Recent Articles – Page 39 – Old Magazine Articles

The Okies and the Dust Bowl
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

The other half of California’s 200,000 migratory workers are farmers who trekked from the dust bowl area; they found work on farms, but not farming; it’s seasonal piecework, like in a mill. Each Oklahoma nomad dreams of a cottage and a cow, but he’s just sitting on a barbed wire fence. With the publicity over, the government has forgotten the dust bowl refugees. At Depression depth, a man might make $8 a week; now, $5 is lucky. They are the bitterest folk in America; blood may flow…

Click here if you would like to read a 1940 article about the the finest movie to ever document the flight of the Okies: The Grapes of Wrath.

She Lead The WAACs
(Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Here is the skinny on Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby (1905 – 1995). This article begins at a crucial point in her life, when she took charge of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women’s Army Corps). With no prior military experience, Hobby entered the U.S. Army as a major and immediately began organizing the Women’s Army Auxiliary into an efficient clerical element within the army. Her abilities were evident and she was soon elevated to the rank of colonel; in a similar light, the skills and abilities of the WAACs were also recognized and they, too, were given more challenging jobs. After the war, Hobby went on to distinguish herself in a number of other government positions.

Click here to read about WAC accomplishments by the end of 1945.

Tarawa
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

The editors at Yank Magazine were always aware that the publication existed primarily to keep U.S. Army morale on the upward swing, but they never wished to patronize their readers by feeding them Army approved malarkey either. They knew fully that they had to give the straight dope as often as possible or they, too, would be eating k-rations at the front. There are examples of articles that seriously downplayed the disappointing outcomes of major engagements (such as Kasserine Pass and Operation Market Garden) but, by enlarge, the sugar-coating was lighter than you might think. That is why this 1944 article concerning the Battle of Tarawa is important. Yank correspondent John Bushemi (1917 – 1944) made it quite clear the U.S. Marine losses were heavy, and for that reason alone the battle was of historical significance.

Click to read about the U.S. fabric rationing during W.W. II.

The Underground Newspapers of the Sixties
(American Opinion, 1967)

The Enemy, according to the underground press, is ‘The Establishment’ – an amorphous term used by young radicals to mean parents, teachers, school administrators, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Pentagon, CIA, the media, government bureaucrats, the narcotics squad, businessmen, and the FBI. The favorite hate symbol within this curious Establishment is the policeman – according to the mythology of the Left, a brutal enforcer of the capitalist status quo and oppressor of youth.

Flappers Altered the Sexual Contract in Society
(Coronet Magazine, 1955)

Perhaps the above headline gives a wee-bit too much credit to the flappers for changing the sex codes of North America – but it certainly would never have happened without them. They were one of the necessary elements, in addition to motion pictures, recorded music, automobiles and greater job opportunities for women, that, when mixed together created a new social contract. The attached article spells it all out as to how the flappers of the 1920s had stripped the female body of its Victorian wrappings and proudly displayed it in the sunlight.

You might also want read about sex during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The Domino Theory
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

In 1951, N.Y. Governor Thomas Dewey (1902 – 1971) made a fact-finding trip to French Indochina (Vietnam), and as impressed as he was with the French command, he wrote urgently in this Collier’s article of his belief in the Domino Theory – Indochina, Thailand and Burma were the Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia:

The Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia is the cornerstone of our Pacific defenses. And Indochina is the cornerstone of the cornerstone.

Here Comes Denim
(Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

Nine months into the war the American fashion industry awoke to discover that one of the most sought after cottons being purchased domestically was denim.

Denim was first seen in 1853, worn by the men who panned for gold in California. When faced with hard labor, this sturdy twill had proven its worth again and again, and when the American home front recognized that there was a great deal of work to be done in the fields and factories if the war was to be won, they slipped on jeans and denim coveralls and saw the job through.

Who on Sixth Avenue could have known back then that denim would be the main-stay in American sportswear for decades to come?

A far more thorough history of blue jeans can be read here.

The Japanese Home Front
(American Magazine, 1943)

This article was written by Max Hill, who was serving as the Tokyo bureau chief for the Associated Press at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. The column consists of his observations as to how the Japanese home front operated during his seven month incarceration.

Click here to read about the Japanese home front during the early period of the Sino-Japanese War.

Click here to read about the W.W. II German home front.

Should the Federal Government Fund Schools at All?
(Literary Digest, 1921)

‘The public school system will become a vast political machine.’ And this machine, it is charged, ‘will give a Federal Administration the opportunity of creating an educational autocracy, really endangering the liberty of thought and information, which is a basic right of the people.’

This article pertains to a bill that was before the Congress one hundred years ago that proposed the creation of a Department of Education. The bill was defeated. The proposed legislation was enthusiastically supported by the National Education Association.

Should the Federal Government Fund Schools at All?
(Literary Digest, 1921)

‘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…

Red Goals For American Society
(Congressional Record, 1963)

When we read this transcript from The Congressional Record we were flabbergasted! You will find that it is a compilation that was pieced together in the late Fifties listing all the changes America’s Communist enemies wished to see take place in the United States in order to make their mission of conquest that much easier – yet as you read the list you quickly recognize that at least 85% of this tally fell into place as recently as 2020.

The State of Women’s Suffrage in 1907
(Harper’s Weekly, 1907)

This 1907 article refers to a report made by journalist and suffragist Ida Husted Harper (1851 – 1931), concerning the status of the suffrage movement as it could be found throughout the Western world. A number of interesting issues and seldom remembered concerns are sited throughout this article on the matter of the bullying and boorish ways of those wishing to hamper the advancement of women’s suffrage.

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.

A Pearl Harbor Day Recollection
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

A year after the Pearl harbor attack, one of the PM journalists recalled for their readers how many Americans in the lower 48 had heard the news on the radio that evening.

Enter China
(Quick Magazine, 1950)

On Friday, November 3, 1950 Mao Tse-Tung (1893 – 1976) ordered the Chinese Army to intervene in the Korean War on behalf of the the retreating North Korean Army:

…perhaps [as many as] 250,000 Chinese Communists jumped into the battle for Northwest Korea; at best, their intervention meant a winter campaign in the mountains; at worst, a world war.

From Amazon: The Korean War: The Chinese Intervention

A World War II Prayer Story
(Reader’s Digest, 1944)

A psychologist, in discussing some of the widely publicized ‘miracles’ of the war, puts it this way: ‘God may be likened to an electric dynamo. We can receive the power of this dynamo by attaching ourselves to it by prayer; or we can prove it has no influence in our lives by refusing to attach ourselves to it by prayer. The choice is ours…’ Today indisputable proof of the power of prayer are pouring in from every quarter of the globe. The only surprising thing is that we think it surprising. These praying soldiers, sailors and aviators of ours are merely following the example of Washington who knelt to ask for aid in the snows of Valley Forge and of Lincoln who, in the darkest days of the Civil War, declared: ‘Without the assistance of That Divine Being Who attends me I cannot succeed; with that assistance I cannot fail.’

Click here to read about one of the most famous prayers of the Second World War…

U.S. Racial Diversity and the Cold War
(Quick Magazine, 1954)

With the end of the Second World War in 1945 came numerous social changes to the nation. Among them was the Civil Rights movement, which soon began to find followers in the white majority and acquire an unprecedented traction in Washington as a result of the Cold War (an article on this topic can be read here). It was these two factors, the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement, that combined in the Fifties to call for the creation of a new immigration policy. It would be naive to assume that race alone was the sole factor in drafting a more inclusive policy because, as the attached editorial spells out, the Cold War climate demanded that the U.S. make more friends among the developing countries if the Soviets were to be defeated economically and militarily.