Articles from 1923
The gross quota allowance of immigration for the new year is the same as for the last, 357,803, of which 20% or 71,000 is the maximum which may arrive in any single month… Germany has sent only 43,000 immigrants, although her quota was 67,000.
William Jennings Bryan (1860 – 1925) is best remembered today as the rube who advocated for creationism in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In this 1923 essay he picks away at Darwin’s evolution theory using many of the arguments that he would (victoriously) deploy two years later.
One of the first American magazine articles heralding the November 4, 1922 discovery of the ancient tomb of King Tutankhamen (1341 BC – 1323 BC) by the British archaeologist Howard Carter (1874 – 1939); who was in this article, erroneously sited as an American:
What is thought may prove the greatest archeological discovery of all time has recently been made in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor. Two chambers of a tomb have been found filled with the funeral paraphernalia of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, and hopes are entertained that the third chamber, yet unopened, may contain the royal mummy itself.
Indignant accusations of trickery in dealing with the grain supply, which have been launched against the Russian Soviet Government by American and European editors, who were amazed to find that Russia was exporting grain in the midst of a new famine, are not particularly noticed by the Moscow press, which however, in such journals as the Moscow ‘Isvicstia’ and the ‘Economcheskaia Gizn’ feature reports of starvation in the Volga provinces.
Although there is no mention of the Soviet famine in this 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky, it is interesting nonetheless; to read it for free, you may click here.
As delighted as this Photoplay Magazine journalist was to make the acquaintance of 1920s film star Norma Talmadge (1894 – 1957), she could not help but compare her to the reigning film diva of the period, Mary Pickford:
Mary awakens your love.
Norma awakens your admiration.
Mary makes you long to be of service to her.
Norma makes you long to have her friendship.
Mary Pickford is a sort of divine child, who always seems far away from you, glowing in a soft light…
Norma Talmadge is an intelligent, brilliant woman of the world, with every faculty keyed to the highest pitch…
The interview was conducted by the versatile Adela Rogers St. Johns (1894 – 1988): a veteran journalist from Hollywood’s earliest days, she also made her mark writing screenplays, novels and toiled in the precincts as one of the first woman police reporters.
In 1923, a seasoned war reporter returned to the battleground of Chateau Thierry and walk the old turf where so many had died.
In order to gain a secure footing on the issue of Prohibition law enforcement, a Federal law was passed seeing to it that no foreign ships within the three mile limit of the United States could ever keep alcohol or wine in their ship stores.
When the architects of Prohibition were planning their dry fairyland they always knew that the weak spot in their scheme was going to be the vast borderlands that separate the United States from Canada and Mexico.
The attached article from 1923 outlines the concerns President Coolidge’s administration had regarding Prohibition law enforcement along the Canadian frontier.
The census-takers of 1920 to the people of America:
Can you read and write?
Five million men and women of America responded:
We cannot!
Fresh from his trip through post-war Europe, U.S. Senator Robert La Follette (1855 – 1925) declared:
The Germans have been underfed for seven years. They are suffering for want of food, fuel and clothing. Young children and old people are dying from hunger and disease induced by hunger. Emaciated, despairing, they are waiting the end.
These articles makes it clear that Clemanceau and Churchill were not the only ones who feared German duplicty in regards to the rearmament clause. Written a year apart are these two columns from Time and Punch insisting that the German Reichswehr had numerous weapons that were banned under the Versailles Treaty:
My attention had often been called to persistent rumors regarding Germany’s secret army. Whispers had reached me from quite reliable sources of over a million Teuton soldiers, well-officered and disciplined…
Click here if you would like to read about the 1936 Versailles Treaty violations.
A dictatorship can last forever, if properly managed. It is my task to provide a mechanism that will endure and to have the various parts of this mechanism running without friction; then after I am gone it will be able to run itself. A dictatorship must answer the purpose for which it was introduced. Certainly the Fascist regime will last a very long time… Socialism works on the principle that all are equal, but Fascism knows we are far from equal. Take the great masses of human beings. They like rule by the few.
This article was written shortly after the French occupation of the Ruhr and at a time when Adolf Hitler did not have much of a following -he was something of a curiosity to the Western press:
A principal reason why Hitler’s followers have begun to doubt him, it appears, is that the ‘dreaded gathering’ of the National Socialists in Munich came and went without ‘accomplishment.’
Read about the earliest post-war sightings of Hitler: 1945-1955
The Time Magazine review of Charlie Chaplin’s film, A Woman of Paris, fell in line with many other reviews of the work: they all believed that Chaplin, as director, had moved the ball forward insofar as the development of film – and Time hoped that they had seen the end of Chaplin the clown. However, the 82 minute film was a commercial flop, primarily because he wasn’t in it (they chose not to publicize that he played an extra’s roll for one quick scene).
The first film Chaplin had directed was The Kid (1922) – and you can read about that here…
Here is a column that appeared in the October 15, 1923 issue of Time that reported on the amount of devastation that was inflicted upon the German-occupied areas of Northern France between 1914 through 1918.
More on this topic can be read here
Alabama native John Purifoy was a regular contributor to Confederate Veteran Magazine and he wrote most often about the Battle of Gettysburg; one of his most often sited articles concerned the roll artillery played throughout the course of that decisive contest. In the attached article Purifoy summarized some of the key events from a rebel perspective. In the last paragraph he pointed out the one crucial error Lee soon came to regret- take a look.
A report that anticipated a hefty load of European immigrants for 1923.
