Pathfinder Magazine

Articles from Pathfinder Magazine

The Soviet Invasion of Finland
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

Just as Lenin had a triumphal military adventure, Stalin, too, believed that he could deploy Soviet forces victoriously. However, when Lenin launched his enterprise against neighboring Georgia in 1921, he had the benefit of skilled military leaders under his command – this was not the case with Stalin, who had seen fit to purge his military of thousands of officers (1934 – 1939). When Stalin’s legions attacked Finland in November of 1939, the Soviet losses that were inflicted by the numerically inferior Finns were far greater than he ever thought possible.


The article appeared during the closing weeks of the war and it reported on the outside aid the Finns were receiving. The attached file also includes an article from 1931 concerning some of the bad blood that existed between the two nations.


Read an article explaining how the Soviets used early radio…

FDR’s Alphabet Agencies
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)

Listed herein are the sixty-two alphabet agencies as they existed in 1934. More were on their way and, as this article makes quite clear, a good number of them were created by the Hoover administration. If you’re looking for an article indicating that Hoover and Roosevelt had similar approaches to governance, this might be a good place to start.

Youth at Risk
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

By the year 1937 it became a concern that an eighth of all those admitted to the nation’s state-run mental hospitals were between the ages of 15 through 24. On a similar note, it was revealed that 40% of employable youth were entirely unable to secure positions during this this same period. These matters were made known as a result of the efforts put forward by the Youth Commission of the American Council of Education – a group that began compiling such data in 1935.

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‘Soak the Rich”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)

‘SOAK THE RICH!’ has been a popular slogan for generations. President Roosevelt knows the people and he knows that this cry is even more popular now than it ever was before. Taxes which increase the cost of living and hang so heavily on the poor cannot be popular… But pick some taxes that bear down on the rich and – and then you have something which everyone will hurrah for. The number of rich are comparatively few, and hence their votes and influence can be disregarded entirely.


President Roosevelt’s plan was to tax this minority for 75 percent of their income.


To read about the dwindling good fortune of the rich, click here…

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…

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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).

A Spike In Illegitimate Births
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)

A new problem of the war is the fact that children are born to married women whose husbands have been long overseas… Department of Labor figures show that more than twice as many illegitimate children were born this year than in 1942.


Click here to read more on this topic.

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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.

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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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The Birth of Special-Effects Makeup
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Here is an article about one of the most innovative minds in the nascent world of Hollywood makeup design; it belonged to a fellow named Jack Dawn (1892 – 1961). Dawn was under contract at MGM for decades and worked on over two hundred films, his most being the film that is discussed herein: The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM). The article briefly touches upon the thin, rubbery masks that he created after having made numerous in depth studies of human bone and muscle.

‘No More Pearl Harbors”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

When the twenty-year-old editor at Yank Magazine wrote this editorial at the close of W.W. II he was expressing a belief that was shared equally with the members of the W.W. I generation who prosecuted and managed the war from Washington – and that was an understanding that the world is a far more dangerous place than we thought it was and it needs to be watched. This 1946 article is similar to other columns that appeared in 1947 (when the CIA was established) and 1952 (when the NSA opened its doors) in that it announced the creation of a government agency intent on global espionage in order to have done with all future concerns that another Pearl Harbor was in the planning.

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