1929 – Old Magazine Articles

Explaining the 1924 Immigration Bill
(American Legion Monthly, 1929)

U.S. Senator David Reed (1880 – 1953) chose to take another victory lap as he recalled the glories of the legislation he co-authored in 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Bill, that placed restrictive quotas on immigration based on the 1890 Census). He explained why the legislation was introduced:

“The diagnosis showed that we were getting more immigrants than we could digest…we still harbor foreign colonies in our midst, animated by alien ideals, owing first loyalty to some other country, and giving only lip service – and not always that – to the land to which they have come to make their homes.”

‘What the Negro Means to America”
(Atlantic Monthly, 1929)

In the attached article Count Hermann Alexander Keyserling (1880 – 1946), German philosopher and social critic, wrote about those uncommon cultural elements within the African-American culture that renders American blacks as an unprecedented, unique cultural force in the world:

There has never been anything like the American Negro in Africa, nor is there anything like him in the West Indies or in South America.

In Memorium, 1914
(Saturday Review of Literature, 1929)

The editors for the August 3, 1929 issue of The Saturday Review of Literature removed their collective caps in deep solemnity for the disasters that began that week just fifteen years earlier when the opening shots were fired that began the First World War.

It was a fitting tribute coming from a literary magazine in 1929, for that would be the year that introduced some of the finest World War I books to the reading public: Undertones of War (Blunden), The Path of Glory (Blake) and All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque), which are all mentioned herein.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
(The Bookman, 1929)

Heartlessly torn from the brittle pages of a 1929 issue of The Bookman was this summary and review of Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Sigfried Sassoon:

During the war something was lost to Englishmen which they can recapture in nostalgic memories but never recover in fact. This strange novel of Sassoon’s reminds one of the faintly faded colors and old-fashioned security of English sporting prints.

All Quiet on the Western Front
(Saturday Review of Literature, 1929)

Henry Seidel Canby (1878 – 1961) was one of the founding editors of The Saturday of Literature
and in this article he put pen to paper and presented his readers with a concise summation of what he liked to call the five phases of war literature. Canby sensed that since 1919 there had been five unique types of war books, all produced by veterans, and that Erich Maria Remarque’s (1898 – 1970) All Quiet on the Western Front was typical of the fifth variety that was appearing in 1929:

The balance hangs true in Remarque. Pacifism is a theory, militarism is a theory, war is a necessity – not in its causes, for who really hates the enemy! – but for this doomed generation it is a fact. War for these men is normal, which does not mean that they like it.

A 1930 article about the movie can be read here can be read here.

Turning Back The Fashion Revolution
(Literary Digest, 1929)

Periodically we run across articles on this subject and it makes us sit up and recognize that this must have been a constant fear for numerous women (and fashion journalists) during the Twenties. Each article centers on a widespread belief that the Deep State behind the fashion industry had plans afoot to force women back into long skirts and corsets and that women would not be allowed any say in the matter.

Click here to read a similar article and here to read our other article on the subject.

The World After W.W. I
(The Bookman, 1929)

The book review of Winston Churchill’s 1929 tome, The Aftermath:

All too frequently Mr. Churchill passes lightly over the story he alone can tell and repeats the stories that other men have told….[Yet] no one who wants to understand the world he lives in can afford to miss The Aftermath. Would that all contemporary statesmen were one-tenth as willing as Mr. Churchill to tell what they know.

More about Winston Churchill can be read here.

Read the thoughts of one W.W. I veteran who regrets having gone to war…

‘The Americans in the Argonne Won the War”
(You Can’t Print That, 1929)

Here is a segment of the famous interview with General Paul von Hindenburg that was conducted just days after the close of hostilities in which the journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) posed the question as to which of the Allied Armies played the most decisive roll in defeating Germany; whereupon the General responded:

The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.

Read on…

Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…

‘The Americans in the Argonne Won the War”
(You Can’t Print That, 1929)

The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.

