Search Results for "Pathfinder Magazine"
The First 365 Days of the Korean War (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)When the Korean War began during the summer of 1950 many Americans were wondering aloud "Is this the beginning of W.W. III?" One year later they were relieved to find that it was not a world war, but the butcher's bill stood at 70,000 U.S. casualties and still there was no end in sight. This article examines these first 365 days of combat, taking into account all losses and gains. No, Joe Biden, U.S. Relations With Germany Were Bad Before the U.S. Entry Into W.W. II (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)During the Presidential debate of October 22 (2020) Vice President Biden remarked that the American diplomatic corps made nice with Hitler up until the German invasion of Poland - the attached article from 1939 refutes this statement:
Eight months prior to the day when W.W. II would commence, diplomatic relations between Berlin and Washington got ugly; the carefully controlled German press declared that matters between the two camps "were at their lowest point since 1917". Hitler's diplomats demanded apologies and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee clarified the American position by stating that the American people have a general dislike for Fascism. The Department of the Navy announced that it was expanding its presence in the Atlantic.
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".
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. U.N. Dilemma (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)With the expansion of the Korean War, the United Nations realized that World War III was at their doorstep if they wanted to engage. Withdrawing in order to fight another day made sense - but such a decision was not without costs. Expanding The American Draft Pool (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Nine months after the American intervention into the Korean War, the Congress saw reason to expand the draft pool to an even wider degree:
"Eighteen-year-olds were a little closer to the draft this week, and America was a step closer to a system of permanent universal military training..." Robert Ley: Nazi Philosophizer (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)Attached you will find the Nazi justification for organized slaughter which was encapsulated for the succeeding generations by Dr. Robert Ley, one of Hitler's willing henchmen (1890 – 1945).
Ley was the mad founder of the "Adolf Hitler Schools"; to learn more, click here.
Meet Joseph Goebbels (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938"Goebbels is the creator of the Hitler legend. He is the white-washer of the Nazi reputation. In the 1920s the party had an unsavory name because its ranks included a clique of of homosexuals. As early as 1922 a Nazi meeting at Munich voted that no woman should ever hold political office. Goebbels twisted the party's abnormal dislike of women into something 'respectable' - the doctrine that a woman's place was in the kitchen and the maternity ward." Goering in Italy (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)The journalist who penned the attached article was in the dark as to the reasons why Reichsmarshal Herman Goring appeared in Rome during the opening weeks of January, 1937, but he wisely presumed that it had something to do with the Spanish Civil War - and he was right. Will Television Ever Be Profitable? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)DUH. Over 15,000 Suicides in 1928 Germany (Pathfinder Magazine, 1931)A short notice compiled from figures collected at the end of 1928 showed that Germany was the all-time global-champion when it came to suicide:
"In that year 16,036 persons in Germany committed suicide. This is an average of 44 a day or 39 for each 100,000 persons in the country..." ''Noses, Eyes, Chins'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Practicing throughout the Thirties and Forties, fashion photographer Arthur O'Neil took time out from his glamorous day to explain to an inquiring journalist what his requirements are when looking for a fashion model:
"The prettiest girls, according to O'Neil, are between 16 and 28 and come mostly from the Middle West..." The Satellite War (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"Then came June 24 [1950]. Her skirts legally clean, Russia hit upon a way to fight the U.S. without technically using a single bullet or soldier of her own. It mattered little if Korean mercenaries, not identifiable nationally with the USSR, were doing the fighting. A satellite war was just as good a way to weaken the U.S. as a direct war - if not better."
The U.S. Occupation of Turkey (Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)"There aren't many Yanks in Turkey but an American naval force of eight destroyers is being kept in Turkish waters to protect American interests and to assist the British, French and Italian navies before Constantinople to induce compliance by Turkey with the terms of the peace treaty and to serve as a warning to cease her practices against the Armenians in Asia Minor." Yamashita Sentenced to Death (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)The article posted herein lists the aleged crimes of General Tomoyuki Yamishita (1885 - 1946) of the Imperial Japanese Army. The article also states the results of his sentencing, death by hanging. Two weeks after the trial he received a stay of execution by the United States Supreme Court. He was finally hanged on February 23, 1946.
During the Spring of 1946, the Japanese general behind the Bataan Death March was tried and executed, you can read about that here.
The Secret Papers of Robert Lansing (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)In 1940, when America stood on the precipice preparing to enter another enormous conflict, the heretofore secret papers of Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, Robert Lansing (1864 – 1928), were released - shedding light on the government's reasoning as to why they felt U.S. intervention in the European war was necessary. A Warning to the West (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)This is a 1948 Soviet poster that foreign correspondents of the day reported as having been widely distributed across the Worker's Paradise. A veiled piece of patriotic pageantry, it was clearly intended to intimidate the Western democracies; it made its appearance a few weeks into the Berlin Blockade (June, 1948 - May, 1949) - an international stunt that gained the Soviets nothing. From Amazon:
Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin
''A Red Is a Red is a Red'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)The Cold War was not often seen as a subject for poetry - but that didn't stop a popular versifier like Berton Braley (1882 – 1966). He took a look around at the post-war world and saw plenty subjects that rhymed:
"You'll meet, methinks, a lot of pinks
Whose statements are dogmatic
That Communists are Liberals
And really Democratic;
But when you hear that type of tripe
Keep this fact in your nut
- That Communists are Communists and nothing else but!"
His poem went on for three more stanzas... Setting the Trends from Paris (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)So much had changed in the world as a result of the Second World War, and although those shifting sands had moved much of the fashion industry to New York, the heart and soul of women's fashion was still in Paris. This article is all about the fashion kings and queens who remained in the French capital. These columns explain what all the finest French designers were up to: Dior, Balmain, Schiaparelli, Fath, Balenciaga, Lanvin etc, etc, etc...
To read further about post-war Paris fashion, click here...
Catholics and Nazis (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Shortly after Hitler assumed power, he struck a deal with the Catholic Church in Germany allowing their schools to remain open. On May Day, 1937, he nullified the agreement, saying:
"We made a start with the nation's youth. They shall not escape us. We will take them when they are 10 years-old and bring them up in the spirit of the community..." The First Congresswomen
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)This column recalls the earliest women to serve in the House and Senate (although the tenure of Senator Rebecca Latimer Felton was oddly excluded):
"In 1916, the first Congresswoman was elected. She was Miss Jeannette Rankin (1880 - 1973), a Republican from Montana. On her first day in the House, war was declared; she voted against it. The next Congress had no women." Cardinal Innitzer Stands Up (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)With the 1938 merging of Austria with Hitler's Germany came the Nazi coercion of Austrian Christianity. One of the first clerics to rebel against their repression was Cardinal Theodor Innitzer (1875 - 1955) of Vienna who made clear his outrage in a series of open letters criticizing the various Nazi restrictions involving marriage and the removal of nuns and priests from various schools and hospitals. The North Korean Winter Offensive (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)On December 31, 1950, the Communist Armies fighting in Korea launched a campaign that was intended to drive the UN Forces further south away from the 38th Parallel. Costing much in both blood and treasure, the Red Push was easily contained and whatever ground had been gained was easily re-taken when the UN launched a counter-offensive of their own on February 21, 1951.
Click here to read how Japan, still smarting from their defeat just six years earlier, had found a new identity and resolve as a result of the Cold War, and the war in Korea in particular. Japan Chipped-In (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)War-weary Japan recognized that when the U.S. and her assorted allies went to war in Korea, she too, could play an important roll in the struggle as a reliable, non-combatant partner. Dumping Justices (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)The attached editorial was intended to serve as PATHFINDER MAGAZINE's introduction to six pen-portraits that follow on the next webpage. In order to better serve their readers the editors provided profiles of the oldest Supreme Court justices who FDR wished to remove.
"[Justices] McReynolds, Sutherland, Van Devanter, and Butler are generally conceded to be the court's consistently conservative bloc. In some cases, this bloc is viewed as not only conservative but also reactionary."
Click here to read the profiles of the six justices...
The Battle Over History 100 Years Ago (Pathfinder Magazine, 1926)What do you know: the same arguments existed in the 1920s, too... The Submarine War In The Pacific (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)"U.S. submarines toll of Japanese ships reaches 256 since Pearl Harbor . Russell Islands are scenes of bitter dog-fights." The First Fifty-Years Behind the Wheel (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952) There is no organization that has compiled more facts about cars and their impact on society, than The American Automobile Association - AAA for short. And why shouldn't they? the AAA predates turn signals, starter buttons and stop lights. They were around before seat belts, parking lights and jay-walkers. They even predate car doors and windshields - to say nothing of their wipers. As you should all know by now, the AAA was not established as a car trivia repository but a coterie of motorists who banded together to aid other motorists.
Written in 1952, this article serves to mark the 50th anniversary of the AAA; these columns are positively packed with assorted automobile trivia which, when pieced together, spells out the first fifty years of the car in America.
Read about the Great Depression and the U.S. auto industry...
In The Country Illegally (Pathfinder Magazine, 1931)"[President Hoover's Secretary of Labor, William N. Doak] placed the number of aliens now illegally residing in the United States at 400,000. Of this number he thought 100,000 were subject to deportation... The illegal entries were made, he said, under the quota laws of 1921 and 1924, the larger part coming through Mexico and Canada, while ship's deserters amounted to about 1
Click here to read about the U.S. Border Patrol.
1,000." ''The Madhouse'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"The party purge had been widened to include the Soviet Secret Police itself, with 50 of its number being arrested." A Laugh on the Klan (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)In 1947 KKK-infiltrator Stetson Kennedy
(1916 – 2011) wished to harness the power of government in order to parody, rather than eliminate the KKK:
"Stetson Kennedy, author of the KKK-exposing books Southern Exposure and Imperial Wizard asked for an Illinois state charter to set up a mock KKK group that would have as officers 'a Negro, a Jew, a Roman Catholic and an American Indian.'"
Illinois Secretary of State Edward Barrett denied Kennedy's application but his harsh criticism regarding the Klan's loathsome history was read into the records of the state legislator.
During the Thirties and early Forties there was a link between the Bund and the KKK: click here to read about him.
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." Negotiations (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939) ''Radio Here and Abroad'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)During the early days of radio, as in the early days of the internet, there was much scrambling done all around in order to figure out a way to make the technology profitable. When this article was on the newsstand the pioneers of radio were getting closer to achieving this goal but they were not there yet. In Europe, by contrast, the concept of commercial radio was held askance by many; some nations barred all ads from "the invisible wave", while others preferred that commercials only be heard during certain hours of the day.
"Educational broadcasting is growing in popularity in Europe and is being extended into the afternoon school hours."
A good deal of column space explains how the Soviet Union used radio.
Read about the radio program that was produced by the WPA writers and actors branch in order to celebrate American diversity; click here.
Talk of Repeal on Capitol Hill (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)During the summer of 1932, Democratic Senator Carter Glass (1858 - 1946) turned heads and dropped jaws on Capitol Hill when he introduced a piece of legislation that was intended to water-down the 18th Amendment. Glass, a devoted enemy of the swizzle stick, proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would continue to outlaw saloons nationally while permitting hootch to flow freely throughout the wet states - and cut off booze in the dry. The Critical Situation in Korea (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)Upon hearing the news of the Chinese Army's appearance on the Korean peninsula, President Truman turned to his trusted advisers:
"At 11 a.m. the President spoke first to General Bradley. How bad, he wanted to know, would the casualties be? 'Very bad, I'm afraid, sir. It is too early for an accurate estimate, but our losses will be heavy.' Then President asked how serious the situation was. 'Critical,' was Bradley's terse response." Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Here is a very thorough profile of Mustafa Kamel Atatürk (1881 - 1938), the first president of the Republic of Turkey (1923 - 1938). The article goes into some detail concerning his humble beginnings, his vices and his secret writings for the revolutionary Vatan ve Hürriyet (Motherland and Liberty) underground movement. His rise to power came with his assorted military triumphs in the Italo-Turkish War, the Balkan War, the First World War and most notably, the Greko-Turkish War. He came to power in 1922 and began reforming Turkish society in ways that rocked the nation to its very corps.
Click here to read a 1922 article about the Turkish slaughter of Christians.
Israel: Home to Three Major Faiths (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)This article about the newly established nation of Israel will give a sense as to how difficult it is to govern, seeing that the land is dear to the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The War in Winter (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940) Inequality For Female Barflies (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)This column concerns a 1937 bill sponsored by New York State Senator Edward Coughlin. The senator's bill provided for the arrest of any woman who stood "at or in front of the bar of any club, hotel or restaurant licensed to sell alcoholic beverages". Coughlin held that any woman found guilty of this pastime should be charged with disorderly conduct. A few other states were also attracted to this legislation; it passed a year later only to be repealed in the early Sixties.
Click here to read about that moment in 1920 when American Women attained the vote.
The Free Speech Dilemma
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)The antisemitic radio ramblings of Father Charles Coughlin (1891 – 1979) prompted the brain trust of the nascent radio world to ponder deeply the differences between hate speech and free speech and where their responsibilities rested in the matter. Food Riot (Pathfinder Magazine, 1931)"In Central Arkansas where crops were ruined by the drought and farmers were left without food, some 300 of them banded together, descended on the little town of England and grimly announced they were going to have food if they had to take it from the shelves of the stores." Defining the Left and the Right (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)Surprisingly, these definitions outlining Left and Right in American politics are almost accurate descriptions for our own day, but they still fall short in a number of areas - yet, wouldn't it be amazing if they still sufficed after all the numerous tremors that have served to rearrange the sociopolitical landscape during the past sixty years?
