Pathfinder Magazine

Articles from Pathfinder Magazine

The First Fifty-Years Behind the Wheel (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)

There is no organization that has compiled more facts about cars and their impact on society, than The American Automobile Association – AAA for short. And why shouldn’t they? the AAA predates turn signals, starter buttons and stop lights. They were around before seat belts, parking lights and jay-walkers. They even predate car doors and windshields – to say nothing of their wipers. As you should all know by now, the AAA was not established as a car trivia repository but a coterie of motorists who banded together to aid other motorists.


Written in 1952, this article serves to mark the 50th anniversary of the AAA; these columns are positively packed with assorted automobile trivia which, when pieced together, spells out the first fifty years of the car in America.


Read about the Great Depression and the U.S. auto industry…

Communism vs Democracy (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Pathfinder Magazine publisher Graham Patterson put pen to paper in an effort to articulate what the Cold War was in its simplest form, and what were the differences between a communist government and a democracy.

It is important for free people to know their avowed enemy, to understand communism, to recognize the difference between their present freedom and the way of life communism would force upon them.

Sugar Rationing Hits The Candy Industry (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)

The candy-makers of the nation are not having a such a sweet time of it, for, like most other manufacturers, they are bothered by scarcities of labor and materials and so must cut corners and find substitutes.


The article goes on to point out that the sugar that was available was largely devoted to military personnel (18 pounds a year); as a result of this candy rationing, movie-goers were introduced to popcorn as a substitute (you can read about that here).

The Satellite War (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Then came June 24 [1950]. Her skirts legally clean, Russia hit upon a way to fight the U.S. without technically using a single bullet or soldier of her own. It mattered little if Korean mercenaries, not identifiable nationally with the USSR, were doing the fighting. A satellite war was just as good a way to weaken the U.S. as a direct war – if not better.

Expanding The American Draft Pool (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)

Nine months after the American intervention into the Korean War, the Congress saw reason to expand the draft pool to an even wider degree:

Eighteen-year-olds were a little closer to the draft this week, and America was a step closer to a system of permanent universal military training…

The Draft (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

Christmas in khaki became the new theme song of thousands of the nation’s young men last week when the Army handed Selective Service a new quota… the Army wants 70,000 in November.

Women Behind the Guns (Assorted Magazines, 1942)

When it became clear to the employers on the American home front that there was going to be a shortage of men, their attention turned to a portion of the labor pool who had seldom been allowed to prove their mettle: they were called women. This article recalls those heady days at the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground when local women were trained to fire enormous artillery pieces in order that the Army weapons specialists understand the gun’s capabilities. This column primarily concerns the delight on all the men’s faces when it was discovered that women were able to perform their tasks just as well as the men.

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.

The Ice was Thawing… (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

Starting in the 1940s, small articles like the one here began appearing in magazines and newspapers across the nation – snippets indicating that the American people (ie. whites) were slowly catching on to the system of racial injustice they had inherited – and wondering aloud as to the tyranny of it all:

To 13 co-eds at Uppsala College, East Orange, N.J., democracy is something more than a worn text-book theory. It is a living, though thorny, reality. Shortly before school’s end, they formed one of the nation’s first interracial, interfaith college social sororities.


Another article about segregation’s end can be read here.

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