1922 – Page 6 – Old Magazine Articles

Klan Methods and Customs
(Literary Digest, 1922)

This article reported on the alarming growth and surprising appeal that the KKK was attaining in 1922. The unnamed journalist described numerous incidences that clearly reflected the Klan’s open contempt for law throughout the country- concluding that the Klan was beyond redemption. The article revealed that the newspaper editors who lived and worked in those regions where the Klan was most active had greater contempt for them than we otherwise might have been lead to believe.

No Citizenship for Japanese Immigrants
(Literary Digest, 1922)

An article that marks the date of November 13, 1922 as a poor one for the assembled masses who happened to have been of Japanese ancestry in the United States. On that date Justice George Sutherland (1862-1942), of the United States Supreme Court, handed down the ruling that the Japanese can not be citizens of this country. The opinions of many American Newspapers are presented herein, among them an excerpt from the St. Louis Star which summed up the opinion just so:

The law which prevents the naturalization of Japanese is plainly intended to exclude the Japanese because they are racially unassimlable and their presence creates economic difficulties.

You can read more about Justice Sutherland HERE…

Citizenship Denied
(Literary Digest, 1922)

This article reported that as of 1922, the United States Government saw fit to deny 19,000 immigrants U.S. citizenship. This number, when added to the other repatriated applicants of the previous ten years, totals up to 760,000 people; which was, at that time, more than the entire population of North Dakota. The Ellis Island based naturalization service classified all rejected immigrants in fifteen different categories, this reporter preferred to name just two: Ignorance and Immoral Character. Immoral Character speaks for itself. And Ignorance covers those who didn’t appear to know enough to exercise the rights of citizenship intelligently. Oddly, there seemed to have been no talk of amnesty.

A Profile of H.L. Mencken
(The English Review, 1922)

During much of the 20s and 30s satirist H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956) was widely read and respected for the critic that he was -and as you read this British essay from the arts journal, The English Review, you’ll get a sense that the author/groupie must have been waiting by the docks for several years in anticipation of his arrival.

The historian Henry Steele Commager ranked H.L. Mencken at number 9 insofar as his impact on the American mind was concerned – click here to understand his reasoning…

Click here to read an article about one of New York’s greatest mayors: Fiorello LaGuardia.

Car Design in 1922
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

Five sketches of motor car designs which won cash prizes or honorable mention at the recent [1922] first annual ‘Body Builders’ Show in New York. In this competition were entered many leading custom body builders.

The Modern Klan
(Atlantic Monthly, 1922)

An Atlantic Monthly article by LeRoy Percy (1860– 1929), a well-off planter who had successfully fought the spread of the KKK into Washington County, Mississippi. This article explains how the Klan operated in 1922. Their wide-spread appeal is also discussed.

One of the strangest aberrations in American life since the war is the growth of the Ku Klux Klan. In the North that organization, when considered at all, has been thought of as a colossal buffoonery, a matter unworthy of the time or thought of intelligent folk; and indeed for the average American, with his common sense and his appreciation for the ridiculous, any other attitude of numbers would seem unlikely…The Klan excludes from membership Negroes, Jews, Catholics and foreign-born, whether citizens or not. In its own phrase, it is the only Gentile White Protestant American-born organization in the world. It is secret… When asked if he is a member, the custom is for a good Klansman to evade, more rarely to reply in the negative, but in any event not to avow his membership.

Click here to learn about the origins of the term Jim Crow.

The Invincible Mrs. Mallory
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

The Vanity Fair sports writer Fred Hawthorne was filled with high praise for tennis star Molla Bjurstedt Mallory (1884 – 1959):

To-day Mrs. Mallory’s backhand shots are on par with her famous forehand drive, and her all-around play has improved tremendously. She is a splendid volleryer, too, though not in our typical American style. Mrs. Mallory has won the national singles title five times and last August defeated Mlli. Suzanne Lenglen, of France, probably the most finished woman tennis player in the world.

Carl Sandburg on Charlie Chaplin
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

This poem was submitted to the Vanity Fair editors by an obscure film critic named Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967):

The room is dark. The door opens. It is Charlie
playing for his friends after dinner, ‘the marvel-
ous urchin, the little genius of the screen…’

Between the years 1920 – 1928, Sandburg served as the film critic for the Chicago Daily News.

