attitude of busy faculty members toward the nonacademic interlopers from the fourth estate exemplifies the spirit of Harvard. T h e only major disappointment of my Nieman year was the necessity of living at Harvard, Massachusetts, and commuting daily the twenty-seven miles to Cambridge. But the one thing which made the daily commuting grind bearable was my good fortune in becoming acquainted with Professor George Kistiakowsky, and making the trip with him most of the time.

I value my friendship with him so highly that I

am sure I will have pleasant memories of commuting long after the inconvenience is forgotten. However, one recommendation which I should like to make is that future Nieman Fellows delay as long as possible before taking a house in the country. It is, to say the least> inconvenient, to be so far removed from the center of activities. I have no major suggestions to offer concerning Nieman activities.

I think the setup as it now stands is excellent.

I

hope nothing will be permitted to change the personal freedom of selection for each Nieman during his year of residence.

I believe any attempt further to standardize Nieman

activities, or to curb the individual freedom of the Fellows would be a mistake. It has been a memorable year.

If it doesn't make me a

better newspaperman I should have been a ditch digger.

CONCLUSION

HOW HAVE THEY STUCK TO THEIR LAST? AN

EDUCATIONAL

ENTERPRISE

is tested by its products. • An

additional test may properly be applied to the Nieman Foundation.

Under the terms of the bequest, a measure of its

success is inevitably the proportion of Fellows who stick to their journalistic last. Of 111 Fellows who completed Fellowships up to June 1947, 76 returned from Harvard to the papers from which they came, 24 went to other positions in journalism; 11 left journalism.

These last all went initially into war emergency

positions in O W I , Red Cross blood bank, housing administration, or military government. T h e tenth year of the Fellowships finds 43 of the first 111 Fellows still employed by the papers from which they were appointed, 41 in other positions in journalism, 25 outside journalism. John Terry was killed as a war correspondent on Leyte, and Robert Dickson died in 1947. Of the 25 who have left journalism, 15 left in the first instance for military or other war service.

Six have continued

in government, eight are in public relations, six in education, teaching journalism, two in advertising.

One of the women

left her job to marry, and is now a college teacher of journalism. Three are writing books instead of the news. T h e score at the end of nine years then is that just less than half of the Fellows have stayed with the papers from which they were appointed, nearly four-fifths have stayed in journalism.

T h e 11 Fellows of the tenth group are still on their

Fellowships.

115

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The Ν teman Fellows

Report

Those who have left journalism have in almost every case found better jobs in allied fields. The larger number who have shifted to other positions within journalism have also found better jobs. In the nature of things these selected young men were going to find better jobs where they were, or somewhere else. The most marked factor in change of employment was war service. The war interrupted the continuity of employment of 33 Fellows. Eighteen were in military service, 15 in war emergency employment. Very few of these men returned to the same positions they left. Of the 24 Fellows in the two groups since the war only three have left journalism and 17 are with the same employer as before their Fellowships. Government has as much right to draw to itself serviceable journalists as lawyers, and the Nieman Foundation need no more apologize for the fact that the adviser to the occupation army on German newspapers is a Nieman Fellow than does the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that its veteran Washington correspondent, Charles Ross, is secretary to the President. Solely because of the very specific terms of the Nieman gift, the Foundation would feel concern if any large part of its Fellows turned from newspaper work to public relations, advertising, the teaching of journalism, or other allied fields, even though, as often happens, these fields outbid newspaper salaries. A number of universities have sought Nieman Fellows to teach journalism or direct their journalism schools, and two have accepted positions on the Harvard staff. It is a very strict accounting that scores the professor of journalism and the Curator of the Nieman Fellowships as "outside journalism," but they have to be recorded as having left active newspaper work. Often the newspaperman who sticks to his last resists higher-paid ofiers for the love of the newspaper job. That is

How

Have

They Stuc\

to Their Last?

117

the kind o£ newspapermen the N i e m a n Committee seeks in its selection for Fellowships and hopes to appoint. 1946-47 g r o u p every one returned

0 £ the

to the employer

who

granted him leave o£ absence for his Fellowship. T h e 1947-48 Fellows were asked to supply statements, before their appointment, of their intention to return to their papers.

T h e Foundation does not intend that the leave of

absence shall be construed as a one-way street.

