Articles from 1922
When this profile of the thirty-tree year-old Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975) was published, the painter was not as yet recognized as the eccentric that history remembers him to have been. The anonymous journalist took an enormous interest in understanding Benton’s education and the source of his inspiration.
Click hereto read a 1936 art review regarding the paintings of Grant Wood.
This 1922 men’s fashion article is illustrated with seven images and riddled with wise words for all those seeking information regarding 1920s backless vests, patent leather dancing shoes, madras dress shirts and kid suede gloves for semi-dress wear.
Pogroms and other less violent forms of Antisemitism in Eastern Europe had resulted in a large increase of the Jewish migration to the United States by 1922. This growth in the Jewish population swelled from an estimated 1,777,185 in 1907 to an estimated 3,390,301 by 1918. The following one page article includes a map of the continental United States featuring those portions of the U.S. with the largest Jewish populations in 1922.
Click here to read an article about the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Jewish National Council of Palestine has issued a second manifesto to the Arabs, the text of which follows in it’s original translated form.
Semetic nations: our regeneration is your regeneration and our freedom is your freedom.
In 1922 former Vanity Fair editor (1919 – 1920) and future Algonquin wit, Robert E. Sherwood (1896 – 1955), taking his job seriously as the film critic for LIFE MAGAZINE, journeyed West to visit the growing movie kingdom of Hollywood. The doors magically opened up for him and he was able to rub elbows with many of the crowned heads of the realm. He filed these eight paragraphs recounting his experiences and observations; you might be amused to read his thoughts concerning the unfinished Hollywood sign.
The article is adorned with cartoons by John Held Jr.. In the world of American 1920s satirical art, he was the gold standard.
This is the story of the First Gas Regiment. It was organized at American University (Washington, D.C.) in August of 1917 and arrived in France in time to disperse noxious gas all over the Germans as they launched their March offensive in 1918:
Company B of the First Battalion was the outfit that participated in the first show. The attack was launched on a two-mile front extending from Lens to Hill 70 near Loos, and held by the Canadians… It was a tough job. The nature of the work was graphically described by a Yankee buck, who said in a moment of disgust: ‘This is a job for grave diggers, hod carriers and piano movers, instead of chemists, pipe fitters and mechanics.
If you’ve been in search of an historical article that clearly indicated that Americans were irked by white immigrants just as much as they’ve been bugged by non-white immigrants – then search no more. The journalist who penned this 1922 column chides the U.S. Government, and the people who granted them authority, for the difficulties that were placed in the path of all the various poor European migrants yearning to breathe free:
Whilst it does seem most expedient to curtail immigration, it ought to be done in a way which would impose least hardship on those who after all have had a supreme belief in America. One of America’s weaknesses lies in red tape, did it need to be said; another lies in a sort of contempt for the poor whites of Europe – the ‘Wops’ and the ‘K*k*s’ and the ‘Dagoes’ and ‘Hunkies’ and the rest. They are unfortunate – after all, that is the chief thing against them.
Statistics of the World War prove, however, that war was, from the standpoint of mortality, not vastly different from other wars. In spite of the improvements in methods of killing by machinery,Nature managed to runup a higher score than the enemy’s bullets and shells. The Surgeon General of the Army, at the request of The American Legion Weekly, has prepared the following figures for the period of the war, from April 1, 1917 to December 31, 1919.
A few choice words concerning the Treaty of Versailles by the German anti-socialist author S. Miles Bouton (born 1876):
Such a treaty could not bring real peace to the world even if the conditions were less critical and complex. As they are, it will hasten and aggravate what the world will soon discover to be the most serious, vital, and revolutionary consequences of the war.
The quote above is an excerpt from THE NATION’s review of Bouton’s 1922 book, And The Kaiser Abdicates: The German Revolution, November, 1918.
Thus any traveler in Germany feels that the future grows darker and darker for both Germany and Europe. There is no doubt that the German people have learned little from their war experiences and that it would require only a spark to set them off in another wild rush down through Europe behind Russian guns. It is a dismal prospect, and it is a terrible one, for it would mean, in the final analysis, the utter destruction of European civilization.