The Passing of an Era
(The Nation, 1922)

British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (1862-1922) was quicker than most of his contemporaries when he recognized what was unfolding in Europe during the August of 1914, and uttered these prophetic words:

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

The anonymous old wag who penned this opinion column came to understand Gray’s words; four years after the war he looked around and found that the world speeding by his window seemed untouched by the heavy handed Victorians. For this writer, the Victorian poet and writer Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888) represented the spirit of that age and it all seemed to come crashing down in 1922:

Granting that the son of Arnold of Rugby was more troubled over the decay of Christian dogma than we are, it should be remembered that the decay symbolized for him a fact of equal gravity to ourselves — the loss of a rational universe in which to be at home. But he never doubted how a new world was to be built — by justice and by reason, not by claptrap and myth.

Fifth Avenue Observations
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

This cartoon was drawn by the New York artist Reginald Marsh (1898 – 1954), who had a swell time comparing and contrasting the bio-diversity along 1922 Fifth Avenue; from the free-verse poets on Eighth Avenue up to the narrow-nosed society swanks on Sixty-Eighth Street -and everyone else in between.

Click here to read a 1921 article about the growth of the Jewish population in New York.

Click here to read a magazine article about 1921 Harlem.

Kansan Governor Henry J. Allen Takes On the KKK
(The Outlook, 1922)

An article from The Outlook reported on the enormous amount of discomfort that the Ku Klux Klan was generating among Catholics in 1922 Kansas. During a New York interview, Kansas Governor Henry J. Allen (1868 – 1950) remarked about the piles of letters his office received imploring that the state take action and how he, too, had been threatened by the organization.

Kansas is engaged in trying out the Ku Klux Klan through an action in the State Supreme Court to restrain it’s secret activities.

Weird Rumors About the Klan…
(The Outlook, 1922)

Teddy Roosevelt’s (1858 – 1919) magazine The Outlook, was often quite critical of the Ku Klux Klan, yet in this brief notice the editors seemed surprisingly Milquetoast in their reporting of the organization’s growth and assorted activities. The article passively noted bizarre rumors that stood in contrast to the Klan’s history:

There have been some queer developments in the Ku Klux Klan. Thus in Georgia it has been alleged that Negroes have been asked to join…

Will Hays Comes to Hollywood
(The American Magazine, 1922)

This short notice is about Will Hays, an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, who was hired to be the conscience of the Dream Factory in 1922; he rode into Hollywood on the heels of a number of well-publicized scandals vowing to sober the place up. Widely believed to be a moral man, the Hays office was located in New York City – far from the ballyhoo of Hollywood. Hays’ salary was paid by the producers and distributors in the movie business and although he promised to shame the film colony into making wholesome productions, he was also the paid apologist of the producers.

The King of Italy Smiles on the Fascists
(The Literary Digest, 1922)

This 1922 news column reported that Benito Mussolini had been granted power by the Italian King:

King Victor Emanuel of Italy has invited the leader of Fascisti, Benito Mussolini, to form a cabinet to replace the Facta Ministry.

Anti-Lynching Law Debated in Congress
(Congressional Digest, 1922)

Reproduced here are the two pages from the Congressional Digest of 1922 which are composed of both the outline of the proposed legislation as well as the debate of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill.

The bill, which was introduced by Representative Leonidas C. Dyer (1871 – 1957)of Missouri, was intended to make lynching a felony that would have resulted in a short prison term and a $5,000.00 fine for all guilty participants. The proposed legislation passed the House of Representatives but not the Senate. Congressional debates concerning anti-lynching would be a topic for many years to come, however, the arguments presented against passage of this bill by the Southern Representatives make an interesting read.

The Letters and Cartoons of O. Henry
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Today, the name of O. Henry (1862 – 1910) has a far stronger association with New York City than with North Carolina, (his birth place) or Texas, where he spent much of his youth; however when you come to read the attached letters, and see his cartoons, you will hear a very distinct Western voice that is far removed from the New York that he wrote about.

Dada in Germany
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

A segment from a longer article on the origins of Dada by the father of Dada. This column pertains specifically to how the movement took root in Germany as a result of the First World War.

First Blood
(American Legion Weekly, 1922)

A veteran of the U.S. First Division, Sixteenth Infantry, tells the chilling story of that rainy night in November, 1917, when the first German raid upon the American trenches took place:

It was on that night that Company F took over its first front line position, received its baptism of fire, bore the brunt of the first German raid and lost the first American troops killed and captured in the World War.

…two hundred and forty Bavarians, the widely advertised cut-throats of the German Army, hopped down on us. The first raid on American troops was in full swing. They had crawled up to our wire under cover of their artillery barrage and the moment it lifted were right on top of us.

The U.S. Army would not launch their own trench raid for another four months.