Author name: editor

California Farm Labor (Pageant Magazine, 1952)
1952, Agricultural Labor, Pageant Magazine

California Farm Labor
(Pageant Magazine, 1952)

By /

With the bad old days that spanned that period between October, 1929 through August, 1945 seen only in the rear view mirror, many Americans began to enjoy the high life that came with the booming post-war economy – a buying spree that wouldn’t slow until the mid Seventies. In the midst of so much plenty American magazines began to run articles about some of the folks who weren’t partaking in all the fun, and this article is a fine example – it is about the 2,000,000 white people who toiled in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Thirteen years later they would be outsourced by a labor pool willing to work for even less money.

… They get no unemployment insurance. They get no social security benefits. The law does not, in the main, protect them.


Click here to read about the horrendous living conditions of 1940s migrant workers…


Click here to read about the tremendous hardships that fell upon the fertile San Joaquin Valley in 1937…

1920 Short Skirts | Flappers Show Their Knees | 1920s Flappers Showing Legs
1922, Flappers, The Flapper Magazine

Ode to Feminine Knees
(Flapper Magazine, 1922)

By /

When the skirt hems began to rise in the Twenties, it was widely understood that the vision of a woman’s leg was a rare treat for both man and boy; a spectacle that had not been enjoyed since the days of Adam (married men excluded). The flappers certainly knew this, and they generally believed that suffering the dizzying enthusiasm of the male of the species was a small price to pay in order to secure some element of liberty. The flappers liked their hem-lengths just where they were and, thank you very much, they were not about to drop them. Attached are some verses by an anonymous flapper who expressed her reaction regarding all that undeserved male attention her knees were generating.

Allied Bombers Over Germany 1943 | Bombing of WW2 Germany
1943, German Home Front, Newsweek

Sticking It To Berlin
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

By /

[Berlin,] the target of 69 RAF raids so far, [the city] has been hit hard only a few times this year and underwent no raids during 1942. On the morale front it ranks ahead of all other German cities. When the others were raided the outcry of the Germans was bitter but local. When Berlin hit groans rose from all over Germany. If RAF night raiders should raze the capital by fire, as they did Hamburg, the whole German nation would suffer the shock of Berliners… Goebbels begged them to stand up under bombs as stoutly as the British did in 1940.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

1944 Army Study of Marijuana | 1940s Marijuana Experiments | US Government Study of Marijuana Users 1944
1945, Newsweek, Weed

The U.S. Army’s Cannabis Study
(Newesweek Magazine, 1945)

By /

Posted herein is a report on the seven-month study on the effects marijuana has on military personnel that was conducted in 1944:

A great many of [the participants] attempted to form a compensatory image of themselves as superior people. ‘I could be a general like MacArthur. He looks smooth – like he’s high all the time.’

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

The Terror of the Nazi Stormtroopers (Literary Digest, 1933)
1933, The Literary Digest, The Nazis

The Terror of the Nazi Stormtroopers
(Literary Digest, 1933)

By /

This piece reported that the Manchester Guardian journalists who were posted to Nazi Germany were, without a doubt, the most reliable sources on all matters involving the violence committed by those brown shirted thugs during the earliest days of Hitler’s reign:

The ‘Brown terror does not exist in Germany, according to the Hitler dictatorship.

Even to talk about it is a penal offense. But the ‘Brown Terror’ goes on.


Read about the German POWs who were schooled in virtues of democracy.

1942 Tank War in USSR
1942, Eastern Front, PM Tabloid

‘Tanks Spearhead Nazi Offensive”
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

By /

The largest tank battle in history was fought on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. In April of 1943, 6,000 German and Soviet tanks, supported by some 2,000,000 infantrymen, had-at-it near the Russian city of Kursk. This article was written a year before the clash, and it informed the readers that armored engagements were becoming larger and larger with each one.

One Tough New York City Cop (Collier's Magazine, 1941)
1941, Collier's Magazine, Old New York History

One Tough New York City Cop
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

By /

Few Times Square tourists recognize Johnny Broderick, but New York mobsters cringe at the mention of his name. Meet Broadway’s one-man riot squad in his own bailiwick, where the lights are brightest.


