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Currie: I thought maybe we could start this morning with a little bit of how you got into journalism. I think it's an interesting choice for a woman from your background, which I would describe as a proper New England background, a woman whose father was a civil engineer, a chairman of the board of selectmen of Wellesley, Massachusetts, and whose mother was very much involved in her community. And so for a woman of your background, on graduating from Wellesley College in 1919, you made a diversion, I think. I wonder if you could start by talking about that.
Montgomery: Well, it seems to me that when you graduate from college, you end one chapter and you begin another. Well, in beginning mine, I didn't want to do the most obvious thing—teaching. I wanted to—well, I said, "Something different." Later I defined that as the most impossible "reporting," not having done any such thing. However, that was the goal that I chose and that was the goal that finally, with several detours, I accomplished.
Currie: Maybe we shouldn't spend too much time on the detours, but how did you first get an entrée into that goal? I believe it was through a newspaper advertisement.
Montgomery: First of all, I decided I had to teach until I had something more definite to go on. So for a year and a half, I taught—one year in Norwich, Connecticut, and a part of a year in Cranston, Rhode Island. The reason I didn't go any longer in Cranston, Rhode Island, was because I saw an ad in the paper. By that I mean my Townsman in my home town, saying that Roger Babson Reports was looking for a recent graduate to do a report in Washington, only one month allowance in time.
Well, I imagine that a seasoned reporter wouldn't be looking for a one-month job, but for me it was perfect. I did get the job, and I had an unusual happening on the way to my job in Washington. Mr. Babson, Roger Babson, was a well-known economist, and he did quite a number of lectures, so that when he came back and found that his office had hired what he called "a slip of a girl" to do a report for Babson in Washington, this was too much. I had gone to Washington already and was working on this when he had the office telephone and say to meet him at the University Club for dinner. I thought he was so nice to want to help me, but when I got there and hardly had the menu in my hand, he said, "You're fired."
Well, that was a blow. So my answer was, "Mr. Babson, I have a signed contract for one month, and I don't believe, fair as you are supposed to be, that you would not regard an official contract. So therefore, I am prepared to leave at your wish, but I believe I have two weeks left. I would like to use that writing my report."
"All right," he said. "Go ahead. But have your things planned to leave on the last day." Therefore, I was ready now for Washington.
Currie: And you finished that report quite successfully.