1933

Articles from 1933

The Plummeting Salaries
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

In this article, Dorothy Dunbar Bromley (1896 – 1986) addressed one of the preeminent issue of her day: the rapidly decreasing salaries of the American worker:

If we are fatuous optimists, it is because we have only the vaguest idea of how appalling the situation is. We have read a great deal about the return of of the garment sweatshop of fifty years ago, with the same abominable conditions and the same exploitation of women and children for a few cents an hour, or for no pay at all…


More on this exploitation can be read here…

Lenin, Rockefeller and Diego Rivera
(The Literay Digest, 1933)

When it was made known to Nelson Rockefeller that the muralist he retained to decorate the lobby of his New York Building (Rockefeller Plaza) had taken the liberty of painting the likeness of Lenin in the work, letters were exchanged between the two men. The attached column is an excerpt from a longer piece that pertains to the dust-up.

The Japanese Soldier In China
(Literary Digest, 1933)

An article that seems remarkable for lacking those politically correct qualities we’re all so used to reading in today’s magazine columns, this article presents a somewhat slanted, pro-Western vision of the Japanese Army, depicting it as an organized and highly disciplined peasant army:

Some of the finest raw material in the world makes up Japan’s infantry…The material is not so adaptable for horsed and mechanized units, as the Japanese possess little natural aptitude for dealing with animals or machines.

Some attention is paid to the strict diet of the Japanese soldier.

The Fascist Blue Shirts of Portugal
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Black shirts in Italy, Brown shirts in Hitlerite Germany and now comes a new imitator in Portugal’s Blue-Shirt Fascist movement known as National Syndicalism.


Portugal’s Fascism is described by a Lisbon correspondent of the London Morning Post as a blend of Hitlerite Fascism and Mussolini Fascism. Because it is called the National Syndicalist movement it must not be confused with the Red Syndicalism of Spain. Its leader is Dr. Roalo Preto, who is said to bear a personal resemblance to Hitler.

A movement of opinion and ideas toward a more just and equitable social organization…We aim at substituting the principle of liberty of work by a system of ‘harmony of direction’ under which capital, technical knowledge, and labor will cooperate under the protective care of the State in maximum productive return for the welfare of the nation.

Norman Bel Geddes
(Creative Art Magazine, 1933)

Norman Bel Geddes (1893 – 1958) was one of the prominent industrial designers to practice a style known as streamline modern. Always mentioned in the same breath as Henry Dreyfuss and Raymond Lowey, Norman Bel Geddes opened his office in 1927 and helped to give the 1930s a defining look. He was the first of his kind to recognize that American manufacturers were sincerely interested in the marketing of modern design.


The sleek, aerodynamic lines of 1930s streamlining can clearly bee seen in the thirteen images illustrating the attached article about his work, which was written by Douglas Haskell, a well-known design critic active throughout much of the period spanning the mid-Twenties through the mid-Sixties; the column was intended to serve as a review for Geddes’ 1932 book, Horizonsstyle=border:none.

The Economic Collapse of the World
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Published in May of 1933, the attached article concerned the much anticipated London Economic Conference which was scheduled to convene the following month in London. The world leaders who agreed to assemble were all of one mind in so much as their shared belief that collectively they would stand a better chance in defeating the economic depression that was bedeviling all their respective countries. It was their intention to meet and review all existing international trade and tariff agreements and to make an effort at stabilizing the currency exchange rates.

Nazism and Bolshevism: the Similarities
(Literary Digest, 1933)

A look at the observations made by a correspondent for The London Observer who compared the two dominate tribes found in 1933 Berlin and Moscow. The writer was far more distracted by the similarities in their street hustle and their sloganeering rather than their shared visions in governance and culture; for example, both Nazis and Communists were attracted to restrictions involving speech, assembly and gun ownership while sharing an equal enthusiasm for May Day parades and the color red. Additionally, both totalitarians had their preferred dupes:

Absolute ideas invariably demand victims; and the ruthless treatment which is deliberately meted out to Jews in Germany is closely paralleled by the creation in the Soviet Union of a sort of pariah caste of Lishentsi or disenfranchised persons.


Germany never celebrated May Day with public parades until Hitler came to power; May Day was made a national holiday and all employers were given the day off with pay.


Click here to read an article that explains in great detail how the Nazi economic system (with it’s wage and price controls) was Marxist in origin.


Read another article that compares Communism and Nazism…

The Flaws of the NRA
(Collier’s Magazine, 1933)

An excerpt from a longer article by Winston Churchill in which he praised the virtues of the Anglo-American alliance and the economic leadership forged by the two nations during the Depression. Four paragraphs are devoted to the confusion he experienced when stopping to consider some of President Roosevelt’s economic decisions and the roll played by his National Recovery Administration (NRA).


Like many presidents before and after him, FDR purchased many of his clothes from Brooks Brothers;
click here to read about the history of the store.

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