Marathon Dancing in the Thirties (Collier's Magazine, 1932)When marathon dancing first became popular in the Twenties there was an amusing, lighthearted aspect to it. However, when the Great Depression came, and the jobs evaporated, marathon dances took a darker turn. As desperation fell across the land, enrolling in a marathon dance contest became, in many cases, the only way to put bread on the table. 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. Another Addition to Man's Incomprehension of Woman... (The Saturday Review of Literature, 1932)Attached is the 1932 review of Woman: Theme and Variations by Major A. Corbett-Smith:
"There is no mystery about women, he announces...she is never quite sure of herself in comparison with other women; but she is well aware of her superiority to man..."
Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York nightclubs of 1937.
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". 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." 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.
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...
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. 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." Private Charity During The Great Depression (New Outlook Magazine, 1932)"The obligation for giving this year does not fall on the shoulders of the rich and powerful business concerns alone! It is an obligation which rests upon all who are gainfully employed...They should give, not because it is good policy, but because they have at heart the preservation of the human interests of the country."
- so wrote Newton D. Baker in this editorial from 1932 in which he promoted the effectiveness of the private charity that he was chairing: the Committee for Welfare Relief Mobilization. When President Hoover stepped-up and advocated for public donations to private charity organizations America answered the call in various forms. Passing the Buck (Collier's Magazine, 1932)The attached editorial goes into some detail cataloging numerous U.S. presidents and their assorted excuses for the economic depressions that kicked-in during their respective administrations. Hoover is included. Cedric Gibbons: Production Designer (Creative Art Magazine, 1932)Throughout film history there have been many men and women who have toiled in the Hollywood vineyards as art directors, but none have ever matched the level of high productivity as Cedric Gibbons (1893 – 1960). Indeed, he is remembered as the "dean" of art directors who stood head and shoulders above all others during Hollywood's Golden Age; between 1912 and 1956 there were hundreds movies that bore his thumbprint - winning Oscars for 39 of them (he was also one of the aesthetes who designed that award).
Illustrated by four photographs of his sets from the early Thirties, the attached article appeared mid-way through his career:
"At the Metro-Goldwyn studios in Culver City, just a few short miles from Hollywood, Mr. Gibbons rules supreme as art director. He is at the head of an intricately organized group of technical experts and artisans, numbering nearly two thousand individuals, and is responsible for the artistic investiture and pattern of some fifty or more feature films per annum."
Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
The Poor Are Everywhere (The Chicagoan, 1932)Three years into the Great Depression a citizen of Chicago realizes that there is nowhere he can go to escape the uneasy presence of the hungry poor in his city:
"They're on the boulevards and in the parks. They're on the shady streets in nice neighborhoods and around the corner from expensive restaurants. You can tell they're starving by looking at them. Their nerve is gone - they don't even beg. You see thousands every day... Young men and old women never begged in this country before." The Temper of the Electorate (The New Outlook Magazine, 1932)Just weeks before the U.S. presidential election of 1932 this article appeared in a political magazine that indicated how the Depression-tossed voters were feeling after three years of economic set-backs. The article consists of 21 pithy little paragraphs that sum up their feelings:
"I BELIEVE it possible to feel hungry under either major party, but that under the Republicans it seems to hurt more."
Click here to read about the extensive press coverage that was devoted to the death of FDR...
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..." 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. 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. Prisoner of War (Saturday Review of Literature, 1932)The Saturday Review of Literature discussed a number of World War One books while in the course of reviewing Shoot And Be Damned
by Ed Halyburton and Ralph Goll, a wartime memoir which recalled time spent in a German prisoner of war camp.
The Birth of Hollywood Filmmaking (America, 1932)2013 Anno Domini marked the 100th anniversary of the Hollywood film industry. With this in mind it is entirely fitting and proper that we post this thumbnail history that outlines how it all got rolling, as told by the jaded Robert Sherwood, an early film critic who witnessed much of it (although he incorrectly dated the first Hollywood feature film to 1912).
"Hollywood history begins with four men: Jesse Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille, Dustin Farnum and a silent film called The Squaw Man...
(The fourth name in Sherwood's list was that of Samuel Goldwyn - who, in fact, had nothing to do with the production, but whose name in Hollywood had such staying power it seemed difficult to imagine that he didn't.)
Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.
''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.
