1929 – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

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…

What the Negro Thinks
(The Bookman, 1929)

This is the 1929 book review of What the Negro Thinks
by Robert Moton (1867 – 1940).

[To the Negro] the white man sometimes seems a bit pathetic in his insistence upon keeping the worth of the Negro hidden, in refusing to recognize skill and talent, honor and virtue, strength and goodness simply because it wears a black skin. To him, the white man’s apparent dread of the Negro is incomprehensible…

Schools Should Not Fly ”An Emblem Of War”
(Literary Digest, 1929)

Here is one from the everything old is new again collection. This 1929 article asks whether it was appropriate for schools to fly the American flag, believing as the this one cleric did, that the starry banner is an emblem of war.