Pathfinder Magazine – Page 8 – Old Magazine Articles

Who Was Mussolini?
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

A semi-flattering profile of Benito Mussolini that explains his difficult childhood and the periodic beatings he suffered at the hands of his Marxist father. No references are made to his favorite pastimes – beating up editors and closing newspapers:

Significantly, his god is Nietzsche, the German philosopher who wrote: ‘Might makes right.’

You can read about his violent death here…

Fascist Rome fell to the Allies in June of 1944, click here to read about it…

The Klansman on the Supreme Court
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

When the U.S. Supreme Court gave their decision concerning the 1940 appeal of a lower court’s verdict to convict three African-Americans for murder, civil libertarians in Washington held their collective breath wondering how Justice Hugo Black approached the case. Black, confirmed in 1937 as FDR’s first court appointee, admitted to having once been made a ‘life member’ of the Ku Klux Klan. This column was one of any number of other articles from that era that reported on the Alabaman’s explanation behind his Klan associations:

I did join the Klan… I later resigned. I never rejoined.

The Bad War Poets
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)

On came the foe, rushing foe,

As down they fell by hundreds.

‘Twas bravery held our men;

They knew they were outnumbered.

‘Hundreds’ and ‘outnumbered’; Tennyson could hardly have done better than that. But even Tennyson would not have tried to rhyme ‘steam and ‘submarine’, as the author of the following succeded in doing:

Brave boys, put on steam;

Be ready at the guns, boys;

‘Tis a German submarine.

etc., etc.

American Spelling Rejected by Canadians
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1931)

Heaven knows that the average American had it tough during 1931. The Great Depression was coming down hard on them – but the harshest blow came from our neighbor to the North who rejected our manner of spelling!

Allied Occupation of Germany Ends
(The Pathfinder, 1930)

The foreign correspondent for Pathfinder Magazine filed this brief report about the goings-on in Germany on June 30, 1930, when the last Allied regiments had completed their occupation duties mandated under the Treaty of Versailles and withdrew to their own borders:

For the most part the German population waited patiently until the last uniformed Frenchman had entrained and then they raised the German flags, [and] began to sing ‘Deutschland Ueber Alles’…

President Hindenburg issued a proclamation saying in part:

‘After long years of hardships and waiting, the demand of all Germans was today fulfilled. Loyalty to her fatherland, patient perseverance and common sacrifices have restored to the occupied territory the highest possession of every people – freedom.’

Mid-War Production Figures
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)

During the Summer of 1943, James F. Byrenes, FDR’s Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, gave a report on the wartime production output for that period. 1943 proved to have been a turning point for the Allied war efforts on both fronts.

When the Depression Caught Up With Doctors
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

Some people have maintained that doctors weren’t hit so hard by the economic slump. The claim was that people couldn’t help getting sick and their misfortune was the doctor’s gravy. But the Committee on the Cost of Medical Care, a non-governmental committee, of which Secretary Wilbur is chairman, reports a rapid decline in the income of doctors during the Depression… In 1930, the first [full] year of the Depression, physician’s incomes decreased 17% and they have been decreasing ever since.

The author also included some other elements gleaned by the committee – such as the average sum paid by the families in their study, the approximate cost of the nation’s medical bills and an approximation concerning the number of medical professionals at work in 1931.

During the Depression, many doctors and nurses worked entirely for free; to read about that, click here…

Scandal
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

The New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, with its millions of employees and billions of dollars in relief funds, has long been recognized as a potential cesspool of graft where the unscrupulous are concerned. Last week, in the fierce heat of the 1938 campaign’s closing days, the stench of scandal began to penetrate the WPA administrations of two states…

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.

Soak the Rich States, Too
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)

This is an interesting article that assesses the financial abilities of each of the 48 states in 1935 in an effort to illustrate that the ten richest states, as a result of their minority status on Capitol Hill, were in no position to cry out about majority tyranny when the insolvent 38 states rigged a deliberately unfair tax code that would see to it that they alone would pay the nation’s bills.

The ‘rich’ people may howl and growl and moan at having to foot the bills for everything, but there’s no remedy for it… The reason is this: our parade of poor states totals 38, while the rich states number only ten. The figures show that these rich states, which have only one-third the population, have to pay two-thirds of the taxes. The 10 richest states have only 20 Senators in the Senate, while the 38 poor states have 76. The rich are decidedly in the minority and there is no way for them to change the set-up.

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.

The Boy Scouts of America
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)

When this article first appeared, the Boy Scouts of America, as an institution, was barely thirty-five years old:

The truth is that never in the history of mankind has a simple idea – an idea, incidentally, born in South Africa – so seized the imagination of boys the world over as has Scouting.

Both Boy Scots and Girl Scouts were active in the Japanese-American internment camps during W.W. II. Click here to read about that subject…

Abuses at Sunbeam Prison
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

Abuses were all too common in most Southern penitentiaries up until the Fifties. This article chronicles one prison in Florida and their practice of placing the prisoners in 60-gallon barrels when they stepped out of line.

The Invention of Nylon
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

Last week, two of the nation’s leading manufacturers of synthetic textiles were taking important steps to woo the feminine heart from silk to synthetic hosiery. The E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Company announced that it had laid plans for construction of a new $7,000,000 plant near Seaford, Delaware, for manufacture of a new synthetic yarn called ‘Nylon,’ which, used in hosiery, was expected to compete successfully with all types of silk stockings.

The Books Lincoln Read
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)

Examine Lincoln’s prose and the fruitage of his reading will appear… The easy quickening of Lincoln’s mind came from books like Aesop’s Fables, Robinson Caruso and Pilgrim’s Progress… To a man who knew intimately so many creatures, both wild and domestic, the fables seemed natural.

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

Speeches by Hitler and Chamberlain Compared
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

We shall fight until the terror of the plutocracies has been broken.

– so blathered Adolf Hitler in a radio address from early 1940 in which he attempted to clarify the Nazi war aims. Never forgetting that the zi in Nazi is derived from Sozi for socialist (Compare with ‘Commie’ for ‘Communist’) – the dictator was heard here doing what he did from time to time in his speeches; borrowing the street hustle of the proletarian underdog (many thanks to WIKIanswers).

Click here to read another article on the same topic.

The Women Voter in Her First Five Elections
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

This is an interesting article that indicates just how profoundly elections had changed after 1920, when women began to vote. Previously, when the voting booth was a gender-specific domain, the victory margins were seldom greater than 10%; yet, beginning with the 1920 presidential election and continuing through the election of 1936, dramatic differences could be seen between the winners and losers that had never existed in prior contests.

The journalist believed that the advent of radio broadcasting also played a contributing factor in these elections.

Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.