1938

Articles from 1938

‘Class Magazines” (Scribner’s Magazine, 1938)

This article looks at the rise of Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and House & Garden – recognizing them as highly unique publications for their time. Special attention is paid to publisher Condé Nast and his meteoric rise during the early 20th Century.

The class magazines exude an aura of wealth and their circulations, therefore, are limited. They cater to the fit though few and they do this with slick paper, excellent illustrations and a sycophantic reverence for Society – at thirty-five to fifty cents a copy.


Click here to read about Fortune Magazine…

Threat of Nationalizing (Liberty Magazine, 1938)

In the winter of 1938, when one of FDR’s anointed Brain Trusters made an off-the-cuff remark that the Federal Government would take over industry if the economy did not turn around, it must have alarmed many of the industry captains and sent the stock market through the floor. It also moved the eccentric Bernarr MacFadden (1868 – 1955) to put a fresh ribbon in his typewriter and have at it:

The present administration has made a ghastly failure of the business management of this government. It has increased the national indebtedness at the rate of five to ten million dollars every day. It has added more than twenty thousand million dollars to our national debt, and it probably has twenty million or more of our citizens on the dole, or in charity jobs, which is the dole in another form.

Kaiser Wilhelm’s Thoughts On Hitler (Ken Magazine, 1938)

For the sixth time in his life, Ken Magazine‘s far-flung correspondent, W. Burkhardt, found himself cast in the roll as guest of the deposed king of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 – 1941). After exchanging pleasantries, their conversation turned to weightier topics, such as contemporary German politics and it was at that time that Ken‘s man in Doorn recognized his moment:

Suddenly, sensing a chance I may never have again, I pose the question:

And yourself, Sire, what do you think of him?

Nichts!

Click here to read about the fall of Paris…

The Okies and the Dust Bowl (Ken Magazine, 1938)

The other half of California’s 200,000 migratory workers are farmers who trekked from the dust bowl area; they found work on farms, but not farming; it’s seasonal piecework, like in a mill. Each Oklahoma nomad dreams of a cottage and a cow, but he’s just sitting on a barbed wire fence. With the publicity over, the government has forgotten the dust bowl refugees. At Depression depth, a man might make $8 a week; now, $5 is lucky. They are the bitterest folk in America; blood may flow…

Click here if you would like to read a 1940 article about the the finest movie to ever document the flight of the Okies: The Grapes of Wrath.

The Imperial Wizard (Ken Magazine, 1938)

Fat, shrewd-smiling, garrulous Old Doc Evans (Hiram Evans, 1881 – 1966) is still Emperor and Imperial Wizard, but he’s now apparently only fronting for a Big Boss who has some sensational new plans which have already begun to click. Once again the Klan is holding hands with politicians all over the country, but the hand-holding is being done under the table. The big drive begins in May

The Oscars: Hollywoods Self-Adoration Fest (Stage Magazine, 1938)

A tongue-in-cheek magazine article from 1938 about The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and their annual gala devoted to over-confidence, The Oscars. Written eleven years after the very first Academy Award ceremony, and published in a magazine that catered to New York theater lovers, the article was penned by an unidentified correspondent who was not very impressed by the whole affair but managed to present a thorough history of the award nonetheless.


Director Frank Capra was awarded his third trophy at the 1938 Oscars…

‘Americans All” (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

In an effort to keep the writers and actors of the Works Progress Administration busy, FDR’s Department of the Interior produced a 26-part radio program intended to prove that America could never have become so great without the contributions of all the various hyphenated groups that make up the country. On Sunday afternoon throughout much of 1938, Americans could gather around their radios, if they had them, and hear their identity groups being praised by the Government: African-Americans tuned in on December 18th; the WASP show was on December fourth.

Their Freaky Religion (Literary Digest, 1938)

Last spring the Third Reich recognized a third official state religion: a neo-pagan cult based on Thor, Wotan, Siegfried and the old Nordic gods. It was especially favored by ultranazis and by Hitler’s black-shirted bodyguards, the Schutzstaffel or S.S. corps. The other two official German religions are Catholic and Protestant Evangelical, whose proponents today are deadlocked in combat with the up and coming neopagans.

Labor Abuses in the South (Focus Magazine, 1938)

Many of the back-handed dealings that would be addressed in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath are illustrated in the attached photo-essay titled, Slavery in America. This article is about the cruel world of the Deep South that existed in the Twenties and Thirties. It was an agrarian fiefdom where generations of White planters and factory owners practiced the most un-American system of exploitation and feudalism that developed and was perpetuated from the chaos wrought by the Civil War and Reconstruction. It was a nasty place where the working people of both races labored under conditions of peonage and bone-crushing poverty with no hope in sight.


Click here to read more about the American South during the Great Depression.

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