And so I made out a list of as many occupations known to man as I could think of, and sent them to him, telling him to mark off with a blue pencil those which he was perfectly sure did not appeal to him, and check with red those for which he felt some predilection. Out immediately went piano-mover, waiter, floorwalker, bank manager, bookkeeper, and some fifty others.
Six months later, I returned him the red-checked list for further perusal. Now his preferences were much more definite. Research, journalism, editorial work, diplomacy were again red, but almost everything else marked headed him for a scientific career.
The decision made, Grant began his pre-medical course.
After Stuart graduated from Yale he moved downtown to Wall Street and continued in a broker’s office all during the depression. But, in this money making atmosphere, his attitude was changing. He had concluded that serving humanity was a higher fulfillment than profiting at humanity’s expense, and medicine seemed the career which he also liked best. Having found out, he had the courage to start back at the beginning to accomplish it. We made a compact for him to go as far as he could and test whether his interest kept up. First he had to acquire sufficient chemistry and biology, going to Columbia University in the daytime for the former, to New York University in the evening for the latter, preparing his lessons until three in the morning.
The next year he passed his entrance examinations.
Following the legislative near-victory in the winter of 1934, I resolved to go to Russia to see for myself what was happening in the greatest social experiment of our age. With keen anticipation I looked forward to discovering whether the Marxian philosophy, dramatized and realized and based on an economic ideology, did not have to accept some of the philosophy of Malthus.
Grant, then about to enter his final year at Cornell Medical School, was eager to investigate the progress of medicine in the Soviet Union, and made up his mind to come along. I was taking also my secretary, Florence Rose, efficient, competent in any capacity, whether field organizing or in the office. Though but recently enlisted in the movement, she had come more with the attitude of the early days, not for what she could get out of it, but for what she could give to its furtherance. Her talents and enthusiasm, when added to her cheerfulness, made her a rare combination; always gleeful and bubbling with fun, she carried out nearly everything in that spirit.
Mrs. Ethel Clyde, an officer of the Federal legislative organization, was to be the fourth of our little group within a large group. When zeal for the “new civilization” in Russia had been at its height she had relinquished her expensive Park Avenue apartment for a smaller one on a side street, and contributed the difference in rent to sundry leftist causes and birth control.
At the last moment it seemed we might not be able to go. For some years Stuart had had a bad sinus condition, and hardly had he matriculated at Cornell in the fall of 1933 when he had been struck by a squash racket, fracturing the bone over his eye. That winter he had been operated on nine times. A week before I was due to sail this doctor advised that he have an exploratory operation. I rushed up from Washington, where the legislative work for that session was just being wound up, and would have abandoned the Russian expedition had not the operation apparently been entirely successful. Stuart insisted that I go. Since he was in no danger I continued with my plans.
It was not feasible to travel in Russia except in a party under official guidance. Three people I knew who had gone by themselves described how train after train had passed them, boat after boat had steamed down the Volga with no accommodations available. Therefore, we chose the non-partisan Second Russian Seminar.