T h e support

a paper gives a candidate is a major factor in selection, on the assumption that a strong endorsement by an employer indicates a relationship likely to lead to the Fellow's return to his paper. T H E METROPOLITAN TREND T h e movement of N i e m a n fellows within

these

nine

years has shown a mild metropolitan trend, such as has been a characteristic of the American society generally, though less marked than a m o n g other selected groups of able young men —much less marked than a m o n g Rhodes scholars for instance. T h e movement from smaller papers and rural areas to the metropolitan press has not been of such proportions as to discourage the N i e m a n Committee from continuing to seek to have the smaller paper and remoter areas represented in Fellowship awards. Of 25 Fellows appointed from the South, seven had left the South by 1947. One had moved into the South, leaving a net movement out of the region of six in 25. T w o f r o m the South are Washington correspondents, one is in N e w York, one is in California, one is in Massachusetts, two are in Ohio. Twenty-four

were appointed

from the West

and

ten

had moved out of the West by 1947, mainly to N e w York and Washington, but one went to Chicago and one to Miami.

T w o others moved into the West, besides two in

118

The Nteman Fellows Report

Washington who transferred to the office there of a San Francisco paper. Seventy-seven were appointed from 17 metropolitan cities (including West and South), and in 1947 those employed in metropolitan centers still number 76, but to this should be added the seven in foreign service for metropolitan publications. The number in Washington increased from 10 to 11, in New York from 20 to 25, in Chicago from two to four. The total movement, however, was greater from metropolitan papers than from regional papers, which suggests that the factors in shifts of employment are individual. Twenty men were appointed from quite small papers, eight of them weeklies. Eight left those papers, but four others entered the small paper field from large cities, leaving a net shift of four out of 20 from the smallest papers. The percentage of change was much larger in the metropolitan field. Of the 77 appointed from big city journalism, 29 had changed employment. A considerable factor in the movement occurred in the press services. Of 17 Fellows appointed from Associated Press and United Press, 10 had turned to newspaper, radio, or magazine work. Some of the shifts in employment are explained by the rise of two new newspapers and two magazines which sought staff recruitment among Nieman Fellows, and the tendency of the news magazines in several years to recruit Nieman Fellows at substantial salary differentials over newspaper levels. Individual ambition for Washington or foreign service led to some of the changes. Many were the inevitable results of individual growth and recognition. SOME WHO MOVED

A member of the New Yor^ Times staff was appointed editor of the Boston Herald. A reporter on the Cleveland

How Have They Stuc\

to Their Last?

119

Press was appointed managing editor of the Dayton News. A press association reporter was appointed Far Eastern correspondent for Collier's Magazine. A science writer on a Philadelphia paper became science editor of the Saturday Evening Post. A small town Texas editor becamc a Washington correspondent. A reporter in Piedmont, South Carolina, is now editor of the Arkansas Gazette. A Seattle news editor joined Time Magazine where he has become a senior editor. A Washington editorial writer bought a newspaper in New Hampshire. SOME WHO STAYED

The men who changed employment can be matched by the men who have found satisfactory opportunity for growth within the organizations from which they came to Harvard. From a large number of such cases, these are examples: A labor reporter in Chicago has become a Washington correspondent of his paper. A United Press bureau manager in Minnesota after service as a war correspondent has become the foreign editor of United Press in New York. Two editorial writers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch are still writing editorials there and have been joined by a Nieman Fellow from Des Moines. All three Nieman Fellows from the Louisville Courier-Journal have found it to their advantage to continue their development on that paper. A former news reporter on the Minneapolis Star-Journal has become editorial writer on that paper. The Sunday editor of the Portland Oregonian returned as assistant managing editor. The sports editor of the Boston Globe returned as night editor. A reporter on the Detroit Free Press, returning, won his paper a Pulitzer Prize two years later. A war correspondent of the United Press returned as foreign correspondent with a roving assignment.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Employment and Location of Nieman Fellows in the First Nine Groups Situation John McL. Clark Irving Dilliard Edwin W . Fuller, Jr.

Frank S. Hopkins Edwin A. Lahey H. Herbert Lyons, Jr. Louis M. Lyons Edwin J. Paxton, Jr. Thomas O. Zuber

at Appointment 1938-39

Situation

April 1, 1948

Editorial writer, Washington Publisher, Claremont (N.H.) Post Daily Eagle Editorial writer, St. Louis Post- Editorial writer, St. LouisDispatch Post Dispatch Reporter, Boston Herald Public Relations, Bell Telephone Laboratories, New York City Government—State DepartReporter, Baltimore Sun ment Labor reporter, Chicago Daily Washington correspondent, News Chicago Daily News Reporter, Mobile Press Register, Sunday Dept., New Уог\ Ala. Times Reporter. Boston Globe Curator, Nieman Foundation, Cambridge Associate editor, Paducah Sun- Director, radio station Democrat, Ky. WKBY, Paducah, Ky. Editorial writer, Birmingham On Rosenwald Fellowship, News, Ala. Birmingham, Ala. 1939-40

J. Edward Allen

Reporter, Boston Herald

Oscar J. Buttedahl

Editor the Leader, Bismarck, N. D. Editor-publisher, Delta Democrat-Times, Greenville, Miss. Bureau Manager, United Press, Minneapolis, Minn. Reporter, Baltimore Evening Sun Foreign correspondent, United Press, Washington, D. C. Editorial writer, Montgomery Advertiser, Ala.

