The W.W. II Teacher Shortage (Click Magazine, 1944)This 1944 article by the U.S. Commissioner of Education, John W. Studebaker (1887 – 1989), reported on the impact that W.W. II was having on the American educational system. Studebaker pointed out that during the course of the national emergency, as many as 115,000 teachers had left the nation's classrooms in order to help the war effort in one form or another:
"Every community can testify to the competent and unselfish job teachers have done both at their posts and in voluntary wartime tasks of rationing, salvaging and bond sales. But the fact remains that at this critical time in our history between 20,000 and 25,000 positions have been abandoned and thousands of classes are overcrowded. Look at these figures:
in October, 1939, there were practically no teaching jobs vacant. In October, 1943 there were 7,700, and in addition , about 57,000 more positions had to be filled by teachers who could not meet the regular certification requirements." Tag Cloud Mortgage payment calculators
Propaganda Radio (Direction Magazine, 1941)This magazine article first appeared on American newsstands during February of 1941; at that time the U.S. was ten months away from even considering that W.W. II was an American cause worthy of Yankee blood and treasure.
Yet, the journalist who penned the attached column believed that American radio audiences were steadily fed programming designed to win them over to the interventionist corner. He believed that it was rare for isolationists to ever be granted time before the microphones and quite common for newscasters to linger a bit longer on any news item that listed the hardships in France and Britain. Objectivity was also missing in matters involving the broadcasting of popular song:
"Kate Smith missed none of the emotional nuances in such songs as 'The Last Time I Saw Paris' and 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square'. Lynn Fontanne gave such an evocative reading of Alice Duer Miller's 'The White Cliffs' that she was called upon to repeat it on several succeeding broadcasts."
Denim (Collier's Magazine, 1942)Nine months into the war the American fashion industry awoke to discover that one of the most sought after cottons being purchased domestically was denim.
Denim was first seen in 1853, worn by the men who panned for gold in California. When faced with hard labor, this sturdy twill had proven its worth again and again, and when the American home front recognized that there was a great deal of work to be done in the fields and factories if the war was to be won, they slipped on jeans and denim coveralls and saw the job through.
Who on Sixth Avenue could have known back then that denim would be the main-stay in American sportswear for decades to come.
A far more thorough fashion history of blue jeans can be read here.
Whale Meat Replaced Steak... (Click Magazine, 1944)As a result of the rationing of beef, in order to placate the Grand Poo-Bahs who lorded-over the American war effort, some people along the W.W. II home front turned to whale meat as a substitute for beef:
"If you walk into a Seattle, Washington butcher shop and ask for a steak, you might be offered a whale steak. No ration points will be required, and the flavor will be somewhere between that of veal and beef. You can prepare your steak just as you would a sirloin, or you can have it ground into whaleburger."
"An average whale is valued at about $5,000, weighs from 50 to 80 tons and gives 7 to 15 tons of edible meat. It produces between 50 to 70 barrels of oil and 5 to 10 tons of bone. The liver weighs from 1,800 pounds and the heart about 400 pounds. Three types of whales are common off of the West Coast: the fin-back, best meat producer; the sperm, good for oil only; and the humpback which provides both meat and oil."
When the U.S. was fighting the First World War, twenty years earlier, it was found that the oil extracted from whales proved useful in the production of explosives.
Art on the Home Front (Rob Wagner's Script Magazine, 1942)The United States had only been committed to the Second World War for twenty weeks when the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971) felt compelled to write about the unique roll artist are called upon to play within a democracy at war:
"The art of a democracy must be, like democracy itself, of and by and for the people. It must and will reflect the public mood and public interest...Awareness of America, of its infinitely varied beauties and of its sometimes sordid ugliness; awareness of the life of America, of its fulfillments and its failures; awareness, if you like, of God, the landscape architect supreme - and political failure: of the promise of America and of its problems, art has been, or has aimed to be, a revelation. It is for the right to solve these problems our way that we are now at war."
Absolute, Total Morons on the W.W. II Home Front (Collier's Magazine, 1943)If you're one of those types who tend to feel that Americans aren't as smart as they used to be, this is the article for you: attached is a collection of quotes generated by eight home front dullards who were asked the question:
"Do you know what you are fighting?"
They all understood that their nation had just finished it's second year fighting something called "Fascism" but were hard-pressed to put a thoughtful definition to the term:
"A Kansas cattle raiser defined Fascism as '...the belief in a big industrial enterprise. Anyone who thinks that way is Fascist-minded."
Additionally, it is fun to see the pictures of all the assorted noobs who made such ridiculous statements.
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