The Press: The Fair Lady of Milwaukee

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It was opposition to McCarthy that helped put "the Journal behind Stevenson in 1952. The paper's editors were ready to support General Eisenhower as soon as he was nominated, but Grant stopped it. Said he: "We'll wait for the Democrats, see who they nominate and decide then." But the Journal did not decide until Ike campaigned in the Midwest and met McCarthy. "Ike didn't keep a decent distance," said Hoben, "and we did think he showed insufficient strength in dissociating himself from McCarthy. From then on, it was impossible for us to back Ike." Even the two of the six editorial writers who voted for Ike agreed that "the Journal's traditions made it necessary to back Stevenson."

Since the election, the Journal has often backed the Republican Administration, insisted that Ike's biggest battle is against the "forces inside his own Republican Party," hailed Vice President Nixon for the good job he is doing. The Journal hammers at the Administration for not revising the McCarran Internal Security Act, while it campaigns for free world trade and backs the U.N. and the International Court of Justice as staunchly as it supported the League of Nations. Grant's independent attitude "is to go to the truth wherever you find it, and to hell with left or right."

Society Wedding. The fiber of Harry Grant's independence threads back through his entire life. He was born in Chillicothe, Mo., the son and grandson of stable owners. The family moved to St. Louis, and when Grant was 15, his father killed himself, leaving Grant's mother to make ends meet by teaching dancing. Harry Grant quit high school after his freshman year, went to work as a $5-a-week railway messenger. He was earning $60 a month as a ticket clerk when he quit to make more as a bookkeeper and cattle checker in Swift & Co.'s stockyards. He bought schoolbooks and studied at night, and by the time he was 22, he had saved enough money to enter Harvard as a special student.

In his first year, with his usual energy, Grant took seven courses (four was standard), lived in an attic, wore secondhand clothes and did odd jobs to add to his savings. By the end of the year, his money ran out, so Grant took a job selling roofing in the Southwest until he saved enough for a second try at Harvard. After struggling through the second year, he gave up and moved to a cheap room in Hoboken, having lost his "illusions about what an education could do for me." By limiting himself to 11¢ a day for lunch and not much else, he held out until he found a job he liked, working for N. W. Ayer advertising agency in Manhattan. Grant moved through every department, was so able at whatever he turned his hand to that in three years he was sent to London to represent the agency.