1919

Articles from 1919

A Starbucks Cure for the 1918 Influenza
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Coffee has the ability to remedy some physical ailments, however this small article told the story of one U.S. Army Colonel who felt so helpless upon seeing so many sick army men come ashore in France suffering from such a terrible illness as influenzastyle=border:none, and was moved to do the only thing that he could in his power to offer comfort: unlimited cups of hot coffee. How real was coffee as a preventative measure in the face of influenza? The good colonel was on to something – it wasn’t the java bean that made an impact, it was the heat: viruses die when exposed to high temperatures.


A more thorough article about Influenza can be read here.


Click here to read about the earliest use of face masks to combat airborne disease.

Jack Dempsey In Silent Movies
(Motion Picture News & Vanity Fair, 1919)

Two articles from two different magazines reported the news that the World Champion Boxer of 1919, Jack Dempseystyle=border:none (1895 – 1983), would soon try his hand at movie acting. The Vanity Fair item is actually a cartoon by that old sentimentalist, John Held, Jrstyle=border:none.(1889-1958).


In the future, other athletes would follow in his steps to Hollywood; his fellow boxer Gene Tunney would follow him out there eight years later (The Fighting Marines). Swimmers Buster Crabbe (Buck Rogers) and Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan) got the fever and came out during the early days of sound movies.

Censoring Letters and Looking for Spies
(Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Buried on page eight of a post-war issue of The Stars & Stripes was this column reporting on the wartime activities of the AEF censors in France – men assigned to not simply censor all outgoing mail from Europe, but to also chemically test each one for traces of invisible ink.


Click here to read an article the post office censorship duing the Second World War.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Preparing for the Next War
(Literary Digest, 1919)

We find ourselves preparing for the next war when the ink is hardly dry on the still unratified Treaty of Peace.

These were the thoughts of the Japanese rulers who were terribly surprised to find that they had quickly become the subject of much attention by their former allies, the Americans and the Commonwealth powers following the close of the First World War.

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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