1947

Articles from 1947

The U.S. Navy’s War: Pearl Harbor to Midway
(Dept. of the Navy, 1947)

An essay on the U.S. Navy’s progress during the first six months of World War Two.

Japan’s decision to launch a war was based on the assumption that the conflict in Europe would render Russia and Great Britain negligible factors in the Far East. It was based on the further assumption that the United States, already committed to near belligerency in the Atlantic could not, even if finally successful in that theater, mount an offensive in the Pacific in less than 18 months to two years and would not in any case be willing to pay the price of total victory in the Pacific.

Princess Elizabeth During the Second World War
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

A printable article (excerpted from a longer one) outlining what exactly Princess Elizabeth II was up to during World War II:

…and it was decided that Elizabeth must not enlist in anything, that her training for the throne was of the first importance. But Elizabeth felt that she would be a slacker and carry about an inferiority complex for life. So for a year, relentlessly, she persisted. Just before her nineteenth birthday, her father gave in…

Henry Dreyfuss
(Coronet Magazine, 1947)

Attached is an article about the work of the American industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss (1904 – 1972):

At 43, Henry Dreyfuss is enormously successful, a fact which he makes every effort to conceal… In designing a typewriter, he measured the fingers of hundreds of typists. In creating a new chair for plane or train, he doesn’t settle for the fact that the chair simply seems comfortable. He hires an orthopedic surgeon to advise.

Industrial design was barely getting started when the 1929 Depression struck. America’s economic collapse may have meant calamity for millions of people, but for designers it spelled golden opportunity. Savage competition became the rule. To stay in business, a manufacturer had to give his products new utility, new eye-appeal…

The James Agee Review of It’s a Wonderful Life
(The Nation, 1947)

James Agee, the film reviewer for The Nation (1942 – 1948), was charmed by the warmth of It’s a Wonderful Life
and believed that it was an admirable and well-crafted piece of film making; he nonetheless came away feeling like he’d been sold a bill of goods and rejected the movie primarily because he believed that films created in the Atomic Age should reflect the pessimism that created the era.

Down With Christian Dior and His ”New Look”!
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1947)

The California fashion critic who penned this article believed that the fashions of Christian Dior stood firmly in opposition to the optimistic, Twentieth Century casual elegance of Claire McCardell (1905 – 1958) and Adrian (1903 – 1959). She could not bare Dior, with his vulgar penchant to spin

the feminine figure in the unconventional manner, trying to make her look good where she ain’t. He seeks the ballet dancer illusion – natural, rounded shoulders, too weak to support a struggling world…Her waist is pinched in an exaggerated indentation, the better to emphasize her padded hips…There are butterfly sleeves, box pockets, belled jackets, and barreled skirts, suggesting something like a Gibson girl, or whatever grandmother should have worn.


Click here to read a 1961 article about Jacqueline Kennedy’s influence on American fashion.

The Archbishop Did His Bit
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

A small notice from 1947 that reported on the archdiocese of St. Louis standing up in favor of racially integrating their school system – while simultaneously threatening excommunication to all members of the flock who contested the decision.

Government-Supplied Scabs
(Commonweal Magazine, 1947)

Writing to the editors of the news monthly, Commonweal during the Autumn of 1947 was Harry Leland Mitchell (1906 – 1989), president of the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union who reported that the National Farm Labor Union was engaged in an important strike against the Di Giorgio Corporation in Bakersfield, California:

First, the Di Giorgio Corporation is the world’s largest fruit-producing corporation… it is to large scale industrialized agriculture what Ford is to the automobile industry. If the National Farm Labor Union wins the strike, it will be possible to proceed rapidly to the [organizing] of the migratory agricultural workers of California.


– but the union didn’t win. Di Giorgio, in league with the Department of Agriculture, secured foreign laborers to break the strike.

The Cold War and Public Opinion
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

This article was written by Gallup Poll Editor William Lydgate who compared various opinion surveys that were taken shortly after the close of W.W. II with the ones that were created just one year later.


The 1945 poll revealed that the American public generally looked forward to friendly relations with the Soviet Union, shared remarkably high hopes for world peace and believed deeply that the United Nations would be responsible for the creation of a better world. However, the 1946 poll measured an enormous drop in this sunny disposition.

Scroll to Top