W . Hodding Carter William B. Dickinson Stephen E. Fitzgerald Weldon B. James Carroll Kilpatrick

120

Chief, Information Section, Int. Labor Off., Montreal Publisher, Meridian (Ida.) Times Editor-publisher, Delta Democrat-Times. Foreign editor, UP, New York City Public relations counsel. New York City Foreign correspondent, Collier's Washington correspondent San Francisco Chronicle

Where Are They Glenn С. Nixon

Steven M. Spencer Volta W . Torrey William P. Vogel, Jr. Edward A. Wyatt, IV

Reporter, News

The

Now?

121

States Public Relations, Automobile Manufacturers Association, Detroit Saturday Science writer, The Philadel- Associate editor, phia Evening Bulletin Evening Post Popular Feature editor. Associated Press, Managing editor. Science, New York City N. Y . Reporter, New York^ Herald Free lance; Silvermine Ave., Norwalk, Conn. Tribune Progress-Index Editor, Progress-Index, Peters- Editor, burg, Va. United

1940-41 Nathan G. Caldwell

Reporter, Nashville,

George Chaplin

City editor, Greenville Piedmont Political writer. New Times Feature writer. New York.

John H . Crider Harry M. Davis Charles Edmundson Arthur D. Eggleston R. Vance Johnson

Alexander Kendrick Lowell M. Limpus William J. Miller Harry T . Montgomery William M. Pinkerton Boyd T . Simmons Ralph J. Werner

Associate Editor, Nashville Tennessean (S.C.) Managing editor, San Diego Journal Herald York, Editor, Boston

Tennessean

Times

Science editor, Newsweek, New York City Editorial writer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Newspaper consultant, AMG, Germany Washington correspondent, San Francisco Chronicle

Editorial writer, St. Louis PostDispatch Labor editor, San Francisco Chronicle Managing editor, Globe-News Publishing Co., Amarillo, Texas. Reporter, Philadelphia inquirer Foreign correspondent, CBS Special correspondent. New Special correspondent. New York Daily News York Daily News News editor. Time, Inc., Reporter, Cleveland Press New York City Cable editor. Associated Press, Business editor, AP, New New York City York City Reporter, Associated Press, News director. Harvard UniWashington, D. C. versity, Cambridge Labor reporter, Detroit News Reporter, Detroit News Assistant financial editor, Mil- Public relations, Milwaukee, waukee Journal Wisconsin 1941-42

Charles S. Allen Harry S. Ashmore B. Donald Burke

Reporter, New Haven Register Reporter, Greenville News Photo editor. Life

Evening (S.

C.)

Public relations director, AMVETS Editor, Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, Ark. Foreign correspondent. Ufe, New York City

122

The Nieman Fellows

James E. Colvin

Rewriter, Chicago Daily

Sanford L. Cooper Neil О. Davis Robert E. Dickson Donald S. Grant Henning Heidt Everett R. Holies Victor O. Jones Robert Lasch Edward M. Miller Thomas Sancton Kenneth Stewart

Millard C. Browne

James M. Daniel, III

John F. Day, Jr. Edward J. Donohoe Robert C. Elliott James P. Ethridge, Jr. Thomas H. Griffith Ernest M. Hill Frank K. Kelly

