Norman Hapgood

Norman Hapgood, like most of the rest of us in the Eighties and Nineties, broke into journalism through the avenue of the “space reporter.” He reported city news for the old Evening Post in Godkin’s palmy days, and he quickly made his mark. That was not because he received personal commendation from the editor-in-chief; for E. L. Godkin, with all his high journalistic qualities, had the very bad habit of never going out of his way to notice work of the news-reporting staff, except when it did not suit him. But when Hapgood wrote for his afternoon paper a two or three column story of the day’s important but highly intricate argument before the Interstate Commerce Commission, Joseph H. Choate and James C. Carter made it their business to write personally, to the Evening Post, concerning the remarkable clarity with which the unknown reporter had narrated the proceedings and had set forth the underlying principles. It was with this same thoroughness that Hapgood did everything; perhaps that was why, later on, his five years on other newspapers as dramatic critic made no great impression. He lacked that light touch which enlivens criticism of the kind.

Like his mode of thought, Hapgood’s style was downright and uncompromising. When he began to write editorials, he was quite inevitably drawn into political discussion. On such topics, he was always a liberal thinker; in those days many people described him as a dangerous radical. He made mistakes, sometimes took positions which he himself found to be untenable; but he was moderate in language, he was always ready to admit the fact when he had been wrong, and he was separated by many leagues from the traditional Braintruster of 1933.

Hapgood had a hand, quite inevitably, in New York City politics, notably in the Fusion committee which elected John Purroy Mitchel mayor. In all such matters, he often differed from acquaintances both on the Right and on the Left, but never with contentious indignation. To the most convinced opponent of his political ideas, he would talk with quiet and inquiring interest. In one of Hapgood’s editorial invectives, he quoted the saying of an older philosopher: “I abhor your opinion, but I would give my life to defend your right to express it.”

Alexander Dana Noyes
1938 Century Association Yearbook