Part: 1234         Session: 12         Page 123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233 of 512

wasn't doing an awful lot about it, except I cut my Oxford career one year short, staying two years instead of three, in order to get back to get to work. I mean I felt I should get back to the U.S. and get to work. I regret that now. I think a third year at Oxford would have been better than not taking it. But in any case, I hadn't done very much specifically about getting a job. My brother knew the general manager of these papers and I guess sold him the idea of hiring me when I got back from Oxford. So I went down there to see him and they hired me. The problem was not made any more difficult by the fact that one of the owners of the Trenton-Times papers was a classmate of mine both at Lawrenceville and for as long as he lasted at Princeton, which wasn't very long, but nevertheless I knew him quite well. So, of course, it was really quite simple from that point of view. And he welcomed me down there. But this was just before the election of 1936 and I was wearing a great big Roosevelt button, and I went down to Trenton to see about the job, the plan being to take the job within a couple of weeks, the last thing that John Kerney said to me as I said goodbye to him, after taking a long look at the button on my lapel, he said, “When you come to work here, take that goddamn thing off.” And this created a certain crise de conscience with me because I wasn't about to take that button off just because I was going to work for an ultra anti-Roosevelt paper. And so I solved the problem--I guess this isn't necessarily creditable but at least this is what happened--by choosing to start work right after the election when I wouldn't be wearing a button anyway, instead of before it. So I resolved the problem with a clear conscience while avoiding a confrontation. I worked there for a year as a reporter.

Was it general assignment, local reporting?