1952

Articles from 1952

California Farm Labor (Pageant Magazine, 1952)

With the bad old days that spanned that period between October, 1929 through August, 1945 seen only in the rear view mirror, many Americans began to enjoy the high life that came with the booming post-war economy – a buying spree that wouldn’t slow until the mid Seventies. In the midst of so much plenty American magazines began to run articles about some of the folks who weren’t partaking in all the fun, and this article is a fine example – it is about the 2,000,000 white people who toiled in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Thirteen years later they would be outsourced by a labor pool willing to work for even less money.

… They get no unemployment insurance. They get no social security benefits. The law does not, in the main, protect them.


Click here to read about the horrendous living conditions of 1940s migrant workers…


Click here to read about the tremendous hardships that fell upon the fertile San Joaquin Valley in 1937…

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1950s Texas (American Magazine, 1952)

Lost in wide-eyed wonder, this journalist reported all that he saw during his four-month journey through The Lone Star State, finding, to his astonishment, that everything those annoying men named Tex had told him throughout the years was absolutely true.

Don’t be offended if Texans fail to thank you for compliments about their state; they are weaned on a sublime conviction that everything in Texas is the biggest or best or both… Anything in Texas that isn’t the biggest or best is bound to be the smallest or the worst; there is no mediocrity.


Click here to read about the U.S. Border Patrol in Texas.

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Why Do Detergents Have Such Wacky Names (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)

This column praises those brainiacs of Madison Ave who obsess over single syllable words (and sounds) in an effort to propel their client’s product to the tip-top of the profit-pantheon.

The right name can zoom a product into a commercial success. The wrong one can wreck its sales and waste the advertising dollars spent promoting it… If one day you hear of a product called ‘Heck’ or ‘Gosh’, don’t be surprised. Slang is more popular than the king’s English in product naming. Again, it’s because you use it more naturally. Newest proof of this came after the phrase ‘poof – there goes perspiration’ (a TV commercial for Stopette spray deodorant) made ‘poof’ a new American slang word.

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‘How We Can Win in Asia” (Quick Magazine, 1952)

In the attached editorial, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (1898 – 1980) weighs in on how the United States could forge stronger Cold War alliances in Asia and the Middle East:

We have thought that we could stop the spread of communism by guns and by dollars. We have spent billions upon billions and yet the Red tide of communism seems to spread… We should show Asia how her revolution can follow the pattern of 1776. What will win in Asia are not guns and dollars but but ideas of freedom and justice. To win in Asia, America must identify herself with those ideas.


To understand some of the diplomatic challenges Douglas was referring to, click here


More on this topic can be read here…

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The Damaged Prestige of the FBI (Quick Magazine, 1952)

When this article appeared on the newsstands, J. Edgar Hoover had been FBI chief for nearly thirty years. In all that time he had enjoyed being photographed among celebrities and adored patting himself on the back by writing numerous magazine articles about the FBI. But by the time the early Fifties came along Hoover and his Federal agency were no longer the teflon icon that they used to be; the failings of the FBI were adding up and Hoover did not seemed accountable.

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The First Fifty-Years Behind the Wheel (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)

There is no organization that has compiled more facts about cars and their impact on society, than The American Automobile Association – AAA for short. And why shouldn’t they? the AAA predates turn signals, starter buttons and stop lights. They were around before seat belts, parking lights and jay-walkers. They even predate car doors and windshields – to say nothing of their wipers. As you should all know by now, the AAA was not established as a car trivia repository but a coterie of motorists who banded together to aid other motorists.


Written in 1952, this article serves to mark the 50th anniversary of the AAA; these columns are positively packed with assorted automobile trivia which, when pieced together, spells out the first fifty years of the car in America.


Read about the Great Depression and the U.S. auto industry…

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Protestants in America (Pageant Magazine, 1952)

This is a report from 1952 on the largest group of Christians in the United States during that period in time:

The United States is sometimes called a ‘Protestant nation.’ It isn’t, of course. It is a nation of 150,697,361 free people, free to choose whatever path to God they please. But it was settles largely by Protestant denominations; it has, in fact, the largest Protestant population of any nation on earth. By latest tally, 81,862,328 Americans belong to religious bodies. Of these 59 percent are Protestant. Roman Catholics account for 33 percent, Jews for six percent and other faiths for two percent.

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The Power of the African-American Press (Pageant Magazine, 1952)

President Truman was re-elected in 1948 by a slender margin of 52,000 votes in the circulation area of The Chicago Defender, which almost alone of all the newspapers of all kinds in that area, supported Truman. After the election it published a boastful full-page advertisement –

What is the Negro press? Primarily it is a protest press demanding the correction of injustice to colored people. ‘We are organs of protest,’ explains Thomas W. Young, publisher of the Norfolk Journal and Guide, ‘born more than a hundred years ago in righteous indignation over the institution of slavery.’

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Levittown: The Birth of the Modern Suburb (Pageant Magazine, 1952)

When the Second World War ended in 1945 the Europeans began shoveling themselves out of the rubble while simultaneously erecting their respective nanny-states. By contrast, the Americans set out on a shopping-spree that has yet to be matched in history. Never before had so many people been able to purchase so many affordable consumer products, and never before had there ever been such a variety; aided by the G.I. Bill, housing was a big part of this binge – and binge they did! The apple of their collective eyes involved a style of prefabricated housing that was called Ranch House, Cape Cod and Early American. Millions of them were built all across the country – and the financial model for these real estate developers came from a Long Island, New York man named William J. Levitt.


Attached is an article titled 15 Minutes with Levitt of Levittown.

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