Enter Plastic
(Literary Digest, 1937)
This article is about the chemist Dr. Leo Hendrik Baekeland (1863 – 1944) – who left the world a far more plastic place than when he had found it.
1937
Articles from 1937
The Interior Design of the Hindenburg’
(Creative Art Magazine, 1937)
This article from a 1937 issue of The Magazine of Art addressed the over-all aesthetic appeal of the Hindenburg’ . Written by Blanche Naylor, no stranger to all matters involving industrial design of the Thirties and Forties, the article goes into some detail as to the color scheme, upholstery, paintings and the names of the assorted German designers responsible for the beauty of the air-ship. The article is accompanied by seven photographs and one diagram of the public rooms accessible to the Hindenburg’ passenger’s.
Colorful Menswear
(Literary Digest, 1937)
This 1937 fashion report let it be known that men’s fashions were getting more colorful; items that we associate with the Fifties such as plaid cummerbunds made their appearance first in 1937. The first clothing item to cross the color line was, in all probability, the Hawaiian shirt – which came into vogue some five years earlier.
Click here to read a related article from 1919.
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.
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.
Gahndi and American Movies
(Photoplay Magazine, 1937)
Roving Photoplay correspondent Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. traveled far afield to Yerovila Jail in Poona in order to ask the incarcerated Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948) a question of an entirely trivial nature:
What is your favorite American movie?
‘German Ersatz”
(Literary Digest, 1937)
Speaking of Evil Geniuses, let’s not forget all that the German chemists did to dream-up efficient substitutes for motor fuel, rubber, coal and various metals just before Hitler launched the war in Europe.
The most significant little word in the German vocabulary of 1937 is Ersatz. In two syllables, which, literally translated, means ‘substitute’, it summarizes the bold experiment in rigged economy which is Adolf Hitler’s Four Year Plan… The Reich’s great chemical industry went into high gear immediately, and at this point Ersatz became the big little word of the German language.
Movie Night in the Worker’s Paradise
(Photoplay, 1937)
Saturday night in Stalin’s Moscow: so much to do! If you wanted to take your date to a Russian movie you could go to Battleship Potemkin, or you could take her to Battleship Potemkin, or to Battleship Potemkin! On the other hand, you might choose a foreign movie that was approved by the all-knowing Soviet apparatchik, and in that case the two of you would see a Charlie Chaplin movie – and we’ll give you one guess as to which one he liked.
Click here if you want to know what films Hitler liked.
Low-Wage Pay Scales for Working Women
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who loitered on every street
Fascist Italy Quits the League of Nations
(Literary Digest, 1937)
Italy’s friction with the League of Nations began May 11, 1936, when her delegates stalked out of a lively League Council meeting after it had voted to continue economic sanctions against her over the Ethiopian war.
Nazi Germany quit the League years earlier, click here to read about it…
He Re-Organized
(Literary Digest, 1937)
Congressional eyes bulged last January when President Roosevelt handed Congress his plan to streamline the executive branch of the Government. He asked for sixspecial assistants, two new cabinet officers, an auditor general (to supplant the all-powerful Controller General), a reshuffling and consolidation of boards and bureaus and an expansion of the civil service in all directions.
‘The Pleasures of Gas Warfare”
(Literary Digest, 1937)
Gas, even in its most virulent form, is the most rational as well as the most humane weapon ever employed on the battlefield. It is also – and this should certainly be of interest to the advocates of strict neutrality – the only weapon in the arsenal of Mars which can truly be called defensive.
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.
Nanking Falls
(The Literary Digest, 1937)
Exactly four months after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese hostilities on the Shanghai peninsula’ a New York Herald Tribune correspondent cabled from Shanghai last week, ‘Nanking, China’s abandoned capital, for the third time in it’s more than 2000 years of history, was captured by an alien foe when the Japanese military forces completely occupied the city.’ …To this, Quo Taichi, Chinese ambassador to England, replied defiantly: ‘Capture of Nanking will by no means mark the end of China’s resistance.’
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…
Hugh S. Johnson of the NRA
(Literary Digest, 1937)
Published some time after the demise of the NRA, this article presents a thumbnail profile of Hugh S. Johnson (1882 – 1942), FDR’s fair-haired boy who ran that shop from start to finish. He was once again in the news after having compared the New Deal to a fascist dictatorship during the Fall of 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…
Repeal + Four Years
(Literary Digest, 1937)
With the [Prohibition] Repeal, approximately one million people went back to work, making wine, beer and distilled spirits, bottles and barrels; transporting, selling and serving and advertising it. Innumerable industries indirectly connected with liquor, such as printing, building and machinery-making, received a sharp stimulus. With Repeal also, sorely needed tax money started to roll into the public coffers. Since 1933 more than two billion dollars in liquor taxes has gone into national, state and local treasuries…