Articles from Pathfinder Magazine
Here are five letters to the editor written in response to an article that appeared in one of the Spring, 1944, issues of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE that pertained to two Native American tribal edicts that forbade the use of alcohol.
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Of the 17 defendants in the Russian ‘circus trial’, four were still alive in Moscow last week. Thirteen others, convicted of having acted on the instigation of exile Leon Trotsky to sabotage Soviet railways, mines and factories, were taken to a cellar of Moscow’s Lubianka Prison, where they were yanked into cells to have have their brains blown out by pointblank pistol shots.
Another article about the show trials can be read here…
Congratulations were in order in Soviet Russia last week. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the famed N.K.V.D., secret police, and celebration of that organization’s success in ‘rooting out the enemies of the people’
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.
Surprisingly, these definitions outlining Left and Right in American politics are almost accurate descriptions for our own day, but they still fall short in a number of areas – yet, wouldn’t it be amazing if they still sufficed after all the numerous tremors that have served to rearrange the sociopolitical landscape during the past sixty years?
When the largely agricultural province of Saskatchewan (Canada) began their flirtation with socialism they, too, started with laws involving insurance – car insurance! read about it here…
A thumbnail review of It’s a Wonderful Life written in the form of a favorable plot synopsis. Oddly, the film
When it became clear to all that the Soviets had the bomb – and Washington was the target – the egg-heads in D.C. decided it was time to disperse various government offices to the suburbs:
Given any warning at all, the National Security Resources Board now seems confident it can preserve at least a skeleton Government. But as for the run-of-the-mine Federal employee, he’ll have to take his chances amid the irradiated rubble…
The Marshall Plan was a U.S. Government aid program that was instrumental in the reconstruction and economic resurrection of 16 Western European nations following the devastation caused by the Second World War. It is named for Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who co-authored the initiative with the help of the prominent business leader William Clayton, and the American diplomat George F. Kennan.
The attached article concerns the first draft of the scheme that was drawn-up by Marshall and the representatives of these 16 nations during the Summer/Fall of 1947. The amount of cash to be distributed (and paid back over a period of 30 years) was $22.44 billion.
Marshall knew that such an economic stimulant (and the liberties that would follow) would serve to guarantee that Western Europe would not fall into clutches of the Soviet Union.
To read about the Soviet reaction to the Marshall Plan, Click here
To paraphrase Second Corinthians: Europe’s despair was Stalin’s opportunity – he delighted in the post-war unemployment, the inflation and the general lack of confidence in their governmental institutions. When the Marshall Plane came to the rescue in rebuilding Europe, the Soviets knew they were licked. This article reveals how totally bummed the Soviets were over the broad European acceptance of the Marshall plan. They hated it.
The firm of Uncle Sam and John Bull flying grocers, kept the Western Allies in the Battle for Berlin last week… If the peace continues, the U.S. British estimated, by mid-July there will be enough food in Berlin’s stockpile to feed the 2 million Germans in western sectors of the capital until September 1… Supplying fuel and coal was another problem…
The article is accompanied by one cartoon from THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE.
By the time 1947 was coming to a close, an enormous shift in the fashion winds had taken place that altered the silhouette of the fashionable woman. Waists were narrow, hips were padded – and the hemline had dropped as much as twelve inches. The New Look out of Paris dictated the appearances of suits and evening wear, but blouses were left out of the revolution – everyone had to figure it out for themselves and hope that the couturiers from across the sea would come to the rescue the following season.
By late November, 1941, only children and the clinically optimistic were of the mind that America would be able to keep out of a war – as you’ll be able to assume when you read the attached article that appeared on the newsstands just ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It extolls the industrial prowess of the United States as the country prepared for war:
• William S. Knudson (1879 – 1948), Director of the OPM, declared U.S. arms output will soon ‘assure Hitler’s defeat’. Proof of this claim was seen in the celebration in New Haven, Connecticut, of one company’s production of it’s 10,000th machine-gun within a year of the time the contract was signed to build a plant.
• The launching of the 35,000-ton battleship INDIANA at Newport News, Virginia, the third battleship to come off the ways this year, indicated the increased tempo of defense production, which Admiral Land, of the Maritime Commission, said neared ‘superhuman’.
Goebbels is the creator of the Hitler legend. He is the white-washer of the Nazi reputation. In the 1920s the party had an unsavory name because its ranks included a clique of of homosexuals. As early as 1922 a Nazi meeting at Munich voted that no woman should ever hold political office. Goebbels twisted the party’s abnormal dislike of women into something ‘respectable’ – the doctrine that a woman’s place was in the kitchen and the maternity ward.
The journalist who penned the attached article was in the dark as to the reasons why Reichsmarshal Herman Goring appeared in Rome during the opening weeks of January, 1937, but he wisely presumed that it had something to do with the Spanish Civil War – and he was right.
Suddenly last June, a Federal grand jury in New York City hoisted the curtain on ‘America’s most significant spy prosecution since the [First] World War’ by indicting 18 persons for participating in a conspiracy to steal U.S. defense secrets for Germany. Subsequently, only four of the 18 could be found for trial. The others, including two high officials of the German War Ministry, were safe in – or had escaped to – the Fatherland.
After eight years of research, the National Retail Lumber Dealers Association and the Producers’ Council, an organization of building materials manufacturers, have polished up all the known short-cut, dollar-saving methods in building, packaged them into an industry-wide program, and labeled them the ‘four-inch module plan.’… The house is built on of three sections, each 16 x 24 feet, and bolted at floor, walls and roof. Wall joints are hidden by cabinets; by simply removing top and side cabinets, bolts can be loosened and the house readied for moving on trailers.
Pictured herein is Dr. C.W. Hewlett – early proponent of solar energy.
He was employed by the research department at General Electric and can be seen demonstrating his brainchild, the Solar Electric Motor:
Four small, round iron plates constitute the cell which converts the light into power. The plates are coated with selenium over which is an extremely thin layer of platinum. Both of the metals are ‘light sensitive’ and convert certain of the the rays into electricity, but as to just how this is done science is pretty vague.
