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Dissent in the Pulpit (Literary Digest, 1917)

Shortly after the U.S. Congress declared war against Germany, a New York City minister named Dr. John Haynes Holmes (1879 – 1964) took to his pulpit and made a series of sound remarks as to why the United States had no business participating in the European war:

Other clergymen may pray to God for victory for our arms — I will not. In this church, if no where else in all America, the Germans will still be included in the family of God’s children. No word of hatred will be spoken against them, no evil fate will be desired upon them. I will remember the starving millions of Belgium, Servia, Poland, and Armenia, whom my countrymen may neglect for the more important business of killing Germans…

Uniform and Equipment Cost Illustrated (Scientific American, 1917)

A black and white magazine illustration from the cover of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN that appeared six months after President Wilson’s declaration of war against Germany in order to let Uncle Sam’s taxpayer’s understand what it will cost them to put a million and a half men in the field.

Edith Head on Paris Frocks (Photoplay Magazine, 1938)

A telegraph from Hollywood costume designer Edith Head (1897 – 1981) to the editorial offices of PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE listing various highlights of the 1938 Paris fashion scene. Not surprisingly, it reads like a telegram:

Paris says:


• Long waistlines, short flared skirts, fitted bodices, tweeds combines with velvet, warm colors…

• Hair up in pompadours piles of curls and fringe bangs.

• Braid and embroidery galore lace and ribbon trimmings loads of jewelry mostly massive.

• Skirts here short and not too many pleats more slim skirts with slight flare.

The great Hollywood modiste wrote in this odd, Tarzan-english for half a page, but by the end one is able to envision the feminine Paris of the late Thirties.

Recommended Reading: Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designerstyle=border:none.

Click here to read about physical perfection during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

America’s Ever-Changing Mind: 1929 – 1952 (Pageant Magazine, 1953)

In an effort to show how American thought can vary between decades, a retired pollster from the Gallup organization collected the data gleaned from various opinion polls that were launched between 1929 on up through the dawn of the Atomic Age in order to show what a different people we had become. The topics that were addressed were


• Racial tolerance


• Taxes


• Women in the work place


• Labor unions


• Women smoking

• Bathing Suits

‘The Most Married Man in America” (Yank Magazine, 1945)

As a result of the generous proxy-marriage laws allowed by the citizens of Kansas City, Kansas, many young women, feeling the urge to marry their beaus residing so far afield as a result of the Second World War, would board buses and trains and head to that far-distant burg with one name on their lips: Finnegan. This is the story of Mr. Thomas H. Finnegan, a successful lawyer back in the day who saw fit to do his patriotic duty by standing-in for all those G.I.s who were unable to attend their own weddings.

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…

The Front-Line Mechanics (United States News, 1942)

Side by side with with the fighting men who ride to battle goes an army of men who fight with tools and machinery, instead of guns and tanks… That army of fighter-mechanics has grown in importance with the increase in the Army’s dependence on motorized equipment. They operate beyond the glow of headlines – but without the aid of mechanics the Army’s wheels would never turn.

The Evolution of Golf Clothes (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

Oddly, this essay has more to do with the evolution of golf from a shepherd’s pastime to the sport of kings, however there are some references made to the evolution of golf clothing:

Royalty did, however, dress up the game. It gave us the brilliant garments that golf captains wear in Britain. When I first went abroad I thought that I had never seen more splendid creatures. And the modern golf costume is a thing of mode and cut…

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