With All Deliberate Speed: The Life of Philip Elman

2. Trials at Harvard

CHAPTER 2 Trials at Harvard THE EXACT DAY OR MONTH THIS HAPPENED I don't remember, but I suspect it was probably late I935. I was in my third year at CCNY and Congress had just enacted the Wagner Act, the National Labor Relations Act, which guaranteed unions the right of collective bargaining and gave workers the right to join a labor union. There was a story in the New York World-Telegram which told how the Harvard Law School was beginning a program of training lawyers who would help the labor unions. According to the article, this course at the Harvard Law School was being taught by two professors who had been active in drafting the Wagner Act: Felix Frankfurter, of whom I had heard, and another man whose name meant nothing to me then, but who meant an awful lot to me later on in my life, Calvert Magruder. (Incidentally, he pronounced it "Callvert.") By then things were much better financially in the Elman household . We were no longer on the abyss. We were reasonably comfortahle . I can't tell you exactly how much my father made, maybe seventyfive dollars a week. That was a lot of money in those days. My mother saved every penny that she possibly could. I don't remember that we ever had to eat anything less than the very best. What my mother spread before us were banquets. She would make puddings loaded with butter, eggs, sugar, almonds, raisins. All high cholesterol stuff. We didn't eat like poor people. Every Saturday my father would take us down to the delicatessen and we would load up on hot corned beef and pastrami and baked beans and cole slaw. Those are my 17 With All Deliberate Speed fondest childhood memories. Wonderfully rich food that we poor people ate. I didn't really major in anything at CCNY. I took courses in logic and the philosophy of law with Morris Raphael Cohen. I don't know if that name means anything today. He was a legendary figure at CCNY. He is probably the first person who became a-I must use the term role model because I can't think of any other. He made a big impact on me, one I can still feeL I can't measure it. He was a philosopher. But he was a pragmatic kind of guy-very earthy. He did not throw abstractions at you. And from Morris Cohen I developed a realistic skepticism of anything that I really couldn't see or feel or touch or understand. Harry Overstreet was also in the department of philosophy. He was the chairman of the department. He was an urbane, civilized, well-read guy. I had taken a couple of courses in philosophy, but I wouldn't say I was a philosophy major. I didn't take very much in economics, but I took a couple of history courses. I took some courses in English. I took some courses in Latin, for which I am very grateful because it helped me in writing English. I would not say that I had the kind of wellrounded education kids got when they went to school later on. But I did come out of CCNY knowing how to read and how to write. I can write English because I took all these courses where the emphasis was on grammar and syntax and punctuation, and clear, simple, brief expression. I learned about short, positive, direct communication of thoughts and ofwords. I did not write for literary magazines or anything like that. Somebody once described me as an "unintellectual intellectuaL " I think it's not entirely accurate, but there is a sort of a contradiction between my knowing as little as I do about intellectual subjects and my seeming to know enough so that I can talk about them without making a fool of myself. While there were some outstanding faculty, I think it was mainly students who made it what it was. The students were very high class. Everybody was highly motivated. Everybody there was on his way to become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or an accountant or an architect or something much more than his parents were. So the level of discussions in classes was always very high. At the time I didn't Trials at Harvard 19 appreciate what a good education I was getting. In...