When Spedding returned to the United States in 1935, the country was still in the grip of the Great Depression, and the job market had not improved. He was George Fisher Baker assistant professor at Cornell University from 1935 to 1937. It was another temporary position, but it did allow him to work with Hans Bethe. At one point he drove out to Ohio State University hoping to find a tenure track position. The position had already been filled, but the professor of chemistry there, W. L. Evans, knew that Winfred F. (Buck) Coover at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa, had a position. "I wouldn't normally have chosen the place," Spedding later recalled, "but I was desperate. I thought: I can go there and build up physical chemistry and when jobs really open up I can go to another school."