Jane Eads Bancroft: Interview #1

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When I was about 16 or so, my father got married again to my stepmother, who was only nine years older than I. She had been a schoolteacher. She was really very tiny and very bright, and we got along pretty well.

Currie: What did your father do for International Harvester?

Eads: I think he was a salesman. I think he had to do with farm equipment. That's what he did in Quincy. He was head of a farm implement company in Quincy until he died, which was when I was working in Chicago.

Currie: How would you describe him? What kind of man was he?

Eads: He was wonderful. He was very handsome and so proud of us kids, always doing things for us. My aunt was a wonderful woman, too. But my father loved to buy things for me—clothes. I remember at various times, like Easter, he'd bring home hats and real pretty things for me. I enjoyed that very much. I think that's where I got my love of clothes and fashions. I even remember when I was a very young girl, clipping fashion pictures out of magazines that a neighbor girl had, that we never got, like a Vogue magazine. It sort of followed me through in the fashion, because I did a lot of fashion writing later in Paris and in New York.

Currie: Did your father give you any guidance as to what he thought you should do with your life?

Eads: No, because, actually, I sort of knew what I wanted to do. I mean, I wanted to do something; I wanted to get out, go to a big town. I don't know how that evolved, but first of all, I finished high school. Then that summer, I worked as a proofreader. There were two newspapers and they were both pretty successful. One was an afternoon, and one was a morning paper in Quincy. I knew some guys on the other paper, and one of them told me about the job on the other paper, a proofreading job, and I got it. I worked there all summer for a very small sum, and I was the only proofreader. I read the whole paper from the front page to back.

Currie: How would you do that?

Eads: You just read the typewritten copy and look for a mistake in punctuation and spelling and that sort of stuff.

Currie: Were you located at a desk?

Eads: At a desk in the city room. Several times I would be working at night, and I'd be the only one there, except a real tall guy, a skinny guy, who was the Associated Press man there. He had a desk near my desk. I remember I hardly ever saw him sit down. Anyway, that's not important. But one night, he asked me to read a proof on a headline he wrote for the story to go in the paper, and it was the death of [President Warren] Harding. I have to laugh to myself when I think how long ago that was. It came over the wire, you know, and so he wrote out this headline, and I read the proof on it to see about the type and all. I don't know how I knew those things. In those days, you could go out in the composing room, when you couldn't later on; the union wouldn't let you touch a piece of type.

Currie: So would they bring you the proof at the desk?

Eads: Yes.

Currie: And then you would go through it and send it back to the composing room? Is that what happened?

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party or something. Well, that hurt my feelings, so I remember going up to my room in this rooming house, and crying, and I made up my mind that would never happen to me again. So I had about three or four other sorority parties. I wrote or called, or whatever I did, and cancelled out everything.

There was an older woman at the university who was, I think, an instructor, very nice and attractive, and I met her. She liked me, I guess. I met her on the campus one day, and she asked me about these things. I told her what happened. She gave me the dickens. I still hadn't turned one down. She made me go to the phone and call them and accept, which I did, and they wanted me. They wanted to pledge me, and they wanted me to stay with them overnight. They wanted to hide me, because you're not supposed to do this.

Currie: You weren't supposed to do what?

Eads: They invited me. I guess in the rushing season, it's something you're not supposed to do, like inviting you over for dinner or staying overnight.

Currie: I see. So they wanted you to spend the night, even though during rush, they weren't supposed to do that.

Eads: That's right. And they wanted me to join their sorority, and I wouldn't do it. I said I didn't have any money and that my father wouldn't like it. They said, "Can we call your father long distance?" [Laughter.] I said, "No." I'm sure he would have said yes, but I didn't.

I went to a rooming house. There were other girls there, and I liked them all. We had a lot of fun.

Currie: You didn't end up joining a sorority?

Eads: I was only there one semester. Money ran out. I wanted clothes and other things.

Currie: So you bought clothes?

Eads: Well, partly. Anyway, I didn't stay. My grades were pretty good, but I really wanted to go to Chicago, which I did. I stayed there for a while.

Finally, my father and the publisher of the paper in Quincy, the Whig-Journal, it was called, wanted me to come back and edit a junior newspaper. It was a Sunday supplement to their regular paper. That was quite interesting. I was there, I guess, two years, anyway. I organized it so that I had an editor in each school and reporters for each grade, and a sports editor, and I went around to all the schools, talked to the principals, and it was really quite interesting. Then I wrote editorials. Somewhere along the line, all those clippings and editorials got lost, which I've been very sorry about ever since, because I'd like to know myself how I came out with my writing editorials.

Currie: Do you remember the name of the publication?

Eads: It was the Quincy Whig-Journal, junior Sunday supplement, a junior newspaper. It was like a regular newspaper, only it came out on Sunday only in tabloid form.

