New Outlook Magazine

Articles from New Outlook Magazine

The Mobsters
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

This is an informative read that was written during the closing months of the Noble Experiment by one of New York’s most admired crime reporters, Joseph Driscoll. The article is composed of numerous profiles of mob bosses both famous and forgotten from numerous cities throughout the nation.

[These] personality sketches constitute a roll-call, a memorial service for the men of direct action, the gentleman of the rackets, who prospered under prohibition and who (we hope) may not be with us much longer, certainly not in the same old style and the same old stand…


An Al Capone article can be read here…

Incompetence at the Helm
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

A columnist writing for the magazine New Outlook following the first nine months of the New Deal, weighed carefully all the assorted alphabet agencies and edicts that President Roosevelt created in hopes that the U.S. economy would once more spring to life. He concluded that there was nothing to look forward to and compared FDR to the con-men on the street corners who scam the passersby into playing their shell games; difference being that FDR’s shells were both empty.


Click here to read about the first 100 days of the Roosevelt administration.

Your Graduation Gift: Despair
(New Outlook, 1933)

This is a graduation commencement speech that was written simply to appear on the printed page of a 1933 magazine – it was far too depressing to have ever been recited before an audience of eager-eared graduates and their doting relatives.

You know, of course, that ‘times are hard’… You know that less than ten percent of the post-graduate professional men from last year’s class have found work. And you have heard from home. Allowances have been cut. Classmates have had to drop out of college. Old family friends have had grave misfortunes. Homes have been lost. You know all these things, but you can’t realize them fully at this moment. You will, unfortunately, realize them only too well when you yourselves try to find a place in the world.

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Harold Ickes Wrote the Relief Checks
(New Outlook, 1935)

When Harold Ickes (1874 – 1952) assumed his post as FDR’s Secretary of the Department of the Interior he found himself in charge of three distinct governmental concerns. The first of these elements to be lorded over was the public lands (mines, forests and Indian reservations). His second responsibility was involved with the drilling of oil. The third and most observed cell in his official asylum was that of Administrator of Public Works Three Billion Dollar Fund. He was under instruction to spend this as rapidly as possible…It would give work to the workless, get money into circulation and encourage business.


Click here to read about President Harry Truman…

Child Labor
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

As you can read in this article, you’ll find that child labor throughout most of the Thirties had not been eradicated fully and was very much alive in some of the more brutal parts of the nation. That said, you might be surprised to know that the proposed amendment to the constitution concerning the ban on child labor (18 and bellow) has never been ratified by the Congress even to this day. When this column was written the proposed amendment was already nine years old and the politician who penned it held that the legislation was similar Prohibition in that it attempted to impose a moral code upon the American people. He believed that this was matter best left to the states; he further pointed out that the recently passed National Recovery Act had abolished child labor by fiat (and when the NRA was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1935, child labor abuses increased a small degree).

Child labor was finally brought under control with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

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…

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The Political Climate in Germany
(New Outlook Magazine, 1932

By the early Thirties the anointed of Europe realized that there would be no economic recovery for the continent if Germany was not a part of it. With this in mind, a delegation convened in Lausanne, Switzerland where it was decided by representatives from France, Britain and Germany that the reparation payments imposed upon the defeated countries by the Treaty of Versailles would be suspended. Hitler’s followers were of the mind that Germany should not have signed the agreement unless the war-guilt clause was removed from the Versailles Treaty. This article addresses the general political climate in Germany as 1932 came to a close.

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The 1934 German Economy
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

Attached herein are thumbnail reports on how the Third Reich economy was faring during the last six months of 1934. For the month of October a report begins –

The developments in the German trade situation in recent weeks are best summed up in the following newspaper headline of recent date:


REICH TO GLORIFY HUNGER AS VIRTUE

Tyranny At Home
(New Outlook Magazine, 1935)

In the Spring of 1935, as the world slipped deeper and deeper into the muck of the Great Depression, journalist Cedric Fowler noticed that both governments state and Federal were introducing legislation that was designed to muzzle free-speech and make the deportation of foreign radicals far easier. At first he thought it was a result of the spread of Fascism across the globe – and it had finally reached our shores. He also considered the possibility that the elected classes, realizing that they were unable to reduce the destruction of the Depression, felt emasculated and invigorated by picking on the radical minority. Either way, he feared for the nations future.

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Germany on the Eve of Hitler
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

The first half of this article succinctly summarizes the German political experience that took place between 1919 through 1933; the second half anticipated a new, stable beginning for Germany. The German correspondent seemed not be bothered at all about their incoming chancellor.


A similar article can be read here…

The Benevolent Government…
(New Outlook Magazine, 1935)

Sadly, this is a story that has been duplicated numerous times throughout the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Red China, Vietnam, Canada and every other nation where the people have entrusted their health care to a faceless bureaucracy. It was a pathetic anecdote that was adored by FDR’s critics.


More about New Deal spending can be read here…

‘Nobody Starves”
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

This article attempted to explain to that portion of the reading public fortunate enough to have jobs, just how the county relief programs worked and what was provided to the subscribers. The journalist did not weigh-in as to whether she approved or disapproved of the program but sought to explain that in places like the Mid-West, where houses outnumbered apartment buildings, allowances for such possessions were made. In the congested cities of the East it might be expected that the family car be sold prior to receiving relief funds, but in the states where distances were greater subscribers were permitted to hold on to their cars.

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Manchukuo
(New Outlook Magazine, 1932)

This article heralds the creation of a new nation – the short lived puppet state of Manchukuo. Carved out of portions of Japanese-occupied Manchuria in 1932, the country was created by Imperial Japan in order to serve as an industrial province from which they could continue their military adventures in China. A good deal of column space pertains to a silver tongued Japanese Foreign Minister named Count Uchida Kōsai (1865 – 1936) and how he attempted to justify Manchukuo before the outraged members of the League of Nations – when the League declared that Manchuria was Chinese, Uchida withdrew Japan from membership in the League..

How Poor Was America?
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

Economist Robert R. Doane (1889 – 1961) presented numerous charts and figures amassed between 1929 through 1932 to argue that America was still a wealthy nation despite the destruction wrought by the Great Depression:

In 1929 the United States held 44.6 percent of the total wealth of the world. In 1932 that proportion has increased to almost 50 percent. We still have half the banking-power of the world. We still have half the income. In all of the items of economic importance and efficiency, the United States still stands supreme.

The Case For Social Studies
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

Although the author of this article, educator Cedric Fowler, does not offer a name for the subject he is proposing, it will not take you very long to recognize it as social studies. Fowler argued that the text books available at that time were more suited to the Nineteenth Century than the tumultuous Thirties, ignoring all the various hot topics of the day that would have made subjects such as history, geography and civics come alive for those students who were enrolled at the time of the Great Depression.

Life has become more complex for young Americans since the time of their fathers and grandfathers, and educational method has become more complex and more comprehensive with it… The work of Dewey, Thorndike and a score of other authorities has liberated the schoolroom from its stuffy atmosphere, has made it possible for it to become an ante-room to adult life.

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