OFF-COLOR IN 1873, CRIMSON CAME TO STAY

"We wish the College would lay plank walks in the Yard. . ." ". . . We have recently heard many complaints from the members of '74 of the sudden disappearance from the College Library of the books which contain the subject-matter of their themes. . ." With these weighty pronouncements did the CRIMSON's oldest ancestor, the Magenta, break upon the Harvard scene on the morning of January 24, 1873.

Ten Juniors were behind this latest attempt to start a college publication at Harvard. And there was plenty of about its reception by the student body, which event then was student body, which even then was continually being attacked for its "indifference." Five papers had gone before, and been brushed off coldly, and the sixth, the erudite Advocate, was securely by established by then. There seemed little room for another.

Mother Was Ahead

But the Magenta caught on. It was essentially a literary magazine, but realized than the Advocate had the edge on it in that field, and the editors therefore tried to give it news value as well. There was one column of news headed "Brovities," and important events received editorial comment. But the main bulk of the magazine was made up of stories, essays and articles of all kinds, ranging from education in France, to "soulful effusions on Persian poetry."

They called at the Magenta because they thought that was the College's Color, but in May 1875 a meeting of all departments of the University solemnly voted that the color be crimson. The Magenta editors had once asked indignantly how it could possible "designate itself by the uneuphonius name of "The CRIMSON," but they had to eat their words.

With the Oatmeal

In 1882 a long-needed daily paper came along under the name of the Harvard Daily Herald. News was the leading thing in this paper, Cambridge's first breakfast table daily. And in October the Herald joined with the CRIMSON as the Herald-Crimson, which became The Harvard CRIMSON only in 1891.

Among former CRIMSON editors now prominent in public affairs and journalism are Joseph F. Barnes '27, Managing Editor in 1926 and lately manager of the Moscow bureau of the Herald-Tribune, and Robert J. Bulkley '02, former Democratic Senator from Ohio and President of the CRIMSON in 1901, who sent congratulations and best wishes for this 70th anniversary. John Cowles, newspaper publisher and vicepresident of LOOK magazine, was an editor, as was Corliss Lamont '24, well-known teacher and radical author. Roger Sherman Greene '01, former President, has been a loading diplomat in the Far East.