Author name: editor

American Women During the 1930 s Great Depression | Job Statistics for Women in the Great Depression
1934, New Outlook Magazine, The Great Depression

The Lot of Women in the Great Depression
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

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An editorial by two American feminists who insisted that the economic depression of the Thirties had knocked the wind right out of the Women’s Movement. They argued that some of the high ground that was earned in the preceding decades had been lost and needed to be taken back; their points are backed up by figures from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as other agencies. Much column space is devoted to the employment discrimination practiced by both state and Federal governments in favor of single women at the expense of the married. It is grievously made clear that even the sainted FDR Administration was one of the cruel practitioners of wage inequality.


CLICK HERE to read about the pay disparity that existed between men and women during the 1930s.

1947 Di Giorgio Strike Bakersfield | History of California Farm Labor Struggles
1947, Agricultural Labor, Commonweal Magazine

Government-Supplied Scabs
(Commonweal Magazine, 1947)

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Writing to the editors of the news monthly, Commonweal during the Autumn of 1947 was Harry Leland Mitchell (1906 – 1989), president of the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union who reported that the National Farm Labor Union was engaged in an important strike against the Di Giorgio Corporation in Bakersfield, California:

First, the Di Giorgio Corporation is the world’s largest fruit-producing corporation… it is to large scale industrialized agriculture what Ford is to the automobile industry. If the National Farm Labor Union wins the strike, it will be possible to proceed rapidly to the [organizing] of the migratory agricultural workers of California.


– but the union didn’t win. Di Giorgio, in league with the Department of Agriculture, secured foreign laborers to break the strike.

A-20 Havoc Bomber Aircraft | Boston Bomber in WW II | A-20 Bomber in WW II
1944, Weapons and Inventions, Yank Magazine

The American A-20 Havoc
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

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An enthusiastic Yank Magazine article about the Douglas DB-7/A-20 Havoc (the British called it the A-20 Boston): throughout the course of the war, there was no other attack bomber that was manufactured in greater quantity than this one (7,477).

An eyewitness report of a pre-invasion mission over the continent in one of the newest and most effective U.S. air weapons, an attack bomber that looks like an insect but moves and hits with the speed of a meteor…

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1920s Chicago Gangsters | 1920s Chicago Bootleggers
1927, Prohibition History, The Chicagoan

Prohibition – Chicago Style
(The Chicagoan, 1927)

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By 1927 it was common knowledge to every Chicago-based journalist that any reporter who wrote truthfully or seemed in any way outraged by the business practices of Al Capone – and others of his ilk, was likely to be found face down in Lake Michigan. The writer who penned this piece probably had that fact in mind while sitting at the typewriter; it is not an apology for the Chicago gangsters, it simply implies that they are established, the police are complicit – so get used to it. The writer then begins to explain how the bootlegging and distribution business operated – some of the up-and-coming hoods of the day must have been gratified to read that there was plenty of room for advancement within each organization.


A history of Chicago vaudeville can be read here…

1941 Skirt Hemlines | Fashion Originators Guild Argument for Longer Hemline 1941 | 1940s Fabric Rationing and Hemline Length
1941, Fashion (WWII), Newsweek

A Patriotic Argument for Shorter Skirts
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

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Months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Washington was gearing-up for the fight by restricting the availability of certain fabrics to the fashion industry and diverting these materials to the defense industry. This started an open discussion in fashion circles as to whether it would simply be best to raise the hemlines until the national emergency was over.

The Fashion Originators Guild termed shorter skirts silly and added that dresses ‘are just as short today as decency and grace will permit.

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Erskine Caldwell War Reporting 1941
1941, Eastern Front, PM Tabloid

The Partisan War
(PM Tabloid, 1941)

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A Red Army officer, who said the German Army was being constantly harassed behind its lines by partizan activities and guerilla warfare, told me details of a number of recent incidents in White Russia. He said almost every village in German-occupied territory had supplied one or more groups of partizans who lived in the woods and used every opportunity to waylay detachments of infantry patrols and tanks.

1940 Morale in Germany | Poor Morale in 1940 Germany
1940, German Home Front, PM Tabloid

Despair and Hunger
(PM Tabloid, 1940)

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PM correspondent Richard O. Boyer (1903 – 1973) was in Berlin in June of 1940 when Paris fell to the German Army. He was dumbstruck by the surprising gloominess that hung heavily upon the German people the week of that great victory:

I could not understand it all and could scarcely believe the testimony of my own eyes. The scarlet banners with their black swastikas that garlanded the city everywhere in response to Hitler’s orders seemed only to emphasize the worried melancholy. The victory bells that rang each day at noon acquired the sound of a funeral dirge when one looked at the tired, pinched faces of the Germans hurrying along the pavements … When I expressed surprise to a glum man sitting near me he glanced impatiently up and only said, ‘We celebrated once in 1914’.


The Japanese home front suffered from tuberculosis – click here to read about it…

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'No More Pearl Harbors'' (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)
1946, Pathfinder Magazine, Spying

‘No More Pearl Harbors”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

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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.

Pearl Harbor Newspaper Article | Pearl Harbor Magazine Article
1942, Pearl Harbor, Yank Magazine

The Pearl Harbor Story
(Yank Magazine, 1942)

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When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old – and like the articles that came out in ’41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the Arizona).


Five months after the Pearl Harbor attack the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea, click here to read about it…

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Japanese Economy W.W. II | 1930s Japanese Economy | 1941 Japan
1941, St. Louis Star-Times, World War Two

Japan Could Not Afford to Go to War
(St. Louis Star-Times, 1941)

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The day following Japan’s debut performance at Pearl Harbor found American economists assessing the economic strength of that country in an effort to understand how long their military would be able to exert power:

Government economists doubted today that Japan’s economy could withstand a long war with the United States.


Four years after the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese newspaper editorial expressed deep regret for Japan’s aggressiveness in the Second World War, click here to read about it…

Popular Japanese Perceptions of the USA
1942, Japanese Home Front, The American Magazine

How Americans Were Seen by The Japanese
(American Magazine, 1942)

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In this article, photographer Frederick L. Hamilton recalled his two years in Japan prior to the Pearl Harbor attack; he let’s lose with all he learned concerning how the Japanese perceived the Americans:

They think we are soft, wasteful, irreverent and stupid…Most serious of all to the Japanese is their belief that we have no spiritual quality, no sense of honor.

The Iconic ''I Want You'' Poster Is Seen for the First Time (Literary Digest, 1917)
1917, Posters, The Literary Digest

The Iconic ”I Want You” Poster Is Seen for the First Time
(Literary Digest, 1917)

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In April, 1917, the call went out to artists of all ages that their talents were badly needed to create new and different sorts of posters that would rally the American masses to the colors. One of the first to answer the call was the celebrated illustrator James Montgomery Flagg; his first effort was the memorable I Want You poster, immediately raised the standards which other artists would have to acknowledge. It was reported that George Creel, the President’s appointee for all matters involving such undertakings in the mass-media, hosted a dinner for American illustrators; the evening ended with much clapping and cheering and the next day, one can assume, the poster campaign began in earnest.

Click here to read about W.W. I art.

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