When the largely agricultural province of Saskatchewan (Canada) began their flirtation with socialism they, too, started with laws involving insurance - car insurance! read about it here...
The Steineck Spy Camera (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949) George F. Kennan: Mr. X (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)George F. Kennan was an American diplomat who is remembered as being one of the most insightful analysts of Soviet foreign policy during the cold war.
Click here to read about the Cold War prophet who believed that Kennan's containment policy was not tough enough on the Soviets...
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."
Communism vs Democracy (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)Pathfinder Magazine publisher Graham Patterson put pen to paper in an effort to articulate what the Cold War was in its simplest form, and what were the differences between a communist government and a democracy.
"It is important for free people to know their avowed enemy, to understand communism, to recognize the difference between their present freedom and the way of life communism would force upon them." The Border-Jumper Problem
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)Using numerous unkind pejoratives throughout his article, this journalist interviewed plenty of farmers and politicians who had many thoughts and observations concerning this question:
"What to do with the thousands of Mexican farm laborers who illegally enter the U.S. each year to harvest South Texas crops." A Pox on Both Your Houses... (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)Washington's growing impatience and distrust with both Chiang Kai-shek's island nation and the communist thugs on the mainland was reaching the high-water mark during the earliest days of 1950 when President Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893 – 1971) presented that administration's China policy:
"No official military aid for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist government, either on the island of Formosa [Taiwan] or anywhere else. No hasty recognition of the Communist Chinese government of Mao Zedong. No attempt to stop further Russian advances in Asia except through 'friendly encouragement' to India, French Indo-China, Siam, Burma and the new United States of Indonesia..." The Trial of Hideko Tojo (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)Standing before the judges who made up the 11-nation war crimes tribunal in occupied Tokyo, General Hideko Tojo, among 19 other Japanese wartime leaders, put on the show of his life:
"Without hesitation, Tojo accepted full blame for plunging Japan into war. But it was, he insisted, a 'defensive' war, and 'in no manner a violation of international law..'"
The Windsors in Hitlerland (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)An eyewitness account of the Windsors on their visit through Germany in 1937. The journalist reported that the two seemed nervous - reluctant to sign guest ledgers or photographed with Nazi leaders (except with Hitler, they seem very pleased in that photo). Air Pollution Becomes a Problem (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)This news article was penned a year and a half after the end of W.W. II and it concerns the steps various industrial cities were taking to limit the amount of pollutants that factories belched into the air daily. A year later, the Republican-lead Congress would pass an important piece of legislation titled the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.
2013 marked the first time that the industrial powerhouse of China finally recognized that air pollution in the Beijing area exists and it is a problem. China regularly emits the lion's share of green house gasses (a whopping 23.5%).
Unholiness in the Holy Land (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) Motor City Takes It On The Chin (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)By August of 1932, the Great Depression had finally caught up with the American automobile industry:
"For the first time in history auto production has fallen off. Last year's output was 700,000 cars [fewer than the number produced just two years earlier.]"
The research has shown that between the Fall of 1929 and 1932 American automobile manufacturing had decreased by 70%. The Battle for the Atlantic (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)The attached is an uncredited article from the later days of 1943 concerning the continuing struggle for supremacy of the North Atlantic:
"It was plain to see that due to the Allied tactics which drove the U-boats from the seas last summer, sinking 90 subs in 90 days, something new had to be added... the newer [German] subs have larger conning towers, painted white this time instead of black - packing at least two new guns, and shooting it out in the open instead of from ambush... Brazil has recently reported 11 sinkings in the South Atlantic."
Wanderers No More (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)Here is a pretty middle-of-the-road type of article that explains the creation of British Palestine, the Jewish migration and the Arab unrest:
"Writing in his History of Zionism, Nahum Sokalow looked in to the future: 'The Jews have grown tired of their roll as the homeless Chosen People and would prefer to be a self-supporting small nation with a quiet spot of earth for themselves...'. The spot for which the Jews had yearned proved to be about as quiet as a live volcano."
The Taboos (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Radio executives hated any controversy - as you will see in the attached list of subjects all writers and broadcasters were instructed to veer away from at all cost. False Hope in Washington (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)This snippet appeared on the newsstands shortly after Halloween, 1950. It will give you a sense of the great relief that was felt not simply in the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, but all across the country. The journalist wrote this report as if decades had past and a distant memory was being recalled about a five month-long war that was once fought and won by the all-suffering Americans and their U.N. Allies, but the Communists learned their lesson, so we don't have to worry about them anymore. The war's turning point is hailed (The Inchon Landings), as is General MacArthur, American casualty figures are listed and mention is made of the South Koreans moving into the recently liberated towns of the North. But this same reporter would write a very different article for the next issue of the magazine when he would relay that the war had expanded, and casualty figures had ballooned with the intervention of the Chinese Army. The Proxy Wars (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"On June 24 [1950] Soviet Russia dug deep into her bag of tricks and came up with a new one - war by proxy. Today, still sadly unprepared for satellite warfare, the US may yet profit by tragic experiences - so that even possible defeat in Korea will not be totally without gain. What has been learned and how this knowledge might be used in future satellite wars is discussed here." Dance International (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"In New York last week, on the polished floor of the Rainbow Room, Rockefeller Center's skyscraping night club, Hawaiians, Chinese, Scandinavians and Africans stamped whirled, leaped, and gesticulated to a dozen different kinds of music...it was an exposition of no little cultural and social importance - 'Dance International,' a festival showing the progress of the dance in all nations since 1900."
In their quest to document the evolution of dance in the United States, the audiences were treated to Modern Dance performances by Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Paul Weidman and Paul Haakon. FDR's Third Term: Vox Populi (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)Here are the results of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE's 1940 poll concerning FDR's controversial run for a third term. The pollsters were interested in discovering the voter's thoughts on the third term as a concept for future presidents - rather than gaining a better understanding as to the popularity of President Roosevelt.
The poll considered the opinions of citizens who voted for FDR in 1936 and those who sided with Republican Alf Landon in the same election. They concluded that 68.6% of poll's participants were against a third presidential term.
The Great Depression in the South (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)In the Summer of 1938 the New Deal administration turned its attention to the Southern States in an effort to solve the poverty that had long afflicted the region and was especially keen during the Great Depression:
"The War Between the States freed the slaves, but it did not free the South. Old plantations were broken up. Pressed to meet mortgages, farmers leased part of their farms to tenants. Cheap [African-American] labor remained and children were pressed into service on the Southern fields. Cotton and low labor costs stayed in the South."
Read about FDR's African-American advisers here...
The Bavarians Wanted a King (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)An important news item came across the wire in mid-may, 1949:
"The delegates from Western Germany's 11 states gave final approval to the draft of the constitution for the new Federal Republic of Germany."
- but what matter was this to the thousands of Bavarians who were highly distrustful of the new government; they had their own gloried past that was largely due to the royal family known as the House of Wittelsbach:
"A strong faction is campaigning for the return to the throne of former Crown Prince Rupprecht. The eldest son of King Ludwig III, deposed in 1918, Rupprecht is a tall, thin man of vast education. He led Bavarian troops under Kaiser Wilhelm. In World War II, he was exiled to Italy. Since then he has been living with his family at Leutstetten Castle on Lake Starnberg near Munich." "If the Bavarian people desire monarchy, I shall respect their desire."
Nice work if you can get it... Scandal (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)"The New Deal's Works Progress Administration, with its millions of employees and billions of dollars in relief funds, has long been recognized as a potential cesspool of graft where the unscrupulous are concerned. Last week, in the fierce heat of the 1938 campaign's closing days, the stench of scandal began to penetrate the WPA administrations of two states..." The Critics of FDR's Supreme Court Scheme (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Attached are seven thumbnail arguments against FDR's court scheme that were circulating around the country at that time:
"[The President's] move is dictated by expediency and not by a long-range view and that it comes only because the Supreme Court has decided against New Deal legislation 11 out of 16 times." Ground Zero: Washington, D.C. (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)When it became clear to all that the Soviets had the bomb - and Washington was the target - the egg-heads in D.C. decided it was time to disperse various government offices to the suburbs:
"Given any warning at all, the National Security Resources Board now seems confident it can preserve at least a skeleton Government. But as for the run-of-the-mine Federal employee, he'll have to take his chances amid the irradiated rubble..." 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". A Chronology: 1950 - 51 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Appearing in the June 27, 1951 issue of PATHFINDER was this list of chronological events that made up the first ten months of fighting in the Korean War. German Prisoners Resisted Soviet Coercion (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)The article posted above pointed out that the American-held German P.O.W.s who participated in the U.S. Army's Special Projects Division were all volunteers and willing participants in the program. These Germans had shown some enthusiasm and an interest to learn about democracy and little coaxing was needed. Contrast this with the column linked to the title above that illustrated the crude manner in which the unforgiving Soviet Army chose to propagandize the malnourished German P.O.W.s who fought at Stalingrad:
"If communism provides the Utopia that Marx, Lenin and Stalin claim, why does Russia have to rule by the bayonet?"
As many of you know, the U.S.S.R. did not release most of their German P.O.W.s until the death of Stalin in 1953.
Youth at Risk (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)By the year 1937 it became a concern that an eighth of all those admitted to the nation's state-run mental hospitals were between the ages of 15 through 24. On a similar note, it was revealed that 40% of employable youth were entirely unable to secure positions during this this same period. These matters were made known as a result of the efforts put forward by the Youth Commission of the American Council of Education - a group that began compiling such data in 1935. WANTED: BAMBINI (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"Since 1922 Italy's marriage rate has fallen to 7.2 per 1,000 of population, her birth rate to 22.2 per 1,000 and her excess of births over deaths to 8.7 per 1,000. The newspaper IL POPOLO d'ITALIA of Milan has estimated that the steady decline in the birth rate has deprived Il Duce of 15 army divisions." Washington Weighs in on China (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)Seasoned Washington journalist Felix Morley (1894 – 1982) discussed the complicated issues involved in the diplomatic recognition of Communist China:
"All the obvious arguments are against recognition. The Red regime in China has imprisoned our official representatives, confiscated American property, flouted and insulted us in a dozen different ways." "But in recent years we have mixed up diplomatic recognition and moral approval. The absurd result is that we recognize Russia and not Spain, and are at present opposed to recognizing China even though we fear that may be cutting off our nose to spite Stalin's face." An American in Kharkov (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)An American woman recalled the difficulties she encountered while trying to set up a household in Soviet Russia. Segregation Soviet-Style (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)As the April of 1949 was winding down, 11 members of the Communist Party U.S.A. were standing trial in a Federal courtroom spilling every secret they had in an all-out effort to lighten their load further down the road. Among these classified plots was a 1930s plan to invade the United States and create two separate Soviet "republics" - one White, the other Black. The region they had in mind for the African-Americans would cover nine of the old Confederate states.
A Quick Read About Soviet-Enforced Atheism Behind the Iron Curtain...
A Look Back at the Berlin Air-Lift (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)"Last week, after the Russians announced they would lift the blockade on May 12 [1949], the airlift took a bow and added a modest nod at the 324-day record:
• 189,247 flights;
• 1,528,250 tons delivered;
• best day's work: April 16 with 12,947 tons hauled in 1,393 flights.
- [and if the West had not chosen to answer the Soviet challenge in Berlin] "there might never have been an Atlantic Pact or a Western German state. The Communists might have gone amok in France and Italy. Russia might have won the Cold War in the first heat." The Non-Success of Prohibition (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)Prohibition had been in place for a little over eleven and a half years by the time this uncredited editorial was published. The column is informative for all the trivial events that Prohibition had set in motion and are seldom remembered in our own time - such as the proliferation of private golfing institutions; clubs that intended to appear innocent enough, but were actually created for "Wet" dues-paying golfers. A recently posted article (1917) that appeared in The Literary Digest near the end of 1929 examined the astronomical wealth that had been earned by the gangsters in America's biggest cities. The Anti-Mussolini Resistance (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)It is terribly chic these days to insist that the presidency of Donald Trump was "Fascist" - no one would have found this statement more hilarious than the fellows who are profiled in the attached article. These are the men who were assaulted on the streets and in their offices by Mussolini's supporters, these are the writers who were censored and blacklisted - these hardy souls were the original Anti-Fa. The Soviet Reaction to the Marshall Plan (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)To paraphrase Second Corinthians: "Europe's despair was Stalin's opportunity" - he delighted in the post-war unemployment, the inflation and the general lack of confidence in their governmental institutions. When the Marshall Plane came to the rescue in rebuilding Europe, the Soviets knew they were licked. This article reveals how totally bummed the Soviets were over the broad European acceptance of the Marshall plan. They hated it. Putting An End To Child Labor (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)A column that recalls the failed efforts to banish child labor by adding a prohibitive amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The effort had the backing of the the American Federation of Labor and the National Child Labor Committee and was opposed by forces on Capitol Hill who felt that the issue was best addressed by each individual state. The opposition was composed of the American Bar Association, The Farm Bureau Federation, the Daughters of the American Revolution and Cardinal William Henry O'Connell of the Boston Archdiocese. Japanese Nationalists (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)This article tells the tale of the Japanese Nationalist Masaharu Kageyama (1910 - 1979), a fellow who, in the political landscape of U.S.-occupied Japan, seemed rather like the late Mussolini of Italy: always remembering the storied past of a Japan that no longer existed. Kageyama was something a flat-Earther, choosing the road of the Japanese Nationalist, he held that Emperor Hirohito was indeed divine and that the Fascist vision of an "East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" was achievable, even in 1949.