Report

News Public relations director, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, 111. News editor, Time, Inc., Copy editor, Pittsburgh Press Washington, D. C. Editor, Lee County Bulletin, Editor-publisher, Lee County Auburn, Ala. Bulletin Copy editor. New Yori{ World- Deceased (December, 1947) Telegram Reporter, Des Moines Register Editorial staff, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reporter, the Journal, Jackson- Reporter, Miami Herald, ville, Fla. Miami, Florida Reporter, United Press, New News analyst, CBS, Chicago York Night editor, Boston Globe Sports editor, Boston Globe Editorial writer, Omaha World- Chief editorial writer, Chicago Sun Herald Sunday editor, the Oregonian, Assistant managing editor, the Oregonian Portland, Ore. Reporter, Associated Press, New Editorial writer, the Advertiser, Pascagoula, Miss. York City National editor, PM, Brooklyn, Professor of Journalism at New York University N. Y. 1942-43 Editorial writer, Sacramento Editorial writer, Buffalo Union, Sacramento, CaUf. Evening News, Buffalo, N. Y. Reporter, Washington Daily Scripps-Howard Newspaper News Alliance, Washington, D. C. Reporter, Associated Press, Hunt- Managing editor, Dayton ington, W. Va. Daily News, Dayton, Ohio Reporter, Scranton Times, Pa. Reporter, Scranton Times, Pa. Reporter, San Francisco News, Executive assistant, Henry J. San Francisco Chronicle Kaiser, New York City Reporter, Tampa Daily Times, Public relations, Tampa, Fla. Tampa, Fla. Asst. city editor, Seattle Times, Senior editor, Time, Inc., Seattle, Wash. New York City Reporter, United Press, Okla- Foreign correspondent, Chihoma City, Okla. cago Daily News Reporter, Associated Press, New Free lance. New York City York City

Where Are They Erwin W . Kieckhefer Kenneth F. McCormick Arthur B. Musgrave

Fred W . Neal

Robert Okin

Oren M. Stephens William A. Townes

Now?

123

Farm reporter, Minneapolis Star- Editorial writer, Minneapolis Journal, Minneapolis, Minn. Star-Journal Reporter, Detroit Free Preis, Reporter, Detroit Free Press Detroit, Mich. Copy editor, Houston Post, Professor of journalism, Houston, Texas Massachusetts State College Reporter, Wall Street Journal, Coordinator of Public RelaWashington, D. C. tions, State Dept. of Education, New York Foreign correspondent, Asso- Political Officer, U.N. Commission on the Balkans, ciated Press, New York City Salonika, Greece Sunday editor, Arkansas Demo- Editor, Santa Rosa (Calif.) crat, Little Rock, Ark. Republican manager, Santa Reporter, Cleveland Press, Cleve- General Rosa (Calif.) Press Demoland, Ohio crat 1943-44

Theodore Andrica Lawrence A. Fernsworth Paul J. Hughes

Charles S. Jennings Robert Lasseter Frederick W . Maguire

Jacob S. Qualey John B. Terry

John W . Shively

Leigh White

Herbert C. Yahraes

Nationalities editor, Cleveland Nationalities editor, ClevePress, Cleveland, Ohio land Press Copy editor, Netv Уог\ Daily Copy editor. New York, News Daily News Reporter Louisville Times, Feature writer, Louisville Louisville, Ky. Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky. Copy editor, Chicago Daily Government — State Dept., News, Chicago, 111. London Editor, Rutherford Courier, Mur- Editor, Rtitherjord Courier freesboro, T e n n . Editor, Lowell Sunday Tele- Assistant professor of Jourgram, Lowell, Mass. nalism, Michigan State College Reporter, Minneapolis Star-Jour- Reporter, Minneapolis Times nal, Minneapolis, Minn. Washington correspondent, Killed on Leyte as war corHonolulu Star-Bulletin respondent, Chicago Daily News Reporter, Kansas City Star-Bul- Government — National letin, Kansas City, Mo. Housing Administration, Washington, D. C. News analyst, Columbia Broad- Foreign correspondent, Chicasting System, Washington, cago Daily News D. C. Feature writer, PM, Brooklyn, Free lance, Stanfordville, N. N. Y. Y.

124

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Robert Bordner

Reporter, Cleveland Press, Cleveland, Ohio Reporter, Dallas News, Dallas, Texas Feature writer, Boston Globe Reporter, Louisville CourierJournal, Louisville, Ky. News editor, Time, Inc., New York City City editor, Lexington Leader, Lexington, Ky.

1944-45

David E. Botter, Jr. William H . Clark Edward Edstrom Kendall Foss A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

Ben Holstrom Nathan Robertson Charles A. Wagner Houstoun Waring

Reporter, Minneapolis Star-Journal, Minneapolis, Minn. Washington correspondent, FM, Brooklyn, N. Y. Sunday editor, New Yor^ Mirror Editor, Littleton Independent, Littleton, Col.

