Pathfinder Magazine

Articles from Pathfinder Magazine

Hitler Was At Chateau Thierry?
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Having read a Hitler article that appeared in Pathfinder Magazine during the winter of 1937, a previously unknown German immigrant in New Jersey wrote to the editors and revealed that he had served with Hitler during the Battle of Chateau Thierry (May 31 – July 18, 1918). Perhaps the writer, Hans W. Thielborn, suffered some memory loss as a result of a head wound during the battle – but records show that the fight had been over for some ten days by the time the two interacted.

Soak the Rich States, Too
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)

This is an interesting article that assesses the financial abilities of each of the 48 states in 1935 in an effort to illustrate that the ten richest states, as a result of their minority status on Capitol Hill, were in no position to cry out about majority tyranny when the insolvent 38 states rigged a deliberately unfair tax code that would see to it that they alone would pay the nation’s bills.

The ‘rich’ people may howl and growl and moan at having to foot the bills for everything, but there’s no remedy for it… The reason is this: our parade of poor states totals 38, while the rich states number only ten. The figures show that these rich states, which have only one-third the population, have to pay two-thirds of the taxes. The 10 richest states have only 20 Senators in the Senate, while the 38 poor states have 76. The rich are decidedly in the minority and there is no way for them to change the set-up.

Stalin Puts Trotsky ”On Trial”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

In response to Stalin’s Moscow show trial convicting Leon Trotsky of anti-revolutionary sedition – a second kangaroo court was convened in Mexico in which Trotsky and his fellow travelers offered a public defense on behalf of the accused.

Advertisement

The Boy Scouts of America
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

When this article first appeared, the Boy Scouts of America, as an institution, was barely thirty-five years old:

The truth is that never in the history of mankind has a simple idea – an idea, incidentally, born in South Africa – so seized the imagination of boys the world over as has Scouting.


Both Boy Scots and Girl Scouts were active in the Japanese-American internment camps during W.W. II. Click here to read about that subject…

Abuses at Sunbeam Prison
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

Abuses were all too common in most Southern penitentiaries up until the Fifties. This article chronicles one prison in Florida and their practice of placing the prisoners in 60-gallon barrels when they stepped out of line.

The Invention of Nylon
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

Last week, two of the nation’s leading manufacturers of synthetic textiles were taking important steps to woo the feminine heart from silk to synthetic hosiery. The E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Company announced that it had laid plans for construction of a new $7,000,000 plant near Seaford, Delaware, for manufacture of a new synthetic yarn called ‘Nylon,’ which, used in hosiery, was expected to compete successfully with all types of silk stockings.

Advertisement

The Books Lincoln Read
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)

Examine Lincoln’s prose and the fruitage of his reading will appear… The easy quickening of Lincoln’s mind came from books like Aesop’s Fables, Robinson Caruso and Pilgrim’s Progress… To a man who knew intimately so many creatures, both wild and domestic, the fables seemed natural.

Speeches by Hitler and Chamberlain Compared
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

We shall fight until the terror of the plutocracies has been broken.


– so blathered Adolf Hitler in a radio address from early 1940 in which he attempted to clarify the Nazi war aims. Never forgetting that the zi in Nazi is derived from Sozi for socialist (Compare with ‘Commie’ for ‘Communist’) – the dictator was heard here doing what he did from time to time in his speeches; borrowing the street hustle of the proletarian underdog (many thanks to WIKIanswers).


Click here to read another article on the same topic.

Advertisement

The Women Voter in Her First Five Elections
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

This is an interesting article that indicates just how profoundly elections had changed after 1920, when women began to vote. Previously, when the voting booth was a gender-specific domain, the victory margins were seldom greater than 10%; yet, beginning with the 1920 presidential election and continuing through the election of 1936, dramatic differences could be seen between the winners and losers that had never existed in prior contests.


The journalist believed that the advent of radio broadcasting also played a contributing factor in these elections.


Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.

The Wages and Hours Bill
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937, 1938)

This article recorded portions of the battle on Capitol Hill that were waged between the Spring and Winter of 1937 when Congress was crafting legislation that would establish a minimum wage law for the nation’s employees as well as a maximum amount of working hours they would be expected to toil before additional payments would be required. This legislation would also see to it that children were removed from the American labor force. The subject at hand is the Black-Connery Bill and it passed into law as the Fair Labor Standards Act.

U.S. Congress Approves Naval Expansion
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)

In 1934, the members of the U.S. Congress were able to see how ugly the world was becoming – and with this forethought they approved the Vinson Act. This legislation did not violate any of the restrictions agreed to under the Washington Naval Treaty and provided funds for 102 additional ships to be added to the American fleet by 1942.

Advertisement

African-Americans During the Great Depression
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)

Written during the later years of the Great Depression, these columns summarize the sad lot of America’s Black population – their hardships, ambitions, leadership, and where they tended to live.

When the Depression struck, Negroes were the first to lose their jobs. Today, 1,500,000 colored adults are unemployed.


A 1938 article about the hardships of the Southern States during the Great Depression can be read here…


Click here to learn about the origins of the term Jim Crow.

The Pliable Front Line
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

The United Nations defense ‘line’ in Korea was more like a rubber band. It gave with Red punches, then snapped back. But last week the strain on the elastic was terrific… Neat shifting by the out-numbered defenders met and tossed back each of the blows – first along the southern coast toward Pusan…

KRISTALLNACHT
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

Herschel Grynszpan (1921 – ?) was a Polish-Jewish refugee born in Germany who, on his own volition, shot and killed a German diplomat in Paris in 1938. This murder prompted the Nazis to terrorize the Jewish population throughout Germany and Austria the very next day (November 8) in an event that was called Kristallnacht. This article covers the murder and the senseless horror that followed; attention was also paid to the reactions from various capital cities.

In Vienna, Storm Troopers fired 18 synagogues, shot a Polish Jew in his bed, invaded homes and threw the furniture out the windows. Ten thousand Jews were arrested, at least 60 attempted suicide. Restaurants and grocery stores refused to sell to Jewas.

Advertisement

Starvation in the San Joaquin Valley
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Renowned as an earthly paradise from whose rich soil the brilliant sun draws abundant crops of semi-tropical fruits, the Great Valley is today the state’s principal source of wealth. Last week, Californians were acutely conscious that the valley could also produce squalor, misery, disease and death…[The San Joaquin Valley] is host to 70,000 jobless, homeless families living in frightful squalor and privation….hopeless men and women sprawled in the sun as their ill-clad children played in the dirt.


Read about the the mood of the Great Depression and how it was reflected in the election of 1932 – click here…

Palestine Brexit
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)

The British reign over Palestine lasted 31 years; attached is an eyewitness account of the orderly withdrawal that took place during the summer of 1948, when the remaining elements of their colonial regiments lowered the Union Jack for the last time and boarded ships for home:

Last week, from gently-heaving transports in Haifa harbor, men of Britain’s 40th Royal Marines in khaki shorts and green berets, took a last look shoreward. Alongside the transports were the aircraft carrier H.M.S. TRIUMPH, a cruiser and five destroyers… From shore came note by note the sound of a bugler blowing Last Post.

The Arms Race
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Stirred by [the] Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and by subsequent German scrapping of the Versailles Treaty, military experts of every nation have been altering the smallest details of army life to make their forces bigger, faster and more deadly than those of their neighbors.

Nowhere was there any indication that the pace of armaments might slacken. No nation gave any sign of dropping out of the race.


The economist who made the German rearmament possible was named Hjalmar Schacht, click here to read about him…

Advertisement

Scroll to Top