The Klansman on the Supreme Court (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)When the U.S. Supreme Court gave their decision concerning the 1940 appeal of a lower court's verdict to convict three African-Americans for murder, civil libertarians in Washington held their collective breath wondering how Justice Hugo Black approached the case. Black, confirmed in 1937 as FDR's first court appointee, admitted to having once "been made a 'life member' of the Ku Klux Klan. This column was one of any number of other articles from that era that reported on the Alabaman's explanation behind his Klan associations:
"I did join the Klan... I later resigned. I never rejoined." The Lot of Chinese Christians (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)For those who keep records of the harsh treatment dolled out to religious sects by the various assorted tyrannical governments of the world, China is the all-time champion. Since it's inception, the People's Republic of China has attempted to coerce or eradicate every religious faith within its borders. Here is an account by an eyewitness to the many assorted atrocities dished out to the Christians in China by the followers of Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976.
An article about Soviet persecution of religious adherents can be read here...
Graham Greene (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948) The End of the NRA (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)During the Spring of 1935 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously proclaimed FDR's National Recovery Administration null and void - and the names of some 5,300 of its Washington, D.C. functionaries were immediately entered onto the unemployment list. All except one: Diana Rogovin; she was the "sole survivor" of the bureaucracy. To her fell the task of dotting the i's and crossing the t's as the great ship went down. She completed her last duty in February of 1937.
Dealing with Lightning (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)When the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics was let-in on the secret that the U.S. Army intended to manufacture and deploy wooden gliders, a red light went on in their collective heads as they all remembered how susceptible wood and canvas aircraft had been in attracting lightning bolts. This article outlines the steps that were taken to remedy the problem. The Battle of Yichang (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943) 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 Era of the Dictators (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"If necessity can be called the mother of invention, then deep public dissatisfaction can be called the mother of the authoritarian or 'totalitarian' state. In Europe, the [First] World War resulted in post-war conditions that walked arm-in-arm with profound social change. The aftermath was a great political and economic headache that grew slowly in intensity until it lead people to embrace anything that promised a cure... In Europe there are no less than 11 nations operating under systems far removed from democracy as we know it in this country." Another Review (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947) Tax Policy (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951) The Necessity of Overthrowing Russia (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)This is a profile of the American Cold Warrior James Burnham (1905 – 1987), who is remembered as being one of the co-founders of the conservative monthly, National Review . What is little known about Burnham is the fact that he was a communist in his early twenties and a steady correspondent with Trotsky. It didn't take long before he recognized the inherit tyranny that is the very nature of communism - and from that moment on he devoted much of his life to revealing to the world the dangers of that tyranny.
A Racial Dust-Up in Harlem (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)One of Reverend Martin Luther King's most poignant observations involved the sad fact one of America's most segregated institutions was the church. This article is about the New York Episcopal Archdioceses and their efforts to remedy that in the early Thirties:
"All Souls Episcopal Church is in Harlem, New York's 'black belt'. This once lily white congregation has been engulfed by the spreading colored population. Opposition to negro parishioners reached a point when an element of the white vestry asked the rector, Reverend Rollin W. Dodd, to resign..." ''Lynching No. 3'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)A dreary news story relaying the violent end that came to one R.C. Williams of Ruston, Louisiana. ''Soak the Rich'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)"'SOAK THE RICH!' has been a popular slogan for generations. President Roosevelt knows the people and he knows that this cry is even more popular now than it ever was before. Taxes which increase the cost of living and hang so heavily on the poor cannot be popular... But pick some taxes that bear down on the rich and - and then you have something which everyone will hurrah for. The number of rich are comparatively few, and hence their votes and influence can be disregarded entirely."
President Roosevelt's plan was to tax this minority for 75 percent of their income.
To read about the dwindling good fortune of the rich, click here...
Planing the Occupation (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)Some seven months before Japan quit the war, the anointed heads of the Institute of Pacific Relations convened in Hot Springs, Virginia to discuss what the Allied Occupation of Japan would look like.
Click here to read about August 28, 1945 - the day the occupation began. Medal of Honor for Pvt. Lloyd C. Hawks (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)Lloyd Cortez Hawks (1911 - 1953) was a U.S. Army private and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration for valor — the Congressional Medal of Honor. Hawks performed his celebrated acts of derring-do while serving as a medic attached to the 30th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division outside of Carano, Italy. Hiding A Military Error (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)This 1946 article puts a nice face on a subject that both American diplomats and military men were eager to hide from the world - the issue involving a total lack of military preparedness. The journalist reported on the military's push to bulk-up the reserves to an acceptable level, but the real story was that all branches of the armed services were on a recruiting drive for more men (and women) to make up for the fact that the post-war deployment program had drastically reduced the combat effectiveness of practically every unit. Under heavy pressure from civil authorities to save money, military planners failed to retain the services of numerous combat veterans to train the newest recruits. This partially explains the lack of accomplishments attained by the earliest divisions deployed to halt the North Korean advances in 1950. One Month Into the Berlin Blockade (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)"The firm of Uncle Sam and John Bull flying grocers, kept the Western Allies in the Battle for Berlin last week... If the peace continues, the U.S. British estimated, by mid-July there will be enough food in Berlin's stockpile to feed the 2 million Germans in western sectors of the capital until September 1... Supplying fuel and coal was another problem..."
The article is accompanied by one cartoon from THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE.
Read more articles from PATHFINDER MAGAZINE...
Thoughts on Blouses (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)By the time 1947 was coming to a close, an enormous shift in the fashion winds had taken place that altered the silhouette of the fashionable woman. Waists were narrow, hips were padded - and the hemline had dropped as much as twelve inches. "The New Look" out of Paris dictated the appearances of suits and evening wear, but blouses were left out of the revolution - everyone had to figure it out for themselves and hope that the couturiers from across the sea would come to the rescue the following season.
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 Monument at Montfaucon (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) When the Depression Caught Up With Doctors (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)"Some people have maintained that doctors weren't hit so hard by the economic slump. The claim was that people couldn't help getting sick and their misfortune was the doctor's gravy. But the Committee on the Cost of Medical Care, a non-governmental committee, of which Secretary Wilbur is chairman, reports a rapid decline in the income of doctors during the Depression... In 1930, the first [full] year of the Depression, physician's incomes decreased 17% and they have been decreasing ever since."
The author also included some other elements gleaned by the committee - such as the average sum paid by the families in their study, the approximate cost of the nation's medical bills and an approximation concerning the number of medical professionals at work in 1931.
During the Depression, many doctors and nurses worked entirely for free; to read about that, click here...
The Ice was Thawing... (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)Starting in the 1940s, small articles like the one here began appearing in magazines and newspapers across the nation - snippets indicating that the American people (ie. whites) were slowly catching on to the system of racial injustice they had inherited - and wondering aloud as to the tyranny of it all:
"To 13 co-eds at Uppsala College, East Orange, N.J., democracy is something more than a worn text-book theory. It is a living, though thorny, reality. Shortly before school's end, they formed one of the nation's first interracial, interfaith college social sororities."
Another article about segregation's end can be read here.
Low-Wage Pay Scales for Working Women (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) 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...
The Biz (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)Pulled from the business section of a 1940 issue of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE was this list of Hollywood statistics that should be of interest to all you old movie fans. If you've ever wondered how the Dream Factory fared following the Great Depression, you can stop scratching your head bone - herein you will learn how many souls were on Hollywood's payroll, how many movies did the town make each year (give or take), what percentage of global film production was turned out by Hollywood and how many American movie theaters were there in 1940.
The Atomic Spy Ring (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)An interesting column that succinctly sums up how Stalin's spies were able to compromise the Manhattan Project, who organized the spy ring, the intelligence that was gleaned, how they were caught and what their fate within the legal system would be.
You can read about Alger Hiss HERE...
A Salute to Susan B. Anthony (Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)Five and a half months before the 19th Amendment was ratified, granting all female citizens over the age of 21 the right to vote, the editors of THE PATHFINDER MAGAZINE saw fit to pay tribute to Susan B. Anthony (1820 - 1906) - the woman who got the ball rolling so long ago:
"She drafted the pending amendment to the constitution in 1875." 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.
Towards a Nuclear Strategy (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)Here is the "Pathfinder Magazine" article about Air University; established in 1946 by the U.S. Department of War in order to train senior American Air Force officers to serve as strategic thinkers in the realm of national security. In 1949 that meant conceiving of ways to implement a successful strategy in which the Soviet Union would be defeated with nuclear weapons:
"At AU's apex is the Air War College. To its senior officer-students the question of destroying an enemy's will to resist is grimly real. Killing ten million citizens of an enemy nation is no haphazard problem to the Air War College. In the statistics of modern war, a loss of approximately 4% of a nation's population saps its will to resist..."
Six months after this article was first read, the Soviets tested their first Atomic bomb; click here to read about that event. 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.
Truman's China Policy for 1951 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)This is a single column that clearly lays out the Truman Administration's diplomatic policies concerning Mao's China - the summary is reduced to five bullet points. The Duke Went After An Author (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Perhaps one of the unmentioned reasons for America's revolt against the crown in 1776 was our revulsion of their power to cancel publication of any book of their choosing (there have been exceptions) - primarily books they deem slanderous of The Firm. This certainly was the case in 1937 when the newly minted Duke of Windsor (previously Edward VIII) sought to block all further publication of Coronation Commentary (1937) by Geoffrey Dennis. He succeeded in doing so on grounds of libel - but not before hundreds of copies could be published. The Pentagon Prepared for W.W. III (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Shortly after the Soviet Union successfully tested their first atomic bomb, the brass hats who work in the Pentagon saw fit to take the first step in preparing to fight an atomic war: they gave the order to create a subterranean headquarters to house a military command and control center for the U.S. and her allies.
"The finished chamber, according to local observers, will be 3,100 feet long, contain four suites for the top brass (the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others), and provide operational quarters for some 1,200 technicians in peacetime, or 5,000 if atomic bombing threatens the Washington command."
Commonly known as "Site R", it is located not terribly far from the presidential retreat, Camp David, and in the subsequent years since this article first appeared, the complex has grown considerably larger than when it was first envisioned. Today, Site R maintains more than thirty-eight military communications systems and it has been said that it was one of "undisclosed locations" that hosted Vice President Dick Cheney (b. 1941) shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks.
A related article can be read here...
The Hiss-Chambers Case (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)This is a report concerning how the Hiss/Chambers perjury trial was proceeding before the jury. The journalist pointed out that Hiss' attorney, Lloyd Paul Stryker, was repeatedly making slanderous remarks about the character of Whitaker Chambers - an indication that the facts were simply not on the side of the defendant.
Mid-War Production Figures (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)During the Summer of 1943, James F. Byrenes, FDR's Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, gave a report on the wartime production output for that period. 1943 proved to have been a turning point for the Allied war efforts on both fronts.
Click here to read about W.W. II Detroit. George Orwell (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"No one perhaps has done as much as the British writer who calls himself George Orwell to persuade former fellow-travelers that their ways lie in some direction other than the Stalinist party line."
So begin the first two paragraphs of this book review that are devoted to the anti-totalitarian elements that animated the creative side of the writer George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair: 1903 – 1950). The novel that is reviewed herein, Coming Up for Air, was originally published in 1939 and was reviewed by Pathfinder Magazine to mark the occasion of the book's first American printing in 1950. Badly Needed Dollars Shipped Overseas... (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)"No wonder there isn't any dough to be found" -the Commerce Department revealed that immigrant remittances to their countries of origin reached as high as $173,000,000 in 1931. The Italians were the most eager participants, with the Greeks in the number two position.
Click here to read about the American South during the Great Depression.
'Distribution of Wealth' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)Columnist Wheeler McMillen penned the attached 1946 editorial concerning a subject African-Americans have long recognized as problematic: American democracy and the tyranny of the majority. This has become a timely subject since President Obama introduced the term distribution of wealth to the American vocabulary during the 2008 election - this was swiftly followed-up by the Occupy movement and their Tweets regarding the ambitions of the "99 percent" (meaning, "majority" - the Russian translation for this term is "Bolshevik"):
What was Pathfinder Magazine (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)PATHFINDER MAGAZINE was a pretty terrific news organ and to thumb through any of the issues spanning 1910 through 1922 you'll get the sense that it had a heavy hand in influencing TIME, NEWSWEEK and any number of other magazines that came later. Established in Washington, D.C. in 1894, PATHFINDER earned its reputation as a genuine source for domestic and international news.
This article was written by its last publisher, Graham Patterson, and it served as both a history of that weekly as well as an obituary for its founder, George Mitchell - which is entirely fitting because the whole enterprise folded four and half years later. By the time its final issue rolled off the press in 1952 it had become the second largest news magazine in America - with a circulation numbering 1,200,000. With a record like that it seems odd that it went under at all.
Click here to read our collection of articles from PATHFINDER MAGAZINE. G.M. Mid-Century Motorama (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950) The Political Landscape (Pathfinder Magazine, 1920) Weeks after the Prohibition Amendment came into effect, there was much scurrying about by all politicians on both the state and Federal levels - all looking for allies they could rely upon to either defend or overturn the legislation, depending upon their respective constituencies. The first question put to each representative was, "Are you wet or dry?" Shortly before this article went to press, Congress held a vote to repeal the Volstead Act: the repeal was rejected by a vote of 254 to 85. The Bad War Poets (Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)"On came the foe, rushing foe,
As down they fell by hundreds.
'Twas bravery held our men;
They knew they were outnumbered."