Reporter, Cleveland

Press

Washington correspondent, Dallas News Editor, Horticulture Reporter, Louisville CourierJournal Foreign correspondent, Berlin, New York Post Author; professor o£ English University of Kentucky Advertising, McCann-Erickson. Inc., Chicago Washington free lance political writer Sunday editor, New York Mirror Editor, Littleton Independent

1945-46 James Batal Charlotte L. Fitzhenry

Arthur W . Hepner Frank W. Hewlett Mary Ellen Leary Robert J. Manning Cary Robertson Richard E. Stockwell Leon Svirsky Ben Yablonky

Editor, Cleghorn Courier, Fitch- Editor, Arab Institute, N. Y. burg, Mass. City Reporter, Associated Press, Chi- Writer and journalism incago, 111. structor, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa Labor reporter, St. Louis Post- News analyst, CBS, New Dispatch York War correspondent. United Press Editorial staff, World Report Political reporter, San Francisco Political editor, San FranNews cisco News Reporter, United Press, Wash- Reporter at U.N., United ington Press Sunday editor, Louisville Cour- Sunday editor, Louisville ier-Journal, Kentucky Courier-Journal News analyst, WCCO, Minnea- Editorial writer, Minneapolis polis Star-journal Science editor. Time, Inc. Associate editor. Scientific American Reporter, PM, New York Assistant professor of Journalism, New York University

Where Are They

Now?

125

1946-47 Francis E. Carey

Henry H. Hornsby

Science writer, Associated Press, Washington, D. C. Executive editor, Daily Republic, Mitchell, S. D. Labor Reporter, San Francisco, Chronicle Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle Reporter, Lexington Leader, Ky.

Richard E. Lauterbach

War correspondent.

Ernest H. Linford

Editor, Republican-Boomerang, Laramie, Wyo. Editor, editorial page, Miafni Daily News, Fla. War Correspondent, United Press City Editor, Louisville Defender, Ky. War Correspondent, United Press Copy desk editor, Philadelphia Copy desk editor, PhiladelInquirer, Pa. phia Inquirer PressReporter, Memphis-Press-Scimi- Reporter, Memphis Scimitar, Tenn. tar, Tenn. Staff writer, Newsweek., Wash- Information Officer, United States Mission to U.N. ington, D. C.

Paul L. Evans Stephen M. Fisher Jack Foisie

Francis P. Locke William H. McDougall Fletcher P. Martin Robert C. Miller Jay G. Odell, Jr. Clark Porteous Gilbert W. Stewart, Jr.

Life

Science writer, Associated Press, Washington, D. C. Executive editor. Daily Republic, Mitchell, S. D. Labor reporter, San Francisco Chronicle Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle Reporter, Lexington Leader, Ky. Editor, '48, The Magazine of the У ear Editorial writer. Salt Lai^e City Tribune Associate editor. Daily News, Dayton, Ohio Correspondent UP (on leave) City editor, Louisville Defender Foreign correspondent, UP

The Nieman Fellowships for the college year 1947-48 are held by the following: Charles W . Gilmore, Associated Press reporter, Atlanta, Georgia; Robert W . Glasgow, reporter, Neuj Yor\ Herald Tribune; Lester H . Grant, science reporter, Netv Yor\ Herald Tribune; Rebecca F . Gross, editor, Loc\ Haven (Pa.) Express; Carl W . Larsen, rewrite man, Chicago Times; Justin G. McCarthy, Jr., reporter, Chicago Sun; Walter G. Rundle, China manager, United

126

The Nieman Fellows

Report

Press; Lois Sager, reporter, Dallas News; Robert M. Shaplen, chief, Shanghai Bureau, Newsweef^; Walter H. Waggoner, political writer, Washington Bureau, New Yor\ Times; George Weiler, foreign correspondent, Chicago Daily News.

BOOKS, AWARDS, ARTICLES

(Outside their regular journalistic writing) THEODORE

ANDRICA

Editor of the New Pioneer (published by the Cultural Association for Americans of Roumanian Descent) Articles in Coronet JAMES

BATAL

Co-author, chapter on the Near East in Most of the World, edited by Ralph Linton (Columbia University Press, April 1947) DAVID

BOTTER

Articles: "Labor Looks at Texas," Southwest Review, winter, 1946; "Psychosis Down South," Southwest Review, autumn, 1947 Pamphlets: Labor for the Layman, Dallas News, 1945; Operation Dallas, Dallas News, 1946 NATHAN

G.

