1938 – Page 9 – Old Magazine Articles

Censors of the Japanese War Machine (Ken Magazine, 1938)

The Japanese censorship boards have drafted regulations for the press in territory under their control, and unsuccessful attempts were made to control news dispatches in Shanghai’s foreign-owned newspapers. In Peiping, Tientsin, Tsingtao and other cities where the Japanese are in complete control, foreign editors are having their troubles, as evidenced by the ‘secret’ instructions to the press issued by the Special Military Missions to China, with Headquarters in Peiping… Under the heading ‘Important Standards for Press Censorship’ come the following regulations…

-what follows is an enormous laundry list of DONT’S issued to the officers of the foreign press stationed in Japanese-occupied China.

The Great Depression in the South (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

In the Summer of 1938 the New Deal administration turned its attention to the Southern States in an effort to solve the poverty that had long afflicted the region and was especially keen during the Great Depression:

The War Between the States freed the slaves, but it did not free the South. Old plantations were broken up. Pressed to meet mortgages, farmers leased part of their farms to tenants. Cheap [African-American] labor remained and children were pressed into service on the Southern fields. Cotton and low labor costs stayed in the South.

Read about FDR’s African-American advisers here…

Leon Trotsky Speaks About FDR and the Great Depression (Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1938)

Two and a half years were left on the clock for the exiled Leon Trotsky (né Lev Davidovich Bronstein: 1879 – 1940) until he would have to keep his rendezvous with an icepick in Mexico – and while living it up on this borrowed time he granted an interview to this one correspondent from a Beverly Hills literary magazine in which he ranted on in that highly-dated and terribly awkward Bolsheviki language about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his social programs.

Click here to read an article about the NKVD agent who murdered Trotsky.

Remembering Alma Gluck (Stage Magazine, 1938)

Marking the occasion of the untimely death of American soprano Alma Gluck (born Reba Feinsohn; 1884 – 1938), music critic Samuel Chotzinoff wrote this essay in which he recalled witnessing the first meeting between Gluck and her (second) husband Efrem Zimbalist, Sr. (1890 – 1985) at the absolute height of her fame in 1911. The remembrance continues as Chotzinoff labels that era as being the ‘golden age of vocalists’ and recalls many of the finest qualities of her talent.

‘Steel Ring Around Mussolini” (Ken Magazine, 1938)

One thousand men are charged with the personal responsibility of seeing that Il Duce doesn’t meet with an untimely death. Their frenzied precautions make him the best protected of all contemporary dictators – a protection which is sorely needed. Sixteen years after the victorious March on Rome a special tribunal dealing with the ‘enemies of fascism’ is still working along at exceptionally high pressure.

Click here to read about Mussolini’s departure from the League of Nations.

Beauticians Without Borders (Click Magazine, 1938)

This is the story of the Jacob A. Riis Settlement beauty clinic which was funded by a well-heeled New Yorker in order that the impoverished women from the down-trodden quarters of New York might come to know all the relaxation that comes with electrolysis and eyebrow-plucking (sadly, anal bleaching was not offered at the time).

Bad Press Day for Eleanor Roosevelt (Ken Magazine, 1938)

During a 1936 visit to a research facility devoted to finding a cure for children’s lung ailments, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was remembered by a reporter for having blurted out a highly insensitive question:

What is the use of saving babies, if they can’t earn a decent living when they grow up?

With two years to think about her impulsive inquiry, the reporter responded with outrage in formulating an answer.

He was Too Tough on Businesses (Collier’s Magazine, 1938)

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was well-known for cracking wise about the members of the American business community, such as stock brokers, speculators, company functionaries and the leading corporate executives during the Great Depression – believing that there actually could be an economy worth saving if they didn’t exist. Throughout the Thirties the New Deal launched numerous tax laws and assorted other pieces of legislation that served only to stymy competition, raise prices and slow all economic growth. The editors of COLLIER’S MAGAZINE published this spirited and rational defense of corporate America in 1938 and it is attached herein:

American business, whatever its limitations, has produced a better living for more people than any other system of production… The American big-business system has fed people better and more generously. It has provided more convenient and more wholesome shelter. It has distributed vastly more of the mechanical aids to civilized living.

Click here to read about FDR’s tax plan from 1935.

Movie Exhibitors vs Movie Producers (Ken Magazine, 1938)

A 1938 magazine article pertains to a brawl that once existed between movie exhibitors and movie producers involving the Hollywood practice known as block-booking, which required theater owners to commit to movies they have never seen. The article refers to how Hollywood employed their biggest stars to fight legislation in Washington designed to overturn this scheme.

The bill was defeated.

Click here to read about Marilyn Monroe and watch a terrific documentary about her life.

More about the American film business in the 1940s can be read here…

FDR on Wage Reduction (Literary Digest, 1938)

I am opposed to wage reductions – a statement made by President Roosevelt at a February press conference in 1938, compelled both economists and industrialists to ejaculate numerous multisyllabic words on the matter. In light of the fact that magazine editors are wage earners, the majority of selected quotes side with FDR.

Click here to read about the end of the Great Depression…