1933 – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

The Temper of the Times
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

Columnist George Sokolosky (1893 – 1962), writing from the road, reported that a general uneasiness had fallen across the land as a result of the economic stagnation:

Wherever I go, I am told of how many families live on the city and country. In Williamsport, Pa., a delightfully intelligent young woman explained to me how this year was different from last in that many of those who contributed to charities are now, rather quietly, taking charity.

Eleanor Roosevelt Was a Very Different First Lady
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

Written not too long after she assumed the title First Lady; Eleanor Roosevelt (1906 – 1975) was causing a dust-up in Washington:

With the Constitution making no provision whatever for the duties of President’s wives, they have heretofore confined their activities largely to the social side of the white House.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s governmental activities are approved by those who see in them altruism, sympathy for the downtrodden, and a great desire to serve others. Her activities are opposed by those who feel that she is not properly a public servant because she is not responsible to the American electorate or directly accountable to it at election time.

President Hoover’s Farewell Address
(Literary Digest, 1933)

With FDR waiting in the wings, eagerly anticipating the start of his administration, the outgoing president, Herbert Hoover (1874 – 1964), made his farewell address to the cash-strapped nation:

Warning against the ‘rapid degeneration into economic war which threatens to engulf the world’ the President said that ‘the imperative call to the world today is to prevent that war.’ The gold standard, he said ‘is the need of the world,’ for only by the early reëstablishment of that standard can the barriers to trade be reduced.’

Read about the Great Depression and the U.S. auto industry during the last year of the Hoover presidency…

The First Five Year Plan
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

A 1933 magazine article that reported on the success of the Soviet Union’s first (of many) Five Year Plans.

The myriad five year economic development plans dreamed-up by the assorted butchers of the dear dead Soviet Union all had one thing in common that was never lost on the Russian people: they always involved the construction of new factories, but never the construction of new housing.

Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.

Fascists in Chile
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Cabled from Santiago, Chile came this report that on May 7, 1933 the broad-belted boulevards of that grand city were filled with 15,000 Chilean fascists, cheered on by a crowed that was estimated at a number higher than 400,000 – a throng composed almost entirely of citizens who had all come to see the first parade of the Nacional Milicia Republicana:

Along the lines of the march there were many demonstrations for the Fascists, and a few against them. Women tossed flowers from flag-bedecked windows. Domingo Duran, Minister of Education and Justice, a regimental commander of the militia, received almost continual applause.

A squadron of Fascist planes flew overhead as the units, unarmed, and marching to airs played by two dozen bands and fife corps, moved through the spacious Boulevard Alamada, past the Presidential Palace to the Plaza des Aramas.

From Amazon: Chile and the Nazis: From Hitler to Pinochet

The Truce of Tangku
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

This 1933 news piece concerned the cessation of hostilities that was agreed upon by both the Imperial Empire of Japan and China in the campaign that began two years earlier with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

When the withdrawal of Chinese troops is completed, the Japanese agree that their own troops will retire to the Great Wall, which the Japanese claim is the boundary of the state of Manchukuo.

Mussolini and the Four-Power Pact
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

The brain child of Il Duce, the Four-Power Pact was a diplomatic treaty that was intended to guarantee a greater voice to the four strongest powers in Europe: Italy, Germany, France and Britain.

The chief value of the Mussolini pact is (1) it induces collaboration in Europe and (2) it pledges the disarmament regardless of what the disarmament conference does.

1930s Golf Attire
(Photoplay Magazine, 1934)

The attached 1933 and 1934 photos will give some indication as to what golf clothes looked like during the early Thirties. Depicted in the first image are four actors of the Hollywood tribe: Adolphe Menjou (clad in plus-fours), a slovenly Johnny Weismuller, Bruce Cabot and Richard Arlen.

Full-cut trousers were the rule of the day, as can clearly be seen in the second photo that was indifferently ripped from the browning pages of Delineator Magazine, which also shows a smashing linen shirtwaist dress that was worn on the Bermuda links.

T.E. Lawrence: Tiresome Literary Celebrity
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Hannen Swaffer (1879 – 1962), long-time dead British journalist who once presided as the Grand Pooh-Bah of Fleet Street’s chattering classes declared in this editorial that one by one the war heroes of the past are being debunked and now it is Lawrence’s turn…

Read these various accounts that serve as proof that there is a life after this one.

‘China: The Pity of It”
(Saturday Review of Literature, 1933)

The review of J.O.P. Bland’s China: The Pity of It which was written by Henry Kittredge Norton:

Mr. Bland (1863 – 1945) has known his China for a third of a century and he is convinced that if that unhappy country has moved at all in the last three decades, it has moved backwards…Without relieving the Chinese of their share of the responsibility in the premises, the half-baked liberalism of the west – by which is meant Great Britain and the United States for the most part -is found to be the chief cause of expanding disaster in China…

Available at Amazon: China – The Pity Of It

The Battle at the Great Wall
(Literary Digest, 1933)

…Peiping Associated Press dispatches tell of a major battle between Japanese and Chinese armies for possession of Chiumenkow Pass in the Great Wall of China. The Pass is one of the most important gateways leading into the rich province of Jehol which, it is reported, Japan purposes to cut off from China and add to Manchukuo…This collision forms the second chapter in the Shanhaikwan dispute, and it comes quickly.

Versailles Treaty Conference Spoofed on Stage
(Stage Magazine, 1933)

One of the summer offerings of 1933 was the stage production of ‘Peace Palace’ by Emil Ludwig (1881 – 1948). Posted here is a review of the production along with a black and white photograph of the cast in full costume and recognizable make-up.

A New Deal for Women
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

This historic article appeared during the opening weeks of Roosevelt’s first term administration announcing that the new president was taking a novel approach in granting various appointments to government positions of leadership by selecting numerous women who had proved their mettle in the fiery furnace of 1920s Democratic party politics.

1924 was a very important year for American women in politics…

Isamu Noguchi
(Creative Art, 1933)

A profile of the twenty-eight year old artist Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988).

The Japanese Drive on Beijing
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

The aggressive ambitions of Japan know no bounds. The occupation of Peiping [Beijing] will lead to further aggression in Shantung and Shansi and other northern provinces, and will result either in the establishment of a new puppet regime in North China.

The Shanghai SHUN PAO, an independent newspaper, bewails the futility of the uncoordinated resistance which has prevailed among China’s forces since the capture of Jehol, and it adds:

The only possibilities now are peace by compromise or a continuance of war. Despite the dangers of the latter course it is the only possible solution, but resistance must be coordinated under an able leader, China must fight or become a second Korea.

Linen and Cotton and the Summer of 1933
(Delineator Magazine, 1933)

Attached is printable fashion editorial by a lifer in the world of 20th Century American fashion, Marian Corey who stood firm on her belief that the Summer of ’33 would stand out as the first season in which the swankiest threads in fashion’s offering would be linen and cotton rather than silk:

Cotton and linen have gone chic on us. Yes we know that you’ve heard this before. Every year for the last three, stylists have become very sentimental, along about March first, on this subject and each year practically everyone has gone right on wearing silk and more silk, just the same. This time, however, things will be different; this is the summer to believe the stylists.

The article is illustrated by six photographs picturing various assorted well-fed loafers of the Palm Beach set.

Learn about the color trends in men’s 1930 suits…