Full Text of the Excerpt

MARY FREDERICKSON:

In Harold Coy's book on the Prices he says that during this whole period, the thirties and up until '43, I guess-he talked about when you left Lippmann's office or stopped working for Lippmann-he said that you were thoroughly acclimated to working in a man's world, but you were no less a woman for having done so. (Laughter)

MARY PRICE ADAMSON:

You would have to ask Harold what he meant about that. Like any young woman, I was interested in young men. So I had various romances or people who would take me dancing. You know, there was no matrimony.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you have any feeling of the way your family viewed your career, that they viewed your working, continuing to work, or was it a perfectly natural thing that you had to work to support yourself?

MARY PRICE ADAMSON:

I had to work. There was no question about that. There wasn't much a choice about it. By that time, I was fairly successful, and so my family would have been pleased about that because when I went to work for Lippmann, I made the munificent salary of $50 a week, which was a big step up from the $35 I'd been making at the Insurance Brokers. And it was considered to be a very good salary at that time.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was that a job, more than the others that you'd had before, that you were really satisfied with, that was stimulating and exciting?

MARY PRICE ADAMSON:

Yes, it was very stimulating and exciting, and I liked it quite a bit. The fact that I left after 3½ years had nothing to do about whether that job was stimulating. In fact, it was so much so that I began to have ideas about doing things while I was still young enough to do it, to try to get myself involved in things that more personally concerned me, not to be a secretary forever, but to involve myself in things I was interested in.