"'Hundreds' and 'outnumbered'; Tennyson could hardly have done better than that. But even Tennyson would not have tried to rhyme 'steam and 'submarine', as the author of the following succeded in doing:
"Brave boys, put on steam;
Be ready at the guns, boys;
'Tis a German submarine."
etc., etc.,
The Battle for the City of Peace (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)"With ranks spread thin, Haganah, the army of the two-weeks old 'Independent Republic' of Israel, had to resist the armed forces of four other Arab states The Lebanese swept down from the north. Syrian and Iraqi armies converged near the Sea of Galilee. Egyptians invaded Jerusalem from the south. And Egyptian planes bombed Tel Aviv, the capital of Israel, and settlements in the south. Dropping 50-pounders, the Egyptians scored their biggest strike on a Tel Aviv bus station, killing 41, wounding 65." Chinese Slave Labor Under The Boot of Japan (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)By 1945 the Japanese Army was beginning to see the writing on the wall insofar as their occupation of China was concerned. With the collapse of Germany they knew they could expect the Soviets to attack at any time - this foreboding inspired them to corral greater numbers of hapless Chinese and force them to build barricades in order to postpone the inevitable. 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. FDR's ''Pack The Court'' Proposal (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Attached is a break-down of President Roosevelt's proposed legislation to rid the Supreme Court of six ornery justices by imposing a mandatory retirement age for the whole of the Federal Government. Failing that, FDR's legislation would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70, in order to assure passage of all New Deal legislation. ''The Tenth Man'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)This is a light history of the African-American people; weak in some spots, informative in others, the article seems to have been written for the white Americans who know little about them.
The Hat Superstition that was Reliable... (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)As far as superstitions and clothing are concerned, hats seem to be the one garment that has the most unfounded and irrational precepts attached to their existence. Plentiful are the dictates pertaining to where hats should never be placed or worn - these superstitions existed centuries before the Second World War, but for one citizen of San Angelo, Texas, he had his own beliefs where hats are concerned and some believed that, as a result, he was able to save the lives of 56 American servicemen... Justice Willis Van Devanter (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) The Birth of Special-Effects Makeup (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Here is an article about one of the most innovative minds in the nascent world of Hollywood makeup design; it belonged to a fellow named Jack Dawn (1892 - 1961). Dawn was under contract at MGM for decades and worked on over two hundred films, his most being the film that is discussed herein: The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM). The article briefly touches upon the "thin, rubbery" masks that he created after having made numerous in depth studies of human bone and muscle. The Quarantined New Yorker (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)"New York has a strange exile. She is now in her sixties, this woman has been isolated on North Brother Island, way up the East River, for 17 years and must spend the rest of her life there." The Brutality of Combat (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)"The shock of modern battle is so severe to nervous systems that the hair color of thousands of young men in the Pacific and European theaters of war has turned gray overnight."
Not surprisingly, the young men in question had no interest in resembling their grandfathers
and so the services of a patriotic hair dye manu- facturing firm were secured.
Read more articles from PATHFINDER MAGAZINE...
Prohibition Builds the First U.S. Prison for Women (Pathfinder Magazine, 1926)Alderson Prison in lovely West Virginia was not simply the first Federal prison intended for women, but also the very first prison ever built on American shores to house women only; for as you might have read in this 1924 article, thousands of American women were running afoul of the law as a result of Prohibition. The Solar Motor (Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)Pictured herein is Dr. C.W. Hewlett - early proponent of solar energy.
He was employed by the research department at General Electric and can be seen demonstrating his brainchild, the "Solar Electric Motor":
"Four small, round iron plates constitute the cell which converts the light into power. The plates are coated with selenium over which is an extremely thin layer of platinum. Both of the metals are 'light sensitive' and convert certain of the the rays into electricity, but as to just how this is done science is pretty vague".
False Hope for 1937 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Perhaps it was the practice of magazine editors during the Great Depression to instruct their reporters to find hope where none existed; that must have been the case for this article. The unnamed journalist who wrote this slender column reported on a few rare cases involving real jobs with real salaries being offered to recent graduates; the reporter wished to believe that this was a sign that the end was nigh - but these few jobs were flukes. The author saw economic growth where there really wasn't any at all, however he certainly made the case for its existence. The title link posted above leads to a passage from FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by Jim Powell that explains the true situation that existed in 1937, when unemployment stood at 20 percent by Summer. Post-War Nazis (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)By clicking the title link posted above you will see a photo of what appears to be the Fascist's answer to the von Trapp Family Singers - but hold, good reader - it was something far more sinister.
Read about American censorship in Occupied-Japan...
The NRA Shows Its Teeth (Pathfinder Magazine, 1933)The National Recovery Administration (1933 - 1935) was just one of the many alphabet agencies that the FDR administration created; his critics at the time, like the historians today, all believed that it was one of the well-meaning Federal efforts that simply prolonged the the Great Depression.
This is 1933 editorial addressed the various violation codes (there were 500 of them) and punishments that the Federal Government was prepared to dish out to all businesses wishing to defy any of the assorted labor laws and price-fixing measures that the NRA was designed to enforce. From Amazon: Nine Honest Men U.N. Forces Turn Back Spring Offensive (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Attacking across a 125 mile front, the Chinese Army launched their spring offensive on May 17, 1951; unable to make any advances, they retired two weeks later, leaving behind some 80,000 dead. "The Communist hit first on the east central front. A quick rout of two ROK divisions caught the U.S. 2nd Division, commanded by Major General Clark Ruffner, in a dangerous pocket with their east flank exposed...One officer called the Red onslaught 'an astounding demonstration. They wade right through macine gun or artillery fire. The bodies pile up and they walk right over the bodies and the pile of bodies gets higher.'" FCA: Not Going Anywhere (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Unlike the CCC, WPA, CWA, or DRA, you can type FCA.gov into a search engine and actually make contact with one of FDR's multiple alphabet agencies. This 1937 article will tell you why it came into being - but it won't tell you why the agency wasn't done away with during any of the decades of plenty that followed. Fashion's Rainmaker (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)"In the February of 1947, he opened eyes and mouths all over the world by showing almost-ankle-length daytime dresses. In the United States this length was christened the New Look. And Christian Dior had won, by inches the title, King of Fashion. His title is still secure. Dior designs accounted for an estimated 60% of total haute couture exports last year." ''The Hell Bomb'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)This article from February, 1950 goes on in some detail explaining why Americans should not be worried in the least about the fact that the Soviets now have atomic capability because the U.S. military has bigger and far more destructive bombs.
"A hydrogen bomb could cause damage almost without limit. The Nagasaki plutonium bomb affected an area of 10 square miles. The new weapon could destroy an area of 100, or 1,000 square miles." A Nervous Australia (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)"General Sir Thomas A. Blamey, Australian commander of Allied ground forces in the Southwest Pacific, declared the Japs have massed 200,000 first-line troops on the approaches to Australia and might be expected to launch an offensive at any time." Elsa Maxwell: Life of the Party (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940) Pecos Bill, Among Others (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948) The Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)During the April of 1945 elements of the U.S. First Army barreled across the countryside of central Germany. Coming across the chateau outside of the Harz Mountain village of Degenershausen it must have seemed to them to be just another pretty pile of high class European rocks, just like all the other ones they'd been stumbling upon since D-Day - but they soon found that the joint was used to house many of the records of pertaining to German diplomacy between the years 1871 through 1944. This article lays bare some of the hidden details in the agreement that was struck between foreign ministers Molotov and Ribbentrop in 1939; the treaty that came to be known as the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact.
Read about the earliest post-war sightings of Hitler: 1945-1955
Mr. Kinsey's Report (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)Although much of what Dr. Alfred Kinsey wrote concerning male sex patterns has been debunked in our own age, his conclusions were taken quite seriously in the late Forties and early Fifties. This slender column serves as a summary and review regarding his studies that were published in his 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948).
From Amazon:
Sexual Behavior in The Human Female and Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Two Volume Set
Mussolini - Irked By The Marx Brothers (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938) A Spike In Illegitimate Births (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)"'A new problem of the war is the fact that children are born to married women whose husbands have been long overseas... Department of Labor figures show that more than twice as many illegitimate children were born this year than in 1942."
Click here to read more on this topic. Actress Karen Morely in Washington (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)Karen Morley (né Mildred Linton: 1909 – 2003) was an American movie actress whose last moment before the cameras was when she refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the early Winter of 1952. Starvation (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)"Intelligence officers of the U.S. Army, just returned from Germany, brought appalling stories of the conditions under the policy of divided control established at Potsdam last August. Berlin, they reported confidentially, had a pre-war population of four million and an average daily death of toll of 175. Berlin today, although harboring over a million refugees from what was Eastern Germany, has a population of just over three million; deaths, 4,000 a day." The Soviet Invasion of Finland (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)Just as Lenin had a triumphal military adventure, Stalin, too, believed that he could deploy Soviet forces victoriously. However, when Lenin launched his enterprise against neighboring Georgia in 1921, he had the benefit of skilled military leaders under his command - this was not the case with Stalin, who had seen fit to purge his military of thousands of officers (1934 - 1939). When Stalin's legions attacked Finland in November of 1939, the Soviet losses that were inflicted by the numerically inferior Finns were far greater than he ever thought possible.
The article appeared during the closing weeks of the war and it reported on the outside aid the Finns were receiving. The attached file also includes an article from 1931 concerning some of the bad blood that existed between the two nations.
Read an article explaining how the Soviets used early radio...
Origin of the Term ''Jim Crow'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)The first three paragraphs of this article explain the 19th Century origins of a moniker that represents the most hideous institution born on American shores. The term in question is "Jim Crow" - a sobriquet that came into use decades before the American Civil War but was refashioned into a synonym that meant institutional racism. The article goes on to recall one African-American Congressman and his fruitless efforts to "clean up Jim Crow". The Draft (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"Christmas in khaki" became the new theme song of thousands of the nation's young men last week when the Army handed Selective Service a new quota... the Army wants 70,000 in November." 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." Going Where the People Go (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Fed-up with empty pews, a British pastor discovered that when he held services in a movie theater - where he discussed whatever Christian content was encapsulated within the story, he attracted a far larger crowd. The numbers were so impressive he continued this practice and even began producing Christian films in the subsequent decades. ''Americans All'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)In an effort to keep the writers and actors of the Works Progress Administration busy, FDR's Department of the Interior produced a 26-part radio program intended "to prove that America could never have become so great without the contributions" of all the various hyphenated groups that make up the country. On Sunday afternoon throughout much of 1938, Americans could gather around their radios, if they had them, and hear their "identity groups" being praised by the Government: African-Americans tuned in on December 18th; the WASP show was on December fourth.
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." The 1938 Spies (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)"Suddenly last June, a Federal grand jury in New York City hoisted the curtain on 'America's most significant spy prosecution since the [First] World War' by indicting 18 persons for participating in a conspiracy to steal U.S. defense secrets for Germany. Subsequently, only four of the 18 could be found for trial. The others, including two high officials of the German War Ministry, were safe in - or had escaped to - the Fatherland." U.S. Sailors Wore Earrings? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)A short notice from a May, 1944, issue of The Pathfinder reported that there was a fashion among the American sea-going men of the enlisted variety to wear a particular style of earring in their left ear if they'd experienced combat. Don't take our word for it, read on... Should Truman Have Fired MacArthur?
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)"Had the five-star general, brilliant military servant of his country for 50 years, been a sincere, farsighted prophet advocating the only course which could halt Communist Imperialism and save the free world? Or had he been an egotistical, arbitrary, insubordinate soldier, deliberately undercutting his Commander-in-Chief in pursuit of a policy to which no United States or United Nations official would give endorsement?"
The author lists numerous instances indicating that the General had been insubordinate. 'You Bet Your Life' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950 More Fighting for Christmas (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"The toughest fighting was in a three-mile beachead at the chewed-up port of Hungnam. There the U.S X Corps had escaped from a Chinese trap and was piling aboard a fleet of Victory and Liberty ships."
The U.S. Navy had a strong presence off shore to cover the American withdrawal. Free College? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)The concept of a free college education paid for by the Federal Government was not the brain child of the Vermont Marxist Bernie Sanders, but an idea that was briefly pursued by the education advisers of U.S. President Harry S Truman:
"Today the average American of 20 - 24 years of age has completed 12.1 years of schooling, an all-time high...Last week the President's Commission on Higher Education issued a report aimed at pushing the average still higher. It urged that free public education be extended through the first two years of college."
Even as early as 1894 socialism was recognized as wishful thinking.
The Moscow Show Trials Continue (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"Of the 17 defendants in the Russian 'circus trial', four were still alive in Moscow last week. Thirteen others, convicted of having acted on the instigation of exile Leon Trotsky to sabotage Soviet railways, mines and factories, were taken to a cellar of Moscow's Lubianka Prison, where they were yanked into cells to have have their brains blown out by pointblank pistol shots."
