The Saturday Review – Old Magazine Articles

The Revolution in 1920s Fashion (Saturday Review of Literature, 1925)

A clever observer of the passing scene typed these words about the social revolution that he had been witnessing for the past six years:

In those dark ages before the war women’s fashions changed from year to year, but generally speaking at the dress-makers word of command…The first short skirt sounded the knell of his dictatorship, and since then womanhood has never looked back…I say again that [today’s fashion] is a phenomenon which the social historian appears to be passing over.

Click here to read about the fashion coup of 1922.

‘Company K” by William March (Saturday Review of Literature, 1933)

The New York Times war correspondent Arthur Ruhl (1876 – 1935) reviewed a book that would later be seen as a classic piece of World War One fiction: Company K
by William March (born William Edward Campbell 1893 – 1954). Awarded both the French Croix de Guerre and the Distinguished Service Cross, March gained an understanding of war and the frailties of human character as a member of the Fifth Marines fighting at Belleau Wood and participating in the big push during the San-Mihiel Offensive:

The outstanding virtues of William March’s work are those of complete absence of sentimentality and routine romanticism, of a dramatic gift constantly heightened and sharpened by eloquence of understatement.

Baron Fritz & No Hard Feelings (Saturday Review of Literature, 1930)

Saturday Review’s Emerson G. Taylor reviewed two World War I books: Baron Fritz by Dante scholar Karl Federn, which he liked, and No Hard Feelings, by Medal of Honor recipient John Lewis Barkley, which he did not:

In this week’s other narrative of soldier’s life, John Lewis Barkley, late Corporal, K Company, 4th United States Infantry, tells the world that he and his gang were exceedingly tough ‘hombres’, that, in the Second Battle of the Marne and in the Meuse Argonne operations, he killed a vast number of bloodthirsty Germans with his trusty rifle, by serving a machine-gun, or with a pistol and a knife, that he was profusely decorated, was always in the fore-front of duty and danger, and spent a furlough in Paris with Marie…Ho-hum.

‘Revolt in the Classroom (The Saturday Review, 1943)

This 1943 article by the noted American sociologist, Willard Waller (1899 – 1945), reported on the impact that W.W. II was having on the American educational system. Waller pointed out that during the course of 1942-43 school year, as many as 189,000 teachers had left their classrooms in order to work in defense plants. The author argued four distinct points that would halt the mass exodus – among them was the cry that salaries of teachers must be raised to the point where they match favorably with industry.

A 1944 photo-essay on this topic can be read here…

The Creation of the Ghettos (The Saturday Review, 1948)

The subject addressed in this article pertains to the greatest act of cruelty that was ever thrust upon African-Americans by the white hegemony – for it was the one scheme designed to guarantee their continuing poverty.

‘The Women Are Coming” (The Saturday Review, 1948)

Unknown to the majority of women in this country, a steadily mounting feminist campaign is under way for Equal Rights for women under the Constitution. The average man will regard this statement with bewilderment.