CALDWELL

Reports on Tennessee State and Local Government (pamphlets) 1942; Reports on Mechanization of the South (Tennessean and other newspapers). From work on a Rosenwald Fellowship, 1946 HOODING

CARTER

Books: flood Crest (Rinehart & Company, 1947); The Winds of Fear (Farrar & Rinehart, 1944); Lower Mississippi, River Series (Farrar & Rinehart, 1942); Civilian Defense in the United States (1942) Guggenheim Fellowship, 1945, for historical novel Southern Writers Award for The Winds of Fear Pulitzer Prize, 1946, for newspaper editorials on race issue Honorary degree M.A., Harvard, 1947 Honorary degree Litt. D., Bowdoin, 1947 WILLIAM

CLARK

Books: History of Massachusetts (4 Vols., Historical Society of New York, 1935); History of the American Merchant Marine (L. C. Page Company, 1936); Railroads and Rivers: History of inland Transportation (L. C. Page Company, 1938); History of Philadelphia (American Historical Society of New York, 1941); History of American Agriculture (L. C. Page Company, 1946)

127

128

The Nieman Fellows Report JOHN

CRIDER

Book: TAe Bureaucrat (J. B. Lippincott Co., 1944) Articles: "It's Your Money, Brother," Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 26, 1944; in Survey Graphic, Nation's Business, North American Review, Scientific American, Women's Home Companion, Geographic Magazine of London, England Member of Pulitzer Awards Committee, 1947 NEIL

DAVIS

His Lee County Bulletin took first honors in Alabama Press Association contest "general excellence" four years out of six since his fellowship. President of Alabama Press Association 1947 HARRY

M.

DAVIS

Science articles, New York. Times Magazine, Newsweek, Book: Energy Unlimited (Murray Hill Books, 1948) JOHN

Book: Bloody

Ground

F.

DAY,

etc.

JR.

(Doubleday, Doran Co., 1941) WILLIAM

B.

DICKINSON

Article: "The Truth About MacArthur," Pic, March 1948 IRVING

DILLIARD

Articles: "What is the Middle West Thinking," New Republic, Dec. 23, 1940; "Can the Republicans Win," New Republic, Sept. 7, 1942; "Big Stakes in Illinois," New Republic, Oct. 5, 1942; "GOP Prepares for the Kill," New Republic, Dec. 21, 1942; "How J. P. Ran A Newspaper," Nieman Reports, April 1947 In Dictionary of American Biography: numerous biographies Editor, Joseph Pulitzer Centennial issue, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 6, 1947 EDWARD

J,

DONOHOE

American Newspaper Guild Award, 1948, for reporting of milk drivers strike in Scranton Times, November 1947 CHARLES

EDMUNDSON

Articles: "What We Learned in New Guinea," Fortune, June 1943; "Surgery Under Fire," Fortune, July 1943; "Sniping, A Japanese Art," Fortune, December 1943 EDWARD

EDSTROM

Story: "The Hawk and the Pigeon," Nieman ROBERT

C.

Reports,

February 1947

ELLIOTT

"Oscar" of San Francisco Manufacturers and Wholesalers Association for 1946 for "newswriter most instrumental in promoting industrial expansion of the West"

Boo]{^s, Awards, Articles LAWRENCE

129

FERNSWORTH

Book: Dictators and Democrats (Robert M. McBride & Co., 1941) Numerous articles in periodicals, including Foreign Affairs, New Republic, Nation, National Geographic, Current History, Nature, The Economist (England), New Statesman (England), Fortnightly (England) JACK

FOISIE

Articles in New York. Times Sunday Magazine and Saturday Evening A.

B.

GUTHRIE,

Pott

JR.

Book: The Big Sky (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1947) Short Stories Poem in Atlantic Monthly, January 1947 HENNING

HELDT

Miami chapter in Our Fair City (Vanguard Press, 1947) FRANK

W.

HEWLETT

Articles in Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, World Report FRANK

S.

HOPKINS

"Quest for Wisdom," Harper's, February 1940; "Training Foreign Service Clerical Employees," Foreign Service Journal, 1945; "Improving the Administrative Efficiency of the Department of State," Foreign Service Journal, 1946; "Improving Service Training of Foreign Service Officers," Foreign Service Journal, 1946 WELDON

JAMES

Articles in Saturday Evening Post, Collier's V A N C E JOHNSON

Book: Heaven's Tableland (The Dust Bowl) (Farrar, Straus, October 1947) FRANK

KELLY

First prize story in Crowell Publishing Company story contest 1946; Saturday Review of Literature criticism "America's No. 1 Suburbanite," Better Homes and Gardens, November 1947 ALEXANDER

KENDRICK

Article: "On Reporting from Moscow," Guild Reporter, October 1945 ERWIN W .

KIECKHEFER

Wallace's Farmer $500 Award, 1948, for best editorial of 1947 interpreting farmer to city readers CARROLL

KILPATRICK

Political Articles in New Republic Article: "Washington Merry-Go-Round," '48, The Magazine of the March 1948

Year,

130

The Nieman Fellows EDWIN

A.

