A Tenured Professor by John Kenneth Galbraith

Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780547595610
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1991-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

10

P P W

THE MONEY continued to roll in. The Bank of America, Marjie’s first adventure, was a pleasant source of revenue. It had descended from its majestic position as the first bank of the country, a glowing example of agricultural, retail and real estate banking expertise, to near prostration, and its stock, to the Marvins’ delight, reflected in dismal numbers the descent. The large Texas banks that Marvin and Marjie had visited when they were making their early assessment of euphoria were equally remunerative. The collapse of the RepublicBank Corporation, become the First RepublicBank Corporation, a holding company with forty banks scattered over the state, was worth some tens of millions of dollars alone. This might be small as compared with the truly lofty returns from the great stock market correction, but it was rewarding nonetheless.

Given the reliability of IRAT—the certainty when euphoria verged on insanity or the only slightly smaller certainty when pessimism built on despair—there had come to be an even more automatic aspect to the operation. Much could be given over to the computer and the discreet and adequately compensated young man who, increasingly, came to handle the routine. He, in turn, was now aided by two newly acquired assistants, one a highly efficient, wholly presentable young woman who had been superbly trained in computer science at both Haverford and Bryn Mawr. Marvin and Marjie knew they could no longer postpone serious pursuit of the liberal goals that until now had been only in the realm of intention and promise.

Their first effort was, however, suitably modest, a continuation of Marjie’s earlier interest in the executive status of women. Perhaps it was less important for its eventual success than for bringing a new friend into their lives.

A few blocks from the Marvins’ house, on Appleton Street, lived a woman of Marjie’s age and of ancient New England lineage named Helen Winthrop Wentworth. Unattached after a brief and eminently instructive marriage, she had resumed her maiden name, moved back into her now deceased parents’ house and, perhaps in reaction to the extravagant male chauvinism of her former spouse, had interested herself in a modest way in the women’s movement. She had come to admire Bella Abzug, had read Betty Friedan and once had entertained Gloria Steinem overnight on a visit she was making to the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe. Win, as she liked to be called, had a young son at school with the twins, and bringing the children home, she came to know the Marvins. Slender, attractively attired, at times what was once called demure, she was in sharp contrast with the increasingly robust Marjie. This Marvin did not find unappealing; she, in turn, found more than acceptable any man who was as markedly different from her discarded husband as Marvin.

Marjie moved promptly to get Win interested in the Executive Gender Survey, and a new idea for increasing the number of women in the upper reaches of corporate management was discussed one lovely early summer evening on the terrace back of the Brattle Street house.

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