Recent Articles – Page 32 – Old Magazine Articles

The National Press Club During the War
(Click Magazine, 1943)

Throughout the decades, Washington, D.C. has had more than its fair share of private clubs for journalists – but they all failed for the same reason: each one of them granted credit to their members at the bar. It was not until 1908 that someone got it right – The National Press Club insisted that each ink-slinger pay-as-they-go. As a result, this club has been able to keep their doors open for well over one hundred years. This well-illustrated article explains what an important role the club played during the war years.

-recommended reading:
Drunk Before Noon: The Behind-The-Scenes Story of the Washington Press Corps

Jim Crow and the Draft
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

Wishing to avoid some of the taint of racism that characterized the American military during the First World war, Republican Senator William Barbour (1888 – 1943) announced that he intended to introduce an amendment to the 1940 conscription legislation that would open all branches of the U.S. Military to everyone regardless of skin color. The article goes on to list all the various branches that practiced racial discrimination.

Fighting in Winter
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Within a few weeks, Winter again will be sweeping down on the greatest battlefield in history… At Leningrad, the Fall rains are almost over. Now comes a month of dangerously dry, clear weather and then the snow. The Moscow zone will be thickly carpeted in white in seven or eight weeks. Allied strategists hope that the second Russian war Winter will bring a repition of the first, when Soviet skill in cold weather fighting finally drove the Nazis back.

‘The Equal Rights Amendment” Voted Down
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

The author of this 1937 column pointed out that the Equal Rights Amendment had been submitted before Congress for passage each and every year since 1923, and each time it received a nay vote.

Scientific Proof That Women Should Not Be Allowed to Vote
(Current Opinion, 1912)

This article was written by the well respected British bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Wright (1861 – 1947) concerning his belief that women should be denied the vote. Relying upon his scientific training, Wright held that women, as a result of their flawed nature, simply lacked a sense of reasoning.

Scientific Proof That Women Should Not Be Allowed to Vote
(Current Opinion, 1912)

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.

‘Making the Immigrant Unwelcome”
(Literary Digest, 1921)

To read this 100-year-old article is to understand that the inhumane conditions of today’s alien detention centers on the Southwest border are a part of a larger continuum in American history. This article addressed the atrocious conditions and brutality that was the norm on Ellis Island in the Twenties.

But it is not the stupidity of the literacy test alone that is to be condemned. It is its inhumanity.

When the Word Became Flesh
(Jesus People Magazine, 1973)

The Christian concept of death is contained in this article by the ancient Greek author Athanasius (296 – 373).

All those who believe in Christ tread death underfoot as nothing and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die, they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the the resurrection. Death has become like a tyrant who has become completely conquered by the legitimate monarch and bound hand and foot so that the passers-by jeer at him.

State Sponsored Ignorance
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

The editors of Pathfinder Magazine were rightfully scandalized to report that the Mississippi State Senate voted in favor of purchasing two sets of civics books for the school children of their state:

[The] idea behind this, said the Senate Education Committee, was to eliminate instructions for voting from the books to be distributed to Negro pupils.

The Border Patrol
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

This article lays out the many responsibilities and challenges that made up the day of a U.S. Border Patrol officer stationed along the Rio Grande in 1940:

In one month these rookies must try to absorb French and Spanish, immigration law, criminal law, naturalization, citizenship and expatriation law, fingerprinting, criminal investigation, first aid, firearms and the laws of the open country through which refugees are tracked down in the desert and forest.

Deporting the Reds
(American Legion Weekly, 1920)

In this 1920 American Legion Weekly article the mojo of the Red Scare (1917 to 1920) is fully intact and beautifully encapsulated by W.L. Whittlesey who condemned the U.S. Government for ever having allowed large numbers of socialist immigrants to enter the country and spread their discontent throughout the fruited plane. On the other hand, the writer was grateful that the government was finally tending to the matter of deporting them in large numbers and doing so with every means available.

The Doomed Amelia Earhart
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Published one month before her disappearance, this is one of the last interviews Amelia Earhart was to give.

50,000 Klansmen March in Washington, D.C.
(Literary Digest, 1925)

A report on the August, 1925 KKK march in Washington, D.C.:
The parade itself marshaled ‘from 50,000 to 60,000 white-robed men and women’ as the correspondent of the The New York Times estimates, and H.L. Mencken tells us in the New York Sun:

The Klan put it all over its enemies. The parade was grander and gaudier, by far than anything the wizards had prophesied. It was longer, it was thicker, it was higher in tone. I stood in front of the treasury for two hours watching the legions pass. They marched in lines of eighteen or twenty, solidly shoulder to shoulder. I retired for refreshment and was gone an hour. When I got back Pennsylvania Avenue was still a mass of white from the Treasury down to the foot of Capitol Hill – a full mile of Klansmen…

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

The Up-and-Coming FDR
(The Saturday Evening Post, 1913)

Theodore Roosevelt had loomed large in Washington for a long time – so when it was learned that his nephew, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a Democrat!), was chosen to work in Woodrow Wilson’s Department of the Navy he was an instant curiosity.

Click here to read a 1913 article about another young man on the move: Winston Churchill.

A Boy in the Union Army
(Coronet Magazine, 1960)

During the Civil War many young boys enlisted. In fact, three out of every ten men on the Union side were under 21, and not until 1864 did Congress pass a law forbidding the enlistment of of anyone under 16. But Johnny Clem, who joined up at ten, had them all beaten.

– Indeed he did. In fact, at the age of 12, Johnny Clem was a hero.

The Missing Confederate Gold
(Literary Digest, 1912)

For many it will come as no surprise that the Confederate States of America entered it’s twilight with the same hubris and cupidity that gave it life. This 1912 article solved a mystery: what had become of the gold and silver from the vaults of the CSA when it finally became clear to all that the rebellion was over.

Click here to read a memoir of the Union victory parade in 1865 Washington.

‘I Am Not a Dictator”
(Liberty Magazine, 1938)

In 1938, Fulton Oursler (1893 – 1952), editor of Liberty, crossed the Atlantic Ocean in order to ask Benito Mussolini why he invaded Ethiopia and to get his thoughts as to whether there would be peace in Europe. We can’t say that Il Duce gave very thorough answers to those questions, but Oursler did find out what was eating Mussolini:

Why is it that the people of the United States are so against Fascism? What is the matter with them? Why is the whole press so bitter against Fascism? Can you answer me that?