The words and deeds of Johnny Broderick were so widely known that visiting politicians would request that he take charge of their security details and the broadcasting moguls wanted to make radio shows celebrating his daring-do. His round-house punch was known far and wide; cops like this one do not come along too often.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

American Marijuana History | Weed in the 1940s | Recreational Drugs in the 1930s
1938, The Literary Digest, Weed

Marijuana in the Thirties
(Literary Digest, 1938)

By /

During the closing days of 1937, Clarence Beck, Attorney General for the State of Kansas made a radio address on the Mutual Broadcasting System concerning the growing popularity of Marijuana:

It Is estimated the Narcotic Bureau of the New York Police Department in 1936 alone destroyed almost 40,000 pounds of marijuana plants, found growing within the city limits. Because of its rapidly increasing use, Marijuana demands a price as high as $60 a pound. (continued)

Foreign-Born Agricultural Laborers in California | 1950 Illegal Alien Farm Worker Articles
1951, Agricultural Labor, The New Leader Magazine

The Origins of ”Undocumented” Labor
(The New Leader, 1951)

By /

This article was penned in 1951 by Hank Hasiwar, a loyal New Deal Democrat and president of the National Farm Labor Union (formerly the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union). His column was written in order to express his complete and utter outrage that there were members of congress who openly worked to undermine the welfare of American workers:

U.S. Senator Clinton Anderson (D-NM) made a strenuous attempt to flood the farming areas with hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals to be brought in at great expense to the taxpayers in order to provide cheap labor for the farm owners.

There was Illegal Immigration from Mexico Back Then, Too (Ken Magazine, 1938)
1938, Agricultural Labor, Ken Magazine

There was Illegal Immigration from Mexico Back Then, Too
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

By /

This 1938 magazine article can be filed in the the more things change, the more they stay the same folder. It lists all the assorted means by which Mexicans have attempted to illegally cross over the Southern border, whether to smuggle others, import illegal drugs or for their own gratification.


Marijuana was becoming a problem in 1938, too. Read about it here.


Click here to read about the U.S. Border Patrol.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

1950s TEXAS | Texas Magazine Travel Article | Don Eddy Magazine Article
1952, Miscellaneous, The American Magazine

1950s Texas
(American Magazine, 1952)

By /

Lost in wide-eyed wonder, this journalist reported all that he saw during his four-month journey through The Lone Star State, finding, to his astonishment, that everything those annoying men named Tex had told him throughout the years was absolutely true.

Don’t be offended if Texans fail to thank you for compliments about their state; they are weaned on a sublime conviction that everything in Texas is the biggest or best or both… Anything in Texas that isn’t the biggest or best is bound to be the smallest or the worst; there is no mediocrity.


Click here to read about the U.S. Border Patrol in Texas.

Mr. Kinsey's Report (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)
1948, Miscellaneous, Pathfinder Magazine

Mr. Kinsey’s Report
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1948)

By /

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 Setstyle=border:none

The Era of Naval Aviation WW2 | Aircraft Carrier Engagements 1942
1942, PM Tabloid, War at Sea

A New Kind of Naval Warfare
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

By /

In the seven months since Pearl Harbor the aircraft carrier has replaced the battleship as the true capital ship of modern naval warfare. The carrier’s rise to power reached a crushing climax in the battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway – the two most decisive naval engagements of the war thus far. Opposing fleets only struck at each other with bomber and torpedo planes and never fired a shot except in self-defense against aircraft.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

Removing God from the Public Schools | Creating Secular Public Schools 1945 | McCollum v. Board of Education
1945, Education, Newsweek, PM Tabloid

Kicking God Out of the Schools
(Newsweek Magazine & PM Tabloid, 1945)

By /

A religion-in-the-schools trial, held last week in the Champaign, Illinois Circuit Court, will probably make history. The plaintiff was Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 32, pert, wide-eyed wife of a University of Illinois professor, demanding that the Champaign School Board discontinue a five-year program of religious instruction in school buildings, on the ground that the constitutional separation of church and state is jeopardized.


Posted herein was one of the first of many articles concerning what would come to known as the landmark Supreme Court case McCollum v. Board of Education (1948): the court decided in her favor.


Click here to read about Darwin in the schools.

'I'm No Communist'' (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)
1948, Blacklisting, Photoplay Magazine

‘I’m No Communist”
(Photoplay Magazine, 1948)

By /

Months after his appearance as a spectator at the House Committee on Un-American Activities, actor Humphrey Bogart wrote this article for the editors of Photoplay Magazine addressing the topic of communist infiltration in the Hollywood film industry:

In the final analysis, this House Committee probe has had one salutary effect. It has cleared the air by indicating what a minute number of Commies there really are in the film industry. Though headlines may have screamed of the Red menace in the movies, all the wind and the fury actually proved that there’s been no Communism injected on American movie screens.

Dalton Trumbo Brings on the Storm(Rob Wagner's Script Magazine, 1946)
1946, Blacklisting, Rob Wagner's Script Magazine

Dalton Trumbo Brings on the Storm(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1946)

By /

Blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905 – 1976) did not do himself any favors when he wrote the attached essay outlining his sympathies for Stalin’s Soviet Union at the expense of the United States. A year later he would find himself in the hot-seat in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (1938 – 1975) where his non-cooperation landed him eleven months in the hoosegow on contempt of Congress charges.


In 1887 the New York Times reviewed the first English edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, click here to read it…

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

Scroll to Top