Report

LAHEY

Labor and political artici« in New Republic, including: "Phil Murray, Organization Man," New Republic, January 12, 1942; "What's Ahead for American Labor," New Republic, July 26, 1943; "Is Pegler Right?" New Republic, September 20, 1943; "Bedaux and His Friends," New Republic, March 6, 1944; "Mayor Lausche of Cleveland," New Republic. July 31, 1944; "CIO Comes of Age," New Republic, December 4, 1944 ROBERT

LASCH

Book: Breaking the Building Blockade (University of Chicago Press, 1946) Article: "Chicago Pamot," Atlantic Monthly, June 1943 Winner Atlantic Monthly flOOO Prize article: "For a Free Press," July 1947 ROBERT

LASSETER

Article: "No Other Allegiance," Nieman Reports, July 1947 RICHARD

E.

LAUTERBACH

Books: These Are The Russians, Harper & Brothers, 1946; Through Russia's Backdoor (Harper & Brothers, 1947); Danger from the East (Harper & Brodiers, 1947) Article: "The Emperor's Slipper," Nieman Reports, April 1947 LOWELL

LIMPUS

Books: This Man LaGuardia (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1938); Honest Cop (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1939); Twentieth Century Warfare (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1940); History of the New York Pire Department (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1940); History of the New York Department (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1941); How the Army Fights (D. Appleton-Century Co., 1943) Articles in Forum, Infantry Journal, American Spectator, Liberty, Army & Navy fournal, etc. Order of Merit by Government of Ecuador for military articles ERNEST

H.

LINFORD

Article: "Crusading in a Small Town, "Nieman HERBERT

H.

Reports, February 1947

LYONS

Articles and criticism in the New Republic, 1940-1942 LOUIS M .

LYONS

"Boston: A Study in Inertia," chapter in Our Fair City, Vanguard Press, 1947 Articles: "A Free and Responsible Press," Nieman Reports, April 1947; "The Reader Also Has Rights," Atlantic Monthly, May 1947; "The Press and Its Critics," Atlantic Monthly, July 1947; "The Reading of Nieman Fellows at Harvard," Harvard Library Bulletin, Winter, 1948.

Boo\s, Awards, Articles FLETCHER

Story: "Burial Detail," Nieman

MARTIK

Reports,

WILLIAM

H.

131

July 1947

MCDOUGALL,

JR.

Article: "Scoops by Carrier Pigeons," Nieman Reports, July 1947 Book: Six Bells Off Java (Charles Scribner's Sons, April 1948) GLENN

NIXON

Book: American Prepares jar Tomorrow (Harper & Brothers, 1941) Article: "Science and the Battle of the Atlantic," Уа1е Review, summer, 1946 ROBERT

OKIN

"Spain in the Post-War World," Foreign WILLIAM

M.

Policy

Reports,

August 1, 1947

PINKERTON

"The Newspaperman" Series in Nieman Reports, 1947 "The Lamont Library," Harvard Alumni Bulletin, May 24, 1947 CLARK

Book: South 1948)

Wind Blows,

a novel

PORTEOUS

(New York, Current Books, Inc., May

THOMAS

SANCTION

"The South Looks at the North," American Scholar, 1943; "Reading and Cogitating," Harvard Alumni Bulletin, January 25, 1947 Editor: Survey-Graphic issue on "Segregation," January 1947 Short stories: Harper's. STEVEN

SPENCER

Medical articles in Science Yearboo/{ o£ 1946 Medical and scientific articles in Saturday Evening Post, 1945-1948 Westinghouse Science Writers Award ($1000) for best magazine article on science: "New Hope for the Anemic," Saturday Evening Post, December 14, 1946 OREN

STEPHENS

United States Army Award for Meritorious Civilian Service for work in psychological warfare with India-Burma Headquarters and as liaison officer with Southeast Asia command KENNETH

N.

STEWART

Book: News is What We Make It (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943) Article: "Mr. Pulitzer's Tarnished Prizes," '48, The Magazine of the Year, AprU 1948 WILLIAM

A.

TOWNES

Article: "I've Always Wanted My Own Newspaper," February 1947

Nieman

Reports,

132

The Nietnan Fellows Report WILLIAM

Articles in Fortune,

VOGEL

1942-1945 CHARLES A .

WAGNER

Books of verse; reviews and poetry in Coronet, The Nation, Poetry, can Mercury, The Commonweal HousTouN

Amen-

WARING

Article: "Decency for Denver: Palmer Hoyt's first year at the Denver Post." Nieman Reports, April 1947 Articles in Colorado Editor, Publisher Auxiliary, Pacific Printer Author of Code of Ethics, adopted by Colorado Press Association Awarded Parkhurst Trophy for greatest community service of Colorado weekly newspaper (eight awards in fourteen years) LEIGH

WHITE

Book: The Long Balkan Night (Charies Scribner's Sons, 1944) Articles in Saturday Evening Post, etc. EDWARD

A.