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. 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 Young Barbara Stanwick (Liberty Magazine, 1932)This interview with Barbara Stanwick (b. Ruby Catherine Stevens 1907 – 1990) will give you a genuine insight to her character, its a wonderful read. ''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..." 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%. 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?"
Manchukuo (New Outlook Magazine, 1932)This article heralds the creation of a new nation - the short lived puppet state of Manchukuo. Carved out of portions of Japanese-occupied Manchuria in 1932, the country was created by Imperial Japan in order to serve as an industrial province from which they could continue their military adventures in China. A good deal of column space pertains to a silver tongued Japanese Foreign Minister named Count Uchida Kōsai (1865 – 1936) and how he attempted to justify Manchukuo before the outraged members of the League of Nations - when the League declared that Manchuria was Chinese, Uchida withdrew Japan from membership in the League.. • A Short Film About Manchukuo by The Wall Street Journal • 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. Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon (Saturday Review of Literature, 1932)In 1932, one of the few English speaking fans of bull-fighting was given the task of reviewing Ernest Hemingway's (1899 – 1961) Death in the Afternoon , and came away thinking:
"Ernest Hemingway, in the handling of words as an interpretation of life, is not a brilliant and ephemeral novillero, but a matador possessed of solid and even classic virtues."
Click here to read about Hemingway, the war correspondent.
The New York Social Register (America, 1932)Who could write an accurate assessment of social New York better than a celebrated Broadway playwright? Exactly; that is why we were so happy to find this essay by Clare Boothe Luce (1903 – 1987) on just that very topic:
"The New York Social Register for 1931 contained about thirty-five thousand names, an increase of fifteen thousand over the Social Register of 1914; and the fourteen social registers of the largest American cities contained more than one hundred thousand names - an increase of over fifty thousand names during the same length of time."
These figures are particularly remarkable when one considers that the social register of exactly one hundred years ago, Longworth's New York Directory, boasted exactly eighteen names."
From Amazon: Price of Fame: The Honorable Clare Boothe Luce
•There is a Famous Photograph of N.Y. that We All Know: This Documentary Tells the Story of that Image• 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...
Americans Are A Strange People (Characteristically American, 1932)The very funny Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (1869 - 1944) diagnosed many of the character traits that make Americans what they are. Although written eighty years ago, many of these observations are still true to this day: "Americans are a queer people: they can't read.
They have more schools, and better schools, and spend more money on schools and colleges than all of Europe.
But they can't read.
They print more books in one year than the French print in ten.
But they can't read.
They cover their country with 100,000 tons of Sunday newspapers every week.
But they don't read them.
They're too busy. They use them for fires and to make more paper with.
They buy eagerly thousands of new novels at two dollars each. But they only read page one...
But that's all right. The Americans don't give a damn; don't need to; never did need to.
That is their salvation." ''Dishonest Banks'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932) American Society and Near Society (America, 1932)Clever writer and charming socialite, Clare Boothe Luce (1903 – 1987) succinctly summed-up the good and the bad that could be found at the highest levels of social America in the Thirties...
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. The ''Chief Woman-Elect'' (New Outlook Magazine, 1932)"Half a dozen women who have known Eleanor Roosevelt in the past twenty years all agree that this is the first president's wife in not a few presidential terms who might have achieved election to something in her own right; who might give ear to the women of the country. And although just listening to other people's troubles isn't enough, it is conceivably something." The Ill Fated One (Creative Art Magazine, 1932)"There is much that can be said about those unfortunate men whom life does not treat properly and to whom only death gives the glory they had so wanted to know...One finds them on thrones, in society, among artists, among bourgeoisie, and in the lower classes. Modigliani has his place on this list of grief. His name follows hard upon those tragic ones, Van Gogh and Gauguin."
"A convergence of unhappy circumstances compelled Modigliani to live poorly and to die miserably." 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. An Era's End (New Outlook Magazine, 1932)"What is to be said of an era which produced 'speak-easy frocks' and 'bargain day' in the Federal courts; battalions of snoopers abroad in the land, legal homicides by dry agents, sopping wet public dinners throughout the Republic and 'the man in the green hat' filling the lockers of dry statesmen in the House and Senate office buildings?...What political, sociological and emotional changes the silently resisting mass wrought. We passed from the period when only prohibitionists were regarded by the general public as respectable. We came finally to the time, within twelve years, when the reverse was true."
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