Read on…

Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…

‘The Americans in the Argonne Won the War”
(You Can’t Print That, 1929)

The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.

Read on…

Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…

The State of African-Americans in 1929
(The Book League, 1929)

This book review of Scott Nearing’s Black America
was published on the eve of the Great Depression and it provides a very accurate account of that community.

There are in the United States today, if statistics do not lie, some twelve million Negroes. The population of the Argentine is not so large, nor that of Holland, nor that of Sweden. Eight million of these dark Americans live in the South. In Georgia alone there are more than a million colored people…How do they live – these blacks in a country controlled by whites.

Author Scott Nearing (1883 – 1983) was an American naturalist, educator and civil rights advocate.

Click here to read an article by Ralph Ellison concerning Black writers of the 1930s.

‘A Plan to Make Chinese Canadians”
(Literary Digest, 1929)

A brief column from an American magazine that lucidly explained the mounting frustrations within 1920s Canada concerning the influx of Chinese immigrants to that country.

Click here to read about the Canadian POWs who collaborated with the Nazis.

‘STAY HOME!”
(Hollywood Magazine, 1929)

The advent of talking pictures has enormously increased the number of those who vision a fairyland of fame and fortune if they can only reach Hollywood… Rumor had it that voice was important for the new Talkies, and every female whose misguided family had ‘cultivated’ Mamie’s vocal resources, usually without the faintest reasonable excuse, realized where her destiny lay. The rush was on… Several organizations in Hollywood find it possible to send girls back home before the tragedy point is reached… Periodically the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce broadcasts warnings.

JOURNEY’S END by R.C. Sheriff
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1929)

Robert Littell reviewed the first New York production of Journey’s End by former infantry officer, R.C. Sherriff (1896 – 1975: 9th East Surrey Regiment, 1915 – 1918). We have also included a paragraph from a British critic named W.A. Darlington who had once fought in the trenches and approaches the drama from the angle of a veteran:

Click here if you would like to read another article about the WW I play Journey’s End.

The Very First Football Referee Hand Signals
(Literary Digest, 1929)

With the widespread complaints on the rise from the football fans on the sidelines that they were completely in the dark as to why a play was called, the elders of the sport decided that action had to be taken to remedy the growing confusion…

Hence a system of signals has been devised whereby the officials on the field can let the people in the stand know what is what. A gesture of the arm by the field official will immediately telegraph to the stands that Whoozis College’s penalty was for slugging. Another wave will inform the inquisitive public that the forward pass was incomplete by being grounded.

The article is illustrated with eight photographs of assorted football penalty hand signals; none of the gestures have stood the test of time – the penalties have remained but today different signals indicate each infraction.

Myths About Lincoln
(Literary Digest, 1929)

Myths After Lincoln is a book that documented many of the assorted tall tales that have, through the years, evolved in such a way as to have us all believe that Lincoln was a mystic who was blessed with dreams of foreboding.

The myth of Lincoln’s funeral train appearing as an apparition once a year is discussed, as are the legends that John Wilkes Boothe, like Elvis, survived the Virginia barn fire, where he is believed to have died and escaped into the Western territories.

The New Guy Who Took Her Place
(Literary Digest, 1929)

Making his bow to the nation with the praise of the Anti-Saloon League and of Andrew J. Volstead, father of the Prohibition law, ringing in his years, Mr. Youngquist (1885 – 1959) was quick to announce that

I am dry politically and personally, but I am not a fanatic on the subject.

Male Church Attendance Drops
(Literary Digest, 1929)

A report from The Literary Digest revealed that only one man out of every nine attended Sunday services with any regularity in 1929. The article quotes one wounded clergymen who predicted doom for the American culture as a whole, and interviewed an assorted number of church-goers of the male variety who offered a number sound reasons to attend weekly services, none of them having anything to do with the Gospels. However 317 out of 320 interviewed all concurred that their participation helps them attain a sense of the presence of God in their lives.

Click here to read an article from 1900 about why men dislike going to church.

When W.W. II started, Americans went back to church…