Stalin's bloody purges had their own Hollywood propaganda film: Mission to Moscow (Warner Brothers, 1943)
America Prepares... (Pathfinder Magazine, 1941)By late November, 1941, only children and the clinically optimistic were of the mind that America would be able to keep out of a war - as you'll be able to assume when you read the attached article that appeared on the newsstands just ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The War Budget Grows (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)The Chinese foray into Korea resulted in the coming together of numerous politicians in Washington in order to boost Army spending by $41.8 billion dollars, with an additional $1 billion designated for nuclear warfare preparedness. Assorted branches of the military increased the draft pool and lowered their admission standards. New Jersey Representative Charles Eaton(R) gravely stated:
"We face the greatest danger of extinction since the nation was founded." The U.N. and Collective Security (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Eight months into the Korean War came this editorial from an American news magazine pointing out that the burden of defending South Korea was not being evenly shared by the other member states of the United Nations and that the U.S. was over-represented on the battlefields:
"When the Korean Communists invaded South Korea last June, the U.N. was quick to authorize the use of armed force to combat the aggression, but not so quick when it came to contributing troops. [As of February, 1951] U.N. forces in Korea total about 275,000. Of this number 150,000 are American and 100,000 are South Koreans. This leaves less than 25,000 from 11 of the other U.N. members - a pitifully small contribution... What is there definition of 'collective security'? Have they so soon forgotten Munich? Have they forgotten that collective firmness by the Allies, when Germany invaded the Rhineland, might have prevented World War II?" Design for Modern Living (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)In an attempt to define modernism for a broad audience, architect/designer Alexander Girard curated the Exhibition for Modern Living that was housed at the Detroit Institute of Arts during the winter of 1949. It was a groundbreaking exhibit that brought modernism down from the mountain and allowed people to see that modern design was intended to make life more pleasant:
"Modern design implies shape for use, simplicity, new forms to utilize new materials, easier housekeeping, and honest expression of mass production... Up the richly carpeted ramp, viewers walk up to a dining room done by Alvar Aalto; past two studies Bruno Mathsson and Jean Risom and a bedroom and living-room representing a variety of designers; then up another level to a space furnished by Charles Eames; and finally to a small balcony overlooking George Nelson's living area. The quiet simplicity of the rooms and the gentle tones of symphonic music have people talking in whispers. Sighed one woman: 'I'd like to live here.'" Sugar Rationing Hits The Candy Industry (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)"The candy-makers of the nation are not having a such a sweet time of it, for, like most other manufacturers, they are bothered by scarcities of labor and materials and so must cut corners and find substitutes."
The article goes on to point out that the sugar that was available was largely devoted to military personnel (18 pounds a year); as a result of this candy rationing, movie-goers were introduced to popcorn as a substitute (you can read about that here).
More Babies, Please (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"Italy, Germany and Russia, leading exponents of Europe's Fascist and Communist camps, have each asked for more prolific mothers and decreed measures designed to fetch in the bambini, kinder and kodomos. Their dictator's desires for more babies and still more babies have developed into a population race."
Click here to read about the Nazi struggle to increase their birthrate... WPA and the States (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)In early March, numerous governors convened and agreed that the WPA was dropping too many dependents from their rolls who were then becoming burdensome to their respective states. The executives then wrote a telegram to the White House insisting that the Federal program stop this practice. ''Dishonest Banks'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932) The State of Radio In 1937 America
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"Girding the United States today are two major national radio chains and one smaller chain. They are the National Broadcasting Company, the Columbia Broadcasting Company and the Mutual Broadcasting System, NBC, with its combined Red and Blue networks, has about 110 stations. CBS on a single network has 101. Mutual has 45 and will add a new section of 10 more next month." Spotlight on U.S. Schools in the Late Forties (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)One can't but help but cry a little when reading that the Americans of 1947 actually believed that their public school system was substandard; they had no idea the depths this same system would be thrust just thirty years hence. The Forties was a time when most school teachers believed that the school's biggest problem was "talking in the classroom" or lingering in the halls. However, this article lists the ten "firsts" that both state and Federal governments had initiated in order to make a fine education system better. FDR's Alphabet Agencies (Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)Listed herein are the sixty-two alphabet agencies as they existed in 1934. More were on their way and, as this article makes quite clear, a good number of them were created by the Hoover administration. If you're looking for an article indicating that Hoover and Roosevelt had similar approaches to governance, this might be a good place to start. Mickey Mouse Banned in Yugoslavia (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Due to a highly involved and convoluted Mickey Mouse comic strip plot that we can't possibly begin to understand in the least - but in 1937 managed to offend the crowned heads of the Karađorđević Dynasty in far-off Yugoslavia, all matters Mickey (films, books, comics, etc) were soon banned from the kingdom. Hitler On The Brink Of Power (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)A profile of Hitler that appeared some seven months before he grabbed the big brass ring. It is written soullessly and without judgment and is based mostly on Nazi press releases. Did Stalin Want the U.S. to Recognize China? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)Felix Morley (1894 – 1982), one of the senior Washington columnists in the early Cold War era, summarized the various concerns involved in the diplomatic recognition of Communist China as well as the surprising issue as to whether or not it was what the Soviet Premiere actually preferred at the time?
"There is good reason to believe that the Communist high command in Moscow does not want us to recognize the new Communist government of China" "But in recent years we have mixed up diplomatic recognition and moral approval. The absurd result is that we recognize Russia and not Spain, and are at present opposed to recognizing China even though we fear that may be cutting off our nose to spite Stalin's face." Justice Pierce Butler (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) The Wonderful World of Adjectives (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)"To grammarians, a verb is the strongest part of speech, but not to radio advertisers. In a survey of 15 national radio programs, the entertainment weekly VARIETY has found that adjectives receive the most voice emphasis and the most repetition. On one program, 28 adjectives were spoken in 15 minutes."
Click here to read about how the mass-marketing techniques of the W.W. I era was used to promote KKK membership...
Free College? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)The concept of a free college education paid for by the Federal Government was not the brain child of the Vermont Marxist Bernie Sanders, but an idea that was briefly pursued by the education advisers of U.S. President Harry S Truman:
"Today the average American of 20 - 24 years of age has completed 12.1 years of schooling, an all-time high...Last week the President's Commission on Higher Education issued a report aimed at pushing the average still higher. It urged that free public education be extended through the first two years of college."
Even as early as 1894 socialism was recognized as wishful thinking.
Who Was Mussolini? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)A semi-flattering profile of Benito Mussolini that explains his difficult childhood and the periodic beatings he suffered at the hands of his Marxist father. No references are made to his favorite pastimes - beating up editors and closing newspapers:
"Significantly, his god is Nietzsche, the German philosopher who wrote: 'Might makes right.'"
You can read about his violent death here...
Fascist Rome fell to the Allies in June of 1944, click here to read about it...
The Foreign-Born Population in the Early '30s (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)A brief notice from the 1930 Census reporting on that percentage of the United States population that was born on foreign shores. Within the confines of this small paragraph some details were provided as to how many arrived prior to 1900, how many between 1901 and 1910; 1911 and 1919; 1920 and 1930. Additional information appears concerning the assorted racial make-up of these new American and how many of them originated from both quota and non-quota nations. A Hollywood Star Before the Committee (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Larry Parks (1914 – 1975) was an Hollywood movie actor. His career arched from bit player and supporting roles to top billing before his career was virtually ended when he admitted to having once been a member of the Communist Party USA; his candor soon led to his being blacklisted by all the Hollywood studios. The Reformed South Korean Military (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)By the close of 1952 it became evident to anyone who followed the events in Asia that the army of the Republic of Korea (ROK) had evolved into a competent and reliable fighting force; highly disciplined and well-lead, it was finally able to both take and hold ground while simultaneously inflicting heavy casualties on their the enemies. Gone from the mind was that South Korean army of 1950: that retreating mob that quickly surrendered their nation's capital to the on-rushing Communists just three days into the war, leaving in their wake a trail of badly needed equipment.
After a year and a half of the most vicious combat, the ROK Army put in place the badly needed reforms that were demanded if the war was to be won. Relying on their own combat veterans as well as their United Nation's allies, recruits were clearly schooled in what was required to survive in battle. As relieved as the many Western commanders were to see how effectively the South Koreans were able to create such a force, the liabilities of this army were still genuine and they are listed in this article as well.
Relief Bill Passed by Congress (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)Republican President Herbert Hoover had made numerous attempts to get a Federal relief bill through the Congress to the ailing citizenry, but the Democratic congress repeatedly disagreed as to how the funds were to be distributed. Finally an agreement was reached as Hoover's administration was reaching the end of his term and the Emergency Relief and Construction Act was passed into law.
"The obnoxious features which had been injected into the legislation from time to time by Members of the House of Representatives and had so long delayed action, have been eliminated." The Most Powerful American Men During the Depression (Pathfinder Magazine, 1930) In 1930 a seasoned diplomat and respected attorney by the name of James Watson Gerard (1867 - 1951) created quite a dust-up in Depression-era Washington when he took it upon himself to release his list of those Americans who he believed to have the most power on Capitol Hill. The reason his compilation turned as many heads as it did was because there wasn't the name of a single elected official to be found on the list - not even President Hoover was mentioned (although his treasury secretary was, the millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon).
Click here if you wish to read more on this subject and see Gerard's list of the most powerful men in Cold War Washington.
Whither Latin? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)This article charts the decline of Latin as an academic study in American schools. The disappearance of Latin began in the Thirties and steadily snowballed to such a point that by 1952 its absence was finally noticed.
"Is Latin on its way out in high schools? The answer is a confident 'NO.'
It's hard to see how it can go any lower,' declares Dr. John F. Latimer, head of Latin studies
at George Washington University." Justice McReynolds (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)One of FDR's primary targets was the 75 year-old Justice James Clark McReynolds, attached you will find a four page profile of the man. Reversals for Chiang Kai-shek (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)The years 1927 through 1947 has largely been remembered as a victorious era for the Chinese Nationalists in their struggle against the Communist rebels under Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976). However, following Mao's 1947 retreat to Manchuria and the subsequent training and reforms that took place within his army, the Nationalist Chinese troops began to feel the humiliation of defeat until they made good their "strategic withdrawal" to Formosa (ie. Taiwan), where they have remained ever since.
This single page article goes into greater detain outlining the chronology of events. Dr. Freud (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)This is a profile of Dr. Sigmund Freud that appeared during the last months of his life. In the Spring of 1938 Freud and his family had fled to London in order escape the Nazis. Distributing the Nation's Wealth... (Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)An article about FDR's scheme to create an American Utopia purchased with high taxation. The article closes with an amusing poem about the tyranny of taxation. ''No More Pearl Harbors'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)When the twenty-year-old editor at Yank Magazine wrote this editorial at the close of W.W. II he was expressing a belief that was shared equally with the members of the W.W. I generation who prosecuted and managed the war from Washington - and that was an understanding that the world is a far more dangerous place than we thought it was and it needs to be watched. This 1946 article is similar to other columns that appeared in 1947 (when the CIA was established) and 1952 (when the NSA opened its doors) in that it announced the creation of a government agency intent on global espionage in order to have done with all future concerns that another Pearl Harbor was in the planning.
Mobilization (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Attached is a report on President Truman's efforts to intensify America's wartime posture. When this article was first read the Korean War had been raging for seven months - with the fifth month bringing the promise of an expanded and very bloody war as a result of Chinese intervention. Compiled in these columns is a list explaining how the Truman administration, the Pentagon and the officials on the American home front had met the Korean challenge thus far. Stepping-Up The Training (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)By the autumn of 1950 it became clear to the old hands at the Pentagon that the "police action" on the Korean peninsula was beginning to resemble a real war. With that in mind, thirteen military training camps that had been been barren for the past five years, were dusted off in order that they might once more begin training Americans for war. Two weeks later China threw her hat in the ring.
During this same period, the U.S. Navy took 62 ships that had been mothballed in order to launch the Inchon Landings...
Pearl Harbor's Two Fall Guys (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945 Recognizing that responsible commanders must always assume the blame for the failings within their respective domains, former U.S. General George C. Marshall and General Leonard T. Gerow stood up and claimed responsibility for leaving Pearl Harbor vulnerable to Japanese attack. Marshall had been FDR's Army Chief-of-Staff since the Autumn of 1939 and Gerow had been serving as executive officer of the War Plans Division at the time of the sneak attack - however, To read this article is to understand that these men were responsible for Pearl Harbor's lack of preparedness...
A Spy Within the CPUSA (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)These seven paragraphs from THE PATHFINDER magazine served to introduce their readers to Herbert Philbrick (1915 - 1993) and his efforts to expose the subversive elements within the Communist Party U.S.A..
For nine years Philbrick labored as an F.B.I. mole deep within the Cambridge Youth Council, the Young Communist League and the CPUSA until he made good his resignation by serving as a surprise government witness at a conspiracy trial in which numerous high profile American Reds were indicted (among them William Z. Foster, Eugene Dennis, Robert George Thompson, Gus Hall, Henry Winston, and ex-New York councilmember Benjamin Davis). •Herbert Philbrick Makes his Case in this Short Film• The Archbishop Did His Bit (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)A small notice from 1947 that reported on the archdiocese of St. Louis standing up in favor of racially integrating their school system - while simultaneously threatening excommunication to all members of the flock who contested the decision. The Biblicist (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"Few Americans have more Bibles than Harry S Truman (he has 'about 50') and few quote from them with greater facility... The President seldom misses a chance to stress that only as the U.S. has faith in God can it face the future with confidence." The March from Chosin to the Sea (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)This is an eyewitness account of the fortitude and endurance exhibited by the freezing members of the 1st Marine Division as they executed their highly disciplined 100 mile march from the Chosin Reservoir to the Korean coastline - inflicting (and taking) casualties all the while. The account is simply composed of a series of diary entries - seldom more than eight sentences in length recalling that famous "fighting retreat" in the frozen Hell that was Korea. The journalist's last entry points out that the number of Marine dead was so high, we need never think of the Battle of Tarawa as the bloodiest engagement in Marine history. Soap Operas Come to Television (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)The short-lived soap opera "These Are My Children" was the brain-child of Irna Phillips (1901 – 1973) and it is no matter that the "daytime drama" lasted less than a year on Chicago's WMBQ - the significance of the program rests in the fact that it was the first soap opera to be seen on American television screens:
"Last week television caught the dread disease of radio: soapoperitis... 'These Are My Children', however is no warmed-over radio fare. To make sure of this, Miss Phillips and director Norman Felton built the first episodes backward... Whether [a] soap opera on television can coax housewives to leave their domestic duties [in order] to watch a small screen was a question yet to be answered." Abraham Lincoln: Inventor (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)"There, to a coterie of Lincoln addicts on Abe's 131st birthday, U.S. Patent Commissioner Conway P. Coe displayed a model of a device Lincoln patented in 1849, when he was still an unknown congressman from Illinois. Commissioner Coe read the patent application, in Lincoln's own handwriting, for a gadget to float flatboats in shallow water". Why Do Detergents Have Such Wacky Names (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)This column praises those brainiacs of Madison Ave who obsess over single syllable words (and sounds) in an effort to propel their client's product to the tip-top of the profit-pantheon.