WYATT,

IV

Historical articles in the Commonwealth, Tyler's Quarterly Historical, William and Mary College Quarterly, Historical Magazine Pamphlets: Southern Sketches on Charles Campbell and John Daly Burk HERBERT

C.

YAHRAES

Public Affairs Pamphlets: No. 98, "Epilepsy—The Ghost Is Out of the Closet"; No. 118, "Alcholism is a Sickness"; No. 126, "Rheumatic Fever: Childhood's Enemy"; No. 133, "Make Your Town Safe" THOMAS

N.

ZUBER

Rosenwald fellowship 1947—for book on Southern politicians These fellows Holiday (Harvard James E. Colvin, Donald S. Grant, Sancton, Kenneth

of 1941-42 are authors of the essays in Newsmen's University Press, 1942); Charles S. Allen, B. Donald Burke, Sanford L. Cooper, Neil O. Davis, Robert E. Dickson, Henning Heidt, Victor О. Jones, Robert Lasdh, Thomas N. Stewart.

These fellows of 1945-46 are joint authors of Your Newspaper (The MacMillan Company, 1947): James Batal, Charlotte L. FitzHenry, Arthur W. Hepner, Frank W. Hewlett, Mary Ellen Leary, Gary Robertson, Leon Svirsky, Ben Yablonky.

TERMS OF A NIEMAN FELLOWSHIP

L U C I U S W . N I E M A N F E L L O W S H I P S at Harvard were founded in 1937 by a bequest from Mrs. Agnes Wahl Nieman in memory of her husband, "to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States and educate persons deemed specially qualified for journalism." Lucius Nieman, 1857-1935, was founder and publisher of the Milwaukee Journal. The Fellowships offer a year of resident study at Harvard University. THE

The fellowships are offered to working journalists of at least three years' experience in such employment. Radio and news magazine and other journalistic writers are eligible. Fellowships are open to both men and women. The whole field of instruction at Harvard is open to Nieman Fellows. They may take courses in any department or school of the University. No technical courses designated as courses in journalism are given at Harvard, nor are special courses of study established for Fellows. The purpose of the Fellowships is not to give technical training in journalism but rather to enable the Fellows to increase their competence in subjects with which they have to deal as writers or editors. There are no specific requirements as to the formal education of applicants. The Fellows carry stipends individually adjusted so that, in most cases, they are equivalent to the newspaper salary relinquished during the period of study. Fellows will ordinarily be expected to devote a full academic year to study at the University. Fellows will not be permitted 133

134

The Nieman Fellows Report

to engage in the practice of journalism during their period of study. Fellows are not registered as candidates for any degree. They are urged to consider their opportunities at Harvard more broadly and less formally than in terms of courses as described in the Catalogue. The lectures selected and classes attended should be conceived merely as contributory to an individual plan of work in which lectures, seminars, private reading, informal discussion with teachers and fellow students, and the use of the libraries and other general resources of the University are all combined to serve what is essentially a process of self-education for its own sake without reference to the winning of formal credits. Taking of examinations is optional. An applicant should first receive assurance from his employer that he will be given leave of absence in the event that he is awarded a Fellowship. This does not exclude self-employed or free lance journalists from consideration, although none in this category was appointed in the first ten groups. In writing for application blanks the applicant should state the fields of study in which he is interested so that descriptive information about courses offered at Harvard may be forwarded. In making the awards importance will be given to the use the applicant proposes to make of a year at the University. He should clearly indicate a program of work. Nieman Fellows will register at the office of the Nieman Foundation, 44 Holyoke House, on the first day of the academic year, the Monday preceding the last Wednesday in September. The first installment of the stipend will be payable upon registration and successive installments monthly. About twelve Fellowships are awarded annually. Competition each year has been of such an order as to insure a representative selection.

Terms of a Nieman Fellowship

135

The Fellowships were opened to women journalists in 1945, and two women were appointed for that year, two more in 1947. The first award to a Negro journalist was made in 1946. Selections for fellowships are made by the executive committee of the Nieman Foundation: Louis M. Lyons, Curator of the Nieman fellowships, chairman; David W. Bailey, Secretary to the Harvard Governing Boards; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History. Application blanks may be obtained by writing to the Nieman Foundation, 44 Holyoke House, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts. Applications must be received by May 1.