Currie: I'd like to go back a little bit. In your family, you said your father was a wonderful, exciting man. Was he a political person at all?

Eads: Not that I remember. We never did talk politics, except when I went to Chicago and became a Democrat and he was a Republican.

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Eads: Yes, I wanted a bigger part. I had lots of friends, girlfriends, and we had a hiking club, not a regular organized club, but a group. We used to hike, and I was so proud once, when we walked a mile, because that's the most I had ever walked. [Laughter.]

Currie: Did you have a lot of boyfriends?

Eads: No, but I just got along well with them. I'd have dates. I remember my first date. My father nearly had a fit, me having a date. I had to be home by half past eight or something like that.

Currie: Do you remember what you did on the date?

Eads: We went in a car. He was a newspaperman, and I didn't really like him. He was kind of stocky, and he was a year older than I. I think he was the one that got me that job, and I think he was the sports writer. But he was very nice to me, a very nice guy. We went out, and there were bluffs around Quincy, and we sat in the car and looked over at the bluffs and talked. He never made any passes. I wouldn't have known what to do if he had. [Laughter.] I think my father scared me.

Currie: How did he do that?

Eads: He didn't want me to go out with boys at my age. Too young, I guess. He seemed to think they were like the evil empire. [Laughter.]

Then I graduated from high school.

Currie: Since you had two brothers, did you think there was any difference in the way your father raised you, and the way that he raised your two brothers?

Eads: No. My father made me take piano lessons, and made my brother take violin lessons. Neither one of us were musical, nor could we play, but whenever we had company, he asked us to play something. I pity the poor guests. Neither one of us cared a bit about it. I played a lot with my brother. He and I were very close, always. My older brother seemed to be always in trouble of some kind, and my father sent him to Culver Military Academy. Finally, when he was in his late teens, he joined the Navy. He died while he was in the Navy. I only remember him once, when he was home on leave, I guess. He was sitting at a desk, and he had a pen knife or something on the desk, and I went to look at it. He said, "Don't you touch that. It's dangerous," or something. So that's all I remember. He was really a handsome young man. I remember his looks, blond.

Currie: Then when you graduated from high school, you got the proofreading job. Can you tell me what you remember about the news room at the Quincy Whig-Journal?

Eads: That everybody was bent over their desks and working like dogs. [Laughter.] I mean, I hardly had any conversation with them. People I talked to were out in the composing room, the printers, the press men. They don't have those anymore.

Currie: No, they don't.

Eads: You've missed something. When the paper went to press, the whole building shook. It was absolutely the most thrilling sound I ever heard.

Currie: Describe that for me.

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Eads: They had a man. I don't know what it's like now, but most papers have somebody who handles all AP and UP wire copy. That's all I know. I don't know what they do now.

Currie: So he wasn't employed by the AP. He was employed by the Quincy Whig-Journal?

Eads: I knew very little about it. I hardly knew what they did. This man was just standing there, editing all that stuff, sending it out to the composing room, that's all. It was almost all out of town, this stuff, you know, wire service copy.

Currie: One or two of them would walk you home at night?

Eads: No, I wouldn't say that, because I'm not sure they walked all the way home. No, I wouldn't say that. But we'd go sometimes to a restaurant and get chili and stuff like that.

Currie: What did you think of these newspaper people that you were meeting as a young woman?

Eads: I liked them. I liked them better than anybody else.

Currie: Why?

Eads: I guess they were about the only people I knew. Well, that isn't really true, but the only people I had close contact with. They were interesting. They were aware of what was going on, and curious about what wasn't, and so forth.

Currie: You mentioned that you had a composing room, which most newspapers don't have now. What did your composing room look like, and how did it operate?

Eads: In the composing room, like any big office, there was men sitting around a printing machine, like a desk, and I mean like editors. They handled different copy, sports copy or society or straight news or this or that. And they'd go through it and they'd make it fit so that it would fit in a column, and they'd write a head[line] for it, a head like this. They'd have to make it fit.

Currie: Was this when they had what's called hot type?

Eads: I don't know.

Currie: I thought that at that point, probably what they had was the machine where they would actually—

Eads: Oh, no. Oh, no. No, the copy would be from the original source, from the reporter. [Then it would go to] an editor for the copy desk and then [from] the copy desk was sent to the composing room, where it was set into type. There were two separate units completely in both places that I remember the most. The composing room is like downstairs, down on the floor below or something. The copy desk was right in the same room.

Currie: I see. Did you ever have to go down to the composing room?

Eads: I never did in Chicago, or I never did in a big newspaper, but I did on the Quincy Whig-Journal. It's the only time I did, because the unions don't let you touch a piece of type. Anybody outside a union member couldn't touch it.

Currie: What do you think you learned from your job as a proofreader on the Quincy Whig-Journal?