"The right name can zoom a product into a commercial success. The wrong one can wreck its sales and waste the advertising dollars spent promoting it... If one day you hear of a product called 'Heck' or 'Gosh', don't be surprised. Slang is more popular than the king's English in product naming. Again, it's because you use it more naturally. Newest proof of this came after the phrase 'poof - there goes perspiration' (a TV commercial for Stopette spray deodorant) made 'poof' a new American slang word."
TV Viewers And Sports Attendance (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)Without a doubt, the strongest impulse to buy the earliest televisions came from sports fans. The deep lust in their hearts to witness their favorite sporting events as it happened, free of a bar tab, was a strong one - and the television industry loved them right back. This glorious trifecta consisting of viewers, TV networks and team owners not only altered the way America watched sports, it totally transformed sports itself. Author Steven D. Stark put it nicely in his book Glued to the Set (1997):
"Television has changed the sports landscape — changing everything from the salaries, number of teams, and color of uniforms, to the way that fans conceive of sports and athletes alike," ''Duce: Peeve No. 3 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"A sore humiliation to dictator Mussolini of Italy lies in the fact that what should have been a proud conquest has turned into a diplomatic white elephant. Only one democratic nation in the world - Switzerland - has recognized Italy's claim to Ethiopia."
You can read about his violent death here...
Barbers & Hair Stylists Called On The Carpet (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)By the end of 1944 Congressional heads all turned when it was brought to their attention that the fees charged by hairstylists and barbers had soared 25% above the 1941 levels. New Dealers sought to burden the trade with a price freeze. Let The UN Keep The Peace (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)In the fall of 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson stood before the United Nations General Assembly and reminded them that five years earlier, when the U.N. Charter was conceived, it was agreed that the U.N should have a military arm with which to enforce its edicts. He prodded their memories to a further degree when he reminded them that they'd have one today if the Soviet delegates hadn't objected so vociferously.
"Korea has shown how ill prepared the United Nations is to stop aggression. The defense of Korea is nominally a U.N. responsibility. But 98% of the effort, and an equally high percentage of the 'United Nations' casualties, come from the United States." The Gathering Storm (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)This is the Pathfinder book review for the first in Winston Churchill’s monumental six-volume account of the struggle between the Allied Powers in Europe against the Axis during the Second World War. Told from the unique vantage point of a British prime minister, it is also the story of one nation’s heroic role in the fight against fascist tyranny. When the other volumes in the series were completed, in 1953, Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his effort. Home Front Concerns (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)Here are two home front articles regarding the rationing of labor, food and steel; 1944 orders on clothing production are also touched upon. Red Saskatchewan (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)When the our neighbors to the North first dipped their toe into the tepid waters of socialism, they they chose to do so with car insurance:
"A law compelling automobile operators and public schools to buy insurance from a state-owned company." The Gun Barrel Fence on P Street (Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)When compared to the historic events that took place on numerous other street corners in Washington D.C, the intersection of 28th and P streets barely makes the list, but the residence that stands on the north-east corner there is a twofer. The attached article explains just why the front and side fence is so unique to Washington history - and in later years the house would be purchased by Cold War diplomat Dean Acheson. I936 Saw A Wee-Bit of Prosperity (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)This article sums up the income data that was collected by the U.S. Department of Commerce and published in June of 1937. The report stated that
"The national income increased in 1936 by a larger amount, absolutely and relatively, than in 1935. Income produced rose to 63.8 billion dollars, an increase of 8.8 billion dollars, an increase over the 1935 total."
A chart has been provided.
Click here to read about the economic disaster that 1937 was The Salad Days of Gynecology (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Do you think your job is tough? Pity the pioneering gynecologists of the 16th Century...
The Patton Tank (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)As is made clear on this website, numerous tanks were fielded by the U.N. Forces during the Korean War, and one of the most effective ones was the Patton Tank (in all it's variations). 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. Reform (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) The Consequences of the Munich Agreement (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)"When England and France yielded to Germany in the Munich Agreement of last September, a significant change took place. The balance of power in Europe shifted from the democracies to the dictatorships... [and] the United States had to stop thinking of England and France as America's 'first line of defense' in the time of a European war." Trying to Understand Learning Disabilities (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)The kids who are discussed in this article would be called "LD" today - you don't want to know how they were referred to in the early Twenties. Back then there were no Federally-funded commissions thronging with sympathetic PhD candidates to ramble on about "convergence issues", "processing concerns", "the-classroom-learning-environment" and the "Learning Disabled". There were only frustrated kids, frustrated teachers and broken-hearted parents. This 1937 news article reports on the pioneering teachers at Seward Park High School in New York City and the earliest attempts to address the needs of students who suffered from language processing disorders, dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia and America's favorite - good ol' ADHD. Modular Housing (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)After eight years of research, the National Retail Lumber Dealers Association and the Producers' Council, an organization of building materials manufacturers, have polished up all the known short-cut, dollar-saving methods in building, packaged them into an industry-wide program, and labeled them the 'four-inch module plan.'... The house is built on of three sections, each 16 x 24 feet, and bolted at floor, walls and roof. Wall joints are hidden by cabinets; by simply removing top and side cabinets, bolts can be loosened and the house readied for moving on trailers." Mildred Gillars of Maine (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)How many times have we heard an actress or actor say, "What the Heck, it's work" - plenty (if I had a nickle for every time... etc.). No doubt, this was the thought that tarried through the airy head of Mildred Gillars (né Mildred Elizabeth Sisk) when she agreed to broadcast Nazi propaganda from the heart of Germany on a radio program titled, the Home Sweet Home Hour (1942 - 1945). However, due to the fact that two witnesses must testify in order to prove the charge of treason, she was convicted in Federal Court for having performed in a 1944 Berlin Radio broadcast called Vision of Invasion. The Federal jury found her "not guilty" of committing seven other treasonous acts. Gillars served 12 years in Federal prison and was released during the Summer of 1961. 25 Years of Women Voting (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)Attached herein are two articles that tell the history of an organization that is still with us today: The League of Women Voters. At its birth, in 1869, it was a bi-partisan organization composed of women who made no stand as to which of the two political parties was superior - preferring instead to simply remind all ambitious candidates that American women were voiceless in all matters political and that this injustice had deprived them of a vibrant demographic group. Since women began voting in 1920, the League of Women Voters began promoting candidates from the Democratic party almost exclusively, while continuing to promote themselves with their pre-suffrage "bi-partisan" street hustle. No doubt, the League of Women Voters is an interesting group worthy of the news but it hasn't been bi-partisan in over seventy years. ''Korean Pearl Harbor'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"The first surprise attack came at night. It was mounted by reckless fighters, who swarmed into battle on horseback and afoot after [American] bugles had morbidly sounded 'taps'. The Reds pounced on two combat regiments of the American First Cavalry Division and the South Korean First Division. Hundreds of civilians, caught by the flaming machine gun and mortar fire, were mowed down. In U.N. casualties, it was the one of the costliest engagements of the war." Justice Louis D. Brandeis (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"Part of the personal tragedy inherent in President Roosevelt's suggestion to rid the Supreme Court of men over 70, part of the uncertainty with which liberals greet his plan, must arise from consideration of Louis Demblitz Brandeis. At 80, Brandeis is the oldest of the nine justices... Liberals cherish him, conservatives respect him and the [FDR] administration is grateful to him".
The Mid-Century Look in Fashion (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"Hair as short as a boy's and feathered into wisps about the face... Accented waist... Long slim look... Spread-eagle effect about the shoulders obtained by deep armholes, bloused backs, big collars or little capes... Mostly narrow skirts but still plenty of full ones."
- so begins the attached two page Spring fashion review that was torn from the Women's Page of the January 25, 1950 issue of Pathfinder Magazine. Judging from the six photographs that illustrate the column, Christian Dior continued call the tunes that other fashion designers had to dance to if they expected to attract a following. The New York designers whose efforts were singled out for praise were Lilly Daché, Hattie Carnegie, Ben Reig, Ceil Chapman and Vera Jacobs of Capri Originals.
More about 1950s hairstyles can be read here...
What Will Save Us? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)The author of this brief paragraph points out that prior to the Great Depression that commenced in 1929, there were as many as five other economic slumps that existed in America's past. He remembered that in each case "something unexpected has come along to not only put us back on our feet again but to boom things in addition."
"Will it be the sudden perfection of television? Or further development of electrical appliances, particularly air-conditioning and cooling? Or some new novelty?"
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... June 6, 1944 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)"That was the way D-Day began, the second front the Allies had waited for for two years. It came like a shadow in the English midnight... The Nazi news agency, DNB, flashed the first story at 12:40 a.m. on June 6, Eastern wartime. Before dawn, British and American battleships were pounding shells into Havre, Caen and Cherbourg, high-booted skymen of the [88th] and 101st U.S.A. paratroop divisions had dropped into the limestone ridges of the Seine valley and landing barges filled with American, Canadian and British infantrymen nosed up to the beaches along the estuaries of the Orne and Seine rivers." The Gloom Of It All (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)It must have been very difficult to maintain a sunny disposition back in the Thirties! No doubt, residents of the Great Depression would often have to make their own "good news". For example, that same month in 1932 when this article appeared it was also announced that "for the first time in the nation's history alien emigration from the United States during the last fiscal year exceeded immigration [to the United States], figures being 103,295 and 35,576 respectively" - there! For those people who disliked hearing foreign accents on the streets, there was a glimmer of hope - and that's what this article was all about: finding hope. Korea: 1946 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946) Television: God's Gift To Politicians (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Placing a teleprompter or cue cards below a camera lens seems like old-hat to us - but our grandparents thought that it rendered an amazing affect for televised addresses:
"The new technique for speeches on TV - reading from larlge cards with lettering two inches high placed just under the camera lens - makes it possible for the speaker to look directly into the camera lens, giving the appearance of talking directly to the viewer." Justice George Sutherland (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Justice George Sutherland (1862 - 1942) was consistently on the reactionary side in votes against New Deal legislation. It was he who wrote the decisions invalidating the Guffey coal-control act and the powers of the SEC to interrogate witnesses. His NRA and the Municipal Bankruptcy Act, railroad pensions and "hot oil" legislation. He voted in favor of the TVA and old-age pensions." Dr. Albert Schweitzer (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)Written to review the latest book by Dr. Shweitzer, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus, the article informs the reader as to the remarkable life the author lead and all that he did for the Kingdom. Can The U.S. Stay Out of The War? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Even as early as 1937, the dark clouds of war could be seen on the horizon. The U.S. Congress still smarted from the last world war and did not want to be lured in to newest installment. Six months after this article was first read the Neutrality Act of 1937 would be passed - this column explains much of the thought that went into it. Massacre (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"Late last week 30 prominent Ethiopians were tried as ringleaders in the attempted assassination [of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani]. They were to serve as "public examples" of Italy's determination to rule over her new African domain. All other natives found in possession of arms were shot by Fascist firing squads, more than 1,000 terrified men being mowed down in a bloody Mussolini-ordered revenge." Ludendorff v. Hitler (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937 )A column that explains Hitler's alliance with General Erich von Ludendorff (1865 - 1937) during the famous Beer Hall Putsch (1923) and how it all went south from there. A Most Dangerous Man (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Although Hitler was no mystery to the readers of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE (the editors had been following his trajectory since the early Twenties), the attached article tells of the maniac's impoverished boyhood all the way up to his exulted status in 1937. The Inter-Sound System (Pathfinder Magazine, 1930) Korea: The Contributions of the U.S. Navy
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)With no other seafaring nation afloat to oppose them, the United States Navy directed it's attention entirely to land-based targets on the Korean peninsula. Navy jets pelted the mountainous terrain in support of UN operations ashore while battleships, cruisers and destroyers served as floating artillery batteries:
"The miracle-man most responsible for this rejuvenated navy is brilliant, 53-year-old Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, the first air officer to serve as CNO..."
Draft-Resistance In Canada (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)"A mob of French-Canadian youths surged through Montreal with skull-and-crossbones sign [that read]: "Are We Cannon fodder? Do We Want Conscription? No!" Quebec province seethed with rage at Prime Minister Mackenzie King's decision to send draftees overseas."
Their father's resisted the draft some twenty years earlier...
Statism (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)Not long after the free world had conquered fascism, the long twilight struggle against Communism commenced. Stalin's Soviet Union had refused to comply with the treaties it had previously agreed to and was occupying North Korea and many of the Eastern European countries that the Nazis had invaded. Furthermore, Stalin was was funding armed insurgencies in Greece, Vietnam and China. In an effort to help define the tyranny that is Communism, Pathfinder ran this column that defined Communism as Statism and explained it in simple terms. Children in Need (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)"In respect to their economic status, it has been estimated that one-half to two-thirds of the city children of America are in homes where annual income is too low to permit the family to buy items called for in an ordinary 'maintenance' budget - a budget of about $1,261 to meet the normal needs of living in a family of four."
CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.
Klaus Grabe (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)An article from 1947 that clearly indicated that modern furnishings were a commercial hit in New York City during the immediate period following the war. The furnishings in particular were the product of German modernist named Klaus Grabe. A refugee from Hitler's Germany, Grabe was a Bauhaus-educated designer who had first settled in Mexico with Josef Albers before moving to New York. Shortly after this article appeared, Klaus Grabe would write this book: Build Your Own Modern Furniture . The Government Film Business During WW II (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)"Government movies are now having their greatest boom in history. The boom is tied to the war, but many capital observers believe that it will continue into the post war era, and that the large-scale production of films by the Government telling the people what's what and how to do it is here to stay." When President Truman Tried his Hand at ''Distributing Wealth'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)It seems like a tough nut to swallow, but 12 years before President Obama was even born - U.S. President Harry S. Truman plugged the idea of 'wealth distribution' as a portion of a piece of proposed legislation that has come to be known as the "the Fair Deal". The president's scheme was introduced to the nation in his 1949 State of the Union address, it was composed of "21 points" and the element that is discussed in the attached article involving distribution of income was called the Brannan Plan - for it was U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan (1903 – 1992) who was its advocate. Secretary Brannan wanted the government to establish a guaranteed income for farmers, while allowing the market forces to determine the prices of agricultural products.
''Outmaneuvered'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)Here is a short column that lists the impact that the American counterattack wrought upon the German forces as a result of their winter offensive during the Battle of the Bulge - no explanation was given as to how this information was attained.
Japan On The March (Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)"To the colossal giant that is China, furious little Japan delivered a one-two punch last week. Small divisions of the Emperor's troops first took Canton and then Hankow. So easily did both fall that Britons in Hong Kong declared darkly:'It looks like dirty work.'"
Meet Mao Zedong (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)When this profile first appeared in 1950, the column's subject, Mao Zedong (1893 - 1976), was generally seen as a tin-horn dictator and Stalinist dupe. It wouldn't be long before he would be widely recognized as one of the greatest mass-murderers in world history. Oscars for 1938 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Attached is short report listing some of the highlights of the 11th Academy Awards ceremony that was held on February 23, 1939 in downtown Los Angeles:
• Director Frank Capra received his third "Best Director" statue for
"You Can't Take It with You"
.
• Walt Disney was awarded an "Oscar" for the best animated short film, "Ferdinand The Bull" - in addition to a special award for his innovative work on
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".
• The Best Screenplay "Oscar" went to Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw for his efforts on "Pygmalion".
An amusing, if blasphemous, article about the 1938 Oscars can be read here...
Volksbund, USA (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"The Volksbund early identified itself with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Furthermore, its members at times have indulged themselves in parades, Nazi salutes and loud 'heils'. For these reasons the organization has drawn much criticism for 'un-American' activities." Dormant Capital (Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)This article reported on a phenomenon that is common in our own day as well as the era of the Great Depression. It exists in any locale that fosters a lousy environment for business - for when the entrepreneurial classes loose their daring for investing in commercial ventures and when bankers refuse to loan money for fear that they will never be paid back, it leads to the creation of what is called "dormant capital" - money that should be working, but isn't.
"There is now piled up in banks some $46,000,000,000. As opposed to $39,000,000,000 at the low point of 1933, and the idle capital is on the increase. World trade has virtually broken down."
As one editorial makes clear, FDR had a tough time freeing up private capital for investments, click here to read it.
Justice Charles Evans Hughes (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) Comrade Spy (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)Fingered as the premier Soviet agent working in the United States by a former communist and editor of The Daily Worker and People's World, Gerhart Eisler (1897 – 1968) - was arrested in the Fall of 1947 and charged with espionage.
Standing before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Eisler refused to take the oath, preferring instead to read a prepared statement. The committee refused to play along and the Justice Department soon leveled Eisler with additional charges. By 1949 things were looking dark for Eisler; jumping bail he made good his escape and secured passage across the Atlantic. Welcomed in East Germany as a hero, Eisler was soon named director of East German radio and became a prominent voice for the Communist government.
''The Prospective First Lady'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)"Besides teaching American history and English literature three days a week as vice principal in the Todhunter School in New York (having to commute from Albany), Mrs Roosevelt runs the Val Kill furniture factory where reproductions of early American furniture are made to give work to the unemployed on the environs of the big Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park, N.Y. She belongs to several women's clubs but never neglects her duties as mistress of a governor's mansion..." The Blue Eagle (Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)"Blue Eagle, symbol of the National [Industrial] Recovery Act, is probably one of the best known figures in the country today. Gripping bolts of lightening and a cog wheel in its claws it now hovers over 95 percent of industrial America advertising the success of the first major move of the New Deal... With only one year behind it, it has brought about the cooperation of 2,300,000 employers and 60,000,000 consumers."
- so runs the introductory paragraph for this 1934 article that marked the first anniversary of the National Recovery Administration. This short-lived agency was the brainchild of FDR's administration that was shot down by the Supreme Court in 1935. Although this article is filled with praise for the NRA, it would not be very long before the editors of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE assumed a more suspicious approach when reporting on this president's efforts to repair the damaged economy.
More on NRA problems can be read here...
The Soviets Get the Bomb (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)A news column that is appropriately drenched in the gravitas of the day because it announced that the short-lived age of "atomic security" that brought W.W. II to a close had come to an end. A new epoch had arrived at 11:00 a.m., September 23, 1949, when President Harry Truman announced
"We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR."
With nuclear bombs must come a nuclear strategy:
click here to read about that...
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. The Hollywood Leg Gag (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)Here is a 1937 article that reminds us that there wasn't anything left to chance or improvisation under the old studio system:
"One of the oldest newspaper publicity devices is the 'leg display'. Resorted to chiefly by actresses whose press agents want them to break into print, it consists of nothing more than arriving in New York aboard an ocean liner and letting news photographers do the rest."
The adoration of the Feminine Leg began some twenty yeras earlier with the flappers; click here to read more on this topic...
American Schools During the Great Depression (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)This is a portion of a longer article about American children and their collective sufferings during the Great Depression that can be read here. The column attached pertains to a White House conference and the sorry state of American schools in 1940.
From Amazon: Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher
''Uncle Ho Strikes Back'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)Three years before the total French withdrawal from Vietnam, this one Frenchman summed up his comrade's frustrations concerning their battles against the Viet Minh:
"We can't win a guerrilla war unless we have the support of the people. Frankly, we have not got it. Hitler or the Russians could conquer this country in two months with mass executions, wholesale reprisals and concentration camps. To fight this war and remain humanitarian is difficult." 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. Meet Joseph Stalin (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937) ''The O School'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School in Chicago turned some heads when it first opened. As you read the attached column you will learn about the unorthodox approach they bring to the subject of educating the autistic and the emotionally disturbed. With the fullness of time it has been revealed that they must be doing something right - it has been in business since 1944. Oldest Schoolhouse in America? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)A minor dust-up between Florida and New York as to which of the two had the oldest schoolhouse. The Growth of the Deficit (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)This short column refers to the growth of the U.S. deficit that was bloated during the Hoover Administration (1929 - 1933) - which up to that time was the largest ever incurred during peace time. When FDR assumed the mantel of the Presidency, it would grow considerably larger.
Click here to read an article about 1930s government spending.
Yet, despite the growing deficits, the United States was still an enormously wealthy nation...
Assessing the U.S. Navy in W.W. II (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)Some four months after VJ-Day U.S. Fleet Admiral Ernest King (1878 – 1956) gave a post-game summary of the Navy's performance in his third and final report for the Department of War:
• Biggest factor in this victory was the perfection of amphibious landings
• Hardest Pacific battle: Okinawa invasion
• American subs sank at least 275 warships of all types
• Of the 323 Japanese warships lost, the U.S. Navy claimed 257 (figure disputed by Army Air Corps)
Read an article about the many faults of the
German Navy during the Second World War...
The Air War in Korea (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)Five days after China entered the Korean War, three U.S. Air Force F-80 Shooting Star fighter jets duked it out with three Soviet-made MIG-15s 20,000 feet above the the Korean/Manchurian border. Lieutenant Russell Brown of Southern California fired the decisive shot that sent one MIG down in flames. While engaged with the other two F-80s, the remaining MIGs were dispatched in a similar manner (although other sources had reported that these two fighters had actually been able to return to their bases badly damaged). In the entire sordid history of warfare, this engagement was the first contest to result in one jet shooting down another. The Battle Against Alcohol Dependence (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)Here are five letters to the editor written in response to an article that appeared in one of the Spring, 1944, issues of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE that pertained to two Native American tribal edicts that forbade the use of alcohol.
 Understanding Unemployment (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)In order for FDR's Federal Government to layout their planned economy they had to be able to forecast the future trends in unemployment, and with that in mind it was deemed suitable that a committee be convened to study the matter. The board of brainiacs called themselves the National Resources Committee and their study was boundless and all encompassing. This article summarizes the findings of one of the organization subcommittees; their 450,000-word report was titled "Technological Trends and National Policy, Including the Social Implications of of New Inventions". The head of this subcommittee was the famed sociology professor William F. Ogburn, and as the title implied, the report studied the blessing and the curse that is the nature of technological innovation.
Reform The Banks! (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)Eight months before the Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act (aka the Banking Act of 1933) this unsigned editorial appeared in a Washington-based news magazine pointing out that the economic downturn in the country had created a need for such legislation.
Click here to read another 1932 article about the banks. ''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. Federal Housing (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"At present the Federal Housing Administration is sponsoring the building of more than 1,000 small demonstration houses in as many cities, with the cost to range from $2,500 to $3,500. It is the belief of the belief of the FHA that 71.2 percent of American families have incomes permitting the purchase of homes costing less than $5,000.
Yet, regardless of the degradation of the Great Depression, the United States was still an enormously wealthy nation...
Japanese Feudalism Overturned (Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)The reforms that were imposed upon Occupied Japan in the Forties and Fifties did not simply come in the form of death sentences for war criminals - but additionally the Japanese came to know the rights and protections that are guaranteed to All Americans under the United States Constitution. For the first time ever Japanese women were permitted to vote, unions were legalized and equality under the law was mandated. This small notice concerned the overthrow of the feudal laws that governed the Japanese tenant farmers. Farmers in Flight (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)A report from the regional directors of the Resettlement Administration (an arm of the FDR's Department of Agriculture) stated that:
"15,000 farmers have moved out of the Dakotas, Western Kansas and Eastern Montana, leaving soil which because a aridity or exhaustion could not yield any crop... [Having moved to the states of the Pacific Northwestern] Some of them are squatting in shacks and makeshift dwellings made of tree branches, stray boards [and] strips of tin." Settling Hitler's Refugees (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)"In Washington, D.C. at least 1,500 delegates from 800 American communities in 44 states swarmed into the Mayflower Hotel for the annual conference of the National Council for Palestine. As one of the nation's most important and inclusive Jewish organizations, it was natural that the Council should devote its meetings exclusively to the refugee problem."
Read about the Nazis who cried out to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...
Hitler's Earlies Years In Power (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)"When Adolf Hitler was made chancellor of the Third Reich on January 30, 1933, he pledged his government would (1) unify the German people; (2) eliminate class distinction; and (3) secure equal rights abroad for Germany. At that time the Nazi leader addressed the nation: "Now, German people, give us four years and then judge us!"
"That was four years ago." ''Cash and Carry'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Cash and carry was a diplomatic trade policy set in place by the FDR administration; it was crafted during a special session of the U.S. Congress on September 21, 1939, as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Act of 1937, by which belligerent parties would purchase only non-military goods from the United States so long as the client states in question paid in cash at the time of purchase and assumed full responsibility for transportation. The 1939 Cash and carry revision allowed for the purchasing of military arms to belligerents on the same cash-and-carry basis. The purpose of the policy was to maintain neutrality between the United States and European nations while giving aid to Britain by allowing them to buy non war materials.
Shortly after the 1940 election, British Prime Minister Churchill told FDR that Britain could no longer afford to buy military supplies under the code of cash and carry and a new agreement needed to be agreed upon. The President then persuaded Congress to swap cash-and-carry with Lend-Lease - a new piece of legislation that granted the president authority to sell, exchange, lend, or lease war materiel to any nation whose defense was vital to U.S. security.
The third most popular Lend-Lease export item was the Tommy Gun - click here to read more..
Click here to read about the lend-lease program for Stalin's Russia... When President Truman Tried his Hand at ''Distributing Wealth'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)It seems like a tough nut to swallow, but 12 years before President Obama was even born - U.S. President Harry S. Truman plugged the idea of 'wealth distribution' as a portion of a piece of proposed legislation that has come to be known as the "the Fair Deal". The president's scheme was introduced to the nation in his 1949 State of the Union address, it was composed of "21 points" and the element that is discussed in the attached article involving distribution of income was called the Brannan Plan - for it was U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan (1903 – 1992) who was its advocate. Secretary Brannan wanted the government to establish a guaranteed income for farmers, while allowing the market forces to determine the prices of agricultural products.
