Job #8: United World Federalists I, fall 1962

            After being fired by the lawyers, I was nervous about a new job. But United World Federalists seemed perfectly satisfied with my typing and I was hired, as receptionist and secretary to Albert Mark, the public relations director. Public relations director may sound grand, but he was one person supervising a staff of one person, me. I read some of the brochures that UWF sent to those asking for information on the organization, and learned that UWF was part of a world movement to create if not a world government, at least a world system of law that everyone would agree to. “World Peace Through World Law” was a common slogan.

            I went to work there shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, and one of the first things I saw UWF do was send a telegram to President Kennedy that said, essentially, we support whatever you as the president of the United States do, but if we had world peace through world law, we wouldn’t be facing this kind of crisis. A book that the organization sold was World Peace Through World Law, by Louis B. Sohn and Grenville Clarke. I took a copy home, but could not wade through it. The idea sounded good, and I became a member — and I even recommended my parents join, but I don’t think they did.

            I began to learn a bit about how such an organization worked. For one thing, we sent out newsletters to the various chapters of UWF around the country. These were typed on special mimeograph stencils (which had to be perfectly typed because it was nearly impossible to make corrections), then wrapped around a cylinder that was inked, and then hand-cranked to produce the finished pages. Only one page could be done at a time, so one task involved piles of each page of the document laid on a table, and everyone in the office walked around the table, collating one page at a time, and stapling the completed document with a heavy-duty stapler. “Everyone,” in this case, meant the secretaries and the office manager, that is to say, the women. The men, the heads of the various “departments” (public relations, membership, business, political), sat in their offices doing their important work.

            Just a couple of weeks after starting at UWF, however, I heard an offer I couldn’t refuse. While having dinner at Susan’s parents’ home in Bethesda, one of her father’s colleagues, another psychoanalyst, calling to report that his receptionist/secretary had just quit and did Susan know of anyone who wanted a job. What appealed to me the most was that the job was literally around the corner from where Susan and I lived, and the pay was $80 a week instead of $75. I gave UWF two weeks notice and started working for three psychoanalysts in the middle of December.