1919

Articles from 1919

Doughboys and Social Disease (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

A short notice concerning the number of sexually diseased American World War I soldiers who were treated or segregated during the war and post-war periods.


What is missing from this report was an anecdote involving General John Pershing, who upon hearing that his army was being depleted by social disease, quickly called for the posting of Military Policemen at each bordello to discourage all further commerce. The immediate results of this action were pleasing to many in the American senior command however the next problem concerned the growing number of venereal cases within the ranks of the Military Police.

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A Walk Through Five W.W. I American Battlefields (The Independent, 1919)

Attached are some of moving observations penned by the Editor of The Independent, Hamilton Holt (1871 – 1951) when he toured Seicheprey, Cantigny, Chateau Thierry, St Mihiel and the Argonne battle fields — which were the five battlefields where General Pershing chose to launch operations in the European war against Imperial Germany. There is one winsome photograph of the Aisne-Marne Cemetery as it appeared shortly after the conflict.


Within a year Holt would change his mind about the war as well as the treaty signed at Versailles.

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The Dress Reform Movement (La Nazione, 1919)

In the early parts of the 20th Century serious attention had been paid in some quarters to what was called dress reform. An article from the August 14, 1929 magazine The Nation pointed out that

The Life Extension Institute weighed the street clothing of the women in New York City last June. The clothing of the women…averaged two pounds, ten ounces, while that of the men was was eight pounds, six ounces.


The Italian Futurist Ernesto Thayaht offered his remedy for the fashion maladies of the day with the design of a one piece garment that many Americans chose to see simply as pajamas. Needless to say, it didn’t catch on.


Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.
Click here to read an editorial about the need for reform in men’s attire.
Read about men’s fashions from 1937 and the break-through in color that had been so sorely needed.

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TUSCANIA Torpedoed (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

On February 5, 1918 the Cunard passenger liner, Tuscania (having been pressed into service as a troop ship) was sent to the bottom of the sea by a German U-boat; well over one thousand, five hundred Doughboys from various units were drowned, as were her British crew which was numbered over three hundred. On the first anniversary a survivor of the attack wrote to the editors of the Stars and Stripes.

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War Profiteers (Life Magazine, 1919?)

Although the year 1919 (and spanning throughout much of the Twenties) was a period marked by a strong sense of anti-communism in the United States, the words war profiteer proved to be a term capable of getting a good many people in both camps riled up. This is a fine cartoon by Rollin Kirby that nicely satirizes that low breed of opportunist.


Click here to see how weird the first car radios looked.

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Supplying Chewing Gum to the A.E.F. (America’s Munitions, 1919)

Although the origins of chewing gum have been traced to many different parts of the ancient world, no culture has whole-hardheartedly embraced the stuff quite as thoroughly as the Americans. The Yankee bromance with chewing gum has largely been credited to the American industrialist William Wrigley, Jr. (1861 – 1932) for creating, in 1906, a gum that appealed broadly to the American palette – and when Americans went to war in 1917, Wrigley’s chewing gum was in their arsenal.


We added to this page a small column about Dr. Morris Nafash, who was one of the brilliant chemists at the Bazooka Bubble Gum Company.


Click here to read about the A.E.F. love for candy…

Click here to read about all the effort that was made to get cigarettes to the Doughboys.

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The U.S. Navy Railway Guns (American Legion Weekly, 1919)

An article written for an American veterans organization one year after the war, the attached piece tells the story of the five American naval batteries that were mounted on specially made rail cars and deployed along the Western Front. The article is two pages long and is filled with interesting facts as to the whereabouts of their assorted deployments and what was expected of the naval crews who worked them.

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