Home Front Concerns
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)
Here are two home front articles regarding the rationing of labor, food and steel; 1944 orders on clothing production are also touched upon.
Pathfinder Magazine
Articles from Pathfinder Magazine
The 1948 Tucker
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)
[The] First models of the Tucker ’48, [the] only really revolutionary postwar car so far, should be ready for public showing in New York, Chicago, and on the West Coast within 60 days…
Stepping-Up The Training
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)
By the autumn of 1950 it became clear to the old hands at the Pentagon that the police action on the Korean peninsula was beginning to resemble a real war. With that in mind, thirteen military training camps that had been been barren for the past five years, were dusted off in order that they might once more begin training Americans for war. Two weeks later China threw her hat in the ring.
During this same period, the U.S. Navy took 62 ships that had been mothballed in order to launch the Inchon Landings…
Television: God’s Gift To Politicians
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)
Placing a teleprompter or cue cards below a camera lens seems like old-hat to us – but our grandparents thought that it rendered an amazing affect for televised addresses:
The new technique for speeches on TV – reading from larlge cards with lettering two inches high placed just under the camera lens – makes it possible for the speaker to look directly into the camera lens, giving the appearance of talking directly to the viewer.
Red Saskatchewan
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)
When the our neighbors to the North first dipped their toe into the tepid waters of socialism, they they chose to do so with car insurance:
A law compelling automobile operators and public schools to buy insurance from a state-owned company.
The State of Radio In 1937 America
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Girding the United States today are two major national radio chains and one smaller chain. They are the National Broadcasting Company, the Columbia Broadcasting Company and the Mutual Broadcasting System, NBC, with its combined Red and Blue networks, has about 110 stations. CBS on a single network has 101. Mutual has 45 and will add a new section of 10 more next month.
Dormant Capital
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)
This article reported on a phenomenon that is common in our own day as well as the era of the Great Depression. It exists in any locale that fosters a lousy environment for business – for when the entrepreneurial classes loose their daring for investing in commercial ventures and when bankers refuse to loan money for fear that they will never be paid back, it leads to the creation of what is called dormant capital – money that should be working, but isn’t.
There is now piled up in banks some $46,000,000,000. As opposed to $39,000,000,000 at the low point of 1933, and the idle capital is on the increase. World trade has virtually broken down.
As one editorial makes clear, FDR had a tough time freeing up private capital for investments, click here to read it.
Understanding Unemployment
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
In order for FDR’s Federal Government to layout their planned economy they had to be able to forecast the future trends in unemployment, and with that in mind it was deemed suitable that a committee be convened to study the matter. The board of brainiacs called themselves the National Resources Committee and their study was boundless and all encompassing. This article summarizes the findings of one of the organization subcommittees; their 450,000-word report was titled Technological Trends and National Policy, Including the Social Implications of of New Inventions. The head of this subcommittee was the famed sociology professor William F. Ogburn, and as the title implied, the report studied the blessing and the curse that is the nature of technological innovation.
The U.N. Counter-Offensive
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1951)
In mid-March the U.N. forces launched a counter-strike in answer to the Communists offensive that was commenced across a wide swath of the front line in early January. General Ridgeway remarked that although the Communists were in retreat, they still had an enormous pool of men in reserve.
The Gloom Of It All
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)
It must have been very difficult to maintain a sunny disposition back in the Thirties! No doubt, residents of the Great Depression would often have to make their own good news. For example, that same month in 1932 when this article appeared it was also announced that for the first time in the nation’s history alien emigration from the United States during the last fiscal year exceeded immigration [to the United States], figures being 103,295 and 35,576 respectively – there! For those people who disliked hearing foreign accents on the streets, there was a glimmer of hope – and that’s what this article was all about: finding hope.
Distributing the Nation’s Wealth…
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)
An article about FDR’s scheme to create an American Utopia purchased with high taxation. The article closes with an amusing poem about the tyranny of taxation.
Chinese Slave Labor Under The Boot of Japan
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)
By 1945 the Japanese Army was beginning to see the writing on the wall insofar as their occupation of China was concerned. With the collapse of Germany they knew they could expect the Soviets to attack at any time – this foreboding inspired them to corral greater numbers of hapless Chinese and force them to build barricades in order to postpone the inevitable.
The New Normal
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)
In December of 1949 Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’s anti-communist forces retreated to the island of Formosa (Taiwan).
Medal of Honor for Pvt. Lloyd C. Hawks
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)
Lloyd Cortez Hawks (1911 – 1953) was a U.S. Army private and a recipient of the United States military’s highest decoration for valor — the Congressional Medal of Honor. Hawks performed his celebrated acts of derring-do while serving as a medic attached to the 30th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division outside of Carano, Italy.
The Invincible Chinese?
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)
Man, those Chinese are good soldiers… You can’t see ’em; you can’t hear ’em. You don’t know they’re there until they’re on top of you… They’re experts at camouflage and the best damn night-fighters I’ve ever seen. We could walk a company over the hill and see nothing. Then we’d look around and they’d be swarming on us like flies. It was just like they’d sprouted from the ground.