Prohibition Killings (Pathfinder Magazine, 1929)Two sources have been combined on one printable page in order to assess the body count that was created as a result of the murders that the prohibition laws had wrought. The complete number is not here - just the last four years:
1933, the year Prohibition was rescinded, seemed to have been the bloodiest year in this study - with 12,123 people murdered (being 9.6 per 1000,000 souls). The numbers began to drop from there: 1934 through 1936 saw a steady decline in urban homicide. A Very Hitler Christmas (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)Whether it was the nog, the tannenbaum or just the good ol' spirit of the season - no one knows - but in late of December of 1938, the "nice Hitler" came out for some airing:
"Partly as a Yuletide truce and partly because most of them were suffering from severe frostbite, 18 'reformed Communists' and 7,000 Jews were released from concentration camps." Korea: 1946 (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)"The Koreans were joining the ranks World War II's disillusioned peoples... Thus whichever way they looked at their political future, Koreans saw little hope for the unity and independence they'd dreamed would follow Japan's defeat... The Red Army would leave Korea when they felt like it. And it would feel like it when northern Korea was so safely Red that even the Red Army couldn't paint it much Redder." The Soviets at the U.N. (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)In 1949 there still existed such hope and optimism for the future of the United Nations as a force for good in the world - and a profound disappointment can clearly be sensed in this writer's voice as you read this column that reported as to how the Soviets were manipulating the organization to benefit their espionage efforts.
CLICK HERE to read about the beautiful "Blonde Battalions" who spied for the Nazis...
Click here to read about the blackmail and extortion tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression...
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... ''Russia Has a Congress'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)"Many Americans do not realize that Soviet Russia has an elected congress. As its powers are set forth in the present Russian constitution, this congress has the appearance of being both representative and democratic... 'The Supreme Soviet' is somewhat similar to that of our national legislature. It has two chambers, like our house and senate." The author points out that regardless of the appearances, we all know that "there is a catch somewhere'.
Click here to read about the blackmail and extortion tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression...
American Spelling Rejected by Canadians (Pathfinder Magazine, 1931)Heaven knows that the average American had it tough during 1931. The Great Depression was coming down hard on them - but the harshest blow came from our neighbor to the North who rejected our manner of spelling! The Trial of Franz von Papen (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)Franz von Papen (1879 – 1969) was born into the German nobility; he worked as a diplomat, a politician and during both World Wars he served as an intelligence officer in his nation's army. During the Third Reich von Papen was appointed Vice Chancellor under Adolf Hitler. This article concerns the period in von Papen's life when, after having been acquitted earlier by the international tribunal, he found himself once more on the docket for another misdeed.
Franz von Papen had an IQ that measured 134 - click here to read about the strangely high IQs of the other lunatics in Nazi leadership... The 1948 Tucker (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)"[The] First models of the Tucker '48, [the] only really revolutionary postwar car so far, should be ready for public showing in New York, Chicago, and on the West Coast within 60 days..." Are College Degrees Needed In Such A Bad Economy? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)"There is sharply divided sentiment on [the subject of education]. One faction holds that a costly 'overproduction of brains' has contributed to our [economic] plight, while the opposition reasons that any curtailment in educational expenditure would be 'false economy' and that only from the best minds will come our economic salvation". White Primaries in Georgia (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)On January 29, 1947, the Georgia House of Representatives approved the Democratic white primary law - which was intended to exclude any African American in that state from voting in state primary elections. The First Lady's Story (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)A column from a 1937 issue of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE included these two seemingly random tales from the life of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The brief remembrance on the second page is a bitter-sweet story about young Eleanor and her mother's vision of her as a hopelessly plain-looking girl.
Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.
The Invincible Chinese? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"Man, those Chinese are good soldiers... You can't see 'em; you can't hear 'em. You don't know they're there until they're on top of you... They're experts at camouflage and the best damn night-fighters I've ever seen. We could walk a company over the hill and see nothing. Then we'd look around and they'd be swarming on us like flies. It was just like they'd sprouted from the ground." The Five Wealthiest Counties (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)During the summer of 1937 the U.S. Census Bureau released the data that was compiled by it's business department concerning the payrolls dolled out by the nation's wealthiest industries in 1935. The information gleaned from these payrolls indicated which were the five richest counties in the country based on personal income. These small municipalities could be found in two Eastern states, two Mid-Western states and one Western state.
Jump ahead to our own time and you'll learn how much the game has changed: today the top five wealthiest counties in the United States are all located in the Maryland and Virginia Suburbs that lie just outside the District of Columbia! ''Canned Goods'' From Canada (Pathfinder Magazine, 1931) Walt Disney's Cinderella (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)"The film abounds in charming little animals. A pair of bluebirds, venturing out in wintry weather, fly about in galoshes and overcoats. The heroine's best friends are the mice who ultimately carry her pumpkin to the ball...However, people who have been distressed by Disney's recent preoccupation with 'live action' will be happy to find him back where he belongs." Mrs. Il Duce (Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)As you will see by reading the attached article, Mussolini's flack released no information concerning Rachele Mussolini (1890 – 1979), Il Duce's second wife. All that they seem to know about the lass was that she had a waistline that rivaled his.
Swimwear (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)The only big fashion innovation popular enough to share the 1947 headlines with Dior's "New Look" involved the evolution in women's swimwear; most notably the Bikini. The attached single page article pertains to all the new fabrics being deployed in ladies beachwear and all their assorted coverups:
"Sand-and-sun fashions for this summer are perter and briefer than ever before. Although the typical bathing suit covers just about 2.5 square feet of a swimmer's anatomy, a costume-look for the beach is achieved with a companion cape, skirt of short coat... Favored fabrics are those made to ride the waves. Knitted wool shows up in both classic and unusual designs. Colors are softer and muted. Black and blue appear most often, with cider, gray and smudge the 'high-style' shades."
•Click here to learn about women's fashions from the Summer of 1934• Analyzing Truman (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951) In Defense of President Hoover (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)Attached is a small excerpt from the Pathfinder review of Eugene Lyons' book, Our Unknown Ex-President (1948). The author outlined the various measures taken by the Hoover administration during the earliest years of the Great Depression in hopes that the flood waters would subside:
"He fought for banking reform laws, appropriations for public works, home-loan banks to protect farms and residences. He asked for millions for relief to be administered by state and local organizations... A Democratic Congress refused to heed his suggestions."
Yet, regardless of the various missteps made by Hoover and FDR, the United States remailed an enormously wealthy nation...
The Reds Take it on the Chin (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)"United Nations patrols in Korea probed north last week seeking out an enemy that wouldn't stand and fight. But early this week, after U.N. advance units had pushed to within eight miles of Seoul, the Communists suddenly stopped playing hide and seek and began to offer stiffer resistance.... The Communist reluctance to fight last week caused much speculation at Eighth Army headquarters. Some officers thought the Reds were regrouping for a major push down the center. Others felt the Chinese had pulled back to give weight to the cease-fire negotiations at Lake Success. But they all agreed on one point: the Communists have paid an appalling price for their Korean adventure."
In hindsight we can say that the musings of the first officers were correct: the Communists were indeed rearming for a major offensive that would begin the following May.
Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War. The U.N. Counter-Offensive (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)In mid-March the U.N. forces launched a counter-strike in answer to the Communists offensive that was commenced across a wide swath of the front line in early January. General Ridgeway remarked that although the Communists were in retreat, they still had an enormous pool of men in reserve. The New Normal (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)In December of 1949 Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek's anti-communist forces retreated to the island of Formosa (Taiwan). Smellivision Arrives (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)Technology blogs on the net have users who frequently post the question "When will T.V. be able to 'broadcast' smells?": the ability existed as early as 1946 - but there was no interest - or so this article has lead us to believe:
"Optimistic scientists visualized the day when television sets would come equipped with 200 to 300 different smells. (Aromas are automatically concocted by chemicals in the set, mixed by radio-remote-control from the studio.) Faint nostrils quavered at the thought of several odors on the same program..." America's Disgrace: Polluted Rivers (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951) Ad Man: Heal Thyself... (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 it was generally recognized by the red-meat-eaters on Madison Avenue that the rules of the ad game had been re-written. There were far fewer dollars around than there were during the good ol' Twenties, and what little cash remained seldom changed addresses with the same devil-may-care sense of abandon that it used to. Yet as bleak as the commercial landscape was in 1932, those hardy corner-office boys, those executives with the gray flannel ulcers remembered that they were in the optimism business and if there was a way to turn it around, they would find it. The Klan in Miami (Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)"The night before [the Miami] citizens went to the polls to decide among 15 candidates for three commissionerships, the old specter of the Ku Klux Klan was raised to scare away the colored votes."
The scheme didn't work. The Holocaust Rescuers (Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)Here is a small article that appeared during the middle of the war saying that there were German parishioners within both Protestant and Catholic churches who offered food and shelter to the various assorted minorities (primarily Jews) who were persecuted by the Nazis. Stalin's 'Hate-America' Campaign (Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)In 1952 the Soviet hierarchy began publishing an enormous amount of anti-American cartoons in magazines and newspapers throughout the "worker's paradise". As you will see, the Red cartoonists of yore were really big on comparing Americans to bugs and Nazis; they also delighted in making all American senior officers resemble the obese General Walker, who was the American corps commander leading the U.N. Forces in Korea.
The Soviets were very clever in the way in which they used radio to manipulate their people, click here to read about that... Shopping from Television (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)Before there was an HSN or a QVC - before there was an Adam Freeman or a Mary Beth Roe, there was "Your Television Shopper" and "Leave It To The Girls" starring Maggie Johnson and Faye Emerson, respectively. The programs were two of several such shows that aired during the prepubescent days of television broadcasting - and like the shopping shows that came along fifty years later, they, too, moved products off the shelves at a surprising pace.
Click here to read how Hollywood costume designer affected popular fashion... Unemployment Data for 1930 (Pathfinder Magazine,1930)"In a statement for the month of December, President Green of the Federation of Labor placed the number of unemployed at about 5,000,000; estimated that incomes of wage earners had declined over $6,000,000,000 in the past year and said about 50 percent of trade union members had had to lower their standard of living because of lowered incomes." The Swedish Touch (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950) The Marshall Plan: Rebuilding Europe (Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)The Marshall Plan was a U.S. Government aid program that was instrumental in the reconstruction and economic resurrection of 16 Western European nations following the devastation caused by the Second World War. It is named for Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who co-authored the initiative with the help of the prominent business leader William Clayton, and the American diplomat George F. Kennan.
The attached article concerns the first draft of the scheme that was drawn-up by Marshall and the representatives of these 16 nations during the Summer/Fall of 1947. The amount of cash to be distributed (and paid back over a period of 30 years) was $22.44 billion.
Marshall knew that such an economic stimulant (and the liberties that would follow) would serve to guarantee that Western Europe would not fall into clutches of the Soviet Union.
To read about the Soviet reaction to the Marshall Plan, Click here
Read more articles from PATHFINDER MAGAZINE...
Atomic Researcher Arrested in London (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)In January, 1950, a British scientist named Klaus Fuchs (1911 – 1988) was arrested for passing atomic secrets on to Soviet agents.
"In his confession Fuchs admitted that the transfer of information began in 1942, shortly after he joined the [British Ministry of Supply] as a German Refugee." A Rift in the Containment Policy (Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)Washington's growing distaste for the Chinese Nationalist dictator Chiang Kai-shek was reaching fever-pitch that last week in January, 1950, when President Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893 – 1971) presented the administration's Asia policy:
"No official military aid for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist government, either on the island of Formosa [Taiwan] or anywhere else." 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..."
America's Oldest Soft Drink (Pathfinder Magazine, 1944) The Era of Bartering (Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)"Scrip (sometimes called chit) is a term for any substitute for legal tender and is often a form of credit" - so reads the Wikipedia definition for those items that served as currency in those portions of the U.S. where the bucks were scarce.
The attached news column tells a scrip story from the Great Depression - the sort of story that was probably most common on the old frontier. Judith Coplon in Federal Court (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)FBI agents arrested Judith Coplon (1921 – 2011: Soviet code name "Kompid") on March 4, 1949 in Manhattan as she met with Valentin Gubitchev, a NKVD official employed at the United Nations, while carrying what she believed to have been secret U.S. government documents in her purse. Hoover's G-Men FBI were certain that Coplon, a secretary at the Federal Justice Department, was colluding with the Soviet agents in Washington but to prove their case conclusively would compromise an ongoing counter-espionage project called the "Venona Project". The failure to prosecute this case successfully began to shed doubt upon the FBI director and his credibility in matters involving Soviet spy-catching.- read about that here...
Years later Coplon's guilt was made clear to all when the Venona cables were released. However our laws mandate that it is illegal to try a suspect twice for the same crime and she was released.
Why America Could Win A War Against Russia (Pathfinder Magazine, 1951) When this article first went to print, American forces had been slugging it out on the Korean peninsula for the past six months - and the American people had genuine concerns about that dust-up snowballing into a much larger conflict. This article was written to remind them that mighty air armadas do not simply appear when necessary; they must be planned and budgeted. The author goes into great depth concerning all the impressive aircraft that was both available in limited numbers and on the drawing boards - but the military-industrial complex would need a lead time of 18 months to produce them in effective numbers.
"If we win this war or any part of it, it won't be due to the wisdom or foresight of our political leaders but to what U.S. industry has heretofore conclusively proved itself capable of - an outright production miracle."
Were Russian MIGS Better Than American Fighter Jets?
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. What is little known about Burnham is the fact that he was a communist in his early twenties and a steady correspondent with Trotsky. It didn't take long before he recognized the inherit tyranny that is the very nature of communism - and from that moment on he devoted much of his life to revealing to the world the dangers of that tyranny.
by Jim Powell that explains the true situation that existed in 1937, when unemployment stood at 20 percent by Summer.